Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West Read online

  Where's Sidney? said the man in his suit of mud.

  In the bed I reckon.

  They went on.

  Toadvine, called the barman.

  The kid looked back.

  The barman had come from behind the bar and was looking after them. They crossed from the door through the lobby of the hotel toward the stairs leaving varied forms of mud behind them on the floor. As they started up the stairs the clerk at the desk leaned and called to them.

  Toadvine.

  He stopped and looked back.

  He'll shoot you.

  Old Sidney?

  Old Sidney.

  They went on up the stairs.

  At the top of the landing was a long hall with a windowlight at the end. There were varnished doors down the walls set so close they might have been closets. Toadvine went on until he came to the end of the hall. He listened at the last door and he eyed the kid.

  You got a match?

  The kid searched his pockets and came up with a crushed and stained wooden box.

  The man took it from him. Need a little tinder here, he said. He was crumbling the box and stacking the bits against the door. He struck a match and set the pieces alight. He pushed the little pile of burning wood under the door and added more matches.

  Is he in there? said the boy.

  That's what we're fixin to see.

  A dark curl of smoke rose, a blue flame of burning varnish. They squatted in the hallway and watched. Thin flames began to run up over the panels and dart back again. The watchers looked like forms excavated from a bog.

  Tap on the door now, said Toadvine.

  The kid rose. Toadvine stood up and waited. They could hear the flames crackling inside the room. The kid tapped.

  You better tap louder than that. This man drinks some.

  He balled his fist and lambasted the door about five times.

  Hell fire, said a voice.

  Here he comes.

  They waited.

  You hot son of a bitch, said the voice. Then the knob turned and the door opened.

  He stood in his underwear holding in one hand the towel he'd used to turn the doorknob with. When he saw them he turned and started back into the room but Toadvine seized him about the neck and rode him to the floor and held him by the hair and began to pry out an eyeball with his thumb. The man grabbed his wrist and bit it.

  Kick his mouth in, called Toadvine. Kick it.

  The kid stepped past them into the room and turned and kicked the man in the face. Toadvine held his head back by the hair.

  Kick him, he called. Aw, kick him, honey.

  He kicked.

  Toadvine pulled the bloody head around and looked at it and let it flop to the floor and he rose and kicked the man himself. Two spectators were standing in the hallway. The door was completely afire and part of the wall and ceiling. They went out and down the hall. The clerk was coming up the steps two at a time.

  Toadvine you son of a bitch, he said.

  Toadvine was four steps above him and when he kicked him he caught him in the throat. The clerk sat down on the stairs. When the kid came past he hit him in the side of the head and the clerk slumped over and began to slide toward the landing. The kid stepped over him and went down to the lobby and crossed to the front door and out.

  Toadvine was running down the street, waving his fists above his head crazily and laughing. He looked like a great clay voodoo doll made animate and the kid looked like another. Behind them flames were licking at the top corner of the hotel and clouds of dark smoke rose into the warm Texas morning.

  He'd left the mule with a Mexican family that boarded animals at the edge of town and he arrived there wildlooking and out of breath. The woman opened the door and looked at him.

  Need to get my mule, he wheezed.

  She looked at him some more, then she called toward the back of the house. He walked around. There were horses tethered in the lot and there was a flatbed wagon against the fence with some turkeys sitting on the edge looking out. The old lady had come to the back door. Nito, she called. Venga. Hay un caballero aqui. Venga.

  He went down the shed to the tackroom and got his wretched saddle and his blanketroll and brought them back. He found the mule and unstalled it and bridled it with the rawhide hackamore and led it to the fence. He leaned against the animal with his shoulder and got the saddle over it and got it cinched, the mule starting and shying and running its head along the fence. He led it across the lot. The mule kept shaking its head sideways as if it had something in its ear.

  He led it out to the road. As he passed the house the woman came padding out after him. When she saw him put his foot in the stirrup she began to run. He swung up into the broken saddle and chucked the mule forward. She stopped at the gate and watched him go. He didnt look back.

  When he passed back through the town the hotel was burning and men were standing around watching it, some holding empty buckets. A few men sat horseback watching the flames and one of these was the judge. As the kid rode past the judge turned and watched him. He turned the horse, as if he'd have the animal watch too. When the kid looked back the judge smiled. The kid touched up the mule and they went sucking out past the old stone fort along the road west.

  II

  Across the prairie - A hermit - A nigger's heart - A stormy night - Westward again - Cattle drovers - Their kindness - On the trail again - The deadcart - San Antonio de Bexar - A Mexican cantina - Another fight - The abandoned church - The dead in the sacristy - At the ford - Bathing in the river.

  Now come days of begging, days of theft. Days of riding where there rode no soul save he. He's left behind the pinewood country and the evening sun declines before him beyond an endless swale and dark falls here like a thunderclap and a cold wind sets the weeds to gnashing. The night sky lies so sprent with stars that there is scarcely space of black at all and they fall all night in bitter arcs and it is so that their numbers are no less.

  He keeps from off the king's road for fear of citizenry. The little prairie wolves cry all night and dawn finds him in a grassy draw where he'd gone to hide from the wind. The hobbled mule stands over him and watches the east for light.

  The sun that rises is the color of steel. His mounted shadow falls for miles before him. He wears on his head a hat he's made from leaves and they have dried and cracked in the sun and he looks like a raggedyman wandered from some garden where he'd used to frighten birds.

  Come evening he tracks a spire of smoke rising oblique from among the low hills and before dark he hails up at the doorway of an old anchorite nested away in the sod like a groundsloth. Solitary, half mad, his eyes redrimmed as if locked in their cages with hot wires. But a ponderable body for that. He watched wordless while the kid eased down stiffly from the mule. A rough wind was blowing and his rags flapped about him.

  Seen ye smoke, said the kid. Thought you might spare a man a sup of water.

  The old hermit scratched in his filthy hair and looked at the ground. He turned and entered the hut and the kid followed.

  Inside darkness and a smell of earth. A small fire burned on the dirt floor and the only furnishings were a pile of hides in one corner. The old man shuffled through the gloom, his head bent to clear the low ceiling of woven limbs and mud. He pointed down to where a bucket stood in the dirt. The kid bent and took up the gourd floating there and dipped and drank. The water was salty, sulphurous. He drank on.

  You reckon I could water my old mule out there?

  The old man began to beat his palm with one fist and dart his eyes about.

  Be proud to fetch in some fresh. Just tell me where it's at.

  What ye aim to water him with?

  The kid looked at the bucket and he looked around in the dim hut.

  I aint drinkin after no mule, said the hermit.

  Have you not got no old bucket nor nothin?

  No, cried the hermit. No. I aint. He was clapping the heels of his clenched fists together at his chest.

>   The kid rose and looked toward the door. I'll find somethin, he said. Where's the well at?

  Up the hill, foller the path.

  It's nigh too dark to see out here.

  It's a deep path. Foller ye feet. Foller ye mule. I caint go.

  He stepped out into the wind and looked about for the mule but the mule wasnt there. Far to the south lightning flared soundlessly. He went up the path among the thrashing weeds and found the mule standing at the well.

  A hole in the sand with rocks piled about it. A piece of dry hide for a cover and a stone to weight it down. There was a rawhide bucket with a rawhide bail and a rope of greasy leather. The bucket had a rock tied to the bail to help it tip and fill and he lowered it until the rope in his hand went slack while the mule watched over his shoulder.

  He drew up three bucketfuls and held them so the mule would not spill them and then he put the cover back over the well and led the mule back down the path to the hut.

  I thank ye for the water, he called.

  The hermit appeared darkly in the door. Just stay with me, he said.

  That's all right.

  Best stay. It's fixin to storm.

  You reckon?

  I reckon and I reckon right.

  Well.

  Bring ye bed. Bring ye possibles.

  He uncinched and threw down the saddle and hobbled the mule foreleg to rear and took his bedroll in. There was no light save the fire and the old man was squatting by it tailorwise.

  Anywheres, anywheres, he said. Where's ye saddle at?

  The kid gestured with his chin.

  Dont leave it out yonder somethin'll eat it. This is a hungry country.

  He went out and ran into the mule in the dark. It had been standing looking in at the fire.

  Get away, fool, he said. He took up the saddle and went back in.

  Now pull that door to fore we blow away, said the old man.

  The door was a mass of planks on leather hinges. He dragged it across the dirt and fastened it by its leather latch.

  I take it ye lost your way, said the hermit.

  No, I went right to it.

  He waved quickly with his hand, the old man. No, no, he said. I mean ye was lost to of come here. Was they a sandstorm? Did ye drift off the road in the night? Did thieves beset ye?

  The kid pondered this. Yes, he said We got off the road someways or another.

  Knowed ye did.

  How long you been out here?

  Out where?

  The kid was sitting on his blanketroll across the fire from the old man. Here, he said. In this place.

  The old man didnt answer. He turned his head suddenly aside and seized his nose between his thumb and forefinger and blew twin strings of snot onto the floor and wiped his fingers on the seam of his jeans. I come from Mississippi. I was a slaver, dont care to tell it. Made good money. I never did get caught. Just got sick of it. Sick of niggers. Wait till I show ye somethin.

  He turned and rummaged among the hides and handed through the flames a small dark thing. The kid turned it in his hand. Some man's heart, dried and blackened. He passed it back and the old man cradled it in his palm as if he'd weigh it.

  They is four things that can destroy the earth, he said. Women, whiskey, money, and niggers.

  They sat in silence. The wind moaned in the section of stovepipe that was run through the roof above them to quit the place of smoke. After a while the old man put the heart away.

  That thing costed me two hundred dollars, he said.

  You give two hundred dollars for it?

  I did, for that was the price they put on the black son of a bitch it hung inside of.

  He stirred about in the corner and came up with an old dark brass kettle, lifted the cover and poked inside with one finger. The remains of one of the lank prairie hares interred in cold grease and furred with a light blue mold. He clamped the lid back on the kettle and set it in the flames. Aint much but we'll go shares, he said.

  I thank ye.

  Lost ye way in the dark, said the old man. He stirred the fire, standing slender tusks of bone up out of the ashes.

  The kid didnt answer.

  The old man swung his head back and forth. The way of the transgressor is hard. God made this world, but he didnt make it to suit everbody, did he?

  I dont believe he much had me in mind.

  Aye, said the old man. But where does a man come by his notions. What world's he seen that he liked better?

  I can think of better places and better ways.

  Can ye make it be?

  No.

  No. It's a mystery. A man's at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with. He can know his heart, but he dont want to. Rightly so. Best not to look in there. It aint the heart of a creature that is bound in the way that God has set for it. You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it. You believe that?

  I dont know.

  Believe that.

  When the old man's mess was warmed he doled it out and they ate in silence. Thunder was moving north and before long it was booming overhead and starting bits of rust in a thin trickle down the stovepipe. They hunkered over their plates and wiped the grease up with their fingers and drank from the gourd.

  The kid went out and scoured his cup and plate in the sand and came back banging the tins together as if to fend away some drygulch phantom out there in the dark. Distant thunderheads reared quivering against the electric sky and were sucked away in the blackness again. The old man sat with one ear cocked to the howling waste without. The kid shut the door.

  Dont have no bacca with ye do ye?

  No I aint, said the kid.

  Didnt allow ye did.

  You reckon it'll rain?

  It's got ever opportunity. Likely it wont.

  The kid watched the fire. Already he was nodding. Finally he raised up and shook his head. The hermit watched him over the dying flames. Just go on and fix ye bed, he said.

  He did. Spreading his blankets on the packed mud and pulling off his stinking boots. The fluepipe moaned and he heard the mule stamp and snuffle outside and in his sleep he struggled and muttered like a dreaming dog.

  He woke sometime in the night with the hut in almost total darkness and the hermit bent over him and all but in his bed.

  What do you want? he said. But the hermit crawled away and in the morning when he woke the hut was empty and he got his things and left.

  All that day he watched to the north a thin line of dust. It seemed not to move at all and it was late evening before he could see that it was headed his way. He passed through a forest of live oak and he watered at a stream and moved on in the dusk and made a fireless camp. Birds woke him where he lay in a dry and dusty wood.

  By noon he was on the prairie again and the dust to the north was stretched out along the edge of the earth. By evening the first of a drove of cattle came into view. Rangy vicious beasts with enormous hornspreads. That night he sat in the herders' camp and ate beans and pilotbread and heard of life on the trail.

  They were coming down from Abilene, forty days out, headed for the markets in Louisiana. Followed by packs of wolves, coyotes, indians. Cattle groaned about them for miles in the dark.

  They asked him no questions, a ragged lot themselves. Crossbreeds some, free niggers, an indian or two.

  I had my outfit stole, he said.

  They nodded in the firelight.

  They got everthing I had. I aint even got a knife.

  You might could sign on with us. We lost two men. Turned back to go to Californy.

  I'm headed yon way.

  I guess you might be goin to Californy ye own self.

  I might. I aint decided.

  Them boys was with us fell in with a bunch from Arkansas. They was headed down for Bexar. Goin to pull fo
r Mexico and the west.

  I'll bet them old boys is in Bexar drinkin they brains out.

  I'll bet old Lonnie's done topped ever whore in town.

  How far is it to Bexar?

  It's about two days.

  It's furthern that. More like four I'd say.

  How would a man go if he'd a mind to?

  You cut straight south you ought to hit the road about half a day.

  You going to Bexar?

  I might do.

  You see old Lonnie down there you tell him get a piece for me. Tell him old Oren. He'll buy ye a drink if he aint blowed all his money in.

  In the morning they ate flapjacks with molasses and the herders saddled up and moved on. When he found his mule there was a small fibre bag tied to the animal's rope and inside the bag there was a cupful of dried beans and some peppers and an old greenriver knife with a handle made of string. He saddled up the mule, the mule's back galled and balding, the hooves cracked. The ribs like fishbones. They hobbled on across the endless plain.

  He came upon Bexar in the evening of the fourth day and he sat the tattered mule on a low rise and looked down at the town, the quiet adobe houses, the line of green oaks and cottonwoods that marked the course of the river, the plaza filled with wagons with their osnaburg covers and the whitewashed public buildings and the Moorish churchdome rising from the trees and the garrison and the tall stone powderhouse in the distance. A light breeze stirred the fronds of his hat, his matted greasy hair. His eyes lay dark and tunneled in a caved and haunted face and a foul stench rose from the wells of his boot tops. The sun was just down and to the west lay reefs of bloodred clouds up out of which rose little desert nighthawks like fugitives from some great fire at the earth's end. He spat a dry white spit and clumped the cracked wooden stirrups against the mule's ribs and they staggered into motion again.

  He went down a narrow sandy road and as he went he met a deadcart bound out with a load of corpses, a small bell tolling the way and a lantern swinging from the gate. Three men sat on the box not unlike the dead themselves or spirit folk so white they were with lime and nearly phosphorescent in the dusk. A pair of horses drew the cart and they went on up the road in a faint miasma of carbolic and passed from sight. He turned and watched them go. The naked feet of the dead jostled stiffly from side to side.