Cormac McCarthy: Outer Dark

“[McCarthy] is a very fine writer — one of our best.”

— Peter Matthiessen

“Cormac McCarthy’s supple and stunning language, the breadth in his characters, his sense of the physicality of the landscape, an evocation of biblical themes to which he is equal, and a pure gift for conveyance distinguish him as a contemporary writer almost without equal.”

— Barry Lopez

“[McCarthy] puts most other American writers to shame. [His] work itself repays the tight focus of his attention with its finely wrought craftsmanship and its ferocious energy.”

— The New York Times Book Review

“No other novelist in America seems to have looked the work of Faulkner in the eye without blinking and lived to write in his spirit without sounding like a parody of the master.”

— Dallas Morning News

“McCarthy is a writer to be read, to be admired, and quite honestly — envied.”

— Ralph Ellison

THEY CRESTED OUT on the bluff in the late afternoon sun with their shadows long on the sawgrass and burnt sedge, moving single file and slowly high above the river and with something of its own implacability, pausing and grouping for a moment and going on again strung out in silhouette against the sun and then dropping under the crest of the hill into a fold of blue shadow with light touching them about the head in spurious sanctity until they had gone on for such a time as saw the sun down altogether and they moved in shadow altogether which suited them very well. When they reached the river it was full dark and they made camp and a small fire across which their shapes moved in a nameless black ballet. They cooked whatever it was they had with them in whatever crude vessels and turned in to sleep, sprawled on the packed mud full clothed with their mouths gaped to the stars. They were about with the first light, the bearded one rising and kicking out the other two and still with no word among them rekindling the fire and setting their battered pannikins about it, squatting on their haunches, eating again wordlessly with beltknives, until the bearded one rose and stood spraddlelegged before the fire and closed the other two in a foul white plume of smoke out of and through which they fought suddenly and unannounced and mute and as suddenly ceased, picking up their ragged duffel and moving west along the river once again .

SHE SHOOK HIM awake into the quiet darkness. Hush, she said. Quit hollerin.

He sat up. What? he said. What?

She shook him awake from dark to dark, delivered out of the clamorous rabble under a black sun and into a night more dolorous, sitting upright and cursing beneath his breath in the bed he shared with her and the nameless weight in her belly.

Awake from this dream:

There was a prophet standing in the square with arms upheld in exhortation to the beggared multitude gathered there. A delegation of human ruin who attended him with blind eyes upturned and puckered stumps and leprous sores. The sun hung on the cusp of eclipse and the prophet spoke to them. This hour the sun would darken and all these souls would be cured of their afflictions before it appeared again. And the dreamer himself was caught up among the supplicants and when they had been blessed and the sun begun to blacken he did push forward and hold up his hand and call out. Me, he cried. Can I be cured? The prophet looked down as if surprised to see him there amidst such pariahs. The sun paused. He said: Yes, I think perhaps you will be cured. Then the sun buckled and dark fell like a shout. The last wirethin rim was crept away. They waited. Nothing moved. They waited a long time and it grew chill. Above them hung the stars of another season. There began a restlessness and a muttering. The sun did not return. It grew cold and more black and silent and some began to cry out and some despaired but the sun did not return. Now the dreamer grew fearful. Voices were being raised against him. He was caught up in the crowd and the stink of their rags filled his nostrils. They grew seething and more mutinous and he tried to hide among them but they knew him even in that pit of hopeless dark and fell upon him with howls of outrage.

In the morning he heard the tinker’s shoddy carillon long through the woods and he rose and stumbled to the door to see what new evil this might be. There had been no one to the cabin for some three months, he himself coming harried and manic into the glade to wave away whoever by chance or obscure purpose should visit so remote a place, he himself slogging through the new spring mud four miles to the store and back once a week for such few things as they needed. Cornmeal and coaloil. And candy for her. When the tinker came rattling his cart in drunken charivari through the clearing he was there with wild arms like one fending back a curse. The tinker looked up, a small gnomic creature wreathed in a morass of grizzled hair, watching him with bland gray eyes.

Sickness here, he called. Got sickness.

The tinker took a few last short steps, backing into the wagon’s momentum like a balky mule, halted and lowered the shafts to the ground and passed one ragged blue coat sleeve across his brow. What kind? he said.

The man walked toward him, still waving one hand, his pegged brogans noiseless in the thatch of pineneedles and the only sound in the clearing the tinker’s pails penduluming with a tin clatter to gradual rest.

Old fevery chill of some kind, the man said. Best not to come round.

The tinker cocked his head. You sure it ain’t the pox.

No. Done had the doctor. Said not to allow nobody around.

What is it. One of the youngerns?

No. My sister. Ain’t nobody here ceptin me and her.

Well I hope her well anyways. You all need anything? Got everthing for the house from thread to skillets. Got some awful good knives. Got Dupont’s powder and most readyloads. Got coffee and tea for when the preacher comes. Got — the tinker lowered his voice and looked about him cunningly — got the best corn whiskey ye ever put in your thoat. One jar left, he cautioned with upraised finger.

I ain’t got no money, the man said.

Well, the tinker said, musing. Listen. I like to help a feller out when I can. You got ary thing about the place you been lookin to trade off? We might could work up a trade some way. Somethin new and pretty might just set your sister up to where she’d feel better. I got some right pretty bonnets …

Naw, the man said, toeing the dust. They ain’t nothin I need. I thank ye all the same.

Nothin for the lady?

Naw. She’s mendin tolerable thank ye.

The tinker looked past him at the ruined shack. He listened to the silence in which they stood. Looky here, he said.

What is it, the man said.

He motioned with crook’d forefinger. I’ll just show ye, he said. Here.

What is it?

The tinker reached down among his traps, groping in a greasy duck sack. He brought forth a small pamphlet and handed it slyly to the man.

The man stared at it, thumbed it open, riffled the crudely printed butcherpaper.

Can ye cipher?

Naw. Not good.

Don’t matter noway, the tinker said. It’s got pitchers. Here. He reached the book from the man and taking a confiding stance at his side flipped the book open to a sorry drawing of a grotesquely coital couple.

What about that? said the tinker.

The man pushed the book at him. Naw, he said. I don’t want nothin. You excuse me. I got to see to my sister.

Well, sure now, the tinker said. I just thought I’d let ye take a peek. Don’t hurt nothin do it?

Naw. I got to get on. Maybe next time you come thew I’ll need somethin … He was backing away, the tinker still standing with the little book in his hand and the cupidity in his face gone to a small anger.