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The Orchard Keeper(29)

By:Cormac McCarthy


It catapulted outward as if something inside had been galvanized into violent effort, shot open and pitched him backward through a tangle of down saplings and into the creek. In the darkness the water closed over him thickly as running oil, choking off his breath, filling his nose. He floundered to his feet streaming and numb, coughing up creek water. Wiping water from his eyes he looked about and saw the flashlight, still lit, scuttling downstream over the bed of the creek like some incandescent water-creature bent on escape. He waded after it, tearing recklessly about in the freezing water with the boots leaden and rolling about his shins, reached for it, his hand like a bat’s shadow poised over the dome of light, and then it was gone, sucked down through the silt and mire inexplicably, and he was left balancing on one foot in the darkness with his arm and shoulder deep in the water. He groped about and finally came up with the flashlight and shook it. The metal cylinder sloshed softly water among the batteries. He stuck it in his pocket and surged noisily back upstream to the car.

He was aware for the first time now of a sickly-sweet odor, faintly putrescent, and by the time he reached the car again it was thick in the air and he knew it was whiskey without having ever smelled it. Then he could see the man taking shape out of the gloom, sprawled on the upturned headliner and half out through the open door, one arm hanging into the water. The sour smell of the whiskey, the mustiness of the old car upholstery, and what he perceived to be blood on the man’s face—these burned such an image of death into his brain that he made for the bank, panicky, clawing wildly at the brush, up to the field where light in fragile shellpink reefs broke on an unreal world.

But the man wasn’t dead. The boy was already on the bank, catching his breath and teetering with the dry rollings of his breakfastless stomach, when he heard a voice out of the void, hollow and half lost among the chatterings of the creek.

Hey, the call came.

He turned, hanging to a jagged sapling, saw in the shade below him a movement among the wreckage, a pale face against the dark interior of the car, the man propped up on his hands looking at him. Hey you, he said.

He hung there looking at him. A sweep of lights tracked the shadows of the mountain and a car hammered the bridge, echoing the noise of its passage in the creek. Finally he said: What do you want?

The man groaned. There was a moment of silence and then he said, Goddamn, man; how about giving me a hand.

Okay, he said. He wasn’t afraid any more, just cold, sliding down the mud and into the creek again and then squatting in the water facing the man, wondering what he should say. He could see him quite clearly now, there was a dark smear of blood down the side of his face. The man looked at him, a suggestion of a grin breaking painfully on his face. Played hell, didn’t I? he said.

You hurt? His own words rattled like bb’s through a clatter of teeth. He started to say something else but a further chill rendered him inarticulate, his palsied jaw jerking like an idiot’s.

I don’t rightly know, the man was saying. Yes. Here … he reached out one hand and the boy steadied it on his shoulder while the man drew up one knee and stepped out into the water. Then he pulled the other leg out, his face wrinkling with pain, and so was standing in the creek, his hand still on the boy’s shoulder in an attitude of fatherly counsel. When he started for the bank the hand withdrew for a moment, one faltering half-step, and then flew back and clamped there like a predatory bird striking. Whew, the man said. I must of busted the shit out of my leg.

It took them some time to get up the bank, the boy trying to push him up and him pulling himself along by trees, roots, handfuls of dead grass, holding the leg out behind him. Then they sat in the weeds at the edge of the field breathing white plumes into the cold morning air. In the quarter-darkness the fields looked like water, flat and gray. The boy was wet and cold; everything was wet and very cold. The man ran his hand along his leg trying to tell whether it was broken or not. His trousers were clammy against his skin. The boy sat in front of him hugging his shoulders and shivering, his toes lifeless, squishing in his boots when he wiggled them and sand and grit rasping in his socks. He said: Your head’s bleeding.

The man ran his hand along the side of his face. Other side.

He reached across and his hand came away sticky with blood and he wiped it on his trouser leg and turned to the boy. You want to do something for me?

Sure, the boy said.

Go down and get them keys then, and let’s get the hell out of here.

The boy disappeared over the cut of the bank; the man could hear him in the water. Presently he came back and handed the keys over.

Thanks, he said. Here. He took the boy’s hand and turned it over. What’d you do here?