Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God is set in the mountains of eastern Tennessee around 1965. It opens with the county auctioning off Lester’s home. “Lester Ballard never could hold his head right after that.” Then he’s falsely accused of rape. After several days in jail, the sheriff determines Lester is not guilty (he’s certainly not innocent) of this particular crime and he’s set free.
You might think Lester is a little pissed off now, and you’d be right. But not to worry, Lester is a “child of god much like yourself perhaps.” And like you perhaps, Lester becomes unmoored, feral – though in fairness he was probably always feral. He starts collecting things: stuffed animals from the fair, women’s clothing, female corpses. You know, the standard stuff anyone would collect after losing everything.
So the sheriff gets involved again, but Lester has disappeared into the mountains. The sheriff represents what passes for civilization in this “dead and fabled waste.” This is obvious because he wears “pressed and tailored” chinos, and his name is Fate (no one ever accused Cormac McCarthy of light-heartedness or subtlety). So Fate is chasing Lester in a place the “good lord didn’t intend folks to live in.” Some things just don’t change in Cormac Land, and when the sheriff is asked if he thinks people are meaner now compared to the old days, he responds predictably. “I think people are the same from the day God first made one.”
Lester is a precursor to McCarthy’s Judge Holden in Blood Meridian and Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men. He’s just not as compelling as those superbly nihilistic killers. These novels share other Cormac tropes too: wild and brutal landscapes, men comfortable with random acts of violence, and civilization fighting a losing battle against viciousness.
But back to Child of God. I hope this doesn’t come as a surprise, but people die. And when someone dies, we call it fate even though fate had nothing to do with it. So fate does eventually catch up with Lester, but Fate doesn’t.
What makes men like Lester Ballard, Judge Holden, and Anton Chigurh so vicious? Is it the inhospitable environment? Something inside them? The devil? I hope you aren’t so naive as to think Cormac McCarthy is going to answer that for you.
Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor
Pungent Sound Journal of Pulp Poetry 