Read Online The Orchard Keeper (1965) by Cormac McCarthy - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Cormac McCarthy
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time now and he could feel it give. She canned the remainder of the garden in two days and was after him to get his bed back up to the loft before he took cold. It rained and the pond went blood-red and one afternoon he caught a bass from the willows in waternot a foot deep and cleaned it and held the tiny heart in the palm of his hand, still beating.
His bed was still on the porch. These nights he could not bear to be in the house. He would go out after dinner and come back at bedtime—and then out again directly she was asleep, walking the dark roads, passing by the shacks and houses, the people illumined yellowly behind the windowlights in gestures mute and enigmatic…
One night cutting through a field he came upon two figures struggling in the grass, naked, white and frantic in the gloss of the quarter-moon as stranded fish. He went on. They did not see him. When he got to the road he began to run, his shoes slapping loud on the asphalt till they burned and stung, ran till his chest was seared. Below the forks of the road in Stiefel’s yard was a great tulip poplar. He crawled up the kept-grass bank and folded in the shadows of the trunk like a malefactor gone to earth, his breath dragging coals through his lungs.
He sat there for a long time, watching the lights go out one by one over the valley. Sound of voices close and urgent on the acoustic night air, doors falling to, laughter … An encampment settling for rest, council fires put out … In caverns by torchlight a congress of fiends and warlocks rattling old dry bones in wistful hunger.
You goin to hunt him out. When you’re old enough. Goin to find the man that took away your daddy. (Remember: fierce and already aging face downthrust into his, sweetsour smell …)
How can I? He had begun to cry.
Your daddy’d of knowed how. He was a Godfearin man if he never took much to church meetin … The Lord’ll show you, boy. He will not forsake them whatbelieve. Pray and the way will be made known to ye. He … You
swear
it, boy.
His arm was growing numb with pain … could feel her tremble through the clutched hand … I swear, he said.
You won’t never forgit.
No.
Never long as you live.
Long as I live.
Yes, she said.
Long as I …
I won’t forgit neither, she said, tightening once more on his arm for a moment, leaning her huge face at him. And, she hissed, he won’t forgit neither.
I live …
He never forgot. From somewhere in the darkness came the sound of a banjo, tentative chords … a message … what news? Old loves reconsummated, sickness, a child’s crying. Silence now in the houses. Repose. Even to those for whom no end of night could bring rest enough. And silence, the music fled in the seeping amber warmth of innumerable dreams laid to death upon the hearth, ghostly and still … The morning is yet to the nether end of the earth, and he is weary. Bowing the grass in like sadness the dew followed him home and sealed his door.
Still the weather held, and the rain. The days were gray and misty and in the night the trees dripped and spattered. The pond had been bottled and he watched them drifting about one morning while still-fishing from the limestone ledge at the upper end. Later a man came in a skiff poling through the fog and he saw him stop what bottles skittered and jerked and lift up the lines totake off the fish. The man saw him and nodded his head and he nodded back. The skiff circled at the upper end and returned down the pond, silent but for the thud of the pole on the stern-boards.
He was pushing hard now and the days were bending under and cold weather came. His cot was still on the porch and daily he checked the undoing of the yard trees, woke to a red world with the sun wedged huge and squat in the mountain gap and the maples incandesced. Couched in his musty blanket he sniffed to test the air. A limp breeze water-wrought and tempered with smoke came lisping through the screen with no news yet.
He waited. In the slow
His bed was still on the porch. These nights he could not bear to be in the house. He would go out after dinner and come back at bedtime—and then out again directly she was asleep, walking the dark roads, passing by the shacks and houses, the people illumined yellowly behind the windowlights in gestures mute and enigmatic…
One night cutting through a field he came upon two figures struggling in the grass, naked, white and frantic in the gloss of the quarter-moon as stranded fish. He went on. They did not see him. When he got to the road he began to run, his shoes slapping loud on the asphalt till they burned and stung, ran till his chest was seared. Below the forks of the road in Stiefel’s yard was a great tulip poplar. He crawled up the kept-grass bank and folded in the shadows of the trunk like a malefactor gone to earth, his breath dragging coals through his lungs.
He sat there for a long time, watching the lights go out one by one over the valley. Sound of voices close and urgent on the acoustic night air, doors falling to, laughter … An encampment settling for rest, council fires put out … In caverns by torchlight a congress of fiends and warlocks rattling old dry bones in wistful hunger.
You goin to hunt him out. When you’re old enough. Goin to find the man that took away your daddy. (Remember: fierce and already aging face downthrust into his, sweetsour smell …)
How can I? He had begun to cry.
Your daddy’d of knowed how. He was a Godfearin man if he never took much to church meetin … The Lord’ll show you, boy. He will not forsake them whatbelieve. Pray and the way will be made known to ye. He … You
swear
it, boy.
His arm was growing numb with pain … could feel her tremble through the clutched hand … I swear, he said.
You won’t never forgit.
No.
Never long as you live.
Long as I live.
Yes, she said.
Long as I …
I won’t forgit neither, she said, tightening once more on his arm for a moment, leaning her huge face at him. And, she hissed, he won’t forgit neither.
I live …
He never forgot. From somewhere in the darkness came the sound of a banjo, tentative chords … a message … what news? Old loves reconsummated, sickness, a child’s crying. Silence now in the houses. Repose. Even to those for whom no end of night could bring rest enough. And silence, the music fled in the seeping amber warmth of innumerable dreams laid to death upon the hearth, ghostly and still … The morning is yet to the nether end of the earth, and he is weary. Bowing the grass in like sadness the dew followed him home and sealed his door.
Still the weather held, and the rain. The days were gray and misty and in the night the trees dripped and spattered. The pond had been bottled and he watched them drifting about one morning while still-fishing from the limestone ledge at the upper end. Later a man came in a skiff poling through the fog and he saw him stop what bottles skittered and jerked and lift up the lines totake off the fish. The man saw him and nodded his head and he nodded back. The skiff circled at the upper end and returned down the pond, silent but for the thud of the pole on the stern-boards.
He was pushing hard now and the days were bending under and cold weather came. His cot was still on the porch and daily he checked the undoing of the yard trees, woke to a red world with the sun wedged huge and squat in the mountain gap and the maples incandesced. Couched in his musty blanket he sniffed to test the air. A limp breeze water-wrought and tempered with smoke came lisping through the screen with no news yet.
He waited. In the slow
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