The Crossing (The Border Trilogy, #2)

by Cormac McCarthy

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. Well. You probably right about that. This is my third trip. It’s the only time I was ever down here that I got what I come after. But it sure as hell wasnt what I wanted. The man nodded. He didnt seem to need to know what that was. I’ll tell you what,

said. It will be one cold day in hell when you catch me down here again. A frosty son of a bitch. I’ll tell you that flat out. Billy poured the coffee. They drank.

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.

This world will never be the same, the rider said. Did you know that? I know it. It aint now. FOUR DAYS LATER he set out north along the river with the remains of his brother trestled up in a travois he’d made from sapling poles dragging behind the horse. They were three days reaching the border. He rode past the first of the white obelisks marking the international boundary line west of Dog Springs and he crossed the ancient dry reservoir there.

came to the little cemetery and he hobbled the horse and left it to graze outside the gates while he worked at digging the grave. He was down to his waist in the dry dirt and caliche when the sheriff pulled up and got out and walked down through the gate. I suspicioned it was you, he said. Billy paused and leaned on the spade and squinted up at him. He’d taken off his rag of a shirt and he reached and picked it up off the ground and wiped the sweat from his forehead with it and stood waiting. That’s your brother lay in yonder I take it, the sheriff said.

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. Yessir. You come see me in Lordsburg tomorrow. All right.

He walked out. A cold wind was coming down off the mountains. It was shearing off the western slopes of the continent where the summer snow lay above the timberline and it was crossing through the high fir forests and among the poles of the aspens and it was sweeping over the desert plain below. It had ceased raining in the night and he walked out on the road and called for the dog. He called and called. Standing in that inexplicable darkness. Where there was no sound anywhere save only the wind. After a while he sat in the road. He took off his hat and placed it on the tarmac before him and he bowed his head and held his face in his hands and wept. He sat there for a long time and after a while the east did gray and after a while the right and godmade sun did rise, once again, for all and without distinction.