THE CROSSING

The gloom master is darker than normal in this second book of the Border Trilogy. Published in 1994, Cormac McCarthy once again takes the reader across the border into Mexico through the eyes of a young man. Has anybody ever seen Cormac smile? In a rare interview with The New York Times, Cormac stated that he is not an aficionado of authors who don’t “deal with issues of life and death.” This novel deals with those issues. He is also the master of simple declarative sentences without quotation marks. He told Oprah Winfrey, on her show in 2007, that he believes there is no reason to “blot the page up with weird little marks.” Yet, this rebel of proper grammar is consider one of the great writers of our times. Since I seem to be drawn to his novels, I can’t argue that point but many literary critics do. And what does William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White, writers of The Elements of Style, think about his prose? Not too much, I'm sure.

The story starts innocently enough with sixteen year old Billy Parham trying to trap a wolf that traveled from Mexico on to Parham’s ranch in New Mexico. The she-wolf has been destroying the livestock. Billy and his father are unsuccessful trapping the wolf until Billy gets the idea to bury the trap under a old campfire. Bingo! The wolf gets caught; but since Billy can’t pull the trigger, he decides to take the wolf back to Mexico. Billy almost completes the mission up till the time a group of Mexicans take the wolf away from Billy. The Mexicans put the wolf in a pit at a town fair. While chained to a post, the wolf is forced to fight one dog after another. Billy tries fruitlessly to save the wolf with whom he has bonded. With no options available to him, Billy shoots the wolf dead. After burying the wolf, Billy heads back to New Mexico. Cheery story so far, right? During his trek home, he runs into a man at a run-down church that tells Billy the first of three stories told by strangers in this novel. This part of the novel is unique, just as is the alternate Spanish and English lines throughout the tale. Although I don’t know Spanish, it was written so brilliantly that I knew what they were saying.

When Billy arrives at his parents ranch in New Mexico, he finds that his home is deserted. He rides into town to see the Sheriff. He is told that his parents were shot to death by two men and the six horses stolen. His brother, Boyd, got away and is staying a neighbor’s house. Billy finds Boyd, steals money, a shotgun, ammo, and food from the family. The game plan is to head back to Mexico and find the horses. All this happens early in this 426 page novel, so I’m not giving away the story. The novel explodes once the boys cross into Mexico. They will encounter many difficulties, meet a mysterious young girl, meet a strange character named Quijada on two occasions. Oh, the troubles are many. You will read the second and third story told by strangers. The second story is about a rebel who gets his eyes sucked out after being captured by the federals, and the third story is about a gypsy and two airplanes. This novel is quite a trip.

An example of Cormac’s prose are the following lines pertaining to Billy Parham: “It had ceased raining in the night and he walked out on the road and called for the dog. He called and called. Standing in that inexplicable darkness. Where there was no sound anywhere save only the wind. After a while he sat in the road. He took off his hat and placed it on the tarmac before him and he bowed his head and held his face in his hands and wept. He sat there for a long time and after a while the east did gray and after a while the right and god made sun did rise, once again, for all and without distinction.” Notice all the “ands”? This man of ‘no rules’ prose can get his point across to the reader in his own remarkable way. I highly recommend this novel.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: Three of Cormac McCarthy’s novels have been made into movies: No Country for Old Men , The Road , and All the Pretty Horses . I’m sure there will be many more.

The first novel that I read by Cormac was The Road, which I hated. Somehow, I’ve read three of his novels since, and have become a fan. Another example of Cormac’s prose that displays his writing skill is the following paragraph about evil in The Crossing: “The wicked know that if the ill they do be of sufficient horror that men will not speak against it. That men have just enough stomach for small evils and only these will they oppose. He said that true evil has power to sober the small doer against his own deeds and in the contemplation of that evil he may even find the path of righteousness which has been foreign to his feet and may have no power but to go upon it. Even this man may be appalled at what is revealed to him and seek some order to stand against it. Yet in all of this there are two things which perhaps he will not know. He will not know that while the order which the righteous seek is never righteousness itself but is only order, the disorder of evil is in fact the thing itself. Nor will he know that while the righteous are hampered at every turn by their ignorance of evil to the evil all is plain, light and dark alike. This man of which we speak will seek to impose order and lineage upon things which rightly have none. He will call upon the world itself to testify as to the truth of what are in fact but his desires. In his final incarnation he may seek to indemnify his words with blood for by now he will have discovered that words pale and lose their savor while pain is always new.” 
  
Another great line is when the she-wolf’s mate gets caught in a trap in Mexico: “She carried a scabbed over wound on her hip where her mate had bitten her two weeks before somewhere in the mountains of Sonora. He’d bitten her because she would not leave him. Standing with one forefoot in the jaws of a steel trap and snarling at her to drive her off where she lay just beyond the reach of the chain. She’d flattened her ears and whined and she would not leave. In the morning they came on horses. She watched from a slope a hundred yards away as he stood up to meet them.” Wow, this man can write.