Outer Dark(47)

Howdy little mam, he said. How you?

Tolerable, she said. You the tinker used to go over in Johnson County some?

They Lord honey I ain’t been over there in six or eight months. Are you from over thataway?

Yes, she said. You ain’t got nary cocoa have ye.

No, he said, I ain’t. I don’t get enough call for it to mess with totin it. I got coffee.

And you stocks them books.

What books?

Them pitcher books for the men. Them books.

The tinker’s eyes shifted warily. Who are you? he said.

I’m the mother of that chap you got.

I ain’t got no chap, the tinker said.

I want him back, she said.

You don’t see him do ye?

What have ye done with him.

I ain’t got him.

She had not moved from the rock. She smoothed the ragged dress down over her knees and looked up again. I want him, she said.

The tinker was now standing more easily between the cart shafts, watching her with interest and with something else in his little goat’s face. How you know I got him? he said.

You got him off my brother, she said. I got to get him back.

How old a chap is it? This’n you claim to of lost.

He ain’t but about eight months.

Eight months. And how long you been missin him?

All that time.

The tinker spat lazily over his forearm where it hung by a thumb in the bib of his jumper and drew down one eye cunningly. That sure is a long time, he said. I would hate to be in ary such fix as that.

I hate it myself, she said.

All that nurse fee.

That what?

Nurse fee addin up all the time. Most likely comes to a right smart.

I never thought about that, she said.

No, the tinker said. I allowed maybe you’d not.

I ain’t got no money.

No money.

No.

Well. Course even did I know the whereabouts of it they wouldn’t be no way tellin it was yourn. Just your word is all.

I wouldn’t want it if it wasn’t mine.

Well now I don’t know. Some women is a fool about a youngern. Do anything to get one.

I just want what’s mine.

Maybe you the kind of gal fool enough about a youngern to do anything to get one.

No, she said. He’s mine sure enough.

Well, said the tinker. Wouldn’t do nothin much to get one eh?

This’n I would, she said. I want him back.

Well now, said the tinker.

I’ll work out that fee or just whatever, she said.

The tinker watched her, his thumbs still hooked in his jumper. Well now, he said. You right sure about that?

Yes, she said. I got to have him back.

The tinker shrugged his patched jacket higher onto his shoulders and gripped the cart shafts. Well, he said, if you ain’t got nothin else to do just come along with me.

He started off and she fell in behind and padded after him, shoeless and tattered, watching the cart lurch and weave and the tinware hung from the travis poles swing in mounting discord like a demented symphony. They went down the road the way she had come.

They went past houses and along fenced fields where late corn stripped of fodder stood naked and grotesque out of the dead scrub weeds and the intermittent bright shapes of pumpkins. The cart went along on its cam-shaped wheels like a crippled dog. The tinker did not speak. Yellow leaves were falling in a field and lay already deep in the stony troughs a last crude harrowing had left. She walked looking down at her feet and her lips were moving slightly. The sound of the tinker’s cart faded to the drowsy clangor of belled cattle before she looked again and saw him far down the road. She hurried to catch up, holding her dress tight in one fist between her breasts and the cloth already dark with milk.

For the rest of the day she followed behind the cart as if tethered to it. The tinker did not speak nor did he look back and he seemed to have no need of rest. They went through the late afternoon curiously processional and grave among the banded shadows, the tinker stooped in the rotted leather with his cap far back on his head and eyes to the ground and her caught up in the wake of the cart and its lonely tolling tinware like some creature rapt and besorced by witches’ music, demon piping.

Come evening the tinker left the road and turned up a weedy wagon path, giving her a brief look backward and motioning with his head. They climbed up through a field, the cart badly tilted and the tinker near horizontal in the harness. When they came to the top of the hill the track turned and they went on in blue dusk through a high meadow out of which sprang small fowl to wheel away with indignant cries over the sedge. At the end of this meadow was a cabin.

They pulled up in the dooryard and the tinker unbuckled himself from out of his traps and set the cart down. She came along slowly and looked in through the halfopened door. Weeds grew at the threshold and from inside came a musty smell.

They ain’t nobody here, she said.