Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy Page A

them paps.
    Yes mam, she said.
    Aye, said the old woman. I got some I’ll give ye. She opened the firebox door and poked and spat among the flames and clanged it shut again. The sow reared half up and regarded them with narrow pink eyes and a look of hostile cunning. The old woman looked to her pot and then brought down a pitcher of buttermilk from her cupboard and a glass. I believe everbody loves a good drink of buttermilk, she said. Don’t you?
    Yes mam, she said. She was watching a woodrat that had come from a pile of kindling along the wall and now paused to scratch with one tiny hindfoot.
    Yander goes a old rat, she said.
    I don’t have no rats in my house, the old woman said simply.
    The rat looked at them and went on across the woodpile and from sight.
    I cain’t abide varmints of no description.
    She nodded. I’m like you, she said.
    I’ll have us some supper here directly.
    Thank ye, she said, the glass of milk in her hand, wearing a clown’s mouth of it. It had darkened in the room and fire showed thin and pink in the joints of the stove’s iron carriage.
    They’s a tinker comes thew here be it ever so little often, the old woman said. Got a jenny to pull his traps and smokes stogies. Does that favor him?
    I don’t know. I ain’t never seen him.
    The old woman paused midway unscrewing a tin of snuff. She did not look up. After a minute she undid the tin and took a pinch of the tobacco between her fingers and placed it in her lower lip. Do ye dip? she said.
    No mam. I’ve not took it up.
    She nodded and put the lid back and replaced the tin in her shirt pocket. If you ain’t never seen him, she said, how do you expect to know him when ye do.
    Well, she said, I don’t believe he had no jenny.
    Most don’t.
    He sells them books.
    What books.
    Them nasty books.
    Most do. I thought you said he come to the house.
    He did come to it but he never come in it.
    Did you want some more buttermilk?
    No thank ye mam. I’ve a plenty.
    It’s a poor lot wanderin about thataway, said the old woman.
    They ain’t no help for it.
    And if ye find him what?
    I’ll just tell him. I’ll tell him I want my chap. She was gesturing strangely in the air with one hand. The old woman watched her. Milk ran from the dark cloth she wore, the hand subsided into her lap again like a falling bird. I’d of wanted to see it anyways, she said. Even if it had of died.
    The old woman nodded and wiped the corners of her mouth each in turn with the pursed web of her thumb. Aye, she said. Reach them plates down from behind ye now.
    Yes mam.
    Did you come thew Well’s Station?
    Yes mam. This mornin. I seen two fellers hung in a tree.
    That was yesterday.
    No mam. It was this mornin.
    I reckon they still there then. They was supposed to of killed old man Salter over there.
    It sinkened me in my heart to see it.
    Yes. Here. I’ll get the lamp directly.
    Ain’t you scared by yourself?
    Some. Sometimes. Ain’t you?
    Yes mam. I always was scared. Even when they wasn’t nobody bein murdered nowheres.

HE CAME DOWN out of the kept land and into a sunless wood where the road curved dark and cool, overlaid with immense ferns, trees hung with gray moss like hag’s hair, and in this green and weeping fastness birdcalls he had not heard before. He could see no tracks in the packed sand he trod and he left none. Sometime in the afternoon he came upon a cabin and upon the veranda an old bearded man seated with a cane tilted across one knee. Two hounds watched him with bleeding eyes, muzzles flat to the scoured and grassless soil in the yard. He slowed his steps and raised one hand. The old man did not move for a minute and then his hand came slowly from his lap palmoutward no higher than his chest and returned without pausing.
    Howdy, he said.
    Howdy, said the old man, a voice remote and soft.
    I hate to bother anybody but I was wonderin could I might get a sup of water from ye.
    Wouldn’t turn Satan away for a drink, the old man said. Come