Outer Dark(22)

Holme shuffled past. The man in front of him turned. Ain’t that a sight, he said. Holme nodded.

I reckon whoever done it will be wearin a black suit.

Holme looked at the man who spoke.

I hate knowin they is such people, don’t you?

He nodded again. They were moving back up the street toward the store. The clerk was talking to a number of men on the porch. When he saw Holme he cut his eyes away quickly. He went on talking. One of the men turned and looked at Holme. Holme stood in the square idly. After a few minutes two more turned and looked at him. He began to shift about uneasily. A man came away from the group and started down the walk toward the wagon, pushing his way past the crowd there. Just before he entered the building where the sheriff had gone he turned again and looked in Holme’s direction. Holme started across the square, walking slowly. He was listening behind him very hard. When he reached the corner he looked back. Three men were crossing the square at a fast walk. He began to run. He ran down a narrow lane, looking for a turn. He could not hear them behind him. He passed a long wooden shed and at the end of it was an alleyway beyond which he could see a field and cattle. He took this turn and checked behind him once again. They came leisurely and with grim confidence. He went into the alley and along the rear of the shed. Two negroes were unloading sacks of feed from a wagon at a dock. They watched him pass. He came to a stile at the fence and vaulted through it and out into the field, quartering slightly to the left toward a line of trees. A group of cows raised their muzzles out of the grass and regarded him with bland placidity. He raced through a perpetual explosion of insects and his breath was already coming hard for him. When he reached the line of trees there was a fence again and he stumbled over it. They were coming across the field at what looked to be a trot. Behind them came more. Their voices floated in the droning emptiness. He ducked into the shelter of the woods, turned down a stone gully washed bare of leaves, running.

When he came out on the creek a colony of small boys erupted from a limestone ledge like basking seals alarmed and pitched white and naked into the water. They watched him with wide eyes, heads bobbing. He crossed at the shallows above them with undiminished speed, enclosed in a huge fan of water, and plunged into a canebrake on the far side. Crakes, plovers, small birds clattered up out of the dusty bracken into the heat of the day and cane rats fled away before him with thin squeals. He crashed on blindly. When he emerged from the brake he was in a road, appearing suddenly in a final and violent collapse of stalks like someone fallen through a prop inadvertently onstage, looking about in terror of the open land that lay there and still batting at the empty caneless air before him for just a moment before turning and lurching back into the brake. He went on at a trot, one eye walled to the sun for a sextant and his heart pumping in his gorge. When he came out of the cane again he was in deep woods. He paused to get his breath and listen but he could hear nothing save his pounding blood. Then he was kneeling like something broken or penitent among the corrugate columns. A dove called softly and ceased. He was kneeling in wild iris and mayapple, his palms spread on his thighs. He raised his head and looked at the high sun and the light falling long and plumb through the forest. No sounds of chase or distant cries reached him in this green serenity. He rose to his feet and went on. Nightfall found him crouched in a thicket, waiting. With full dark he came forth, a solitary traveler going south. He walked all night. Not even a dog spoke him down that barren road.


When he talked to the man with the barn roof he had eaten nothing but some early field turnips for two days. He had washed and shaved in a branch and tried to wash the shirt. The collar of it was frayed open and the white cheesecloth lining stood about his neck with a kind of genteel shabbiness like a dickie of ruined lace.

You paint? the man said.

Sure, he said. I paint all the time.

The man looked him over. I got a barn roof needs paintin, he said. You do roofs?

I done lots of roofs, he said.

You contract or just do day wages?

Holme wiped his lips with two fingers. Well, he said, if it ain’t but just the one roof I’d as soon do wages.

You pretty fast on roofs?

I make right good time on a roof.

The man regarded him a moment more. All right, he said. I pay a dollar a day. You want to start tomorrow I’ll get the paint this evenin and have it ready for ye.

That suits me, he said. What time you want me to start?

We start here at six. Ceptin the nigger. He gets down early on account of the feedin.

Holme nodded.

All right, the man said.

He started away.

Where you stayin at? the man said.

Holme stopped. Well, I’ve not found a place as yet. I just got here.