Got a well full, the man said. Just round back. Help yourself.
Thank ye, he said again, going on with a final nod, along the side of the house to the rear where an iron pump stood on the end of a pipe a foot above the well cover, as if the ground had settled and left this shank exposed. He took up the handle and cranked it and immediately the water came up clear and full and gorged the pump’s tongue and cascaded into a bucket at his feet. He watched a spider move in its web across the flume inspecting from drop to drop the water beading there. He took the gourd from the bucket and rinsed and filled it and drank. The water was cold and sweet with a faint taste of iron. He drank two dipperfuls and passed the back of his hand across his mouth and looked about him. A small garden grubbed out of the loamy soil and beyond that an impenetrable wall of poison ivy. Random stands of grass, scraggly and wheatcolored. A waste of blue clay where washwater was thrown.
The back of the house was windowless. There was a door with no handle and a stovepipe that leaned from a hole hacked through the wall with an axe. There was no sign of stock, not so much as a chicken. Holme would have said maybe it was whiskey, but it wasn’t whiskey.
He went back to the man on the porch. That’s fine water, he said.
The old man turned and looked down at him. Yes, he said. Tis. Know how deep that well is?
No. Fifty foot?
Not even fifteen. It’s actual springwater. Used to be a spring just back of here but it dried up or sunk under the ground or somethin. Sunk, I reckon. Year of the harrykin. Blowed my chimley down. Fell out in the yard and left a big hole in the side of the house. I was settin there watchin the fire and I blinked and next thing I was lookin outside. Come mornin I went to the spring and it weren’t there. So I got me a well now. Don’t need all that there pump but I chancet to come by it. Good water though.
Yes it is.
Seems like everthing I get around runs off in the ground somewheres and I got to go after it.
You live here by yourself?
Not exactly. I got two hounds and a ten-gauge double-barrel that keeps me company. They’s lots of meanness in these parts and I ain’t the least of it.
Holme looked away. The old man tilted forward in his chair and stroked his beard and squinted.
Live by yourself and you bound to talk to yourself and when ye commence that folks start it up that you’re light in the head. But I reckon it’s all right to talk to a dog since most folks do even if a dog don’t understand and cain’t answer if he did.
Yes, Holme said.
Aye, said the old man. He tilted his chair back against the side of the house once more. It was very quiet. The hounds lay like plaster dogs in a garden.
Well, I thank ye for the drink, Holme said.
Best not be in no rush, the man said.
Well, I got to be gettin on.
Whereabouts is it you’re headed?
Just up the road. I’m a-huntin work.
I doubt you can make it afore nightfall.
Make what?
Preston Flats. It’s about fourteen mile.
What’s between here and it?
The old man gestured toward the woods. Just like you see. More of it. They’s one more house. About two mile down.
Who lives there?
They don’t nobody live there now. Used to be a minktrapper lived there but he got snakebit and died. Been snakebit afore and thowed it off. This’n got him in the neck. When they found him he was kneelin down like somebody fixin to pray. Stiff as a locust post. That’s about eight year ago.
They Lord, Holme said.
Well. The old man recrossed his legs. I never did like him much anyways. Poisoned two of my dogs.
How come him to do that?
I don’t know. Mayhaps he never meant to. He used to poison for varmints. They said they had to break ever bone in his body to get him laid out in his box. Coroner took a sixpound maul to him.
Holme looked at him in dull wonder and the old man looked at the steaming woods beyond the road. He lifted a twist of tobacco from the bib of his overalls and paused with it in his hand while he consulted pockets for his knife.
Chew? he said.
I thank ye, Holme said. I ain’t never took it up.
The old man pared away a plug and crammed it in his mouth. Do ye drink? he asked.
I’ve been knowed to, Holme said.
I’d offer was I able but I ain’t. Ye ain’t got nary little drink tucked away in your poke have ye?
I wisht I did, Holme said.
Aye, the old man said. Clostest whiskey to here is a old nigger woman on Smith Creek and it ain’t good. Sides which they’s genly a bunch of mean bucks lays out down there drunk. Got knives ye could lean on. Last time I was down there you couldn’t of stirred em with a stick. Makes a feller nervous. He shifted the cane to the other knee and spat. Don’t it you?
I expect it would.
Listen yander, he said, tilting his head.
What’s that? said Holme.
Listen.
The dogs lifted their long faces and regarded one another.
Yander they go, the old man said, pointing.
They watched a high and trembling wedge of geese drift down the sky with diminishing howls.
Used to hunt them things for a livin afore it was outlawed, the old man said. That was a long time ago. Fore you was borned I reckon. You ain’t no game warden are ye?
No, Holme said.
Didn’t figure ye was. You ever see a four-gauge shotgun?
No. Not to recollect it I ain’t.
The old man rose from his chair. Come in till I show ye one, he said.
He led the way into the house, a two-room board shack sparsely furnished with miscellaneous chairs, an iron bedstead. It smelled stale and damp. On the lower walls grew scalloped shelves of fungus and over the untrod parts of the floor lay a graygreen mold like rotting fur. There was a rattlesnake skin almost the length of the room tacked above the fireplace. The old man watched him watch. I ain’t got nary now, he said.
What?
Snakes. I’m out. That’n there was the biggest. Biggest anybody ever seen or heard tell of either.
I wouldn’t dispute it, Holme said.
He was eight foot seven inches and had seventeen rattles. Big in the middle to where ye couldn’t get your hands around him. Come back here.
They made their way through a maze of crates, piles of rags and paper, a stack of warped and mildewed lumber. Standing in the corner of the room was a punt gun some seven feet long which the old man reached and handed out to him. Holme took it and looked it over. It was crudely stocked with some porous swamp wood and encrusted with a yellow corrosion that looked and smelled of sulphur.
What ye done was to lay it acrost the front end of your skiff and drift down on em, the old man said. You’d pile it up with grass and float down and when ye got to about forty yards out touch her off into the thickest of em. See here. He took the gun from Holme and turned it. On the underside was an eyebolt brazed to the barrel. Ye had ye a landyard here, he said. To take up the kick. He cocked the huge serpentine hammer and let it fall. It made a dull wooden sound. She’s a little rusty but she’ll fire yet. You can charge her as heavy as you’ve got stomach for it. I’ve killed as high as a dozen ducks with one lick countin cripples I run down. They bought fifty cents apiece in them days and that was good money. I’d be a rich man today if I’d not blowed it in on whores and whiskey.
He set the gun back in the corner. Holme looked about him vaguely. On a shelf some dusty jars filled with what looked like the segmented husks of larvae.
You don’t pick ary guitar or banjer do ye?
No, Holme said.
If’n ye did I’d give ye one of them there rattles to put in it.
Rattles.
Them snakes rattles yander. Folks that picks guitar or banjer are all the time puttin em in their guitar or banjer. You say you don’t play none?