The Orchard Keeper

John Wesley Rattner grows up without a father. His mother treasures his father’s memory, but she is sure that he is dead. They live in a log house near Red Branch. John moves his mattress down from his room to the front porch, where he sees “a tall gaunt hound” through the screen door (34). His mother encourages him to hunt and makes him promise to “find the man that took away [his] daddy” (35). John reluctantly promises to do so, even though he has no idea how to find whoever killed Kenneth.

John is a social outcast. He rarely interacts with people, though he meets a girl on the way to the place where he fishes. She tries to flirt with him but he is awkward and reluctant to engage. He removes a leech from her leg, trying not to look at her skin and underwear. Embarrassed, he returns home. His mother tells him how his father was too proud to accept “the govmint disability” payments owed to him after being shot in World War I (39); according to Kenneth, he had a platinum plate in his skull as a result of his service.

Marion drives fast through the mountain roads in the rain. He hears police sirens in the distance. With the road slick, he crashes into a storefront but narrowly evades the police. As he drives away, he lights a cigarette and sings to himself.

John tries to heal an injured sparrow hawk but it dies after three days. He hitches a lift into the town with Mr. Eller, who gives him a quarter to spend. John tries to collect the bounty offered to people who kill hawks in the region. Showing the office worker the dead hawk, he signs forms and receives a bounty of $1. With his money secure in his pocket, he watches a band playing “old hymns martial and distantly strident” while people march through the streets in the name of Christianity and Prohibition (42). The crowd dissipates and John wanders through the streets. He passes by “overalled men and blind men and amputees on roller carts or crutches” (43). In one shop, he spends his bounty on steel traps. He buys four and commits to buying eight more in the future. In the next weeks, he tracks nearby animals and carefully lays his traps to catch muskrats. He catches nothing. 

Arthur walks to the creek. As he breathes heavily, feeling exhausted, he remembers making similar, easier journeys as a boy. He enters the orchard and feels the “spectral and reverent” silence (47). In years past, Arthur has cut wreaths and laid them over the pit. This is the first time he has visited the corpse at night. Dangling his feet over the edge of the dark pit, he smokes a pipe. Hearing a “small, almost tentative slosh” from the pit (48), he wanders back to the road. He hears a car in the distance, coming toward him. He thinks about the lingering traces of birdshot in his weary knee and his old dog, Scout, sleeping beneath the porch. Walking again, he comes across the large metal tank at the top of the mountain. He stands beside the fence for a while and then walks home, where he takes an inventory of his possessions. He sharpens a knife on a soapstone and then carefully modifies his shotgun shells. Once finished, he places the “twelve circumcised shotgun shells” in his pocket (50).

Ef Hobie was part of a family that has been making whiskey since long before Prohibition. Ef’s father had been dead for many years when Ef died as the result of a car accident. Now, only two Hobies remain: Garland and his mother. When a bootlegger named Brushy is arrested, the 78-year-old Mrs. Garland is also sent to jail. She is released when she is diagnosed with cancer. As a result, Garland is left alone to carry the whiskey to the orchard so that it can be collected by Marion, who then takes it to Knoxville. At four o’ clock in the morning, Marion is in the orchard to collect a shipment of whiskey. He hears Arthur in the distance, shooting his modified shotgun shells into the metal tank. He watches Arthur shoot “six neat black holes in the polished skin of the tank, angled up across it in a staggered line” (52). Arthur continues to shoot, shaping a crude X across the metal surface. Concerned that the sound of the shotgun might alert the police, Marion moves quickly to collect the bootlegged whiskey.

Marion drives toward Knoxville; Arthur watches him drive away. While driving, Marion crashes the car near the creek where John is checking his traps. John hears the crash and rushes to help. As the car sinks into the water, John pulls Marion free. He smells a “sickly-sweet odor, faintly putrescent” and knows that it is whiskey (53). John and Marion sit on the bank of the creek; Marion asks John to fetch the keys from the car, and then they walk together across the fields. John makes a crutch for Marion. Dripping wet and shivering, they reach a house where an old man welcomes them in. As the man’s wife offers them coffee, Marion tells an elaborate lie about how he was wounded. Marion introduces John to the old couple, telling him that this is June Tipton and his wife. June drives Marion and John home in his pickup truck. June drops John and Marion at Marion’s house, where Marion’s partner is angry with him for repeatedly placing himself in danger. Noticing John, who is “holding the coat in his arms and still dripping water” (57), she assumes that the boy was helping Marion. She helps John and Marion out of their wet clothes. She dresses Marion’s wounds and gives John a change of clothes. At last, Marion tells John his name. They eat breakfast, and Marion leads John to the smokehouse where his dog, Lady, has just given birth to a litter of puppies. Marion gives John one of the four-week-old puppies, assuring him that it is the “best’n.”

Police officers named Legwater and Gifford investigate reports of a crashed Plymouth near Red Branch. They find the wrecked car and the bootlegged (but mostly broken) bottles of whiskey. They also find two sets of tracks moving away from the crash site. They determine that one set of tracks belongs to a bystander who intervened in the wreck. They visit a store where old men gather to talk endlessly about nothing in particular. John is at the store. As the men ask about the crashed car, he feels increasingly anxious. Gifford and Legwater depart and John leaves a short time later.

In the woods above the creek, Marion teaches John how to hunt. Lady chases ahead and suddenly barks. As Lady wrestles with a racoon, John slips and falls in the creek. Marion and his friend Bill search for the dog. John comes up from the water clutching Lady’s injured body. He saves the dog but does not recover the racoon. Marion encourages John to sit beside the fire and warm up and then takes him home later that night.