Rough Stone Rolling

Earlier I had commented on the book, No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy. I entertained the idea of finding $2.4 million as a character in the story did, and wondered if I would actually turn it in or keep it.

Last night I went with a friend to watch the movie of the same name, directed & produced by Joel and Ethan Coen. I’m a big fan of their films (Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing, Fargo…) and never miss seeing them in the theater if I can help it. This new one, less farcical and more introspective than previous works, was wonderful to look at from the first shot and left you affected long after the lights came up.

In a nutshell, a hunter finds a bunch of bullet-ridden cars, dead men, a truck full of contraband and a satchel full of money– the fruits of a drug deal gone bad (the story takes place in 1980). He takes the satchel home where he has a sweet, young wife. It doesn’t take long for a very evil killer to catch his scent, though, and suddenly the hunter has to draw every trick he can summon to stay ahead of death. That’s the plot, but the narrator is what you’re really fixed on– an old, wizened sheriff who can’t hardly understand the world anymore. In a rare moment of vulnerability he confides to a mentor that in this modern world he’s “outmanned.” It’s very poignant, this faithful servant of the law’s conclusion. Time has passed him by. Evil is winning. There’s genuine lament, not scorn, in his voice when he says that “after ’sir’ and ‘ma’am’ disappear, there’s no stemming the tide of moral turpitude.” And at the end of the film he sits at his kitchen table, telling his wife a dream he had: His father is riding past him on a horse trail, carrying a flame… as if he was going to make a campfire for when the son caught up.

I look at the world and marvel like an old man, myself, and I’m only 30 hours short of 48. The things people are doing to themselves and each other: molesters and self-mutilators, familial murder-suicides, shooting rampages and serial killers, augmenting everything on their bodies they can and calling it sexy. People getting offended by baby Jesuses and gays celebrating their conditions on their own TV shows. I miss being a teen in Salt Lake, when even us bad eggs respected, and were grateful for, the law on the street. The sheriffs carried six-guns and God help you if you crossed the line. When, at 16, you were still anticipating your first kiss and songs on the radio caught you up in the moments. I’m feeling a bit passed by, myself, and I can’t tell if things are really changing that quickly, or if I’m just waxing nostalgic for my youth.

Last December I visited the street of my childhood in Bronx, NY. I hadn’t been there since 1969 and, after hearing the horror stories about how the neighborhood had gone to hell, I really didn’t know what I’d find. Well, it looked remarkably intact, but it was small and gray and cold. When I was a kid we played in the snow in the park across the street; it was empty. The mothers and old folks walked along and chatted; not a soul. There were shots around the corner while I was taking pictures, and a mother grabbed her child and ducked in an alley. If there ever was a sign that you can’t go back, that was mine. I never did develop those pictures.

If I do get to retire before I meet my dad at the campfire, I hope I can do so in a town that time somehow overlooked, where kids play in the streets (what’s a play date?) and people walk their neighborhoods for the pleasure of it. Where a soda fountain defies progress and remains open, and the autumn fair is a big event.

I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just have to wait for the next estate.