The Orchard Keeper(66)

But I never done it to benefit myself because I knowed I’d have to scout the hushes if they found I done it as I allowed they would and if I did have my reasons stit they cain’t a man say I done it to benefit myself.

A man gets older, he said, he finds they’s lots of things he can do jest as well without and so he don’t have to worry about this and that the way a young feller will. I worked near all my life and never had nothin. Seems like a old man’d be allowed his rest but then he comes to find they’s things you have to do on account of nobody else wants to attend to em. Like that would make em go away. And maybe they don’t look like much but then they lead you around like you might start a rabbit dog to hunt a fence-corner and get drug over half the county against nightfall. Which a old man ain’t good at noway. He eased himself slightly in the chair and shifted his weight. Most ever man loves peace, he said, and none better than a old man.

Or even knows they need attendin to. But I never done it to benefit myself. Shot that thing. Like I kept peace for seven year sake of a man I never knowed nor seen his face and like I seen them fellers never had no business there and if I couldn’t run em off I could anyway let em know they was one man would let on that he knowed what they was up to. But I knowed if they could build it they could build it back and I done it anyway. Ever man loves peace and a old man best of all.

Do they allow you to chew in here?

I kindly doubt it, the old man said. I ain’t a-fixin to ast noway, I’ll jest slip me one when I see clear to. They’s some in here I wouldn’t put past tellin on a feller. Half loonies. The real loonies wouldn’t. Some here that ain’t crazy, like me, but I doubt they’d want to tell.

I wonder how come them to be here, the boy said. The old man ran a lank and corded hand through his hair. I couldn’t say, he said. The ways of these people is strange to me. I did mean to ast you, you ain’t seen my old dog I don’t reckon?

No, the boy said, I’ve not seen him. You want I could go out to your place and hunt him.

Well, ever you’re out thataway might holler for him. I don’t know what to tell ye to do with him. I ain’t got no money to ast nobody to feed him with and I couldn’t shoot him was he too poor to walk, but might could somebody else …

I see him I’ll take care of him, the boy said. I wouldn’t charge you nothin noway.

Well, the old man said, refolding his hands in his lap. They looked up together, an orderly crossing the room with prim steps and bearing in tow an odor of disinfectant, cleaning fluid redolent of sassafras from the corridor where two Negroes mopped backwards toward each other. They could hear the measured slap of the mops on the baseboard above the door’s long pneumatic hiss until it closed and they sat again in quiet, the sunlight strong and airy in the room.

That wasn’t the one. He said:

What are these? the stethoscope still about his neck and jerking about rubbery when he moved.

Shotgun done it, said the old man, seated half naked and in decorous rectitude upon the examining table with his feet just clearing the floor and looking straight ahead—so that the intern had moved him about roughly without speaking either as you might a cataleptic wasted thin with years until the old man had asked him quietly if he intended to kill him.

What were you doing, robbing a henhouse?

The old man didn’t answer. He said again:

I know she’s here.

If she is she don’t want to see you.

I mean to see her.

Then the barrel of the gun shortening and withdrawing in the cup of his shoulder and his face bent to the stock and him walking into it, the black plume of smoke forming soundlessly about the muzzle and the shot popping into his leg, audible and painless in his flesh and him taking another step with the same leg and pitching forward as if he had stepped in a hole and then he could hear the shot.

You reckon you’ll come back to the mountain, the boy said. When you … come back?

Oh, said the old man, well. Yes. Yes, most likely I will. I allowed I might go back up yander in the mountains where my new place is at but I don’t know as I will. A man gets lonesome off by hisself he ain’t used to it. I spect I’ll jest come on back if the old house ain’t fell down. Yes.

He shuffled his feet on the floor. A shadow fell over them and he looked up to see the boy standing. Are ye leavin? he said.

Yes, the boy said. I got to get on back.

Well. I thank ye for the tobacca.

It’s all right.

Well.

I’ll come again.

No, the old man said.

Yes. I will.

Well.

He stopped again at the door and lifted his hand. The old man waved him on, and then he was alone again. The mowers came back. A little later the attendant to lead him away.