I ain’t never tried my hand at it.
Some folks has a sleight for music and some ain’t. My granddaddy they claimed could play a fiddle and he never seen one.
None of us never took it up, Holme said.
I’d show ye snakes but I ain’t got nary just now. Old big’n yander’s the one got me started. Feller offered to give me ten dollars for the hide and I told him I’d try and get him one like it but I didn’t want to sell that’n. So then he ast me could I get him one live and I thought about that a little and I told him yes anyways. So he says he’ll take all I can get at a dollar a foot and if I come up on anothern the size of old big’n yander he’ll give double for it. But I ain’t never seen the like of him again. Might if I live long enough. I use a wiresnare on a pole to hunt my snakes with. It ain’t good now. Spring and fall is best times. Spring ye can smoke em out and fall they lay around to where ye can pick em up with your hands pret-near. I hunt them moccasins too when I can see one but they don’t pay as good and they more trouble. The old man spat into the barren fireplace and wiped his chin and looked about him with a kind of demented enthusiasm.
Well, Holme said, I thank ye for the water and all …
Shoo, come out on the porch and set a while. Ye ain’t set a-tall.
Well just for a minute.
They went onto the porch and the old man took his rocker and pointed out a chair to Holme. Holme sat and folded his hands in his lap and the old man began to rock vigorously in the rocker, one loose leg sucking in and out of its hole with a dull pumping sound.
You know snakes is supposed to be bad luck, he said, but they must have some good in em on account of them old geechee snake doctors uses em all the time for medicines. Unless ye was to say that kind of doctorin was the devil’s work. But the devil don’t do doctorin does he? That’s where a preacher cain’t answer ye. Cause even a preacher won’t say they cain’t help nor cure ye. I’ve knowed em to slip off in the swamp theirselves for a little fixin of somethin another when they wasn’t nothin else and them poorly. Ain’t you?
I reckon, Holme said.
Sure, the old man said. Even a snake ain’t all bad. They’s put here for some purpose. I believe they’s purpose to everthing. Don’t you believe thataway?
The old man had leaned forward in his rocker and was watching Holme with an intent look, his thumb and forefinger in his beard routing the small life it harbored.
I don’t know, Holme said. I ain’t never much studied it.
No. Well. I ain’t much neither but that’s the way I believe. The more I study a thing the more I get it backards. Study long and ye study wrong. That’s what a old rifleshooter told me oncet beat me out of half a beef in a rifleshoot. I know things I ain’t never studied. I know things I ain’t never even thought of.
Holme nodded dully. I got to get on, he said.
Stay a spell, the old man said. Ain’t no need to rush off.
Well, I best get on.
Just stay on, the old man said. I’ll learn ye snakehuntin. You look to me like a young feller who’d not be afeared of em.
Maybe, Holme said. But I got to get on.
You got kin over twards the flats?
No.
Ain’t married are ye?
No.
Might’s well stay on.
The praying minktrapper materialized for him out of the glare of the sun like some trembling penitent boiling in the heat there, a shimmering image beyond which the shape of the forest rose likewise veered and buckling. He blinked his eyes and stood from the chair. I thank ye kindly, he said, but I got some things needs looked after.
What’s that?
Holme was stretching with his hands deep in his pockets, rocking a little on his heels. He stopped. What? he said.
I said what is it needs looked after if it’s any of my business.
Holme looked at him. Then he said: I’m huntin a woman.
The old man nodded his head. I cain’t say as I blame ye for that. I live to see the fifth day of October I’ll be sixty-three year old and I …
No, Holme said. My sister. I mean to say I’m a-huntin my sister.
The old man looked up. Where’d you lose her at?
She run off. She’s nineteen year old and towheaded. About so high. Wears a blue dress all the time. Rinthy. That’s her name.
How come her to run off?
I don’t know. She ain’t got right good sense in some ways. She just up and left. I don’t reckon you’ve seen such a person have ye?
Not to notice it I ain’t.
Well.
I had a wife one time used to run off. Like a dog. Best place to hunt em is home again.
She ain’t rightly got a home.
Where’d she run off from then?
Holme had paused with one foot on the top step, one hand spread over his knee. He pursed his lips and spat, dry white spittle. Well, he said, she ain’t actual what you’d call run off. She just left. I figured I’d ast anyways. If she might of come this way. If I don’t find her soon I’m goin to have to start huntin that tinker and I’d purely hate that.
She got ary kin she might of went to?
No. She ain’t got no kin but me.
Kin ain’t nothin but trouble noway.
Yes, Holme said. Trouble when you got em and trouble when you ain’t. I thank ye kindly.
Shoo, the old man said. Just stay on.
Well, I best get on.
The old man took up his cane from where he had leaned it against the side of the house. Well, he said, come back when ye can stay longer.
I will, he said. He went down the steps into the yard. The hounds raised their eyes to watch him go. He half turned again at the road and lifted one hand and the old man nodded and made a little motion with his cane.
Thank ye for the water and all, Holme said.
Shoo, said the old man. I wouldn’t turn Satan away for a drink.
THE TWO HOUNDS rose howling from the porch with boar’s hackles and walled eyes and descended into the outer dark. The old man took up his shotgun and peered out through the warped glass of his small window. Three men mounted the steps and one tapped at the door. And who is there? A minister. Pale lamplight falling down the door, the smiling face, black beard, the tautly drawn and dusty suit of black. Light went in a long bright wink upon the knife blade as it sank with a faint breath of gas into his belly. He felt suddenly very cold. The dogs had gone and there was no sound in the night anywhere. Minister? he said. Minister? His assassin smiled upon him with bright teeth, the faces of the other two peering from either shoulder in consubstantial monstrosity, a grim triune that watched wordless, affable. He looked down at the man’s fist cupped against his stomach. The fist rose in an eruption of severed viscera until the blade seized in the junction of his breastbone and he stood disemboweled. He reached to put one hand on the doorjamb. He took a step backwards as if to let them pass.
HE KEPT WALKING after the sun was down. There were no more houses. Later a moon came up and the road before him went winding chalky and vaporous through the black woods. Swamp peepers hushed constantly before him and commenced behind as if he moved in a void claustral to sound. He carried a stick with him and prodded each small prone shadow through which he passed but this road held only shapes of things.
When he did reach Preston Flats the town looked not only uninhabited but deserted, as if plague had swept and decimated it. He stood in the center of the square where the tracks of commerce lay fossilized in dried mud all about him, turning, an amphitheatrical figure in that moonwrought waste manacled to a shadow that struggled grossly in the dust.
He hurried on, through the town where houses and buildings in shadow halved the narrow road and his own shape fled nimbly over the roofs, on into the country past farms remote and dark in the lush fields of early summer, the night cool, a hushed blue world of the dead.