Child of God

by Cormac McCarthy

Now they’s good timber up here too. Real good timber. It’s been cut over fifteen twenty year ago and so maybe it ain’t big timber yet, but looky here. While you’re a laying down there in your bed at night this timber is up here growin. Yessir. And I mean that sincerely. They is real future in this property. As much future as you’ll find anywheres in this valley. Maybe more. Friends, they is no limit to the possibilities on a piece of property like this. I’d buy it myself if I had any more money.

After a while Kirby came back but he didn’t have any whiskey. He handed Ballard his knife back. I cain’t find it, he said. Cain’t find it? No. Well shit fire. I’ll hunt some more later on. I think I was drunk when I hid it. Where’d ye hide it at? I don’t know. I thought I could go straight to it but I must not of put it where I thought it was. Well goddamn.

Well, we was standin there, the way you will.

It was all swoll up and bleedin.

I never liked Lester Ballard from that day. I never liked him much before that. He never done nothin to me.

You better run, you son of a bitch.

He come in the store and told it like you’d tell it was rainin out.

The dumpkeeper had spawned nine daughters and named them out of an old medical dictionary gleaned from the rubbish he picked. These gangling progeny with black hair hanging from their armpits now sat idle and wide-eyed day after day

She sat stark naked on the ground and watched him go, calling various names after him, none his.

Ballard squatted on his heels in the yard opposite the visitor. They looked like constipated gargoyles.

THE HIGH SHERIFF OF SEVIER County came out through the courthouse doors and stood on the portico surveying the gray lawn below with the benches and the Sevier County pocketknife society that convened there to whittle and mutter and spit.

Salt and battery too, you son of a bitch.

All the trouble I ever was in, said Ballard, was caused by whiskey or women or both.

All the trouble I ever was in was caused by gettin caught,

Where was that woman from? What woman? That one you raped. You mean that old whore? All right. That old whore. I don’t know. How the hell would I know where she was from? Was she from Sevier County? I don’t know, damn it. The sheriff looked at him and put the straw back in his teeth and went away.

He worked for old man Whaley settin fenceposts at eight cents a post to buy it. Told me he quit midmornin right in the middle of the field the day he got enough money. I don’t remember what he give for it but I think it come to over seven hundred posts. I’ll say one thing. He could by god shoot it. Hit anything he could see. I seen him shoot a spider out of a web in the top of a big redoak one time and we was far from the tree as from here to the road yonder. They run him off out at the fair one time. Wouldn’t let him shoot no more. I remember back a number of years, talkin about fairs,

he could strictly make the feathers fly. We’d never seen the like of shootin.

I think we’d drunk a little whiskey too, I disremember. Anyways I got to studyin this here ape and I thought: Well hell. He ain’t big as me. They had him up there on a chain. I remember he was settin on a stool eatin a head of red cabbage. Directly I said: Shit.

and this feller that owned the ape, he told me, said: Now don’t hit him too hard out there cause if you do you’ll make him mad and you’ll be in some real trouble. I thought to myself: Well he’s tryin to save his ape a whippin is what he’s tryin to do. Tryin to protect his investment.

Had a muzzle on him. He kindly looked me over. Well, they called out our names and everthing, I forget what the old ape’s name was,

He didn’t look like he was goin to do nothin much so I reached out and busted him one. He just kindly looked at me. Well, I didn’t do nothin but square off and hit him again. Popped him right in the side of the head. When I done that his old head jerked back and his eyes went kindly funny and I said: Well, well, how sweet it is. I’d done spent the fifty dollars. I ducked around and went to hit him again and about that time he jumped right on top of my head and crammed his foot in my mouth and like to tore my jaw off. I couldn’t even holler for help. I thought they never would get that thing off of me.

Shape ye fire for the job always.

Reckon you could do it now from watchin? he said. Do what, said Ballard.

a group of depressed looking chickens huddled and clucked.

THEY WASN’T NONE OF EM any account that I ever heard of.

You ort to be proud, Lester, that you ain’t never married. It is a grief and a heartache and they ain’t no reward in it atall. You just raise enemies in ye own house to grow up and cuss ye.

Toward dawn he emerged from a hole in a rock on the far side of the mountain and peered about like a groundhog before commiting himself to the gray and rainy daylight.

No, those were sorry people all the way around, ever man jack a three hundred and sixty degree son of a bitch, which my daddy said meant they was a son of a bitch any way you looked at em.