The Orchard Keeper (1965) Read Online Free PDF Page A

himself hollow-eyed and sinister in the bar mirror and it occurred to him that he was ungodly tired. He skirted along the high booths lining the walls and got to the bar where he ordered and drank straight four shots of whiskey. He began to feel better. He was sitting with the fifth drink before him when sounds of breaking glass issued from the dance floor and he turned to see two men circling warily with clenched bottles. A huge figure hulked up from the end of the bar and shuffling out through the gathering spectators seized the combatants one in each hand by the belts and turkey-walked them out the door, them stepping high, unprotesting, their bottles dangling idly.
    Whooee! see them turkeys trot, a man down the bar called out. The bouncer came back down the floor wearily, not smiling, faded again into the shadows. Sylder tossed off the drink, watched the blur of faces for a few minutes, not even high on the liquor, just feeling waves of fatigue roll from him. He didn’t even think he was mad any more. A few minutes later he left, wondering vaguely as he stepped into the air again why he had come here and where he thought he was going. Louisiana or anywhere else, his job had gone off the market December fifth 1933.
    He walked out in the quiet darkness, across the gravel, limping just a little on the bad ground. He got to the car and opened the door.
    By the phosphorous glow, more like an emanation from the man’s face than from the domelight, Sylder froze, his hand batting at the air stirred by the outflung door. The face stared at him with an expression bland and meaningless and Sylder groped for some, not cause or explanation, but mere association with rational experience by which he could comprehend a man sitting in his car as if conjured there simultaneously with the flick of light by the very act of opening the door.
    The mouth stretched across the lower face in a slow cheesy rictus, a voice said: You goin t’wards Knoxville?
    —A strained octave above normal, the pitch of supplication.
    Sylder’s hand found the door and he expelled a long breath. What in the Goddamn hell you doin in my car, he croaked. Something loathsome about the seated figure kept him from reaching for it violently, as a man might not reach for bird-droppings on his shoulder.
    The mouth, still open, said: I seen your plates, Blount County—that’s where I’m from, Maryville. I figured you might be goin thataway. I need a ride bad … ’m a sick man. The tone cloying, eyes dropped to Sylder’s belt as if addressing his stomach. It was not presentiment that warned Sylder to get shed of his guest but a profound and unshakable knowledge of the presence of evil, of being for a certainty called upon to defend at least his property from the man already installed beneath his steering wheel.
    You’re sick all right, Sylder said. Scoot your ass out of there.
    Thanks, old buddy, the man said, sliding across the seat to the far door without apparent use of any locomotorappendages but like something on runners tilted downhill. There he sat.
    Sylder leaned his head wearily against the roof of the car. He knew the man had not misunderstood him.
    I knowed you wouldn’t turn down nobody from home, the voice said. You from Maryville? I live right near there, comin from Floridy …
    Sylder lowered himself into the car, the hackles on his neck rising. He looked at the man. I would have to put you out with my hands, he said silently, and he could not touch him. He slipped the key into the switch and started the motor. He felt a terrific need to be clean.
    Shore is a nice autymobile, the man was admiring.
    Swinging the little coupe through the rutted drive and out onto the paving he thought: He’ll be a talker, this bastard. He’ll have plenty to say.
    In immediate corroboration the man began. This sure will help me out, old buddy. You know it sure is hard to get a ride nights.
    Morning, Sylder muttered under the vehement shift to second.
    —specially not