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Cities of the Plain, 1998
In this concluding volume of McCarthy's superb "Border Trilogy" John Grady Cole, the protagonist of the award-winning All the Pretty Horses, and Billy Parham from The Crossing meet as hired ranch-hands at the Cross Fours in Orogrande, southern New Mexico. It's the early '50s and the stoic boys of the two earlier novels are young men now, toughened by their trying ordeals south of the border, but still at the mercy of life's fateful ups and downs. They're helplessly entrapped in the only way of life they know and value, that of the hard-riding working cowboy. But times are changing and the days of the oldtime cowboy are about to be swept away by the implacable onward rush of the modern world. There'll soon be no lebensraum for these last, obscure, lone-wolf heroes of an outmoded age. One might say "unsung heroes," had McCarthy not lent authoritative voice to John Grady's and Billy's simple personal dignity, integrity, loyalty, and gallantry.
As McCarthy aficionados well know, one doesn't turn to this master of contemporary American writing when in the mood for heart-warming stories and joyful endings. Cities of the Plain is no exception to the rule. Although not the grimmest and most truculent of the apocalyptic McCarthy canon (this reader would unhesitatingly assign that place to the tenebrous and brooding Outer Dark), the last Border novel is a gutsy, no-holds-barred, violent tale doomed to a bitter outcome. Still, there are intermittent moments of humour and pleasing ease and grace. Every now and then, as in The Crossing's ineluctable but hopeful conclusion, "after a while the east did gray and after a while the right and godmade sun did rise, once again, for all and without distinction."
Once again McCarthy's unerring sense of language gives tongue to impeccable dialogue in unabashed, down-to-earth American English-as-actually-spoken among the Coles and Parhams of the land, with generous dollops of straightforward Spanish. The interconnecting narrative is lean and purposeful, effortlessly conveying action, emotion, and descriptive images with the seamless stylistic integrity that always identifies McCarthy's prose. The work is virtually flawless. Nothing that needs omitting is told, nothing that requires including is overlooked. Perhaps the only false note is the improbable conversation of the pimp Eduardo during the climactic knife-fight, but here we are beginning to transcend reality in one of McCarthy's blind reaches towards the ultimate meaning, if any, and the surreal intrudes when it must. As also in the epilogue summing up the next fifty years of Billy Parham's wasted life. There Billy encounters a rootless wanderer like himself and the two indulge in an interminable discussion of a dream about "the unmappable world of our journey;" the tone here veers sharply away from that of the main narrative, but this is inevitable. Billy himself has long been cut loose and is hopelessly adrift.
The story focuses primarily on Billy's buddy John Grady, who falls in love with a beautiful young Juarez whore whom he determines to marry, ignoring the friends who tell him he's a fool. The girl is sweet and docile, a born victim, and unbeknownst to John Grady also an epileptic. She accepts his courtship, but her protector refuses all offers to buy her out and John Grady is forced to fall back on a makeshift plot for her escape. He sets about making his arrangements and squares the marriage with his skeptical boss, procures a ring, gets his money together, fixes up an abandoned cabin in his spare time, and devises a plan to smuggle the girl across the border. But she never comes. Found dead in the river on the morning set for the marriage, her body is taken to the morgue. When John Grady views it, he knows whom to blame, drinks a whiskey neat, and sets out forthwith to take revenge. He confronts the pimp Eduardo in a rainy alley and kills him during a cruel fight with knives, remaining mortally wounded himself. Billy Parham has gone looking for him and comes too late to save his life. "Goddamn whores," Billy shouts. "He was crying and the tears ran on his angry face and he called out to God to see what was before his eyes. Look at this, he called. Do you see? Do you see?" But in McCarthy's harsh world God might not see. Or may not care. Might not even be.
Along the way there are some truly fine scenes, notably the cross-country wild-dog hunt. The novel is crammed with ranch labour, horse-trading, hefty breakfasts, hell-raising on the other side of the border, and always the magnificent cowboy conversations. This is a memorable novel, the conclusion to a modern masterpiece, but one doesn't go looking for a high old time when reading McCarthy: one braces for the experience.
© Wordreign, July 1999
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