Cities of the Plain (30 page)

You are going to see your guts before you die, said Eduardo. He stepped away. Pick it up,
he said.

The boy watched him.

Pick it up. Did you think I was serious? Pick it up.

He bent and picked up the knife and wiped the blade on the side of his jeans. They
circled. Eduardo's blade had severed the fascia of his stomach muscles and he felt hot and
sick and his hand was sticky with blood but he was afraid to turn loose holding himself.
The slicker had come unwound again and he shook it free and let it fall behind him. They
circled.

Lessons are hard, said Eduardo. I think you must agree. But at this point the future is
not so uncertain. What do you see? As one cuchillero to another. One filero to another.

He feinted with the switchblade. He smiled. They circled.

What does he see, the suitor. Does he still hope for some miracle? Perhaps he will see the
truth at last in his own intestines. As do the old brujos of the campo.

He stepped in with his knife and feinted at the boy's face and then the blade dropped in a
vanishing arc of falling light and connected the three bars by a vertical cut to form the
letter E in the flesh of his thigh.

He circled to the left. He flung back his oiled hair with a toss of his head.

Do you know what my name is, farmboy? Do you know my name?

He turned his back on the boy and walked slowly away. He addressed the night.

In his dying perhaps the suitor will see that it was his hunger for mysteries that has
undone him. Whores. Superstition. Finally death. For that is what has brought you here.
That is what you were seeking.

He turned back. He passed the blade again before him in that slow scythelike gesture and
he looked questioningly at the boy. As if he might answer at last.

That is what has brought you here and what will always bring you here. Your kind cannot
bear that the world be ordinary. That it contain nothing save what stands before one. But
the Mexican world is a world of adornment only and underneath it is very plain indeed.
While your worldhe passed the blade back and forth like a shuttle through a loomyour world
totters upon an unspoken labyrinth of questions. And we will devour you, my friend. You
and all your pale empire.

When he moved again the boy made no effort to defend himself. He simply slashed away with
his knife and when Eduardo stepped back he had fresh cuts on his arm and across his chest.
He flung back his head again to clear his lank black locks from before his face. The boy
stood stolidly, following him with his eyes. He was drenched in blood.

Dont be afraid, said Eduardo. It doesnt hurt so bad. It would hurt tomorrow. But there
will be no tomorrow.

John Grady stood holding himself. His hand was slick with blood and he could feel
something bulging through into his palm. They met again and Eduardo laid open the back of
his arm but he held himself and would not move the arm. They turned. His boots made a soft
sloshing sound.

For a whore, the pimp said. For a whore.

They closed again and John Grady lowered his knife arm.

He felt Eduardo's blade slip from his rib and cross his upper stomach and pass on. It took
his breath away. He made no effort to step or to parry. He brought his knife up underhand
from the knee and slammed it home and staggered back. He heard the clack of the Mexican's
teeth as his jaw clapped shut. Eduardo's knife dropped with a light splash into the small
pool of standing water at his feet and he turned away. Then he looked back. The way a man
might look getting on a train. The handle of the huntingknife jutted from the underside of
his jaw. He reached and touched it. His mouth was clenched in a grimace. His jaw was
nailed to his upper skull and he held the handle in both hands as if he would withdraw it
but he did not. He walked away and turned and leaned against the warehouse wall. Then he
sat down. He drew his knees up to him and sat breathing harshly through his teeth. He put
his hands down at either side of him and he looked at John Grady and then after a while he
leaned slowly over and lay slumped in the alleyway against the wall of the building and he
did not move again.

John Grady was leaning against the wall on the opposite side of the alley, holding himself
with both hands. Dont sit down, he said. Dont sit down.

He steadied himself and blew and got his breath and looked down. His shirt hung in bloody
tatters. A gray tube of gut pushed through his fingers. He gritted his teeth and took hold
of it and pushed it back and put his hand over it. He walked over and picked up Eduardo's
knife out of the water and he crossed the alley and still holding himself he cut away the
silk shirt from his dead enemy with one hand and leaning against the wall with the knife
in his teeth he tied the shirt around himself and bound it tight. Then he let the knife
fall in the sand and turned and wobbled slowly down the alleyway and out into the road.

He tried to keep off the main streets. The wash of the lights from the city by which he
steered his course hung over the desert like a dawn eternally to come. His boots were
filling up with blood and he left bloody tracks in the sand streets of the barrios and
dogs came into the street behind him to take his scent and raise their hackles and growl
and slink away. He talked to himself as he went. He took to counting his steps. He could
hear sirens in the distance and at every step he felt the warm blood ooze between his
clutched fingers.

By the time he reached the Calle de Noche Triste he was lightheaded and his feet were
reeling beneath him. He leaned against a wall and gathered himself to cross the street. No
cars passed.

You didnt eat, he said. That's where you were smart.

He pushed himself off the wall. He stood at the streetcurb and felt before him with one
foot and he tried to hurry in case a car should come but he was afraid he'd fall and he
didnt know if he could get up again.

A little later he remembered crossing the street but it seemed a long while ago. He'd seen
lights ahead. They turned out to be from a tortilla factory. A clanking of old chaindriven
machinery, a few workers in flourdusted aprons talking under a yellow lightbulb. He
lurched on. Past dark houses. Empty lots. Old slumped mud walls half buried in winddriven
trash. He slowed, he stood teetering. Dont sit down, he said.

But he did. What woke him was someone going through his bloodsoaked pockets. He seized a
thin and bony wrist and looked up into the face of a young boy. The boy flailed and kicked
and tried to pull away. He called out to his friends but they were on the run across the
empty lot. They'd all thought he was dead.

He pulled the boy close. Mira, he said. Est‡ hien. No to molestarŽ.

DŽjame, said the boy.

Est‡ bien. Est‡ bien.

The boy wrenched about. He looked after his friends but they'd vanished in the darkness.
DŽjame, he said. He was close to tears.

John Grady talked to him the way he'd talk to a horse and after a while the boy stopped
pulling and stood. He told him that he was a great filero and that he had just killed an
evil man and that he needed the boy's help. He said that the police would be looking for
him and that he needed to hide from them. He spoke for a long time. He told the boy of his
exploits as a knifefighter and he reached with great difficulty to his hip pocket and got
his billfold and gave it to the boy. He told him that the money in it was his to keep and
then he told him what he must do. Then he had the boy repeat it back. Then he turned loose
of the boy's wrist and waited. The boy stepped back. He stood holding the bloodstained
wallet. Then he squatted and looked into the man's eyes. His arms clutching his bony
knees. Puede andar? he said.

Un poquito. No mucho.

Es peligroso aqu’.

S’. Tienes raz—n.

The boy got him up and he leaned on that narrow shoulder while they made their way to the
farther corner of the lot where behind the wall was a clubhouse made from packingcrates.
The boy knelt and pulled back a drapery of sacking and helped him to crawl in. He said
that there was a candle there and matches but the wounded filero said that it was safer in
the dark. He'd started to bleed all over again. He could feel it under his hand. Vete, he
said. Vete. The boy let drop the curtain.

The cushions he lay on were damp from the rain and they stank. He was very thirsty. He
tried not to think. He heard a car pass in the street. He heard a dog bark. He lay with
the yellow silk of his enemy's shirt wrapped about him like a ceremonial sash gone dark
with blood and he held his bloodied claw of a hand over the severed wall of his stomach.
Holding himself close that he not escape from himself for he felt it over and over, that
lightness that he took for his soul and which stood so tentatively at the door of his
corporeal self. Like some lightfooted animal that stood testing the air at the open door
of a cage. He heard the distant toll of bells from the cathedral in the city and he heard
his own breath soft and uncertain in the cold and the dark of the child's playhouse in
that alien land where he lay in his blood. Help me, he said. If you think I'm worth it.
Amen.

WHEN HE FOUND the horse standing saddled in the bay of the barn he led it out and mounted
up and rode out in the dark up the old road toward John Grady's little adobe house. He
hoped the horse would tell him something. When he reached the house and saw the light in
the window he put the horse forward at a trot and went splashing through the little creek
and into the yard where he pulled up and dismounted and halloed the house.

He pushed open the door. Bud? he said. Bud?

He walked into the bedroom.

Bud?

There was no one there. He went out and called and waited and called again. He went back
in and opened the stove door. A fire was laid with stovechunks and kindling and newsprint.
He shut the door and went out. He called but no one answered. He mounted up and gave the
horse its head and kneed it forward but it only wanted to set out across the creek and
back down the road again.

He turned and rode back and waited at the little house for an hour but no one came. By the
time he got back to the ranch it was almost midnight.

He lay on his bunk and tried to sleep. He thought he heard the whistle of a train in the
distance, thin and lost. He must have been sleeping because he had a dream in which the
dead girl came to him hiding her throat with her hand. She was covered in blood and she
tried to speak but she could not. He opened his eyes. Very faintly he had heard the phone
ring in the house.

When he got to the kitchen Socorro was on the phone in her robe. She gestured wildly at
Billy. S’, s’, she said. S’, joven. EspŽrate.

HE WOKE COLD and sweating and raging with thirst. He knew that it was the new day because
he was in agony. When he moved the crusted blood in his clothes cracked about him like
ice. Then he heard Billy's voice.

Bud, he said. Bud.

He opened his eyes. Billy was kneeling over him. Behind him the boy was holding back the
cloth and outside the world was cold and gray. Billy turned to the boy. çndale, he said.
R‡pido. R‡pido.

The curtain fell. Billy struck a match and held it. You daggone fool, he said. You daggone
fool.

He reached down the stub of a candle in its saucer from the shelf nailed to the crate and
lit the candle and held it close. Aw shit, he said. You daggone fool. Can you walk?

Dont move me.

I got to.

You couldnt get me across the border noway.

The hell I cant.

He killed her, bud. The son of a bitch killed her.

I know.

The police are huntin me.

JC's bringin the truck. We'll run the goddamn gate if we have to.

Dont move me, bud. I aint goin.

The hell you aint.

I cant make it. I thought there for a while I could. But I cant. Just take it easy now. I
aint listenin to that shit. Hell, I've had worse scratches than that on my eyeball.

I'm cut all to pieces Billy.

We'll get you back. Dont quit on me now, goddamn it.

Billy. Listen. It's all right. I know I aint goin to make it.

I done told you.

No. Listen. Whew. You dont know what I'd give for a cool drink of water.

I'll get it.

He started to set the candle by but John Grady took hold of his arm. Dont go, he said.
Maybe when the boy gets back.

All right.

He said it wouldnt hurt. The lyin son of a bitch. Whew. It's gettin daylight, aint it?

Yeah.

I seen her, bud. They had her laid out and it didnt look like her but it was. They found
her in the river. He cut her throat, bud.

I know.

I just wanted him. Bud, I wanted him.

You should of told me. You didnt have no business comin down here by yourself.

I just wanted him.

Just take it easy. They'll be here directly. You just hang on.

It's okay. Hurts like a sumbitch, Billy. Whew. It's okay.

You want me to get that water?

No. Stay here. She was so goddamned pretty, bud.

Yes she was.

I worried about her all day. You know we talked about where people go when they die. I
just believe you go someplace and I seen her layin there and I thought maybe she wouldnt
go to heaven because, you know, I thought she wouldnt and I thought about God forgivin
people and I thought about if I could ask God to forgive me for killin that son of a bitch
because you and me both know I aint sorry for it and I reckon this sounds ignorant but I
didnt want to be forgiven if she wasnt. I didnt want to do or be nothin that she wasnt
like goin to heaven or anything like that. I know that sounds crazy. Bud when I seen her
layin there I didnt care to live no more. I knew my life was over. It come almost as a
relief to me.

Hush now. They aint nothin over.

She wanted to do the right thing. That's got to count for somethin dont it? It did with me.