Cities of the Plain (21 page)

At the wreckingyard out on Alameda he went up and down the aisles of old stacked
windowsash with a steel tape measuring by height and width and checking figures against
those he'd jotted on the notepad in his shirtpocket. He dragged the windows he wanted out
into the aisle and got the truck and backed it to the door and he and the yardman loaded
the windows in the truck. The man sold him some panes of glass to replace the broken ones
and showed him how to score and break them with a glasscutter and then gave him the
glasscutter.

He bought an old Mennonite kitchen table made of pine and the man helped him carry it out
and set it in the bed of the truck and the man told him to take the drawer out and stand
it in the bed.

You go around a curve it'll come out of there.

Yessir.

Liable to go plumb overboard.

Yessir.

And take that glass and put it up there in the cab with you if you dont want it broke.

All right.

I'll see you.

Yessir.

He worked long into the nights and he'd come in and unsaddle the horse and brush it in the
partial darkness of the barn bay and walk across to the kitchen and get his supper out of
the warmer and sit and eat alone at the table by the shaded light of the lamp and listen
to the faultless chronicling of the ancient clockworks in the hallway and the ancient
silence of the desert in the darkness about. There were times he'd fall asleep in the
chair and wake at some strange hour and stagger up and cross the yard to the barn and get
the pup and take it and put it in its box on the floor beside his bunk and lie face down
with his arm over the side of the bunk and his hand in the box so that it would not cry
and then fall asleep in his clothes.

Christmas came and went. In the afternoon of the first Sunday in January Billy rode up and
crossed the little creek and halloed the house and stood down. John Grady came to the door.

What are you doin? Billy said.

Paintin windowsash.

Billy nodded. He looked about. You aint goin to ask me in?

John Grady passed his sleeve along the side of his nose. He had a paintbrush in one hand
and his hands were blue. I didnt know I had to, he said. Come on in.

Billy came in and stood. He took a cigarette from his pocket and lit it and looked around.
He walked into the other room and he came back. The adobe brick walls had been whitewashed
and the inside of the little house was bright and monastically austere. The clay floors
were swept and slaked and he'd beaten them down with a homemade maul contrived from a
fencepost with a section of board nailed to the bottom.

The old place dont look half bad. You aim to get you a Santo to put in the corner yonder?

I might.

Billy nodded.

I'll take all the help I can get, John Grady said.

I hear you, said Billy. He looked at the bright blue of the sash of the windows. Did they
not have any blue paint? he said.

They said this was about as close as they could get.

You fixin to paint the door the same color?

Yep.

You got another brush?

Yeah. I got one.

Billy took off his hat and hung it on one of the pegs by the door. Well, he said. Where's
it at?

John Grady poured paint from his paintcan into an empty one and Billy squatted on one knee
and stirred the brush into the paint. He passed the flat of the brush carefully across the
rim of the can and painted a bright blue band down the center stile. He looked across his
shoulder.

How come you to have a extra brush?

Just in case some fool showed up wantin to paint, I reckon.

They quit before dark. A cool wind was coming down from the gap in the Jarillas. They
stood by the truck and Billy smoked and they watched the running fire deepening to
darkness over the mountains to the west.

It's goin to be cold up here in the wintertime, pardner, Billy said.

I know it.

Cold and lonely.

It wont be lonely.

I'm talkin about her.

Mac says she can come down and work with Socorro whenever she wants.

Well that's good. I dont expect there'll be a lot of empty chairs at the table on them
days.

John Grady smiled. I expect you're right.

When have you seen her?

Not for a while.

How long a while?

I dont know. Three weeks.

Billy shook his head.

She's still there, John Grady said.

You got a lot of confidence in her.

Yes I do.

What do you think is goin to happen when her and Socorro get their heads together?

She dont tell everthing she knows.

Her or Socorro?

Either one.

I hope you're right.

They aint goin to run her off, Billy. There's more to her than just she's good lookin.

Billy flipped the cigarette out across the yard. We better get on back.

You can take the truck if you want.

That's all right. Go on. I'll ride that old crowbait of yours. Billy nodded. Ride him
blind through the brush tryin to beat me back. Get him snakebit and I dont know what all.
Go on. I'll ride behind the truck. Horse like that it takes a special hand to ride him in
the dark. I'll bet it does. A rider that can instill confidence in a animal. John Grady
smiled and shook his head. A rider that's accustomed to the ways and the needs of the
nighthorse. Ride the bedgrounds slow. Ride left to right. Sing to them snuffles. Dont pop
no matches. I hear you. Did your grandaddy used to talk about goin up the trail? Some.
Yeah. You think you'll ever go back to that country? I doubt it. You will. One of these
days. Or I say you will. If you live. You want to take the truck back? Naw. Go on. I'll be
along. All right. Dont eat my dessert. All right. I appreciate you Comin up. I didnt have
nothin else to do. Well. If I had I'd of done it. I'll see you at the house. See you at
the house.

JOSEFINA WAS STANDING in the door watching. In the room the criada turned, one hand
lofting the weight of the girl's dark hair for her to see. Bueno, said Josefina. Muy
bonita. The criada smiled thinly, her mouth bristling with hairpins. Josefina looked back
down the hall and then leaned in the door.

ƒl viene, she whispered. Then she turned and padded away down the corridor. The criada
turned the girl quickly and studied her and touched her hair and stood back. She passed
her thumb across her lips gathering the pins. Eres la china poblana perfecta, she said.
Perfecta.

Es bella la china poblana? the girl said.

The criada arched her brows in surprise. The wrinkled lid fluttered over the pale blind
eye. S’, she said. S’. Por supuesto. Todo el mundo to sabe.

Eduardo stood in the doorway. The criada saw the girl's eyes and turned. He jerked his
chin at her and she went to the dresser and laid down the hairbrush and put the pins in a
china tray and went past him and out the door.

He came in and shut the door behind him. The girl stood quietly in the center of the room.

VoltŽate, he said. He made a stirring motion with his forefinger.

She turned.

Ven aqu’.

She came slowly forward and stood. He took her jaw in the palm of his hand and raised her
face and looked into her painted eyes. When she lowered it again he put his hand into the
gathered hair at her neck and pulled her head back. She turned her eyes up toward the
ceiling. Her pale throat exposed. The visible bloodpulse in the thick arteries at either
side of her neck and the small tic at the corner of her mouth. He told her to look at him
and she did but she seemed to have power to cause those dark and hooded eyes of hers to go
opaque. So that the visible depth in them was lost or shrouded. So that they hid the world
within. He recaught his grip in her hair and the smooth skin tautened over her cheekbones
and her eyes widened. He commanded again that she look at him but she was already looking
at him and she did not answer.

A quiŽn le rezas? he hissed.

A Dios.

QuiŽn responde?

Nadie.

Nadie, he said.

That night she felt the cold pneuma come upon her as she lay naked in the bed. She turned
and called to the cliente standing in the room.

I'm bein as quick as I can, he said.

By the time he'd slid into the bed beside her she'd cried out and gone rigid and her eyes
white. In the muted light he could not see her but he placed his hand on her body and felt
her bowed and trembling under his palm and taut as a snaredrum. He felt the tremor of her
like the hum of a current running in her bones.

What is it? he said. What is it?

He came out into the hallway half dressed and pulling on his clothes. Tiburcio appeared
from nowhere. He pushed the man aside and knelt in the girl's bed and unbuckled his belt
and whipped it from about his waist and caught it and folded it and seized the girl's jaw
and forced the leather between her teeth. The cliente watched from the doorway. I didnt do
nothin, he said. I never even touched her.

Tiburcio rose and strode toward the door.

She just went that way, the cliente said.

Speak to no one, Tiburcio said. You understand me?

You got it, old buddy. Just you let me get my shoes.

The alcahuete shut the door after him. The girl was breathing harshly through the belt. He
sat and pulled back the covers. He studied her without expression. He bent over her
slightly in his black silk. The soft false whisper of it. A morbid voyeur, a mortician. An
incubus of uncertain proclivity or perhaps just a dark dandy happened in from off the neon
streets who aped imperfectly with his pale and tapered hands those ministrations of the
healing arts that he had seen or heard of or as he imagined them to be. What are you? he
said. You are nothing.

WHEN H E STEPPED OUT onto the porch and let the screendoor to behind him Mr Johnson was
sitting on the edge of the porch with his elbows propped on his knees watching the sunset
where it deepened and flared over the Franklins to the west. Distant flocks of geese were
moving downriver along the jornada. They looked no more than bits of string against the
raucous red of the sky and they were far too distant to be heard.

Where are you off to? said the old man.

John Grady walked to the edge of the porch and stood picking his teeth and looking out
across the country along with him. What makes you think I'm off to somewhere?

Hair all slicked back like a muskrat. Boots.

He sat on the boards beside the old man. Goin to town, he said.

The old man nodded. Well, he said. I reckon it's still there.

Yessir.

You couldnt prove it by me.

When was the last time you were in El Paso?

I dont know. Been a year, I'd say. Maybe longer.

You dont get tired bein out here all the time?

I do. At times.

You dont ever want to make a run in to sort of see what's goin on?

I dont believe it would help. I dont believe there's anything goin on.

Did you used to go over to Ju‡rez?

Yes I did. Back when I was a drinkin man. The last time I was in Ju‡rez Mexico was in
nineteen and twentynine. I seen a man shot in a bar. He was standin at the bar drinkin a
beer and this man come in and walked up behind him and pulled a government fortyfive out
of his belt and shot him in the back of the head with it. Stuck the gun back in his
breeches and turned and walked out again. He wasnt even in a hurry about it.

Shot him dead?

Yes. He was dead standin there. Thing I remember is how quick he fell down. Just dead
weight. The movies dont ever get that part right neither.

Where were you?

I was standin almost next to him. I seen it in the bar mirror. I'm partially deaf to this
day in this one ear on account of it. His head just damn near come off. Blood everwhere.
Brains. I had on a brand new Stradivarius gabardine shirt and a pretty good Stetson hat
and I burned everthing I had on save the boots. I bet I took nine baths handrunnin.

He looked out across the country to the west where the sky was darkening. Tales of the old
west, he said.

Yessir.

Lot of people shot and killed.

Why were they?

Mr Johnson passed the tips of his fingers across his jaw. Well, he said. I think
these people
mostly come from Tennessee and Kentucky. Edgefield district in South Carolina. Southern
Missouri. They were mountain
people.
They come from mountain people in the old country. They always would shoot you. It wasnt
just here. They kept comin west and about the time they got here was about the time Sam
Colt invented the sixshooter and it was the first time these people could afford a gun you
could carry around in your belt. That's all
there ever
was to it. It had nothin to do with the country at all. The west. They'd of been the same
it dont matter where they might of wound up. I've thought about it and that's the only
conclusion I could ever come to.

How bad of a drinkin man did you used to be, Mr Johnson? If you dont care for me to ask.

Pretty bad. Maybe not as bad as some might like to remember it. But it was more than a
passin acquaintance.

Yessir.

You can ask whatever you want.

Yessir.

You get my age you kindly get weaned off standin on ceremony. I think it embarrasses Mac
at times. But dont worry about askin me stuff.

Yessir. Was that when you quit drinkin?

No. I was more dedicated than that. I quit and took it up again. Quit and took it up.
Finally got around to quittin all together. Maybe I just got too old for it. There wasnt
any virtue in it.

The drinkin or the quittin?

Either one. There aint no virtue in quittin what you aint able any longer to do in the
first place. That's pretty, aint it.

He nodded toward the sunset. Deep laminar red. The cool of the coming dark was in it and
it was all around them.

Yessir, said John Grady. It is.

The old man took his cigarettes from his shirtpocket. John Grady smiled. I see you aint
quit smokin, he said.