The Orchard Keeper(59)

He didn’t know how to begin so he sat there for part of a minute with his jaw going up and down as if he couldn’t breathe and the man said, Well, what now?

The old man nodded his head to where in the gravel the ancient hound stood gazing up at the machine before him with a baffled look. What about him? the old man said.

What about him?

Well, you don’t keer if he rides, do ye?

You’re resistin arrest, Ownby, now get on in there. He slammed the door but the old man’s cane was hanging over the runningboard and in mutual defeat the door rocked open again as the cane cracked. The old man pulled it in the car with him and studied the lower part of it, stooping to examine the whiskers of wood standing up from the break. The man slapped the door again and it bounded in snugly upon the old man and all but took his breath.

The man was coming around the car and he hadn’t much more time so he pulled at the handles and got the right one and opened the door again and leaned out and called to the dog, standing off a few feet now and rocking back and forth in consternation.

Hya, Scout, the old man whispered. Come on, get in here.

Hey! the man called. What in the hell you think you’re up to now?

The dog started, backed away. The man paused midway in his passage from door to door, returned. The old man straightened up and watched him come.

I told you oncet, the man said, coming up fast and reaching for the door. The old man recoiled, waiting for it to buffet shut against him, but instead it wrenched outward and the man’s face jutted in and stared at him in a mask of classic anger. You tryin to excape? he wanted to know.

Nosir, the old man said. I was jest gettin my dog in …

Jest what! Dog? He turned and seemed to see the hound for the first time. They said you’s crazy. Dog’s ass, you cain’t take no dog …

He cain’t shift for hisself, the old man said. He’s too old.

I ain’t no dog catcher and this ain’t no kennel, the man said. And I wadn’t sent here to haul no broken-down sooner around. Now get in the goddamned car and stay put. He said it very slowly and evenly and the old man really began to worry. But he suffered the door closed to once more and didn’t mention it again until the man came around and got in beside him.

It wouldn’t hurt nothin for him to ride, he said. I cain’t hardly leave him jest a-standin there.

Old-timer, the man said, I advise you jest to set still and hush up cause you in plenty of trouble already. He cranked the engine and slid the gearshift upward and the old man felt himself rocketed backward violently with a welter of dust boiling and receding before him and the dog standing there in the drive with the gravel dancing about him and then they cut one long rattling curve and were on the road and leaving, and the old man, clutching his cane, holding the dirty little sack between his knees, looked back at the dog still standing there like some atavistic symbol or brute herald of all questions ever pressed upon humanity and beyond understanding, until the dog raised his head to clear the folds above his milky eyes and set out behind them at a staggering trot.





Warn blew little cone-shaped thistles into the fur. No, he said. Ten maybe. See here—he blew again, cotton mink. Takes a first-class mink to bring twenty dollars. The boy nodded.

Fur’s slippin, Warn said. Whew, here. He handed the mink back. Sure raised hell with it, didn’t he?

The boy took it and pitched it underhand back up onto the shelf in the woodshed. He clambered down the pile of logs and they went out together. Some wasps were hovering beneath the eaves with their long legs dangling. Small buds already on the locust trees. It would soon be nothing but bones, but he wouldn’t come to see, like when he dug up the flying squirrel he had buried in a jar and found only bones with bits of fur rolling around inside the glass like bed-lint.

They took the road to Warn’s house, the fields still too wet to cross, passed the store.

You got any money? Warn asked him.

No, he said. I ain’t sold my hides yet. You?

Naw. I sold my hides but I ain’t got nothin left. I blow it in quick as I get it. Got me some new shoes for school is about all.

What you get for em?

For the hides? I don’t know; two dollars on most of em. That big rat got three I think it was and some of em the man said was kits and they didn’t bring but a dollar. I had eighteen hides and I think it come to thirty-one dollars.

I should get six dollars, the boy said. I owe out two. Who you owe?

Sylder. He loant me the money for traps when Gifford got mine. I’d done signed a paper to buy em uptown—on account of the man let me have those first ones I bought at lot price.

You keep messin with Sylder and signing papers uptown and sech shit as that and you goin to get your ass slung in the jail after all. Lucky Gifford didn’t do it.