Outer Dark

by Cormac McCarthy

The more I study a thing the more I get it backards. Study long and ye study wrong. That’s what a old rifleshooter told me oncet beat me out of half a beef in a rifleshoot. I know things I ain’t never studied. I know things I ain’t never even thought of.

Holme swallowed and glanced at him again. In the up-slant of light his beard shone and his mouth was red, and his eyes were shadowed lunettes with nothing there at all.

You don’t have much to say, do ye? the man said. No. I guess you think maybe you and me should of traded. I don’t care, Holme said. I believe in takin care of my own, the man said. That’s the way I think. Ever man thinks his own way, Holme said.

Hard people makes hard times. I’ve seen the meanness of humans till I don’t know why God ain’t put out the sun and gone away.

And she waited again at the front door with it open, poised between the maw of the dead and loveless house and the outer dark like a frail thief.