Outer Dark

  Before dark he came upon the creek again, smaller and clear, choked with duckwort and watercress, the flat verdant ground stretching away everywhere beneath the sparse cover of trees and a coppery haze quivering like some rare dust in this twilight. The child had come awake again and begun to squall. He entered a stand of cottonwoods where the ground held moss of a fiery nitric green and which he prodded with his foot for a moment and then laid the child upon. It howled redgummed at the pending night. He stood back from it and watched it dumbly. It kicked away the towel and lay naked with legs pedaling. He knelt forward in the damp earth and covered it again and then rose to his feet and lumbered away through the brush without looking back.

  He did not return along the creek but took his bearings by what faint light still lay in the west and struck out across country. The air was dank and stormy. Night fell long and cool through the woods about him and a spectral quietude set in. As if something were about that crickets and nightbirds held in dread. He went on faster. With full dark he was confused in a swampy forest, floundering through sucking quagmires and half running. He did not come upon the river but upon the creek again. Or another creek. He followed it down, in full flight now, the trees beginning to close him in, malign and baleful shapes that reared like enormous androids provoked at the alien insubstantiality of this flesh colliding among them. Long and long after he should have reached the river he was careering through the woods with his hands outstretched before him against whatever the dark might hold. Until he began to stumble and a cold claw was raking upward through his chest. When he came upon the creek again he splashed into it thigh and crotch before he knew it was there. He stopped, his breath roaring, trying to listen. Very far away lightning quaked once, again, soundlessly. The current moved dimly about him. He spat. His saliva bloomed palely on the water and wheeled and slid inexplicably upstream, back the way he had come. He turned and watched it in disbelief. He plunged his arm into the water. It seemed motionless. He spat again, and again the spittle flared and trembled and listed perverse. He surged from the water and began to run in the return direction and at a demented pace through the brush and swamp growth, falling, rising, going on again.

  When he crashed into the glade among the cottonwoods he fell headlong and lay there with his cheek to the earth. And as he lay there a far crack of lightning went bluely down the sky and bequeathed him in an embryonic bird's first fissured vision of the world and transpiring instant and outrageous from dark to dark a final view of the grotto and the shapeless white plasm struggling upon the rich and incunabular moss like a lank swamp hare. He would have taken it for some boneless cognate of his heart's dread had the child not cried.

  It howled execration upon the dim camarine world of its nativity wail on wail while he lay there gibbering with palsied jawhasps, his hands putting back the night like some witless paraclete beleaguered with all limbo's clamor.

  IT WAS EARLY MORNING when the tinker appeared upon the bridge, coming from the woods with a sprightly hop like a stage dwarf after the main company has departed. He peered both up and down the road. Satisfied, he left the bridge and took the path along the river, going bowbacked among the rushes with his curious magelike agility. The sun was well up and the bracken along the shore steamed in the rising warmth. The tinker hummed a little air to himself as he went.

  When he came to the branch where it joined the river he cast about for a crossing, coming finally to a narrows a short distance upstream. When he came back into the river path on the far side the tracks he followed had ceased.

  Whoa now, he said. Which way we a-goin here?

  He recrossed the creek and picked up the man's trace in a furrow of crushed ferns that led into the woods. Ah, he said. We a-takin to the deep pineys.

  He lost the tracks more than once going up the branch but he paid that no mind. He was watching for tracks coming from the other way and he could find none. After he had gone a mile or so he ran out of any kind of track at all. He circled and returned, finding nothing. Finally he crossed the branch and went down the far side and very soon he came upon the tracks again. He followed them into a small clearing and here they ceased. He looked about him. It appeared to be the same place in which the tracks coming up the near side had vanished. As if their maker had met in this forest some dark other self in chemistry with whom he had been fused traceless from the earth. Than he heard the child cry. He turned, small grin among his wire whiskers. He found it at the far end of the clearing in a cup of moss, naked and crying no louder than a kitten.

  Well well, he said, kneeling, you a mouthy chap if ye are a poor'n. He poked a finger at it as one might a tomato or a melon. Little woodsy colt ain't ye? Looks like somebody meant for ye to stay in the woods.

  He folded the towel about it and picked it up and holding it against the bib of his overalls with one arm began his way down the creek again.

  When he reached the bridge and the road he had not been gone two hours. The child blinked mindlessly at the high sun. The tinker entered the woods on the other side of the road where he had hidden the cart and searched among his goods until he came up with some cheap gingham in which to wrap the child. It drooped into sleep against his thin chest, its face mauve and wrinkled as though beset already with some anguish or worry. He placed it between some sacks in the floor of the cart and regarded it.

  Well, he said, you alive if ye ain't kickin. He stooped and took up the tongues of the cart and set off through the woods, into the road, the wending trackless corridor down which echoed the clatter of his wagon and the endless tympanic collision of his wares.

  He did not stop when he reached the store. He turned left onto the state road, going north now, moving with the same tireless pace. The child had not cried and he had not looked at it. Late in the afternoon he stopped to eat and it did cry, a thin and labored squall as he bent above it, his mouth slow and ruminative, chewing, dry cornbread collecting in his beard and sifting down upon the child. Tell em about it, he said.

  When the sun had gone he went on in darkness, the child quiet again as if motion were specific against anything that ailed it. The moon came up and grew small and the road before him went white as salt. He jangled on through an iceblue light in his amulet of sound.

  Before midnight he entered a town. Past a mill where a wheel rumbled drunkenly under its race and water fell with a windy slash. Past stores and shops, dark clustered houses, heralded and attended by the outcry of dogs down the empty streets and on again into the patched farmland. Another mile and he came to a wagon drive and a house a short way from the road that sat likewise in darkness. He pulled up before the door and lowered the cart to the ground. Halloo there, he called.

  He waited. After a while light appeared very faint and yellow among the weather-riven slats and a woman's voice said: Who's out there?

  Me, said the tinker.

  Come in, she said, swinging open the door and standing there in a rough shift with a tallow candle in one hand.

  He stamped his boots ceremonially once each on the sill and entered. Howdy, he said.

  Late hours for a old man ain't it? she said.

  It's late hours for a young one. I need me a nurse woman.

  I've never questioned that.

  No ... here, don't shut the door. It's for this here youngern.

  What youngern.

  One I got in the cart. Bring that candle here.

  She followed him out suspiciously and peered past his shoulder down into the cart where the child lay sleeping.

  Looky here, he said.

  They Lord God.

  Here, let me fetch him out.

  You take this candle, she said. I'll fetch him out.

  It came awake with a thin yowl. She gathered it up and they went into the house and stretched it out on the crude board table, hovering above it nervously. Lord, she said, it ain't but just borned.

  I know it, he said.

  Where all did it come from?

  I found it in the woods, he said
. It'd been thowed away and I found it.

  This poor thing needs fed.

  I know it, he said. Is they ary nurse about here?

  She was biting the backs of her knuckles. Mrs Laird, she said. She's just got her a new chap.

  You reckon she'll take it?

  She ain't got nary choice. Here, he needs better wrapped. Mind him a minute while I get some things and we'll go.

  Where does she live at?

  Just up the road. You mind him a minute.

  Setting forth in the faint moonlight, the tinker now at her elbow and her carrying the child wrapped completely from sight, they appeared furtive, clandestine, stepping softly and soft their voices over the sandy road in shadows so foreshortened they seemed sprung and frenzied with a violence in which their creators moved with dreamy disconcern.

  IT DID NOT rain again. He looked for it to, dark and starless as it was, coming down a road he could not see and through a wood kept by nothing he could hear. When he entered the glade a small hot moon came dishing up from the overcast to see him home. There was no light in the cabin. He stood for a moment with the rack of his chestbones rising and falling.

  She was sleeping. When he emerged from the cabin again he was carrying the axe. He crossed the glade to the spring path and entered the woods. In a grove of blackhaws he stopped and looked about him and then sank the axe into the earth. He passed his shirtcuff across his forehead and took up the axe again and began to hack at the ground with crazed industry.

  She had tried once to reach for the lamp but she could not move. She called his name softly in the quiet but there was no answer. The door was open and after a while he was standing in it, he and the axe in an assassin's silhouette against the slack gloss of the moon. He crossed to the table and took up the lamp and lit it, shaping the room from darkness. He turned to see her watching him, pale and disheveled and with such doll's eyes of painted china.

  Culla? she said.

  You best hope it's me.

  Where you been?

  Out.

  Where's it at?

  There was a long silence. He had not set the lamp down. He was holding the stained chimney in one hand and she could hear him breathing in the quiet. The flame trembling unhoused between them held her eyes.

  It died, he said.

  When she woke in the morning he was not there either. There was a small fire on the hearth and she watched that. He came in after a while bearing wood but he did not speak. He got the dipper from the waterbucket and brought it to her, helping her up with one hand, her neck craned, drinking, on her lips a white paste that clove to the dipper rim.

  I want some more, she said.

  He brought it. When she had finished she lay back and watched the fire again.

  How you feel this mornin? he said.

  I don't know. I don't feel much of nothin.

  You'll be ailin some for a spell I would reckon.

  I feel fevery.

  You hungry?

  I ain't real hungry.

  You want eggs? I believe they's a egg.

  If we got ary, she said.

  There was one egg. He spooned lard into a pan and fried it over the fire and brought it to her along with a chunk of cornbread. I got to go to the store today, he said.

  I got to go somewheres myself but I ain't able.

  She was eating very slowly, her eyes on the plate.

  Yes, he said. All right. I'll get somethin.

  And she was bleeding again. He wet a fresh cloth and gave it to her.

  You want anything?he said.

  No. I don't want nothin.

  He took down a knotted handkerchief from the sideboard and untied it, laying the cloth out and unfolding a small sheaf of paper dollars. He counted them and took one, together with what loose coins there were, and put these in the pocket of his overalls. Then he retied the kerchief with the remaining money and put it back in the cupboard.

  I'm gone, he said.

  All right.

  He stopped at the door and looked at her. She turned her head away slowly.

  It was midmorning when he set out and it took him just a little over an hour to reach the store at the junction, the sun warm on his back and the fine pumice of the road already paling and going to dust again. A horsefly followed behind his head as if towed there on a string.

  When he got to the store it was closed. He rattled the latch and peered inside. From an upper window a voice called down: We still christians here. You'll have to come back a weekday. He turned away. By noon he was at the cabin again, sitting on a stump in the glade and carving at it intently with his knife. When he went in she was asleep in her foul bed. He sat before the fireplace watching ashes rise and wheel feebly in the cold light that fell there. She stirred heavily in her sleep, moaning. He watched her. When he could stay no longer he went out again and walked on the road. He could not decide what to do. He sat on a stone by the side of the road and with a dead stick drew outlandish symbols in the dust.

  They made their meal that night on the last stale pieces of cornbread, a fine mold like powdered jade beginning on them where they lay dried and curling in the cupboard. She did not even ask him about the store. After she was asleep he again appropriated the quilt from off the bed and spread it upon the floor. He removed his shoes and lay down and folded the quilt over himself and stared at what shadows the joists and beams made upon the roof's underside. The lamp guttered and ceased. His eyes were closed. Before he slept he saw again the birth-stunned face, the swamp trees in a dark bower above the pale and naked flesh and the black blood seeping from the navel.

  He woke early, the hard boarding laminated against his spine. A smoky light crept on the one pane of glass. He rose and refolded the quilt, replaced it at the foot of the bed and got his shoes and put them on, watching her, finally leaning above her wasted face to hear her breath. He took a drink of water from the bucket and opened the door on this new day, leaning in the doorframe, drinking. He shook the last of the water from the dipper and stretched, one hand to the small of his back.

  Before it was full daylight he had gone to the spring again, the empty pail jiggling against his thigh, against pathside briers with a tin squeal, kneeling finally and watching the water suck cold and sandy over the bucket rim, filling and setting it on the bank and laving water on his wrists and forearms, dipping two palmfuls against his forehead, leaning his mouth into the meniscal calm of it, wide and tilting in the water the eyes that watched his eyes.

  He set the bucket on the table and took up the weightless dipper and floated it on top. She was watching him.

  I'd admire to have me a drink of that there fresh springwater, she said.

  He brought it to her, watched her drink.

  You want more? he said.

  She held up the empty dipper. If they is some, she said.

  They's a bucketful if you want it.

  She sat with her hands clasped between her breast and her belly while he brought the dipper to her again. Light from the window lay in a niggardly stain across the bed.

  If that old winder was warshed, she said, I bet you could see out ever which way.

  Funny to me you never noticed it when you was up and able.

  I could get out my own self then, she said. Stead of havin to lay up and look out a winder.

  He took the empty dipper from her and crossed the room.

  I ain't warshin no winders, he said.

  Well.

  Well what?

  Nothin. I just said well.

  You better just.

  I thought I heard that old tinker back this mornin, she said. Messin around.

  He had been looking through the cupboard and now he stopped and closed the doors and looked at her. She was staring vacantly out toward the pines. That old tinker, he said, is long gone.

  She looked at him. I just wondered, she said. I heard some kind of commotion sounded like him.

  Well it wasn't.

  She watched him. Where you goin? she
said.

  Store.

  You reckon they got ary bit more of that black candy like they had?

  I'll see, he said.

  All right.

  Don't take in no strangers while I'm gone.

  She sighed deeply. They ain't a soul in this world but what is a stranger to me, she said.

  She was keeping tally of the days. At the end of a week she climbed from the bed and walked to the foot of it and back. The next day she couldn't get up at all. But within the week she was walking about the cabin painfully each time he left.

  One evening when he came in she was sitting in the chair, demurely and half-smiling, her figure thin and wasted under the ragged shift she wore as if great age had come upon her and her eyes huge and fever-black. He entered slowly and shut the door. Well, he said. You feelin that peart?

  I'm better from what I was.

  You've fell off considerable, ain't ye?

  Lord, she said, I've gained back from what I was. I was puny as ... I wasn't nothin but a shadder.

  He eased himself down on the bed. When he looked at her again and the light falling slantwise across her he could see like dark tears two milkstains in the thin cotton cloth. He looked away. His hands lay palmupward on his thighs and he sat watching them as if they were somehow unaccountable.

  Within the next few days she was walking about in the dooryard, taking the sun, as she said. He watched her poke along in her mincing shuffle, as if she carried an egg between her knees. Mend, woman, he said. He was sitting crosslegged in the shade of the house with the shotgun dismantled and hammering at the worn searnotch with a piece of wagon spring.

  You fixin to tear up daddy's gun, she said.

  It ain't daddy's gun, he said, not looking up.

  She watched him. You ain't got ary shells, she said.

  He held the lockplate between his knees and cocked the hammer. Now damn ye, slip if ye can, he said.

  What? she said.

  I was talkin to the gun.

  Culla, she said.

  What.

  Nothin.

  But two days later she stopped him as he came through the door with the chipped and yellowed pail in which he bore water, her standing almost in the doorway and arresting him with one arm. He paused to lean against the jamb and looked down at her. Well, he said, what?