Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy

This book ended Cormac McCarthy's Western Trilogy with it's release in 1998. McCarthy over my reading of this set of books has become one of my favorite authors. It is impossible to read his work without seeing a straight line from Hemingway to McCarthy and for someone who considers Hemingway his favorite author this is a road I am glad to travel.

In Cities of the Plain we revisit a character from each of the first two books in the series, John Grady Cole from All the Pretty Horses and Billy Parham from The Crossing. The year is 1952 and though Parham is nine years older than the nineteen year old Cole the two have developed a brotherly relationship. Certainly with Billy's loss of his brother Boyd in the previous story this in understandable.

The major events in this book take place South of the border in Ciudad Juarez a border town across from El Paso. As the boys from the ranch go across the border one night and go into a brothel John's friends encourage him to partake of one of the women who catches his eye. He declines however and as the story we see the cowboys doing all kinds of cowboy things. Roping cattle, catching wild dogs bringing down calves keeps the boys busy. Unbeknownst to his friends however John Grady Cole has returned south of the border and has started spending time with the young prostitute who has moved to a different brothel, one owned by a very dark character named Eduardo.

Soon Billy Parham and the rest of his friends know that John has a problem and it is becoming bigger and bigger. No longer in lust, he now is in love and he wants to bring this girl out of the brothel and marry her. Eduardo however has no desire to let that happen, he will not let Cole buy her out, it is all complicated by the fact that Eduardo is in love with the young prostitute as well.

This book captures all of the glory of the first two books and brings the characters into the twentieth century. McCarthy's talent is on display here on every page. The scenes that he depicts are beautiful and clear. The relationship between the cowboys is so attractive to someone watching in modern times, the simplicity, the honesty, and the lack of sarcasm and easy rudeness is as attractive as the vivid scenery that the author describes.

Other characters in the book are deeper than any we have seen even in the first two books, at least in terms of secondary characters. On his travels South of the border John Grady meets and establishes a friendship with an elderly blind musician. He also is reverential in his dealings with Mr. Johnson, the elderly patriarch of the ranching family for whom he works. Sitting on the porch with Mr. Johnson as he has wandered out in his long underwear and hearing the stories of the old man's days on the plains driving cattle north, days that he calls the best of his life.

Billy while not the major character in the story, is still a big part of the story and his ultimate decency makes him the most unsullied character in the story. He is a friend in need and a friend indeed as cliched as that is. When the book ends the sorrow he feels over the end we see coming is palpable.

Upon the completion of the book we are given an epilogue. In this we see what happened to Billy in the second half of the century. He travels the country, finding ways to earn a living, as the ranching and cowboy life that he has known ends under his feet. In the final scenes of the epilogue Billy in his seventies is staying dry under an overpass when he spies an old Indian man on the opposite side. The man comes to sit with them and as they talk he tells Billy a story about a dream he had and a dream the character in his dream had. In the end he offers thoughts and questions about what is life and where is reality and where does it end. As McCarthy spins the vision we are allowed to be amused by Billy, even in his seventies playing the innocent asking questions that have more to do with the logistics of the vision than the hidden deep meanings. Later we are told that Billy continues to wander until following the river he is taken in a by a family who find in him something special, he greets the children as they come home from school, teaches them how to ride and feels a level of being home one senses he has not felt for a long time.

As the story of Billy finally comes to an end he is having a very vivid dream and wakes the wife of the family with whom he is staying. She asks him if he would like a drink and reading Billy, an almost eighty year old man still uncomfortable with women saying " Yes Ma'am " with his best manners one is struck by the anomaly of one of the cowboys of lifetimes ago coming to the end of his life in the new millennium. He tells the woman of his dream of his brother Boyd, long dead, and says he wishes everyday that he could spend some time with him, see him ride, one last time. After the woman settles him he tells her that " He is not who she thinks he is." The wife counters will a self assured " We know just what you are." By the end of this story we do to.

Billy, is one of the most enduring characters of twentieth century literature, and perhaps McCarthy's greatest creation. Understated in everything he does, and a hero we would all be proud to know. Yes Billy we all know just who you are.