I want to take the Kid from Blood Meridian and just plop him in the middle of the Van Der Linde gang and see what happens.
Dutch would try to teach him to read and then gets punched.
Hosea would not even bother, but would probably force him to get up and work and the kid would and not complain.
Arthur would probably whoop his ass like a disgruntled father cuz he's tired of his shit.
Micah would take a shine to him in the worst way possible.
Older John would try to be a positive role model for him but younger John would argue with a teenager for like 5 hours.
But mostly? The kid would just stay quiet and watch everything unfold around him, sorta like Arthur stalking the camp interactions, and just sit there.
i think what fucks me up the most about the last two chapters of blood meridian is how much focus they put on the kid. being a kid.
like there’s the whole scene with the judge in the prison where there’s only those metal bars between them and he’s just grabbing at him and it’s so horrific when you remember all the children he already hurt along the way and you can only imagine what he’d do to the kid who is. a kid. a kid just like the other kids who he hurt and killed
and then there’s everyone pitying him and showing him so much kindness in San Diego because they realise how young he is. the doctor ensuring he sobers up and giving him the operation that saves his life. the prison guards releasing him despite it being said he would be hanged.
and then after the time skip, he runs into a kid of 15, just like he was, and kills him. and all at once you realise how cruel this world is even to children and you realise what the kid could have ended up like and it’s just !!!
all the focus on the childhood innocence he never got to have but still lost and still misses. the innocence he never knew but the one he longs for. the innocence that tobin tried to give him a shred of, dying for it