The Caravan of Carnival Folk That Begins Child of God

From the opening scene of the novel, which is the setting for the origin of Lester Ballard's eminent descent into degeneracy:

They came like a caravan of carnival folk up through the swales of broomstraw and across the hill in the morning sun, the truck rocking and pitching in the ruts and the musicians on chairs in the truck bed teetering and tuning their instruments, the fat man with guitar grinned and gesturing to the others in a car behind and bending to give a note to the fiddler who turned a fiddlepeg and listened with a wrinkled face. 

–Cormac McCarthy, Child of God, 3.