Cormac McCarthy's ex-wife had a fight about aliens and then pulled a gun from her vagina

By Sean O'Neal | January 9, 2014 | 7:37pm

Aux Features Books

Cormac McCarthy’s ex-wife Jennifer squatted in the cracked terracotta terrain of New Mexico and dug her heels into the carpet and holstered the Smith & Wesson in the capacious hollow of her vagina. The gun flashed silver before it disappeared inside her as she had disappeared inside the bedroom she shared with her boyfriend on Aventura Road. Jennifer thought of space aliens and squared the gun in her vagina.

The police report would say Jennifer McCarthy had been arguing with her boyfriend over “space aliens” and had grown tired of it. The police report would identify her as Jennifer McCarthy and as a 48-year-old artist and as the woman who got a divorce from novelist Cormac McCarthy in the calescent Texas summer of 2006. The police report paid no mind to what the argument was about besides “space aliens” and that she had left home because of it. When Jennifer had returned to Aventura Road the auric moonlight had cast long shadows on the crags and lava scree of the surrounding floodplain and then on her figure as she put the gun deep inside her concavity. The floodplain out there broad and quiet. The heft of the Smith & Wesson cold and steely in her vagina.

Most Popular

Who is crazy, you or me? she asked her man.

The police report would say Jennifer had “inner course with the gun” as it conveyed the unspeakable in its unlettered civil servant spelling. Jennifer pulled the revolver and “used it as a sex toy” and taunted her boyfriend then pointed it at his head. She had dressed in lingerie that rounded her body’s bajada curves like a trowel-dug runnel. Her lacy underwear rippled like a trout-filled brook as she made love to the Smith & Wesson she’d pulled from her vagina and dared him to say who was crazy.

Who is crazy, you or me? she said.

Her boyfriend grabbed the gun that had been in her vagina and took it roughly away from her and then took it into the bathroom and put it in the toilet. The Smith & Wesson lay there flinty and impassive in the azure pool of the commode. The police report would say he then “took it out of the toilet and put it in the trash can outside” where the officers would later find it. He put it outside where the coyotes watched from the scrub and quietly bayed at the vermillion New Mexico moon that may or may not have been circled by space aliens. There werent no reason to arguing that anymore he figured. There aint no arguing about space aliens when your woman has a gun in her vagina.

Who is crazy, you or me? she had asked him.

The police report would say Jennifer was arrested on a felony charge of aggravated assault and handcuffed and taken away. Cormac McCarthy would say nothing. There werent nothing to say against the crushing black void of the universe or of your ex-wife's vagina. There werent nothing to say about a thing like that except that the world continued its cold and relentless circling and that maybe he had known already that women do strange things with their vaginas and that if you asked him he was glad to be rid of it.

Who is crazy, you or me? she had asked.

The gun in her vagina did the talking on that.