Cormac McCarthy - Cities of the Plain

Billy sat watching the night spool past. The roadside chaparral, the flat black scrim of the mountains cut into the starblown desert sky above them. Troy smoked. He reached for the whiskey and unscrewed the cap and sat holding the bottle.

I got discharged in San Diego. Took the first bus out. Me and another old boy got drunk on the bus and like to got throwed off. I got off in Tucson and went in a store and bought a new pair of Judson boots and a suit. I dont know what the hell I bought the suit for. I thought you was supposed to have one. I got on another bus and come on to El Paso and went up that evenin to Alamogordo and got my horses. I wandered all over this country. Worked in Colorado. Worked up in the panhandle. Got throwed in jail in this little old chickenshit town I wont even name it to you. State of Texas though. State of Texas. I hadnt done nothin. Just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I like to never got out of there. I'd got in a fight with a Mexican and like to killed him. I was in jail up there for nine months to the day. I wouldnt of wrote home for nothin. Time I got out and went to see about my horses they'd been sold for the feedbill. I didnt care about the one but I did the other cause I'd had him a long time. Nobody seemed to know nothin about it. I knew if I grabbed the old boy I'd be right back in the damn jail again. Asked all around. Finally somebody told me they'd sold my horse out of the state. They thought the buyer was from Alabama or some damn place. I'd had that horse since I was thirteen years old.

I lost a horse in Mexico I was awful partial to, Billy said. I'd had him since I was nine.

It's easy to do.

What, lose a horse?

Troy had tipped the bottle up and he drank and lowered it and screwed the cap back on and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and laid the bottle on the seat. No, he said. Get partial to one.

Half an hour later they pulled off the highway and rumbled over the pipes of a cattleguard and drove up the milelong dirt road to the ranch house. The porchlight was on and three heeler dogs came out and ran beside the truck barking. Elton came out and stood on the porch with his hands in his back pockets and his hat on.

They ate at a long table in the kitchen, passing bowls of hominy and okra and a great platter of fried steaks and biscuits.

This is awful good, mam, Billy said.

Elton's wife looked at him. You wouldnt mind not callin me mam would you?

No mam.

It makes me feel like a old woman.

Yes mam.

He cant help hisself, Troy said.

That's all right, the woman said.

You never let me off that easy.

Bein let off easy was never somethin you needed more of, the woman said.

I'll try not to say it, Billy said.

There was a seven year old girl at the table and she watched them with wide eyes. They ate. After a while she said: What's wrong with it?

What's wrong with what?

Sayin mam.

Elton looked up. There aint nothin wrong with it, honey. Your mama's just one of them modern kinds of women.

What's a modern kind of woman?

Eat your supper, the woman said. If your daddy had his way we wouldnt even have the wheel yet.

They sat in old canebottomed chairs on the porch and Elton set the three glass tumblers on the board floor between his feet and unscrewed the cap from the bottle and poured three measures and put the cap back and stood the bottle on the floor and passed the glasses round and leaned back in his rocker. Salud, he said.

He'd turned off the porchlight and they sat in the soft square of light from the window. He raised his glass to the light and looked through it like a chemist. You wont guess who's back at Bell's, he said.

Dont even say her name.

Well you did guess.

Who else would it be?

Elton leaned back in the chair and rocked. The dogs stood in the yard at the foot of the steps looking up at him.

What, said Troy. Did her old man finally run her off?

I dont know. She's supposed to be visitin. It's turned out to be kindly a long visit.

Yeah.

For whatever consolation there might be in that.

It aint no consolation.

Elton nodded. You're right, he said. It aint.

Billy sipped the whiskey and looked out at the shapes of the mountains. Stars were falling everywhere.

Rachel run smack into her in Alpine, said Elton. Little darlin just smiled and hidied like butter wouldnt melt in her mouth.

Troy sat leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, the glass in both hands before him. Elton rocked.

You remember we used to go down to Bloy's to try and pick up girls? That's where he met her at. Camp meetin. That'll make you ponder the ways of God. He asked her out and she told him she wouldnt go out with a man that drank. He looked her straight in the eye and told her he didnt drink. She like to fell over backwards. I guess it come as somethin of a shock to her to meet a even bigger liar than what she was. But he told the naked truth. Of course she called his hand on it. Said she knew for a fact he drank. Said everbody in Jeff Davis County knew he drank and drank plenty and was wild as a buck. He never batted a eye. Said he used to but he quit. She asked him when did he quit and he said I just now did. And she went out with him. And as far as I know he never took another drink. Till she quit him of course. By then he had a lot of catchin up to do. Tell me about the evils of liquor. Liquor aint nothin. But he was changed from that day.

Is she still as good lookin?

I dont know. I aint seen her. Rachel said she was. Satan hath power to assume a pleasing form. Them big blue eyes. Knew more ways to turn a man's head than the devil's grandmother. I dont know where they learn it at. Hell, she wasnt but seventeen.

They're born with it, Troy said. They dont have to learn it.

I hear you.

What they dont seem to learn is not to just run over the top of some poor son of a bitch for the pure enjoyment of it.

Billy sipped his whiskey.

Let me have your glass, Elton said.

He set it on the floor between his feet and poured the whiskey and recapped the bottle and reached and passed the glass across.

Thanks, said Billy.

Were you in the war? Elton said.

No. I was fourE

Elton nodded.

I tried to enlist three different times but they wouldnt take me.

I know you did. I tried to get overseas but I spent the whole war at Camp Pendleton. Johnny fought all over the Pacific theatre. He had whole companies shot out from under him. Never got a scratch. I think it bothered him.

Troy handed across his glass and Elton set it on the floor and poured it and passed it back. Then he poured his own. He sat back. What are you lookin at? he asked the dog. The dog looked away.

The thing that bothers me and then I'll shut up about it is that we had a hell of a row that mornin and I never had the chance to make it up. I told him to his face that he was a damn foolwhich he wasand that the worst thing he could do to the old boy was to let him have her. Which it was. I knew all about her by then. We like to come to blows over it. I never told you that. It was bad. I never saw him alive again. I should of just kept out of it. Anybody in the state he was in you cant talk to em noway. No use to try even.

Troy watched him. You told me, he said.

Yeah. I guess I did. I dont dream about him anymore. I used to all the time. I'd have these conversations with him.

I thought you was goin to get off the subject.

All right. It still seems like about the only subject there is, though. Dont it?

He rose heavily from the chair with bottle and glass in hand. Let's walk out to the barn. I'll show you the foal that Jones mare throwed you never did think much oPS Just bring your all's glasses. I got the bottle.

THEY RODE ALL MORNING through the open juniper country, keeping to the gravelly ridges. A storm was making up over the Sierra Viejas to the west and over the broad plain that ran south from the Guadalupes down around the Cuesta del Burro range and on to Presidio and the border. They crossed the upper reaches of the creek at noon and sat among the yellow leaves and watched leaves turn and drift in a pool while they ate the lunch that Rachel had packed for them.