The Crossing (The Border Trilogy, #2)

by Cormac McCarthy

Bien dicho, the man said. He looked across the country. He said that he could read men’s thoughts. Billy didnt point out to him that he’d already asked him twice for his.

Then he said he harbored no grudge toward any man over a woman for they were only property afoot to be confiscated and that it was no more than a game and not to be taken seriously by real men. He said that he had no very high opinion of men who killed over whores. In any case, he said, the bitch was dead, the world rolled on.

They sat and drank coffee. The man’s name was Quijada and he was a Yaqui indian from western Sonora and he was the same gerente of the Nahuerichic division of the Babícora who’d told Boyd to cut their horses out of the remuda and take them. He’d seen the lone güero riding in the mountains and told the alguacil not to molest him. He told his guest that he knew who he was and why he’d come. Then he leaned back in his chair. He raised the cup to his lips and drank and watched the fire.

The soul of Mexico is very old, said Quijada. Whoever claims to know it is either a liar or a fool. Or both. Now that the yankees have again betrayed them the Mexicans are eager to reclaim their indian blood. But we do not want them. Most particularly the Yaqui. The Yaqui have long memories.

him, did they? He didnt want to be taken care of. He wanted to shoot people. What makes one a good enemy also makes one a good friend.

What does the corrido say? Quijada shook his head. The corrido tells all and it tells nothing. I heard the tale of the güerito years ago. Before your brother was even born. You dont think it tells about him? Yes, it tells about him. It tells what it wishes to tell. It tells what makes the story run. The corrido is the poor man’s history. It does not owe its allegiance to the truths of history but to the truths of men. It tells the tale of that solitary man who is all men. It believes that where two men meet one of two things can occur and nothing else. In the one case a lie is born and in the other death. That sounds like death is the truth. Yes. It sounds like death is the truth. He looked at Billy. Even if the güerito in the song is your brother he is no longer your brother. He cannot be reclaimed. I aim to take him back with me.

After a long time he stirred. He leaned forward. He turned the white porcelain bowl up and held it in the palm of his hand and regarded it. The world has no name, he said. The names of the cerros and the sierras and the deserts exist only on maps.

That they cannot find for us the way again. Your brother is in that place which the world has chosen for him. He is where he is supposed to be. And yet the place he has found is also of his own choosing. That is a piece of luck not to be despised.

Beyond the church walls the night harbored a millennial dread panoplied in feathers and the scales of royal fish and if it yet fed upon the children still who could say what worse wastes of war and torment and despair the old woman’s constancy might not have stayed, what direr histories yet against which could be counted at last nothing more than her small figure bent and mumbling, her crone’s hands clutching her beads of fruitseed. Unmoving, austere, implacable. Before just such a God.

The old gods of that country tracing his progress over the darkened ground. Perhaps logging his name into their ancient daybook of vanities.

He licked his thumb and wiped it on the knee of his trousers. He said that for men of the road the reality of things was always of consequence. He said that the strategist did not confuse his devices with the reality of the world for then what would become of him? El mentiroso debe primero saber la verdad, he said. De acuerdo?

He spoke of the identity of the little canvas biplane as having no meaning except in its history and he said that since this tattered artifact was known to have a sister in the same condition the question of identity had indeed been raised. He said that men assume the truth of a thing to reside in that thing without regard to the opinions of those beholding it while that which is fraudulent is held to be so no matter how closely it might duplicate the required appearance.

were in fact not the machine in which the son has died then its close resemblance to that machine is hardly a thing in its favor but is rather one more twist in the warp of the world for the deceiving of men. Where then is the truth of this? The reverence attached to the artifacts of history is a thing men feel. One could even say that what endows any thing with significance is solely the history in which it has participated. Yet wherein does that history lie?

said that he’d thought at one time that the client wished simply to have the aircraft as a memento. He whose son’s bones were themselves long scattered on the sierra. Now his thought was different. He said that as long as the airplane remained in the mountains then its history was of a piece. Suspended in time.

said that in any case this gift from the mountains had no real power to quiet an old man’s heart because once more its journey would be stayed and nothing would be changed. And the identity of the airplane would be brought into question which in the mountains was no question at all. It was forcing a decision. It was a difficult matter. And as is so often the case God had finally taken a hand and decided things himself.

canvas bankbag full of silver pesos. Two men met almost by chance neither of whom would ever trust the other. The gypsy thinned his lips in what would not quite pass for a smile. He said that where expectations are few disappointments are rare.

They quit the country and returned again in the spring. They had no money left. A seeress tried to warn them back. One of their own. He had weighed the woman’s words, but he knew what she did not. That if a dream can tell the future it can also thwart that future. For God will not permit that we shall know what is to come.

Nueve días. Nueve noches. Sin comida. Sin fuego. Sin nada.

Nine days. Nine nights. No food. No fire. No anything

the hypnotic flume below them a drowned man shot out of the cataract upriver like a pale enormous fish and circled once facedown in the froth of the eddy water beneath them as if he were looking for something on the river’s floor and then he was sucked away downriver to continue his journey.

The gypsy pitched the stub of his cigarette into the fire and crossed his boots before him and drew them to him in his hands and sat leaning forward studying the flames.

He looked at them and he said that the airplane they now freighted north along the road was then some other airplane.

said that he believed that fate had intervened in the matter for its own good reasons. He said that fate might enter into the affairs of men in order to contravene them or set them at naught but to say that fate could deny the true and uphold the false would seem to be a contradictory view of things. To speak of a will in the world that ran counter to one’s own was one thing. To speak of such a will that ran counter to the truth was quite another, for then all was rendered senseless.

From a certain perspective one might even hazard to say that the great trouble with the world was that that which survived was held in hard evidence as to past events. A false authority clung to what persisted, as if those artifacts of the past which had endured had done so by some act of their own will.

He said that in any case the past was little more than a dream and its force in the world greatly exaggerated. For the world was made new each day and it was only men’s clinging to its vanished husks that could make of that world one husk more.

La tercera historia, said the gypsy, es ésta. Él existe en la historia de las historias. Es que ultimadamente la verdad no puede quedar en ningún otro lugar sino en el habla.

The third story, said the gypsy, is this. He exists in the history of stories. Ultimately, truth cannot be found anywhere but in speech.

The past, he said, is always this argument between counterclaimants. Memories dim with age. There is no repository for our images. The loved ones who visit us in dreams are strangers. To even see aright is effort. We seek some witness but the world will not provide one. This

is the third history. It is the history that each man makes alone out of what is left to him. Bits of wreckage. Some bones. The words of the dead. How make a world of this? How live in that world once made?

Estoy regresándole a mi país, Billy said.

The faces became very familiar to him. By their antique clothing they were long dead and he pondered them where they sat posed on porchsteps, seated in chairs in a yard. All past and all future and all stillborn dreams cauterized in that brief encapture of light within the camera’s closet. He searched those faces. Looks of vague discontent.

He sensed in them a certain power and he guessed that the gorgios considered them bad luck for they would scarcely look at them but the truth was darker yet as truth is wont to be.

and of any other value there was none. Every representation was an idol. Every likeness a heresy. In their images they had thought to find some small immortality but oblivion cannot be appeased. This was what his father meant to tell him and this was why they were men of the road.

imprudent to suppose that the dead have no power to act in the world, for their power is great and their influence often most weighty with just those who suspect it least.

In those faces that shall now be forever nameless among their outworn chattels there is writ a message that can never be spoken because time would always slay the messenger before he could ever arrive.

He said that perhaps they would meet again upon some other road for the world was not so wide as men imagined.

But the gypsy only smiled and waved one hand. He said that the way of the road was the rule for all upon it. He said that on the road there were no special cases. Then he turned and strode on after the others.

You speak american? he said. Yessir. I do. I thought you looked about halfway sensible. What the hell are you doin out here? What’s wrong with that horse? Well sir, I guess I’m mindin my own business. I reckon I could even say the same about the horse. The man paid no attention. He aint dead is he? No. He aint. He got cut by roadagents. Cut by roadagents? Yessir. You mean they nutted him? No. I mean they stabbed him in the chest with a pigsticker. Whatever in the hell for? You tell me. I dont know. Well I dont either.

You look like you might of been down here a while, the man said. I dont know. What does that look like? Like you need to get back.

I’ll tell you what you better do. What’s that? Keep this here fire built up. Why is that. Mountain lions is why. Horsemeat’s their favorite kind. Billy nodded. I always heard that, he said. You know why you always heard it? Why I always heard it? Yeah. No. Why? Cause it’s right is why. You think most of what a man hears is right? That’s been my experience. It aint been mine.

My brother was shot and killed down here. I’d come down to take him home. He was shot and killed south of here. Town called San Lorenzo. You can get killed down here about as quick as anything else you might decide to do.

had a uncle was born in Missouri. His daddy fell off a wagon drunk in the mud one night goin through there and that’s how it come about that he was born in Missouri.

just got to jabberin. I been more fortunate than most. There aint but one life worth livin and I was born to it. That’s worth all the rest. My bud was better at it than me. He was a born natural. He was smarter than me too. Not just about horses. About everthing. Daddy knew it too. He knew it and he knew I knew it and that’s all there was to say about it.

This world will never be the same, the rider said. Did you know that? I know it. It aint now.

He slept that night in his own country and he had a dream wherein he saw God’s pilgrims laboring upon a darkened verge in the last of the twilight of that day and they seemed to be returning from some deep enterprise that was not of war nor were they yet in flight but rather seemed coming from some labor to which perhaps these and all other things stood subjugate.

There aint much to say, is there? No sir. Not much. Well. You caint just travel around the country buryin people. Let me go see the judge and see if I can get him to issue a death certificate. I aint even sure whose property that is you’re diggin in.

He got his blankets and spread them in the hay and he was sitting eating sardines out of a tin and watching the rain when a yellow dog rounded the side of the building and entered through the open door and stopped.