Why is Bobby Western’s cat in The Passenger named Billy Ray? The first answer is another question: who cares? In spite of that, I asked myself while reading the book, mainly because of the care which McCarthy paid to choosing names in his novels and the fact that The Passenger features real friends of McCarthy, like John Sheddan, Bill Kidwell or Cynthia Farah, to name just a few.
I guessed that the kidnapped cat was named after Billy Ray Reynolds, a talented musician who played guitar with the outlaw singer, the great Waylon Jennings and had a three-decade songwriting career in Nashville, Tennessee. He passed away in 2019. Reynolds was probably introduced to McCarthy by Bill Kidwell, a close friend of both, in 1978, when Cormac was a struggling writer working as a stonemason for Kidwell outside of Nashville.
My hunch was confirmed a few weeks ago, when Sean Lynch, a collector and dealer of McCarthy’s books, told me that he had purchased a first edition of Suttree, inscribed to Reynolds and his first wife, Pam. I had come across this book many times, since it first appeared at Heritage Auction in 2013 along with the Bill Kidwell collection of McCarthy materials. It was damp-stained and in poor condition, so I had passed on it. When Sean told me he had acquired it, I changed my mind, and I regretted having underestimated the importance of the association.
However, Sean had delved into researching the people to whom the book was inscribed, and had found in the musician’s obituary that Reynolds had a pet named “Mac”. That was the name McCarthy was called by friends. It was Cormac himself who explained this in a letter to his editor, Albert Erskine: “Some of my friends call me Mac, others Chuck or Charlie. My family calls me Doc”. Additionally, many of McCarthy’s letters to Erskine, held at the University of Virginia, are signed that way. Thus, everything suggested a sort of joke or tribute between old friends: one names his real pet after Cormac’s nickname, while the other names “Billy Ray” the cat of his last novel protagonist after his friend.
While I was philosophizing about this, Sean, who is much more practical than I am, found Reynolds first wife, spoke to her on the phone, and had the theory confirmed: the pet was indeed named Mac after Cormac and the cat in the novel was named after her husband, Billy Ray.
Bingo?
Not quite. My friend Wesley Morgan, a true McCarthy enthusiast and expert on all things related to Cormac and Knoxville, presented a completely different story. He pointed to another McCarthy acquaintance: Billy Ray (Red) Callahan, about whom he had written an enlightening essay (Morgan, Wesley G. (2005). Red Callahan in Suttree: The Actual and the Fictitious, in The Cormac McCarthy Journal, 4(1), 210-219). What a character Callahan was! His father had been killed when Billy Ray was very young. Billy himself was in and out of prison before being shot to death by George Kenneth Wagner, the operator of the Copa Club in Knoxville. “According to a newspaper report at the time of his death, Red had a rap sheet consisting of 33 charges including public drunkenness, fighting, prowling, housebreaking and larceny between 1953 and 1963” (Morgan, op. cit.). He was one of those men living on the edge, and beyond, whose lives attracted McCarthy so much that he made Callahan one of the characters in Suttree.
Billy Ray Callahan is relevant to our story because, after his death, and the publication of Suttree, McCarthy’s brother Dennis and his wife Judy had a frisky cat that they named Billy Ray Callahan after the actual person and character in the novel. A very credible source told Wes that Cormac was a big lover of cats and so much attached to this one that he decided to name the fictional cat in The Passenger after him.
So, what? Don’t know. I just hope that there are no other friends or pets of McCarthy’s friends, or even a Schrödinger’s cat, named Billy Ray or Mac out there.
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2 Responses
Fascinating question, but to my eye — having read the Morgan piece — it seems pretty clear that Bobby Western’s cat was named after Billy Ray Reynolds, otherwise the cat just would’ve been named Red. In any case, it’s a compelling piece. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you. I guess that there is the chance that the name Billy Ray echoes both Billy Ray Reinolds and Billy Ray Callahan. That would explain the choise of naming the cat just Billy Ray.