Free Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy Page B

out on the creek a colony of small boys erupted from a limestone ledge like basking seals alarmed and pitched white and naked into the water. They watched him with wide eyes, heads bobbing. He crossed at the shallows above them with undiminished speed, enclosed in a huge fan of water, and plunged into a canebrake on the far side. Crakes, plovers, small birds clattered up out of the dusty bracken into the heat of the day and cane rats fled away before him with thin squeals. He crashed on blindly. When he emerged from the brake he was in a road, appearing suddenly in a final and violent collapse of stalks like someone fallen through a prop inadvertently onstage, looking about in terror of the open land that lay there and still batting at the empty caneless air before him for just a moment before turning and lurching back into the brake. He went on at a trot, one eye walled to the sun for a sextant and his heart pumping in his gorge. When he came out of the cane again he was in deep woods. He paused to get his breath and listen but he could hear nothing save his pounding blood. Then he was kneeling like something broken or penitent among the corrugate columns. A dove called softly and ceased. He was kneeling in wild iris and mayapple, his palms spread on his thighs. He raised his head and looked at the high sun and the light falling long and plumb through the forest. No sounds of chase or distant cries reached him in this green serenity. He rose to his feet and went on. Nightfall found him crouched in a thicket, waiting. With full dark he came forth, a solitary traveler going south. He walked all night. Not even a dog spoke him down that barren road.
       When he talked to the man with the barn roof he had eaten nothing but some early field turnips for two days. He had washed and shaved in a branch and tried to wash the shirt. The collar of it was frayed open and the white cheesecloth lining stood about his neck with a kind of genteel shabbiness like a dickie of ruined lace.
    You paint? the man said.
    Sure, he said. I paint all the time.
    The man looked him over. I got a barn roof needs paintin, he said. You do roofs?
    I done lots of roofs, he said.
    You contract or just do day wages?
    Holme wiped his lips with two fingers. Well, he said, if it ain’t but just the one roof I’d as soon do wages.
    You pretty fast on roofs?
    I make right good time on a roof.
    The man regarded him a moment more. All right, he said. I pay a dollar a day. You want to start tomorrow I’ll get the paint this evenin and have it ready for ye.
    That suits me, he said. What time you want me to start?
    We start here at six. Ceptin the nigger. He gets down early on account of the feedin.
    Holme nodded.
    All right, the man said.
    He started away.
    Where you stayin at? the man said.
    Holme stopped. Well, I’ve not found a place as yet. I just got here.
    You can stay in the barn if ye ain’t proud, the man said. You goin to be on it all day you might as well get under it at night.
    All right, Holme said. I thank ye.
    I don’t want no smokin in there.
    I ain’t never took it up, Holme said.
       From the roof ridge he could see a good distance over the rolling country. He adjusted his ladders and sat for a moment, watching the sun bleed across the east, watching a small goat go along the road. The rusted weathercock cried soft above him in the morning wind. He kneaded the bristles of his brush and adjusted his bucket. His shadow moiled cant and baneful over the lot below him and over the waking land a chorale of screaming cocks waned and ceased and began again. When the sun struck the eastern bank of the roof the water drew steaming up the tin and vanished almost instantly. He stirred the thick green paste and began.
    By midmorning the roof had reached such a temperature that the wet paint flashed on the tin like lacquer. The paint in the bucket healed over when he rested, and the base of the brush had taken on a skirt of dull green scum. He continued