Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy

Author:Cormac McCarthy [McCarthy, Cormac]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2022-12-06T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Okay?

I’m okay.

Why wouldnt your brother go with him?

Because he thought it made my father look foolish.

Did you think that he should have gone?

Yes. So did he. After it was too late.

Was your father an atheist?

Odd question. Are you?

Sometimes. Was he?

I dont know. Probably. I think he considered a person’s beliefs a part of his character. He wouldnt have thought that to believe in God—or not—would be a conscious decision. You were probably either a believer or you werent. I’m sure he thought that he was too young to die, but I’m not sure how the Godless deal with death.

Would that include you?

You’re just going to get idiosyncratic responses. What’s the point?

I’ll take what I can get.

If you dont know what life is—and you dont—then I’m not sure how you would characterize the absence of it. I suppose we think that we know where we are but that is obviously absurd. To die is difficult, but to die without knowing where it is that you have been. Or why. Well. Anyway, I’m guessing that what you’re trying to come to grips with is what sort of mind would dedicate itself to blowing up the world.

What I’m trying to come to grips with is you. Your brother was remorseful about not going to Mexico with your father.

Remorseful doesnt really say it. My father finally came to him in a dream and after that my brother went to Mexico to see if he could find him.

After your father was dead.

Yes. He went to see if he could find where he was buried.

We can talk about something else.

Maybe it’s just not a good day. I’m all right. Go ahead.

Did he find your father’s grave?

No.

How long was he in Mexico?

I dont know. I couldnt get hold of him. When I finally found him he was…He was in terrible pain. He’d come back to El Paso. I got him to go with me to a restaurant but he couldnt stop crying and he was crying in the restaurant. I put my hand on his arm but he pulled it away.

Why did he do that?

It’s complicated.

All right.

He’d found the clinic but they wouldnt talk to him. He wound up giving away all his money to Mexican officials but nothing came of it. He was there for weeks. Sleeping in a three dollar hotel. I dont know when he’d eaten last. He looked like a ghost.

This was in El Paso.

Yes. He was at the Gardner Hotel when he finally called me. He’d had another dream. Except that he didnt call it a dream. What he said was that our father had come to him in the night and that he’d stood at his bedfoot in his deathclothes and my brother kept asking him where he was but he didnt know. He didnt know where he was. My brother told me this in tears over the phone and then he hung up and I thought that he would take his life.

He never found where your father was buried.

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