Outer Dark(25)

About workin here … I don’t believe …

Yes, just a minute now, I won’t be a minute.

She heard the woman on the steps, treading upward into the sound of the child’s crying until both ceased, and she rose and left for them the empty room with table and stove and cooking pots, holding her own things to her breast where thin blue milk welled from the rotting cloth, going down the path to the road again.

She went on through the town past houses and yard gardens with tomatoes and beans yellowed with road dust and poles rising skewed into the hot air, past rows of new corn putting up handhigh through the gray loam, along old fences of wormy rail, the spurs of dust from her naked heels drifting arcwise in pale feathers to the road again. If crows had not risen from a field she might never have looked that way to see two hanged men in a tree like gross chimes.

She stood for a moment watching them, clutching the bundle of clothes, wondering at such dark work in the noon of day while all about sang summer birds. She went on, walking softly. Once she looked back. Nothing moved in that bleak tree.

Further along she spied a planting of turnips. She crossed a fence and made her way toward them over the turned black earth. They were already seeding and she could smell the musty hemlock odor of them sweet in the air. They were small, bitter, slightly soft. She pulled half a dozen and cleaned away the dirt with the gathered hem of her dress. While she was chewing the first of them a voice hallooed across the field. She could see a house and a barn beyond the curve in the road and now in the barn-lot she made out a man there watching her. His voice drifted over the hot spaces lost and thin:

Get out of them turnips.

She looked at the handful of turnips, at him, then broke off the tops of them and pushed the bulbs into her parcel and started back to the road. When she reached the house the man was standing there waiting for her. She swallowed and nodded to him. Mornin, she said.

Mornin eh? You’ve had a long day of it. What are you doin roguin in my garden?

I wouldn’t of took nothin if I’d knowed anybody cared. It was just some little old thin turnips. I’ve not eat today.

Ain’t? How come you ain’t? You ain’t run off from somewheres are ye?

No, she said. I ain’t even got nowheres to run off from.

He considered this for a moment, one eye almost shut. If you ain’t got nowheres to run from you must not have no place to run to. Where is it you are goin if it’s any of my business?

I’m startin to wish it was somebody else’s besides just mine.

I believe you’ve run off from somewheres, the man said.

I’ve been run off from.

Ah, said the man. He looked her up and down.

I’m a-huntin this here tinker, she said.

Tinker?

Yessir. He’s got somethin belongs to me.

I’ll bet he does.

I got to get it back.

And what is it?

I cain’t tell ye. He knows he ain’t supposed to have it. If I can just see him.

That sounds more than just commonly curious to me, the man said. Where’s your family at?

I ain’t got nary’n. Ceptin just a brother and he run off. So I got to find this here tinker.

The man shook his head. You ain’t goin to get no satisfaction out of no tinker. Specially if you ain’t got no kin to back ye up. I’m surprised myself you ain’t got no more shame than to tell that it was one.

They Lord, she said, it ain’t nothin like that. I ain’t never even seen him.

You ort to of knowed one’d do ye dirt … You what?

I ain’t never seen him.

You ain’t.

No sir.

The man stood watching her for a moment. Honey, he said, I think you better get in out of the sun.

I wouldn’t care to myself, she said.

Go on to the house and tell my old woman I said you was to take dinner with us. Go on now. I’ll be in directly I get unhitched and watered.

Well, she said, you sure it’s all right. I don’t want to put nobody out.

Go on, he said. I’ll be in directly, tell her.

He watched her go, shaking his head slowly. She crossed the scored and grassless yard warding away chickens with a little shooing gesture until she arrived at the door and tapped.

The woman who appeared had a buttermold in one hand and in the other a gathering of apron with which she wiped her face. The sight of this frail creature upon her stoop seemed to weary her. What is it? she said.

Your man said was it all right I was to come for … He said to ast you if you’d not care to let me take dinner with ye’ns if …

She didn’t appear to be listening. She was looking at this petitioner with a kind of aberrant austerity. I’ve churned till I’m plumb give out, she said.

It is a chore, ain’t it.

Plumb give out. She held the buttermold before her now in her two hands, sacrificially.