She had not dug but a few inches before she came upon packed clay, unsevered roots. She chose another spot and soon uncovered a bedded rock which bared to the oblique lightfall of the sun’s retrograde lay scored with powdery axemarks.
His long shadow overrode her but she did not see it. She stood and turned and found herself against his chest. She screamed and fell back, stumbled to the ground crushing the flowers, the blood starting again, warm on her leg. But he was the one: kneeling in the dark earth with his writhen face howling at her, saying Now you done it. Now you really went and done it. And her own face still bland and impervious in such wonder he mistook for accusation, silent and inarguable female invective, until he rose and fled, bearing his clenched hands above him threatful, supplicant, to the mute and windy heavens.
THEY ENTERED the lot at a slow jog, the peaceful and ruminative stock coming erect, watchful, shifting with eyes sidled as they passed, the three of them paying no heed, seeming blind with purpose, passing through an ether of smartweed and stale ammonia steaming from the sunbleared chickenrun and on through the open doors of the barn and almost instantly out the other side marvelously armed with crude agrarian weapons, spade and brush-hook, emerging in an explosion of guineafowl and one screaming sow, unaltered in gait demeanor or speed, parodic figures transposed live and intact and violent out of a proletarian mural and set mobile upon the empty fields, advancing against the twilight, the droning bees and windtilted clover.
THE STORM had abated but rain still fell. He sat watching it with his chin propped on the soured and thinworn knees of his overalls, crouched on his narrow strip of dead earth, the fine clay dust musty and airless even above the rank breath of the wet spring woods. Night came and he slept. When he woke again it was to such darkness he did not trust his balance. He was very cold. He curled himself up on the ground and listened to the rain drifting in a rapid patter with the wind across the forest. When morning came he was sitting again with his knees tucked up, waiting, and with the first smoky portent of light he rose and set forth from the shelter of the cliff and through the steaming woods to the road, now a flume of ashcolored loam through which he struggled with weighted shoes, his hands pocketed and head cupped between his shoulderblades.
He reached the town before noon, mud slathered to his knees, wading through a thick mire in which the tracks of wagons crossed everywhere with channels of milky gray water, entering the square among the midday traffic, a wagon passing him in four pinwheels of flickering mud. He watched it pull up before a store, the horse coming to rest in an ooze that reached its fetlocks and the high wheels of the wagon sucking halfway to their hubs. He reached the store as the driver was turning and getting down. Howdy, he said.
How do, said the driver, pulling a sack from the wagon bed. A mite boggy, ain’t she?
Yes tis, he said. You need any help?
Thank ye, said the man. I can get it all right.
He levered the sack onto his shoulder, nodded to Holme standing there holding the door, and went in, disappearing to the rear of the building. Holme approached the counter, unknotting the kerchief and removing two coins.
Yes, the clerk said, looking up out of the shabby and ludicrous propriety of his celluloid collar and winecolored cravat, his slight figure lost in a huge green coat coarse-woven and yieldless as iron.
Dime’s worth of cheese and crackers, Holme said.
A dime’s worth each?
No, both.
A nickel’s worth each then, the clerk said.
Holme was looking about him at the varieties of merchandise. He looked at the clerk. What? he said.
I said a nickel’s worth each.
That’d be a sight of crackers wouldn’t it?
I don’t know.
Holme seemed to be thinking about something else. After a minute he drummed his knuckles on the counter and looked up. You ever eat cheese and crackers? he said.
Yes, said the clerk with dignity.
Well, I’d like a dime’s worth like a person would eat.
The clerk adjusted the shoulders of his weighty coat with a shrug and went down the counter to where a wooden box stood and from which he began to ladle crackers into a paper. Then he went on, stooping below the counter. Holme wasn’t watching. His gray eyes moved over the tiered wares with vague wonder.
The clerk returned and laid the cheese and crackers before him each wrapped in a paper and looked up at him. What else now, he said.
Take out for a dope, Holme said, nudging the coins across the tradeworn wood.
To drink here?
Just outside.
You like two pennies, the clerk said with a small malignant smile.
For what?
The bottle.
I ain’t going but just to the front stoop with it.
Well, he don’t like for me to let em leave the store.
Holme looked at him.
Course if you ain’t got it you could drink it in here.
Shit, Holme said.
The clerk flushed. Holme reached again into the pocket of his overalls and plucked forth the kerchief. He took out the two bits of copper with a disdainful flourish and let them trickle down over the counter.
Thank ye, said the clerk, raking the coins into his palm. He rattled them into the wooden cashdrawer and looked up at Holme with satisfaction.
Holme grunted, gathered up the two packets, crossed the floor to the coolbox and got the drink and went out. While he was sitting on the stone veranda eating the cheese and crackers in the noon sun the wagon driver reappeared from the store and took a practiced leap up onto the box, unlooped the reins from the whipstand and cocked one mudcumbered boot upon the dashboard.
Say, Holme said.
The driver paused in the act of chucking the reins and looked down. Yes, he said.
Say you don’t need no help?
No, don’t believe I do.
Well, you don’t know where a man might find work hereabouts do ye?
The driver studied him. Him looking up with eyes narrowed against the light, his jaws working slowly over the dry crackers.
Steady work?
Any kind.
Well, the driver said. The mill ort to be takin on summer hands in a week or so. He looked down at the man again but the man said nothing, watching him, chewing. Yes, he said. Listen. Maybe the squire might have somethin. Some work around the house or somethin. He seized up the reins again.
Where’s he at?
The man took the reins in one hand and with the other he pointed down the road to the north. Bout a quarter mile, he said. Big house on the left as you leave town. You’ll see it. He lifted the reins and chucked them and the horse leaned into the traces and broke the wheels with a slight sucking noise.
Much obliged, Holme said.
The man raised one hand.
He watched them go, the bottle tilted upward to his mouth, watching the horse veer and wobble, the wheels dripping back into their furrows the upturned clots of muck. He took the empty bottle inside and collected his money and came out again and started down the road the way the man had directed him.
He did see it, a large two-storey house fronted with wooden columns on which the paint lay open in long fents like slashed paper and a yellow stain of road dust paling upward in the sunlight until the gables shone clean and white. He turned up the graveled drive and walked around the house, along a little cobbled walkway until he came to what he took for the back door. He tapped and waited. No one came. He tapped again. After a while he went on to the other side of the house. There was a kitchen door and a window through which he could see an old negro woman bending over a table and paring potatoes. He tapped at the glass.