No Country for Old Men (22 page)

Where you went out the back door of that house there was a stone water trough in the weeds
by the side of the house. A galvanized pipe come off the roof and the trough stayed pretty
much full and I remember stoppin there one time and squattin down and lookin at it and I
got to thinkin about it. I dont know how long it had been there. A hundred years. Two
hundred. You could see the chisel marks in the stone. It was hewed out of solid rock and
it was about six foot long and maybe a foot and a half wide and about that deep. Just
chiseled out of the rock. And I got to thinkin about the man that done that. That country
had not had a time of peace much of any length at all that I knew of. I've read a little
of the history of it since and I aint sure it ever had one. But this man had set down with
a hammer and chisel and carved out a stone water trough to last ten thousand years. Why
was that? What was it that he had faith in? It wasnt that nothin would change. Which is
what you might think, I suppose. He had to know bettern that. I've thought about it a good
deal. I thought about it after I left there with that house blown to pieces. I'm goin to
say that water trough is there yet. It would of took somethin to move it, I can tell you
that. So I think about him settin there with his hammer and his chisel, maybe just a hour
or two after supper, I dont know. And I have to say that the only thing I can think is
that there was some sort of promise in his heart. And I dont have no intentions of carvin
a stone water trough. But I would like to be able to make that kind of promise. I think
that's what I would like most of all.

The other thing is that I have not said much about my father and I know I have not done
him justice. I've been older now than he ever was for almost twenty years so in a sense
I'm lookin back at a younger man. He went on the road tradin horses when he was not much
more than a boy. He told me the first time or two he got skinned pretty good but he
learned. He said this trader one time he put his arm around him and he looked down at him
and he told him, said: Son, I'm goin to trade with you like you didnt even have a horse.
Point bein some people will actually tell you what it is they aim to do to you and
whenever they do you might want to listen. That stuck with me. He knew about horses and he
was good with em. I've seen him break a few and he knew what he was doin. Very easy on the
horse. Talked to em a lot. He never broke nothin in me and I owe him more than I would of
thought. As the world might look at it I suppose I was a better man. Bad as that sounds to
say. Bad as that is to say. That has got to of been hard to live with. Let alone his
daddy. He would never of made a lawman. He went to college I think two years but he never
did finish. I've thought about him a lot less than I should of and I know that aint right
neither. I had two dreams about him after he died. I dont remember the first one all that
well but it was about meetin him in town somewheres and he give me some money and I think
I lost it. But the second one it was like we was both back in older times and I was on
horseback goin through the mountains of a night. Goin through this pass in the mountains.
It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept on goin. Never
said nothin. He just rode on past and he had this blanket wrapped around him and he had
his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin fire in a horn the way people
used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. About the color of the
moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin on ahead and that he was fixin to make
afire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold and I knew that whenever I
got there he would be there. And then I woke up.

ALSO BY CORMAC McCARTHY

Cities of the Plain

The Crossing

All the Pretty Horses

The Stonemason (a play)

The Gardener's Son (a screenplay)

Blood Meridian

Suttree

Child of God

Outer Dark

The Orchard Keeper