Cities of the Plain (15 page)

I dont know. I'll get it.

You dont make that in a year.

I know it.

You're in a dangerous frame of mind, son. Did you know that?

Maybe.

I've seen it before. You know you been actin peculiar since you had that wreck? Have you
thought about that? Look at me. I'm serious.

I aint crazy, Billy.

Well one of us is. Shit. I blame myself. That's all. Blame myself.

It dont have nothin to do with you.

The hell it dont.

It's all right. Just let it go.

Billy leaned back in his chair. He stared at the two cigarettes burning in the ashtray.
After a while he pushed his hat back and passed his hand across his eyes and across his
mouth and pulled the hat down again and looked across the room. Out at the bar the
shuffleboard bells rang. He looked at John Grady.

How did you ever get in such a mess?

I dont know.

How did you let it get this far?

I dont know. I feel some way like I didnt have nothin to do with it. Like it's just the
way it is. Like it always was this way.

Billy shook his head sadly. More craziness, he said. It aint too late, you know.

Yes it is.

It's never too late. You just need to make up your mind.

It's done made up.

Well unmake it. Start again.

Two months ago I'd of agreed with you. Now I know better. There's some things you dont
decide. Decidin had nothin to do with it.

They sat for a long time. He looked at John Grady and he looked out across the room. The
dusty dancefloor, the empty bandstand. The shapes of a covered drumset. He pushed back his
chair and stood and set the chair back carefully at its place at the table and then he
turned and walked out across the room and through the bar and out the door.

*ÊÊ*ÊÊ*

LATE THAT NIGHT lying in his bunk in the dark he heard the kitchen door close and heard
the screendoor close after it. He lay there. Then he sat and swung his feet to the floor
and got his boots and his jeans and pulled them on and put on his hat and walked out. The
moon was almost full and it was cold and late and no smoke rose from the kitchen chimney.
Mr Johnson was sitting on the back stoop in his duckingcoat smoking a cigarette. He looked
up at John Grady and nodded. John Grady sat on the stoop beside him. What are you doin out
here without your hat? he said.

I dont know.

You all right?

Yeah. I'm all right. Sometimes you miss bein outside at night. You want a cigarette?

No thanks.

Could you not sleep either?

No sir. I guess not.

How's them new horses?

I think he done all right.

Them was some boogerish colts I seen penned up in the corral.

I think he's goin to sell off some of them.

Horsetradin, the old man said. He shook his head. He smoked.

Did you used to break horses, Mr Johnson?

Some. Mostly just what was required. I was never a twister in any sense of the word. I got
hurt once pretty bad. You can get spooked and not know it. Just little things. You dont
hardly even know it.

But you like to ride.

I do. Margaret could outride me two to one though. As good a woman with a horse as I ever
saw. Way bettern me. Hard thing for a man to admit but it's the truth.

You worked for the Matadors didnt you?

Yep. I did.

How was that?

Hard work. That's how it was.

I guess that aint changed.

Oh it probably has. Some. I was never in love with the cattle business. It's just the only
one I ever knew.

He smoked.

Can I ask you somethin' said John Grady.

Ask it.

How old were you when you got married?

I was never married. Never found anybody that'd have me.

He looked at John Grady.

Margaret was my brother's girl. Him and his wife both was carried off in the influenza
epidemic in nineteen and eighteen.

I didnt know that.

She never really knowed her parents. She was just a baby. Well, five. Where's your coat at?

I'm all right.

I was in Fort Collins Colorado at the time. They sent for me. I shipped my horses and come
back on the train with em. Dont catch cold out here now.

No sir. I wont. I aint cold.

I had ever motivation in the world but I never could find one I thought would suit
Margaret.

One what?

Wife. One wife. We finally just give it up. Probably a mistake. I dont know. Socorro
pretty much raised her. She spoke better spanish than Socorro did. It's just awful hard.
It liked to of killed Socorro. She still aint right. I dont expect she ever will be.

Yessir.

We tried ever way in the world to spoil her rotten but it didnt take. I dont know why she
turned out the way she did. It's just a miracle I guess you could say. I dont take no
credit for it, I'll tell you that.

Yessir.

Look yonder. The old man nodded toward the moon.

What?

You cant see em now. Wait a minute. No. They're gone.

What was it?

Birds flyin across the moon. Geese maybe. I dont know.

I didnt see em. Which way were they headed?

Upcountry. Probably headed for that marsh country on the river up around Belen.

Yessir.

I used to love to ride of a night.

I did too.

You'll see things on the desert at night that you cant under?stand. Your horse will see
things. He'll see things that will spook him of course but then he'll see things that dont
spook him but still you know he seen somethin.

What sort of things?

I dont know.

You mean like ghosts or somethin?

No. I dont know what. You just knows he sees em. They're out there.

Not just some class of varmint?

No.

Not somethin that will booger him?

No. It's more like somethin he knows about.

But you dont.

But you dont. Yes.

The old man smoked. He watched the moon. No further birds flew. After a while he said: I
aint talkin about spooks. It's more like just the way things are. If you only knew it.

Yessir.

We was up on the Platte River out of Ogallala one night and I was bedded down in my soogan
out away from the camp. It was a moonlit night just about like tonight. Cold. Spring of
the year. I woke up and I guess I'd heard em in my sleep and it was just this big
whisperin sound all over and it was geese just by the thousands headed up the river. They
passed for the better part of a hour. They blacked out the moon. I thought the herd would
get up off the grounds but they didnt. I got up and walked out and stood watchin em and
some of the other young waddies in the outfit they had got up too and we was all standin
out there in our longjohns watchin. It was just this whisperin sound. They was up high and
it wasnt loud or nothin and I wouldnt of thought about somethin like that a wakin us wore
out as we was. I had a nighthorse in my string named Boozer and old Boozer he come to me.
I reckon he thought the herd'd get up too but they didnt. And they was a snuffy bunch, too.

Did you ever have a stampede?

Yes. We was drivin to Abilene in eighteen and eightyfive. I wasnt much more than a button.
And we had got into it with a rep from one of the outfits and he followed us to where we
crossed the Red River at Doane's store into Indian Territory. He knew we'd have a harder
time gettin our stock back there and we did but we caught the old boy and it was him for
you could still smell the coaloil on him. He come by in the night and set a cat on fire
and thowed it onto the herd. I mean slung it. Walter Devereaux was comin in off the middle
watch and he heard it and looked back. Said it looked like a comet goin out through there
and just a squallin. Lord didnt they come up from there. It took us three days to shape
that herd back and whenever we left out of there we was still missin forty some odd head
lost or crippled or stole and two horses.

What happened to the boy?

The boy?

That threw the cat.

Oh. Best I remember he didnt make out too well. I guess not.

People will do anything. Yessir. They will.

You live long enough you'll see it. Yessir. I have.

Mr Johnson didnt answer. He flipped the butt of his cigarette out across the yard in a
slow red arc.

Aint nothin to burn out there. I remember when you could have grassfires in this country.

I didnt mean I'd seen everthing, John Grady said.

I know you didnt.

I just meant I'd seen things I'd as soon not o£

I know it. There's hard lessons in this world.

What's the hardest?

I dont know. Maybe it's just that when things are gone they're gone. They aint comin back.

Yessir.

They sat. After a while the old man said: The day after my fiftieth birthday in March of
nineteen and seventeen I rode into the old headquarters at the Wilde well and there was
six dead wolves hangin on the fence. I rode along the fence and ran my hand along em. I
looked at their eyes. A government trapper had brought em in the night before. They'd been
killed with poison baits. Strychnine. Whatever. Up in the Sacramentos. A week later he
brought in four more. I aint heard a wolf in this country since. I suppose that's a good
thing. They can be hell on stock. But I guess I was always what you might call
superstitious. I know I damn sure wasnt religious. And it had always seemed to me that
somethin can live and die but that the kind of thing that they were was always there. I
didnt know you could poison that. I aint heard a wolf howl in thirty odd years. I dont
know where you'd go to hear one. There may not be any such a place.

When he walked back through the barn Billy was standing in the doorway.

Has he gone back to bed?

Yeah.

What was he doin up?

He said he couldnt sleep. What were you?

Same thing. You?

Same thing.

Somethin in the air I reckon.

I dont know.

What was he talkin about?

Just stuff.

What did he say?

I guess he said cattle could tell the difference between a flight of geese and a cat on
fire.

Maybe you dont need to be hangin around him so much.

You might be right.

You all seem to have a lot in common.

He aint crazy, Billy.

Maybe. But I dont know as you'd be the first one I'd come to for an opinion about it.

I'm goin to bed.

Night.

Night.

HE TOLD THE WOMAN in spanish that he intended to keep his hat and he carried it with him
up the two steps to the bar and then he put it on again. There were some Mexican
businessmen standing at the bar and he nodded to them as he passed. They nodded back
curtly. The barman placed a napkin down. Se–or? he said.

Old Grandad and water back.

The barman moved away. Billy took out his cigarettes and lighter and laid them on the bar.
He looked in the backbar mirror. Several whores were draped about on the couches in the
lounge. They looked like refugees from a costume ball. The barman returned with the shot
of whiskey and set it and the glass of water on the bar and Billy picked up the whiskey
and rocked it once in a slow circular motion and then raised it and drank. He reached for
his cigarettes, he nodded to the barman.

Otra vez, he said.

The barman came with the bottle. He poured.

D—nde est‡ Eduardo, said Billy.

QuiŽn?

Eduardo.

The barman poured reflectively. He shook his head.

El patr—n, said Billy.

El patr—n no est‡.

Cu‡ndo regresa?

No sŽ. He stood holding the bottle. Hay un problema? he said.

Billy shook a cigarette from the pack and put it in his mouth and reached for the lighter.
No, he said. No hay un problema. I need to see him on a business deal.

What is your business?

He lit the cigarette and laid the lighter on top of the pack and blew smoke across the bar
and looked up.

I dont feel like we're makin much progress here, he said.

The barman shrugged.

Billy took his money from his shirtpocket and laid a tendollar bill on the bar.

That aint for the drinks.

The barman looked down the bar to where the businessmen were standing. He looked at Billy.

Do you know what this job is worth? he said.

What?

I said do you know what this job is worth?

You mean you make pretty good on tips.

No. I mean do you know what it costs to buy a job like this? I never heard of nobody buyin
a job.

You do lots of business in Mexico?

No.

The barman stood with the bottle. Billy took out his money again and put down two fives on
top of the ten. The barman palmed the money off the bar and put it in his pocket. Un
momento, he said. EspŽrate.

Billy took up the whiskey and swirled it and drank. He set the glass down and passed the
back of his wrist across his mouth. When he looked in the backbar glass the alcahuete was
standing at his left elbow like Lucifer.

S’ se–or, he said.

Billy turned and looked at him.

Are you Eduardo?

No. How may I help you?

I wanted to see Eduardo.

What do you want to see him about?

I wanted to talk to him.

Yes. Talk to me.

Billy turned to look at the barman but the barman had moved away to serve the other
patrons.

It's just somethin personal, Billy said. Hell, I aint goin to hurt him.

The alcahuete's eyebrows moved slightly upward. That is good to know, he said. You find
something you dont like?

I got a deal he might be interested in.

Who is the dealer.

What?

Who is the dealer.

Me. I'm the dealer.

Tiburcio studied him for a long time. I know who you are, he said.

You know who I am?

Yes.

Who am I?

You are the trujam‡n.

What's that?

You dont speak spanish?