Cormac McCarthy - Cities of the Plain

He woke and lay in the dark and the cold and he thought of her and he thought of his brother dead in Mexico. In everything that he'd ever thought about the world and about his life in it he'd been wrong.

Toward the small hours of the morning the traffic on the freeway slacked and the rain stopped. He sat up shivering and hitched the blanket about his shoulders. He'd put some crackers from a roadside diner in the pocket of his coat and he sat eating them and watching the gray light flush out the raw wet fields beyond the roadway. He thought he heard the distant cries of cranes where they would be headed north to their summering grounds in Canada and he thought of them asleep in a flooded field in Mexico in a dawn long ago, standing singlefooted in the wetlands with their bills tucked, gray figures aligned in rows like hooded monks at prayer. When he looked across the overpass to the far side of the turnpike he saw another such as he sitting also solitary and alone.

The man raised his hand in greeting. He raised his back.

Buenos d'as, the man called.

Buenos d'as.

QuZ tiene de comer?

Unas galletas, nada m++s.

The man nodded. He looked away.

Podemos compartirlas.

Bueno, called the man. Gracias.

M' voy.

But the man stood. I will come to you, he called.

He descended the concrete batterwall and crossed the roadway and climbed over the guardrail and crossed the median between the round concrete pillars and crossed the northbound lanes and climbed up to where Billy was sitting and squatted and looked at him.

It aint much, Billy said. He pulled the remaining few packages of crackers from his pocket and held them out.

Muy amable, the man said.

Est++ bien. I thought at first you might be somebody else.

The man sat and stretched out his legs before him and crossed his feet. He tore open a package of the crackers with his eyetooth and took one out and held it up and looked at it and then bit it in two and sat chewing. He wore a wispy moustache, his skin was smooth and brown. He was of no determinable age.

Who did you think I might be? he said.

Just somebody. Somebody I sort of been expectin. I thought I caught a glimpse of him once or twice these past few days. I aint never got all that good a look at him.

What does he look like?

I dont know. I guess more and more he looks like a friend.

You thought I was death.

I considered the possibility.

The man nodded. He chewed. Billy watched him.

You aint are you?

No.

They sat eating the dry crackers.

Ad-nde vas? Billy said.

Al sur. Y toe?

Al none.

The man nodded. He smiled. QuZ clase de hombre comparta sus galletas con la muerte?

Billy shrugged. What kind of death would eat them?

What kind indeed, said the man.

I wasnt tryin to figure anything out. De todos modos el compartir es la ley del camino, verdad?

De veras.

At least that's the way I was raised.

The man nodded. In Mexico on certain days of the calendar it is the custom to set a place at the table for death. But perhaps you know this.

Yes.

He has a big appetite.

Yes he does.

Perhaps a few crackers would be taken as an insult.

Perhaps he's got to take what he can get. Like the rest of us. The man nodded. Yes, he said. That could be.

Traffic had picked up on the turnpike. The sun was up. The man opened the second package of crackers. He said that perhaps death took a larger view. That perhaps in his egalitarian way death weighed the gifts of men by their own lights and that in death's eyes the offerings of the poor were the equal of any.

Like God.

Yes. Like God.

Nadie puede sobornar a la muerte, Billy said.

De veras. Nadie.

Nor God.

Nor God.

Billy watched the light bring up the shapes of the water standing in the fields beyond the roadway. Where do we go when we die? he said.

I dont know, the man said. Where are we now?

The sun rose over the plain behind them. The man handed him back the last remaining packet of crackers.

You can keep em, Billy said.

No quieres m++s?

My mouth's too dry.

The man nodded, he pocketed the crackers. Para el camino, he said. I was born in Mexico. I have not been back for many years.

You goin back now?

No.

Billy nodded. The man studied the coming day. In the middle of my life, he said, I drew the path of it upon a map and I studied it a long time. I tried to see the pattern that it made upon the earth because I thought that if I could see that pattern and identify the form of it then I would know better how to continue. I would know what my path must be. I would see into the future of my life.

How did that work out?

Different from what I expected.

How did you know it was the middle of your life?

I had a dream. That was why I drew the map.

What did it look like?

The map?

Yes.

It was interesting. It looked like different things. There were different perspectives one could take. I was surprised.

Could you remember all the places you'd been?

Oh yes. Couldnt you?

I dont know. There's been a bunch of em. Yeah. I suppose. If I put my mind to it. If I was to set down and study about it.

Yes. Of course. That was my method. One thing leads to another. I doubt that our journey can be lost to us. For good or bad.

What sorts of things did it look like? The map.

At first I saw a face but then I turned it and looked at it other ways and when I turned it back the face was gone. Nor could I find it again.

What happened to it?

I dont know.

Did you see it or did you just think you did?

The man smiled. QuZ pregunta, he said. What would be the difference?

I dont know. I think there has to be a difference.

So do I. But what is it?

Well. It wouldnt be like a real face.

No. It was a suggestion. Un bosquejo. Un borrador, quiz++s. Yes.

In any case it is difficult to stand outside of one's desires and see things of their own volition.

I think you just see whatever's in front of you.

Yes. I dont think that.

What was the dream?

The dream, the man said.

You dont have to tell me.

How do you know?

You dont have to tell me anything.

Perhaps. Nevertheless there was this man who was traveling through the mountains and he came to a place in the mountains where certain pilgrims used to gather in the long ago.

Is this the dream?

Yes.

cndale pues.

Gracias. Where pilgrims used to gather in the long ago. En tiempos antiguos.

You've told this dream before.

Yes.

cndale.

En tiempos antiguos. It was a high pass in the mountains that he had come to and here there was a table of rock and the table of rock was very old and it had fallen in the early days of the earth from a high pe-asco in the mountains and lay in the floor of the pass with its flat and cloven side to the weather and the sun. And on the face of that rock there were yet to be seen the stains of blood from those who'd been slaughtered upon it to appease the gods. The iron in the blood of these vanished beings had blackened the rock and there it could be seen. Together with the hatching of axemarks or the marks of swords upon the stone to show where the work was done.

Is there such a place?

I dont know. Yes. There are such places. But this was not one of them. This was a dream place.

cndale.

So the traveler arrived at this place at nightfall when the mountains about were darkening and the wind in the pass was growing cold with night's onset and he put down his burden to rest himself and he removed his hat to cool his brow and then his eyes fell upon this bloodstained altarstone which the weathers of the sierra and the sierra's storms had these millennia been impotent to cleanse. And there he elected to pass the night, such is the recklessness of those whom God has been so good as to shield from their just share of adversity in this world.