COME UP, LESTER, SAID THE dumpkeeper.
Ballard was coming, he didn’t need asking. Howdy Reubel, he said.
They sat in the sofa and looked at the ground, the old man tapping his stick up and down, Ballard holding the rifle upright between his knees.
When we goin to shoot some more rats? said the old man.
Ballard spat. Any time you want, he said.
They about to carry us off out here.
Ballard cut his eyes toward the house where he’d seen a half naked girl cross in the gloom. A baby was crying.
I don’t reckon you’ve seen em have ye?
What’s that?
Hernie and that next to least’n.
Where they at?
I don’t know, said the old man. They cut out, I reckon. Been gone three days.
That fairheaded one?
Yeah. Her and Hernie. I reckon they’ve took off with some of these here jellybeans.
Well, said Ballard.
I don’t know what makes them girls so wild. Their grandmother was the biggest woman for churchgoin you ever seen. Where you goin, Lester?
I got to go.
Best not rush off in the heat of the day.
Yeah, said Ballard. I’m goin to walk out thisaway.
You see any rats, why, just shoot em.
If I see any.
You’ll see some.
A dog followed him out the quarry road. Ballard gave a little dry whistle and snapped his fingers and the dog sniffed at his cuff. They went on up the road.
Ballard descended by giant stone stairs to the dry floor of the quarry. The great rock walls with their cannelured faces and featherdrill holes composed about him an enormous amphitheatre. The ruins of an old truck lay rusting in the honeysuckle. He crossed the corrugated stone floor among chips and spalls of stone. The truck looked like it had been machine-gunned. At the far end of the quarry was a rubble tip and Ballard stopped to search for artifacts, tilting old stoves and water heaters, inspecting bicycle parts and corroded buckets. He salvaged a worn kitchen knife with a chewed handle. He called the dog, his voice relaying from rock to rock and back again.
When he came out to the road again a wind had come up. A door somewhere was banging, an eerie sound in the empty wood. Ballard walked up the road. He passed a rusted tin shed and beyond it a wooden tower. He looked up. High up on the tower a door creaked open and clapped shut. Ballard looked around. Sheets of roofing tin clattered and banged and a white dust was blowing off the barren yard by the quarry shed. Ballard squinted in the dust going up the road. By the time he got to the county road it had begun to spit rain. He called the dog once more and he waited and then he went on.
THE WEATHER TURNED overnight. With the fall the sky grew bluer than he’d ever known. Or could remember. He sat hourlong in the windy sedge with the sun on his back. As if he’d store the warmth of it against the coming winter. He watched a cornpicker go snarling through the fields and in the evening he and the doves went husbanding among the chewed and broken stalks and he gathered several sackfuls and carried them to the cabin before dark.
The hardwood trees on the mountain subsided into yellow and flame and to ultimate nakedness. An early winter fell, a cold wind sucked among the black and barren branches. Alone in the empty shell of a house the squatter watched through the moteblown glass a rimshard of bonecolored moon come cradling up over the black balsams on the ridge, ink trees a facile hand had sketched against the paler dark of winter heavens.
A man much for himself. Drinkers gone to Kirby’s would see him on the road by night, slouched and solitary, the rifle hanging in his hand as if it were a thing he could not get shut of.
He’d grown lean and bitter.
Some said mad.
A malign star kept him.
He stood in the crossroads listening to other men’s hounds on the mountain. A figure of wretched arrogance in the lights of the few cars passing. In their coiling dust he cursed or muttered or spat after them, the men tightly shouldered in the high old sedans with guns and jars of whiskey among them and lean tree-dogs curled in the turtledeck.
One cold morning on the Frog Mountain turn-around he found a lady sleeping under the trees in a white gown. He watched her for a while to see if she were dead. He threw a rock or two, one touched her leg. She stirred heavily, her hair all caught with leaves. He went closer. He could see her heavy breasts sprawled under the thin stuff of her nightdress and he could see the dark thatch of hair under her belly. He knelt and touched her. Her slack mouth twisted. Her eyes opened. They seemed to open downward by the underlids like a bird’s and her eyeballs were gorged with blood. She sat up suddenly, a sweet ferment of whiskey and rot coming off her. Her lip drew back in a cat’s snarl. What do you want, you son of a bitch? she said.
Ain’t you cold?
What the hell is it to you?
It ain’t a damn thing to me.
Ballard had risen and stood above her with the rifle.
Where’s your clothes at?
She rose up and staggered backwards and sat down hard in the leaves. Then she got up again. She stood there weaving and glaring at him with her puffed and heavylidded eyes. Son of a bitch, she said. Her eyes were casting about. Spying a rock, she lunged and scrabbled it up and stood him off with it.
Ballard’s eyes narrowed. You better put down that rock, he said.
You make me.
I said to put it down.
She drew the rock back menacingly. He took a step forward. She heaved the rock and hit him in the chest with it and then covered her face with her hands. He slapped her so hard it spun her back around facing him. She said: I knowed you’d do me thisaway.
Ballard touched his hand to his chest and glanced down quickly to check for blood but there was none. She had her face buried in her hands. He took hold of the strap of her gown and gave it a good yank. The thin material parted to the waist. She turned loose of her face and grabbed at the gown. Her nipples were hard and bluelooking with the cold. Quit, she said.
Ballard seized a fistful of the wispy rayon and snatched it. Her feet came from under her and she sat in the trampled frozen weeds. He folded the garment under his arm and stepped back. Then he turned and went on down the road. She sat stark naked on the ground and watched him go, calling various names after him, none his.
FATE’S ALL RIGHT. HE’S plainspoken but I like him. I’ve rode with him a lot of times. I remember one night up on the Frog Mountain at the turnaround there they was a car parked up there and Fate put the lights on em and walked on up there. The old boy in the car was all yessir and nosir. Had this girl with him. He ast the old boy for his license and the old boy scratched around for the longest time, couldn’t find his pocketbook nor nothin. Fate finally told him, said: Step out here. Said the old girl settin there was white as a sheet. Well, the old boy opened the door and out he steps. Fate looked at him and then he hollered at me, said: John, come here and see this.
I went on up there and the old boy is standin by the side of the car lookin down and the sheriff is lookin down, got the light on him. We’re all standin there lookin down at this old boy and he’s got his britches on inside out. Pockets hangin outside all around. Looked crazier’n hell. Sheriff just told him to go on. Ast him if he could drive like that. That’s the kind of feller he is.