When he had stopped shivering he got his pan and filled it with snow and set it among the embers. While it was heating he found the axe and cut two poles with which to hang the blanket to dry.
When day came he was sitting in a nest of weeds he’d made on the hearth and he was sipping coffee from a large porcelain cup which he held in both hands. With the advent of this sad gray light he shook the last few drops out of the cup and climbed down from his perch and began to poke through the ashes with a stick. He spent the better part of the morning stirring through the ruins until he was black with woodash to the knees and his hands were black and his face streaked with black where he’d scratched or puzzled. He found not so much as a bone. It was as if she’d never been. Finally he gave it up. He dusted the snow from the remainder of his provisions and fixed himself two baloney sandwiches and squatted in a warm place among the ashes eating them, black fingerprints on the pale bread, eyes dark and huge and vacant.
WITH THE BLANKETLOAD OF provisions over his shoulder he looked like some crazy winter gnome clambering up through the snowfilled woods on the side of the mountain. He came on falling and sliding and cursing. It took him an hour to get to the cave. The second trip he carried the axe and the rifle and a lardpail filled with hot coals from the fire at the house.
The entrance to the cave was no more than a crawl-way and Ballard was slick with red mud down the front of him from going in and out. Inside there was a large room with a bore of light that climbed slantwise from the red clay floor to a hole in the roof like an incandescent treetrunk. Ballard blew up a flame from wisps of dry grass with his coals and assembled the lamp and lit it and kicked at the remains of an old fire in the center of the cave beneath the roof hole. He came dragging in slabs of hardwood from the upright shells of dead trees on the mountain and soon he had a good fire going in the cave. When he started back down the mountain for the mattress a steady plume of white smoke was rising from the hole in the ground behind him.
THE WEATHER DID NOT change. Ballard took to wandering over the mountain through the snow to his old homeplace where he’d watch the house, the house’s new tenant. He’d go in the night and lie up on the bank and watch him through the kitchen window. Or from the top of the wellhouse where he could see into the front room where Greer sat before Ballard’s very stove with his sockfeet up. Greer wore spectacles and read what looked like seed catalogs. Ballard laid the rifle foresight on his chest. He swung it upward to a spot just above the ear. His finger filled the cold curve of the trigger, Bang, he said.
BALLARD STAMPED THE snow from his shoes and leaned his rifle against the side of the house and tapped at the door. He glanced about. The sofa lay mantled in snow and over the snow lay a fine stippling of coalsoot and cat tracks. Behind the house stood the remains of several cars and from the rear glass of one of them a turkey watched him.
The door fell open and the dumpkeeper stood there in his shirtsleeves and suspenders. Come in, Lester, he said.
Ballard entered, his eyes wheeling about, his face stretched in a china smile. But there was no one to see. A young girl was sitting on a car seat holding a baby and when Ballard came in she got up and went into the other room.
Get over here and warm fore ye take your death, said the dumpkeeper, making for the stove.
Where’s everbody at? said Ballard.
Shoot, said the dumpkeeper, they’ve all left out of here.
The mizzes ain’t left is she?
Aw naw. She’s a visitin her sister and them. Ever one of the girls is left savin the least’n though. We still got two of the babies here.
How come em to all leave of a sudden like that?
I don’t know, said the dumpkeeper. Young people these days, you cain’t tell em nothin. You ort to be proud, Lester, that you ain’t never married. It is a grief and a heartache and they ain’t no reward in it atall. You just raise enemies in ye own house to grow up and cuss ye.
Ballard turned his backside to the stove. Well, he said. I never could see it.
That’s where you’re smart, said the dumpkeeper.
Ballard agreed mutely, shaking his head.
I heard you got burned out over at your place, the dumpkeeper said.
Plumb to the ground, said Ballard. You never seen such a fire.
What caused it?
I don’t know. It started in the attic. I believe it must of been sparks from the chimney.
Was you asleep?
Yeah. I just did get out of there.
What did Waldrop say?
I don’t know. I ain’t seen him. I ain’t lookin for him.
Be proud you wasn’t like old man Parton up here got burned down in his bed that time.
Ballard turned around and warmed his hands at the stove. Did they ever find any of him? he said.
WHEN HE GOT TO THE HEAD OF the hollow he rested, watching behind him the while. The tracks he followed had water standing in them and they went up the mountain but they did not come back down. He lost them later and found some different ones and he spent the afternoon in the woods stalking about like any hunter but when he returned to the cave just short of nightfall with his feet numb in the leaky shoes he had not found any of the whiskey and he had not seen Kirby.
He ran into Greer the next morning. It had begun to rain, a small cold winter rain that Ballard cursed. He lowered his head and tucked the rifle under his arm and stepped to one side to pass but the other would not have it so.
Howdy, he said.
Howdy, said Ballard.
You’re Ballard ain’t ye?
Ballard did not raise his head. He was watching the man’s shoes there in the wet leaves of the overgrown logging road. He said: No, I ain’t him, and went on.
LORD THEY CAUGHT ME, LESTER, said Kirby.
Caught ye?
I’m on three year probation.
Ballard stared around the little room with its linoleum floor and cheap furniture. Well kiss my ass, he said.
Ain’t it a bitch? I never thought about them bein niggers.
Niggers?
They sent niggers. That’s who I sold to. Sold to em three times. One of em set right there in that chair and drunk a pint. Drunk it and got up and walked out and got in the car. I don’t see how he done it. He might of drove for all I know. They caught everbody. Got old lady Bright up in Cocke County even and she’s been sellin whiskey non stop since fore I was born.
Ballard leaned and spat into a can sitting in the floor. Well fuck it, he said.
I sure would of never thought about them sendin niggers, said Kirby.
BALLARD STOOD AT THE door. There was no car in the driveway. A pale yellow trapezoid of light lay in the mud beneath the window. Within, the idiot child crawled in the floor and the girl was curled on the sofa reading a magazine. He raised his hand and tapped.
When the door opened he was standing there already wearing his sickish smile, his lips dry and tight over his teeth. Hidy, he said.
He ain’t here, said the girl. She stood hiploose in the doorframe and regarded him with frank indifference.
What time you expect him?
I don’t know. He’s took Mama to church. They won’t be back fore ten-thirty or eleven.
Well, said Ballard.
She said nothing.
Turned off cool, ain’t it?
It is standin here with the door open.
Well ain’t you goin to ast me in for a minute.
She thought about it before she swung the door back. You could see it in her eyes. But she let him in, more’s the fool.