No.
The drover stroked his whiskers and nodded his head. Hogs is a mystery by theyselves, he said. What can a feller know about one? Not a whole lot. I've run with hogs since I was just a shirttail and I ain't never come to no real understandin of em. And I don't doubt but what other folks has had the same experience. A hog is a hog. Pure and simple. And that's about all ye can say about him. And smart, don't think they ain't. Smart as the devil. And don't be fooled by one that ain't got nary clove foot cause he's devilish too.
I guess hogs is hogs, Holme said.
The drover spat and nodded. That's what I've always maintained, he said.
Holme was watching the activity below them.
That's my little brother Billy yander, the drover said, pointing with one tatterclad arm. This is his first time along. I thought mamma was goin to bawl sure enough when we lit out and him with us. Says he goin to get him some poontang when we get sold but I told him he'd be long done partialed to shehogs. The drover turned and bared his orangecolored teeth at Holme in a grimace of lecherous idiocy. Holme turned and watched the hogs. The drovers stood among them like crossers in a ford, emerging periodically out of the shifting pall of red dust and then blotted away again. They seemed together with the hogs to be in flight from some act of God, fire or flood, schisms in the earth's crust.
I better get on and give them fellers a hand, the drover said.
Luck to ye, Holme said.
We'll be stopped up on the river somewheres come dark. If ye chance by that way just stop and take supper with us.
Thank ye, said Holme. I'd be proud to.
The drover waved his staff and scrabbled away over the rocks like a thin gnome. Holme sat for a while and then rose and followed along the ridge toward the gap where the hogs were crossing.
The gap was narrow and when he got to it he could see the hogs welled up in a clamorous and screeching flume that fanned again on the far side in a high meadow skirting the bluff of the river. They were wheeling faster and wider out along the sheer rim of the bluff in an arc of dusty uproar and he could hear the drovers below him calling and he could see the dead gray serpentine of the river below that. Hogs were pouring through the gap and building against the ones in the meadow until these began to buckle at the edges. Holme saw two of them pitch screaming in stifflegged pirouettes a hundred feet into the river. He moved down the slope toward the bluff and the road that went along it. Drovers were racing brokenly across the milling hogs with staves aloft, stumbling and falling among them, making for the outer perimeter to head them from the cliff. This swept a new wave of panic among the hogs like wind through grass until a whole echelon of them careering up the outer flank forsook the land and faired into space with torn cries. Now the entire herd had begun to wheel wider and faster along the bluff and the outermost ranks swung centrifugally over the escarpment row on row wailing and squealing and above this the howls and curses of the drovers that now up-reared in the moil of flesh they tended and swept with dust had begun to assume satanic looks with their staves and wild eyes as if they were no true swineherds but disciples of darkness got among these charges to herd them to their doom.
Holme rushed to higher ground like one threatened with flood and perched upon a rock there to view the course of things. The hogs were in full stampede. One of the drovers passed curiously erect as though braced with a stick and rotating slowly with his arms outstretched in the manner of a dancing sleeper. Hogs were beginning to wash up on the rock, their hoofs clicking and rasping and with harsh snorts. Holme recoiled to the rock's crown and watched them. The drover who had spoken him swept past with bowed back and hands aloft, a limp and ragged scarecrow flailing briefly in that rabid frieze so that Holme saw tilted upon him for just a moment out of the dust and pandemonium two walled eyes beyond hope and a dead mouth beyond prayer, borne on like some old gospel recreant seized sevenfold in the flood of his own nether invocations or grotesque hero bobbing harried and unwilling on the shoulders of a mob stricken in their iniquity to the very shape of evil until he passed over the rim of the bluff and dropped in his great retinue of hogs from sight.
Holme blinked and shook his head. The hogs boiled past squealing and plunging and the chalky red smoke of their passage hung over the river and stained the sky with something of sunset. They had begun to veer from the bluff and to swing in a long arc upriver. The drovers all had sought shelter among the trees and Holme could see a pair of them watching the herd pass with looks of indolent speculation, leaning upon their staves and nodding in mute agreement as if there were some old injustice being righted in this spectacle of headlong bedlam.
When the last of the hogs had gone in a rapidly trebling thunder and the ochreous dust had drifted from the torn ground and there was nothing but quaking silence about him Holme climbed gingerly from his rock. Some drovers were coming from the trees and three pink shoats labored up over the rim of the hill with whimpering sounds not unlike kittens and bobbed past and upriver over the gently smoking land like creatures in a dream.
Holme walked slowly up the bluff. The sun was bright and it was a fine spring day. The drovers had begun to assemble and they seemed in no hurry to overtake the hogs. They were handing about plugs and pouches of tobacco with an indifferent conviviality.
That beats everthing I ever seen, one said.
That's pitiful about your brother.
I don't know what all I'm goin to tell mamma. Herded off a bluff with a parcel of hogs. I don't know how I'm goin to tell her that.
You could tell her he was drunk.
Tell her he got shot or somethin.
You wouldn't need to tell her he went to his reward with a herd of hogs.
He shook his head sorrowfully. Lord I just don't know, he said. I just wisht I knowed what to tell her.
You won't see her for a couple of months anyways, Billy. Give ye time to think some about it.
What happent? Holme said.
One of the drovers looked at him. They Lord, he said, where was you at? Did you not see them hogs?
I seen him a-settin on a rock over yander, Billy said. Vernon went right past him and he never reached to help him nor nothin.
The drovers looked at him, a bizarre collection of faces that seemed assembled from scraps and oddments, all hairyfaced and filthy and half toothless and their weathered chops lumpy with tobacco chews. One spat and squinted up at Holme.
That right, stranger? he said.
Holme ignored him. I didn't see you comin to help, he said.
I wasn't near him, Billy said. I couldn't of got to him. You was right there.
I seen him a-settin on that rock.
That's all right about him settin on some rock, who was it got them hogs started in the first place?
That's right. How come em to do thataway?
Where was you at, stranger? When them hogs commenced runnin crazy.
I wasn't nowheres. I was way back yander.
Behind em kindly?
He just watched Vernon go right on out over the bluff and never said diddly shit.
Somethin had to of spooked them hogs thataway.
Well ain't he just said he come up behind em?
He never raised hand one to save him.
Stranger we don't take too kind to people runnin off folks' stock.
We ain't got a whole lot of use for troublemakers hereabouts.
Vernon never bothered nobody. You can ast anybody.
Shit, Holme said. You sons of bitches are crazy.
Peace be on all you fellers, a voice sang out behind them. Two of the drovers removed their hats. Holme looked around to see what was occurring.
A parson or what looked like one was laboring over the crest of the hill and coming toward them with one hand raised in blessing, greeting, fending flies. He was dressed in a dusty frockcoat and carried a walking stick and he wore a pair of octagonal glasses on the one pane of which the late sun shone while a watery eye peered from the naked wire aperture of the other.
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What's the ruckus here? Hey? He drew up and looked from one to the other among them and looked at the ground as if he had forgotten something, taking a kerchief from his sleeve and snorting into it.
Howdy Reverend, said Billy.
Howdy. Bless all of ye'ns. They Lord what's been thew here?
Hogs, said one of the drovers. Damndest mess of hogs you ever seen, excuse me.
Hard words don't bother me no more than does hard ways, said the reverend. That's what all I'm here for. What's he done? You ain't fixin to hang him are ye? Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord. Don't hold with hangin a-tall lessen it's legal. What possessed them hogs anyways?
This here feller run em off, Billy said.
I never done it, Holme said.
The hell you never.
Here now, somebody's lyin. You, young feller, look me in the eye and tell me you never run them hogs off.
I never run em off, Holme said.
The drovers pressed about to watch.
The preacher looked at the ground again, stuffing the kerchief back up his sleeve.
Well, Reverend?
I believe he run em off.
I told ye, Billy said.
Goddamn it, Holme said, I wasn't nowheres ...
Watch that talk in front of the preacher, boy, one of the drovers said.
But don't hang him boys, the reverend said. Don't do it. We'll take him in to justice. Render unto Caesar what all's hisn.
He shoved brother Billy's brother Vernon off the bluff with the hogs.
Just a goddamn minute, Holme said.
There he goes again with that mouth.
Don't hang him, boys, the preacher cried out. No good'll ever come of it.
Everbody seen what he done, Billy said. You all seen it.
The preacher looked like a charred bird. He was peering at the ground and pounding his cane there. Ah don't hang him, he said. Oh Lord don't hang him. Shaking his head and muttering these things loudly over and over.
I wisht you'd hush about some hangin, Holme said.
It's a serious thing, the preacher said. I don't advocate it save under the strongest extremes.
Well if you'd hush about it ...
Tore up with guilt. The preacher nodded sad and negative. Plumb tore up with it.
We all seen him on that rock.
How come ye to do it, son?
Holme looked about him for some sign of sanity. Shit, he said.
I believe we done mentioned it to ye oncet about that barnyard talk.
The preacher had begun to gesture inanely with his cane. Boys I believe he's plumb eat up with the devil in him. But don't hang him.
Ort to thow him off the bluff the way he done Vernon, Billy said.
How far down is it? the preacher was interested.
Too far to walk back.
Billy don't know what all to tell his maw, Reverend. He just don't have no notion how to go about tellin her. Ain't that right Billy?
I don't know what none of us is goin to tell Greene come upon his hogs. They must of been two hunnerd head fell off in the river.
Don't flang him off the bluff, boys, the preacher said. I believe ye'd be better to hang him as that.
I believe we would too.
What do you say Billy? He's your brother.
I believe I'd rest easier. I believe Vernon would of wanted it thataway.
Lessen he's got some choice.
They looked at Holme.
Vernon never had none, Billy said.
He's right about that.
Well he probably don't care noway. You got any particulars, stranger? Strung up or flang off in the river?
Holme wiped his palms down the sides of his overall legs and looked about him with wide eyes.
Let's hang him if he don't care. I ain't never seen nobody hung.
We ain't got nary rope.
They stopped and looked from one to the other.
Rope?
Cain't hang him thout a rope.
They's one in the wagon. Cecil's got one in the wagon.
They Lord he'll be ten mile up the river fore we catch him.
He'll be stopped makin camp now late as it is. We hurry we can get up there and get him hung afore dark.
Let's just thow him off the bluff and be done with it.
Naw, that ain't no way to do. Besides Billy wants him hung.
I believe Vernon would of wanted it thataway, Billy said.
I believe old Greene'll be comforted some too.
Don't flang him off the bluff, boys. Tain't christian.
Let's go then.
Hump up there, stranger, and let's go get hung.
They started up the river.
The preacher fell in alongside Holme. What place of devilment you hail from, mister? he asked.
Holme looked at him wearily. I don't come from no place of devilment, he said. I come from Johnson County.
Never heard tell of it. You a christian?
Yes.
I cain't say as you've much took on the look of one.
It ain't marked you a whole lot to notice neither, Holme said.
Don't disperge the cloth son, the preacher said. Don't disperge the cloth.
Cloth's ass, Holme said.
Well now, said the preacher, what have we here. I believe it's a hard enough case to give Jehovah hisself the witherins.
Holme didn't answer.
Might be somethin of a comfort to have a preacher there at your final hour, the preacher went on. If your heart ain't just scabbed over with sin.
You don't look like much of a preacher to me, Holme said.
I'll bet I don't, the preacher said. I'd just bet I don't at that, to you.
Holme trudged along over the chopped ground. They were following the swath the hogs had made.
Where was it you was a-goin anyways? the preacher asked.
Just on to the next town.
Guess you never reckoned when ye set out this mornin that you was on your way to be hung. Did ye?
Holme ignored him.
A feller never knows what day'll be his last in this vale of tears. You been baptized?
Why don't you go on and walk somewheres else? Holme said.
I guess a feller mires up so deep in sin after a while he don't want to hear nothin about grace and salvation. Not even a feller about to be hung dead.
It ain't no use, Reverend. He's too mean to be saved.
Most probably you right, the reverend said. But I sure would love to do it if I could. It'd make a jimdandy sermon. I saved a blind feller once wanted to curse God for his affliction. You all want to hear that'n? It's a strong sermon. I like to save it for best.
Tell it, Reverend.
I won't tell it all. This blind feller hollered out one time and said: Looky here at me, blind and all. I guess you reckon I ort to love Jesus.
Well neighbor, I says, I believe ye ort. He give ye eyes to see and then he tuck em away. And maybe you never was much of a christian to start with and he figgered this'd bring ye round. They's been more than one feller brought to the love of Jesus over the paths of affliction. And what better way than blind? In a world darksome as this'n I believe a blind man ort to be better sighted than most. I believe it's got a good deal to recommend it. The grace of God don't rest easy on a man. It can blind him easy as not. It can bend him and make him crooked. And who did Jesus love, friends? The lame the halt and the blind, that's who. Them is the ones scarred with God's mercy. Stricken with his love. Ever legless fool and old blind mess like you is a flower in the garden of God. Amen. I told him that.
That's a right pretty sermon, Reverend.
I wisht Vernon could of heard it.
He knelt right there and was saved on the spot, the reverend said.
The path had come down from the high bluffs and was going along the river and already it was late afternoon. Holme looked about, stepped past the preacher and the drover next him and jumped.
It was a long way down and wh
en he hit he felt something tear in his leg. He came up with a mouthful of muddy water and spat and turned. They were aligned along the bluff watching him. The preacher had both hands aloft, gesturing. The drovers against the pale sky were small, erect, simian shapes. The seven of them watched him. He could hear the preacher's voice. The current was carrying him on and his leg was hurting but he kept watching them and after a while they were very small and then they turned and went on along the bluff with no order rank or valence to anything in the shapen world.
WHAT DISCORDANT vespers do the tinker's goods chime through the long twilight and over the brindled forest road, him stooped and hounded through the windy recrements of day like those old exiles who divorced of corporeality and enjoined ingress of heaven or hell wander forever the middle warrens spoorless increate and anathema. Hounded by grief, by guilt, or like this cheerless vendor clamored at heel through wood and fen by his own querulous and inconsolable wares in perennial tin malediction.
In the clearing he set down his cart and circled the remains of a fire out of which rose a slender stem of smoke like the pistil of a burnt flower, his thin nose constricted and eyes wary. Shapes of risen sleepers lay in the pressed and poisoned grass. He set out the child and gathered wood and built back the fire. Dark fell and bats came to hunt the glade, crossing above the figure sulking there on his gaunt shanks like little voiceless souls. Then they went away. A fox stopped barking. The tinker in his mothgnawn blanket nodded. The child slept.
The three men when they came might have risen from the ground. The tinker could not account for them. They gathered about the fire and looked down at him. One had a rifle and was smiling. Howdy, the tinker said.
HOLME CAME limping out of the woods and crossed a small field toward the light, insects rising out of the dark and breaking on his face like rain and his fingers trailing in the tops of the wet sedge. He could hear no sound save a faint moaning like the wind but there was no wind. When he entered the glade he could see men seated about the fire and he hobbled on, one hand raised, into the firelight. When he saw what figures warmed there he was already among them and it was too late. There were three of them and there was a child squatting in the dust and beyond them the tinker's cart with the hung pans catching the light like the baleful eyes of some outsized and mute and mindless jury assembled there hurriedly against his coming.
Howdy, said the bearded one. Ain't seen ye for a while.
He looked at them. They wore the same clothes, sat in the same attitudes, endowed with a dream's redundancy. Like revenants that reoccur in lands laid waste with fever: spectral, palpable as stone. He looked at the child. It had a healed burn all down one side of it and the skin was papery and wrinkled like an old man's. It was naked and half coated with dust so that it seemed lightly furred and when it turned to look up at him he saw one eyeless and angry red socket like a stokehole to a brain in flames. He looked away.