The Orchard Keeper (1965) (24 page)

He gazed at the wall above the line of wicker chairs. The attendant passed through the room with a young man and a woman. She was drying her eyes with a yellow lace handkerchief. They went out. After a while the boy said:

They got Marion Sylder.

The old man turned his head, the fine white silk of his hair lifting slightly with the motion as if a breeze had touched it. Who’s that? he said.

Sylder. The … the feller used to haul whiskey for Hobie. They caught him with a load and sent him to Brushy.

Thought his name was Jack, the old man said.

No, Sylder. Marion Sylder. He was a friend of mine.

Yes, the old man said. I recollect seein him on the mountain time or two. Had a black car. Kindly a new one I believe it was. Say they sent him to Brushy.

Three years. For runnin whiskey.

That’s pitiful, the old man said. Feller nowadays you don’t get by with much. Yes, I recollect the boy, don’t know as I ever did meet him. Well, I hope he fares better’n me. I cain’t get used to all these here people. The old man looked like he might be going to say more but he stopped and he looked at the boy, his wiry and tufted brows bunched whether in pain or anger and eyes blanched with age a china-blue, but fierce, a visage hoary and peregrine.

How long do you have to … stay in?

Here? he said, looking about him. Likely a good while, son. They ain’t never said what I was charged with nor nothin but I suspicion they think me light in the head is what it is. I reckon you knowed this was a place for crazy people. What they tend to do with me when they come to find out I ain’t crazy I couldn’t speculate. He patted the front of his shirt where he had put the tobacco. How’s young Pulliam? he said.

He’s gone up in the country to stay with his gram-maw, the boy said. Ain’t nobody much left around no more.

No, the old man said. He ever catch him a mink?

No. I caught one though.

Did, eh? What did it bring?

It never brought nothin. They was a bobcat or somethin got aholt of it and tore it up.

That’s a shame, said the old man. Did ye lay ye a set for that old cat?

Me and Warn did. But we never caught nothin but a big old possum.

Cats is smart, allowed the old man. Course it could of been a common everday housecat. They’ll tear up anything they come up on, a cat will. Housecats is smart too. Smarter’n a dog or a mule. Folks thinks they ain’t on account of you cain’t learn em nothin, but what it is is that they won’t learn nothin. They too smart. Knowed a man oncet had a cat could talk. Him and this cat’d talk back and forth of one another like ary two people. That’s one cat I kept shy of. I knowed what it was. Lots of times that happens, a body dies and their soul takes up in a cat for a spell. Specially somebody drownded or like that where they don’t get buried proper.

But not for no longer than seven year so he would be
gone now and I don’t have to fool with him no more except he ought not to of got burnt, that ought not to of happent and maybe I done wrong in that way to of let that happen, but it’s done now and he’s gone, that had to of been him Eller was supposed to of heard, wonderin what all it could of been squallin thataway, not that I’d of told anybody—him leavin out cat and all and bound most probably for hell and I hope they don’t nobody hear no more from him never. So that man put him there either justified or not is free too afore God because after that seven year they cain’t nobody bother you, what that lawyer said and I had been scoutin nine year he said was two year longer than needful but this time I was too old and they catched me
.

Yes, he said, they’s lots of things folks don’t know about sech as that. Cats is a mystery, always has been. He stopped, passed a hand across his face dreamily. Then he turned to the boy. Believe you’ve growed some, ain’t ye? he said.

The boy ran his palms along his knees. I reckon, he said.

Mm hm, the old man said. What do you figure you’ll make?

I don’t know, he said. Not much of nothin.

Well, the old man said, it’s always hard for a young feller to get a start. Does seem like they’s any number of ways to get money nowadays, not like when I was growin up cash money was right hard to come by. They’s even a bounty on findin dead bodies, man over to Knoxville does pretty good grapplehookin em when they jump off of the bridge like they do there all the time. They tell me he gets out fast enough to beat anybody else to em only not so fast as they might stit be a-breathin. So they tell it leastways.

But I never done it to benefit myself because I knowed
I’d have to scout the hushes if they found I done it as I allowed they would and if I did have my reasons stit they cain’t a man say I done it to benefit myself
.

A man gets older, he said, he finds they’s lots of things he can do jest as well without and so he don’t have to worry about this and that the way a young feller will. I worked near all my life and never had nothin. Seems like a old man’d be allowed his rest but then he comes to find they’s things you have to do on account of nobody else wants to attend to em. Like that would make em go away. And maybe they don’t look like much but then they lead you around like you might start a rabbit dog to hunt a fence-corner and get drug over half the county against nightfall. Which a old man ain’t good at noway. He eased himself slightly in the chair and shifted his weight. Most ever man loves peace, he said, and none better than a old man.

Or even knows they need attendin to. But I never done it to benefit myself. Shot that thing. Like I kept peace for seven year sake of a man I never knowed nor seen his face and like I seen them fellers never had no business there and if I couldn’t run em off I could anyway let em know they was one man would let on that he knowed what they was up to. But I knowed if they could build it they could build it back and I done it anyway. Ever man loves peace and a old man best of all
.

Do they allow you to chew in here?

I kindly doubt it, the old man said. I ain’t a-fixin to ast noway, I’ll jest slip me one when I see clear to. They’s some in here I wouldn’t put past tellin on a feller. Half loonies. The real loonies wouldn’t. Some here that ain’t crazy, like me, but I doubt they’d want to tell.

I wonder how come them to be here, the boy said. The old man ran a lank and corded hand through his
hair. I couldn’t say, he said. The ways of these people is strange to me. I did mean to ast you, you ain’t seen my old dog I don’t reckon?

No, the boy said, I’ve not seen him. You want I could go out to your place and hunt him.

Well, ever you’re out thataway might holler for him. I don’t know what to tell ye to do with him. I ain’t got no money to ast nobody to feed him with and I couldn’t shoot him was he too poor to walk, but might could somebody else …

I see him I’ll take care of him, the boy said. I wouldn’t charge you nothin noway.

Well, the old man said, refolding his hands in his lap. They looked up together, an orderly crossing the room with prim steps and bearing in tow an odor of disinfectant, cleaning fluid redolent of sassafras from the corridor where two Negroes mopped backwards toward each other. They could hear the measured slap of the mops on the baseboard above the door’s long pneumatic hiss until it closed and they sat again in quiet, the sunlight strong and airy in the room.

That wasn’t the one. He said:

What are these? the stethoscope still about his neck and jerking about rubbery when he moved
.

Shotgun done it, said the old man, seated half naked and in decorous rectitude upon the examining table with his feet just clearing the floor and looking straight ahead—so that the intern had moved him about roughly without speaking either as you might a cataleptic wasted thin with years until the old man had asked him quietly if he intended to kill him
.

What were you doing, robbing a henhouse?

The old man didn’t answer. He said again:

I know she’s here
.

If she is she don’t want to see you
.

I mean to see her
.

Then the barrel of the gun shortening and withdrawing in the cup of his shoulder and his face bent to the stock and him walking into it, the black plume of smoke forming soundlessly about the muzzle and the shot popping into his leg, audible and painless in his flesh and him taking another step with the same leg and pitching forward as if he had stepped in a hole and then he could hear the shot
.

You reckon you’ll come back to the mountain, the boy said. When you … come back?

Oh, said the old man, well. Yes. Yes, most likely I will. I allowed I might go back up yander in the mountains where my new place is at but I don’t know as I will. A man gets lonesome off by hisself he ain’t used to it. I spect I’ll jest come on back if the old house ain’t fell down. Yes.

He shuffled his feet on the floor. A shadow fell over them and he looked up to see the boy standing. Are ye leavin? he said.

Yes, the boy said. I got to get on back.

Well. I thank ye for the tobacca.

It’s all right.

Well.

I’ll come again.

No, the old man said.

Yes. I will.

Well.

He stopped again at the door and lifted his hand. The old man waved him on, and then he was alone again. The mowers came back. A little later the attendant to lead him away.

He stood in front of the courthouse again, again the
heat and the sulphurous haze in fixed and breathless canopy above the traffic. He took the dollar from his pocket and pressed out the creases between his palms. It would leave him two dollars and what was left of the fifty cents, since he had gotten five and a half for the hides of which, he had paid the two to Sylder and now this dollar which he hadn’t even known that he owed. Then he climbed the walk, the dollar in his hand, past the arch and past the tireless bronze soldier and under the new shade of the buckeyes. He mounted the gritty footworn steps upward in a rush, into the hall, turning left and coming again to the long counter with the desks behind it. There was only one woman there, not the one he had traded with before. She was at a typewriter, the machine clacking loudly in the empty room. He stood at the counter watching her. After a while he coughed. She stopped and looked up. Can I help you? she said.

Yesm.

She still sat, hands poised over the machine. He stared back at her. She lowered her hands into her lap, swiveled the chair about to face him. He said no more and she rose and crossed slowly to the counter, adjusting her glasses as she went.

Well, she said, what can I do for you?

It’s about the bounty, mam. Hawks.

Oh. You have a hawk. She was looking down at him.

No mam, I done give it to ye. He had the dollar out in his hand now and waving it feebly, wondering could the price have gone up. I was figuring on trading back with ye if you-all don’t care, he said.

Her brows pinched up a small purse of flesh between them. Trade back? she said. You mean you want to get the hawk back?

Yesm, he said. If you-all don’t care.

When did you bring it in?

He looked to the ceiling, back again. Let’s see, he said. I believe it was around in August but it could of been early in September I reckon.

They Lord God, son, the woman said, it wouldn’t still be here. Last August? Why …

What all do you do with em? he asked, somehow figuring still that they must be kept, must have some value or use commensurate with a dollar other than the fact of their demise.

Burn em in the furnace I would reckon, she said. They sure cain’t keep em around here. They might get a little strong after a while, mightn’t they?

Burn em? he said. They burn em?

I believe so, she said.

He looked about him vaguely, back to her, still not leaning on or touching the counter. And thow people in jail and beat up on em.

What? she said, leaning forward.

And old men in the crazy house.

Son, I’m busy, now if there was anything else you wanted …

He smoothed the dollar in his hand again, made a few tentative thrusts, pushed it finally across the counter to her. Here, he said. It’s okay. I cain’t take no dollar. I made a mistake, he wadn’t for sale. He turned and started for the door.

You, she called. Here! You come back here, you cain’t …

But that was all he heard, through the door now, running down the long hall toward the wide-flung outer doors where a breeze riffled the posters and notices on the wall and past them and again into the candent May noon.

T
he boy had already gone when they came from Knoxville, seven years now after the burial and seven months after the cremation, and sifted the ashes, since whipped to a broth by the rains of that spring and now dried again, caked and crusted, sifted them and there found the chalked sticks and shards of bone gray-white and brittle as ash themselves, and the skull, worm-riddled, vermiculate with the tracery of them and hollowed and fired to the weight and tensile cohesiveness of parched cardboard, the caried teeth rattling in their sockets. And a zipper of brass, fused shapeless, thick-coated with a dull green paste.

That was all. They were there four hours, the two officers deferential before the coroner, dusting the pieces with their handkerchiefs and passing them on to him who placed them in a clean bag of white canvas.

Mr Eller bit with his small teeth a piece from his plug of spiced tobacco, refolded the cellophane and put it again into his breast pocket. And the skull, he said. With all the fillins melted out of the teeth.

Okay. And the skull. Johnny Romines stopped, the cigarette half rolled in his left hand and leaking as he gestured with it. So, he said, what I want to know is did the boy know about it or not, and would he know was it his daddy?

I don’t know, Mr Eller said. If he did I never heard it. Asides he’s been gone off now since May or June and this is the fourth day of August they jest now gettin up there. I figure maybe the old man was the only one that knowed.

Old man Ownby? Was he the one done it?