The Orchard Keeper

Six years later, Arthur eats wild peaches and walks through the countryside near his cabin. He notes the presence of the “squat metal tank” at the top of the mountain (28)—installed by the government, much to his displeasure. He passes through the abandoned orchard where Marion hid Kenneth’s body, which Arthur discovered some years before. He remembers how he encountered a scared young couple who eventually revealed that they had seen something terrible, causing them to drop the buckets they were using to gather berries. Arthur investigated and found Kenneth’s fetid corpse floating in the “lucent rotting water” in the bottom of the pit (29).

Arthur rarely interacts with people. He thinks about living somewhere even more remote, as then he would not be considered “unneighborly” for his disinterest in social interaction. He lives with his dogs in a “musty, dank and cellar-like” house (31). At night, cats appear in his dreams and he does not sleep well, fearing they will steal his breath. At one time, he kept a shotgun beside his bed. After he woke in the night and fired at nothing, however, he now keeps the loaded gun in the corner of the room. When he was young, an African American woman who was formerly enslaved told him about the wampus cats that prowled the mountains at night and said that Arthur had “the vision.