The Crossing

by Cormac McCarthy

  La entrada es en el pecho, no?

  Si, said Billy.

  He nodded and took up the towel and soap and dipped the towel in the olla of water and soaped it and set about cleaning Boyd's back and chest, washing carefully around the poultices and under his arm. He rinsed the towel in the olla and squeezed it out and bent and wiped away the soap. The towel where he turned it was dark with grime. No estas demasiado frio? he said. Estas comodo? Bueno. Bueno.

  When he was done he laid the towel by and set the olla in the floor and leaned and took from his bag a folded towel which he laid on the chair and opened carefully with just his fingertips. Inside was a second towel cured in the autoclave and done up in a bundle fastened with tape. He gently pried loose and lifted away the tape and holding the edges delicately between thumb and finger he spread the towel open upon the chair seat. Inside were gauze squares and squares of muslin and cottonballs. Small folded towels. Rolls of cloth bandage. He lifted his hands away without touching anything and he took two small enameled pans nested together from his bag and one he laid near the bag and the other he leaned and dipped partly full of hot water from the bucket and then conveyed it carefully in both hands to the chair and set it at the edge of the chair away from the bandages. He selected from their fitted compartments in his case his tools of nickel steel. Sharpnosed scissors and forceps and hemostats some dozen in number. Boyd watched. Billy watched. He dropped the instruments into the pan and he took from the bag a small red bulb syringe and placed that in the pan and he took out a small tin of bismuth and he took out two small sticks of silver nitrate and unwrapped them from out of their foil coverings and laid them on the towel beside the pan. Then he took out a bottle of iodine and loosed the cap and passed the bottle up to the woman and he held his hands over the pan and instructed her to pour the iodine over his hands. She stepped forward and took the cap from the bottle.

  Andale, he said.

  She poured.

  Mas, he said. Un poquito mas.

  Because the outer door was open the flame in the glass fluttered and twisted and the little light that it afforded waxed and waned and threatened to expire entirely. The three of them bent over the poor pallet where the boy lay looked like ritual assassins. Bastante, the doctor said. Bueno. He held up his dripping hands. They were dyed a rusty brown. The iodine moved in the pan like marbling blood. He nodded to the woman. Ponga el resto en el agua, he said.

  She poured the remainder of the iodine into the pan and the doctor tested the water with one finger and then quickly fished a hemostat from the pan and with the hemostat he took up a packet of the muslin squares and dipped them and held them up to drain. He turned to the woman again. Bueno, he said. Quita la cataplasma.

  She put one hand to her mouth. She looked at Boyd and she looked at the doctor.

  Andale pues, he said. Esta bien.

  She blessed herself and bent and reached and took hold of the rag that bound the poultice and lifted it and slid her thumb beneath the poultice and pulled it away. It was of matted weeds and dark with blood and it came away unwillingly. Like something that had been feeding there. She stepped back and folded it from sight in the dirty sheeting. Boyd lay in the flickering light of the votive candle with a small round hole a few inches above and to the left of his left nipple. The wound was dry and crusted and palelooking. The doctor bent and swabbed it carefully with the cotton. The iodine stained Boyd's skin. Blood welled slowly in the hole and a thin line of it ran across Boyd's chest. The doctor laid a clean gauze square over the wound. They watched it slowly darken with blood. The doctor looked up at the woman.

  La otra? she said.

  Si. Por favor.

  She leaned and freed the poultice from Boyd's back with her thumb and lifted it away. Larger, blacker, uglier. Beneath it was a ragged hole that yawned redly. About it the flesh was crusted with scale and blackened blood. The doctor placed a sheaf of the gauze squares over the wound and placed a square of muslin over them and pressed upon it with the tips of his fingers and held it there. Slowly the cloth darkened. The doctor placed more patches. A thin trickle of blood ran down Boyd's back. The doctor swabbed it up and pressed again with the tips of his fingers against the wound.

  When the bleeding had stopped he took a cloth and dipped in the iodine solution in the pan and while he held the packing against the wound in the boy's back he set to cleaning closely about both wounds. He dropped the soiled swabs in the dry tray beside him and when he was done he pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose with the back of his wrist and looked at Billy.

  Take his hand, he said.

  Mande?

  Take his hand.

  No se si me va permitir.

  El te permite.

  He sat on the edge of the pallet and took hold of Boyd's hand and Boyd clasped it in his grip.

  Do your damndest, Boyd whispered.

  Que dice?

  Nada, said Billy. Andale.

  The doctor took a sterile cloth and wrapped it around the little flashlight and turned the flashlight on and picked it up and put it in his mouth. Then he dropped the cloth into the pan with the swabs and leaned and took a hemostat from the pan and bent over Boyd and gently lifted away the pads from the exit wound and trained his light upon it. The blood was already beginning to well anew and he placed the hemostat in the wound and snapped it shut.

  Boyd bowed and threw his head back but he did not cry out. The doctor took another hemostat from the pan and he dabbed up the blood with a cloth patch and studied the wound with the light and then clamped again. The tendons in Boyd's neck shone taut in the lamplight. The doctor gripped the flashlight in his teeth. Unos pocos minutos mas, he said. Unos pocos minutos.

  He placed two more hemostats and then he took the red bulb syringe from the pan and filled it with the solution and he instructed the woman to take the towel and hold it against the boy's back. Then he slowly flooded the wound. He cleaned the wound with a swab and flooded it again washing out clots of blood and bits of matter. He reached into the pan with his hand and brought up a hemostat and clamped it in place.

  Pobrecito, said the woman.

  Unos pocos minutos mas, said the doctor.

  He flooded the wound out once again with the syringe and he took up one of the sticks of silver nitrate and with a muslin swab held in a hemostat in one hand he cleaned away clots and debris while with the other he cauterized with the silver nitrate. The silver nitrate left pale gray tracks in the tissue. He clamped one more hemostat and again flooded the wound. The woman doubled the towel against Boyd's back and held it. With the forceps the doctor picked out something small from the wound and held it to the light. It was about the size of a grain of wheat and he held it and turned it in the small cone of light.

  Que es eso? Billy said.

  The doctor leaned with the flashlight in his teeth so that the boy could see better. Plomo, he said. But it was a small chip flaked off from Boyd's sixth rib and he was referring to the faint metal coloring along the conchoidal edge of the bone. He laid it on the towel together with the forceps and with his forefinger he felt along Boyd's ribs from front to back. He watched Boyd's face while he did so. Te duele? he said. Alla? Alla? Boyd lay with his face turned away. He sounded as if he could hardly breathe.

  The doctor took a pair of small sharpnosed scissors from the pan and glanced at Billy and then began to snip away the dead tissue along the edges of the wound. Billy reached and took Boyd's hand in both of his.

  Le interesa el perro, the doctor said.

  Billy looked toward the door. The dog sat watching them. Git, he said.

  Esta bien, the doctor said. No lo molesta. Es de su hermano, no?

  Si.

  The doctor nodded.

  When he was done he instructed the woman to hold the towel beneath the wound in the boy's chest and then he flooded and cleaned it also. He flooded it again and he probed it with a swab. Finally he sat back and took the flashlight from his mouth and laid it on the towel and looked at
Billy.

  Es un muchacho muy valiente, he said.

  Es grave? said Billy.

  Es grave, the doctor said. Pero no es muy grave.

  Que seria muy grave?

  The doctor adjusted his spectacles, pushing them back again with his wrist. It had grown cold in the room. You could see very faintly the doctor's breath plume and lapse in the lapsing light. A light bead of sweat lay across his forehead. He made the sign of the cross in the air before him. Eso, he said. Eso es muy grave.

  He reached and took up the flashlight again, holding it in one of the muslin squares. He put it in his teeth and took up the bulb and refilled it and laid it by and then slowly unclamped the first of the hemostats that lay in a circle of hardware about the wound in Boyd's back. He drew it away very slowly. Then he unclamped the next.

  He took up the bulb and gently washed the wound and swabbed it and took up the silver nitrate stick and gently touched it in the wound. He worked from the top of the wound downward. When he had removed the last hemostat and dropped it into the pan he sat for a moment with both hands over Boyd's back as if exhorting him to heal. Then he took up the tin of bismuth and unscrewed the lid and held it over the wounds and shook the white powder over them.

  He laid gauze squares on the wounds and over the wound in the boy's back he placed a small clean towel from among his sterile dressings and he taped them down and then he and Billy eased Boyd up and the doctor quickly wrapped him about with a roll of cloth bandaging, passing the roll under his arms, until he reached the end of it. He fastened the end with two small steel clamps and they pulled Boyd's jumper back over him and eased him down again. His head lolled and he sucked a long rasping breath.

  Fue muy afortunado, the doctor said.

  Como?

  Que no se le han punzando los pulmones. Que no se le ha quebrado la gran arteria cual era muy cerca de la direccion de la bala. Pero sobre todo que no hay ni gran infeccion. Muy afortunado.

  He wrapped his instruments in the towel and placed them in his bag and he emptied the basins into the bucket and swabbed them out and put them away and closed the bag. He rinsed and dried his hands and stood and took his cufflinks from his pocket and rolled down his sleeves and fastened them. He told the woman that he would return the following day and change the dressings and that he would leave the supplies with her and show her how he wished it to be done. He said that the boy must drink plenty of water. That they must keep him warm. Then he handed Billy his bag and turned and the woman helped him on with his coat and he took his hat and thanked her for her help and ducked out through the low door.

  Billy followed him out with the bag and intercepted the doctor coming around to the front of the car with the crank. He handed him the bag and took the crank from him. Permitame, he said.

  He bent in the dark and found the slot in the radiator grill with his fingers and fitted the crank and pushed it into the socket. Then he stood and swung the crank. The motor started and the doctor nodded. Bueno, he said. He stepped back along the fender and idled down the throttle and turned and took the crankhandle from Billy and bent and stowed it under the seat.

  Gracias, he said.

  A usted.

  The doctor nodded. He looked toward the doorway where the woman stood and he looked again at Billy. He took a cigarette from his pocket and put it in his mouth.

  Se queda con su hermano, he said.

  Si. Acepte el caballo, por favor.

  The doctor said that he would not. He said that he would send his mozo with the horse in the morning. He looked at the sky to the east where the first gray light was shaping out the roofline of the hacienda from the accommodate darkness. Ya es de manana, he said. Viene la madrugada.

  Yes, said Billy.

  Stay with your brother. I will send the horse.

  Then he climbed into the car and pulled shut the door and switched on the lights. There was nothing to see yet the ejiditarios had come to their doorways all down the wall of dwellings, men and women pale in the lights, pale in their clothes of unbleached cotton, children clutching at their knees and all of them watching while the car trundled slowly past and swung around in the compound and went out and down the road with the dogs running alongside howling and leaning to nip at the softly rumpling tires where they turned on the clay.

  *

  WHEN BOYD AWOKE late in the morning Billy was sitting there and when he woke midday and when he woke again in the evening he was there. He sat nodding and tottering on into the twilight and he was surprised to hear his name called.

  Billy?

  He opened his eyes. He leaned forward.

  I dont have no water.

  Let me get it. Where's the glass?

  Right here. Billy?

  What?

  You got to go to Namiquipa.

  I aint goin nowheres.

  She'll think we just ditched her.

  I caint leave you.

  I'll be all right.

  I caint go off down there and leave you.

  Yeah you can.

  You need somebody to look after you.

  Listen, Boyd said. I've done got over all that. Go on like I asked you. You was worried about the horse anyways.

  The mozo arrived at noon the day following riding a burro and leading Nino on a rope halter. The workers were in the fields and he rode across the bridge and up past the row of their habitations calling out as he went for senor Paramo. Billy went out and the mozo halted the burro and nodded to him. Su caballo, he said.

  He looked at the horse. The horse had been fed and curried and watered and rested and looked another horse altogether and he told the mozo so. The mozo nodded easily and undallied the end of the halter rope from the horn of his saddle and slid from the burro.

  Por que no montaba el caballo? Billy said.

  The mozo shrugged. He said that it was not his horse to ride.

  Quiere montarlo?

  He shrugged again. He stood with the halter rope.

  Billy stepped to the horse and unlooped the bridlereins from the saddlehorn where they'd been hung and bridled the horse and let the reins fall and slid the halter off Nino's neck.

  Andale, he said.

  The mozo coiled the rope and hung it over the horn of the burro's saddle and walked around the horse and patted him and took up the reins and stepped into the stirrup and swung up. He turned the horse and rode out down the paseo between the row houses and put the horse into a trot and rode up the hill past the hacienda and turned there for he would not take the horse out of sight. He backed the horse and turned it and rode a few figure eights and then galloped the horse down the hill and stopped it in a sliding squat before the door and stepped down all in one motion.

  Le gusta? said Billy.

  Claro que si, said the mozo. He leaned and put the flat of his hand on the horse's neck and then nodded and turned and climbed aboard the burro and rode out down the paseo without looking back.

  IT WAS ALMOST DARK when he left. The Munoz woman tried to have him wait until morning but he would not. The doctor had arrived in the late afternoon and he had left the dressings for the woman and a package of epsom salts and the woman had fixed Boyd a tea made from manzanilla and arnica and the root of the golondrina bush. She'd put up provisions for Billy in an old canvas moral and he slung it over the horn of the saddle and mounted up and turned the horse and looked down at her.

  Donde esta la pistola? he said.

  She said that it was under the pillow beneath his brother's head. He nodded. He looked out down the road toward the bridge and the river and he looked at her again. He asked her if any men had been to the ejido.

  Si, she said. Dos veces.

  He nodded again. Es peligroso para ustedes.

  She shrugged. She said that life was dangerous. She said that for a man of the people there was no choice.

  He smiled. Mi hermano es un hombre del pueblo?

  Si, she said. Claro.

  He rode south along the road through the riverside cot
tonwoods, riding through the town of Mata Ortiz and riding the moon up out of the west to its cool meridian before he turned off and put up for the remainder of the night in a grove of trees he'd skylighted from the road. He rolled himself in his serape and hung his hat over the tops of his standing boots and did not wake till daylight.

  He rode all day the day following. Few cars passed and he saw no riders. In the evening the truck that had carried his brother to San Diego came lumbering down the road from the north in a slow uncoiling of road dust and ground to a stop. The workers on the bed of the truck waved and called out to him and he rode up and pushed his hat back on his head and held up his hand to them. They gathered along the edge of the truckbed and held out their hands and he leaned from the horse and shook hands with them every man. They said that it was dangerous for him to be on the road. They did not ask about Boyd and when he began to tell them they waved away his words for they had been to see him that very day. They said that he had eaten and that he'd drunk a small glass of pulque for the vigor in it and that all signs were of the most affirmative nature. They said that only the hand of the Virgin could have sustained him through such a terrible wound. Herida tan grave, they said. Tan horrible. Herida tan fea.

  They spoke of his brother lying with the pistol under his pillow and spoke in a high whisper. Tan joven, they said. Tan valiente. Y peligroso por todo eso. Como el tigre herido en su cueva.

  Billy looked at them. He looked out across the cooling country to the west, the long bands of shadow. Doves were calling from the acacias. The workers believed that his brother had killed the manco in a gunfight in the streets of Boquilla y Anexas. That the manco had fired upon him without provocation and what folly for the manco who had not reckoned upon the great heart of the guerito. They pressed him for details. How the guerito had risen from his blood in the dust to draw his pistol and shoot the manco dead from his horse. They addressed Billy with great reverence and they asked him how it was that he and his brother had set out upon their path of justice.