Outer Dark Read Online Free PDF

until he came to what he took for the back door. He tapped and waited. No one came. He tapped again. After a while he went on to the other side of the house. There was a kitchen door and a window through which he could see an old negro woman bending over a table and paring potatoes. He tapped at the glass.
    She came to the door and opened it and looked at him.
    Is the squire in? he said.
    Just a minute, she said, pushing the door half to but not closing it. He could hear her shuffling away and then he could hear her calling. He waited. Presently he heard bootsteps crossing the floor and then the door opened again and a big man looked out at him with hard black eyes and said Yes.
    Howdy, he said. I was talkin to a man down to the store said you might need some help. Said you might have some work …
    No, the squire said.
    Well, he said. I thank ye. He turned and started away.
    You, the squire said.
    He stopped and looked back.
    You don’t mind no for a answer, do ye?
    I figured you would know one way or the other, he said.
    Or maybe you don’t need work all that bad.
    I ast for it. I ain’t scared to …
    Come here a minute.
    He retraced his steps and stood facing the squire again, the squire looking him over with those hard little eyes as he would anything for sale. You got a good arm, he said. Can you swing a axe?
    I’ve been knowed to, he said.
    The squire seemed to weigh something in his mind. Tell you what I’ll do with you, he said. You want to earn your supper they’s a tree blowed down out back here needs cut up to stovewood.
    All right.
    All right, eh? Wait here a minute. He went away in the house and then in a few minutes he was back and led the man outside, motioning him with one finger across the yard toward a workshed. They entered and he could see in the gloom a negro bent over a piece of machinery.
    John, the squire said.
    The negro rose wordlessly and approached them.
    Give this man a axe, he said. He turned to Holme. Can you sharp it?
    Yessir, he said.
    And turn the wheel for him to sharp it.
    The negro nodded. Right, said the squire. Ever man to grind his own axe. All right. It’s in the side over yander. You’ll see it. Just a little old pine. What’s your name?
    Holme.
    You ain’t got but one name?
    Culla Holme.
    What?
    Culla.
    All right, Holme. I like to know a man’s name when I hire him. I like to know that first. The rest I can figure for myself. John here will fix you up. Two-foot chunks and holler when you get done.
    He went out and Holme was left facing the negro. The negro had yet to speak. He went past with a great display of effort, one hand to his kidney, shuffling. He fumbled in a corner of the shed for some time and came forth with the axe from the clutter of tools in a broken barrel. The man watched him take it up with endless patience out of a shapeless bloom of staves skewed all awry as if this container had been uncoopered violently in some old explosion, take it up and hand it to him without comment and shuffle on to the stone which he now began to crank. Holme watched him. The wheel trundled woodenly. He laid the rusted bit against it and pressed out a sheaf of sparks which furled in a bright orbit there and raced and faded across the negro’s glistening face, a mute black skull immune to fire, the eyes closed, a dark wood carving provoked again and again out of the gloom until the steel was properly sharp.
    That’s good, he said.
    The negro opened his eyes, rose and nodded and returned to the bench where he had been working. He went out, hefting the weight of the axe in his hand and by the better light at the door of the shed examining the edge of it.
    The tree was not far from the house. It was broken off some six feet from the ground and the standing trunk with its hackle of ribboned wood looked like it had been chewed off by some mammoth browsing creature. He paced off the fallen section and straddling the trunk, working backwards, dressed off the limbs. Then he marked off