The Orchard Keeper(9)

Whooee! see them turkeys trot, a man down the bar called out. The bouncer came back down the floor wearily, not smiling, faded again into the shadows. Sylder tossed off the drink, watched the blur of faces for a few minutes, not even high on the liquor, just feeling waves of fatigue roll from him. He didn’t even think he was mad any more. A few minutes later he left, wondering vaguely as he stepped into the air again why he had come here and where he thought he was going. Louisiana or anywhere else, his job had gone off the market December fifth 1933.

He walked out in the quiet darkness, across the gravel, limping just a little on the bad ground. He got to the car and opened the door.

By the phosphorous glow, more like an emanation from the man’s face than from the domelight, Sylder froze, his hand batting at the air stirred by the outflung door. The face stared at him with an expression bland and meaningless and Sylder groped for some, not cause or explanation, but mere association with rational experience by which he could comprehend a man sitting in his car as if conjured there simultaneously with the flick of light by the very act of opening the door.

The mouth stretched across the lower face in a slow cheesy rictus, a voice said: You goin t’wards Knoxville?

—A strained octave above normal, the pitch of supplication.

Sylder’s hand found the door and he expelled a long breath. What in the Goddamn hell you doin in my car, he croaked. Something loathsome about the seated figure kept him from reaching for it violently, as a man might not reach for bird-droppings on his shoulder.

The mouth, still open, said: I seen your plates, Blount County—that’s where I’m from, Maryville. I figured you might be goin thataway. I need a ride bad … ’m a sick man. The tone cloying, eyes dropped to Sylder’s belt as if addressing his stomach. It was not presentiment that warned Sylder to get shed of his guest but a profound and unshakable knowledge of the presence of evil, of being for a certainty called upon to defend at least his property from the man already installed beneath his steering wheel.

You’re sick all right, Sylder said. Scoot your ass out of there.

Thanks, old buddy, the man said, sliding across the seat to the far door without apparent use of any locomotor appendages but like something on runners tilted downhill. There he sat.

Sylder leaned his head wearily against the roof of the car. He knew the man had not misunderstood him.

I knowed you wouldn’t turn down nobody from home, the voice said. You from Maryville? I live right near there, comin from Floridy …

Sylder lowered himself into the car, the hackles on his neck rising. He looked at the man. I would have to put you out with my hands, he said silently, and he could not touch him. He slipped the key into the switch and started the motor. He felt a terrific need to be clean.

Shore is a nice autymobile, the man was admiring.

Swinging the little coupe through the rutted drive and out onto the paving he thought: He’ll be a talker, this bastard. He’ll have plenty to say.

In immediate corroboration the man began. This sure will help me out, old buddy. You know it sure is hard to get a ride nights.

Morning, Sylder muttered under the vehement shift to second.

—specially not much traffic and what they is folks won’t hardly pick you up even …

Ah, Sylder thought, shouldn’t have thrown that shift. He could see the knee out of the corner of his eye, cocked back on the seat, the man sitting half sidewise watching him.

—My mother been real bad sick too, she …

Sylder’s hand moved in stealth from wheel to shiftlever, poised birdlike. The hand on the speedometer climbed with the hum of the motor.

—doctor’s bills is higher’n …

His left foot dropped the clutch. Now. Under his cupped palm the gearshift shot down viciously, quivered where a moment before the man’s knee had been.

—so I shore do preciate it … The man went on, droning, his legs now crossed with an air of homey comfort, slightly rocking.

Sylder hung his elbow over the doorsill and leaned his ear to the rush of wind, the pockety rhythm of the open exhaust and the black road slishing oily under the wheels, trying to lose the voice.

No cars passed. He drove in almost a trance, the unending and inescapable voice sucking him into some kind of oblivion, some faltering of the senses preparatory to … what? He sat up a little. The man had not taken his eyes from him, and yet never looked directly at him.

You bastard, Sylder thought. It began to seem to him that he had driven clear to Atlanta for the sole purpose of picking up this man and driving him back to Maryville. His back hurt. I must be crazy, he said to himself, reaching in his pockets for cigarettes. This son of a bitch will have me crazy anyway. He jiggled one from the pack, spun it leisurely between thumb and forefinger to his lips. He had the pack in his other hand then riding the top of the steering wheel. I’ll bet I don’t make it, he wagered, don’t reach it. His right hand having delivered the cigarette to his mouth was creeping slowly for the pack to put it away. It was halfway up the steering wheel when the voice, suddenly clear, hopeful, said: