Child of God by Cormac McCarthy Read Free Book Online Page B

closed it behind her. Ballard lowered his face into the steam from his cup.
    Ralph didn’t come and didn’t come. Ballard finished the coffee and said that it was good and no thanks he didn’t want no more and said it again and said that he’d better get on.
    I wish you’d looky here Mama, the girl said from the other room.
    What is it? said the woman.
    Ballard had stood up and was stretching uneasily. I better get on, he said.
    Just wait on him if ye want.
    Mama.
    Ballard looked toward the front room. The bird crouched in the floor. The girl appeared in the doorway. I wisht you’d look in here, she said.
    What is it? said the woman.
    She was pointing toward the child. It sat as before, a gross tottertoy in a gray small shirt. Its mouth was stained with blood and it was chewing. Ballard went on through the door into the room and reached down to get the bird. It fluttered on the floor and fell over. He picked it up. Small red nubs worked in the soft down. Ballard set the bird down quickly.
    I told ye not to let him have it, the girl said.
    The bird floundered on the floor.
    The woman had come to the door. She was wiping her hands on her apron. They were all looking at the bird. The woman said: What’s he done to it?
    He’s done chewed its legs off, the girl said.
    Ballard grinned uneasily. He wanted it to where it couldn’t run off, he said.
    If I didn’t have no better sense than that I’d quit, said the girl.
    Hush now, said the woman. Get that mess out of his mouth fore he gets sick on it.

T HEY WASN’T NONE OF EM any account that I ever heard of. I remember his grandaddy, name was Leland, he was gettin a war pension as a old man. Died back in the late twenties. Was supposed to of been in the Union Army. It was a known fact he didn’t do nothin the whole war but scout the bushes. They come lookin for him two or three times. Hell, he never did go to war. Old man Cameron tells this and I don’t know what cause he’d have to lie. Said they come out there to get Leland Ballard and while they was huntin him in the barn and smokehouse and all he slipped down out of the bushes to where their horses was at and cut the leather off the sergeant’s saddle to halfsole his shoes with.
    No, I don’t know how he got that pension. Lied to em, I reckon. Sevier County put more men in the Union Army than it had registered voters but he wasn’t one of em. He was just the only one had brass enough to ast for a pension.
    I’ll tell you one thing he was if he wasn’t no soldier. He was a by god White Cap.
    O yes. He was that. Had a younger brother was one too that run off from here about that time. It’s a known fact he was hanged in Hattiesburg Mississippi. Goes to show it ain’t just the place. He’d of been hanged no matter where he lived.
    I’ll say one thing about Lester though. You can trace em back to Adam if you want and goddamn if he didn’t outstrip em all.
    That’s the god’s truth.
    Talkin about Lester …
    You all talk about him. I got supper waitin on me at the house.

II

O N A COLD WINTER MORNING in the early part of December Ballard came down off Frog Mountain with a brace of squirrels hanging from his belt and emerged onto the Frog Mountain road. When he looked back toward the turnaround he saw that there was a car there with the motor chugging gently and blue smoke coiling into the cold morning air. Ballard crossed the road and dropped down off through the weeds and climbed up through the woods until he came out above the turnaround. The car sat idling as before. He could not see anyone inside.
    He made his way along by the roadside growth until he was within thirty feet of the car and there he stood watching. He could hear the steady loping of the engineand he could hear somewhere faintly in the quiet mountainside morning the sound of a guitar and singing. After a while it stopped and he could hear a voice.
    It’s a radio, he said.
    There was no sign of anyone in the car. The windows were fogged but