“Tull taken and cut them two big whiteoaks. I heard tell how at high water in the old days they used to line up the ford by them trees.”
“I reckon he did that two years ago when he was logging down here. I reckon he never thought that anybody would ever use this ford again.”
“I reckon not. Yes, it must have been then. He cut a sight of timber outen here then. Payed off that mortgage with it, I hear tell.”
“Yes. Yes, I reckon so. I reckon Vernon could have done that.”
“That’s a fact. Most folks that logs in this here country, they need a durn good farm to support the sawmill. Or maybe a store. But I reckon Vernon could.”
“I reckon so. He’s a sight.”
“Ay. Vernon is. Yes, it must still be here. He never would have got that timber out of here if he hadn’t cleaned out that old road. I reckon we are still on it.” He looks about quietly, at the position of the trees, leaning this way and that, looking back along the floorless road shaped vaguely high in air by the position of the lopped and felled trees, as if the road too had been soaked free of earth and floated upward, to leave in its spectral tracing a monument to a still more profound desolation than this above which we now sit, talking quietly of old security and old trivial things. Jewel looks at him, then at me, then his face turns in in that quiet, constant, questing about the scene, the horse trembling quietly and steadily between his knees.
“He could go on ahead slow and sort of feel it out,” I say.
“Yes,” Cash says, not looking at me. His face is in profile as he looks forward where Jewel has moved on ahead.
“He can’t miss the river,” I say. “He couldn’t miss seeing it fifty yards ahead.”