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

shirtfront, was still looking at it sickly when a voice from the truck said:
    Kin we hep ye?
    He didn’t look up for a second, caught in the pain of his wrecked shoulder raging now as if loosed by the voice from the truck cab, and not lost either to the irony of it. Then he raised his face to the curious sympathetic eyes watching him with a bland serenity that not even the bloody vision of himself could ruffle.
    They were on the far side, he looking at them across the incline of the open turtledeck, so that even as he said
We
he thought: They can’t see him. Yet he couldn’t get his mind that far ahead, and even afterwards could not trace the possibilities on their separate courses. He reconciled the whole thing by this: that there was no way to keep them from getting out of the truck anyway.So he said: We had a little accident, and thought Yes, they will get out anyway. These bastards will jest have to get out and see good.
    The truck doors spread simultaneously like rusty wings and fell to in a rattle of glass uncushioned by any upholstery. They were a man and his son, the elder heavy and red, with creased skin, the younger a tall and thinner duplication. They came shuffling around the rear of the car with an air of infinite and abiding patience. Sylder turned slowly, his eye raking over the scene, trying to imagine what it looked like: the feet protruding solemnly from under the car, the car itself with the hole torn in the quarterpanel and in the door, the dent where the base of the jack hit and the jack lying in the road …
    You hurt bad? the man asked.
    Naw, Sylder grunted. The man was looking past him.
    What happent?
    Car fell, Sylder said. No-account piece of a jack give way on me. He kicked at the handle.
    The man eyed the strewn jack. Shore did now, didn’t it, he said. Whew. Them things’r dangerous as a cocked gun. Always have maintained it. How about your buddy there? Nodding at the upturned feet.
    Yeah, Sylder said to himself. How about him now. Then to the man: He’s all right. Knocked the muffler down when she fell. Soon’s he gets her wired back we’ll be set. The man was moving around him; Sylder cut him off. Say, he said, tell you what you might do.
    What’s that?
    Get your dead ass out of here, Sylder thought. He said: Well, you might carry me down to Topton, see a doctor. Durned arm’s bleeding pretty bad.
    Shore, said the man, I guess we might better at that. Looks pretty bad. You come on.
    They started for the truck, Sylder behind them, herding them. He moved around to the cab, hung back till the older one got in, then stooped to one knee and spoke loudly to the corpse:
    Listen, these fellers going to carry me in to Topton to the doc’s. You come on when you get done … You all done? He rose and turned to the man sitting now in the truck, the motor already started. Listen, he said. He’s about done, I’ll jest go on in with him. You fellers go on, we’ll be all right now … and thinking
Will you go now? Will you go?
    Well, the man said, leaning across the boy (wide-eyed, still silent, getting into the truck), you sure you okay now?
    Sure, Sylder said, already waving to them. Much obliged.
    You’re more’n welcome, the man said. His face moved back, the boy nodded. The gears shifted with a grating sound and the motor died, hushed suddenly in the blue stillness of the broken day.
    Sylder stood there listening to the tortured cranking of the starter and thinking: Ah, God. I should’ve knowed. That raggedy-assed son of a bitch ain’t goin to …
    But it did. The motor coughed a few times, then clattered to a low roar. The gears raked again and the truck pulled away sifting up dustspurs from the rear wheels and was gone almost instantly beyond the curve of the road.
    They never seen the hole, Sylder said. They must never of even seen it. Then he thought: How in hell would they know how long it’d been there if they had?
    He turned and made for the far side of the car, listing badly,