Christian’s Reviews > The Orchard Keeper > Status Update

Deep hole between her neck-
cords, smokeblue. Laddered boneshapes under the paper skin like rows of welts descending into the bosom of her dress. Eyes lowered to her work, blink when she swallows like a toad's. Lids wrinkled like walnut hulls. Her grizzled hair gathered, tight, a helmet of zinc wire. Softly rocking, rocking.

And far in the distance the long purple welts of the Great Smokies.

If I was a younger man, he told himself, I would move to them mountains. I would find me a clearwater branch and build me a log house with a fireplace. And my bees would make black mountain honey. And I wouldn't care for no man.

He started down the steep incline. —Then I wouldn't be unneighborly neither, he added.

For miles on miles the high country rolled lightless and uninhabited, the road ferruling through dark forests of owl trees, bat caverns, witch covens.