Cormac McCarthy - The Crossing

Que novedades tiene de mi hermano, he said.

Cual hermano?

He smiled. He said that he had but one brother.

She uncovered his hand and held it. She did not look at it. Es mentira, she said. Tiene dos.

He shook his head.

Mentira tras mentira, she said. She bent to study his palm. Que ve? he said.

Veo dos hermanos. Uno ha muerto.

He said that he had a sister who had died but she shook her head. Hermano, she said. Uno que vive, uno que ha muerto.

Cual es cual?

No sabes?

No.

Ni yo tampoco.

She let go his hand and rose and took up the bucket. She looked again across the field at the children and the horse. She said that he had perhaps been fortunate in the night for the rain may have kept those indoors who might otherwise have been abroad but she said that the rain which befriends can also betray one. She said also that while the rain fell by the will of God evil chose its own hour and that those whom it sought out were perhaps not entirely lacking of some certain darkness in themselves. She said that the heart betrayed itself and the wicked often had eyes to see that which was hidden from the good.

Y sus Ojos?

She tossed her head, her black hair flowed about her shoulders. She said that she had seen nothing. She said that it was only a game. Then she turned and walked across the field and up toward the road.

He rode south all day and in the evening he passed through the town of Casas Grandes and set out south along the road that he'd first ridden with his brother three years before, out past the darkening ruins in the dusk, past the ancient ballcourts where the nighthawks were hunting yet. The day following he reached the hacienda at San Diego and sat the horse in the old cottonwoods by the river. Then he rode the horse across the board bridge and up to the domicilios.

The Munoz house stood empty. He walked through the rooms. There were no furnishings of any kind. In the niche where the Virgin had stood nothing but a gray scale of old candlewax pooled on the dusty plaster.

He stood in the door, then he walked out and mounted up and rode up to the compound and through the gates.

In the courtyard an old man who sat weaving baskets told him that they were gone. He asked the old man if he knew where they had gone but the old man seemed not to have a clear understanding of the idea of destination. He gestured widely at the world. The rider sat the horse and looked about the courtyard. The old touring car. The ruining buildings. A hen turkey roosting in a sashless window. The old man had bent again to his basket and he wished him a good day and turned the horse and leading the packhorse rode out through the tall arched gate and past the tenants' quarters and down the hill to the river and across the bridge again.

Two days later he rode through Las Varas and turned east toward La Boquilla on the road where he and his brother had first seen their father's horse come up from the lake into the road wet and dripping. There'd been no rain in the high country and the road was dusty underfoot. A dry wind blowing down from the north. On the distant plain beyond the lake the dust blowing out of Babicora as if it were afire. In the evening the big red Waco plane came in from the west and circled and dropped among the trees.

He camped on the plain and made a small fire that seethed in the wind like a forgefire and swallowed up his meager hoard of sticks and limbs. He watched it burn and watched it burn. The rags of flame that fled downcountry broke and vanished like a shout in the darkness. The next day he rode through Babicora and Santa Ana de Babicora and took the road north to Namiquipa.

The town was little more than a mining camp sited on a bluff above the river and he staked his horses below the town to the east in a grove of river willows and bathed in the river and washed his clothes. In the morning when he rode up into the town he encountered a wedding party coming along the road. A common wood carreta hung with bunting. A tarp of manta tied over a rickety bowframe of willow poles to keep the bride from the sun. The cart was drawn by a single small mule, gray and shambling, the bride sat alone in the cart holding a parasol open beneath the teetering canopy. In the road beside her walked a company of men in suits of black or suits of gray that had perhaps once been black and as they passed the bride turned and looked at him sitting the horse by the roadside like some pale witness of ill omen and she blessed herself and turned away again and they went on. He would see the cart again in the village. The wedding was not till after noon and they had ridden in so early solely to take advantage of the dustless condition of the road at that hour.

He followed them down into the town and he rode his horse through the small dusty streets. No one was about. He leaned from his horse and rapped at a random door and sat listening. No one came. He shucked his boot backwards out of the stirrup and kicked at the door by way of knocking louder but the door was imperfectly latched and it swung slowly open into the low darkness.

Hola, he called.

No one answered. He looked out down the narrow street. He looked in through the top of the door. Against the far wall of the hovel a candle burned in a dish and lying on a trestle with wildflowers from the mountains about him lay an old man dressed in his burial suit.

He got down and dropped the reins and stepped through the low door and doffed his hat. The old man had his hands composed upon his chest and he had no shoes on and his bare feet had been tied together at the toes with twine so that they would not lie asplay. Billy called softly into the darkness of the house but that room was all the house there was. Four empty chairs stood against one wall. A fine dust lay over everything. High in the rear wall was one small window and he crossed the room and looked out into the patio behind the house. An old horsedrawn hearse stood with the wagonshafts tilted back against the box. In an open shed at the far side of the enclosure stood a raw wood coffin on sawhorses made from pine poles. The lid of the coffin leaned against the wall of the shed. The coffin and the lid had been blacked on the outside but the inside of the box was raw new wood and no cloth or any lining to it.

He turned and looked at the old man on his coolingboard. The old man had a moustache and his moustache and his hair were silver gray. The hands crossed at his chest were broad and sturdy. His nails had not been cleaned. His skin was dark and dusty, his bare feet square and knotty. The suit he wore seemed small for him and was of a cut no longer seen even in that country and the old man had most likely had it all his life.

He picked up a small yellow flower in shape like a daisy and which he'd seen grow by the roadside and he looked at the flower and at the old man. In the room the smell of wax, a faint hint of rot. A frail afterscent of burnt copal. Que novedades ahora viejo? he said. He put the flower in the buttonhole of his shirtpocket and went out and pulled the door shut behind him.

NONE IN THAT TOWN knew what had become of the girl. Her mother had moved away. Her sister had gone to Mexico years since, who knew what happened to such girls In the afternoon the wedding party came up the street with the bride and groom sitting on the box of the covered carreta. They passed slowly, accompanied by drum and cornet, the cart creaking, the bride in her veil of white, the groom in black. Their smiles like grimaces, terror in their eyes. In appearance they were like certain folk figures of that country who dance together with their own pale bones painted on their costumes. The cart in its slow creaking like that which fords the dreams of the paisano in his weary sleep, passing slowly from left to right through the irrestorable night for which alone he labors, dying away toward the dawn in a faint rattle, a tenuous dread.