The Crossing

by Cormac McCarthy

  Billy sat his horse. He didnt seem to be able to think what else to say. After a while he took his hat off.

  You are Americans, the woman said.

  Yes mam. I reckon the girl told you.

  There is nothing to hide.

  We dont have nothin to hide. I just come over to see if there was anything we could do for you.

  She arched her painted brows in surprise.

  I thought maybe you all was broke down out here.

  She looked at Boyd. Boyd looked off toward the mountains to the south.

  We're headed yonway, Billy said. If you wanted us to carry a message or anything.

  She sat up slightly in the hammock and called out into the caravan. Basta, she called. Basta la musica.

  She sat listening, one hand balanced on the table. In a moment the music ceased and she subsided again into the hammock and spread the fan and looked across the top of it at the young jinete who sat his horse before her. Billy looked toward the caravan thinking someone might appear in the doorway but no one did.

  What all did the mule die of? he said.

  That mule, she said. That mule died because its blood all fell out in the road.

  Mam?

  She raised a hand languidly before her, her ringed and tapered fingers weaving. As if she described the ascending of the animal's soul.

  That mule was having his troubles but no one could reason with that mule. Gasparito should not have been put to attend to the wants of that mule. He had no temperament for such a mule. Now you see what has come to pass.

  No mam.

  Drinking too. In these matters drinking is always present. And then the fear. The other mules are screaming. Tienen mucho miedo. Screaming. Sliding and falling in the blood and screaming. What does one say to these animals? How does one put their minds at rest?

  She made a peremptory gesture to one side. As of some casting to the winds in the dry hot solitude, the birdcalls in the little glade, the evening's onset. Can such animals ever be restored to their former state? There can be no question. Especially in the case of dramatic mules such as these mules. These mules can have no peace now. No peace. You see?

  What was it he done to the mule?

  He tried to cut off the head with a machete. Of course. What did the girl say to you? She speaks no english?

  No mam. She just said it died was all.

  The primadonna looked at the girl suspiciously. Where did you find this girl?

  She was just walkin along the road. I wouldnt of thought you could cut off a mule's head with a machete.

  Of course not. Only a drunken fool would attempt such a feat. When the hacking availed not he began to saw. When Rogelio seized him he would have hacked at Rogelio. Rogelio was disgusted. Disgusted. They fell in the road. In the blood and the dust. Rolling about under the feet of the animals. The carnage threatening to overturn and all in it. Disgusting. What if someone should come along on this road? What if people appeared on this road at such a time to see this spectacle?

  What happened to the mule?

  The mule? The mule died. Of course.

  They wouldnt nobody shoot it or nothin?

  Yes. There is a story. I myself was the one. I came forward to shoot this mule, what do you think? Rogelio prohibited this act. Because it will frighten the other mules he says to me. Can you imagine this? At this point in history? Then he wishes to dismiss Gasparito. He says that Gasparito is a lunatic but Gasparito is only a borrachon. From Vera Cruz of course. And a gypsy. Can you imagine this?

  I thought you was all gypsies.

  She sat up in the hammock. Como? She said. Como? Quien lo dice?

  Todo el mundo.

  Es mentira. Mentira. Me entiendes? She leaned over and spat twice into the dirt.

  At this moment the door did darken and a small dark man in shirtsleeves stood glaring out. The primadonna turned in her hammock and looked up at him. As if his appearance in the doorway had cast a shadow visible to see. He looked over the visitors and their mounts and took from his shirtpocket a package of El Toro cigarettes and put one in his mouth and fished about in his pocket for a match.

  Buenas tardes, Billy said.

  You think a gypsy can sing an opera? the woman said. A gypsy? All gypsies can do is play the guitar and paint horses. And dance their primitive dances.

  She sat upright in the hammock and hiked her shoulders and spread her hands before her. Then she uttered a long piercing note that was not quite a cry of pain and not quite anything else. The horses shied and arched their necks and the riders had to haul them around and still they twisted and stepped and rolled their eyes. Out in the fields the workers stood stock still in their furrows.

  Do you know what that was? she said.

  No mam. It sure was loud.

  That was the do agudo. You think some gypsy can sing that note? Some croaking gypsy?

  I guess I never give it a lot of thought.

  Show me this gypsy, said the primadonna. This gypsy I wish to see.

  Who would paint a horse?

  Gypsies of course. Who else? Horsepainters. Dentists of horses.

  Billy took off his hat and wiped his forehead with the back of his shirtsleeve and put the hat back on. The man in the door had come partway down the painted wooden steps and sat smoking. He leaned and snapped his fingers at the dog. The dog backed away.

  Where abouts did this happen about the mule? Billy said.

  She raised up and pointed with the folded fan. On the road, she said. Not one hundred meters. We could go no farther. A trained mule. A mule with theatrical experience. Slaughtered in its traces by a drunken fool.

  The man on the steps took a last deep draw on his cigarette and flipped the stub at the dog.

  You got any message for your party if we see em? said Billy.

  Tell Jaime that we are well and that he is to come at his own pace.

  Who is Jaime?

  Punchinello. He is Punchinello.

  Mam?

  The payaso. The clowen.

  The clown.

  Yes. The clown.

  In the show.

  Yes.

  I wont know him without his warpaint.

  Mande?

  How will I know him.

  You will know him.

  Does he make people laugh?

  He makes people do what he wishes them to do. Sometimes he makes the young girls cry but that is another history.

  Why does he kill you?

  The primadonna leaned back in her hammock. She studied him. She looked out at the workers in the field. After a while she turned to the man on the steps.

  Diganos, Gaspar. Por que me mata el punchinello?

  He looked up at her. He looked at the riders. Te mata, he said, porque el sabe tu secreto.

  Paff, said the primadonna. No es porque yo se el de el?

  No.

  A pesar de lo que piensa la gente?

  A pesar de cualquier.

  Y que es este secreto?

  The man raised one foot before him and turned his boot to examine it. It was a boot of black leather with lacing up the side, a kind seldom seen in that country. El secreto, he said, es que en este mundo la mascara es la que es verdadera.

  Le entendio? said the primadonna.

  He said that he understood. He asked her if that was her opinion also but she only waved one hand languidly. So says the arriero, she said. Quien sabe?

  He said it was your secret.

  Paff. I have no secret. Anyway it no longer interests me. To be killed night after night. It drains one's strength. One's powers of speculation. It is better to concentrate on small things.

  I reckon I would of thought he was just jealous.

  Yes. Of course. But even to be jealous is a test of one's strength. Jealous in Durango and again in Monclova and in Monterrey. Jealous in heat and in rain and in cold. Such a jealousy must empty out the malice of a thousand hearts, no? How is one to do this? I think it is better to make a study of smaller things. Th
en the larger will follow. In smaller things one can progress. There one's efforts are repaid. Perhaps just the attitude of the head. The movement of a hand. The arriero is only a spectator in these matters. He cannot see that for the wearer of the mask nothing is changed. The actor has no power to act but only as the world tells him. Mask or no mask is all one to him.

  She picked up the operaglasses by their stem and scanned the countryside. The road. The long shadows upon the road. And where do you go, you three? she said.

  We're down here huntin some horses that was stole.

  In whose charge were these horses?

  No one answered.

  She looked at Boyd. She spread the fan. Painted across the folded bellows of the ricepaper was a dragon with great round eyes. She folded it shut. For how long will you seek these horses? she said.

  Ever how long it takes.

  Podria ser un viaje largo.

  Quizas.

  Long voyages often lose themselves.

  Mam?

  You will see. It is difficult even for brothers to travel together on such a voyage. The road has its own reasons and no two travelers will have the same understanding of those reasons. If indeed they come to an understanding of them at all. Listen to the corridos of the country. They will tell you. Then you will see in your own life what is the cost of things. Perhaps it is true that nothing is hidden. Yet many do not wish to see what lies before them in plain sight. You will see. The shape of the road is the road. There is not some other road that wears that shape but only the one. And every voyage begun upon it will be completed. Whether horses are found or not.

  I reckon we better get on, Billy said.

  Andale pues, said the primadonna. May God go with you.

  I see this Punchinello on the road I'll tell him you're waitin on him.

  Paff, said the primadonna. Do not waste your breath.

  Adios.

  Adios.

  He looked at the man on the steps. Hasta luego, he said.

  The man nodded. Adios, he said.

  Billy reined the horse around. He looked back and touched the brim of his hat. The primadonna opened the fan in a graceful falling gesture. The arriero leaned forward with his hands on his kneecaps and tried a last time to spit upon the dog and then they all rode out across the field to the road. When he looked back at the primadonna she was watching them through the spyglasses. As if she might better assess them in that way where they set forth upon the shadowbanded road, the coming twilight. Inhabiting only that ocular ground in which the country appeared out of nothing and vanished again into nothing, tree and rock and the darkening mountains beyond, all of it contained and itself containing only what was needed and nothing more.

  THEY MADE CAMP in an oakgrove beside the river and built a fire and sat while the girl prepared their dinner out of the bounty they'd carried off from the ejido. When they'd eaten she fed the dog the scraps and washed the plates and the pot and went to see about the horses. They rode out again late the next morning and at noon they turned the horses out of the dirt roadway and took a path along the lower edge of a field of peppers and on to the trees and to the river where it shimmered quietly in the heat. The horses quickened their pace. The path turned and ran along an irrigation ditch and then descended into the trees and out again and along a growth of river willows and through a stand of cane. A cool wind was coming off the water, the white tassels of the cane bending and hissing gently in the wind. Beyond the bracken the sound of water falling.

  They came out of the canebrake at a trodden ford in the runoff from the irrigation channel. Above them was a pool where water ran from an old corrugated culvertpipe. The water spilled heavily into the pool and splashing there in the water were half a dozen boys stark naked. They saw the riders at the ford and they saw the girl but they paid them no mind.

  Damn, said Boyd.

  He clapped his heels into the horse's ribs and put it forward through the sandy shallows. He didnt look back at the girl. She was watching the boys with goodnatured interest. She looked behind at Billy and put her other arm around Boyd's waist and they rode on.

  When they reached the river she slid from the horse and took the reins and led both animals out into the water and loosed the latigo on Bird and stood with the horses while they drank. Boyd sat on the bank of the river with one of his boots in his hand.

  What's the matter? said Billy.

  Nothin.

  He limped down along the gravel bar carrying his boot and got a round rock and sat and ran his arm down into the boot and began to pound with the rock.

  You got a nail?

  Yeah.

  Tell her to bring the shotgun.

  You tell her.

  The girl was standing in the river with the horses.

  Traigame la escopeta, Billy called.

  She looked at him. She waded around to the offside of his horse and took the shotgun out of the scabbard and brought it to him. He pried off the forearm and unbreeched the gun and took out the shell and lifted away the barrel and squatted in front of Boyd.

  Here, he said. Let me have it.

  Boyd handed him the boot and he set it on the ground and reached down and felt inside for the nail and then dropped the breech end of the barrel down into the boot and pounded down the nail with the barrel lug and reached in and felt again and then handed the boot back to Boyd.

  Them things smell awful, he said.

  Boyd pulled on the boot and stood and walked up and back.

  Billy put the shotgun back together and pushed the shell into the chamber with his thumb and breeched the gun and stood it upright on the gravels and sat holding it. The girl was back out in the river with the horses.

  You reckon she seen em? Boyd said.

  Seen what?

  Them boys naked.

  He squinted up at Boyd where he stood against the sun. Well, he said, I reckon she did. She aint been struck blind since yesterday has she?

  Boyd looked out to where the girl stood in the river.

  She didnt see nothin she aint seen before, Billy said.

  What's that supposed to mean?

  It dont mean nothin.

  The hell it dont.

  It dont mean nothin. People see people naked, that's all. Dont start gettin crazy on me again. Hell. I seen that opera woman in the river naked as a jaybird.

  You never.

  The hell I didnt. She was takin a bath. She was washin her hair.

  When was all this?

  She washed her hair and wrung it out like a shirt.

  You mean buck naked?

  I mean not stitch one.

  How come you never said nothin about it?

  You dont need to know everthing.

  Boyd stood chewing his lip. You went up and talked to her, he said.

  What?

  You went up and talked to her. Just like you never seen nothin.

  Well what did you want me to do? Tell her I seen her jaybird naked and then start talkin to her?

  Boyd had squatted on the gravel spit and he took off his hat and sat holding it in both hands before him. He looked out at the passing river. You think maybe we ought to of stayed back yonder? he said.

  At the ejido?

  Yeah.

  And wait for the horses to come to us I reckon.

  He didnt answer. Billy rose and walked out along the gravel bar. The girl brought the horses up and he put the shotgun back in the scabbard and looked at Boyd.

  Are you ready to ride? he called.

  Yeah.

  He pulled the cinches on his horse and took the reins from the girl. When he looked at Boyd Boyd was still sitting there.

  What is it now? he said.

  Boyd got up slowly. It aint nothin now, he said. It aint nothin from what it was before.

  He looked at Billy. You know what I mean?

  Yeah, said Billy. I know what you mean.

  IN THREE DAYS' RIDING they reached the crossing where the old wagonroad came down out of La Nortena in t
he western sierras and crossed the high plains of the Babicora and on through the valley of the Santa Maria to Namiquipa. The days were hot and dry and the riders and their horses by each day's end were the color of the road. They'd ride the horses out across the fields to the river and Billy would throw down the saddle and bedrolls and while the girl made camp he'd take the horses downriver and strip off his boots and clothes and ride bareback into the river leading Boyd's horse by the reins and sit the horse naked save for his hat and watch the dust of the road leach away in a pale stain downstream in the clear cold water.

  The animals drank. They lifted their heads and looked out downriver. After a while an old man came through the woods on the far side driving a pair of oxen with a jockeystick. The oxen were yoked with a homemade yoke of poplar wood so whitened by the sun it seemed some ancient weathered bone they bore upon their necks. They waded out into the river with their slow rolling motion and looked upstream and down and across at the horses before they bent to drink. The old man stood at the water's edge and looked at the naked boy horseback.

  Como le va? said Billy.

  Bien, gracias a Dios, said the old man. Y a usted?

  Bien.

  They spoke of the weather. They spoke of the crops, of which the old man knew a great deal and the boy nothing. The old man asked the boy if he was a vaquero and he said he was and the old man nodded. He said that the horses were good horses. Everyone could see that. His eyes drifted upstream to where the thin blue column of smoke from their camp stood in the windless air.

  Mi hermano, said Billy.

  The old man nodded. He was dressed in the dirty white manta of that country in which the workers tended the fields like soiled inmates wandered from some ultimate Bedlam to stand at last hacking in slow and mindless rage at the earth itself. The oxen raised their dripping mouths out of the river first one and then the other. The old man tilted his stick toward them as if to bless.

  Le gustan, he said.

  Claro, said Billy.

  He watched them drink. He asked the old man if the oxen were willing workers and the old man weighed the question and then said that he did not know. He said that the oxen had no choice. He looked at the horses. Y los caballos? he said.

  The boy said he thought that horses were willing enough. He said that some horses enjoyed their work. They enjoyed working cattle. He said that horses were different from oxen.

  A kingfisher flew up the river and veered and chattered and then swung back above the river again and continued upstream. No one looked at it. The old man said that the ox was an animal close to God as all the world knew and that perhaps the silence and the rumination of the ox was something like the shadow of a greater silence, a deeper thought.