Outer Dark(59)

Howdy, said the bearded one. Ain’t seen ye for a while.

He looked at them. They wore the same clothes, sat in the same attitudes, endowed with a dream’s redundancy. Like revenants that reoccur in lands laid waste with fever: spectral, palpable as stone. He looked at the child. It had a healed burn all down one side of it and the skin was papery and wrinkled like an old man’s. It was naked and half coated with dust so that it seemed lightly furred and when it turned to look up at him he saw one eyeless and angry red socket like a stokehole to a brain in flames. He looked away.

Set and rest a spell, the man said.

Holme squatted, favoring his off leg. The child kept watching him.

Whose youngern? he said.

Harmon guffawed and slapped his thigh.

What happent to his eye? Holme said.

What eye.

His eye. He gestured. The one he ain’t got.

I reckon he must of lost it somewheres. He still got one.

He ort to have two.

Maybe he ort to have more’n that. Some folks has two and cain’t see.

Holme didn’t say anything.

I reckon that tinker might know what happent to it.

What tinker?

That’n in yan tree, said Harmon, pointing with the rifle.

Hush. Don’t pay him no mind mister. What did ye do to your leg there?

Nothin.

The bearded one was tunneling gouts of mud from the welt of his boot with a stick. Well, I see ye didn’t have no trouble findin us.

I wasn’t huntin ye.

You got here all right for somebody bound elsewhere.

I wasn’t bound nowheres. I just seen the fire.

I like to keep a good fire. A man never knows what all might chance along. Does he?

No.

No. Anything’s liable to warsh up. From nowheres nowhere bound.

Where are you bound? Holme said.

I ain’t, the man said. By nothin. He looked up at Holme. We ain’t hard to find. Oncet you’ve found us.

Holme looked away. His sweatblistered forehead shone in the firelight. He looked toward the tinker’s cart and he looked at the child. Where’s she at? he said.

Who’s that?

My sister.

Ah, said the man. The one run off with that tinker.

Them’s his traps yander.

The bearded one turned his head slightly and looked and turned back. Aye, he said. That’n you used to trade with.

I never give him no chap, Holme said. I just told her that.

Maybe thisn’s some other chap.

It ain’t nothin to me.

The bearded one raked a gobbet of clay from his stick and cast it into the fire. You know what I figure? he said.

What.

I figure you got this thing here in her belly your own self and then laid it off on that tinker.

I never laid nothin off on no tinker.

I reckon you figured he’d keep him hid for ye.

I never figured nothin.

What did ye have to give him?

I never give nobody nothin. I never had nothin.

Never figured nothin, never had nothin, never was nothin, the man said. He was looking at nothing at all. The mute one seemed to sleep, crouched at the man’s right with his arms dangling between his knees like something waiting to be wakened and fed.

What are you? Holme muttered.

What?

He said it again, sullenly.

The bearded one smiled. Ah, he said. Now. We’ve heard that before, ain’t we?

You ain’t nothin to me.

But the man didn’t seem to hear. He nodded as if spoken by other voices. He didn’t look at Holme.

You never did say what you done with your sister.

I never done nothin with her.

Where’s she at?

I don’t know. She run off.

You done told that.

It ain’t nothin to you.

I’ll be the judge of that.

Harmon turned, his cheek against the upright rifle-barrel. He smiled dreamily.

I reckon little sister’s just a little further on up the road, ain’t she? the man said.

I don’t know. I ain’t seen her.

No.

I allowed maybe you had, Holme said. You seem to know everbody’s business.

I guess it ain’t nothin to me. Is that right?

Holme didn’t answer.

The man wiped the stick and poked it into the fire and stretched forth his boot. Hand him here, he said.

What?

Hand him here. Yan chap.

Holme didn’t move. The child had not stopped watching him.

Unless you’d rather for Harmon to.

He looked at Harmon and then he bent forward and picked up the child. It made no gesture at all. It dangled from his hands like a dressed rabbit, a gross eldritch doll with ricketsprung legs and one eye opening and closing softly like a naked owl’s. He rose with it and circled the fire and held it out toward the man. The man looked at it a moment and then took it with one hand by its upper arm and placed it between his feet.

What do you want with him? Holme said.

Nothin. No more than you do.

He ain’t nothin to me.

No.

Where’s that tinker at if he was raisin him?