Cormac McCarthy - The Crossing

What kind of beer you want? the barman said.

Just any kind. It dont matter.

You aint old enough to drink beer.

Then why did you ask me what kind I wanted?

It dont matter cause I aint servin you.

What kind is he drinkin?

The man down the bar that he'd nodded to studied him. This is a draft, son, he said. Just tell em you want a draft.

Yessir. Thank you.

Dont mention it.

He walked up the street and went in the next bar and sat on a stool. The barman wandered down and stood before him.

Give me a draft.

He went back down the bar and pulled the beer into a round glass mug and came back and set it on the bar. Billy put a dollar on the bar and the barman went to the cash register and rang it up and came back and clapped down seventyaEU'five cents.

Where you from? he said.

Down around Cloverdale. I been workin for the Hashknives. There aint no Hashknives. Babbitts sold it.

Yeah. I know it.

Sold it to a sheepherder.

Yeah.

What do you think of that?

I dont know.

Well I do.

Billy looked down the bar. It was empty save for a soldier who looked drunk. The soldier was watching him.

They never sold him the brand though, did they? the barman said.

No.

No. So there aint no Hashknives.

You want to flip for the jukebox? the soldier said.

Billy looked at him. No, he said. I wouldnt care to.

Set there then.

I aim to.

Is there somethin wrong with that beer, the barman said.

No. I dont reckon. Do you get a lot of complaints?

I just noticed you aint drinkin it is all.

Billy looked at the beer. He looked down the length of the bar. The soldier had turned slightly and was sitting with one hand on his knee. As if he might be deciding whether or not to get up.

I just thought there might be somethin wrong with it, the barman said.

Well I dont reckon there is, Billy said. But if there is I'll let you know.

You got a cigarette? the soldier said.

I dont smoke.

You dont smoke.

No.

The barman fished a pack of Lucky Strikes from his shirtpocket and palmed them onto the bar and slid them down to the soldier. There you go, soldier, he said.

Thanks, the soldier said. He shook a cigarette upright in the pack and pulled it free with his mouth and took a lighter fromhis pocket and lit the cigarette and put the lighter on the bar and slid the pack of cigarettes back to the barman. What's that in your pocket? he said.

Who are you talkin to? said Billy.

The soldier blew smoke down the bar. Talkin to you, he said.

Well, said Billy. I reckon its my business what I got in my pocket.

The soldier didnt answer. He sat smoking. The barman reached and got the cigarettes from the bar and took one and lit it and put the pack back in his shirtpocket. He stood leaning against the backbar with his arms crossed and the smoldering cigarette in his fingers. No one spoke. They seemed to be waiting for someone to arrive.

Do you know how old I am? the barman said.

Billy looked at him. No, he said. How would I know how old you are?

I'll be thirtyaEU'eight years old in June. June fourteenth.

Billy didnt answer.

That's how come I aint in uniform.

Billy looked at the soldier. The soldier sat smoking.

I tried to enlist, the barman said. Tried to lie about my age but they wasnt havin none of it.

He dont care, the soldier said. Uniform dont mean nothin to him.

The barman pulled on his cigarette and blew smoke toward the bar. I'll bet it'd mean somethin if it had that risin sun on the collar and they was comin down Second Street about ten abreast. I bet it'd mean somethin then.

Billy picked up the beermug and drank it dry and set it back on the bar and stood up and pulled his hat forward and looked a last time at the soldier and turned and went out into the street.

He worked another nine months for Aja and when he left he had a packhorse that he'd traded for and a regular bedroll and soogan and an old singleshot 32 caliber Stevens rifle. He rode south across the high plains west of Socorro and he rode through Magdalena and across the plains of Saint Augustine. When he rode into Silver City it was snowing and he checked into the Palace Hotel and sat in the room and watched the snow falling in the street. There was no one about. He went out after a while and walked down Bullard Street to the feed store but it was closed. He found a grocery store and bought six boxes of breakfast cereal and came back and fed them to the horses and put the horses in the yard behind the hotel and got his supper in the hotel diningroom and went up and went to bed. When he came down in the morning he was the only one at breakfast and when he went out to try and buy some clothes all the shops were closed. It was gray and cold in the streets and a mean wind blew out of the north and there was no one about. He tried the door of the drugstore because there was a light on inside but it was closed too. When he got back to the hotel he asked the clerk if today was Sunday and the clerk said it was Friday.

He looked out at the street. There aint no stores open, he said.

It's Christmas day, the clerk said. Aint no stores open on Christmas day.

He drifted into the north Texas panhandle and he worked out most of the following year for the Matadors and he worked for the T Diamond. He drifted south and he worked small spreads some no more than a week. By the spring of the third year of the war there was hardly a ranch house in all of that country that did not have a gold star in the window. He worked until March on a small ranch out of Magdalena New Mexico and then one day he got his pay and saddled his horse and tied his bedroll onto the packhorse and rode south again. He crossed the last blacktop highway just east of Steins and two days later rode up to the SK Bar gate. It was a cool spring day and the old man was sitting on the porch in his rocker with his hat on and a bible in his lap. He'd bent forward to see if he could tell who it was. As if the extra foot of proximity might bring the rider into focus. He looked older and more frail, much reduced from his former self in the two years since he'd seen him. Billy called his name and the old man said for him to get down and he did. When he got to the foot of the steps he stopped with one hand on the paintflaked baluster and looked up at the old man. The old man sat with the bible closed over one finger to mark its place. Is that you, Parham? he said.

Yessir. Billy.

He walked up the steps and took off his hat and shook hands with the old man. The old man's eyes had faded to a paler blue. He held Billy's hand a long time. Bless your heart, he said. I've thought about you a thousand times. Set down here where we can visit.

He pulled up one of the old canebottomed chairs and sat and put his hat over his knee and looked out over the pasturelands toward the mountains and he looked at the old man.

I reckon you knew about Miller, the old man said.

No sir. I've not had much news.

He was killed on Kwajalein Atoll.

I'm awful sorry to hear that.

We've had it pretty rough here. Pretty rough.

They sat. There was a breeze coming up the country. A pot of asparagus fern hanging from the porch eaves at the corner swung gently and its shadow oscillated over the boards of the porch slow and random and uncentered.

Are you doin all right? Billy said.

Oh I'm all right. I had a operation for cataracts back in the fall but I'm makin it. Leona went off and got married on me. Now her husband's shipped out and she's livin in Roswell I dont know what for. Got a job. I tried to reason with her but you know how that goes.

Yessir.

By rights I got no business bein here atall.

I hope you live forever.

Dont wish that on me.