The Orchard Keeper (1965) (16 page)

What about painters? Warn asked. Was that a painter was hollerin around here one time?

The old man leaned back in his rocker, a wise grin settling among his sagging skinfolds. Well now, he said. Shore, I remember that right well. Been about ten year ago I’d say. There followed a moment of silence in which he seemed to be contemplating with satyric pleasure some old deed. Then he crossed one knee over the other and leaned forward. Shore, he repeated, I heard it. Many’s the time. Had folks stirred up and scared all of one summer. Yessir, stirred up a blue fog of speculatin,

What’d it sound like? the boy asked.

Oh, purty fierce …

Well, you reckon it was a painter?

Nope, the old man said.

After a minute Warn said, What was it?

The old man had begun to rock gently, a benign look upon his face, composed in wisdom, old hierophant savoring a favorite truth … He stopped and looked down at them. Well, I’ll tell ye. It was a hoot-owl.

He studied their fallen faces, the hopeful incredulity. Yep, he said, a hoot-owl. One of them big’ns, screechin and a-hollerin on this mountain of summer evenins like any painter. They’s folks said painter, folks said not. But I knowed what it was right along. So I let em do their speculatin and arguin … I recollect one evenin I was at the store gettin some things, late summer it was and nigh dark, bout eight o’clock I reckon, when it commenced hollerin. Well, I never said nothin. In a little bit it come again. Boys, I mean it got quiet in that store to where you could hear the ants in the candy jar. Stit I never let on nothin and after a while Bob Kirby—he’s there—he hollered at me and he said, Hey! Uncle Ather. You fixin to walk crost that mountain tonight?

Well, I turned to him kind of surprised-like and I said, Why shore. A feller’s got to get home sometime, and the best way he can. How come you to ast me that?

He jest looked at me for a minute, then he kind of grinned and he said, Cain’t you hear that wampus cat?

Why, I said, shore I hear it. Anybody’t wadn’t deaf could hear that, I reckon.

Well, he kind of figured he had me then so he says, Ain’t you skeered of painters, Uncle Ather?

Why shore, I says. Anybody ceptin a fool’d be skeered of one, a full-growed one leastways.

Then I never said nothin, jest went to the dope box and got me a dope and commenced drinkin it and lookin at my watch ever oncet in a while. I could see he was plenty puzzled and he tried to slip a grin to the rest of the fellers there once or twicet cept they wadn’t grinnin and I reckon was more puzzleder’n he was. So he never
said nothin neither, but after a while they’s a young feller there, he piped up and ast me if that wadn’t a full-growed one that was raisin all that hell out there. Well, about that time it come again, hollerin, and I looked at him and I said, They Lord God, son, I don’t know what you’d do if a growed one was to squall. Why that ain’t nothin there. But then course they ain’t painters round like they used to be. Back fifty, sixty years ago they’d sing out back and forth crost these mountains all night of a summer till you got to where you couldn’t sleep lessen you did hear em. But it takes a big old tom painter to set up a fuss. That there ain’t nothin. I told him that and about that time shore enough that owl let out another screech couldn’t of been a hundred yards off and I could see the hackles come up on his neck and on Bob Kirby’s too.

I finished my dope and set it down and made like I was fixin to leave then and Kirby, he says, stit grinnin kind of, You mean, Uncle Ather, that you can tell one painter from anothern by its squall?

Well, I said, I don’t reckon I can so good any more. He grinned right big at that.

But, I says, since I seen this’n t’other night I guess it jest don’t worry me none.

Well, they all jumped up with somethin to ast then, how big it was and all. I was already half out the door, but I figured to give em somethin to think about while
they
walked home, so I turned to em and I says, Why it ain’t more’n a kitten. It’s right up here in the gap not even dusk-dark t’other night I seen it scoot crost the road. Old Scout was layin there on the concrete. Now he’s fell off some of late but used to be he come a good bit higher’n my knee—to where you jest could straddle him, and weighed better’n a hunderd pound. So I looked around and I seen him there and I jest pointed to him
and I said, Why he ain’t a whole lot bigger’n Scout here, and said em a good night and went on.

Down the small panes of glass behind the old man’s chair the sun lowered, casting his head in silhouette and illumining his white hair with a prophetic translucence. A little later he rose and went to the table and lit the lamp.

You boys care for some … here, jest a minute. He excused himself and went flapping off to the kitchen from where issued in a moment sounds of cupboards and glassware. When he came back he was carrying two glasses and a cup, a mason jar of some dark red liquid. Here, he said, handing them each a glass. He unscrewed the lid of the jar and poured their glasses. A heavy and evil-looking potion the color of iodine. Muskydine wine, he said. Bet you-all ain’t never had none.

It beaded black and sinister in the soft lampglow. He settled himself in his rocker and filled his cup, watching them taste it.

Mighty fine, Warn said.

Yessir, said the boy.

They sipped their wine with the solemnity of communicants, troglodytes gathered in some firelit cave. The lamp guttered in a draft of wind and their shadows, ponderous and bearlike upon the wall, weaved in unison.

Uncle Ather, said the boy, was they really painters back then?

Warn’s face, a harlequin mask etched in black and orange by the lamplight, turned to the old man. Tell him about that’n, Uncle Ather, he said. That’n you had.

Uncle Ather had already started. Oh yes, he said, allaying doubt with an upthrust of his chin. Yes, they
was, long time back. When I was a young feller, workin on the road crew at that time, I caught one.

Caught one?

Yep. He smiled mysteriously. Shore did. Caught him with my bare hands, and I got the scars to prove it. Here he extended a leathery thumb for inspection. The boy slid from his chair and bent studiously over it.

Right here, the old man said, pointing to a place on the inside just above the web. See?

Yes, he said. The skin was wrinkled like an old purse; in that myriad cross-hatching any line could have been a scar. He sat back down and the old man chuckled throatily.

Yessir, he said. He was a vicious critter. Must of weighed all of five pound.

Warn laughed softly. The boy raised his head. The old man sat complacent and mischievous in his rocker, his eyes dancing.

Well, he said, this is what happent. They was a place called Goose Gap—it’s up t’wards Wears Valley. Well, it was when we was blastin in there. Bill Munroe, he’s dead now, he went up right after, soon as rock quit fallin, and then he hollered for me to come up and look see. They’s stit lots of smoke and dust and I couldn’t see too good but I got on up a little ways and directly I seen he’s holdin up somethin. Looked like a groundhog or a little old dog. When I got to where he was at I seen what it was. I hadn’t never seen one afore and it was all tore up and bloody, but I knowed right off what it was. Bill, he couldn’t make nothin out of it. What it was was a painter kit.

We started up through them rocks and directly we come up on anothern. It wadn’t tore up as bad and Bill allowed as to how it must not of been blowed as fer
and so we was headed right. Anyway it turned out he was right and in a little bit we come up on the den-hole. It was all blowed out in the front and about a yard and a half of bones layin all around, and back in the back under some rocks we found this’n, the third’n, he’s alive and mewlin jest about like a housecat.

Old Bill, he backed off some, said that old she-painter might be around. Well, I was younger’n him and likely didn’t have as good sense, so in I goes and grabs the little feller up by the scruff of the neck. That’s when he hung his tushes in my thumb here. I turnt loose right fast, I’ll tell ye. Well, I figured a minute, and then I took off my shirt and scotched him up in that and brought him on home with me.

Here the old man paused and helped himself to a chew of tobacco from a huge paper pouch. I lived five mile this side of Sevierville then, he continued. I—you boys don’t chew, do ye? no—I had bought me a place off a man named Delozier—twenty acres, mostly sidehill and not much of a house neither, a old piece of a barn … I was married then and that was my first place so I reckon I was kindly what you might say proud of it. I kep some hogs and chickens and later on I had me a cow and a wore-out mule, put me in some corn … I never had nothin, ain’t got nothin now, but I figured it was a start. I wadn’t a whole lot older’n you fellers, nineteen, I think I was. But anyway what I was fixin to tell was about that painter. I brought him on home and give him to Ellen. She took to it right off, kep it in a box and give it milk and sech as that. It got to where it’d folly her around the house like a everday walkin-around cat. It wadn’t but about the size of a cat too … I recollect he’s speckled kindly like a bobcat. Well, they’s even a feller come out from the newspaper
and wrote it up about us havin him; folks come from pret-near everwhere to see him.

I reckon it was about two weeks we’d had him when one evenin I heard one of the hogs squeal. I got the lannern and went out but I couldn’t find nothin wrong and went on back in and never thought no more about it. Well, next mornin they’s a hog gone. I hadn’t never heard of nobody stealin hogs but I figured maybe they’s hog thieves jest like ary other kind, up in Sevier County leastwise as that was purty woolly country at that time. But they wadn’t a whole lot I could do about it, not knowin where to even start lookin. Then two nights later anothern of em went. Well, I says, they gettin slicker now. The secont one never even squealt.

Next night I laid up on the roof of the house with the shotgun—a old single-barrel muzzleloader and me with not enough money to buy caps with even—I was usin matchheads and cottonseed hulls—and here’s somebody stealin my hogs. So I laid up there all night, no further’n from here to the porch yonder from that hogpen. I never seed nothin nor heard nothin. Come mornin I never even looked at the hogs even. Then when she, Ellen, went out later on and slopped em she come back in and she says, Ather, they’s another hog gone.

I was settin in a chair about half asleep and I come from there. I don’t recollect how many hogs it was that we had but seven or eight I reckon anyway, and I run out and counted em and come up short one more hog. I’d been mad afore but now I was scared.

Here the old man found the cup of wine in his hand and he regarded it for a moment with mild surprise, raised it and took a drink. He closed his eyes for a moment,

the high wagon and them coming up to the house
,
wagon and house both belonging to his uncle, and him owning nothing more than he could carry in his two hands, her things in an old leather trunk tied down behind the seat
.

That her? he asked
.

Yessir
.

He walked around the wagon slowly, studying her as a man might a horse. Then he said, Well, light
.

He got down and she was still sitting there
.

What’s she? goin to put the mule up?

Nosir, he said. Ellen. Here
.

He took her hand and she got down
.

You go on with Uncle Whitney, he said. I’ll get the things
.

Helen, he said
.

It’s Ellen, she said. The wagon moved away behind her
.

Ellen
.

Daddy said he’d kill him, she said
.

Ain’t nobody goin to kill nobody, he said. Here, watch the mud
.

She said something else. He watched them go in
.

What happent then, Uncle Ather, Warn said.

Hmm? Oh, well I’d done lost three of them I think it was then. That was three more’n I was willin to lose and two more’n I thought I would lose without I caught somebody. Aside that it looked like I would lose jest as many as whoever I was losin em to was willin to take, which probably meant all of them. So I was mad-scared. Ellen, she claimed I’d gone to sleep on the roof, but I knowed better.

That was late of a summer. I was stit on the road crew and workin twelve and fourteen hours a day and here I got to come home nights and set up with a bunch of hogs. But we never lost no more for a week or
better. Then one night Ellen went to the door to thow out a pan of water and I heard her holler. I run out and she grabbed on to me like she’d seen a hant or somethin, and I ast her what it was but she jest stood there and shook like she’s freezin to death. I walked her back in and went out and looked but I never seen nothin, so I got the pan and come on in. Somethin had scared her real bad but she couldn’t tell me what all it was. After a while all she’d say was
I don’t know
, or
I couldn’t tell what it was
.

The old man paused again, arrested but for the rise and fall of his breathing, the slow mechanical rotation of his jaws, gazed upward—the image of the lampflame on the ceiling, the split corona a doubling egg, like the parthenogenesis of primal light.

He kept on for a week, coming back each night to the dark and empty house. Then he stopped going to work. That morning he took out the few things she had left—a housecoat, odds and ends, and put them on the bed. He sat and looked at them for a long time. When he got up it was evening
.

He stayed for five more days, wandering about the house or sitting motionless, sleeping in chairs, eating whatever he happened to find until there wasn’t any more and then not eating anything. While the chickens grew thin and the stock screamed for water, while the hogs perished to the last shoat. An outrageous stench settled over everything, a vile decay that hung in the air, filled the house
.

On the sixth day he went out and knocked a plank from the back of the barn with the poll of his axe, cut from it two boards. On one he carefully incised her name with the point of his knife. Then he chopped a stake-point on the other board and nailed the two together in the form of a cross. He took it and took her
clothes and a spade down to a corner of the lot where he scooped a hole, buried the clothes, and with the shank of the spade pounded the cross into the ground. Then he walked straight through the house and out again, across the yard, to the road and toward Sevierville. He had gone half a mile before he noticed the shovel in his hand and pitched it into the weeds
.