Later he slept in a field, trampling a nest out of the fescue and lying there with his hands between his knees, watching the random motes of birds passing across the moon’s face in the night.
He was gone in the morning before daybreak. The road went from farmland into pine woods. He walked along with his pockets full of old shelled fieldcorn he had gathered and which he chewed with a grim rotary motion of his jaws. Toward noon he came upon a turpentine camp and he turned in here along a log road until he came to a cluster of sheds. A group of negroes were huddled about on the ground eating cold lunches out of pails and there was a man standing there looking at them or past them, somewhere, one foot propped on a log, tapping with a pencil at a tablet he held. When he saw Holme he stopped tapping and looked at him for a moment and then looked away again. Howdy, he said.
How are you? Holme said.
I ain’t worth a shit. You?
Tolerable thank ye. I taken you to be the bossman.
No, I work for these niggers.
Holme sifted the dry corn in his pocket with one hand. I wondered if you might not need some help, he said.
I think I can handle it, the man said. He looked Holme over, the pencil poised in the air. Clark send ye down?
No. I don’t know no Clark.
Is that right? I wisht I didn’t. The son of a bitch has set me crazy.
Holme smiled slightly. The man turned away, looking toward the negroes. They were smoking and talking in low voices. He was jotting figures on the pad.
You ain’t said, Holme said.
Said what?
If you needed help.
I said no.
I mean no kind of help.
No. Go ast Clark.
Where’s he at?
The man looked at him sideways. Are you sure enough lookin for work? he said.
Yessir.
Shit. Well. Well hell, go see Clark anyway. He might can help ye.
Where’s he at?
Home most likely. Dinner time. Ast in town.
All right, Holme said. Which way is it?
Which way is what?
Town.
Well which way did you come?
I don’t know. I just come up the road and seen this here camp and thought I’d ast.
Well they ain’t but one road so if you didn’t come thew town it must be on up the road wouldn’t you reckon?
Thank ye, Holme said. Much obliged.
The man gave him one last half-contemptuous look and then turned and called something to one of the negroes. Holme went on. A dozen steps on the road he turned again. Hey, he said.
The man looked at him in irascible amazement.
What’s that name again? Holme said.
What?
That name. That feller I’m to see in town.
Clark, goddamn it.
Thank ye. He raised a hand slightly in farewell and the man looked at him and shook his head and yelled again at the negroes. Holme went on.
Further on he came to a board culvert through which a small branch sluiced with a cool sucking sound to cross beneath the road. He stood looking down at the water for a moment, then parted the ferns and went into the woods along the branch until he came to a pool. He knelt in the black sand and dipped and spread his hands very white in the clear water, framing his own listing image. From the bib of his overalls he fingered a small piece of soap and a razor in a homesewn leather sheath. He shucked off the straps of his overalls and took off his shirt and began to wash his arms and his chest. With the soap he made a thin and transient lather, honed the razor against the calf of his boot and shaved himself, studying his face in the water and feeling out stray patches of stubble with his fingers. When he had done he splashed water at his face and took up his shirt to dry with before donning it again. He wrapped the soap in a leaf and put it together with the razor in the bib pocket once more and combed his hair briefly with his fingers and rose.
When he did reach town it was past noon, his shirt gone sour again and sweat darkening the white crusts of salt at his sleeves and the cuffs of his trousers which in their raggedness looked blown off to length, tailored by watchdogs. White dust had built upon the wet patches at his knees until he might have knelt in flour and his face and hair were pale with dust save for his eyes which had a smoked look to them. He wandered into the heatstricken square and looked about him, blinking. People were moving from shade to shade beneath the store awnings and across the bright noon clay with leaden steps, moving beneath the blinding heat like toilers in a dream stunned and without purpose. The first man he came upon that was not caught up in this listless tableau was a teamster fitting a wheel. He said him a howdy above his bent back.
Yep, the man said. He ran his forefinger around a tallow tin and brought forth the last of it like cake icing and daubed it over the tapered spline of the axle. Holme watched while he eased the wheel into place and while he fitted the nut and turned it hand tight. He gave the wheel a spin and it went smoothly, dishing slightly and whispering as if it rode through water. Where’s that wrench now? he said. He was feeling along the ground and Holme thought for a minute the man was blind.