The Orchard Keeper(4)
At Gay or Market he would pull to the curb and yell: One stop! and watch them erupt from the car like circus clowns—five, six, as many as eight of them, all bound for the show, farmboys with no more farm than some wizened tomato plants and a brace of ravenous hogs. In the rearview mirror he could see them watching the car scoot away, hovering and bobbing on the sidewalk like a flock of curious birds.
Sundays the Knoxville beer taverns were closed, their glass fronts dimmed and muted in sabbatical quietude, and Sylder turned to the mountain to join what crowds marshaled there beyond the dominion of laws either civil or spiritual.
Jack the Runner’s mouth was blue, his tongue blue-black as a chow’s. At the table by the door of the Green Fly Inn he sipped blackberry wine from a liniment bottle.
Where’d you leave em? Sylder was asking.
Ahh, Jack gurgled. Over on mountain.
You’re on the mountain now, Sylder said.
Over, Jack emphasized. Hen’son Valley Road.
Henderson Valley Road? Whereabouts?
Top o mountain, like I tol ye …
You reckon he’s tellin us right? June asked.
Sylder looked from him to the runner again. Jack studied a huge and evil-looking cigar he had found in his shirtpocket and fell to turning it against his tongue with drunken singlemindedness. Yeah, Sylder said. Most likely he is.
Right feisty, Jack was saying, holding now the cigar at arm’s length. A loop of spittle woggled mucously from its underside. Right feisty.
Caught in the yellow glare of the headlights they had the temporarily immobilized look of wildlife, deer perhaps, frozen in attitudes of surprise predicating imminent flight. Sylder drove past and up the mountain.
Ain’t you goin to stop? June asked.
Comin back, Sylder said. Behind em, like I was goin their way. I never figured they’d be headed wrong. Way they’re goin, through Sevierville, it’s near thirty mile.
Between them in the crevice of the seat nestled a mason jar of whiskey. Sylder heard the skirling tin sound of the lid being unscrewed and he reached out his hand for June to pass the jar. Moths loomed whitely before the windshield, incandesced, dusted the glass with mica. A ballet of gnats rioted in the path of the headlights. He drank and handed the jar back. Under the black hood the motor hummed its throaty combustions.
Sylder thought about old man Tipton saying it wasn’t sensible as any fool could see that with the pistons going on an angle like that—lop-ass-sided, he’d said—they were bound to wear through on one side. Pistons were supposed to go up and down. Street’s are full of em, he said, if it’s any comfort to know you wadn’t the only one took.
They turned at the quarry and came back down the mountain coasting silently, the tires making a soft slapping sound at the cracks in the asphalt. When the lights picked them up they began to group and sidle to the ditch as cows will. Sylder brought the coupe to a stop slowly alongside of them.
Howdy, said June right into the ear of the girl on the outside. You-all need a ride?
The other one was standing next to her then. They looked at each other and the first one said, Thank ye, I reckon we can make it all right. The boy hung back behind them. Across June’s shoulder Sylder could see him looking not at them or at the women either, but at the car.
How fer ye goin? June wanted to know.
The two exchanged glances again. This time the taller one spoke up. We jest goin down the road a piece, she explained.
Tell her let’s all go down the road for a piece, Sylder suggested.
What? the short one said. Then the boy piped up and they both turned to glare at him.
How fer is it to Knoxville? That was his question.
Knoxville? June couldn’t believe it. You say Knoxville? Why you-all cain’t walk to Knoxville. It’s twenty mile or better—ain’t it, Marion?
A groan went up from the travelers. Sylder was already motioning him out the door.
Here, June said, climbing out. You’ns get in here. We goin to Knoxville, proud to hep ye out.
Sylder presented them each with a welcoming smile as they climbed in and studied each in turn his face under the domelight.
He dropped into the Hopper—the steep twin fork road—without braking. The little one between him and Tipton squealed once and then hushed with her hand clapped over her mouth as they swerved across the pike and shot out into blackness, the lights slapping across the upper reaches of trees standing sharply up the side of the hollow. The coupe dropped, squatted for a moment in the gravel of the lower road, sprang again and slithered away obliquely with the exhaust bellowing from the cutout and gravel popping and rattling in the woods like grapeshot.
The one in the back was making small sobbing noises. No one spoke for a few minutes and then the little one said, Where’s this go?