The Orchard Keeper (1965) (15 page)

A quarter hour later he emerged back into the road again still carrying the knife and dragging behind him a small cedar tree. At the curve below the orchard he stopped and looked back, then relegated the knife to some place in the folds of his coat and shouldered the tree. A little further on he entered the woods again, trace of a path or road leading off to the right. This time he was gone for only a few minutes. When he came back, unburdened of the tree now, he followed his tracks to where he had first come onto the road and so
disappeared once more into the woods, down the slope of the mountain the way by which he came.

They threaded their way over the jumbled limestone of the quarry, Warn in the lead, until they came to the cave.

It don’t look like much, Johnny Romines said.

It opens up inside, Warn said. Here, let me hang him up here and I’ll show ye. He wedged the skunk in the fork of a sapling and then disappeared down into the earth, crawling on hands and knees through a small hole beneath the rocks. They followed one by one, the stiff winter nettles at the cave door rattling viperously against the legs of their jeans. Inside they struck matches and Warn took a candlestub from a crevice and lit it, the calcined rock taking shape, tonsiled roof and flowing concavity, like something gone partly to liquid and frozen back again misshapen and awry, their shadows curling threatfully up the walls among the dried and mounded bat-droppings. They studied the inscriptions etched in the soft and curdcolored stone, hearts and names, archaic dates, crudely erotic hieroglyphs—the bulbed phallus and strange centipedal vulva of small boys’ imaginations.

They followed the strip of red clay that traced the cave floor into another and larger room, hooted at their lapping echoes, their laughter rebounding in hollow and mocking derision. Water dripped ceaselessly, small ping and spatter on stone. The two dogs hung close to them, stepping nervously.

This’n here’s the biggest room, Warn said. Then I got me a secret room on back with a rock in front of it so you cain’t see it. Then they’s a tunnel goes back, but
I ain’t never been to the end of it. Ain’t no tellin where-all it goes.

Boog came up dragging a load of dead limbs and presently they had a fire going in the center of the big room. This here is the way the cave-men used to do, Boog said.

They used to be cave-men hereabouts, said Warn. Pre-storic animals too. They’s a tush over on the other side of the mountain stickin out of some rock what’s long as your leg. Ain’t no way to get to it lessen you had ropes or somethin.

Johnny Romines took out a packet of tobacco and rolled a cigarette. Boog borrowed it and rolled one too and they sat smoking in long steady pulls. Which’d you rather be, Boog asked John Wesley, white or Indian?

I don’t know, the boy said. White I reckon. They always whipped the Indians.

Boog tipped the ash from his cigarette with his little finger. That’s so, he said. That’s a point I hadn’t studied.

I got Indian in me, Johnny Romines said.

Boog’s half nigger, said Warn.

I ain’t done it, Boog said.

You said niggers was good as whites.

I never. What I said was
some
niggers is good as
some
whites is what I said.

That what you said?

Yeah.

I had a uncle was a White-Cap, Johnny Romines said. You ought to hear him on niggers. He claims they’re kin to monkeys.

John Wesley didn’t say anything. He’d never met any niggers.

Tell John Wesley here about the time we dynamited the birds, Warn said. This is last Christmas, he explained.
His daddy give him a electric train one time and they got it out for his little brother.

Johnny Romines told it, slowly, smiling from time to time. They had wired the transformer of the train to a dynamite cap stolen from the quarry shack and buried the cap in the snow.

We had us a long piece of lightwire, he said, and we set in the garage with the transformer all hooked up. Warn here claimed it wouldn’t work. Well, we’d sprinkled breadcrumbs all round over where the cap was buried out in the yard and directly you couldn’t see for the birds. I told Warn to thow the switch.

Goddamn but it come a awful blast, said Warn. I eased the switch on over and then BALOOM! They’s a big hoop of snow jumped up in the yard like when you thow a flat rock in the pond and birds goin ever which way mostly straight up. I remember we run out and you could see pieces of em strung all out in the yard and hangin off the trees. And feathers. God, I never seen the like of feathers. They was stit fallin next mornin.

Lord, whispered Boog, I’d of liked to of seen that.

John Wesley had begun to cough. Ain’t it gettin kindly smoky in here to you? he asked. Above their heads smoke roiled and lowered and they noticed they could no longer see the walls of the cave.

Believe it is some, Warn said. He stood up and was closed from sight by the smoke. Hell’s bells, he said, let’s get out of here.

This is the way the cave-men done it, Boog said.

Cave-men be damned, we’re fixin to get barbycued.

They crawled and stumbled to the mouth of the cave—a shifting patch of murky light weaving beyond the smoke combers, came red-eyed and weeping from their crypt, their jacket fronts encrusted with slick red
mud. When they had dried their eyes and could see again they were in some volcanic and infernal under-region, the whole of the quarry woods wrapped in haze and smoke boiling up out of the rocky ground from every cleft and fissure.

Mr Eller stood at the counter and watched them come in, the clothes steaming on the backs of the men as they stomped off the slush from their shoes and stood about the stove making cigarettes with chilled fingers, the stove popping and whistling with the snow-wetted coal, the women excited with the cold, making their purchases with deliberation, some towing small children about in the folds of their skirts, leaving again, young boys with shotguns and rifles buying shells not by the box but by fours and sixes and lending to the bustle a purposeful and even militant air. He rang the money up in the cash register or marked it in his credit books.

Odor of smoke and cold, wet clothing and meat cooking. The snow was falling again and they watched it. Lord, Mr Eller said, reckon it’s ever goin to quit.

Boog and Johnny Romines came in with a rabbit and they each got a dope.

Whereabouts you get him, Johnny? Mr Eller asked.

Over on the creek.

Warn Pulliam caught a skunk in a hole, Boog said. That right? How’s he smell? He don’t smell too purty.

The men laughed. He’s a fat’n, one said, nodding toward the rabbit. How’s them pups run? Purty good?

Purty good little old rabbit dogs, Johnny said. They jumped two more but I never got a clear shot.

Them’s beagles, said Boog.

The old man came out on the pike road at the gap where the Green Fly Inn had stood. There was no trace of the inn now but the black and limbless pine trunk that stood in the hollow. Snow had started again, dropping like a veil over the valley or riding the wind through the gap, stinging his face a little. He walked down until he came to the Twin Fork road and took it into the Hopper and homeward. From a lightwire overhead, dangling head downward and hollowed to the weight of ashened feathers and fluted bones, a small owl hung in an attitude of forlorn exhortation, its wizened talons locked about the single strand of wire. It stared down from dark and empty sockets, penduluming softly in the bitter wind.

At the head of the hollow there was a springhouse and they stopped to drink, the water green and pulsing up from the rocks where a scalloped fringe of ice jutted just above the waterline.

I figured to set here, Warn said, but they’s too many people come by and you’d get your traps stole. Come on I’ll show you where I got my culvert-set. He dipped up another mouthful of the numbing water, took the rifle and trap and handed the skunk to the younger boy. He don’t smell so bad out in the air, he said. The old lady’ll pitch a hissy when she gets a whiff of me though.

They came out on the road and crossed to the other side where the creek ran. Warn got down on one knee and peered back through the culvert under the road where the spring run trickled through.

It don’t never freeze in here, he said. I done caught me one muskrat here but what I’m lookin for is a mink. See? I got the trap jest back inside where nobody won’t notice it.

The boy peered into the dark tunnel, the water loping
slowly down the corrugated metal and flaring where it passed over the trap.

I seen mink sign here back in the fall and some lately, Warn said. They’s mink on Stock Creek too. Used to be some on Red Branch but they ain’t any more is how come I don’t trap it no more. You ready to go?

See, they ain’t been no cars in here yet, Warn said. Ain’t but jest a few people live over here in the holler and mostly they ain’t got cars. You see that house up yander?

He looked where Warn pointed. Set back off the road was a squat saddle-roofed structure with a thin wisp of smoke swirling and circling about the top of the chimney.

That’s where Garland Hobie lives, he told him. You mess around there you get your ass shot off.

How come?

On account of he makes whiskey, Warn said. Him and his old lady. Here. I’ll show you somethin directly.

Beyond the curve of the road there was an old frame church and Warn pointed it out. See that church? Well, that was a nigger church. They used to be a bunch of niggers lived in the holler and they built this here church and commenced singin and hollerin of a night till old man Hobie, he’s dead now, he run em ever one off. He’s been dead since afore you and me was born and they ain’t none of em come back yet. That’s how strong he was on niggers. They say Ef was even meaner’n the old man. He died right at the store back a few year ago. Jest got out of Brushy Mountain. Garland, he’s meaner’n hell too. They raided em one time here back and he give em the old lady to take off to jail. His own mama. That’s how bad he is. Then they’s Uncle Ather lives up here—nodding ahead of them—he’s a purty good old feller.

Is he your uncle?

Naw. Him and Grandaddy Pulliam worked together cuttin sleepers for the K S & E. So the old man always called him Uncle. He’s purty old. Got a dog pret-near old as you and me both.

That’s purty old, the boy said. How old is he, Uncle …

Uncle Ather? He must be ninety or better. He’s older’n Grandaddy Pulliam and Grandaddy Pulliam’s daddy fought in the Civil War. He owned a lot of land in Knox County and when the war was over they took it away from him on account of him bein a Confederate. Grandaddy Pulliam says they wouldn’t even let nobody vote ceptin niggers and yankees.

Why was that?

On account of back then this was the North I reckon.

Late in the afternoon the old man was sweeping the snow from his front porch when he saw them coming up the road, two small figures dark against the unbroken fall of snow, laboring through the drifts. One of them was carrying a dead skunk. They came abreast of his mailbox and the taller one raised his hand. Heyo, Uncle Ather, he called.

The old man squinted his milkblue eyes against the glare. Hiram Pulliam’s grandson. He grinned and waved them up and they came, toiling on the slope, bowlegged for a better grip in the snow, the Pulliam boy leaning on his rifle and the other one sliding and waving the skunk about in the air.

They sat around the stove with their shoes off, their socks steaming. The old man wrinkled his nose and laughed.

I believe you must of fit that there polecat hand to hand, he said.

Can you smell it? Warn said. I cain’t smell it myself.

He had to crawl back in a hole to get him out, John Wesley said.

I crawled past where he was at, Warn said. I thought he was way on back and then I come to see the wire and it went off into a little side-hole, but I was already past it then. I was all hunkered up down in there and couldn’t hardly turn around, but directly I got to where I could poke my pine knot in the side-hole there and I seen his eyes. I got my rifle turned around and aimed the best way I could and when I shot, it like to busted out my eardrums.

We could hear him shoot, John Wesley said. It sounded like a little old popgun or somethin from on the outside.

Well, when I shot he cut loose too. I mean it really steamed things up in there. I come scootin out hind-end first and we waited a while and then directly I went back and got holt of the wire and come draggin him out and he’s shot between the eyes.

The old man laughed. That puts me in mind of a coon hunt I was on one time, he said. Feller with us shot a coon in a tree and it hung in a limb. So I helt the light and he went up after him. Time he got to the limb where the coon was at it come to life and made at him. He figured purty quick he didn’t want no part of it, but stead of comin down he scooted up another limb and there he set. Ever time he made like he was comin down the coon’d go at him, growlin like a bear. Well, directly he got mad and he decided he’d come on down anyway. So here he come. He was goin to kick the coon off of the limb is what he hollered down to us. We had the lannern on him and could see purty good. He made two
or three swipes at the coon and about that time the old coon latched on to his foot. I never heard the like of hollerin. He commenced swingin that coon around on the end of his toe and he got so took up with it he kindly eased up his holt on the tree. Well, wadn’t but a few minutes one of us hollered to Look out! and here they come pilin down out of the tree. He hit the ground like a sack of feed and jest laid there and the dogs piled on to the coon and they commenced walkin all in his face and fightin till we got em kicked off. We thought he’s dead, but directly he begun to breathe a little and his eyes to flitter some and we seen he wadn’t hurt, jest the wind pooched out of him and scared purty bad. We all laughed considerable and he set there and cussed us, but he was a purty good old boy and I reckon he never helt it against us. I remember he used to tell it on his own sef for years and years and laugh jest like anybody.

The old man sighed. Used to be good coon huntin hereabouts, he said.