Book Excerpt: ‘The Passenger,’ Cormac McCarthy’s First Novel in 16 Years

Book Excerpt

A passage from the author's first novel since his Pulitzer Prize-winning 2006 book "The Road."

Credit...Patrik Svensson

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"The Passenger," Cormac McCarthy's first novel in 16 years, focuses on Bobby Western, who works as a salvage diver and discovers something suspicious in the wreckage of a sunken jet. It will be published by Alfred A. Knopf on Oct. 25, followed by "Stella Maris," a novel whose story and characters intertwine with "The Passenger," on Dec. 6.

He sat wrapped in one of the gray rescue blankets from the emergency bag and drank hot tea. The dark sea lapped about. The Coast Guard boat that had pulled up a hundred yards off sat rocking in the swells with the running lights on and beyond that ten miles to the north you could see the lights of trucks moving along the causeway, coming out of New Orleans and heading east along US 90 toward Pass Christian, Biloxi, Mobile. Mozart's second violin concerto was playing on the tapedeck. The air temperature was forty-four degrees and it was three seventeen in the morning.

The tender was lying on his elbows with the headset on watching the dark water beneath them. From time to time the sea would flare with a soft sulphurous light where forty feet down Oiler was working with the cuttingtorch. Western watched the tender and he blew on the tea and sipped it and he watched the lights moving along the causeway like the slow cellular crawl of waterdrops on a wire. Strobing faintly where they passed behind the concrete balusters. There was an onshore wind coming up past the western tip of Cat Island and there was a light chop to the water. Smell of oil and the rich tidal funk of mangrove and saltgrass from the islands. The tender sat up and took off the headset and began to rifle through the toolbox.

How's he doing?

Doin okay.

What's he want?

The big sidecutters.

He hooked a set of shears to a carabiner and snapped the carabiner over the workline and watched the shears slide into the sea. He looked at Western.

How deep can you use acetylene?

Thirty, thirty-five feet.

And after that it's oxyarc.

Yes.

The tender nodded and pulled the headset back on.

Western drained the last of the tea and shook out the dregs and put the cup back in his bag and reached and got his flippers and pulled them on. He slipped the blanket from his shoulders and stood and zipped up the jacket of his wetsuit and bent and got his tanks and lifted them by the straps and pulled them on. He fastened the straps and pulled on his mask.

The tender slid the headset back. You care if I change stations?

Western lifted the mask up. It's a tape.

You care if I change tapes?

No.

The tender shook his head. Helicopter us out here in the freezing-ass cold at one oclock in the morning. I dont know what the hurry was.

Meaning that they’re all dead.

Yeah.

And you know this how?

It just stands to reason.

Western looked out at the Coast Guard boat. The shape of the lights unchained in the chop of the dark water. He looked at the tender. Reason, he said. Right.

He pulled on his gloves. The white beam of the spotlight raced over the water and back again and then went dark. He pulled on his belt and hooked it and fitted the regulator into his mouth and pulled down the mask and stepped into the water.

Dropping slowly through the dark toward the intermittent flare of the torch below. He reached the stabilizer and dropped down onto the fuselage and turned and swam slowly along, tracing the smooth aluminum under his gloved hand. The bead of the rivets. The torch flared again. The shape of the fuselage tunneling off into the dark. He kicked past the hulking nacelles that held the turbofan engines and dropped down the side of the fuselage and into the pool of light.

Oiler had cut away the latching mechanism and the door stood open. He was just inside the plane crouched against the bulkhead. He gestured with his head and Western pulled up in the door and Oiler shone his light down the aircraft aisle. The people sitting in their seats, their hair floating. Their mouths open, their eyes devoid of speculation. The workbasket was sitting on the floor inside the door and Western reached and got the other divelight and pulled himself into the plane.

He kicked his way slowly down the aisle above the seats, his tanks dragging overhead. The faces of the dead inches away. Everything that could float was against the ceiling. Pencils, cushions, styrofoam coffeecups. Sheets of paper with the ink draining off into hieroglyphic smears. A tightening claustrophobia. He doubled under and got himself turned around and made his way back.

Oiler was swimming down the outside of the fuselage with his light. The light made a corolla in the airspace of the double glass. Western went forward and pushed his way into the cockpit.

The copilot was still strapped into his seat but the pilot was hovering overhead against the ceiling with his arms and legs hanging down like an enormous marionette. Western shone his light over the instruments. The twin throttle levers in the console were pulled all the way into the off position. The gauges were analog and when the circuits shorted out in the seawater they’d returned to neutral settings. There was a square space in the panel where one of the avionics boards had been removed. It had been held in place by six screws by the holes there and there were three jackplugs hanging down where the pigtails had been disconnected. Western wedged his knees against the backs of the seats at either side. Good stainless steel Heuer watch on the copilot's wrist. He studied the panels. What's missing? Kollsman altimeters and vertical speed indicators. Fuel in pounds. Airspeed at zero. Collins avionics otherwise. It was the navigation rack. He backed out of the cockpit. The bubbles from the regulator sorted themselves along the dome of the roof overhead. He’d looked in every possible space for the pilot's flightbag and he was pretty sure it wasnt there. He pushed out through the door and looked for Oiler. He was hovering over the wing. He made a circling motion with one hand and pointed upward and kicked off toward the surface.

They sat on the small deck of the inflatable and pulled off their masks and spat out the regulator mouthpieces and leaned back into the tanks and loosened them. Creedence Clearwater was playing on the tapedeck. Western got his thermos out.

What time is it? said Oiler.

Four twelve.

He spat and wiped his nose with the back of his wrist. He leaned past Western and twisted shut the valves on the gas bottles. I hate shit like this, he said.

What, bodies?

Well. That too. But no. Shit that makes no sense. That you cant make sense out of.

Yeah.

There wont be anybody out here for another couple of hours. Or three. What do you want to do?

What do I want to do or what do I think we should do?

I dont know. What do you make of this?

I dont.

Oiler stripped off his gloves and unzipped his divebag and got his thermos out. He took the plastic cup off the bottle and unscrewed the cap and poured the cup and blew on it. The tender was pulling up the workline and the basket.

You cant even see the damn plane. And some fisherman is supposed to of found it? That's bullshit.

You dont think the lights could have stayed on for a while?

No.

Probably right.

Oiler dried his hands on a towel from his bag and got his cigarettes and lighter out and shucked a cigarette from the pack and lit it and sat looking out over the black and lapping water. They’re all just sitting in their seats? What the fuck is that?

I’d say they had to be already dead when the plane sank.

Oiler smoked and shook his head. Yeah. And no fuel slick.

There's a panel missing from the instrumentation. And the pilot's flightbag is missing.

Yeah?

You know what this is, dont you?

No. Do you?

Aliens.

Fuck you Western.

Western smiled.

What do you think the range is on one of these things?

The JetStar?

Yes.

Probably a couple of thousand miles. Why?

Because you got to wonder where it was coming from.

Yeah. What else?

I think they’ve been down there a few days.

Fuck.

They dont look all that well kept. How long does it take for bodies to come up?

I dont know. Two or three days. Depends on the temperature of the water. How many are there?

Seven. Plus the pilot and copilot. Nine in all.

What do you want to do?

Go home and go to bed.

Oiler blew at his cup and sipped his coffee. Yeah, he said.

The tender's name was Campbell. He studied Western and he looked at Oiler. That's got to be some ugly shit down there, he said. That dont bother you?

You want to go down and take a look?

No.

Hell. I’ll tend for you. Western’ll go with you if you want.

You’re shittin me.

I aint shittin you.

Well. I aint goin.

I know you aint. But if you aint seen what we seen maybe you ought not to be so quick about tellin us what we’re supposed to think about it.

Campbell looked at Western. Western tilted the leaves in his cup. Hell, Oiler. He didnt mean anything by it.

Sorry. The point is I dont have a story about how that plane got down there. And every time I think about all the things that are wrong the list gets longer.

I agree.

Maybe the good doctor Western here can come up with something like an explanation.

Western shook his head. The good doctor Western dont have a clue.

I dont even know what we’re doin out here.

I know. There's nothing about this that rattles right.

So what have we got, two hours till daylight?

Yeah. Hour and a half maybe.

I’m not bringin em up.

I’m not either.

Survivors. What the shit is that?

They sat with their faces shadowed by the lamp, the raft lifting and tilting in the swells. Oiler held out the thermos. You want some of this, Gary?

I’m all right.

Go ahead. It's hot.

All right.

I didnt see any damage at all.

Yeah. It looked like it just left the factory.

Who makes it? The what, JetStar?

JetStar, yeah. Lockheed.

Well. It's a hell of a plane. Four jet engines? How fast will that thing go Bobby?

Western shook out the leaves and screwed the cap back onto his thermos. I think right at six hundred miles an hour.

Damn.

Oiler took a last draw on his cigarette and flipped it spinning into the dark. You’ve never brought up bodies, have you?

No. I just figured anything that you didnt want to do I’m probably not going to like either.

You bring em up with a rope and harness but you still got to get them out of the plane. They keep wantin to put their arms around you. We brought fifty-three up out of a Douglas airliner off the coast of Florida one time and that did it for me. That was before I went to work for Taylor. They’d been down there a few days and you damn sure didnt want to get any of that water in your mouth. They were all swollen in their clothes and you had to cut them out of their seatbelts. Quick as you did they’d start to rise up with their arms out. Sort of like circus balloons.

These dont look like corporation guys.

Yeah? They got on suits.

I know. But they’re not the right kind of suits. Their shoes look European.

Well. I wouldnt know. I aint had on a pair of regular shoes in ten years.

What do you want to do?

Get the hell out of here. We need to take showers.

All right.

What time is it?

Four twenty-six.

Time flies when you’re havin fun.

We can hose off on the dock when we get back. Hose out our suits.

I’m goin to be hard to find, Bobby. I aint comin back out here.

All right.

You think there's already been somebody down there, dont you?

I dont know.

Yeah. But that aint an answer. How would they get in the plane? They’d of had to cut their way in the same way we done.

Maybe somebody let them in.

Oiler shook his head. Damn, Western. I dont know why I even talk to you. All you ever do is spook the shit out of me. Gary, you want to fire this thing up?

You got it.

Western tucked his thermos into his divebag. What else? he said.

I’ll tell you what else. I think that my desire to remain totally fucking ignorant about shit that will only get me in trouble is both deep and abiding. I’m going to say that it is just damn near a religion.

Gary had gone to the back of the inflatable. Western and Oiler raised the two anchors and Gary stood with one foot on the transom and hauled on the starter rope. The big Johnson outboard started immediately and they burbled along till they were well clear of the orange float and Gary cranked the throttle open and they set out across the dark water toward Pass Christian.

Coming downriver an antique schooner running under bare poles. Black hull, gold plimsoll. Passing under the bridge and down along the gray riverfront. Phantom of grace. Past warehouse and pier, the tall gantry cranes. The rusty Liberian freighters bollarded along the docks on the Algiers shore. A few people along the walkway had stopped to look. Something out of another time. He crossed the tracks and went up Decatur Street to St Louis and walked up Chartres Street. At the Napoleon House the old crowd hailed him from the small tables set out before the door. Familiars out of another life. How many tales begin just so?

Squire Western, called Long John. Up from the murky deeps is it? Come join us for a libation. The sun's over the yardarm if I’m not cruelly mistaken.

He pulled up one of the small bentwood chairs and set his green divebag on the tiles. Bianca Pharaoh leaned and smiled. What have you got in the bag, Precious?

He's off on a trip, said Darling Dave.

Nonsense. The Squire wont abandon us. Waiter.

It's just my gear.

It's just his gear, said Brat to the table at large.

Count Seals turned sleepily. It's his diving gear, he said. He's a diver.

Ooh, said Bianca. I like that so much. Let me see inside. Anything kinky?

The man goes to work in rubber apparel, what do you expect? Here my good fellow. A flagon of your stoutest for my friend.

The waiter moved away. The tourists passed along the walk. Threads of their empty conversation hanging in the air like bits of code. Underfoot the slow periodic thud of a piledriver from somewhere along the riverfront. Western regarded his host. How have you been, John?

I’m well, Squire. I was away for a while. A slight contretemps with the authorities regarding the legitimacy of some medical prescriptions.

He detailed his adventures in an offhand way. Pads of forged prescriptions from a printshop in Morristown Tennessee. Real doctors, but their phone numbers replaced with numbers from payphones in supermarket parkinglots. Girlfriend a few feet away in a parked car. Yes. That's correct. His mother is terminal. Yes. Dilaudids. One hundred sixteenths. Three weeks of this in the small towns of the Appalachian south and then pacing up and back in a room at the Hilltop Motel on Kingston Pike in Knoxville. The room paid for with a stolen credit card. Waiting for the connection. Half a shoebox full of Schedule II narcotics with a street value of over a hundred thousand dollars. He’d stripped out of his clothes in the heat and was pacing naked save for a pair of ostrichskin boots and a widebrimmed black Borsalino. Smoking his last Montecristo. Five oclock came. Then six. Finally a knock at the door. He snatched it open. Where in the hell have you all been? he said. But he was staring down the barrel of a .38 caliber service revolver and there was a backup man off to the side with a pump shotgun. The TBI agent was holding up his badge. Looking up at this tall and totally naked felon. Old buddy, he said, we got here just as quick as we could.

You’re out on bail, said Western.

Yes.

I thought you werent supposed to leave the State?

Technically true. But in any case I’m here but for a few days. If that will put your mind at ease. The old town was beginning to wear on me. When they finally sprang me I went home and showered and changed and was on my way down Jackson Avenue to see if I could cadge a drink when I ran into an old girlfriend. Why John, she says, is that you? I havent seen you in ages. Where have you been? And I said: My dear, I have been in durance vile. And she said: Really? You know my sister married a boy from Winston-Salem. And I thought to myself: I really need to get out of this town.

Western smiled. The waiter brought the beer and set it on the table and went away. The long one raised his glass. Salud. They drank. Brat was in conference with Darling Dave. Seeking counsel. In this dream, he said, I climbed through a window and beat this old woman senseless in her bed with a meatmallet. She had these waffle marks on her head.

Dave brushed something unseen from the tabletop. You’re reaching out for help, he said.

What?

It may be that your body's not getting something it needs.

It's always about freedom, said Bianca. Lifting all that stuff off of you. Like a parent dying.

Seals roused himself. A bird person he. In his bathroom brooding raptors hooded like hangmen shifted sullenly upon their perches. A saker, a lanneret.

A parrot? he said.

Bianca smiled and patted his knee. I love you, she said.

Various of them looking for work. John gestured with his glass. Brat very nearly secured a position, he said. But of course at the last moment it all came uncottered.

I just blew it, said Brat. Something came over me. This breather kept going on about this policy and that policy. Finally he said: And another thing. Around here we dont watch the clock. And I said well I just cant tell you how happy I am to hear you say those words. I’ve had a lifelong habit of being up to an hour late for just about everything.

What did he say?

He got sort of quiet. He sat there for a minute and then he got up and left. And it was his office. After a while the secretary came in and she said that the interview was over. I asked her if I’d gotten the job but she said she didnt think so. She looked kind of nervous.

Have you found another place to live?

Not yet.

What about the arson charges?

They dropped them. They found some of the cats.

Cats?

Cats. Yeah. The problem was that the fire had started in about six different places so that looked sort of suspicious to them but then they started finding the cats. It was just a matter of putting two and two together.

The cats knocked over a can of my paint thinner, said Bianca. Then they rolled around in it. Then they all ran up under the heater and caught fire. And then they just ran all over the studio.

Cats.

Kittens. You know. Little cats. She measured a length between her palms. I said why would I set fire to my own apartment? And anyway, we’re only renting for God's sake. How are you going to collect on that? I mean anybody should have been able to figure it out that the cats were on fire. What did they think, they were just sitting around waiting for a fire to start so they could throw themselves into the flames? Obviously the cats caught fire first is what started the whole thing. They’re just so fucking dumb.

The cats?

No, not the cats. The fucking insurance people.

It was pretty much fun, said Brat. When the bailiff raised his hand to swear her in she reached up and slapped him a big high-five. I dont think they’d seen that before.

I suppose the genetic predisposition must vary with the breeds, said John, but in any case the selfimmolatory tendencies of cats does seem to be a known factor in the feline equation. Noted in the writings of Asclepius, among others of the ancients.

Jesus, said Seals.

It would seem to contradict Unamuno, though. Right, Squire? His dictum that cats reason more than they weep? Of course their very existence according to Rilke is wholly hypothetical.

Cats?

Cats.

Western smiled. He drank. A cool and sunny day in the ancient city. The noon and early winter light soft in the street.

Where is Willy V?

He's set up his easel in Jackson Square. Hopes to peddle his daubings to the tourists of course. He and that mooncolored hound of his.

That thing will bite some tourist in the ass and he’ll be in a lawsuit.

Or jail.

Long John had set about unwrapping a large black cigar. He bit the end and spat and rolled the cigar along his tongue and gripped it in his teeth and reached for a match. I had a dream about you, Squire.

A dream you say.

Yes. I dreamt you were wandering in your weighted shoes over the ocean floor. Seeking God knows what in the darkness of those bathypelagic deeps. When you reached the edge of the Nazca Plate there were flames licking up from the abyss. The sea boiling. In my dream it seemed to me you’d stumbled upon the mouth of hell and I thought that you would lower a rope to those of your friends who’d gone before. You didnt.

He ran the match crackling along the underside of the table and fell to enkindling his cigar.

Are you really a diver? said Bianca.

Not the kind you had in mind, Darling, said Dave.

He's every kind of diver you can name, said Seals, struggling partially upright and placing one fist on the table. Every goddamned kind.

I’m a salvage diver, said Western.

What do you salvage?

Whatever we’re hired to. Whatever is lost.

Treasure?

No. It's more commercial stuff. Cargoes.

What's the weirdest thing you were ever asked to do?

You mean of a nonsexual nature?

I knew I liked him.

I dont know. I’d have to think about it. Some guys I know raised a bargeload of batshit one time.

Hear that? said Seals. Batshit.

How did you happen to get into this?

Dont go there, my dear, said John. You dont want to know. How he secretly hopes to die in the deep to atone for his sins. And that's only the beginning.

Oh this is getting interesting.

Dont get too excited. You may have noticed a certain reticence in our man. It's true that he does dangerous underwater work for high pay but it's also true that he's afraid of the depths. Well, you say. He has overcome his fears. Not a bit of it. He is sinking into a darkness he cannot even comprehend. Darkness and immobilizing cold. I enjoy talking about him if he does not. I’m sure you’d like to hear the sin and atonement part. That at the very least. He's an attractive man. Women want to save him. But of course he's beyond all that. What say you, Squire? How far off the mark?

Rave on, Sheddan.

I think I’ll rest my case. I know what you’re thinking. You see in me an ego vast, unstructured, and baseless. But in all candor I’ve not even the remotest aspirations to the heights of self- regard which the Squire commands. And I’m not unaware that it even lends a certain validity to his views. After all, I’m merely an enemy of society, while he is one of God.

Wow, said Bianca. She turned toward Western with a hungry look. What did you do?

Sheddan's thin cheeks caved as he pulled at the cigar. He blew the scented smoke across the table and smiled. What the Squire has never understood is that forgiveness has a time line. While it's never too late for revenge.

Western drained the last of his beer and set the mug on the table. I’ve got to go, he said.

Stay, said Sheddan. I take it all back.

I wouldnt dream of it. You know how I enjoy your chatter.

You’re not off on one of your overseas jobs are you?

No. I’m on my way home to bed.

Just getting off the graveyard shift is it?

That's pretty much right on the money. I’ll see you.

He reached and got his bag and rose and nodded to the assemblage and set off up Bourbon Street with the bag over his shoulder.

I like your friend, said Bianca. Nice ass.

You’re digging a dry hole, my dear.

Why? Is he gay?

No. He's in love.

Pity.

It's worse than that.

How so?

He's in love with his sister.

Wow. Is he part of that upriver crowd that shows up here on Sunday mornings?

No. He's from Knoxville. Well, again, it's worse than that. He's actually from Wartburg. Wartburg Tennessee.

Wartburg Tennessee.

Yes.

There is no such place.

I’m afraid there is. It's near Oak Ridge. His father's trade was the design and fabrication of enormous bombs for the purpose of incinerating whole citiesful of innocent people as they slept in their beds. Cleverly conceived and handcrafted things. One-off, each of them. Like vintage Bentleys. Western himself I met at the university. Well, actually the first time I ever saw him was at the Club Fifty-Two out on the Asheville Highway. He was up on the stage playing the mandolin with the band. Bluegrass. I’d never met him but I knew who he was. He was a mathematics major with a four point grade average. Somebody at our table invited him over and we got to talking. I quoted Cioran to him and he quoted Plato back on the same subject. And he had this beautiful sister. I think she was fourteen. And he would take her to these clubs. They were just openly dating. And she was even smarter than he was. And just drop dead gorgeous. A flat out train-wrecker. He got a scholarship to Caltech and he went there and studied physics but he never got his doctorate. He came into some money and went to Europe to race cars.

He drove racecars?

Yes.

What kind?

I dont know. Those little things they race over there. He’d raced dirt-track cars at the Atomic Speedway at Oak Ridge when he was in high school. Apparently he was quite good at it.

He raced Formula Two, said Dave. He was good at it, just not good enough.

Yes. Well. He has a metal plate in his head for his troubles. A metal rod in one leg. That sort of thing. He has a slight limp. Still, it may have been just an ugly piece of luck. I think he was probably a pretty good driver. They’re not going to strap you into one of those things if you cant drive, I dont care how much money you have.

Does he still have the money?

I was waiting for you to ask. No. He pissed it all away.

And all the while he's banging his sister.

That's my considered opinion.

I’m surprised you never asked him.

I did ask him.

What did he say?

He didnt take it well. Denied it, of course. He thinks I’m a psychopath and he may well be right. The jury is still out. But he's a textbook narcissist of the closet variety and, again, that modest smile of his masks an ego the size of downtown Cleveland.

He seemed awfully straight to me. I was wondering how this crowd even knew him.

The long one looked at her. Straight? You must be joking.

What else has he done?

What else? God. The man's a seducer of prelates and a suborner of the judiciary. He's an habitual mailcandler and a practicing gelignitionary, a mathematical platonist and a molester of domestic yardfowl. Principally of the dominecker persuasion. A chickenfucker, not to put too fine a point on it.

John?

What.

You’re describing yourself.

Me? Not at all. That's nonsense. An eiderduck perhaps. Once.

An eiderduck?

The bridal duck so called. Somateria mollissima, I believe.

Jesus.

A minor peccadillo alongside the enormities rightly laid at the door of your man. Dreams haunted by the complaints of poultry. A restlessness in the roost, a squabbling. Then the ensuing wingwhack, the shrieks. It's a sobering thing. Just his daily list of things to do. Pick up cleaning. Call mother. Fuck chickens. I’m surprised to see a woman of the world such as yourself so easily taken in.

He pulled reflectively on his cigar. He shook his head almost in sadness. Still I suppose they might be willing to endure these indignities if it meant being snatched from under the poulterer's boning-knife at the eleventh hour. And of course the question does arise as to whether it's proper to eat them afterwards. Islamic law is quite clear on this point, if I’m not mistaken. That it would indeed be wrong. But your neighbor can eat them. Assuming he's of a mind to. The Western Church I believe is silent on the matter.

You cant be serious.

Couldnt be more in earnest.

Bianca smiled. She sipped her drink. Tell me something, she said.

Of course.

Does Knoxville produce crazy people or does it just attract them?

Interesting question. Nature nurture. Actually the more deranged of them seem to hail from the neighboring hinterlands. Good question though. Let me get back to you on that.

Well he seemed very nice to me.

He is very nice. I’m enormously fond of him.

But he's in love with his sister.

Yes. He is in love with his sister. But of course it gets worse.

Bianca smiled her odd smile and licked her upper lip. Okay. He's in love with his sister and . . . ?

He's in love with his sister and she's dead.

The novels of the American writer Cormac McCarthy have received a number of literary awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His works adapted to film include "All the Pretty Horses," "The Road" and "No Country for Old Men."

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