The Marble Orchard. Alex Taylor
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see the point, I guess. All those folks were dead and gone long before I ever come to be.”
“There was a spot where even the old folks lost track though, wasn’t there?” said the smaller man.
“There was. Even Uncle Esker couldn’t recollect much past two hundred years. That’s nothing. A drop is all. And I’m not sure I’d want to go on past that even if I could.”
“I might,” said the other man. “I might like to know past what them old folks knew and could tell.”
“Well, I don’t see any kind of good it’d do you or them.”
The smaller man rested his chin against his chest and watched the fire. “Well, maybe not,” he said. “I still might like to know it anyway.”
Beam squatted in the dirt. His head felt warped from the liquor Alton had given him and now he felt a bit dizzy from sleep. He didn’t want to hear the talk of family names or bloodlines, and his guts churned a bit from the memory of all the families at the potluck gawking at him in mute surprise as if he were a guest unexpected and unwelcome.
He sat on his haunches and listened to the men talk of things distant and long forgotten. They seemed to speak with the pulse and rhythm of his own blood as it wandered lost and vagrant inside him and he recalled the faces of the Sheetmires at the potluck again, and heard the dogs hunting in the far wilds beyond the fire. He could see it: the long slick hounds flaming in the pines as they sought the red fox, the great billows of their lungs roaring, their hearts booming like the drum of the wind as it beat against the trees. He could see it all. The drop of paws in the dirt. The fox’s burnished eyes like fine tumble-shined stones flared with cold light. He could see it, and a rush of air surrounded him so that he felt he sat in the doorway of a tomb, the gust swifting in from the trees to chill him until he shivered and clutched at his knees.
“Get up closer to the fire here,” said the large man.
Beam scooted forward and the heat grazed his arms.
“Said you fell asleep?”
Beam nodded. “I guess I did.”
“How you plan on getting home?”
Beam picked at the dirt between his sneakers. He hadn’t considered this and now it dawned on him the way Alton had abandoned him in the cemetery. “I don’t know,” he said, finally. “Walk I guess.”
“That’d be quite a hike.”
Beam picked a chunk of bark from the ground and tossed it into the fire. “Maybe y’all could give me a ride.”
The larger man stuffed his hands into the pockets of his hunting jacket. “I guess we might could,” he said, turning to the smaller man. “Let’s run this boy home and by the time we get back maybe the dogs will have come in.”
The other man bobbed his head in agreement. “That sounds good,” he said. He stood up from his bucket, holding his rifle in the crook of his arm. He smiled at Beam. “Truck’s down this way,” he said, and then moved out through the cemetery.
The larger man stood up and hoisted his rifle over his shoulder. “Come on. It ain’t no trouble for us to give you a ride.”
Beam stood and dusted himself off and then hitched at his jeans. The large man looked him up and down.
“This old boney ground here don’t make much of a bed, does it?” he said.
Beam shook his head. “No, sir.”
“I aim to have them throw a mattress down before I get in the grave. Maybe even a nice quilt or blanket.”
Beam looked at the man. He expected to see a grin, but the man was stern and serious, his lips a pale seam in his black whiskers.
“I wouldn’t want to think about it,” Beam said.
The man snorted and pulled at the rifle strap on his shoulder. “Reckon nobody does,” he said.
TUESDAY
Someone called to Beam from the far bank of the river through the darkness. He heard the man’s voice as it dropped to him dismal and slow.
“I won’t run you for less than five dollars,” Beam yelled in answer.
Spasms of moonlight fell through the rearing trees. The moon itself was mirrored in the river, a doppelganger moon trembling on the black water, and everywhere hung a stillness seemingly permanent, a quiet that gave form to the night’s own immensity.
Beam walked to the bow of the ferry. Moths whirred in the hull lights and he swatted them away. On the landing opposite stood the man who’d called to him, the moon dusting him with a weak and diffuse light.
“You got five dollars?” Beam hollered.
The man picked up a small duffel and hoisted the strap over one shoulder. He turned and began walking away from the river as if in disgust, rising up the landing until his form receded under the locust boughs with their elongate seedpods hung like dead lanterns in those grim and thorny trees. Beam watched him go.
Since sundown, he’d only given passage to a sulking farmer in a rattling tractor, and the want for company had settled on him a lonesomeness that shivered up through his hands as he gripped the flatboat’s railing. He was used to the feeling. It seemed to follow him wherever he went, though he rarely strayed much beyond the ferry and the surrounding bottom country. On nights his daddy let him off duty, Beam might drive Old Dog into the town of Drakesboro to shoot nine ball at The Doe Eyed Lady, a cramped diner that sold fountain drinks and burgers on Wonderbread, the meat so rare and bloody it turned the buns the color of velvet cake. He shot quarter games when money was tight, dollar high when he’d managed to come by extra dough. He had loose friends who joked and ogled the waitresses with him. But even in those times, when the swell of the diner’s clanging noise shrank down and all the billiards slowed and stilled, Beam yet felt a deep loneliness stagger through him, its footsteps heavy and ominous. He felt it again as he watched the man trek up the landing away from the river.
Beam unhitched the keeper chains from the jetty cleats and piled them on the flatboat, then crossed the stern and stepped into the tug. He goosed the throttle and the engine gurgled up and a froth of water boiled from the prop as the ferry crept slowly into the current, and the pulleys screaked along their cables. Driftwood bobbled on the river and the soured reek of mud and locust blossoms rose sharp and hot above the charred stink of diesel. When he was close, Beam cut the engine and let the ferry coast into the landing, the aluminum hull grating on the concrete, and then he fastened the chains to the bollards.
“Five dollars is good money if all you got to do to earn it is run across this river here,” said the man with the duffel. He’d walked back down the landing and now stood just out of the hem of the ferry lights.
“You got a boat to row yourself across with?” Beam asked.
“No,” the man said.
“Then I guess you ain’t got room to complain about the fare.”
The stranger made no reply. He was a broad man and his scalp showed under a thin crew cut. He wore a pale blue collared shirt creased with filth and the corduroy trousers withered against his legs were also dirty and too small for him so that his bare ankles shone white and boney below the cuffs, and when he stepped aboard the ferry Beam saw the broken tennis shoes he wore were caked with cow manure. A red mustache seeped out of his nose and curled around his lips.
Beam looked him over once and then returned to the tug. As he worked the throttle, the man stuck his head into the cabin and said, “I ain’t got five dollars.”
Beam cut the engine. “What’d you say?”
“Said I ain’t got five dollars.” The man’s breath smelled of whisky. “I ain’t got no money at all to give you.”
Beam