The Crossing

by Cormac McCarthy

The doctor's name was Moir and his office was out on West Pine. By the time he got there there were half a dozen people waiting, mostly young men and boys sitting holding their recruiting forms. He gave his name to the nurse at the desk and sat in a chair and waited along with the others.

  When the nurse finally called his name he was asleep and he jerked awake and looked around and he didnt know where he was.

  Parham, she said again.

  He stood up. That's me, he said.

  The nurse handed him a form and he stood in the hallway while she held a card over his eye and told him to read the chart on the wall. He read it to the bottom letter and she tested the other eye.

  You got good eyes, she said.

  Yes mam, he said. I always did.

  Well I guess so, she said. You dont normally start out with bad ones and they get better.

  When he went into the doctor's office the doctor had him sit in a chair and he looked in his eyes with a flashlight and he put a cold instrument in his ear and looked in there. He told him to unbutton his shirt.

  You came here horseback, he said.

  Yessir.

  Where did you come from.

  Mexico.

  I see. Have you got any history of disease in your family?

  No sir. They're all dead.

  I see, the doctor said.

  He put the cool cone of the stethoscope against the boy's chest and listened. He thumped his chest with the tips of his fingers. He put the stethoscope to his chest again and listened with his eyes closed. He sat up and took the tubes from his ears and leaned back in his chair. You've got a heartmurmur, he said.

  What does that mean?

  It means you wont be joining the army.

  He worked for a stable out on the highway for ten days and slept in a stall until he had money for clothes and for the busfare to El Paso and he left the horse with the owner of the lot and set out east in a new duckingcloth workcoat and a new blue shirt with pearl buttons.

  It was a cold and blustery day in El Paso. He found the recruiting office and the clerk filled out the same forms over again and he stood in line with a number of men and they undressed and put their clothes in a basket and were given a brass chit with a number on it and then they stood in line naked holding their papers.

  When he reached the examining station he handed the doctor his medical form and the doctor looked in his mouth and into his ears. Then he put the stethoscope to his chest. He told him to turn around and he put the stethoscope to his back and listened. Then he listened to his chest again. Then he picked up a stamp from the desk and stamped Billy's form and signed it and picked up the form and handed it to him.

  I cant pass you, he said.

  What's wrong with me.

  You've got an irregularity in your heartbeat.

  There aint nothin wrong with my heart.

  Yes there is.

  Will I die?

  Sometime. It's probably not all that serious. But it will keep you out of the army.

  You could pass me if you wanted to.

  I could. But I wont. They'd find it somewhere down the line anyway. Sooner or later.

  It was not yet noon when he walked out and down San Antonio Street. He went down South El Paso Street to the Splendid Cafe and ate the plate lunch and walked back to the bus station and he was in Deming again before dark.

  In the morning when he walked up the barn bay Mr Chandler was sorting through tack in the saddleroom. He looked up. Well, he said. Did you get in the army?

  No sir, I didnt. They turned me down.

  Well I'm sorry to hear it.

  Yessir. I am too.

  What do you aim to do?

  I'm goin to try em in Albuquerque.

  Son they got a awful lot of recruitin offices set up all over the country. A man could make a career out of it.

  I know it. I'm goin to try it one more time.

  He worked on to the end of the week and drew his pay and took the bus out on Sunday morning. He was all day on the road. Night set in just north of Socorro and the sky was filled with flights of waterfowl circling and dropping in to the river marshlands east of the highway. He watched with his face to the cold and darkening glass of the window. He listened for their cries but he could not hear them above the drone of the bus.

  He slept at the YMCA and he was at the recruiting office when they opened in the morning and he was on the bus south again before noon. He'd asked the doctor if there was any medicine he could take but the doctor said that there was not. He asked if there was something you could take that would make it run all right just for a while.

  Where are you from, the doctor said.

  Cloverdale New Mexico.

  How many different recruiting offices have you tried to enlist at?

  This makes the third one.

  Son, even if we did have a deaf doctor we wouldnt put him to listening to recruits with a stethoscope. I think you need to just go on home.

  I dont have one to go to.

  I thought you said you were from somethingdale. Where was it?

  Cloverdale.

  Cloverdale.

  I was but I aint no more. I dont have anyplace to go. I think I need to be in the army. If I'm goin to die anyways why not use me? I aint afraid.

  I wish I could, the doctor said. But I cant. It's not up to me. I have to follow regulations like everybody else. We turn away good men every day.

  Yessir.

  Who told you you were going to die?

  I dont know. They never told me I wasnt goin to.

  Well, the doctor said. They couldnt very well tell you that even if you had a heart like a horse. Could they?

  No sir. I reckon not.

  Go on now.

  Sir?

  Go on now.

  When the bus pulled into the lot behind the bus station at Deming it was three oclock in the morning. He walked out to Chandler's and went to the saddleroom and got his saddle and went to the stall and led Nino out into the bay and threw the saddleblanket over him. It was very cold. The barn was oak batboards and he could see the horse's breath pass across the slats lit from the single yellow bulb outside. The groom Ruiz came and stood in the door with his blanket around his shoulders. He watched while Billy saddled the horse. He asked him if he had succeeded in joining the army.

  No, Billy said.

  Lo siento.

  Yo tambien.

  Adonde va?

  No se.

  Regresa a Mexico? No.

  Ruiz nodded. Buen viaje, he said.

  Gracias.

  He led the horse out down the barn bay and through the door and mounted up and rode out.

  He rode through the town and took the old road south to Hermanas and Hachita. The horse was newly shod and in good plight from the grain it had been fed on and he rode the sun up and he rode all day and rode it down again and rode on into the night. He slept on the high plain wrapped in his blanket and rose shivering before dawn and rode on again. He quit the road just west of Hachita and rode through the foothills of the Little Hatchet Mountains and struck the railroad coming out of the Phelps Dodge smelter to the south and crossed the tracks and reached the shallow salt lake at sunset.

  There was water standing in the flats as far as he could see and the sunset on the water had turned it to a lake of blood. He tried to put the horse forward but the horse could not see across the lake and balked and would not go. He turned and rode south along the flats. Gillespie Mountain lay covered in snow and beyond that the Animas Peaks standing in the last of that day's sun with the snow lying red in the rincons. And far to the south the pale and ancient cordilleras of Mexico impounding the visible world. He came to the remnants of an old fence and dismounted and twisted out the staples from some of the spindly posts and made a fire and sat with his boots crossed before him staring into it. The horse stood in the dark at the edge of the fire and gazed bleakly at the barren salt ground. It's your own doin, the boy said. I got no sympathy for you.

 
They crossed the flat shallow lake in the morning and before noon they struck the old Playas road and followed it west into the mountains. There was snow in the pass and not a track in it. They rode down into the beautiful Animas Valley and took the road south from Animas and reached the Sanders ranch about two hours past nightfall.

  He called from the gate and the girl came out on the porch.

  It's Billy Parham, he called.

  Who?

  Billy Parham.

  Come up Billy Parham, she called.

  When he entered the parlor Mr Sanders stood. He was older, smaller, more frail. Get in this house, he said.

  I'm awful dirty to come in.

  You come on in. We thought you'd died. No sir.

  Not yet I aint.

  The old man shook his hand and held it. He was looking past him toward the door. Where's that Boyd at? he said.

  They ate in the diningroom. The girl served them and then sat down. They ate roast beef and potatoes and beans and the girl passed him a bread dish covered with a linen cloth and he took a piece of cornbread and buttered it. This is awful good, he said.

  She's a good cook, the old man said. I hope she dont decide to get married and quit me. If I had to cook for myself the cats'd leave.

  Oh Grandaddy, the girl said.

  They wanted to put Miller four-F too, the old man said. On account of his leg. They took him up at Albuquerque. They run em through up there I reckon in wholesale lots.

  They didnt me. Are they goin to put him in the cavalry?

  I dont think so. I dont think they're even goin to have one.

  He looked out across the table, chewing slowly. In the yellow light of the pressed glass chandelier the old photographs and portraits above the sideboard seemed like artifacts salvaged from some ancient removal. Even the old man seemed distant from them. From the sepia-tinted buildings, the old shake roofs. The people on horseback. Men sitting among cardboard cactus in a photographer's studio in suits and ties with the legs of their breeches stogged into their boottops and rifles standing upright before them. The antique dresses of the women. The wary or haunted cast to their eyes. Like people photographed at gunpoint.

  That's John Slaughter in that picture at the end yonder.

  Which one?

  That last one on the top right under Miller's certificate. That was took in front of his house.

  Who's the indian girl?

  That's Apache May. They brought her back from a indian camp they raided, bunch of Apaches been stealin cattle. Eighteen ninety-five or six, somewheres in there. He may have killed some of em. He come back with her, she was just a little thing. She was wearin a dress made from an election poster and he took her and raised her as his own. He was just crazy about her. She died in a fire not long after that picture was took.

  Did you know him?

  I did. I worked for him at one time.

  Did you ever kill a indian?

  No. I come near it a time or two. Some that worked for me.

  Who is that on the mule?

  That's James Autry. He didnt care what he rode.

  Who's that with the lion on the packhorse?

  The old man shook his head. I know his name, he said. But I cant say it.

  He drained his coffee and rose and got his cigarettes and an ashtray from the sideboard. The ashtray was from the Chicago World's Fair and it was cast from potmetal and it said 1833--1933. It said A Century of Progress. Let's go in here, he said.

  They went in the parlor. There was a paneled oak pumporgan against the wall where they passed through from the diningroom. A lace throw on top of it. A framed handtinted portrait of the old man's wife as a young woman.

  That thing dont play, the old man said. Aint nobody to play it noway.

  My grandmama used to play one, Billy said. In the church.

  Women used to play music. Anymore you just turn on a victrola.

  He bent and opened the stove door with the poker and poked the fire up and put another split log in and shut the door.

  They sat and the old man told him stories about rawhiding cattle in Mexico as a young man and about Villa's raid on Columbus New Mexico in nineteen sixteen and about sheriff's posses tracking badmen down into the bootheel as they fled toward the border and about the drought and die-up of eighty-six and trailing north the corriente cattle that they'd bought for next to nothing up out of that stricken ground across the high parched plains. Cattle so poor the old man said that at evening crossing before the sun where it burned upon the western desert shore you could all but see through them.

  What do you aim to do? he said.

  I dont know. Try and hire on somewheres I reckon.

  We're about shut down here altogether.

  Yessir. I wasnt askin.

  This war, the old man said. There's no way to calculate what's to come.

  No sir. I dont reckon there is.

  The old man tried to get him to stay the night but he would not. They stood on the porch. It was cold and the prairie all about lay in a deep silence. The horse nickered at them from the gate.

  You'd do just as well to start fresh in the mornin, the old man said.

  I know it. I just need to get on.

  Well.

  I like ridin of a night anyways.

  Yes, the old man said. I always did. You take care, son.

  Yessir. I will. Thank you.

  HE CAMPED THAT NIGHT on the broad Animas Plain and the wind blew in the grass and he slept on the ground wrapped in the serape and in the wool blanket the old man had given him. He built a small fire but he had little wood and the fire died in the night and he woke and watched the winter stars slip their hold and race to their deaths in the darkness. He could hear the horse step in its hobbles and hear the grass rip softly in the horse's mouth and hear it breathing or the toss of its tail and he saw far to the south beyond the Hatchet Mountains the flare of lightning over Mexico and he knew that he would not be buried in this valley but in some distant place among strangers and he looked out to where the grass was running in the wind under the cold starlight as if it were the earth itself hurtling headlong and he said softly before he slept again that the one thing he knew of all things claimed to be known was that there was no certainty to any of it. Not just the coming of war. Anything at all.

  He went to work for the Hashknives except that it wasnt the Hashknives any more. They sent him out to a linecamp on the Little Colorado. In three months he saw three other human beings. When he got paid in March he went to the post office in Winslow and sent a money order to Mr Sanders for the twenty dollars he owed him and he went to a bar on First Street and sat on a stool and pushed back his hat with his thumb and ordered a beer.

  What kind of beer you want? the barman said.

  Just any kind. It dont matter.

  You aint old enough to drink beer.

  Then why did you ask me what kind I wanted?

  It dont matter cause I aint servin you.

  What kind is he drinkin?

  The man down the bar that he'd nodded to studied him. This is a draft, son, he said. Just tell em you want a draft.

  Yessir. Thank you.

  Dont mention it.

  He walked up the street and went in the next bar and sat on a stool. The barman wandered down and stood before him.

  Give me a draft.

  He went back down the bar and pulled the beer into a round glass mug and came back and set it on the bar. Billy put a dollar on the bar and the barman went to the cash register and rang it up and came back and clapped down seventy-five cents.

  Where you from? he said.

  Down around Cloverdale. I been workin for the Hashknives.

  There aint no Hashknives. Babbitts sold it.

  Yeah. I know it.

  Sold it to a sheepherder.

  Yeah.

  What do you think of that?

  I dont know.

  Well I do.

  Billy looked down the bar. It was empty save for a soldier who looked
drunk. The soldier was watching him.

  They never sold him the brand though, did they? the barman said.

  No.

  No. So there aint no Hashknives.

  You want to flip for the jukebox? the soldier said.

  Billy looked at him. No, he said. I wouldnt care to.

  Set there then.

  I aim to.

  Is there somethin wrong with that beer? the barman said.

  No. I dont reckon. Do you get a lot of complaints?

  I just noticed you aint drinkin it is all.

  Billy looked at the beer. He looked down the length of the bar. The soldier had turned slightly and was sitting with one hand on his knee. As if he might be deciding whether or not to get up.

  I just thought there might be somethin wrong with it, the barman said.

  Well I dont reckon there is, Billy said. But if there is I'll let you know.

  You got a cigarette? the soldier said.

  I dont smoke.

  You dont smoke.

  No.

  The barman fished a pack of Lucky Strikes from his shirtpocket and palmed them onto the bar and slid them down to the soldier. There you go, soldier, he said.

  Thanks, the soldier said. He shook a cigarette upright in the pack and pulled it free with his mouth and took a lighter from his pocket and lit the cigarette and put the lighter on the bar and slid the pack of cigarettes back to the barman. What's that in your pocket? he said.

  Who are you talkin to? said Billy.

  The soldier blew smoke down the bar. Talkin to you, he said.

  Well, said Billy. I reckon its my business what I got in my pocket.

  The soldier didnt answer. He sat smoking. The barman reached and got the cigarettes from the bar and took one and lit it and put the pack back in his shirtpocket. He stood leaning against the backbar with his arms crossed and the smoldering cigarette in his fingers. No one spoke. They seemed to be waiting for someone to arrive.

  Do you know how old I am? the barman said.

  Billy looked at him. No, he said. How would I know how old you are?

  I'll be thirty-eight years old in June. June fourteenth.

  Billy didnt answer.

  That's how come I aint in uniform.

  Billy looked at the soldier. The soldier sat smoking.

  I tried to enlist, the barman said. Tried to lie about my age but they wasnt havin none of it.

  He dont care, the soldier said. Uniform dont mean nothin to him.

  The barman pulled on his cigarette and blew smoke toward the bar. I'll bet it'd mean somethin if it had that risin sun on the collar and they was comin down Second Street about ten abreast. I bet it'd mean somethin then.

  Billy picked up the beermug and drank it dry and set it back on the bar and stood up and pulled his hat forward and looked a last time at the soldier and turned and went out into the street.