Free Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy Page A

you reckon …
    I believe somebody has dug em up. Punch that feller there. Hey Bill.
    They spoke in hoarse whispers. The man leaned one ear toward them.
    Listen, what all’s happent? said the clerk.
    I don’t know. Somebody has dug up a bunch of graves at the church.
    Grave thiefs, another whispered.
    They Lord have mercy.
    Yonder comes the high sheriff now.
    Two men were coming across the square on horses, talking to each other. The crowd fanned before them and they dismounted and tied at the rail and went into a building there.
    There were now several hundred people clustered about the wagon and they began to talk in a rising babble of voices. The sun stood directly over them. It seemed hung there in glaring immobility, as if perhaps arrested with surprise to see above the earth again these odds of morkin once commended there. The men along the walk had begun to file past, some standing on toe tips, to view the remains in the wagon bed.
    I don’t believe I care to look, the clerk said.
    Holme found himself moving down the walk with the crowd. Above the odor of sweat and manure he could smell the musty decay of the boxes. When he came abreast of the wagon he could see a waxen gray face scowling eyelessly at the bright noon. In the next box lay what appeared to have been an old man. The box was lined with cheap quilted satin, the figure within wore a white shirt and a necktie but no coat or trousers. The flesh on those old legs had drawn and withered and gone a dusty brown. Someone should have cared more than to leave an old man halfnaked in his burial box beneath these eyes and such a sun. But that was not all. Across the desiccated chest lay a black arm, and when Holme stood on his toes he could see that the old man shared his resting place with a negro sexton whose head had been cut half off and who clasped him in an embrace of lazarous depravity.
    Holme shuffled past. The man in front of him turned. Ain’t that a sight, he said. Holme nodded.
    I reckon whoever done it will be wearin a black suit.
    Holme looked at the man who spoke.
    I hate knowin they is such people, don’t you?
    He nodded again. They were moving back up the street toward the store. The clerk was talking to a number of men on the porch. When he saw Holme he cut his eyes away quickly. He went on talking. One of the men turned and looked at Holme. Holme stood in the square idly. After a few minutes two more turned and looked at him. He began to shift about uneasily. A man came away from the group and started down the walk toward the wagon, pushing his way past the crowd there. Just before he entered the building where the sheriff had gone he turned again and looked in Holme’s direction. Holme started across the square, walking slowly. He was listening behind him very hard. When he reached the corner he looked back. Three men were crossing the square at a fast walk. He began to run. He ran down a narrow lane, looking for a turn. He could not hear them behind him. He passed a long wooden shed and at the end of it was an alleyway beyond which he could see a field and cattle. He took this turn and checked behind him once again. They came leisurely and with grim confidence. He went into the alley and along the rear of the shed. Two negroes were unloading sacks of feed from a wagon at a dock. They watched him pass. He came to a stile at the fence and vaulted through it and out into the field, quartering slightly to the left toward a line of trees. A group of cows raised their muzzles out of the grass and regarded him with bland placidity. He raced through a perpetual explosion of insects and his breath was already coming hard for him. When he reached the line of trees there was a fence again and he stumbled over it. They were coming across the field at what looked to be a trot. Behind them came more. Their voices floated in the droning emptiness. He ducked into the shelter of the woods, turned down a stone gully washed bare of leaves, running.
    When he came