Cities of the Plain (27 page)

A half hour later he saw Travis's truck go by on the highway. In a few minutes it came
back and slowed and pulled into the parking lot. John Grady rolled down the truck window.
Travis pulled up and sat looking at him. He leaned and spat.

What'd they do, give you your time?

Not yet.

I thought maybe the truck was stole. You ain't broke down are you?

No. I was just waitin on somebody.

How long you been here?

I been here a while.

Has that thing got a heater in it?

Not much of a one.

Travis shook his head. He looked toward the highway. John Grady leaned and cleared the
glass again with his sleeve. I bet?ter get on, he said.

Are you in some kind of trouble?

Yeah. Maybe.

Over a girl, I reckon.

Yeah.

They aint worth it, son.

I've heard that.

Well. Dont do nothin dumb.

It's probably too late.

It aint too late if you aint done it.

I'm all right.

He reached and turned the key and pushed the starter but?ton. He turned and looked at
Travis. I'll see you, he said.

He pulled out of the parking lot and headed back up the highway. Travis sat watching the
truck until it was out of sight.

WHEN HE got to the cafe in the Calle de Noche Triste the place was full and the girl was
hurrying back and forth with orders of eggs and baskets of tortillas. She didnt know
anything. She'd only come to work an hour ago. He followed her into the kitchen. The cook
looked up from the stove and looked at the girl. QuiŽn es? he said. The girl shrugged. She
looked at John Grady. She balanced plates up her arm and pushed back out through the door.
The cook didnt know anything. He said the waiter's name was Felipe but he wasnt here. He
wouldnt be back until late afternoon. John Grady watched him for a few minutes while he
turned the tortillas on the grill with his fingers. Then he pushed open the door and went
back out through the restaurant.

He followed the trail of the cabdriver through the various sidestreet bars where he plied
his trade. Bars where patrons from the prior night clutched their drinks and squinted in
the light from the opening door like suspects under interrogation. He narrowly avoided two
fights for refusing to accept a drink. He went to the Venada and knocked at the door but
no one came. He stood outside the Moderno peering into the interior but all was closed and
dark.

He went to the poolhall in Mariscal Street that was frequented by the musicians and where
their instruments hung along the wall, guitars and mandolins and horns of brass or german
silver. A mexican harp. He asked after the maestro but none had seen him. By noon he had
nowhere else to go but to the White Lake. He sat in a cafe over a cup of black coffee. He
sat for a long time. There was another place to go but he didnt want to go there either.

A dwarf of a man in a white coat led him down a corridor. The building smelled of damp
concrete. Outside he could hear street traffic, a jackhammer.

The man pushed through a door at the end of the corridor and held the door and nodded him
through and then reached and threw the lightswitch. The boy took off his hat. They stood
in a room where the recent dead four in number lay on their coolingboards. The boards were
trestled up on legs made from plumbing pipe and the dead lay upon them with their hands at
their sides and their eyes closed and their necks in dark stained wooden chocks. None were
covered over but all lay in their clothes as death had found them. They had the look of
rumpled travelers resting in an anteroom. He walked along slowly past the tables. The
overhead ceiling lights were covered with small wire baskets. The walls were painted
green. In the floor a brass drain. Bits of gray mopstring twisted about the castered
wheels under the tables.

The girl to whom he'd sworn his love forever lay on the last table. She lay as the
rushcutters had found her that morning in the shallows under the shore willows with the
mist rising off the river. Her hair damp and matted. So black. Hung with strands of dead
brown weed. Her face so pale. The severed throat gaping bloodlessly. Her good blue dress
was twisted about on her body and her stockings were torn. She'd lost her shoes.

There was no blood for it had all washed away. He reached and touched her cheek. Oh God,
he said.

La conoce? said the orderly.

Oh God.

La conoce?

He leaned on the table, crushing his hat. He put his hand across his eyes, gripping his
skull. Had he the strength he'd have crushed out all it held. What lay before him now and
all else it might hold forever.

Se–or, said the orderly, but the boy turned and pushed past him and stumbled out. The man
called after him. He stood in the door and called down the hallway. He said that if he
knew this girl he must make an identification. He said that there were papers to be filled
out.

THE CATTLE in the long Cedar Springs Draw up through which he rode studied him as they
stood chewing and then lowered their heads again. The rider knew they could tell his
intentions by the attitude of the horse he rode. He passed on and rode up into the hills
and crested out on the mesa and rode slowly along the rim. He sat the horse facing into
the wind and watched the train going up the valley fifteen miles away. To the south the
thin green line of the river lay like a child's crayon mark across that mauve and bistre
waste. Beyond that the mountains of Mexico in paling blues and grays washing out in the
distance. The grass along the mesa underfoot twisted in the wind. A dark head of weather
was making up to the north. The little horse dipped its head and he pulled it about and
rode on. The horse seemed uncertain and looked off to the west. As if to remember the way.
The boy booted him forward. You dont need to worry about it, he said.

He crossed the highway and crossed through the westernmost section of the McGregor ranch.
He rode through country he'd not seen before. In the early afternoon he came upon a rider
sitting his horse with his hands crossed loosely over the pommel of his saddle. The horse
was a goodlooking black gelding with a savvy look to its eye. It was ochred to the knees
from the dust of that country and the rig was an old rimfire outfit with visalia stirrups
and a flat saddlehorn the size of a coffeesaucer. The rider was chewing tobacco and he
nodded as John Grady rode up. Can I help you? he said.

John Grady leaned and spat. Meanin I aint supposed to be on your land, he said. He looked
at the rider. A man a few years older than he. The rider studied him back with his pale
blue eyes.

I work for Mac McGovern, John Grady said. I reckon you know him.

Yes, the rider said. I know him. You all got stock drifted up this way?

No. Not that I know o£ I just kindly drifted up this way myself.

The rider pushed the brim of his hat back slightly with his thumb. They were met upon a
clay floodplain bereft of grass or any growing thing and the only sound the wind made was
in their clothes. The dark clouds stood banked in a high wall to the north and a thin and
soundless wire of lightning appeared there and quivered and vanished again. The rider
leaned and spat and waited.

I was supposed to get married in two days' time, the boy said. The rider nodded but the
boy said no more.

I take it you changed your mind.

The boy didnt answer. The rider looked off to the north and looked back again.

We might get some rain out of that.

We might. It's rained over in town the last two nights.

Have you had your dinner?

No. I guess I aint.

Why dont you come on to the house.

I better get on back.

I reckon she changed hers.

The boy looked away. He didnt answer.

There'll be anothern along directly. You'll see.

No there wont.

Why dont you come on to the house and take dinner with us. I appreciate it. I need to get
back.

You remind me some of myself. Get somethin on your mind and just ride.

John Grady sat loosely holding the reins. He looked a long time out at the running country
before he spoke. When he did speak the rider had to lean to catch his words. I wish I
could ride, he said. I wish I could.

The rider wiped the corners of his mouth with the heel of his thumb. Maybe you'd better
ought not to go back just yet, he said. Maybe you ought to just wait a little while.

I'd ride and I'd never look back. I'd ride to where I couldnt find a single day I ever
knew. Even if I was to turn back and ride over ever foot of that ground. Then I'd ride
some more.

I've been thataway, said the rider.

I better get on.

You sure you wont change your mind? We feed pretty good. No. I thank you.

Well.

I hope you get that rain up here.

I appreciate it.

He turned the horse and set out south down the broad floodplain. The rider turned his own
horse and started back upcountry but he stopped before he'd gone far. He sat the horse and
watched the boy riding out down the broad valley and he watched him for a long time. When
he could see him no more he raised himself slightly in the stirrups. As if he might call
after him. The boy never looked back. When he was gone the rider stayed a while yet. He'd
dropped the reins and he sat with one leg crossed over the fork of the saddle and he
pushed back his hat and leaned and spat and studied the country. As if it ought to have
something to tell him for that figure having passed through it.

IT WAS LATE EVENING and almost dark when he rode the horse through the ford and dismounted
under the cottonwoods in the glade at the far side. He let drop the reins and crossed to
the cabin and pushed open the door. Inside it was dark and he stood in the doorway and
looked back out at the evening. The darkening land. The sky to the west blood red where
the sun had gone and the small dark birds blowing down before the storm. The wind in the
flue moaned with a long dry sound. He went into the bedroom and stood. He got a match and
lit the lamp and turned down the wick and put back the glass chimney and sat on the bed
with his hands between his knees. The carved wooden Santo leered from the shadows. His own
shadow from the lamp rose up the wall behind him. A hulking shape which looked no
description of him at all. After a while he took off his hat and let it drop to the floor
and lowered his face into his hands.

When he rode out again it was dark and windy and starless and cold and the sacaton grass
along the creek thrashed in the wind and the small bare trees he passed hummed like wires.
The horse quivered and stepped and raised the flues of its nose to the wind. As if to sort
what there might be in the coming storm that was not storm alone. They crossed the creek
and set out down the old road. He thought he heard a fox bark and he looked for it along
the rimrock skylined above the road to the left. Evenings in Mexico he used to see them
come out and walk the traprock dikes above the plains for the vantage of the view there.
To spy out what smaller life might venture forth in the dusk. Or they would simply sit
upon those godlaid walls in silhouette like icons out of Egypt, silent and still against
the deepening sky, sufficient to all that might be asked of them.

He'd left the lamp burning in the cabin and the softly lit window looked warm and
inviting. Or it would have to other eyes. For himself he was done with all that and after
he'd crossed the creek and taken the road he had to take he did not look back again.

When he rode into the yard it was raining lightly and he could see them all at supper
through the rainbleared glass of the kitchen window. He rode on toward the barn and then
halted the horse and looked back. He thought it was like seeing these people in some other
time before he'd ever come to the ranch. Or they were like people in some other house of
whose lives and histories he knew nothing. Mostly they all just seemed to be waiting for
things to be a way they'd never be again. He rode into the barn and dismounted and left
the horse standing there and went to his room. The horses looked out over the stall doors
and watched him as he passed. He did not turn on the light. He got his flashlight from the
shelf and knelt and opened the footlocker and rummaged out his slicker and a dry shirt and
he got the huntingknife that had belonged to his father from the bottom of the locker and
the brown envelope that held his money and laid them on the bed. Then he stripped out of
his shirt and put on the dry shirt and pulled on the slicker and put the huntingknife in
the slicker pocket. He took some bills from the envelope and put the envelope back in the
locker and closed the lid. Then he switched off the flashlight and set it back on the
shelf and went out again.

When he reached the end of the road he dismounted and tied the reins together over the
saddlehorn and led the horse a ways back up the road sliding in the mud and then let go
the cheekstrap and stepped away and slapped the horse on the rump and stood watching as it
trotted off up the road in the heavy muck to disappear in the rain and the dark.

The first lights that picked him up standing by the side of the highway slowed and
stopped. He opened the car door and looked in.

My boots are awful muddy, he said.

Get in here, the man said. You cant hurt this thing.

He climbed in and pulled the door shut. The driver put the car in gear and leaned forward
and squinted out at the road. I cant see at night worth a damn, he said. What are you doin
out in the rain like this?

You mean aside from gettin wet?

Aside from gettin wet.

I just needed to get to town.

The driver looked at him. He was an old rancher, lean and rawboned. He wore the crown of
his hat round the way some old men used to do. Damn, son, he said. You a desperate case.

It aint nothin like that. I just got some business to attend to.

Well I reckon it must be somethin that wont keep or you wouldnt be out here, would you?

No sir. I wouldnt.

Well I wouldnt either. It's a half hour past my bedtime right now.

Yessir.

Errand of mercy.

Sir?

Errand of mercy. I got a animal down.

He was bent over the wheel and the car was astraddle of the white center line. He looked
at the boy. I'll get over if anything comes, he said. I know how to drive. I just cant see.

Yessir.

Who you work for?

Mac McGovern.

Old Mac. He's one of the good'ns. Aint he?

Yessir. He is.

You'd wear out a Ford pickup truck findin a better.

Yessir. I believe I would.

Got a mare down. Young mare. Tryin to foal.

You leave anybody with her?

My wife's at the house. At the barn, I should say.

They drove. The rain slashed over the road in the lights and the wipers rocked back and
forth over the glass.

We'll be married sixty years April twentysecond.

That's a long time.

Yes it is. It dont seem like it, but it is. She come out here with her family from
Oklahoma in a covered wagon. Got married we was both seventeen. We went to Dallas to the
exposition on our honeymoon. They didnt want to rent us a room. Didnt neither one of us
look old enough to be married. There aint been a day passed in sixty years I aint thanked
God for that woman. I never done nothin to deserve her, I can tell you that. I dont know
what you could do.