Cormac McCarthy - The Crossing

He was a long time at his work. He'd taken off his hat and after a while he took off his shirt and laid it across the wall. By what he reckoned to be noon he'd dug down some three feet and he stood the shovel in the dirt and walked back to where he'd left the saddle and the bags and he got out his lunch of beans wrapped in tortillas and sat in the grass eating and drinking water from the canvascovered zinc bottle. There had been no one along the road all morning except for a solitary bus, grinding slowly up the grade and on through the gap toward Gallego to the east.

In the afternoon three dogs appeared and sat down among the stones to watch him. He bent to pick up a rock but they ducked and vanished among the bracken. Later a car came out the cemetery road and stopped at the gate and two women came out along the path and went on to the far west corner of the burial ground. After a while they came back. The man who had driven them sat on the wall and smoked and watched Billy but he did not speak. Billy dug on.

Midafternoon the blade struck the box. He'd thought maybe there would be none. He dug on. By the time he had the top of the box dug clear there was little left of the day. He dug down along the side and felt along the wood for handles but he couldnt find any. He dug on until he had one end of the box clear and by then it was growing dark. He stood the spade in the loose dirt and went to get Nino.

He saddled the horse and led him back to the grave and took down the catchrope and doubled and dallied it and then worked the free end around the box, forcing it along the wood with the blade of the shovel. Then he pitched the shovel to one side and climbed out and untracted the horse and led him slowly forward.

The rope grew taut. He looked back. Then he eased the horse forward again. There was a muffled explosion of wood in the hole and the rope went slack. The horse stopped.

He walked back. The box had collapsed and he could see Boyd's bones in their burial clothes through the broken boards. He sat down in the dirt. The sun had set and it was growing dark. The horse stood at the end of the rope waiting. He felt suddenly cold and he got up and walked over to the wall and got his shirt and pulled it on and came back and stood.

You could just shovel the dirt back in, he said. It wouldnt take a hour.

He walked over to the saddlebags and got out his matches and came back and lit one and held it out over the grave. The box was badly caved. A musty cellar odor rose from the dark ground. He shook out the match and walked over to the horse and unhitched the rope and came back coiling it in his hand and he stood with the coiled rope in the blue and windless dusk and looked off to the north where under the overcast the earliest stars were burning. Well, he said. You could do that.

He worked the end of the rope loose from the coffinbox and laid the rope by on the mound of loose dirt. Then he took up the spade and with the blade of it he split away a long sliver of wood from one of the broken boards and knocked the dirt loose from it against the box and struck a match and got it lit and stood it slantwise in the ground. Finally he climbed down into the grave and by that pale and fluttering light he began to pry apart the boards with the spade and cast them out until the remains of his brother lay wholly to sight, composed on a pallet of rotting rags, lost in his clothes as always.

He rode the horse back out through the gate and got down and skylighted the packhorse off to the south and remounted and rode out and brought the animal back and led it through the gates and back to the grave. He dismounted and untied the bedroll and unrolled it on the ground and pulled loose the tarp and spread it out. It was a windless night and his cryptboard taper was still burning at the side of the grave. He climbed down into the excavation and gathered his brother up in his arms and lifted him out. He weighed nothing. He composed the bones upon the soogan and folded them away and tied the bundle shut at the ends with lengths of pigginstring while the horse stood watching. Over on the gravel highway he could hear the whine of a truck on the grade and the lights came up and swept slowly across the desert and over the bleak headlands and then the truck passed on in its pale wake of dust and ground on toward the east.

By the time he'd filled the grave back in it was close to midnight. He trod down the dirt with his boots and then shoveled the loose rocks back over the top and lastly he took the cross from where he'd leaned it against the wall and stood it in the rocks and piled rocks about it to support it. The wooden torch had long since burned out and he took the charred end of it up and threw it across the wall. Then he threw the spade after it.

He lifted Boyd and laid him across the wooden packframe and he rolled up the blankets from his bedroll and laid them across the horse's haunches and tied everything down. Then he walked over and picked up his hat and put it on and picked up the waterbottle and hung it by its strap over the saddlehorn and mounted up and turned the horse. He sat there for a minute taking a last look around. Then he got down again. He walked over to the grave and pulled the wooden cross loose from the cobbles and carried it back to the packhorse and tied it down on the leftside forks of the packtree and then mounted up again and leading the packhorse rode out through the cemetery and through the gate and down the road. When he reached the highway he crossed it and struck out crosscountry toward the watershed of the Santa Maria, keeping the polestar to his right, looking back from time to time to see how rode the canvas that held his brother's remains. The little desert foxes barking. The old gods of that country tracing his progress over the darkened ground. Perhaps logging his name into their ancient daybook of vanities.

In two nights' riding he passed the lights of Casas Grandes off to the west, the small city receding away behind him on the plain. He crossed the old road coming down from Guzman and Sabinal and struck the Casas Grandes River and took the trail north along the river bank. In the early morning hours and before it was quite light he passed through the pueblo of Corralitos, half abandoned, half in ruins. The houses of the town loopholed against the vanished Apaches. The naked slagheaps dark and volcanic against the skyline. He crossed the railroad tracks and an hour north of the town in the gray dawn four horsemen sallied forth from a grove of trees and halted their mounts in the track before him.

He reined the horse. The riders sat silently. The dark animals they rode raised their noses as if to search him out on the air. Beyond the trees the bright flat shape of the river lay like a knife. He studied the men. He'd not seen them move yet they seemed closer. They sat divided before him on the track two and two.

Que tiene alla? they said.

Los huesos de mi hermano.

They sat in silence. One of the riders detached himself and rode forward. He crossed the track in his riding forward and then crossed it back. Riding erect, archly. As if at some sinister dressage. He halted the horse almost within armreach and he leaned forward with his forearms crossed on the pommel of his saddle.

Huesos? he said.

Si.

The new light in the east was behind him and his face was a shadow under the shape of his hat. The other riders were darker figures yet. The rider sat upright in the saddle and looked back towards them. Then he turned to Billy again.

Abralo, he said.

No.

No?

They sat. There was a flash of white beneath his hat as if he'd smiled. What he'd done was to seize his horse's reins in his teeth. The next flash was a knife that had come from somewhere in his clothing and caught the light in turning for just a moment like a fish deep in a river. Billy dropped down from the offside of his horse. The bandolero caught up the packhorse's leadrope but the packhorse balked and squatted on its haunches and the man booted his horse forward and made a pass at the hitchropes with his knife while the packhorse sawed about on the end of the lead. Some among his companions laughed and the man swore and he hauled the packhorse forward and dallied the leadrope to his saddlehorn again and reached and cut the ropes and pulled the soogan of bones to the ground.