Seriously? I don’t even need a happy ending. Can something genuinely good happen to one of McCarthy’s characters? Just once in between the heartache and tragedy?
20-year-old John Grady Cole and a 28-year-old Billy Parham work together on the same ranch in New Mexico in Cities of the Plain, the third novel of the Border trilogy. Their stories seem to parallel their previous tales in All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing. Cole falls for a Mexican girl he can’t have, and Parham searches for and loses another brother. McCarthy never explains what happened to these two guys in the years since the first two novels. He simply picks up with where and who they are now.
Cole hasn’t changed much in his last four years, though with the single-mindedness he displays in this book I would have expected him to still be after Blue Eyes from ATPH. (No mention of her.) Instead he has his eyes on a young prostitute that he is determined to rescue from her pimp. We see throughout the novels his characteristic need to save the pitiful helpless. Perhaps Cole is especially unrelenting with this girl because he gave up on the last? He won’t repeat this mistake and live with another regret? Even if it means putting himself in mortal danger.
Parham’s had over ten years to mature. The last time we saw him he was bringing back his brother’s remains to bury properly. Parham now looks after Cole as both a friend and brother. He attempts to advise Cole to stay away from the girl and her dangerous master, but when that fails, Billy is the one who has his back.
Both are always determined to do what they think is right – whatever the consequences. They respect the other even when in complete disagreement. Neither quit the other. The friendships that McCarthy has illustrated (Cole and Rawlins/Cole and Parham) are the some of the best examples I’ve seen.
There is one particularly aching moment for me in the epilogue. We find a 78-year-old Billy Parham speaking to a woman about the brother he lost over 60 yrs ago, missing him still and dreaming of him.
The truth is that I have been won over by McCarthy. I can’t remember the last time I cried while reading, and he’s reduced me to hot, heavy tears every time. As much as I might complain that his characters get the shaft, it’s only because I love the people he creates.