by William Gay
Sutter got it in for ye, has he?
I reckon. He tried to kill me.
It ain’t none of my business, but what did yins have yourfallin out about?
Well. It sort of come up about my sister. We got into it over her. He fell silent and sat staring at the ground, and his face was bleak with some grief he didn’t name.
And you took to the deep pineys. I would of thought this was somethin for the law to handle. I was never one to run overquick to em, but they get paid for protectin folks can’t protect themselves.
I can protect myself. I just don’t want to kill him unless I have to. Besides, I’ve been to the law. They never paid me any mind. Somebody told me there’s a sheriff in Ackerman’s Field supposed to be an honest man. Bellwether. You know him?
I know of him. He’s got the name of bein a pretty straight law. There’s a lot of these laws around here their badge just guarantees they can do their meanness and get away with it.
The cell door clanged hollowly behind him. He followed the jailer down a steep stairwell to a green room where folk sat about drinking coffee and pretending they were working. A deputy unlocked a locker and took out a pocketknife and a wallet and a cigarette lighter and handed them to him.
Next time you want to bust up a bar, do it in somebody else’s county, he said.
Bookbinder was going through his wallet. Now wait a goddamned minute, he said. I had sixty dollars in this billfold.
Everyone was watching him. Bland eyes out of calm faces.
Chief? the deputy said. A heavyset man behind a desk scratched his sandy head. He rummaged about looking for Bookbinder’s papers.
One pocketknife, he read. One Zippo cigarette lighter. One black cowhide wallet. Nothing about contents. You was charged with a public drunk. You sure you had any money left?
I wadn’t drunk. And I know goddamned well I had it.
All right, Mr.—he glanced down at the report—Bookbinder. There must of been some kind of a mistake. Wallace, take him back to his cell till all this confusion’s cleared up.
Let’s go, Wallace said.
Bookbinder didn’t move. He seemed to have been struck by some profound revelation. Wait a minute, he said. I believe I left that money in my other britches.
The chief was watching him. His face relaxed. All right, he said. All cleared up. See how easy that was?
The old man had been silent a time. I never cared much for the law, he finally said. Or the law in this county anyway. They hired one old boy was a deputy and he liked to whup folks with that club he carried. Like to beat a couple of fellers to death, whupped em right up the steps to the hospital. Right near the funeral home. They got on to him about it and it pissed him off. He ask em, what’s the use of bein a law if you can’t beat nobody up?
Could you tell me the best way to get to Ackerman’s Field?
Well. If anybody could, I ort to be able to. I worked them mines back in Overton the biggest part of my life. Now the way I’m goin to tell you ain’t the shortest, but it’s the easiest. You might as well forget any other way, these old roads windand twist and sometimes they just peter out. You try to stay on the roads and you’ll just circle around and run over yourself. Go due east till you hit the railroad tracks. They growed up, but they still there. It’s about twelve or fourteen mile. The tracks run north and south. Go south and you’ll come out right in Ackerman’s Field.
And that’s all there is to it.
The old man set his cup aside and took out his pipe. He grinned. First you got to get to the railroad track, and that ain’t no Sunday drive, specially if you ain’t used to the Harrikin. Likely you’ll come up on Overton. The tracks is right near there.
Overton?
It’s just a bunch of buildins now. Nobody left but the ones in the graveyard, and if they could of left, they’d be long gone, too. When Overton went, it went like a June frost. All it was was a minin town, and when the ore run out she just folded up.
Did you live there?
Off and on. My, that was a rough place then. I was bad to drink then, and I used to spend some time in that crossbar hotel they had. I was in there one night they had me locked up with this nigger. Way in the night there was a terrible commotion. Folks hollerin, tryin to break into the jail. I was unused to folks tryin to break in. Thought it went the other way. They broke down the door and knocked out the sheriff and took his keys. Roughest-lookin bunch of folks I ever run into. Most of em drunker than I was. They had torches, and one of em was carryin a rope. Lord God, I thought. They’re goin to hang me for bein drunk.
But it was the nigger. They drug him out and hung him from a big whiteoak. Turned out it was over a whore. Theyhad this albino whore named Wanda, white as if the sun had never shone on her. Hair the color of seagrass twine, and even her eyes looked white. She charged two dollars, and this nigger offered her five, and somebody caught em together, and she swore up and down he forced her.
What did they do to the whore?
Do? They didn’t do nothin except keep on givin her two dollars. There was a lot of em in Overton back then. The miners worked the mines and the whores worked the miners and the only ones come out on top was the company bosses.
Tyler rose. All this time he had sat on the edge of the porch seemingly poised for imminent departure and now he seemed to have come to some decision. Well, I guess I better get on. I got a long way to go.
Well. Best not rush off in the heat of the day. But I reckon you know your business. I wouldn’t worry too much about Sutter. Likely he’s forgot about you by now and he’s drinkin him a cool one somewheres.
There was a fierce intensity in the boy’s face. No. He’s not forgot. And you better worry about him, too, because he’s headed this way, and he’d just as soon kill you as anybody else. There’s something the matter with him. When he comes here, just tell him where I went. That won’t hurt me, by then I’ll be somewhere else. And whatever you do, don’t start anything with him. I didn’t mean to mix you up in this.
I ain’t tellin him jackshit. And you ain’t mixed me up in nothing. I reckon I can set on my own front porch and drink a cup of coffee with whoever I want to. But if that stuff about Sutter is so, you need to be anywhere else besides the Harrikin. You need to be out where there’s more folks. Witnesses. He won’t do nothin if there’s a bunch of folks around. I got to do it. I believe my best chance is to get to Ackerman’s Field. Get to Bellwether and tell him the whole story. There’s a lawyer there named Schieweiler trying to get Sutter sent off.
Like I said, I reckon you know your business. What I’d do is stay on the edge of the Harrikin, close to the roads, and try to catch a ride. Most anybody would give you a lift into town.
I don’t have time. He’s too close on me, and I can stay away from him better in the woods. What’s that hole down there, back in the woods? Just a big hole in the rocks, makes a whistling racket.
That’s what they call the whistlin well. I don’t know how it makes that racket it does. Kindly a mournful sound, though, ain’t it? I knowed some old boys went down in it one time on a rope ladder. They went down to where a tunnel like branched off the shaft. They went a ways back in the tunnel, but they was leery of the shaft. Said they didn’t make enough rope. Said you’d drop a rock off in the main shaft and just grow old waitin for it to hit. Said they wadn’t no bottom, but common sense’ll tell you everthing’s got a bottom, howsomever far it may be.
Well. I’ll see you, Mr. Bookbinder.
You just remember what I said. Due east. And if you see ary ghost in Overton, ask him does he remember old Hollis Bookbinder.
The day had waned and grown chill before Sutter came. Bookbinder dozed in his rocking chair, an old plaid shawl across his lap, but he slept a cat’s troubled sleep, waking atevery noise.
Yet when Sutter came there was no noise, just some alteration of the atmosphere so that when the old man’s eyes blinked open, Sutter had one foot uplifted in the act of stepping onto the porch, then standing f
or a moment in awkward indecision, then setting it down in the yard and leaning to stand the scoped rifle against the wall. Beyond him the world had gone sepia with dusk and twilight’s lengthening shadows ran like dark liquid across the packed earth yard to pool in the lower ground of the woods.
Mr. Bookbinder, he said. You recollect me?
The old man nodded. Head clouded by the tatters of some old halfdream. Faint taste of muscadine wine in the back of his mouth.
I’m lookin for a young feller up this way, figured you might of seen him. He was fumbling about his pockets. Withdrew a worn leather wallet and flashed the old man a glimpse of a badge and a card that might have said anything. Or nothing at all. He repocketed it and the old man looked away and when he looked back at Sutter his own face held a look of almost unspeakable contempt.
You seen him?
I don’t know if I have or I ain’t. You got ary picture of him?
No. Course to hell I ain’t got no picture. You don’t need one to make you remember if you’ve seen a young feller wanderin around.
It’s been six or seven by today, Bookbinder said. Some days I get a run on em. I don’t know if I’ve seen the one you’re lookin for or not.
Sutter was silent for a time, his mismatched face an emotionless mask. The air grew faintly menacing. Bookbinderthought the face looked as if while the clay was yet wet God Almighty had laid a hand to either side of it in a sudden fit of anger and altered it slightly to mark him.
Sutter turned his head and spat into the yard. A black kid goat had come round the corner of the house and approached Sutter’s feet. It nuzzled the calf of his leg and he whirled as if he might kick it then thought better of it then abruptly bent to scratch its curly head.
I always been a respecter of age, Mr. Bookbinder, but I ain’t got time for no jokin around here. You seen that badge. I’m a duly sworn constable of the Sixth District, and you got to cooperate with me.
I don’t know if you’re a constable or not, Bookbinder said. But I do know one goddamned thing. You’re not in the Sixth District. You’re goin to have to get further into the Harrikin than this to work that kind of shit. And just say you was a law. That constable shit don’t cut no ice with me. Far as I’m concerned you just a trespasser, and you need to get on down the line to where you’re welcome.
You a mouthy old son of a bitch, Sutter said easily. To have one foot in the grave and the other in a pile of owlshit. You tired of livin or what? His hand came out of his dungaree pocket with the switchblade knife. He thumbed the button. Bright serpent’s tongue of the blade flicking out. With his left hand he grasped the kid’s head. He twisted it upward hard. The goat’s eyes walled in its head and it bleated softly and it made jerky little motions with its feet on the earth.
I reckon a man lives alone puts a lot of store in his animals. I guess you’re right fond of these goats.
They a right smart of company, the old man said again, like a one-size-fits-all answer he kept in stock. This’n acts like a pet. I bet if I cut its throat it’d make you remember where that boy went.
Or it might make me blow a hole in the middle of you a log truck could drive through.
The goat was trying to escape. It and Sutter making abrupt little dancing motions. Be still, goddamn you, he told it. He looked up. You might if you had a gun, he told Bookbinder.
With his left hand the old man moved the shawl. It slid off his lap soundlessly onto the porch. He was holding trained on Sutter an enormous old dragoon revolver, and its hammer was thumbed back.
It so surprised Sutter that he released his grip on the goat. When it jerked away and fled, Sutter looked down at the knife he was holding. It ain’t loaded, he said.
I done a lot of foolish things in my life, Bookbinder said, but I ain’t never threatened to kill a man with a empty pistol.
Piece of shit would likely blow up in your face anyhow, Sutter said. I don’t believe you’ve got the balls to shoot it, let alone kill anybody with it.
The old man slowly moved the barrel away from Sutter and aimed it at a locust fencepost. When the hammer fell the concussion was enormous and the top of the post exploded into fistsize chunks of rotten wood and when Sutter looked back from the post the gun was on him again. The old man was watching him with narrowed eyes.
You just crazy enough to do it, Sutter said. Hellfire. I just wanted to talk to you.
The old man didn’t say anything and the gun didn’t waver. Sutter closed the knife and pocketed it. I aim to get my rifle, he said. I’ll just be on my way.
Just don’t let the barrel point my way, Bookbinder said. Sutter retrieved the rifle. He kept the barrel pointed earthward.
You know I’ll get you for this, he said conversationally. You’re graveyard dead and don’t even know about it yet. I’ll come through your window like a cat some hot night and cut your throat where you lay.
You come ahead, Bookbinder said. And they’ll be scraping bloody pieces of you off the wall with a goddamned putty knife.
Sutter turned and went. At the yard’s edge he hesitated and would say more, but Bookbinder raised the piece and Sutter kept going. The old man didn’t lower the gun until Sutter had vanished into the darkening wood. He laid the gun aside. His hands were shaking and he clamped them between his thighs to still them.
Somewhere deep in the Harrikin Tyler began to come upon curious arrangements of sticks strung from trees, lengths of wild cane wired together in designs strange and oblique, some simple and composed of only a few sections, others intricate three-dimensional compositions, and all alike suspended by tiewire and turning slowly in the air like alien windchimes or hieroglyphs from some prior language no one knew anymore. Like messages left by some otherworldly traveler who’d gone before him and left these signs in invitation or warning. They became more frequent, a veritable forest of them, asymmetrical and random and somehow sinister.
A dead fox strung head downward from a tree by wire threaded behind the tendons in its legs. He looked at it curiously, then went on beneath the great lowering trees with wind in their upper branches and doves calling from some lost hollow, past ancient utility poles tilted and wireless that bore witness to a civilization that had come tentatively and long since gone. In a bower formed by the roots of a liveoak and sleeping in a bed of moss was a child’s doll. It lay in a miniature casket and its cheeks were rouged and shadowed by improbable lashes and upon kneeling to examine it closer he saw woven into the doll’s flaxen locks humanlooking hair of a darker shade and a wood screw had been threaded into the doll’s molded navel. He studied it a time in a kind of wonder without touching it and then he rose and went on.
Some motion drew his eye and he saw a rusted fifty-gallon drum sitting upright beneath a tree and from its concave top a huge great horned owl was watching him. He approached cautiously. The owl watched him with its great liquid eyes and he saw himself twinned and grotesque leaning toward their depths. The owl’s left leg was imprisoned in the clamped jaws of a steel trap and a chain led away over a tree branch where wire secured it. The owl had been trying to escape the trap, for its feathers were bloody, and Tyler could see that the jaws had bitten into the flesh of its leg. The owl closeup looked like some monster from a child’s fever dream but when he reached a tentative hand toward the trap it did not move just watched him blankly and slightly inquisitively and with enormous patience from beneath its great tufted horns.
He tried to open the jaws of the trap with his hands but could not and finally pried them partway with his pocketknife, then inserted a stick and sprung them enough to free the owl. He backed away, expecting it to fly, but it just stood favoring its left leg and watching him back and he went on. He’d gonea few feet when he heard the concussion of its wings and looking up, saw it pass above him with wingspan terrible like some great prehistoric bird that had outlived its time and now was fleeing this one.
He had been following the tracks of an ironrimmed wagon that had in turn been following the spectral roadway along
the humped back of a long ridge, then down into bottomland grown with pinoak and poplar and maple. This bottomland was cleft by some stream nameless to him, and it seemed pasthaunted, vibratory with the traces of past habitation as if all that happened here happened still and concurrent with all other events and just out of his sight and hearing. He passed tiny log cabins mouldering down into the earth that might or might not have been slave quarters long ago or the houses of woodsprites or littlefolk and he passed a stone springhouse. A cooling box for milk and butter had been chiseled out of the solid limestone and old waterpipes gone almost entirely to rust were fed here. Turning in the direction the pipes led he saw a gently rising slope grown with cedar and hemlock and beyond and above them the looming bulk of a ruined mansion.
He went up the slope abstractedly, he’d realized he was turned around, had angled too far southeast and was in Lawrence County. This had to be the old Perrie mansion, and he knew it was not in Ackerman County. There were still miles and miles of wild country to go, and miles to backtrack. He looked upward. The dark bulk towered above him, three stories of handmade brick with four columns in front. The earth had settled under one of the end columns and it canted outward at the top. A ruined balcony dangled precariously from disintegrating masonry. He went inside. The roof was gone, lost in the fury of a long-ago storm, he could see a square of mottled sunlight falling down the curving stairway. He turned in a slow pivot, more impressed by this ruined glory than the foxes and rats and nightbirds that called it home now.
He went cautiously up a wide stair to a landing and a great hall with rooms opening off it and windowless apertures through which he could see encroaching trees.
Through a window opening he saw a brick outbuilding and a tiny wooden shanty like a witch’s house in a fable. The shanty was impaled with a length of stovepipe like a stake driven through its heart and a column of blue woodsmoke rose and dissipated. The house was surrounded by an enormous amount of ricked firewood and there was a blackened washpot sitting on its three legs over a smouldering fire. Even as he watched a woman came into view. She was laboring up a deeply washed gully dragging what appeared to be a great bundle of honeysuckle vines.