Blood Meridian
Texas-Mexico border in the mid-19th century: Kid, a sixteen-year-old Tennessean who stumbles into the nightmarish world where aboriginal Americans are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.
Ep 1Chapter I
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.
Ep 2Chapter II
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.
Ep 3Chapter III
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.
Ep 4Chapter IV
Five days later, mounted on Earl’s horse, the kid rides out with Captain White’s army of filibusters (people engaging in unauthorized warfare against a foreign country). They ride through the town of Castroville where coyotes have dug up the dead and scattered their bones. Captain White hunts little wild pigs and antelope. All of the filibusters are armed to the teeth. The rifle the kid bears has no scabbard, so he rides with it on his saddlebow, as many others have carried it. The men eat skinned and gutted antelope at nights, laughing and jesting despite all of the gore.
Ep 5Chapter V
The kid “wondrously” survives the massacre; at night he rises and steals away under the moonlight, even while the Comanches celebrate their victory from higher ground. When day comes, the kid sees some outcroppings of rock about a mile away and he heads toward them.
Chapter VI
During the day, the prisoners work in the city streets gathering up filth. Their overseer is a “goldtoothed pervert” whom Toadvine wants to kill personally. Toadvine assures the kid that they’ll get out of the prison. During the day, a cart passes in the street, led by a fat priest who is delivering sacramental bread to someone (presumably someone dying); the guards forcibly remove their prisoners’ hats as a sign of respect to the priest and his holy office.
