McCarthy, Cormac - The Crossing by McCarthy Cormac

Author:McCarthy, Cormac [McCarthy, Cormac]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, Fiction - General, Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), General & Literary Fiction, Coming of Age, Westerns, working
ISBN: 9780330511247
Publisher: Pearson Education Canada
Published: 2009-09-10T16:54:31+00:00

Border Trilogy 2 - The Crossing

III

IT WAS ALL BUT DARK when they rode past the main house and along the drive, past the porticoes with their slender carved iron posts, past the white plaster walls quoined with red sandstone blocks and the terracotta filigree along the upper parapets. The front of the house was faced with three stone arches and above them were carved the words Hacienda de San Diego in letters arched over the initials L. T. The tall Palladian windows were shuttered and the shutters were weathered and broken and paint and plaster were flaking from the walls and the portico ceiling was no more than bare wood lath all waterstained and buckled. They went on across the yard toward what looked to be the domicilios where smoke was rising against the evening sky and rode through the standing wooden gates into the courtyard and sat the horses side by side.

In one corner of the enclosure stood the carcass of an antique Dodge touring car long stripped of wheels and axles, of glass and seats. At the far end of the compound a cookfire burned on the ground and by its light they could see two gaudy caravan wagons with wash hung between them and passing back and forth before the fire both men and women in robes and kimonos who appeared to belong to a circus.

Qué clase de lugar es éste? Billy said.

Es ejido, said the girl.

Qué clase de gente?

No to sé.

He swung down and the girl slid from the back of Boyd’s horse and came and took the reins.

What are them? said Boyd.

I dont know.

They entered the compound, Billy and the girl afoot, the girl leading the horse. Boyd rode behind them. The figures at the far end paid them no mind at all. Two boys were lighting lamps from a burning split of wood at the fire and passing the lit lamps by their bails on a forked pole to a boy on the azotea who moved against the deepening sky hanging the lamps from the parapet. The ground in the compound became more illuminated as he went and soon a rooster began to call. Other boys were stacking haybales against a wall and under the farther portal men were unrolling a painted canvas drop much cracked and weathered from its travels.

Two of the costumed figures seemed engaged in a controversy and one of them stepped back and flung his arms wide. As if to demonstrate the measure of something outsized. Then he burst into song in some alien tongue. All movement ceased until he had done. Then all began again.

Dónde están los domicilios? said Billy.

The girl nodded toward the dark beyond the walls. Afuera, she said.

Let’s go.

I’d like to see it, Boyd said.

You dont even know what it is.

It’s somethin.

Billy took the bridlereins from the girl. He looked back at the fire, at the figures there. We can come back, he said. They’re just gettin set up.

They rode out to where the three long

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