The Orchard Keeper(57)

What’d he buy then?

Well, he got him some backer and a sack of corn-meal. Little sidemeat last time he’s in.

He got credit?

Well, no. I don’t give out a whole lot of credit. He brings in sang. Ginseng roots. Had some goldenseal too but it ain’t worth a whole lot. I give trade on that.

Roots?

Yessir, Huffaker said. I send em off to St. Louis. Same place as I send hides.

The man looked puzzled but he didn’t ask any more about that.

You from around here? the storekeeper asked.

From over t’wards Maryville.

Oh, Huffaker said. I got kin over there myself.

He still got that dog?

Who’s that?

The old feller … the one …

Oh. Yessir, did have one with him. A old redbone looked like he’d been drug half to death or warshed in lye one. Didn’t have no hair hardly at all. Right pitiful-lookin, like.

Well, the man said, you say you don’t know where-all he lives at?

Nosir, I shore don’t.

Well, much obliged.

Yessir. You come back.

He did. He came every day for seven days.

He was there next morning early among the un-churched Sunday idlers, hovering on the edge of the circle they formed about the fireless stove, their conviviality so broken by his presence that they took on the look of refugees grimly awaiting bulletins of some current disaster, the news of flood or fire or plague. From time to time he got a drink from the box and stood sipping it, hand on hip, gazing up at the phantasmagoria of merchandise hung about the ceiling beams. Or peered solemnly out the window, beyond the river and the narrow bridge to where a broad green hollow rose and rose into the mountains.

Monday when Huffaker came down he was not there yet but half an hour later when he went out to unlock the gas pump the car was parked on the gravel ramp approaching the store and the man was perched upon the fender in the same creased and tireless clothes sipping coffee from a paper cup. The sun was coming up behind him and to the west fog was breaking, lifting off the slopes to leave the laurel balds burning with the fierce green light of morning. The man was watching again, the peaks across the river, as if with those slategray eyes he might mark out an old man and a hound somewhere on the face of a mountain not less than four miles distant.

When Huffaker let the door to, the man turned. He lifted a palm in greeting and the man nodded. He went down to the pump and undid the lock.

Looks like another purty day, don’t it? he called.

Does at that, the man said. He drained the coffee and pitched the cup away, got down from the fender and took a few steps up and down the gravel, stretching himself. Huffaker returned to the store.

Around eleven o’clock he came in, nodding once again to the proprietor. He bought a box of soda crackers and some cheese, looked for a long time at the cake rack and finally took a moonpie. He laid his lunch on the counter and Huffaker began to total it laboriously on a scratch pad, adding the figures aloud.

And a quart of sweet milk, the man said.

He put that down, then went to the cooler and brought back the milk in a quart mason jar. The man looked at it, turned it around on the counter.

That’s Mrs Walker’s milk, he reassured the man. It’s good as ever you drunk, garntee ye.

The man nodded and pulled a clip of bills from his pocket.

Forty-five cents, Huffaker said.

He paid it and went out on the porch where he sat back against a post and ate his lunch. After he had finished he squatted there a long time smoking cigarettes. Then he brought the jar back inside and set it on the counter. Huffaker took it out again and washed it under the tap at the side of the building. Some customers were coming up toward the store and he waved at them and went in.

Later on in the afternoon the man came in again and drank a Coca-Cola. Before he went back out to his car he asked Huffaker what time it was that the old man usually came in.

The old feller?

The one I was astin you about.

Oh. Well, times he come in it was genly of a mornin. But then he don’t come regular enough for me to say when a feller be most likely to expect him.


Light gained on the high peaks and in the dawn quiet first birdcalls fell like water on stone. In the wood mists like old gray spirits paled and scattered, by moss coverlets the dark earth stirred and nightfurled wild-flowers unbent their withered fronds all down the path where came the derelict hound shambling along in an aureole of its own incredibility, the old man picking his steps over the schist and quartz chines, his hex-cane bobbing lightly on his shoulder, carrying a limp and greasy paper bag of the curious twisted roots with which he bartered. They crossed a broad rock slide emblazoned with sun and threaded by a trickle of water in a rock channel rusted copper-dark. The old man paused to scale a slate down into the gorge where trees lay tossed and broken. The dog peered down, looked at the old man inquisitively, studied the empty gorge again and then moved on, the old man taking up his cane and following. The sole of his brogan was all but off now and he limped, favoring the odd shoe to save the binder twine with which he had tied it together.