The Crossing tbt-2

by Cormac McCarthy

  I aim to take him back with me.

  It will not be permitted.

  Who would I go to?

  There is no one to go to.

  Who would I go to if there was someone?

  You could apply to God. Otherwise there is no one.

  Billy shook his head. He sat regarding his own dark visage where it yawed in the white ring of the cup. After a while he looked up. He looked into the fire. Do you believe in God? he said.

  Quijada shrugged. On godly days, he said.

  No one can tell you what your life is goin to be, can they? No.

  It's never like what you expected.

  Quijada nodded. If people knew the story of their lives how many would then elect to live them? People speak about what is in store. But there is nothing in store. The day is made of what has come before. The world itself must be surprised at the shape of that which appears. Perhaps even God.

  We come down here to get our horses. Me and my brother. I dont think he even cared about the horses, but I was too dumb to see it. I didnt know nothin about him. I thought I did. I think he knew a lot more about me. I'd like to take him back and bury him in his own country.

  Quijada drained his cup and sat holding it in his lap.

  I take it you dont think that's such a good idea.

  I think you may have some problems.

  But that aint all you think.

  No.

  You think he belongs where he's at.

  I think the dead have no nationality.

  No. But their kin do.

  Quijada didnt answer. After a long time he stirred. He leaned forward. He turned the white porcelain bowl up and held it in the palm of his hand and regarded it. The world has no name, he said. The names of the cerros and the Sierras and the deserts exist only on maps. We name them that we do not lose our way. Yet it was because the way was lost to us already that we have made those names. The world cannot be lost. We are the ones. And it is because these names and these coordinates are our own naming that they cannot save us. That they cannot find for us the way again. Your brother is in that place which the world has chosen for him. He is where he is supposed to be. And yet the place he has found is also of his own choosing. That is a piece of luck not to be despised.

  GRAY SKY, gray land. All day he slouched north on the wet and slouching horse through the sandy muck of the upcountry roads. The rain went harrying over the road before him in the gusts of wind and rattled over his slicker and the hooftracks oozed shut behind him. In the evening he heard again the cranes overhead, passing high above the overcast, balancing beneath them the bight of the earth's curve, earth's weather. Their metal eyes grooved to the pathways which God has chosen for them to follow. Their hearts in flood.

  He rode into the town of San Buenaventura in the evening and he rode through pools of standing water past the alameda with its whitepainted treetrunks and the old white church and out along the old road to Gallego. The rain had stopped and rain dripped from the alameda trees and dripped from the high canales in the mudwalled houses he passed. The road led up through the low hills to the east of the town and set in a bench of land there a mile or so above the town lay the cemetery.

  He turned off and slogged out along the muddy lane and halted his horse before the wooden gates. The cemetery was a large and wild enclosure set in a field filled with loose stones and brambles and surrounded by a low mud wall already then in ruins. He halted and looked out over this desolation. He turned and looked back at the packhorse and he looked at the gray scud of clouds and at the evening light failing in the west. A wind was blowing down from the gap in the mountains and he stepped down and dropped the reins and passed through the gate and started out across the rough cobbled field. A raven flew up out of the bracken and parried away on the wind croaking thinly. The red sandstone dolmens that stood upright among the low tablets and crosses on that wild heath looked like the distant ruins of some classic enclave ringed about by the blue mountains, the closer hills.

  Most of the graves were no more than cairns of rock without marker of any kind. Some held a simple wooden cross composed of two slats nailed together or twisted together with wire. The cobbled rocks everywhere underfoot were the scattered remains of these cairns and ignoring the red stone steles this place looked the burial of some aftermath of battle. Other than the wind in the wild rough grass there was no sound at all. He walked out along a narrow and uncertain footpath winding among the graves, among the slabs and sepulchre tablets blacked over with lichen. In the middle distance a red stone pillar in the shape of a pollarded treetrunk.

  His brother was buried against the southmost wall under a board cross in which had been burned with a hot nail the words Fall el 24 de febrero 1943 sus hermanos en armas dedican este recuerdo D E P. A ring of rusted wire that once had been a wreath leaned against the board. There was no name.

  He squatted and took off his hat. Off to the south a pile of trash was smoldering in the damp and a black smoke rose into the dark overcast. The desolation of that place was a thing exquisite.

  It was dark when he rode back into Buenaventura. He dismounted before the church door and walked in and took off his hat. At the altar a few small candles burned and in that half fugitive light knelt a solitary figure bent at prayer. He walked up the aisle. There were loose tiles in the floor that rocked and clicked under his boots. He bent and touched the kneeling figure on the arm. Senora, he said.

  She raised her head, a dark seamed face faintly visible in the darker folds of her rebozo.

  Donde esta el sepulturero?

  Muerto.

  Quien esta encargado del cementerio?

  Dios.

  Donde esta el sacerdote.

  Se fue.

  He looked about at the dim interior of the church. The woman seemed to be waiting for further questions but he could think of none to put.

  Que quiere, joven' she said.

  Nada. Esta bien. He looked down at her. Por quien esta orando? he said.

  She said that she only prayed. She said that she left it to God as to how the prayers should be apportioned. She prayed for all. She would pray for him.

  Gracias.

  No puedo hacerlo de otro modo.

  He nodded. He knew her well enough, this old woman of Mexico, her sons long dead in that blood and violence which her prayers and her prostrations seemed powerless to appease. Her frail form was a constant in that land, her silent anguishings. Beyond the church walls the night harbored a millennial dread panoplied in feathers and the scales of royal fish and if it yet fed upon the children still who could say what worse wastes of war and torment and despair the old woman's constancy might not have stayed, what direr histories yet against which could be counted at last nothing more than her small figure bent and mumbling, her crone's hands clutching her beads of fruitseed. Unmoving, austere, implacable. Before just such a God.

  When he rode out the next morning early the rain had stopped but the day had not cleared and the landscape lay gray under a gray sky. To the south the raw peaks of the Sierra del Nido loomed out of the clouds and closed away again. He dismounted at the wooden gate and hobbled the packhorse and untied the spade and mounted up again and rode out down the footpath among the cobbled rocks with the spade over his shoulder.

  When he reached the gravesite he stood down and chucked the spade in the ground and took his gloves from the saddlebag and looked at the gray skies and finally he unsaddled the horse and hobbled it and left it to graze among the stones. Then he turned and squatted and rocked the fragile wooden cross loose in its clutch of rocks and lifted it away. The spade was a primitive thing helved in a long paloverde pole and the tang bore the marks where it had been beaten out over a pritchel and the seam rudely welded shut at the forge. He hefted it in his hand and looked again at the sky and bent and began to shovel away the cairn of loose rock over his brother's grave.

  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.

  Billy was trying to undo the tie on the flap of the saddlebag to get to his pistol but Nino turned and stamped and backed away sawing his head. The bandolero undallied and cast off the leadrope and stepped down. The packhorse turned and went trotting.
The man bent above the shrouded form on the ground and unseamed with a single long pass of the knife ropes and soogan all from end to end and kicked aside the coverings to reveal in the graying light Boyd's poor form in the loosely fitting coat with his hands crossed at his chest, the withered hands with the bones imprinted in the leather skin, lying there with his caven face turned up and clutching himself like some fragile being fraught with cold in that indifferent dawn.

  You son of a bitch, said Billy. You son of a bitch.

  Es un engano? said the man. Es un engano?

  He kicked at the poor desiccated thing. He turned with the knife.

  Donde esta el dinero?

  Las alforjas, called out one of the riders. Billy had swung under Nino's neck and he reached again for the flap of the saddlebag on the horse's offside. The bandolero cut open the bedroll under his feet and kicked it apart and trod in it with his boots and turned and then reached and seized Nino's bridlereins. But the horse must have begun to see the loosening of some demoniac among them for he reared and backed and in his backing trod among the bones and he reared again and pawed and the bandolero was snatched off balance and one forehoof caught his belt and ripped it from him and tore open the front of his trousers. He scrambled from under the horse and swore wildly and made a grab again for the swinging reins and the men behind him laughed and before anyone would have thought of such a thing occurring he plunged his knife into the horse's chest.

  The horse stopped and stood quivering. The point of the blade had bedded itself in the animal's breastbone and the bandolero stepped back and threw out his hands.

  Goddamn you to hell, Billy said. He held the trembling horse by the throatlatch and took hold of the handle of the knife and pulled the blade from the horse's chest and flung it away. Blood welled, blood ran down the front of the horse. He snatched off his hat and pushed it against the wound and looked wildly back at the mounted men. They sat their horses as before. One of them leaned and spat and jerked his chin at the others. Vamonos, he said.