I’ve now read three books by John Williams, and each one was different in setting and story. The tone, though, has been the same. Williams is a master of the understated. He’s not shy in asking the reader to think, and that’s what I love most about him.

In Butcher’s Crossing, Williams tells the story of a buffalo hunt beginning with lofty intentions only to succumb to sudden changes of nature and humanity. The narrative is set in 1870s Kansas and Colorado. Will Andrews arrives in the town of Butcher’s Crossing seeking to discover the West after dropping out of Harvard. He meets an experienced buffalo hunter named Miller who convinces him that he knows where thousands of buffalo graze in a Colorado valley. Miller promises Andrews there’s a lot of money to be made with the number of hides they’ll bring back. Andrews agrees to fund and go on the hunt, along with two other men, an old man named Charley, who will steer the wagon, and Schneider, the skinner.

Much of the narrative is about the long journey to Colorado. This portion of the book is repetitive and tiresome, and kudos to Williams for making the reader feel exactly how the riders feel. Once in the valley, the killing starts. Miller becomes obsessed with getting as many hides as possible, and Andrews supports his decision even as Schneider objects over and over. Miller’s goal is what makes them miss their time to leave the valley before winter starts. The story then becomes one of survival under a harsh winter for eight months.

Times have changed once the buffalo hunting party arrives back in Butcher’s Crossing, and it’s this portion of the book where Williams’ writing shines.

Andrews is talking with McDonald–the hide buyer–about why he came out West and what he was trying to discover. McDonald tells him there’s nothing to find out.

You get born, and you nurse on lies, and you get weaned on lies, and you learn fancier lies in school. You live all your life on lies, and then maybe when you’re ready to die, it comes to you–that there’s nothing, nothing but yourself and what you could have done. Only you ain’t done it, because the lies told you there was something else. Then you know you could of had the world, because you’re the only one that knows the secret; only then it’s too late. You’re too old.

It’s a bleak outlook, and it reminds me of the tone of Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. Butcher’s Crossing was published almost 25 years before McCarthy’s classic. I wonder if he read it and was influence by its philosophical outlook on the American dream of manifest destiny. Whereas McCarthy concerns himself with evilness in the world, Williams wonders about something else, something just as damning as evil because it’s unknowable.

We have something to say to each other, Andrews thought dimly, but we don’t know what it is; we have something we ought to say.

I’ve been thinking about that line a lot after finishing the book. It’s stuck with me, and I don’t see it vanishing anytime soon. It’s going to be a filter I experience everything through for a while. And it’s all because Williams gave us a classic tale of the hero’s journey and then questioned if the journey is worth it. That’s something I never thought about, and I’m not sure I want to know the answer. At least not yet. I’m too young.

(Image via New York Review Books.)