HOLME WALKED across the stony earth with his eyes on his broken boots, crossing a black and fallow bottom newly turned, the wind coming very steady and cold and with it like pieces of scaled slate martins with shrill chittering cast up motionless to break and wheel low along the ground past him once again. When he reached the fence he stopped for a moment to look back at the road and then he went on, crossing into a field of rank weeds that heeled with harsh dip and clash under the wind as if fled through by something unseen.
He stood before the cabin uncertainly, his palms resting in the small of his back. He looked toward the road again. Then he mounted the steps to the porch and crossed and entered through the open door.
It was a very old cabin and the ceiling of the room he stood in was little higher than his head, the unhewn beams smoked a foggy and depthless black and trellised with cobwebbing of the same color. The floor was buckled and the walls seemed tottering and he could see nothing plane or plumb anywhere. There was a small window mortised crookedly into the logs of one wall, the sash hung with leather hinges. That and the long clayless chinks among the logs let in the waning light of this day and wind crossed the room with the steady cool pull of running water. There was a claymortared fireplace of flatless and illfitted fieldstone which bulged outward in the room with incipient collapse, a wagon spring for lintel, the hearth of poured mud hard and polished as stone. A serpentine poker. Two wooden bedsteads with tickings of husks and a halfbed with a mattress on which lay curled a dead cat leering with eyeless grimace, a caved and maggoty shape that gave off a faint dry putrescence above the reek of aged smoke. He took hold of the mattress and pulled it from the bed and dragged it to the door, fighting it through the narrow opening and outside and long bright red beetles coming constantly from beneath the cat to scatter in radial symmetry outward and drop audibly to the floor. He threw the mattress in the yard and went back in. In the kitchen a doorless woodstove propped in the front with two bricks against the floor’s fierce incline. A partitioned mealbin with sifter and a hard dry crust of meal adhering to the wood, the meal impregnated with worms whose shed husks littered the floor of the bin among micedroppings and dead beetles. A solid butternut safe in which languished some pieces of cheap white crockery, chipped and handleshorn coffeecups, plates serrated about their perimeters as though bitten in maniacal hunger, a tin percolator in which an inverted salmoncan sat for a lid. A nameless gray dust lay over everything. He returned to the front room and at the bed pressed one spread palm down in the center of the ticking and looked about him wearily.
Later he went out and gathered wood. He found beanpoles in a log crib behind the house and brought them in and he found some roughsawn chestnut boards. When he had got the fire going he pulled one of the beds up toward the hearth and sat down and watched the flames. Smoke seeped from under the wagon spring and stood in blue tiers and he could hear swifts in the flue fluttering like wind in a bottle. He sat on the bed with his hands dangling between his knees. The window light had crept from the floor onto the far wall and the room lay traversed with a bar of bronze and hovering dust. After a while he rose again and went out for more wood.
When he came back he built up the fire and pulled off the stinking boots and stretched out on the bed. There was a string of dried peppers hanging from a nail in the beam over the fireplace. They looked like leather. In the chimney’s throat frail curds of old soot quivered with the heat. A deermouse came down from somewhere in the logs, soundless as a feather falling, paused with one foot tucked to his white bib and regarded him with huge black eyes. He watched it. He blinked and it was gone. He slept.
He was cold all night and in the morning when he woke there was a frost. There was also a man watching him with one bright china eye from behind the paired bores of a shotgun.
Get up, he said.
Holme sat slowly.
Now get your boots. He motioned sideways with his head to where they lay in the floor.
He bent to reach for the boots and got one up, fumbling at it with his naked foot.
Hold it, the man said, waving the barrels in an arc before his face.
He stopped, holding the boot up, watching the man.
Just tote em with ye.
He got the other boot and sat there in the bed holding them in his lap.
Now let’s go, the man said, stepping back and motioning toward the door with the shotgun.
He rose and crossed the floor and stepped out. The long flat grass about the house was blanched with frost, the barren landscape beyond sprayed with those small and anonymous birds of winter. He had not thought of such cold weather and was surprised to see it come.
Let’s go, the man said.
He descended the rimed planks and stood barefooted in the yard. The man came down the steps waving the barrels at him. They crossed through the frozen grass to the fence and then across the iron clods and furrows of the plowed land and into the road.
Gee, the man said.
Holme looked at him.
The man waved the barrels to the right and he tucked the boots up under his arm and turned down the road, advancing upon his lean and dancing shadow with feet that winced in the cold sand. He could hear behind him the measured tread of the armed man, and after a while his breathing, but the man spoke no word. The sun was gaining and he could feel it a little on his back and it felt good.
When they had gone a mile or better along the road they came to a wagon road that went off to the right.
Here ye go, the man said behind him.
He turned up the road. It was washed out and weed-grown and with the mounting sun water had begun again over the bare stones in the gullies. They climbed on, past high oblique faults of red sandstone, coming at last into a field where the road leveled.
Just hop on down, friend, the man said. Tain’t far now.
They came past a barn and beyond that a frame house mounted at the corners on high cairns of rock. A row of chickens regarded them from the porch.
Ho Squire, the man called out, hallooing along his raised palm. Hold up right here, he said to Holme. He advanced to the porch and rapped on the floor. Ho there, he called.
Come up, said a woman’s voice from the house.
Go on, the man said.
Holme shifted the boots to the other arm and mounted onto the porch past the chickens and went in. He could smell breakfast cooking.
On back, the man said.
He crossed the room and went through the door at the far side. The woman was coming in carrying an empty pail. She said Howdy without looking at them and went into the kitchen. They followed her. There was a man sitting at the table eating eggs and biscuits from a large platter before him and as they entered he looked up at them. He was dressed in his undershirt, a verminous-looking bag of ashgray flannel from which the sleeves were gone at the elbow as if chewed off. He turned back to his plate before speaking.
Mornin John. Been huntin?
Huntin housebreakers, the man said.
Have eh?
Yep. He poked Holme forward with the shotgun.
This him? he said, not looking up, spooning eggs sideways onto his fork and into his mouth, his chin almost resting on the table.
I caught him in daddy’s old house a-layin in the bed.
How’d he get in.
How’d you get in, the man said.
I come thew the door, Holme said.
He come thew the door.
Did eh?
He was a-layin in the bed.
The seated squire nodded, wiping up grease from the platter with a large biscuit. I don’t drink coffee or I’d offer ye some, he said, leaning back and wiping his mouth with the palm of his hand. Now, what was your name young feller?
Culla Holme.
You a indian?
No sir.
What was your first name
Just Holme is my last name. Culla. Holme.
Well, the squire said, say you broke in John’s daddy’s old house?
I never broke in, I just come in. It wasn’t locked nor nothin. I didn’t know nobody lived there. They wasn’t nothin there to let on like it.
They’s furniture, the man with the shotgun said. You was a-layin up in the bed your own self.
They was a dead cat in the othern, Holme said.
I never seen it, he said. He turned to the squire. He thowed the beddin out in the yard for it to rain on. I wasn’t goin to tell that.
If that would of done it here back in August I’d of hired him to tote everthing I got outside, the squire said.
It had a old dead cat layin in it, Holme said.
All right, hush now, the squire said. Holme. That’s it ain’t it?
Yessir.
Where do you come from Holme?
I come from down in Johnson County.
What did they run you off for down thataway.
They never run me off.
Well what are you doin up here?
I was huntin work.
In John’s daddy’s old house?
No sir. I just wanted to lay over there.
Did you have a sign out up there for hirin hands John?
John smiled cynically, the gun cradled in the crook of his arm. Not to my recollection, he said.
No, the squire said. He leaned back in his chair and drummed his fingers four times on the table edge and looked up at Holme.
Well Holme, how do you plead?
Plead?
Guilty or not guilty?
I ain’t guilty.
You wasn’t in John’s daddy’s old house?
I was in there but I never broke in.
Well. Maybe we can make it just trespass then.
Holme looked at the man and the man looked back at him. The squire was tapping his fork idly against the edge of the empty plate and sucking his teeth.
I don’t figure I done nothin wrong, Holme said.
Well if you want to plead not guilty I’ll have to take you over to Harmsworth and bind ye over in custody until court day.
When is that?
The squire looked up at him. About three weeks, he said. If they don’t postpone ye. If you get postponed it’ll be another six weeks after that. And if you get …
I’ll take the guilty, Holme said.
The squire leaned forward and pushed away the plate. Right, he said. Guilty. He took up a piece of cornbread from a bowl of it in the center of the table and fell to buttering it. Ethel, he said. Hey, woman.
She came in with a small oak box and set it on the table.
Guilty of trespass, the squire said.
She was fumbling among keys that hung to her by a string. When she got the box open she took out some forms and a quill and inkstand. What’s his name? she said.
Give her your name, the squire said.
Culla Holme.
What?
Culla Holme.
How do you spell it? She was sitting at the end of the table with the quill poised above a document.
I don’t know, he said.
He don’t know how to spell it, she said.
The squire looked at her and then he looked at Holme. His mouth was full of cornbread. Put somethin down, he said. You can guess at it, cain’t ye?
No sir. I ain’t never …
Not you.
Yessir.
Say it once more slow, she said.
He said it.
She wrote something. What was it now, she said, turning to the squire.
You got his name?
Yes. What was it now?
Housebreak … No. What was it? Trespass? Trespass. He kicked a chair. Here John, set down. You makin the place look untidy.
John sat. There was no sound in the room save the scratch of the pen. Holme stood before them shifting from one foot to the other.
All right, she said.
You ain’t forgot the date have ye? Like you done on some of them last’ns.
No, she said.
All right.
She turned the paper around and made a little X at the bottom and held the quill toward Holme. He took it and bent above the paper and made an X beside the X and handed back the quill. She signed it and wafted it in the air for a moment and handed it to the squire. He waved it away with a languorous hand and looked at Holme.
I fine ye five dollars, he said.
I ain’t got no five dollars.
The squire blew his nose into a stained rag and put the rag back in his hip pocket. Ten days then, he said. You can work it out.
All right.
Set down. He turned to the woman. Put that up now and get him some breakfast. You had breakfast? No. Get him some breakfast. Cain’t work prisoners on a empty stomach. All right John, was that all it was you wanted?
John was sitting forward in his chair waving one hand about. Just a danged minute, he said.
What is it?
Well dang it, how many of them ten days does he work on my place?
The squire had paused with his hand outstretched, scratching at something in his armpit. Your place? he said.
My place.
Why would he be comin down to work on your place?
Well dang it I brought him in. He was breakin in my daddy’s house …
I cain’t be comin down to your place with him ever day just because he happened to pick your daddy’s old house to break into.
Well if I hadn’t of arrested him he’d not be here a-tall …
I appreciate you bringin him in and all, John, but they ain’t no reward out for him nor nothin. Is they now? I don’t make the law, I just carry it out.
Well I don’t see why you ort to benefit from what I done. Or from what he ain’t able to pay. I guess you goin to pay back the county his wages, or fine, or whatever …
The squire had stopped scratching. Well now John, he said, you know my books is open to anybody. Ain’t that right, woman.
That’s right, the woman said. Holme was watching her. She wasn’t listening to any of it.
It wouldn’t hurt you none to let me have him a few days out of them ten.
The squire shook his head wearily. John, he said, you and me has always been good neighbors. Ain’t we.
I reckon, John said.
Have I ever turned ye down for a favor?
I ain’t never ast ye none.
Well you always knowed all you had to do was ast. Ain’t that right?
That’s right, the woman said. The squire threw her a sharp look.
I don’t know, John said. Ain’t this a favor?
No.
No. It’s just what’s fair.
Don’t make no difference about fair or not fair, it’s against the law. You ain’t authorized to work no prisoners.
I ort to of just shot him and let it go.
No, you done right bringin him in like ye done. But you cain’t ast me to break the law and turn him back over to ye. Can ye now?
Shit. Scuse me mam.
I wouldn’t ast you to break the law. Would I now. John?
John had risen from the chair. He didn’t look back. He went out through the house with the shotgun hanging in one hand and his boots exploding over the bare boards through the rooms and they could hear the doorlatch and then the loud and final closing of the door and silence again for a moment and then a riotous squabble of chickens and then nothing.
Set down, the squire said. What are you doin with your boots off of such a cold mornin?
Holme took the chair the other man had vacated and sat and pulled on the boots laboriously. He stamped his numb feet on the floor but he could feel nothing. He looked up.
He told me to just tote em. I reckon he figured a feller barefoot be less likely to cut and run.
The squire shook his head sadly. I believe he’s slipped a cog somewheres, he said.
I never bothered nothin in his old house, Holme said.
Don’t make no difference, the squire said. You done been sentenced. I give ye pretty light for a stranger anyways.
Holme nodded.
We’ll get you started here directly you get your breakfast.
Thank ye, Holme said.
Don’t thank me. I’m just a public servant.
Yessir, he said. Grease was frying violently in a skillet behind him and the woman was putting biscuits to warm in the oven. His stomach felt like it was chewing.
The old lady’ll fix ye a bed here in the kitchen. You ain’t no desperate outlaw are ye? Ain’t murdered nobody?
No sir. I don’t reckon.
Don’t reckon eh? The squire smiled.
Holme wasn’t smiling. He was looking at the floor.
Get ye fattened up a little here on the old woman’s cookin you’ll be all right, the squire said. Might get some work out of ye then. You reckon?
Yessir. I ain’t scared to work.
The squire had tilted back in his chair, regarding him. I don’t believe you’re no bad feller Holme, he said. I don’t believe you’re no lucky feller neither. My daddy always claimed a man made his own luck. But that’s disputable, I reckon.
I believe my daddy would of disputed it. He always claimed he was the unluckiest man he knowed of.
That right? Where’s he at now? Home I reckon, where you …
He’s dead.
The squire had propped one foot on the chair before him and was rubbing his paunch abstractedly, watching nothing. His hand stopped and he looked at Holme and looked away again. Well, he said. I guess that’s about as unlucky as a feller would be likely to get.
Yessir.
You got ary family a-tall?
I ain’t got sign one of kin on this earth, Holme said.
Here, the woman said.
Holme looked vacantly at the steaming plate of eggs before him.
Holler when you get done eatin, the squire said, rising. I’ll be out in the back.
All right, Holme said. How long can I stay?
The squire stopped at the door. What? he said.
I said how long can I stay.
The squire shrugged his coat over his shoulders. It’s ten days at fifty cents a day. That’s all.
What about after that?
What about it.
I mean can I stay on longer?
What for?
Well, just to stay. To work.
At fifty cents a day?
Don’t care?
I’ll stay on just for board if you can use me.
It was very quiet in the kitchen. The squire was standing with one hand on the door. The woman had stopped her puttering with dishes and pots. They were watching him.
I don’t believe I can use ye, Holme, the squire said. Holler when ye get done.