Cormac McCarthy: Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West

The man looked at the mule and turned back and squinted at the sergeant. He leaned and spat. That there mule wont bring ten dollars.

What it brings it brings.

They done killed another beef.

I dont want to hear about it.

I caint do nothin with em.

I aint tellin the captain. He’ll roll them eyes around till they come unscrewed and fall out in the ground.

The man spat again. Well, that’s the gods truth anyway.

See to this man now. I got to get.

Well.

Aint nobody sick is they?

No.

Thank God for that.

He stood up into the saddle and touched the horse’s neck lightly with the reins. He looked back and shook his head.

In the evening the kid and two other recruits went into town. He’d bathed and shaved himself and he wore a pair of blue cord trousers and the cotton shirt the captain had given him and save for the boots he looked a new man altogether. His friends rode small and colorful horses that forty days ago had been wild animals on the plain and they shied and skittered and snapped like turtles.

Wait till you get you one of these, said the second corporal. You aint never had no fun.

These horses is all right, said the other.

There’s one or two in there yet that might make ye a horse.

The kid looked down at them from his mule. They rode either side like escorts and the mule trotted with its head up, its eyes shifting nervously. They’ll all stick ye head in the ground, said the second corporal.

They rode through a plaza thronged with wagons and stock. With immigrants and Texans and Mexicans and with slaves and Lipan indians and deputations of Karankawas tall and austere, their faces dyed blue and their hands locked about the shafts of their sixfoot spears, all but naked savages who with their painted skins and their whispered taste for human flesh seemed outrageous presences even in that fabled company. The recruits rode with their animals close reined and they turned up past the courthouse and along the high walls of the cárcel with the broken glass imbedded in the topmost course. In the Main Plaza a band had assembled and were at tuning their instruments. The riders turned down Salinas Street past small gaminghouses and coffee-stands and there were in this street a number of Mexican harness-makers and traders and keepers of gamechickens and cobblers and bootmakers in little stalls or shops of mud. The second corporal was from Texas and spoke a little Spanish and he meant to trade the mule. The other boy was from Missouri. They were in good spirits, scrubbed and combed, clean shirts all. Each foreseeing a night of drink, perhaps of love. How many youths have come home cold and dead from just such nights and just such plans.

They traded the mule accoutred as it was for a Texas stock saddle, bare tree with rawhide cover, not new but sound. For a bridle and bit that was new. For a woven wool blanket from Saltillo that was dusty new or not. And lastly for a two and a half dollar gold piece. The Texan looked at this small coin in the kid’s palm and demanded more money but the harnessmaker shook his head and held up his hands in utter finality.

What about my boots? said the kid.

Y sus botas, said the Texan.

Botas?

Sí. He made sewing motions.

The harnessmaker looked down at the boots. He cupped his fingers in a little gesture of impatience and the kid took off the boots and stood barefoot in the dust.

When all was done they stood in the street and looked at one another. The kid had his new tack slung up on his shoulder. The second corporal looked at the boy from Missouri. You got any money, Earl?

Not a copper cent.

Well I aint neither. We might’s well get our asses back on out to that hole of misery.

The kid shifted the weight of the gear on his shoulder. We got this quarter eagle to drink up yet, he said.

Already it is twilight down in the Laredito. Bats fly forth from their roostings in courthouse and tower and circle the quarter. The air is full of the smell of burning charcoal. Children and dogs squat by the mud stoops and gamecocks flap and settle in the branches of the fruit trees. They go afoot, these comrades, down along a bare adobe wall. Band music carries dimly from the square. They pass a watercart in the street and they pass a hole in the wall where by the light of a small forgefire an old man beats out shapes of metal. They pass in a doorway a young girl whose beauty becomes the flowers about.

They arrive at last before a wooden door. It is hinged into a larger door or gate and all must step over the foot-high sill where a thousand boots have scuffed away the wood, where fools in their hundreds have tripped or fallen or tottered drunkenly into the street. They pass along a ramada in a courtyard by an old grape arbor where small fowl nod in the dusk among the gnarled and barren vines and they enter a cantina where the lamps are lit and they cross stooping under a low beam to a bar and belly up one two three.

There is an old disordered Mennonite in this place and he turns to study them. A thin man in a leather weskit, a black and straightbrim hat set square on his head, a thin rim of whiskers. The recruits order glasses of whiskey and drink them down and order more. There are monte games at tables by the wall and there are whores at another table who look the recruits over. The recruits stand sideways along the bar with their thumbs in their belts and watch the room. They talk among themselves of the expedition in loud voices and the old Mennonite shakes a rueful head and sips his drink and mutters.

They’ll stop you at the river, he says.

The second corporal looks past his comrades. Are you talking to me?

At the river. Be told. They’ll jail you to a man.

Who will?

The United States Army. General Worth.

The hell they will.

Pray that they will.

He looks at his comrades. He leans toward the Mennonite. What does that mean, old man?

Do ye cross that river with yon filibuster armed ye’ll not cross it back.

Dont aim to cross it back. We goin to Sonora.

What’s it to you, old man?

The Mennonite watches the enshadowed dark before them as it is reflected to him in the mirror over the bar. He turns to them. His eyes are wet, he speaks slowly. The wrath of God lies sleeping. It was hid a million years before men were and only men have power to wake it. Hell aint half full. Hear me. Ye carry war of a madman’s making onto a foreign land. Ye’ll wake more than the dogs.

But they berated the old man and swore at him until he moved off down the bar muttering, and how else could it be?

How these things end. In confusion and curses and blood. They drank on and the wind blew in the streets and the stars that had been overhead lay low in the west and these young men fell afoul of others and words were said that could not be put right again and in the dawn the kid and the second corporal knelt over the boy from Missouri who had been named Earl and they spoke his name but he never spoke back. He lay on his side in the dust of the courtyard. The men were gone, the whores were gone. An old man swept the clay floor within the cantina. The boy lay with his skull broken in a pool of blood, none knew by whom. A third one came to be with them in the courtyard. It was the Mennonite. A warm wind was blowing and the east held a gray light. The fowls roosting among the grapevines had begun to stir and call.

There is no such joy in the tavern as upon the road thereto, said the Mennonite. He had been holding his hat in his hands and now he set it upon his head again and turned and went out the gate.