I’ll do just whatever, she said. I ain’t got nothin else to do.
The tinker smiled and captured the beanbowl between his thin shanks and wiped up the remnants with the last of the bread. He chewed with eyes half closed and his face by the firelight hung in a mask of morbid tranquillity like the faces of the drowned.
You don’t need him, she said.
He wiped his wattled chin with his cuff and took up the jar and drank. He was watching her very steadily above the rim. He set the jar down and recapped it. I’ve gone up and down in this world a right smart, he wheezed, and I’ve seed some curious ways. But I never to this day seen a stout manchild laid out in the woods save one.
Woods? she said.
They don’t nourish out of the earth like corn.
He was give to ye. Was he not give to ye?
He was not give to nobody.
What did ye have to give for him?
Yes, the tinker said. What did I have to give for him.
I’ll make it up to ye, she said. Whatever it was.
Will ye now, said the tinker.
I’ll work it out, she said. I can work if I ain’t never had nothin.
Nor never will.
Times is hard.
Hard people makes hard times. I’ve seen the meanness of humans till I don’t know why God ain’t put out the sun and gone away.
Whatever it was you give, she said softly. I’ll give it and more.
The tinker spat bitterly into the fire. They ain’t more, he said.
You promised.
I promised, the tinker said. I promised nothin.
He’s mine, she whispered.
The tinker looked at her. She had both thumbs in her mouth. Yourn, he said. You ain’t fit to have him.
That ain’t for you to judge.
I’ve done judged.
She had leaned forward and her eyes were huge and hungered. She touched his ragged sleeve with two fingers. What did ye give? she said. I’ll make it up to ye. Whatever ye give. And that nurse fee.
The tinker jerked his arm away. He leaned his face toward her. Give, he said. I give a lifetime wanderin in a country where I was despised. Can you give that? I give forty years strapped in front of a cart like a mule till I couldn’t stand straight to be hanged. I’ve not got soul one in this world save a old halfcrazy sister that nobody never would have like they never would me. I been rocked and shot at and whipped and kicked and dogbit from one end of this state to the other and you cain’t pay that back. You ain’t got nothin to pay it with. Them accounts is in blood and they ain’t nothin in this world to pay em out with.
Let me have him, she moaned. You could let me have him.
Let you have him, the tinker sneered. I’d care for him, she said. They wouldn’t nobody like me.
Like you done?
He done it. I never.
Who? the tinker said.
My brother. He’s the one.
Yes, the tinker said. He’s the one would of laid it to early rest save my bein there. Cause I knowed. Sickness. He’s got a sickness. He … the tinker stopped. It was very quiet in the cabin. They could hear the branch murmuring. Or perhaps it was the wind. The tinker stopped and stared at her with his viper’s eyes gone wild in their black wells. It ain’t hisn, he said.
It ain’t nothin to you.
The tinker leaned and seized her wrist in his boney grip. It ain’t, he said. Is it?
Yes.
Neither of them moved. The tinker did not turn loose of her arm. That’s a lie, he said.
What do you care?
That’s a lie, he said again. You say it’s a lie.
She didn’t move.
You say it’s a lie now, the tinker said.
You don’t want him, she whispered. You wouldn’t of took him if you’d of knowed …
The tinker pulled her close. You say that’s a lie damn you.
It’s no right child, she said. You don’t want him. Her body was contorted with pain and her eyes closed.
Yes, said the tinker. You’d try it wouldn’t ye? You lyin little bitch. He flung her arm back and she crumpled up and held it in her other hand. The tinker rose and stood gaunt and trembling above her. You’ll see me dead fore ye see him again, he said.
You won’t never have no rest, she moaned. Not never.
Nor any human soul, he said.
The fire had died to coals. The tinker swung down the lamp and their shadows wheeled wildly from each other and froze on opposite walls. Don’t foller me, the tinker said. You foller me and I’ll kill ye.
She didn’t move.
Bitch, he said. Goddamn lyin bitch.
She had begun to keen softly into her hands. The tinker could hear it a long way down the road.
He could hear it far over the cold and smoking fields of autumn, his pans knelling in the night like buoys on some dim and barren coast, and he could hear it fading and hear it die lost as the cry of seabirds in the vast and salt black solitudes they keep.