Keith Crossing

Read from Tuesday, May 17th to Monday, May 23rd.

The Crossing, by Cormac McCarthy.  This is the second book in his magnificent Border Trilogy, All the Pretty Horses being the first.  Although second in the trilogy, this is a wholly new story, new cast, although in similar locations surrounding the U.S.-Mexico border.  I really enjoyed this novel, although it was darker and more complex than ATPH.  There is not a traditional plot, and the mix of languages could be tricky at times.  If you are not competent in Spanish, then don't bother reading this book. I took Spanish classes for many years in school, and I was able to follow conversations pretty well, but lots of dialogue happens in Spanish without much contextual help for its meaning.  As I said, this book is darker, more deaths, and there is not a satisfactory ending.  Of course, it reveals deep truths about life, but the American in me wanted revenge, and lots of it. 

Billy Parnham, the protagonist, is a 16 year old living on a New Mexican ranch in the late 1930's.  His younger brother is Boyd, and he has got a father and mother.  In the very beginning, Billy and Boyd run into an Indian on their ranch, and the Indian demands they give him food.  They give him some, but when he wants more, they run away and leave the Indian out there.  Later, Billy works with his father to catch a wolf that has been plaguing their lands and eating cattle.  They track the wolf, set up traps, but she always evades them.  Finally, Billy, while acting on his own, sets a trap in an old fire pit and catches the wolf.  However, instead of shooting her, he makes a muzzle and a leash and leads the wolf back across the border into Mexico, where she came from.  The wolf is injured, but he bandages her leg, and they eventually bond somewhat.  But, while crossing a river, he is arrested by the police and the wolf is confiscated and given to a carnival.  Billy tracks the wolf, trying to rescue her, but she ends up being given to a local crime boss.  The gangster sets up a dog-fighting ring on his ranch, and dog after dog is sent into the ring to fight the wolf.  She fights them off as best she can, but they keep throwing new, fresh dogs at her.  Billy cannot do anything but watch in horror, and when he goes into the ring to stop it, he is threatened to be shot, so he is forced to walk away.  Finally, he cannot take it anymore and walks back in with a shotgun and puts the wolf out of her misery.  He buys the carcass off the gangsters and leaves for the mountains, where he buries the wolf.  Billy then rides around for a few months, living like a hermit in the mountains, finally meeting a preacher in an abandoned town hit by an earthquake. 

Billy crosses the border back to the U.S., but something is wrong when he gets to his ranch.  His parents have been brutally murdered, most likely by the Indian.  All their horses have been stolen as well.  Boyd is living with a local family, and they reunite and travel to Mexico together, hoping to catch the killers and find their horses.  They find one horse in a village, and they steal it back, and they briefly try to track the paper trail of the horse across Mexico to a horse dealer, but they run into a dead end.  They still wander, searching for something, when they run into a young girl about to be raped by two riders.  They rescue her, and Boyd and the girl fall in love on the road.  Eventually, they find a ranch where a bunch of their horses are held, and they persuade one guy to give them back, but another boss sets out after Billy and Boyd to get them back.  There is a gunfight, and Boyd is shot in the chest.  Billy manages to get him to safety, and Boyd recovers after many weeks.  But one morning, Billy wakes up to find that both Boyd and the girl have run away.

Billy searches all throughout Mexico for them, and he hears songs being sung about their exploits.  However, he cannot find them, and he crosses back into the U.S.  WWII has started, and Billy tries to enlist, but he is medically rejected for an irregular heartbeat.  He drifts from job to job for years around the Southwest, but finally decides to go back to Mexico one more time.  He travels around, looking for Boyd, who by now has become a mythical figure of a revolution in many villages.  He hears stories that Boyd was killed in a gunfight, and finally it is confirmed and Billy finds the grave.  He resolves to bring the body back to the U.S. for a proper burial, so he exhumes the grave and carries the bones back with him.  At one point he meets a band of robbers that end up stabbing his horse, and he has to stop for awhile and nurse the horse back to riding condition.  Back in the U.S., he is able to bury Boyd on their old ranch.  In the final scene, Billy finds an abandoned building that he takes shelter in from a storm.  An old, mangy dog tries to stay there with him, but Billy kicks the dog out into the storm.  Shortly thereafter he has a change of heart and tries to call the dog back, but he is nowhere to be found, and Billy breaks down sobbing on the road.

It is a story of three border crossings, but also about the crossing between life and death, youth and maturity.  After reading the previous book, How to Read Literature like a Professor, I can recognize many symbolic pieces of the story.  Mexico represents a sort of Underworld Hades that the hero must journey through.  Crossing a river is important, and Billy also suffers a heart ailment.  At one point, Billy pays a border guard to get into Mexico, which is like paying the ferryman to cross the River Styx.  It is a novel about loneliness and injustice, while trying to do the right thing.  Billy never gets revenge for the murder of the wolf, his family and his brother, which unfortunately is similar to real life.  It is depressing, especially the final, symbolic scene, but it makes you see the realistic harshness of the world.  As always, McCarthy's prose is beautifully haunting, and the imagery is fantastic.  The horse-riding jargon and Spanish language can be tricky, but it was a wonderful read.  Four out of five stars.