Outer Dark(21)

They did?

Ever able soul of em.

Holme ran his hands along the seam of his overalls and fingered the wrapped coins in his bib. They any work hereabouts? he said.

You huntin a job?

I could use one.

Lord I wisht I could let ye have this’n. I’m about ready to thow it over.

Well I ain’t much at figures. I’m lookin more for just a workin job.

Well, I don’t know, the clerk said. You could ast. His eyes were wandering about dementedly.

When do ye reckon anybody’ll be back.

Shhh, cautioned the clerk. He took a wire flyswat from the counter and poised stealthily. Holme watched. The clerk swung and flattened a huge melonstriped fly against a crackerjar.

When do ye reckon they’ll be anybody back, Holme said.

Any time. They been over there half the mornin.

You say they at the church?

Yep. First time in a long time for more than a few in that bunch.

Where’s it at?

The church? Just right up here, the clerk pointing. Where the old’n was at fore it burnt.

Holme nodded vaguely, leaning against the drinkbox.

Where was it you said you was from?

I come up from Johnson County.

I ain’t never been down there, the clerk said.

No.

That’s supposed to be a mean place.

Well, I don’t know. Some, I reckon.

That’s what they say. I ain’t never been down there.

Holme nodded. Shadows washed across the yellow light in the storewindows, spilled through over the merchandise. Boot-treads clattered on the board porch.

Here come some now, the clerk said.

Holme went to the door and looked out. There were people milling about. Men were coming into the square on foot and aback mules and horses. Some bore arms. Behind them came a long fieldwagon drawn by two white mules and attended by small boys. Heralding this spectacle there came like the last rank bloom of battlesmoke a pall of near white dust drifting over the square.

What is it? the clerk said.

I cain’t tell, Holme said. Some kind of a big to-do.

Ast them fellers on the porch yonder.

Holme leaned from the door and several of the men looked at him. What is it? he said.

They just now bringin em in, one said.

Who?

Them, the man said.

Another one looked past him at Holme. Them bodies, he said.

A young boy turned and looked up at them. Them old dead people, he said.

Holme watched with them while the wagon rumbled down the square. He could feel the clerk’s breath cold on his sweatsoaked back.

Who is it? he said.

I don’t know, Holme said. They ain’t told.

How many was they kilt?

He never said. Several I reckon.

The wagon passed slowly before them in its wake of pale dust, the mules clean and elegant and the driver upon the box somber and erect. On the bed of the wagon behind him in a row were three wooden coffins. They were fluted and wormbored and hung with webbed clots of yellow clay. Each had been ripped open at the top and from one of them trailed in stained pennants some rags of leached and tattered and absolutely colorless satin.

Lord God, the clerk whispered.

The wagon passed. The driver raised his hands almost imperceptibly, the reins quivered along the mules’ flanks and they came to rest. The men on the porch turned to watch. Holme could see the driver stand out of the wagon above their heads and then descend and he could see the ears of one mule dip and twitch. He turned to the clerk. Them old boxes has been in the ground, he said.

I see they has.

What all do you reckon …

I believe somebody has dug em up. Punch that feller there. Hey Bill.

They spoke in hoarse whispers. The man leaned one ear toward them.

Listen, what all’s happent? said the clerk.

I don’t know. Somebody has dug up a bunch of graves at the church.

Grave thiefs, another whispered.

They Lord have mercy.

Yonder comes the high sheriff now.

Two men were coming across the square on horses, talking to each other. The crowd fanned before them and they dismounted and tied at the rail and went into a building there.

There were now several hundred people clustered about the wagon and they began to talk in a rising babble of voices. The sun stood directly over them. It seemed hung there in glaring immobility, as if perhaps arrested with surprise to see above the earth again these odds of morkin once commended there. The men along the walk had begun to file past, some standing on toe tips, to view the remains in the wagon bed.

I don’t believe I care to look, the clerk said.

Holme found himself moving down the walk with the crowd. Above the odor of sweat and manure he could smell the musty decay of the boxes. When he came abreast of the wagon he could see a waxen gray face scowling eyelessly at the bright noon. In the next box lay what appeared to have been an old man. The box was lined with cheap quilted satin, the figure within wore a white shirt and a necktie but no coat or trousers. The flesh on those old legs had drawn and withered and gone a dusty brown. Someone should have cared more than to leave an old man halfnaked in his burial box beneath these eyes and such a sun. But that was not all. Across the desiccated chest lay a black arm, and when Holme stood on his toes he could see that the old man shared his resting place with a negro sexton whose head had been cut half off and who clasped him in an embrace of lazarous depravity.