He bought a sack of cigarette tobacco and stood there rolling a smoke and nodding at the groceries. Add them up, he said. The storekeeper figured the merchandise on his scratch pad, sliding the goods from one side of the counter to the other as he went. He raised up and pushed his glasses back with his thumb. Five dollars and ten cents, he said. Just put it on the stob for me. Ballard, when are you goin to pay me? Well. I can give ye some on it today. How much on it. Well. Say three dollars. The storekeeper was figuring on his pad. How much do I owe altogether? said Ballard. Thirty four dollars and nineteen cents. Includin this here? Includin this here. Well let me just give ye the four dollars and nineteen cents and that'lI leave it thirty even. The storekeeper looked at Ballard. Ballard, he said, how old are you? Twenty seven if it's any of your business. Twenty seven. And in twenty seven years you've managed to accumulate four dollars and nineteen cents? The storekeeper was figuring on his pad. Ballard waited. What are you figurin? he asked suspiciously. Just a minute, said the storekeeper. After a while he raised the pad up and squinted at it. Well, he said. Accordin to my figures, at this rate it's goin to take a hundred and ninety four years to pay out the thirty dollars. Ballard, I'm sixty seven now. Why that's crazy. Of course this is figured if you don't buy nothin else. Why that's crazier'n hell. Well, I could of made a mistake in the figures. Did you want to check em? Ballard pushed at the scratch pad the storekeeper was offering him. I don't want to see that, he said. Well, what I think I'm goin to do along in here is just try to minimize my losses. So if you've got four dollars and nineteen cents why don't you just get four dollars and nineteen cents' worth of groceries. Ballard's face was twitching. What did you want to put back? said the storekeeper. . I ain't puttin a goddamn thing back, said Ballard, laying out the five dollars and slapping down the dime. BALLARD CROSSED THE mountain into Blount County one Sunday morning in the early part of February. There is a spring on the side of the mountain that runs from solid stone. Kneeling in the snow among the fairy tracks of birds and deer mice Ballard leaned his face to the green water and drank and studied his dishing visage in the pool. He halfway put his hand to the water as if he would touch the face that watched there but then he rose and wiped his mouth and went on through the woods. Old woods and deep. At one time in the world there were woods that no one owned and these were like them. He passed a wind felled tulip poplar on the mountainside that held aloft in the grip of its roots two stones the size of field wagons, great tablets on which was writ only a tale of vanished seas with ancient shells in cameo and fishes etched in lime. Ballard among gothic tree boles, almost jaunty in the outsized
clothing he wore, fording drifts of knee deep snow, going along the south face of a limestone bluff beneath which birds scratching in the bare earth paused to watch. The road when he reached it was unmarked by any track at all. Ballard descended into it and went on. It was almost noon and the sun was very bright on the snow and the snow shone with a myriad crystal incandescence. The shrouded road wound off before him almost lost among the trees and a stream ran beside the road, dark under bowers of ice, small glass fanged caverns beneath tree roots where the water sucked unseen. In the frozen roadside weeds were coiled white ribbons of frost, you'd never figure how they came to be. Ballard ate one as he went, the rifle on his shoulder, his feet enormous with snow where it clung to the sacks with which he'd wrapped them. By and by he came upon a house, silent in the silent landscape, a rough scarf of smoke unwinding upward from the chimney. There were tire tracks in the road but they had been snowed over in the night. Ballard came on down the mountain past more houses and past the ruins of a tannery into a road freshly traveled, the corded tracks of tire chains curving away into the white woods and a jade river curving away toward the mountains to the south. When he got to the store he sat on a box on the porch and with his pocketknife cut the twine that bound his legs and feet and took off the sacks and shook them out and laid them on the box with the pieces of twine and stood up. He was wearing black low cut shoes that were longer than he should have needed. The rifle he'd left under the bridge as he crossed the river. He stamped his feet and opened the door and went in. A group of men and boys were gathered about the stove and they stopped talking when Ballard entered. Ballard went to the back of the stove, nodding slightly to the store's inhabitants. He held his hands to the heat and looked casually about. Cold enough for ye'ns? he said. Nobody said if it was or wasn't. Ballard coughed and rubbed his hands together and crossed to the drink box and got an orange drink and opened it and got a cake and paid at the counter. The storekeeper dropped the dime into the till and shut the drawer. He said: It's a sight in the world of snow, aint it. Ballard agreed that it was, leaning on the counter, eating the cake and taking small sips from the drink. After a while he leaned toward the storekeeper. You ain't needin a watch are ye? he said. What? said the storekeeper. A watch. Did you need a watch. The storekeeper looked at Ballard blankly. A watch? he said. What kind of a watch? I got different kinds. Here. Ballard setting down his drink and half-eaten cake on the counter and reaching into his pockets. He pulled forth three wristwatches and laid them out. The storekeeper poked at them once or twice with his finger. I don't need no watch, he said. I got some in the counter yonder been there a year. Ballard looked where he was pointing. A few dusty watches in cellophane packets among the socks and hairnets. What do you get for yourn? he asked. Eight dollars. Ballard eyed the merchant's watches doubtfully. Well, he said. He finished the cake and took up his own watches by their straps and took his drink and crossed the floor to the stove again. He held the watches out, tendering them uncertainly at-the man nearest him. You all don't need a wristwatch do ye? he said. The man glanced at the watches and glanced away. Let's see em over here, old buddy, said a fat boy by the stove.