Cormac McCarthy - The Crossing

Eres puros huesos, he said. Tengo miedo es verdad.

Please. Be comfortable. Would you like some eggs? I guess I could eat some eggs.

How many will you eat?

I'll eat three.

There is no bread. I'll eat four.

You must sit. Yessir.

He took down a small enameled pail and went out through the low door. The boy pulled back a chair and sat. He folded the blanket roughly and laid it in the chair beside him and took up the nearer cup and sipped the coffee. It wasnt real coffee. He didnt know what it was. He looked around the room. The cats watched him. After a while the man returned with eggs rolling around in the floor of the pail. He picked up the frypan and held it by the handle and peered into it as into some black lookingaEU'glass and then set it down again and spooned grease into it from a clay jar. He watched the grease melt and then broke the eggs into the pan and stirred them about with the same spoon. Four eggs, he said.

Yessir.

The man turned and looked at him and then turned back to his cooking. It occurred to the boy that he hadnt been speaking to him. When the eggs were done he took down a plate and scooped them out onto it and placed a blackened silver fork on the edge of the plate and set it on the table in front of the boy. He poured more coffee and put the pot back on the stove and sat down across the table to watch him eat.

You are lost, he said.

The boy paused with a forkful of the eggs and studied the question. I dont think so, he said.

The last man to come here was sick. He was a sick man.

When was that?

The man gestured vaguely in the air with one hand.

What happened to him? the boy said.

He died.

The boy went on eating. I aint sick, he said.

He is buried in the churchyard.

The boy ate. I aint sick, he said, and I aint lost.

He is the first to be buried there in many a year, I can tell you.

How many a year?

I dont know.

What did he come here for?

He was a miner from the mountains. A barretero. He became sick and so he came here. But it was too late. No one could do anything for him.

Hove many other people live here?

No one. Only me.

Then you was the only one that tried?

Tried what?

To do anything for him.

Yes. The boy looked up at the man. He ate. What day is it? he said. It is Sunday. I meant what day of the month. I dont know. Do you know what month it is? No. How do you know it's Sunday. Because it comes every seven days. The boy ate. I am a Mormon. Or I was. I was a Mormon born. He wasnt sure what a Mormon was. He looked at the room. He looked at the cats. They came here many years ago. Eighteen and ninetyaEU'six. From Utah. They came because of the statehood. In Utah. I was a Mormon. Then I converted to the church. Then I became I dont know what. Then I became me. What do you do here? I am the custodian. The caretaker. What do you take care of? The church. It's done fell down. Yes. Of course. It fell down in the terremoto. Were you here then? I was not born. When was it? In eighteen eightyaEU'seven. The boy finished the eggs and put the fork on the plate. He looked at the man. How long have you been here? Since six years now. It was like this when you got here. Yes. He raised and drained his cup and set it back in the saucer. I thank you for the breakfast, he said.

You are welcome.

He looked like he might be getting ready to rise and leave. The man reached into his shirtpocket and took out tobacco and a small cloth folder in which were papers cut from cornhusks. One of the cats on the bunk had risen and stretched, hindleg and fore, and it leapt silently to the table and walked to the boy's plate and sniffed at it and squatted on bowed elbows and began delicately to pick bits of egg from the tines of the fork. The man had pinched tobacco into a paper and sat rolling it back and forth. He pushed the makings across the table toward the boy.

Thanks, the boy said. I aint never took it up.

The man nodded and twisted the cigarette he'd made into the corner of his mouth and rose and went to the stove. He took a long splinter of wood from a can of them in the floor and opened the stove door and leaned and lit the splinter and with it lit the cigarette. Then he blew out the splinter and put it back in the can and shut the stove door and returned to the table with the pot and refilled the boy's cup. His own cup stood black and cold untouched. He set the pot back on the stove and walked around the table and sat as before. The cat rose and looked at itself in the white porcelain of the plate and stepped away and sat and yawned and set about cleaning itself.

What did you come here for? the boy said.

What did you?

Sir?

What did you come here for?

I didnt come here. I'm just passin through.

The man drew on the cigarette. Myself also, he said. I am the same.

You been passin through for six years?

The man gestured with a small toss of one hand. I came here as a heretic fleeing a prior life. I was running away.

You come here to hide out?

I came because of the devastation.

Sir?

The devastation. From the terremoto.

Yessir.

I was seeking evidence for the hand of God in the world. I had come to believe that hand a wrathful one and I thought that men had not inquired sufficiently into miracles of destruction. Into disasters of a certain magnitude. I thought there might be evidence that had been overlooked. I thought He would not trouble himself to wipe away every handprint. My desire to know was very strong. I thought it might even amuse Him to leave some clue.

What sort of clue

I dont know. Something. Something unforeseen. Something out of place. Something untrue or out of round. A track in the dirt. A fallen bauble. Not some cause. I can tell you that. Not some cause. Causes only multiply themselves. They lead to chaos. What I wanted was to know his mind. I could not believe He would destroy his own church without reason.

You think maybe the people that lived here had done somethin bad?

The man smoked thoughtfully. I thought it possible, yes. Possible. As in the cities of the plain. I thought there might be evidence of something suitably unspeakable such that He might be goaded into raising his hand against it. Something in the rubble. In the dirt. Under the vigas. Something dark. Who could say?

What did you find?

Nothing. A doll. A dish. A bone.

He leaned and stubbed out the cigarette in a clay bowl on the table.

I am here because of a certain man. I came to retrace his steps. Perhaps to see if there were not some alternate course. What was here to be found was not a thing. Things separate from their stories have no meaning. They are only shapes. Of a certain size and color. A certain weight. When their meaning has become lost to us they no longer have even a name. The story on the other hand can never be lost from its place in the world for it is that place. And that is what was to be found here. The corrido. The tale. And like all corridos it ultimately told one story only, for there is only one to tell.

The cats shifted and stirred, the fire creaked in the stove. Outside in the abandoned village the profoundest silence.

What is the story? the boy said.

In the town of Caborca on the Altar River there was a man who lived there who was an old man. He was born in Caborca and in Caborca he died. Yet he lived once in this town. In Huisiachepic.

What does Caborca know of Huisiachepic, Huisiachepic of Caborca? They are different worlds, you must agree. Yet even so there is but one world and everything that is imaginable is necessary to it. For this world also which seems to us a thing of stone and flower and blood is not a thing at all but is a tale. And all in it is a tale and each tale the sum of all lesser tales and yet these also are the selfsame tale and contain as well all else within them. So everything is necessary. Every least thing. This is the hard lesson. Nothing can be dispensed with. Nothing despised. Because the seams are hid from us, you see. The joinery. The way in which the world is made. We have no way to know what could be taken away. What omitted. We have no way to tell what might stand and what might fall. And those seams that are hid from us are of course in the tale itself and the tale has no abode or place of being except in the telling only and there it lives and makes its home and therefore we can never be done with the telling. Of the telling there is no end. And whether in Caborca or in Huisiachepic or in whatever other place by whatever other name or by no name at all I say again all tales are one. Rightly heard all tales are one.