Outer Dark(14)

They ain’t nobody but me. I’m just by myself.

Who’s out there? he called, looking past her and addressing the untenanted night out of which she had come.

She turned and looked with him.

Come up, whoever’s out there.

These faces watched but no one appeared. The man turned to her. You sure they ain’t nobody with ye?

No, she said. I just come by myself.

All right. Which way did ye come?

I live down twards the Chicken River.

Say ye do? And where is it you’re headed on such a dark night.

I’m a-huntin this here tinker.

Tinker? What’d he steal?

Well. Somethin belonged to me.

And what was that?

It was just somethin.

Well come in anyway.

Thank ye, she said.

The women parted before them and they advanced upon and set back the darkness inside as far as a large trestle table where the man turned and put down the lamp. Now, he said. This here is my family. They’s a boy here somewheres. Where’s he at, old woman?

He had better be bringin me in some wood.

He’s a-bringin in wood. Now, what was your name young woman?

Rinthy Holme.

All right. This here’s the family. Dinner be ready here in just a few minutes. Ain’t that right?

The woman nodded.

And you welcome.

Thank ye, she said. She turned to the woman but she had already gone from the room. The grandmother and two girls or women of some age stood watching her.

Get ye a chair, the man said.

They watched her sit, holding the bundle up before her, the lamp just at her elbow belabored by a moth whose dark shape cast upon her face appeared captive within the delicate skull, the thin and roselit bone, like something kept in a china mask. Lord, she said, I’ve not sat hardly today.



They had been eating for several minutes before the boy joined them. He studied her with cadaverous eyes and began to load his plate. She reached another piece of the store bread from its wrapper. She said: I bet I ain’t eat two pones of lightbread in my life. I was raised hard.

The woman regarded her above a poised and dripping forkful of fatmeat. We eat what we’ve a mind to here, she said. We ain’t never had nothin but we don’t care to get just whatever to eat if we got the money. Do we, Luther?

That’s right, he said. I ain’t never belittled my family nothin to eat they wanted. They get that baloney down at the store all the time. They can get them salmons if they’ve a mind to.

She nodded, holding the bread in one hand and applying the butter more slowly. They ate on in silence, jaws working all down the table with great sobriety, all sitting upright and formal saving the toothless old woman who bent nearsightedly into her plate with smacking gums, a sparse tuft of long white chin hairs wagging and drifting above the food.

When the man had finished he pushed back his plate and sat looking about at the others until they began to eat faster, finishing and looking up one by one until all were done but the grandmother. When she finished she set back her plate with one thumb and stared fixedly at the spot where it had been. The man reached and turned down the lamp until the flame showed but crosswise in the wickslot, a dull bronze heat quaking deep in the glass toward which their faces seemed to lean disembodied in a perimeter of smoking icons. The old woman’s leathered lids had closed and she rocked slightly with the ebb of her dreams. Well, said the man, that’s done with, and pushing back his chair he rose from the table. The women began to clear the dishes away, again saving the old woman who opened one eye and looked about and closed it again softly and secretive.

We goin to get a early start of the mornin, the man said.

If you can get that boy prised loose from the bed we might get out of here by midmornin, the woman said. She was wiping off the table. Wake up, mamma, fore ye fall out of the chair again.

That boy’ll be up. Won’t ye, Bud? Where’s he at?

If the waterbucket or woodbox is either one empty he’ll be beyond earshout for sure. Here honey, give me them and set down and rest.

She held the plates stacked against her breast. It’s all right, she said. I don’t care to help.

Well mind the step yander.

All right. I got to get on directly anyhow.

You ain’t goin nowheres tonight.

Well, she said.

Just mind the step yander.


When they had done in the kitchen she followed the woman down the passageway at the rear of the house, the woman holding the lamp before them and so out into the cool night air and across the boardfloored dogtrot, the door falling to behind them and the woman opening the next one and entering, her close behind, a whippoorwill calling from nearby for just as long as they passed through the open and hushing instantly with the door’s closing. She stopped alongside the woman, looking about at the room in which they stood, the two beds that met headfirst in the far corner, one brass and cheaply ornate and the other plain oak, the washstand between them with a porcelained tin basin and a pitcher. The woman set the lamp upon a narrow shelf nailed to the wall.