Blood Meridian

The novel’s protagonist, if it can be said to have one, is the kid, born in 1833 during the Leonid meteor shower. His mother died in childbirth, and he was raised by his father, formerly a schoolmaster, now a drunk who quotes from forgotten poets. Even at the age of fourteen, the kid, thin, ragged, and illiterate, has “a taste for mindless violence,” which the narrator claims will define his whole life.

The kid begins to live by begging and theft. He rides across a barren prairie, where the wind makes the weeds rattle like gnashing teeth. At night, the kid sleeps outside under a sky full of falling stars while wolves cry. The sun is the color of steel when it rises. The kid wears a hat made from leaves.

The kid is lying naked under some trees when a man on horseback, later identified as Sergeant Trammel, approaches him. The kid takes up his knife; the man greets him. He asks if the kid is the one who mauled the Mexican bartender the day before, because, if he is, Captain White wants him to join an army of irregulars going to war against the Mexicans. The kid says that the war (presumably the Mexican-American War) is over, but the man replies that Captain White says otherwise, and promises the kid, at this point fully dressed, that war will give him the opportunity to rise in the world.