Cities of the Plain (25 page)

No sŽ.

No sabes.

No.

Quieres it conmigo?

No puedo.

PorquŽ no?

She didnt know. The woman asked her again. She said that she could come with her and live
in her house where she lived with her children.

The girl whispered that she did not know her.

Te gusta to vida Por all‡? the woman said.

No.

Ven conmigo.

She stood shivering. She shook her head no. The sun was coming soon. In the dark above
them a star fell and in the cold wind before the dawn papers loped and clutched and
rattled briefly in the spines of the roadside growth and loped on again. The woman looked
toward the desert sky to the east. She looked at the girl. She asked the girl if she was
cold and she said that she was. She asked her again: Quieres it conmigo?

She said that she could not. She said that in three days' time the boy she loved would
come to marry her. She thanked her for her kindness.

The woman raised the girl's face in her hand and looked at her. The girl waited for her to
speak but she only looked into 'her face as if to remember her. Perhaps to read at second
hand the shapes of the roads that had led her to this place. What was lost or what was
ruined. Whom bereft. Or what remained.

C—mo se llama? the girl said, but the woman did not answer. She touched the girl's face
and took away her hand and turned and went on along the dark of the road out of the
darkened barrio and did not look back.

Eduardo's car was gone. She crept shivering along the alley under the warehouse wall and
tried the door but it was locked. She tapped and waited and tapped again. She waited a
long time. After a while she went back out to the street. Her breath pluming in the light
along the corrugated wall. She looked back down the alley again and then went around to
the front of the building and through the gate and up the walkway.

The portress with her painted face seemed unsurprised to see her standing there clutching
herself in the stenciled shift. She stepped back and held the door and the girl entered
and thanked her and went on through the salon. Two men standing at the bar turned to watch
her. Pale and dirty waif drifted by mischance in from the outer cold to cross the room
with eyes cast down and arms crossed at her breasts. Leaving bloody footprints in the
carpet as if a penitent had passed.

H E SEEMED to have dressed with care for the occasion although it may have been that he
had business elsewhere in the city. He slid back the goldlinked cuff of his shirt to
consult his watch. His suit was of light gray silk shantung and he wore a silk tie of the
same color. His shirt was a pale lemon yellow and he wore a yellow silk handkerchief in
the breastpocket of the suit and the lowcut black boots with the zippers up the inner
sides were freshly polished for he left his shoes outside his door several pair at a time
as if the whorehouse hallway were a Pullman car.

She sat in the saffroncolored robe he'd given her. Upon the antique bed where her feet did
not quite reach the floor. She sat with her head bowed so that her hair cascaded over her
thighs and she sat with her hands placed on the bed at either side of her as if she might
be afraid of falling.

He spoke in reasoned tones the words of a reasonable man. The more reasonably he spoke the
colder the wind in the hollow of her heart. At each juncture in her case he paused to give
her space in which to speak but she did not speak and her silence only led inexorably to
the next succeeding charge until that structure which was composed of nothing but the
spoken word and which should have passed on in its very utterance and left no trace or
residue or shadow in the living world, that bodiless structure stood in the room a
ponderable being and within its phantom corpus was contained her life.

When he was done he stood watching her. He asked her what she had to say. She shook her
head.

Nada? he said.

No, she said. Nada.

QuŽ crees que eres?

Nada.

Nada. S’. Pero piensas que has traido una dispensa especial a esta casa? Que Dios to ha
escogido?

Nunca cre’ tal cosa.

He turned and stood looking out the small barred window. Along the limits of the city
where the roads died in the desert in sand washes and garbage dumps, out to the white
perimeters at midday where smoke from the trashfires burned along the horizon like the
signature of vandal hordes come in off the inscrutable wastes beyond. He spoke without
turning. He said that she had been spoiled in this house. Because of her youth. He said
that her illness was illness only and that she was a fool to believe in the superstitions
of the women of the house. He said that she was twice a fool to trust them for they would
eat her flesh if they thought it would protect them from disease or secure for them the
affections of the lover of whom they dreamt or cleanse their souls in the sight of the
bloody and barbarous god to whom they prayed. He said that her illness was illness only
and that it would so prove itself when at last it killed her as it soon would do.

He turned to study her. The slope of her shoulders and their movement with the rise and
fall of her breath. The bloodbeat in the artery of her neck. When she looked up and saw
his face she knew that he had seen into her heart. What was so and what was false. He
smiled his hardlipped smile. Your lover does not know, he said. You have not told him.

Mande?

Tu amado no to sabe.

No, she whispered. ƒl no to sabe.

HE SET OUT the pieces loosely on the board and swiveled it about. I'll go you one more, he
said.

Mac shook his head. He held the cigar and blew smoke slowly over the table and then picked
up his cup and drained the last of his coffee.

I'm done, he said.

Yessir. You played a good game.

I didnt believe you'd sacrifice a bishop.

That was one of Schonberger's gambits.

You read a lot of chess books?

No sir. Not a lot. I read his.

You told me you played poker.

Some. Yessir.

Why do I think that means somethin else.

I never played that much poker. My daddy was a poker player. He always said that the
problem with poker was you played with two kinds of money. What you won was gravy but what
you lost was hard come by.

Was he a good poker player?

Yessir. He was one of the best, I reckon. He cautioned me away from it though. He said it
was not any kind of a life.

Why did he do it if he thought that?

It was the only other thing he was good at.

What was the first thing?

He was a cowboy.

I take it he was pretty good at that.

Yessir. I've heard of some that was supposed to be better and I'm sure there were some
better. I just never did see any of em.

He was on the death march, wasnt he?

Yessir.

There was a lot of boys from this part of the country was on it. Quite a few of em
Mexicans.

Yessir. There was.

Mac pulled at his cigar and blew the smoke toward the window. Has Billy come around or are
you and him still on the outs?

He's all right.

Is he still goin to stand up for you?

Yessir.

Mac nodded. She aint got nobody to stand on her side?

No sir. Socorro is bringin her family.

That's good. I aint been in my suit in three years. I'd better make a dry run in it,
Ireckon.

John Grady put the last of the pieces in the box and fitted and slid shut the wooden lid.

Might need Socorro to let out the britches for me.

They sat. Mac smoked. You aint Catholic are you? he said.

No sir.

I wont need to make no disclaimers or nothin?

No sir.

So Tuesday's the day.

Yessir. February seventeenth. It's the last day before Lent. Or I guess next to last.
After that you cant get married till Easter.

Is that cuttin it kindly close?

It'll be all right.

Mac nodded. He put the cigar in his teeth and pushed back the chair. Wait here a minute,
he said.

John Grady listened to him going down the hall to his room. When he came back he sat down
and placed a gold ring on the table.

That's been in my dresser drawer for three years. It aint doin nobody any good there and
it never will. We talked about everthing and we talked about that ring. She didnt want it
put in the ground. I want you to take it.

Sir I dont think I can do that.

Yes you can. I've already thought of everthing you could possibly say on the subject so
rather than go over it item by item let's just save the aggravation and you put it in your
pocket and come Tuesday you put it on that girl's finger. You might need to get it
resized. The woman that wore it was a beautiful woman. You can ask anybody, it wasnt just
my opinion. But what you saw wouldnt hold a candle to what was on the inside. We would
like to of had children but we didnt. It damn sure wasnt from not tryin. Shewas a woman
with a awful lot of common sense. I thought she just wanted me to keep that ring for a
remembrance but she said I'd know what to do with it when the time come and of course she
was right. She was right about everthing. And there's no pride in it when I tell you that
she set more store by that ring and what it meant than anything else she ever owned. And
that includes some pretty damn fine horses. So take it and put it in your pocket and dont
be arguin with me about everthing.

Yessir.

And now I'm goin to bed.

Yessir.

Goodnight.

Goodnight.

FROM THE PASS in the upper range of the Jarillas they could see the green of the benchland
below the springs and they could see the thin standing spire of smoke from the fire in the
stove rising vertically in the still blue morning air. They sat their horses. Billy nodded
at the scene.

When I was a kid growin up in the bootheel me and my brother used to stop where we topped
out on this bench south of the ranch goin up into the mountains and we'd look back down at
the house. It would be snowin sometimes or snow on the ground in the winter and there was
always a fire in the stove and you could see the smoke from the chimney and it was a long
ways away and it looked different from up there. Always looked different. It was
different. We'd be gone up in the mountains sometimes all day throwin them spooky cattle
out of the draws and bringin em down to the feedstation where we'd put out cake. I dont
think there was ever a time we didnt stop and look back thataway before we rode up into
that country. From where we'd stop we were not a hour away and the coffee was still hot on
the stove down there but it was worlds away. Worlds away.

In the distance they could see the thin straight line of the highway and a toysized truck
running silently upon it. Beyond that the green line of the river breaks and range on
range the distant mountains of Mexico. Billy watched him.

You think you'll ever go back there?

Where?

Mexico.

I dont know. I'd like to. You?

I dont think so. I think I'm done.

I came out of there on the run. Ridin at night. Afraid to make a fire.

Been shot.

Been shot. Those people would take you in. Hide you out. Lie for you. No one ever asked me
what it was I'd done.

Billy sat with his hands crossed palm down on the pommel of his saddle. He leaned and
spat. I went down there three separate trips. I never once come back with what I started
after.

John Grady nodded. What would you do if you couldnt be a cowboy?

I dont know. I reckon I'd think of somethin. You?

I dont know what it would be I'd think o£

Well we may all have to think of somethin.

Yeah.

You think you could live in Mexico?

Yeah. Probably.

Billy nodded. You know what a vaquero makes in the way of wages.

Yep.

You might luck up on a job as foreman or somethin. But sooner or later they're goin to run
all the white people out of that country. Even the Bab’cora wont survive.

I know it.

You'd go to veterinary school if you had the money I reckon. Wouldnt you?

Yep. I would.

You ever write to your mother?

What's my mother got to do with anything?

Nothin. I just wonder if you even know what a outlaw you are.

Why?

Why do I wonder it?

Why am I a outlaw.

I dont know. You just got a outlaw heart. I've seen it before.

Because I said I could live in Mexico?

It aint just that.

Dont you think if there's anything left of this life it's down there?

Maybe.

You like it too.

Yeah? I dont even know what this life is. I damn sure dont know what Mexico is. I think
it's in your head. Mexico. I rode a lot of ground down there. The first ranchera you hear
sung you understand the whole country. By the time you've heard a hundred you dont know
nothin. You never will. I concluded my business down there a long time ago.

He hooked his leg over the pommel of the saddle and sat rolling a cigarette. They'd
dropped the reins and the horses leaned and picked bleakly at the sparse tufts of grass
trembling in the wind coming through the gap. He bent with his back to the wind and popped
a match with his thumbnail and lit the cigarette and turned back.

I aint the only one. It's another world. Everbody I ever knew that ever went back was goin
after somethin. Or thought they was.

Yeah.

There's a difference between quittin and knowin when you're beat.

John Grady nodded.

I guess you dont believe that. Do you?

John Grady studied the distant mountains. No, he said. I guess I dont.

They sat for a long time. The wind blew. Billy had long since finished his cigarette and
stubbed it out on the sole of his boot.

He unfolded his leg back over the horn of the saddle and slid his boot into the stirrup
and leaned down and took up the reins. The horses stepped and stood.