- 4 days ago
The next installment of my reading for this audiobook. If you enjoy my readings and would like to support the channel, you can buy me a cup of coffee : https://buymeacoffee.com/lorigomez_apoetrychannel Blood Meridian defies its genre. Cormac McCarthy is a fevered architect drafting a world whose moral compass points directly at the reader while the foundations of civilization as we know it crumble to dust beneath us. Everything is savage here, conspiring to destroy itself- the landscape, the people... there are no real sides... no true adversaries... no one to root for or against... nature's non-duality is revealed... we are all one under a savage sun. Life and death cycle on, irrevocably intertwined... nature stops just long enough to bury its dead, and then moves on... history is the dried blood in a handful of dust... not since Jack London's The Sea Wolf has a book's philosophical implications snuck up and socked my noggin from behind... great stuff.
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LearningTranscript
00:00Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
00:04Chapter 21
00:07Desert castaways, the backtrack, a hideout.
00:12The wind takes a side.
00:14The judge returns, an address.
00:17Los Diabuenos, San Felipe, Hospitality of the Savages, Into the Mountains, Grizzlies,
00:26San Diego, the Sea.
00:30The kid looked at Tobin, but the ex-priest sat without expression.
00:35He was drawn and wretched-looking, and the approaching traveler seemed to evoke in him
00:40no recognition.
00:43He raised his head, slightly, and he spoke without looking at the kid.
00:51Go on, he said.
00:54Save yourself.
00:55The kid took the water bottle from the shells, and unstoppered it, and drank, and handed
01:02it across.
01:03The ex-priest drank, and they sat watching, and then they rose and turned, and set out
01:13again.
01:14They were much reduced by their wounds and their hunger, and they made a poor show as they staggered
01:20onward.
01:21By noon, their water was gone, and they sat studying the barrenness about.
01:27A wind blew down from the north.
01:30Their mouths were dry.
01:33The desert upon which they were entrained was desert absolute, and it was devoid of feature
01:39altogether, and there was nothing to mark their progress upon it.
01:43The earth fell away on every side, equally in its architure.
01:52And by these limits, they were circumscribed, and of them were they locusts.
01:58They rose and went on.
02:02The sky was luminous.
02:05There was no trace to follow, other than the bits of cast-off left by travelers even to
02:10the bones of men, drifted out of their graves in the scalloped sands.
02:16In the afternoon, the terrain began to rise before them, and at the crest of a shallow
02:23esker, they stood, and looked back, to see the judge much as before, some two miles distant
02:31on the plain.
02:33They went on.
02:35The approach to any watering place in that desert was marked by the carcasses of perished
02:40animals in increasing number.
02:42And so it was now, as if the wells were ringed about by some hazard, lethal to creatures.
02:52The travelers looked back.
02:54The judge was out of sight beyond the rise.
02:57Before them lay the whitened boards of a wagon, and further on the shapes of mule and ox, with
03:04the hide scoured bold as canvas by the constant abrasion of the sand.
03:09The kid stood studying this place, and then he backtracked some hundred yards, and stood
03:18looking down at his shallow footprints in the sand.
03:21He looked upon the drifted slope of the esker which they had descended, and he knelt and held
03:28his hand against the ground, and he listened to the faint silica hiss of the wind.
03:34When he lifted his hand, there was a thin ridge of sand that had drifted against it, and he
03:41watched this ridge slowly vanish before him.
03:46The ex-priest, when he returned to him, presented a grave appearance.
03:53The kid knelt and studied him where he sat.
03:56We got to hide, he said.
04:02Hide?
04:03Yes.
04:05Where do you aim to hide?
04:08Here.
04:09We'll hide here.
04:10You can't hide, lad.
04:13We can hide.
04:15You think he can't follow your track?
04:19The wind's taking it.
04:22It's gone from the slope yonder.
04:25Gone?
04:27Ever chase?
04:29The ex-priest shook his head.
04:32Come on.
04:33We gotta get going.
04:36You can't hide.
04:39Get up.
04:40The ex-priest shook his head.
04:44Ah, lad, he said.
04:46Get up, said the kid.
04:51Go on, go on, he waved his hand.
04:56The lad spoke to him.
04:58He ain't nothing.
05:00You told me so yourself.
05:02Men are made of the dust of the earth.
05:04You said it was no par...
05:07parable.
05:08A parable.
05:10No parable.
05:12That it was a naked fact and the judge was a man like old men.
05:17face him down, then, said the ex-priest.
05:23Face him down if he is so.
05:27And him with a rifle and me with a pistol?
05:30Him with two rifles.
05:33Get up from there.
05:35Tobin rose.
05:36He stood unsteadily.
05:39He leaned against the kid.
05:41They set out, veering off from the drifted track, and down past the wagon.
05:46They passed the first of the racks of bones, and went on to where a pair of mules lay dead
05:52in the traces.
05:54And here the kid knelt with a piece of board, and began to scoop them a shelter, watching
06:00the skyline to the east as he worked.
06:03Then they lay prone in the lee of those sour bones, like sated scavengers, and awaited the
06:10arrival of the judge, and the passing of the judge, if he would so pass.
06:17They'd not long to wait.
06:20He appeared upon the rise, and paused momentarily before starting down, he and his drooling man
06:28simple.
06:30The ground before him was drifted and rolling, and although it could be fairly reconnoitered
06:35from the rise, the judge did not scan the country, nor did he seem to miss the fugitives from
06:42his purview.
06:44He descended the ridge and started across the flats, the idiot before him, on a leather
06:50lead.
06:51He carried the two rifles that had belonged to Brown, and he wore a pair of canteens crossed
06:57upon his chest, and he carried a powder horn and flask, and his portmanteau.
07:04And a canvas rucksack, that must have belonged to Brown also.
07:11More strangely, he carried a parasol, made from rotted scraps of hide, stretched over a
07:17framework of ribbed bones, bound with strips of tug.
07:22The handle had been the foreleg of some creature, and the judge approaching was clothed in little
07:27more than confetti, so rent was his costume, to accommodate his figure.
07:32Bearing before him that morbid umbrella, with the idiot in its rawhide collar pulling at
07:40the lead, he seemed some degenerate entrepreneur, fleeing from a medicine show, and the outrage
07:47of the citizens who'd sacked it.
07:50They advanced across the flats, and the kid on his belly in the sand wallow watched them
07:55through the ribs of the dead mules.
07:58He could see his own tracks and tobins coming across the sand, dim and rounded, but tracks
08:04for that.
08:05And he watched the judge, and he watched the tracks, and he listened to the sand moving
08:11on the desert floor.
08:13The judge was perhaps a hundred yards out when he stopped and surveyed the ground.
08:19The idiot squatted on all fours and leaned into the lead like some naked species of lemur.
08:27It swung its head and sniffed at the air as if it were being used for tracking.
08:31It had lost its head, or perhaps the judge had re-plevened it, for now he wore a rough and curious
08:39pair of pampoodies, cut from a piece of hide and strapped to the soles of his feet, with
08:46wrappings of hemp salvaged from some desert wreck.
08:49The imbecile lunged in its collar and croaked, its forearms dangling at its chest.
08:56When they passed the wagon and continued on, the kid knew they were beyond the point, where
09:03he and Tobin had turned off from that trace.
09:06He looked at the tracks, faint shapes that backed across the sands and vanished.
09:13The ex-priest at his side seized his arm and hissed, and gestured toward the passing
09:18judge, and the wind rattled the scraps of hide at the carcass.
09:23And the judge and the idiot passed on, across the sands, and disappeared from sight.
09:32They lay without speaking.
09:35The ex-priest raised himself slightly, and looked out, and he looked at the kid.
09:43The kid lowered the hammer of the pistol.
09:45You'll get no such a chance as that again.
09:51The kid put the pistol in his belt and rose onto his knees and looked down.
09:56And what now?
09:59The kid didn't answer.
10:01You'll be waiting at the next well.
10:04Let him wait.
10:07We could go back to the creek.
10:09And do what?
10:13Wait for a party to come through.
10:16Through from where?
10:18There ain't no fairy.
10:20There's game come to the creek.
10:24Tobin was looking out through the bones and hide.
10:28When the kid didn't answer, he looked up.
10:30We could go there, he said.
10:37I got four rounds, the kid said.
10:42He rose and looked out across the scavenged ground.
10:46And the ex-priest rose and looked with him.
10:49What they saw was the judge, returning.
10:52The kid swore and dropped to his belly.
10:55The ex-priest crouched.
10:57They pushed down into the wallow.
10:59And with their chins in the sand like lizards, they watched the judge traverse again the grounds
11:05before them, with his leashed fool and his equipage on the parasol, dipping in the wind
11:12like a great black flower.
11:14He passed among the wreckage, until he was again upon the slope of the sand esker.
11:20At the crest, he turned, and the imbecile squatted at his knees, and the judge lowered the parasol
11:27before him and addressed the countryside about.
11:30The priest has led you to this boy.
11:36I know you would not hide.
11:38I know too well that you're not the heart of a common...
11:41assassin.
11:44I've passed before your gun sights twice this hour, and will pass a third time.
11:50Why not show yourself?
11:51No assassin, called the judge, and no partisan either.
11:58There's a flawed place in the fabric of your heart.
12:02Do you think I could not know?
12:03You alone were mutinous.
12:06You alone reserved in your heart some corner of clemency for the heathen.
12:11The imbecile stood, and raised its hands to its face, and yammered weirdly, and sat again.
12:21You think I've killed Brown and Toadvine?
12:24They are alive as you and me.
12:27They are alive and in possession of the fruits of their election.
12:32Do you understand?
12:34Ask the priest.
12:36The priest knows.
12:38The priest does not lie.
12:42The judge raised the parasol, and adjusted his parcels.
12:47Perhaps, he called, perhaps you've seen this place in a dream.
12:53That you would die here.
12:56Then he descended the esker, and passed once more across the boneyard,
13:03led by the tethered fool, until the two were shimmering and insubstantial,
13:09in the waves of heat.
13:11And then they were gone, altogether.
13:14They would have died if the Indians had not found them.
13:18All the early part of the night they'd kept Sirius at their left on the southwest horizon,
13:25and Cetus out there, fording the void, and Orion and Betelgeuse turning overhead.
13:31And they had slept curled and shivering in the darkness of the plains,
13:36and woke to find the heavens all changed,
13:39and the stars by which they'd traveled not to be found.
13:42As if their sleep had encompassed whole seasons.
13:47In the auburn dawn, they saw the half-naked savages,
13:53crouched or standing, all in a row,
13:57along a rise to the north.
13:59They got up and went on.
14:03Their shadows so long and so narrow,
14:07raising with mock stealth each thin, articulated leg.
14:11The mountains to the west were whited out against the daybreak.
14:17The aborigines moved along the sand ridge.
14:21After a while, the ex-priest sat down,
14:25and the kids stood over him with the pistol,
14:28and the savages came down from the dunes and approached,
14:31by starts and checks,
14:34across the plain,
14:36like painted sprites.
14:38They were diaguenos.
14:40They were armed with short bows,
14:42and they drew about the travelers and knelt,
14:44and gave them water out of a gourd.
14:47They'd seen such pilgrims before,
14:49and with sufferings more terrible.
14:51They eked a desperate living from that land,
14:54and they knew that nothing,
14:56excepting some savage pursuit,
14:59could drive men to such plight.
15:01And they wanted each day for that thing
15:03to gather itself out of its terrible incubation,
15:06in the house of the sun,
15:07and muster along the edge of the eastern world.
15:11And whether it be armies, or plague, or pestilence,
15:14or something altogether unspeakable,
15:17they waited with a strange equanimity.
15:20They led the refugees into their camp at San Felipe,
15:25a collection of crude huts made from reeds
15:27and housing a population of
15:29filthy and beggarly creatures,
15:31dressed largely in the cotton shirts
15:33of the argonauts who'd passed there.
15:36Shirts, and nothing more.
15:39They fetched them a stew of lizards
15:41and pocket mice hot in clay bowls,
15:43and a sort of pinole,
15:45made from dried and pounded grasshoppers.
15:47And they crouched about and watched them
15:50with great solemnity as they ate.
15:53One reached and touched the grips of the pistol
15:56in the kid's belt and drew back again.
15:59Pistola, he said.
16:04The kid ate.
16:05The savages nodded.
16:08Quiero mirar su pistola, the man said.
16:12The kid didn't answer.
16:15When the man reached for the pistol,
16:17he intercepted his hand and put it from him.
16:20When he turned loose, the man reached again,
16:23and the kid pushed his hand away again.
16:25The man grinned.
16:27He reached a third time.
16:29The kid set the bowl between his legs
16:30and drew the pistol out and cocked it
16:32and put the muzzle against the man's forehead.
16:36They sat quite still.
16:40The others watched.
16:42After a while,
16:43the kid lowered the pistol
16:45and let down the hammer
16:46and put it in his belt
16:47and picked up the bowl
16:49and commenced eating again.
16:51The man gestured toward the pistol
16:53and spoke to his friends,
16:56and they nodded,
16:57and then they sat as before.
17:01¿Qué pasa con ustedes?
17:03The ex-priest, in his black encrusted cravat,
17:08turned his whole torso
17:09to look at the man who'd spoken.
17:11He looked at the kid.
17:13He'd been eating with his fingers
17:14and he licked them
17:15and wiped them on the filthy leg of his trousers.
17:17Las yumas, he said.
17:22They sucked in air
17:23and clucked their tongues.
17:25Son muy malos,
17:28said the speaker.
17:29Claro.
17:31¿No tiene compañeros?
17:33The kid and the ex-priest eyed each other.
17:36Si,
17:38said the kid.
17:40Muchos.
17:41He waved his hand to the east.
17:43Llegarán muchos compañeros.
17:47The Indians received this news
17:50without expression.
17:52A woman brought more of the pinole,
17:53but they had been without food
17:55too long to have appetites,
17:57and they waved her away.
17:59In the afternoon,
18:00they bathed in the creek
18:02and slept on the ground.
18:04When they woke,
18:05they were being watched
18:06by a group of naked children
18:07and a few dogs.
18:11When they went up through the camp,
18:13they saw the Indians
18:14sitting along a ledge of rock,
18:17watching tirelessly
18:18the land to the east
18:19for whatever might come out of it.
18:23No one spoke to them of the judge,
18:25and they did not ask.
18:28The dogs and children
18:29followed them out of the camp,
18:31and they took the trail up
18:33into the low hills to the west,
18:36where the sun was already going.
18:39They reached Warner's Ranch
18:41late the following day,
18:43and they restored themselves
18:45at the hot sulfur springs there.
18:48There was no one about.
18:50They moved on.
18:51The country to the west
18:52was rolling and grassy,
18:54and beyond were mountains,
18:57running to the coast.
18:58They slept that night
19:00among dwarf cedars,
19:02and in the morning
19:03the grass was frozen,
19:05and they could hear the wind
19:06in the frozen grass,
19:09and they could hear
19:10the cries of birds
19:11that seemed a charm
19:12against the sullen shores
19:14of the void
19:15out of which
19:16they had ascended.
19:19All that day,
19:21they climbed through
19:22a highland park,
19:23forested with Joshua trees,
19:25and rimmed about
19:26by bald granite peaks.
19:28In the evening,
19:30flocks of eagles
19:31went up
19:32through the pass
19:33before them,
19:34and they could see
19:35on those grassy benches
19:37the great,
19:38shambling figures
19:39of bears like cattle
19:40grazing
19:41on the upland heath.
19:44There were skiffs
19:45of snow
19:46in the lee
19:47of the stone ledges,
19:48and in the night
19:50a light snow
19:51fell upon them,
19:52reefs of mist
19:55were blowing
19:56across the slopes
19:57when they set out
19:59shivering in the dawn,
20:01and in the new snow
20:02they saw the tracks
20:03of the bears
20:04that had come down
20:05to take their wind
20:06just before daylight.
20:09That day,
20:11there was no sun,
20:13only paleness
20:15in the haze,
20:17and the country
20:18was white with frost,
20:20and the shrubs
20:21were like
20:21polar isomers
20:23of their own shapes.
20:26Wild rams
20:27ghosted away
20:28up those rocky draws,
20:30and the wind
20:31swirled down
20:32cold and grey
20:33from the snowy
20:35reeks above them,
20:37a smoking region
20:38of wild vapors
20:39blowing down
20:40through the gap
20:41as if
20:42the world up there
20:44were all
20:44of fire.
20:45they spoke
20:47less and less
20:48between them,
20:51until at last
20:52they were silent
20:52altogether,
20:55as is
20:55often the way
20:56with travellers
20:57approaching the end
20:58of a journey.
21:00They drank
21:01from the cold
21:01mountain streams
21:02and bathed
21:04their wounds
21:04and they shot
21:05a young doe
21:05at a spring
21:07and ate
21:09what they could
21:10and smoked
21:11thin sheets
21:12of the meat
21:14to carry
21:14with them.
21:17Although they
21:17saw no more
21:18bears,
21:18they saw sign
21:19of their vicinity,
21:20and they moved
21:21off over the slopes
21:23a good mile
21:23from their meat camp
21:25before they put
21:26down for the night.
21:29In the morning,
21:30they crossed
21:30a bit of
21:31thunderstones
21:32clustered
21:33on that heath
21:34like ossified
21:35eggs of some
21:36primal
21:37ground bird.
21:39They trod
21:39the shadow line
21:40under the mountains,
21:42keeping just
21:42in the sun
21:43for the warmth
21:44of it,
21:45and that afternoon
21:46they first
21:48saw the sea
21:49far below them,
21:52blue
21:53and serene
21:54under clouds.
21:57The trail
21:58went back
21:58through the low hills
21:59and picked up
22:00the wagon track,
22:01and they followed
22:02where the locked
22:03wheels had skidded,
22:05and the iron tires
22:06scarred the rock,
22:08and the sea
22:09down there
22:09darkened
22:10to black,
22:12and the sun
22:13fell,
22:14and all the land
22:15about went
22:16blue and cold.
22:19They slept
22:19shivering
22:20under a wooded
22:21boss,
22:22among owl cries,
22:25and a scent
22:25of juniper,
22:27while the stars
22:27swarmed
22:28in the bottomless
22:29night.
22:31It was the evening
22:32of the following
22:33day when they
22:33entered San Diego.
22:36The ex-priest
22:37turned off
22:38to find a doctor,
22:40but the kid
22:41wandered on
22:42through the raw
22:43mud streets
22:44and out past
22:45the houses
22:45of Hyde
22:46in their rows,
22:48and across
22:49the gravel strand
22:50to the beach.
22:53Loose strands
22:53of amber-colored
22:54kelp
22:55lay in a rubbery
22:56rack at the
22:57tide line,
22:59a dead seal,
23:01beyond the inner
23:02bay part of
23:02a reef
23:03in a thin line
23:04like something
23:05foundered there
23:07on which
23:08the sea
23:08was teething.
23:10He squatted
23:11in the sand
23:11and watched
23:13the sun
23:13on the hammered
23:15face of the water.
23:17Out there,
23:18island clouds
23:19emplained
23:20upon a salmon-colored
23:22other sea,
23:23sea-fowl
23:24in silhouette.
23:26Downshore,
23:27the dull surf
23:27boomed.
23:29There was a horse
23:29standing there,
23:31staring out
23:32upon the darkening
23:32waters,
23:33and a young
23:35colt that
23:35cavorted and
23:36trotted off
23:37and came back.
23:40He sat
23:41watching
23:41while the sun
23:43dipped,
23:44hissing in the
23:44swells.
23:46The horse
23:46stood darkly
23:48against the sky.
23:50The surf
23:50boomed in the
23:51dark and the
23:52sea's black hide
23:53heaved in the
23:54kabuk
23:55starlight,
23:56and the long
23:57pale combers
23:58loped out of
24:00the night
24:00and broke
24:02along the
24:02beach.
24:03He rose
24:04and turned
24:06towards the
24:06lights of the
24:07town.
24:08The tide
24:09pools
24:09bright as
24:10smelterpots
24:11among the
24:12dark rocks,
24:14where the
24:14phosphorescent
24:15sea crabs
24:16clambered back.
24:18Passing through
24:18the salt
24:19grass,
24:20he looked
24:20back.
24:22The horse
24:22had not
24:22moved.
24:24A ship's
24:24light winked
24:25in the
24:25swells.
24:27The colt
24:28stood against
24:29the horse
24:30with its head
24:30down,
24:31and the
24:32horse was
24:32watching,
24:34out there,
24:35past men's
24:36knowing,
24:38where the
24:39stars are
24:39drowning,
24:41and whales
24:42ferried their
24:42vast souls
24:44through the
24:45black and
24:47seamless sea.
24:48into the
24:53sea.
24:54The
24:57sea
24:57is
25:10going to
25:11do the
25:12love.
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