Child of God

by Cormac McCarthy

He moves in the dry chaff among the dust and slats of sunlight with a constrained truculence. Saxon and Celtic bloods. A child of God much like yourself perhaps.

All the trouble I ever was in, said Ballard, was caused by whiskey or women or both. He’d often heard men say as much. All the trouble I ever was in was caused by gettin caught, said the black.

You are either going to have to find some other way to live or some other place in the world to do it in.

The tracks of a fox raised out of the snow intaglio like little mushrooms and berrystains where birds shat crimson mutes upon the snow like blood.

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.

You think people was meaner then than they are now? the deputy said. The old man was looking out at the flooded town. No, he said. I don’t. I think people are the same from the day God first made one.

Each leaf he passed he’d never pass again. They rode over his face like veils, already some yellow, their veins like slender bones where the sun shone through them. He had resolved himself to ride on for he could not turn back and the world that day was as lovely as any day that ever was and he was riding to his death.

At the foot of the steps he picked up what appeared to be a wig and saw that it was fashioned whole from a dried human scalp.