He'd had a dream and in the dream a messenger had come in off the plains from the south with something writ upon a ledgerscrap but he could not read it. He looked at the messenger but that face was obscured in shadow and featureless and he knew that the messenger was messenger alone and could tell him nothing of the news he bore
A reoccurring concept throughout The Crossing is predestination: the belief that all men, no matter their actions, have already decided their fate. Here, in the dream, the messenger is a physical manifestation of that belief. In the dream, the messenger is predestined to reach Billy, but does not understand why. Billy is predestined to receive the news, but does not understand it or the messenger. The messenger's identity is hidden as the future/fate is hidden from men. The fate people receive is this “news”. Nobody can avoid the predestination of destiny. Not even in dreams.
She said that the revolution had killed off all the real men in the country and left only the tontos. She said moreover that fools beget their own kind and here was the proof of it and that as only foolish women would have aught todo with them their progeny were twice doomed.
The older woman's statement to Billy alludes to the “doomed” predestination of Mexico's fate. In The Crossing, Mexico is highly differentiated from the United States. It is a far crueler but more realistic land. Its current political instability was created by the conditions it was born from. The “progeny of fools” or failed sons of the revolution were always destined to rule it. All those who engage in such actions the older woman regards as “twice doomed”. It is just as, despite all his kindness, Billy is “twice doomed” much the same. He looses both his only major goal and brother through the book. He is another tonto or fool.
The horse had dark hooves with heavy hoof walls and the horse had in him enough grullo blood to make a mountain horse by both conformation and inclination and as the boy had grown up where the blood carries the shape of a hock or the breadth of a face it carries also an inner being of a certain design and no other and the wilder their life became the more he felt the horse subtly at war with itself. He didn't think the horse would quit him but he was sure the horse had thought about it.
The concept of “inner-nature” is a major theme throughout The Crossing. McCarthy argues that all things are predisposed to the “shape of their soul”. That being their simplest, primordial nature. The nature of their wild spirit. As Billy begins to leave society, his horse begins to return to its natural instincts. It desires to return to being wild just as Billy desires to return home. McCarthy sees both men and horses as similar in nature. Both creatures are domesticated, but both can easily collapse back into a state of natural savagery. An eternal state that persists in the blood of all creatures.
There is another who will hear what you never spoke. Stones themselves are made of air. What they have power to crush never lived. In the end we shall all of us be only what we have made of God. For nothing is real save his grace.
A line delivered by the custodian in the collapsing church to Billy. The custodian's own story is meant to show the paradox of faith and its failure. Ultimately, the custodian agrees with predestination. Man's fate cannot be known; it is already decided, and only God knows one's destination. Man is purely preserved by this “grace” for it is impossible to understand God. The custodian's entire life has been a failure in an attempt to do so. Whereas the custodian sought for God, Billy now looks for Boyd. Both fates are predestined to end poorly in churchyards, but they will end. The only question is if Billy can be preserved unlike the wolf. The wolf that Billy originally desired to protect. All things are justified by that “grace” of which the man in the church speaks, even death.
Yes, it tells about him. It tells what it wishes to tell. It tells what makes the story run. The corrido the poor man's history. It does not owe its allegiance to the truths of history but to the truths of men. It tells the tale of that solitary man who is all men. It believes that where two men meet one of two things can occur and nothing else. In the one case a lie is born and in the other death.
Quijada's moral to Billy carries heavy significance for The Crossing. Always interested in Biblical significance, McCarthy intends for this phrase to allude to the story of Adam and his sons Cain and Abel. Quijada infers that from the first man (or man's most basic nature) hatred and death existed. Adam (or the original man) was “the solitary man who is all men” as humanity descends from him. The two men who meet are his sons Cain and Abel which mirror Billy and Boyd in The Crossing. In both stories, one brother ends up dead while the other must carry the guilt. Either a lie justifies killing or death justifies itself. The dichotomy of murder which exists in all of humanity for all of history. A moral prerogative known quite well to Billy, Boyd, and Quijada throughout the novel.
