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    Child of God
    Child of God
    Child of God
    Ebook163 pages2 hours

    Child of God

    By Cormac McCarthy

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    From the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Road • In this taut, chilling story, Lester Ballard—a violent, dispossessed man falsely accused of rape—haunts the hill country of East Tennessee when he is released from jail.

    While telling his story, Cormac McCarthy depicts the most sordid aspects of life with dignity, humor, and characteristic lyrical brilliance.

    "Like the novelists he admires-Melville, Dostoyevsky, Faulkner-Cormac McCarthy has created an imaginative oeuvre greater and deeper than any single book. Such writers wrestle with the gods themselves." —Washington Post

    Look for Cormac McCarthy's latest bestselling novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKnopf Doubleday Publishing Group
    Release dateAug 11, 2010
    ISBN9780307762481
    Author

    Cormac McCarthy

    Cormac McCarthy was the author of many acclaimed novels, including Blood Meridian, Child of God and The Passenger. Among his honours are the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His works adapted to film include All the Pretty Horses, The Road and No Country for Old Men – the latter film receiving four Academy Awards, including the award for Best Picture. McCarthy died in 2023 in Santa Fe, NM at the age of 89.

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    Reviews for Child of God

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      Short and not so sweet tale of a serial killing necrophiliac. As usual it's McCarthy's way with words that keeps you reading, but this doesn't rise above to Blood Meridian heights of transcendent violence, nor to the pit of despair that is The Road. Lester is a pathetic character, and his story - despite the death and necrophilia - feels rather toothless and pointless. In that sense, it's perhaps more true to life.
    • 4/5
      Lester Ballard is a feral serial killer, whose rife is an extension of his arm. He kills strangers and acquaintances with no remorse or even anger - he is merely a murderer without compunction. Lester is isolated with his own fevered obsessions and leaves misery in his wake. He particularly likes female victims, and practices necrophilia.

      In the hands of a lesser writer, Lester's story would be sensationalized; however, McCormac writes with a simplicity that allows the readers to understand the evolving madness and cunning of a monster.
    • 1/5
      I'm really beginning to question this "genius" of Cormac McCarthy. Three books into his span of works, and they just seem to be getting worse.

      There was no story here. This felt like an extreme horror indie release with better-than-average writing. Lester is a character with no redeeming qualities, and the reader is simply plunged through a series of ever-increasingly terrible events. There's no real surprise at the end, and I, for one, was left trying to understand why this was even published.

      I'm no prude. I can see where someone like Jack Ketchum pulls inspiration from a work like this, but I can see Ketchum also deciding that, if he's going to draw from this, he's going to write something and either make it have a point, or make the point obvious that there's a reason evil like this exists in the world.

      Instead of just, "hey, here's a story about a really terrible human. The end."

      I really have no idea what the point of this novel was. If someone wants to explain it to me, I'll take it.
    • 4/5
      “I don’t know. They say he never was right after his daddy killed hisself.”

      Lester Ballard. “-a violent, dispossessed man who haunts the hill country of East Tennessee.” And then he finds the dead girl. Shudder. The book takes a pretty dark turn from there. Definitely not for the faint of heart!

      Despite the awfulness of Ballard's actions, I found the book nearly impossible to put down! The writing, the style, and the format just kept be engrossed. And 'gross' is an apropos word. I must say again, this book gets pretty nasty and disgusting. Fair warning.
    • 4/5
      "Child of God" by Cormac McCarthy. Lester Ballard is a simple minded, country man, with limited intelligence, an over-abundance of rat cunning and a psychopathic violent streak. With his florid descriptions McCarthy allows the reader to see into the mind - what limited functioning there is -  of this unlikeable individual. What is most frightening is the absence of any real emotion (other than anger) or empathy for or understanding of others. Powerful and disturbing.
    • 4/5
      In McCarthy's first two works, he gave us a world of more or less decent people, and then inserted some act of violence and/or evil into it: a murder, then incest and cannibalism. This book is one step closer to the astonishing transformation of Blood Meridian a in which we're given a world of more or less barbarous people, and then we just watch it all break down, over and over again, and we're left with only a faint glimmer of hope. In other words, rather than a good world in which we find some evil, we're given an evil world and find, unexpectedly, some good: a book, or a savior. Child of God is really a nice balance between those two. It's pretty grim, but it's grim at an individual level: here's what an evil world can do to a man with a sense of justice and beauty, but no way to deal with his own senses.
    • 3/5
      3.5

      "'You think people was meaner then than they are now? the deputy said.

      The old man was looking out at the flooded town. No, he said. I don't. I think people are the same from the day God first made one."'

    • 3/5
      I told myself I was done with Cormac McCarthy after reading No Country for Old Men. First I declared publicly that I couldn’t finish that book — that it was just too depressing. Then last week I went on a road trip and did, in fact, finish that book. It was depressingly good. Meaning that while it was depressing it was also hard to put down.

      Then I declared, also publicly, that that was it. No more depressing McCarthy. But as I was reading some commentaries about No Country for Old Men, I started reading about one of his earlier novels, Child of God.

      Now, you know I can’t turn down a really well written novel about depravity. Also, I’m attracted to novels and stories about inbred hillbilly misfits and the like. So yeah, I downloaded Child of God to my Kindle and started reading.

      I’m not going to drop any spoilers here. As of right now I am 67% through the book. It’s a fast read. It is fascinating, disgusting, and wonderful. I’m not sure why I say wonderful, but I think it is this…

      The thing about McCarthy is that he can use the most beautiful, descriptive, poetic language and then the next sentence makes you want to barf or just retreat from the world. The first of his work that I read — Blood Meridian — I thought it was brilliant, but I think that now 3 books into his work I am starting to really get what the big deal is about him.

      I lack the knowledge to really delve into what I think makes this writing good. Maybe in the coming months I will figure it out. It’s not just violent gross bullshit, and I think that points to the question I’ve got: Why is it not just violent gross bullshit? What makes it good? What makes it literary?
    • 4/5
      Child of God Ok. I think this was a pretty good book overall because it definitely questions humanity and pushes the envelope. The story is kind of fast paced but jagged. There are long, poetic descriptions of nature that juxtapose with the cruelty that is actually happening. This book although short was not a quick read because I actually had to put it down and re read a few times.
    • 4/5
      I recently finished The Road which I thoroughly enjoyed so I thought I'd try another McCarthy book. I knew nothing about this before I started and it was a rather big departure. Where The Road was dark and depressing, this book was more solely depraved. It's sort of Ed Gein meets Deliverance.
    • 3/5
      This book descends into madness in a way that unsettled me, which is most likely the point. The story of Lester Ballard is not a nice one. He starts out as a poor, uneducated fellow who lives in a cabin in the woods. His awkward social interactions at first seemed to be no different than any other person in his depressed community. But then, Lester crossed the line between socially awkward pervert to morally depraved criminal. His crimes were hard to read, as they involved necrophilia and murder. At first I was wondering, "What the hell is the point of all this?" But upon reflection, I see how Lester's downward spiral represents a return to the primal, especially since Lester ends his spree living in a cave. Could McCarthy's point, then, be that man, when isolated from all society and morality, naturally descends into cruelty, lack of empathy, and impulsiveness? It's a frightening thought.
    • 5/5
      Deeply disturbing and brilliantly written.
    • 4/5
      Powerful, wild story presents a thorough examination of loneliness and lunacy (not necessarily in that order). The style is beautiful, the subject matter grim with very dark humor. Short but packs a wallop. A solid choice for those who like Faulkner, Southern Gothic fiction and contemplating the extremes of human behavior.
    • 5/5
      Despite numerous friends and strangers touting the wonderful novel, All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy, I never could get much past the first 15-20 pages. This doesn’t happen that often, but when it does I must invoke the rule of 50. Then I read The Road and really enjoyed it. No Country for Old Men soon followed along with Blood Meridian. I decided to take at look at some of his earlier works, and I started with Child of God. This tense novel fits in nicely with the others I have read.

      Lester Ballard has been falsely accused of rape for a woman he sees in the woods while hunting. The sheriff arrests him, but it soon becomes obvious he is innocent and released. The experience seems to have an effect on Lester, and he begins a slow spiral into bizarre behavior and insanity. The novel starts off gently, innocently, but as events unfold, the tension mounts. Sometimes – especially early on – I laughed at and with Lester, as he roamed the forested mountains of Eastern Tennessee.

      Lester’s farm is about to be sold at auction. He protests, and someone hits him over the head. Lester is dazed, and blood trickles from his ears. This injury became a major factor in the rest of the novel.

      McCarthy has a talent for setting his characters precisely where they belong. He writes, “Ballard descended by giant stone stairs to the dry floor of the quarry. The great rock walls with their cannelured faces and featherdrill holes composed about him an enormous amphitheatre. The ruins of an old truck lay rusting in the honeysuckle. He crossed the corrugated stone floor among chips and spalls of stone. The truck looked like it had been machine gunned. At the far end of the quarry was a rubble tip and Ballard stopped to search for artifacts, tilting old stoves and water heaters, inspecting bicycle parts and corroded buckets. He salvaged a worn kitchen knife with a chewed handle. He called the dog, his voice relaying from rock to rock and back again. // When he came out to the road again a wind had come up. A door somewhere was banging, an eerie sound in the empty wood. Ballard walked up the road. He passed a rusted tin shed and beyond it a wooden tower. He looked up. High up on the tower a door creaked open and clapped shut. Ballard looked around. Sheets of roofing tin clattered and banged and a white dust was blowing off the barren yard by the quarry shed. Ballard squinted in the dust going up the road. By the time he got to the county road it had begun to spit rain. He called the dog once more and he waited and then he went on (38-39).

      This vivid writing is so intense, I expected something odd, or strange, or bizarre to happen at any moment. So early in the novel, I am lulled into the belief this was a story about a poor, unemployed mountain man trying to scratch out a meager existence. He was that, but as the novel unfolds, he becomes so much more.

      Most definitely an adult novel, Cormac McCarthy's Child of God, will make the hair stand to attention. The ending I imagined to be inevitable did not happen. I read this brief novel in a little over two afternoons. I did not sleep well that night. 5 stars.

      --Chiron, 5/10/15
    • 3/5
      Great writing which is what I expect from McCarthy. The story was another of his that took a long time to get into and follows a character you would never wish to know. I find this book a good character piece but lacking the compelling storyline that makes a great book for me. So good but not great.
    • 5/5
      Not for the faint of heart. Violence and deviance. One can not just read this story, McCarthy's writing forces one to experience it.
    • 4/5
      Reading Cormac McCarthy is often trying to cross a familiar, busy, four way intersection with when the lights aren’t working. There is a mixture of the ordinary daily banal with a sense of surprise and danger. No quotation marks, and other grammar ticks make the reading feel strange and unfamiliar. This sense of never quite feeling comfortable is almost another character in McCarthy’s Child of God.

      Ballard, the main character, draws sympathy, and even admiration as a homeless man working to care for himself as best he can. This is quickly followed by revulsion as he violates humanity. The story then seems fueled by the question of whether Ballard is insane or evil. Neither description offers shelter, and in each there is a place where one can see themselves. To my mind this is what makes Child of God so powerful.
    • 4/5
      Wow, such economy of words. A beautifully written tale of horror.
    • 4/5
      Coming to this book, I knew only that the main character, Lester Ballard, had some strange ways, but I didn't know how strange until several chapters into the book. It is an interesting read; McCarthy has a way of making it seem dream-like: broken up, but still flowing together. I'm not sure that makes sense, but that's how it reads to me. He kept the chapters short, most being only a single scene: some shorter, some longer. The short chapters coupled with Lester's bizarre behavior keeps you turning the pages, not to mention the "need" to know what happens....

      There is a strong link to mythology in most of McCarthy's work and this book is no different. There are trips to the underworld, shape-shifting and tragedy among other motifs.

      Without giving away too much, I will say that this book is not for the faint of heart. If Nabokov's Lolita bothers you, then there is a possibility that this will, too. It isn't exactly the same as Lolita , but the deviance of Lester, the main character, is very pronounced as is that of Humbert Humbert. But, in the case of Child of God, Lester is not the narrator.

      I wonder if you could still call Lester a protagonist? He does change, but not much. The reader gets the sense that he is depraved right from the beginning. It's the level, or depth, of his depravity that changes.

      The writing itself will not disappoint fans of McCarthy. His prose, as always, is tight and musical; the critics like to call it poetic, which it is. It damn near sings. I give it four stars simply for the prose. The content gives me pause; that's not to say that we should ignore it, it's just more unsettling than a book with a happy-go-lucky attitude and a bright happy ending. McCarthy almost never has happy endings and this is no exception. He does have "just" endings on occasion, or endings in which those who deserve it get it, if you get my drift.

      I will read it again, simply because I love McCarthy's writing and want to learn from him. If I were reading it as a reader only, once would be enough--maybe more than enough.
    • 2/5
      This story follows Lester Ballard. He seems abusive to people and rapes women (girls?). (Although apparently I missed the part where he was “falsely” accused, as it says in the description of the book. Falsely? Really? I thought he had... Apparently this was a part I skimmed?)

      This was... very odd. The chapters are very short and the entire book is short, so it was – at least – fast to read, but – at least for speed – it also helped that I skimmed through a good portion of it, though obviously I misunderstood, likely due to my skimming.
    • 5/5
      Clearly one of the great writers of our generation! Meet Lester Ballard of east Tennessee....ignorant, impulsive, impoverished, isolated, emotionally needy, and....innocent....primitive predator.....and child of god? I think Lester is McCarthy's everyman. It is painful to follow his tracks in this story, primarily because he acts out all that is uncivilized, unsocialized, and dark about being human. Not easy to read because Lester is not easy to love, yet I loved the character and the story.
    • 5/5
      This is truly a horrifying novel. The subject matter of a crazed killer is not something that I would normally be drawn to, but quite honestly was drawn by the title although I knew this wasn't going to be a walk in the park having read "Road" and "No Country for Old Men." For me, this was the best.

      The writing in this book is so gripping. McCarty paints a terrifying picture of Ballard yet without preaching, moralizing, or sympathizing, the reader gets a tiny glimpse of an understanding of what allienation and isolation can cause in an individual and in a society. The scene of Ballard bringing the wounded bird to the pitiful child and the child's reaction is one of the most gripping I have ever read.[The situation was reminiscent of a situation in "Gilead" by Marianne Robinson[[ASIN:031242440X Gilead: A Novel] Likewise, the description of Ballard watching "the diminutive progress of all things in the valley, the gray fields coming up black...Squatting there he let his head drop between his knees and he began to cry." It takes a very skilled writer to believably bring out that thread of humanity in such a deprived character.

      This is not a pretty book and certainly not a pleasant read, but one that needs to be read by anyone who questions who is really a child of God.
    • 3/5
      Beautiful language, disturbing plot - but the most disturbing bits are unsaid.
    • 4/5
      I can't think of the last time I read a book that repulsed me so much while still keeping me absolutely captivated. I'm not the kind of person who wants to rubberneck while passing a car accident but I guess when it comes to reading this McCarthy novel I am doing the literary equivalent.
      I can't help myself, I think McCarthy's writing is so brilliant in it's simplicity. The descriptiveness of his writing is so vivid that I have a mini-movie going on in my head every time I read his books. Child of God was a horror movie.
      It is the story of Lester Ballard; a troubled, uneducated man on the fringe of society at the beginning of the novel. Through the book a series of circumstances occurs that lead Lester deeper into isolation and gross depravity. I mean seriously gross depravity! Yet McCarthy manages to keep Lester, well I can't say sympathetic but somehow almost animalistic, stripped down to base emotions that I found I couldn't bring myself to rise to the level of righteous indignation that his actions deserved.
      I love a book that begs for serious discussion and that is what McCarthy has done with this book. With Lester's character I see a repulsive character in his manners and his behavior that by far passes anything close to acceptable human behavior. Yet McCarthy calls him "A child of God much like yourself perhaps" right from the beginning of the book just so that statement would stick with me through out the story and kept me shaking my head no, how could Lester be a child of God?
    • 5/5
      McCarthy takes the grotesque tradition, heads out the back, shoots it with a shotgun and pisses all over its corpse. McCarthy does not flinch, does not turn away from what is awful in our world. He writes what he sees in it and what he sees is Lester Ballard, a child of God much like yourself. Depraved and hilarious and perfectly phrased. Masterful.
    • 4/5
      A lean, jet-black character study.
    • 4/5
      The book is nasty, brutish and short. Everything Thomas Hobbes could want to show what life in a state of nature would be like. The main character - Lester Ballard - gets my vote for being the most despicable characterization of a human being imaginable; yet, in some way, McCarthy seems to want, at some level, to create some sense of sympathy for Ballard.

      McCarthy's works tend to be blunt, uncompromising (and frequently unsympathetic) looks at humanity - the sort of stuff one doesn't want to acknowledge - that hit too close to home to be comfortable. He has an eye for precision in his narration that is stark, uneasy, yet - in its own way - quite beautiful.

      This may not be a book for everyone, as some parts approach the absolutely disgusting. But if you want to experience real American literature as few other authors dare present it, Child of God may be a masterpiece.
    • 4/5
      That kid at school who always had a runny nose and a rash around his mouth from licking his lips, and he smelled funny, and used to eat out of the bin and expose himself to other kids...he grew up and Cormac McCarthy wrote a book about him
    • 4/5
      To call Child of God Cormac-lite might be a bit misleading, it's as dark and twisted as any of his other works, with incest-produced idiot offspring and violent encounters with man's dark nature. But it is an easy read, without being particularly diligent I read this in three days. The prose is very good as always, shifting narrative voices and keeping a balanced, stark and poetic language. Cormac sparkles the work with some of his sinister humour and I found myself both grinning and grimacing throughout the novel. What I love about McCarthy's characters is the authors complete unwillingness to resort to any pseudo-psychology or freudian events in the character's past to explain them away. They exist just as is, which pervades them with a mystical profundity without Cormac having to do much, I don't know how he pulls it off really. But to give it more than a four would be too much, it might grow, but it might also fizzle away without leaving much of a mark... Only time can tell.
    • 3/5
      Cormac is a freak. Such dark and nasty characters... however, I do think that Thomas Harris might have lifted some ideas for his killer in 'Silence of the Lambs' from the guy in this book.

    Book preview

    Child of God - Cormac McCarthy

    I

    THEY CAME LIKE A CARAVAN of carnival folk up through the swales of broomstraw and across the hill in the morning sun, the truck rocking and pitching in the ruts and the musicians on chairs in the truckbed teetering and tuning their instruments, the fat man with guitar grinning and gesturing to others in a car behind and bending to give a note to the fiddler who turned a fiddlepeg and listened with a wrinkled face. They passed under flowering appletrees and passed a log crib chinked with orange mud and forded a branch and came in sight of an aged clapboard house that stood in blue shade under the wall of the mountain. Beyond it stood a barn. One of the men in the truck bonged on the cab roof with his fist and the truck came to a halt. Cars and trucks came on through the weeds in the yard, people afoot.

    To watch these things issuing from the otherwise mute pastoral morning is a man at the barn door. He is small, unclean, unshaven. He moves in the dry chaff among the dust and slats of sunlight with a constrained truculence. Saxon and Celtic bloods. A child of God much like yourself perhaps. Wasps pass through the laddered light from the barnslats in a succession of strobic moments, gold and trembling between black and black, like fireflies in the serried upper gloom. The man stands straddlelegged, has made in the dark humus a darker pool wherein swirls a pale foam with bits of straw. Buttoning his jeans he moves along the barn wall, himself flddlebacked with light, a petty annoyance flickering across the wallward eye.

    Standing in the forebay door he blinks. Behind him there is a rope hanging from the loft. His thinly bristled jaw knots and slacks as if he were chewing but he is not chewing. His eyes are almost shut against the sun and through the thin and blueveined lids you can see the eyeballs moving, watching. A man in a blue suit gesturing from the truckbed. A lemonade stand going up. The musicians striking up a country reel and the yard filling up with people and the loudspeaker making a few first squawks.

    All right now let’s get everbody up here and get registered for ye free silver dollars. Right up here. That’s the way. How you little lady? Well all right. Yessir. All right now. Jessie? Have you got it …? All right now. Jess and them is got the house open for them that wants to see inside. That’s all right. We’re fixin to have some music here in just a minute and we want to get everbody registered fore we have the drawins. Yessir? What’s that? Yessir, that’s right. That’s right everbody, we will bid on the tracts and then we’ll have a chance to bid on the whole. They’s both sides of the road now, it goes plumb across the creek to them big timbers on the other side yonder. Yessir. We’ll get into that directly.

    Bowing, pointing, smiling. The microphone in one hand. Among the pines on the ridge the sound of the auctioneer’s voice echoed muted, redundant. An illusion of multiple voices, a ghost chorus among old ruins.

    Now they’s good timber up here too. Real good timber. It’s been cut over fifteen twenty year ago and so maybe it ain’t big timber yet, but looky here. While you’re a laying down there in your bed at night this timber is up here growin. Yessir. And I mean that sincerely. They is real future in this property. As much future as you’ll find anywheres in this valley. Maybe more. Friends, they is no limit to the possibilities on a piece of property like this. I’d buy it myself if I had any more money. And I believe you all know that ever penny I own is in real estate. And ever one I’ve made has been from real estate. If I had a million dollars I would have it ever cent invested in real estate within ninety days. And you all know that. They ain’t no way for it to go but up. A piece of land like this here I sincere believe will give ye ten percent on your investment. And maybe more. Maybe as high as twenty percent. Your money down here in this bank won’t do that for ye and you all know that. There is no sounder investment than property. Land. You all know that a dollar won’t buy what it used to buy. A dollar might not be worth but fifty cents a year from now. And you all know that. But real estate is goin up, up, up.

    Friends, six year ago when my uncle bought the Prater place down here everbody tried to talk him out of it. He give nineteen-five for that farm. Said I know what I’m a doin. And you all know what happent down there. Yessir. Sold for thirty-eight thousand. A piece of land like this … Now it needs some improvin. It’s rough. Yes it is. But friends you can double your money on it. A piece of real estate, and particular in this valley, is the soundest investment you can make. Sound as a dollar. And I’m very sincere when I say that.

    In the pines the voices chanted a lost litany. Then they stopped. A murmur went through the crowd. The auctioneer had handed over the microphone to another man. The other man said: Holler at the sheriff yonder, C B.

    The auctioneer waved his hand at him and bent to the man standing in front of him. Small man, ill-shaven, now holding a rifle.

    What do you want, Lester?

    I done told ye. I want you to get your goddamn ass off my property. And take these fools with ye.

    Watch your mouth, Lester. They’s ladies present.

    I don’t give a fuck who’s present.

    It ain’t your property.

    The hell it ain’t.

    You done been locked up once over this. I guess you want to go again. The high sheriff is standin right over yonder.

    I don’t give a good goddamn where the high sheriff is at. I want you sons of bitches off of my goddamned property. You hear?

    The auctioneer was squatting on the tailboard of the truck. He looked down at his shoes, plucked idly at a piece of dried mud in the welt. When he looked back up at the man with the rifle he was smiling. He said: Lester, you don’t get a grip on yourself they goin to put you in a rubber room.

    The man took a step backward, the rifle in one hand. He was almost crouching and he held his free hand out with the fingers spread toward the crowd as if to hold them back. Get down off that truck, he hissed.

    The man on the truck spat and squinted at him. What you aim to do, Lester, shoot me? I didn’t take your place off of ye. County done that. I was just hired as auctioneer.

    Get off that truck.

    Behind him the musicians looked like compositions in porcelain from an old county fair shooting gallery.

    He’s crazy, C B.

    C B said: You want to shoot me, Lester, you can shoot me where I’m at. I ain’t going nowheres for you.

    LESTER BALLARD NEVER could hold his head right after that. It must of thowed his neck out someway or another. I didn’t see Buster hit him but I seen him layin on the ground. I was with the sheriff. He was layin flat on the ground lookin up at everbody with his eyes crossed and this awful pumpknot on his head. He just laid there and he was bleedin at the ears. Buster was still standin there holdin the axe. They took him on in the county car and C B went on with the auction like nothin never had happent but he did say that it caused some folks not to bid that otherwise would of, which may of been what Lester set out at, I don’t know. John Greer was from up in Grainger County. Not sayin nothin against him but he was.

    FRED KIRBY WAS SQUATTING in his front yard next to the watertap where he used to sit all the time when Ballard came by. Ballard stood in the road and looked up at him. He said: Hey Fred.

    Kirby lifted his hand and nodded. Come up, Lester, he said.

    Ballard came to the edge of the cutbank and looked up to where Kirby was sitting. He said: You got any whiskey?

    Might have some.

    Why don’t you let me have a jar.

    Kirby stood up. Ballard said: I can pay ye next week on it. Kirby squatted back down again.

    I can pay ye tomorrow, Ballard said.

    Kirby turned his head to one side and gripped his nose between his thumb and forefinger and sneezed a gout of yellow snot into the grass and wiped his fingers on the knee of his jeans. He looked out over the fields. I cain’t do it, Lester, he said.

    Ballard half turned to see what he was looking at out there but there was nothing but the same mountains. He shifted his feet and reached into his pocket. You want to trade it out? he said.

    Might do. What ye got?

    Got this here pocketknife.

    Let’s see it.

    Ballard opened the knife and pitched it up the bank at Kirby. It stuck up in the ground near his shoe. Kirby looked at it a minute and then reached down and got it and wiped the blade on his knee and looked at the name on it. He closed it and opened it again and he pared a thin peeling from the sole of his shoe. All right, he said.

    He stood up and put the knife in his pocket and crossed the road toward the creek.

    Ballard watched him scout along the edge of the field, kicking at the bushes and honeysuckle. Once or twice he looked back. Ballard was watching off toward the blue hills.

    After a while Kirby came back but he didn’t have any whiskey. He handed Ballard his knife back. I cain’t find it, he said.

    Cain’t find it?

    No.

    Well shit fire.

    I’ll hunt some more later on. I think I was drunk when I hid it.

    Where’d ye hide it at?

    I don’t know. I thought I could go straight to it but I must not of put it where I thought it was.

    Well goddamn.

    If I cain’t find it I’ll get some more.

    Ballard put the knife in his pocket and turned and went back up the road.

    ALL THAT REMAINED OF THE outhouse were a few soft shards of planking grown with a virid moss and lying collapsed in a shallow hole where weeds sprouted in outsized mutations. Ballard passed by and went behind the barn where he trod a clearing in the clumps of jimson and nightshade and squatted

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