The Orchard Keeper(34)

Leaning against the case John Wesley could see the car pull in alongside the rusty orange gas pump and the two men get out. When they came through the door the nasal clacking voices paused, the chorus of elders looking up, down, back to the stove. Some fumbled knives from their overalls and fell to whittling idly on their milkcases. John Shell struggled to his feet, opened the stove door with kerchiefed hand, dropped in a small chunk of coal from the hod. A draft of sparks scurried upwards. He spat assertively at them and clanked the loose iron door closed.

The two men crossed to the dope box in close order, on the raw subflooring their steps heavy and martial. They selected their drinks and the taller man came over to the counter and spun down a dime. The other one closed the lid and hiked himself up on the box where he sat taking little sips of his drink and smirking strangely at the old men.

John Shell turned to the man at the counter and said, Howdy, Gif.

Howdy, said Gifford, nodding in general to the group. He took a drink of his dope.

Mr Eller came from his chair by the meat block and rang up the dime. Gifford said Howdy to him too and he grunted and went back to his chair taking with him a newspaper from the counter.

Warmin up, Gifford said. Outside the rain had stopped and a cold wind feathered the red water puddles in front of the store. He tilted his head and drank again. A fly rattled electrically against the front window. The fire cricked and moaned in the stove.

Gifford hoisted his dope to eye-level, examined it, his mouth pursed about the unswallowed liquid, swirling the bottle slowly, studying viscosity and bead, suspicious of foreign matter. In the folds of flesh beneath his chin his Adam’s apple rose and fell.

See where somebody lost a old Plymouth down in the creek, he said.

A few looked up. That a fact, someone said.

Yessir, said Gifford. Seems a shame.

Legwater, the county humane officer, finished now with his drink, sat leaning forward, hands palm-downward, sitting on his fingers—an attitude toadlike but for his thinness and the spindle legs dangling over the side of the box. He was swinging them out, banging his heels against the drink case. A longlegged and emaciated toad, then. He kept leering and smirking but no one paid him any attention. Most of the old men had been there the day he shot two dogs behind the store with a .22 rifle, one of them seven times, it screaming and dragging itself along the fence in the field below the forks while a cluster of children stood watching until they too began screaming.

He said, Sure does … brightly, enjoying himself.

Gifford passed him a sharp glance sideways and he hushed and fell to watching his heels bounce.

I don’t reckon anybody knows whose car that is, do they, Gifford went on.

A few of the elders seemed to be dozing. The fly buzzed at the glass.

I got a towtruck comin to take it on in to town. Sure would like to get that car to the rightful owner.

What kind of car did you say it was? It was the boy leaning against the meat case who spoke.

Gif drained the last of his dope with studied indifference, set the bottle carefully on the counter. He looked at the boy, then he looked at the boy’s feet.

You always wear them slippers, son?

The boy didn’t look down. He started to answer, but he could feel the cords in his throat sticking. He coughed and cleared his throat noisily. His feet felt huge.

Them ain’t enough shoes for wet weather, Gifford said. Then he was moving across the floor. Legwater eased himself down from the drink box and fell in behind him. At the door Gif stopped, the door half open, studying something obliquely overhead. Yessir, he said, looks like it’s fixin to clear off. Legwater hovered behind him like some dark and ominous bird.

Well, we’ll see ye, Gifford said.

By the meat block Mr Eller dozed with his paper. He had not looked up nor did he now. Come back, he said.

And they were gone. The fly rattled again at the window. The congress of ancients about the stove stirred one by one. The boy stood uneasily by the meat case. Some of the old men were rolling smokes with their brown papery hands. It was very quiet. He went to the door and stood there for a while. Then he left.





Her first high yelp was thin and clear as the air itself, its tenuous and diminishing echoes sounding out the coves and hollows, trebling to a high ring like the last fading note of a chime glass. He could hear the boy breathing in the darkness at his elbow, trying to breathe quietly, listening too hard. She sounded again and he stood and touched the boy’s shoulder lightly. Let’s go, he said.

The strung-out ringing yelps came like riflefire. The boy was on his feet. Has she treed yet? he asked.

No. She’s jest hit it now. Then he added: She’s close though, hot. He started down the steep hummock on which they had been resting, through a maze of small pines whose polished needles thick on the ground made the descent a series of precarious slides from trunk to trunk until they got to the gully at the bottom, a black slash in the earth beyond which he could see nothing although he knew there was a field there, pitched sharply down to the creek some hundred yards further on. He dropped into the gully, heard the beaded rush of sliding dirt as the boy followed, came up the other side and started out through the field at a jog-trot, the heavy weeds popping and his corduroys setting up a rhythmic zip-zip as he ran.