Cities of the Plain

IV

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. QuiZn 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 oPS 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.

BILLY PAID HIS TOLL at the booth and walked across the bridge. The boys along the river beneath the bridge held up their buckets on poles and called out for money. He walked down Ju++rez Avenue among the tourists, past the bars and curioshops, the shills calling to him from the doorways. He went into the Florida and ordered a whiskey and drank it and paid and went out again.

He walked up Tlaxcala to the Moderno but it was closed. He tapped and waited under the green and yellow tiled arch. He walked around the side of the building and looked in through a broken corner in one of the barred windows. He could see the small light over the bar at the rear of the building. He stood in the rain looking out down the street where it lay in a narrow corridor of shops and bars and lowbuilt houses. The air smelled of dieselsmoke and woodfires.

He went back to ju++rez Avenue and got a cab. The driver looked at him in the mirror.

Conoce el White Lake?

S'. Claro.

Bueno. V++monos.

The driver nodded and they pulled away. Billy sat back in the cab and watched the bleak streets of the bordertown pass in the rainy afternoon light. They left the paved road and went out through the mud roads of the outlying barrios. Vendors' burros piled high with cordwood turned away their heads as the taxi passed splashing through the potholes. Everything was covered with mud.

When they pulled up in front of the White Lake Billy got out and lit a cigarette and took his billfold from the hip pocket of his jeans.

I can wait for you, the driver said.

That's all right.

I can come in and wait.

I might be a while. What do I owe you?

Three dollars. You dont want me to wait for you?

No.

The driver shrugged and took the money and rolled the window back up and pulled away. Billy put the cigarette in his mouth and looked at the building there at the edge of the barrio between the mud and cratewood hovels and the pleated sheetiron walls of the warehouse.

He walked on to the rear of the place and turned up the alley past the warehouse and knocked at the first of two doors and waited. He flipped the butt of the cigarette into the mud. He'd reached to knock at the door again when it opened and the old criada looked out. As soon as she saw him she tried to shut the door but he shoved it back open and she turned and went scuttling down the hallway with one hand atop her head crying out. He shut the door behind him and looked down the hall. Whores' heads in curlingpapers ducked out and ducked back like chickens. Doors closed. He'd not gone ten feet along the hallway when a man in black with a thin and weaselshaped face stepped out and tried to take his arm. Excuse me, the man said. Excuse me.

Billy jerked his arm away. Where's Eduardo? he said.

Excuse me, the man said. He tried to take Billy's arm again. Mistake. Billy took him by the front of his shirt and slammed him against the wall. He was so light. There was nothing to him at all. He put up no resistance but seemed to be merely reaching about him as if he'd lost something and Billy turned loose of the handful of black silk knotted up in his fist just in time. The thin blade of theknife snickered past his belt and he leapt back and raised up his arms. Tiburcio crouched and feinted with the knife before him.

You little son of a bitch, said Billy. He hit the Mexican squarely in the mouth and the Mexican slammed back against the wall and sat down on the floor. The knife went spinning and clattering down the hallway. The old woman at the end of the hall was watching with her fingers in her teeth. Her eye closed and opened again in a huge and obscene wink. He turned to the pimp and was surprised to see him struggling to his feet holding a small silver penknife still fastened to the chain draped across the front of his pegged black trousers. Billy hit him in the side of the head and heard bone crack. The pimp's head spun away and he slid several feet down the hallway and lay in a twisted black pile in the floor like a dead bird. The old woman came down the hall at a tottering run crying out. He caught her as she went past and pulled her around. She threw up her hands and closed her good eye. Aiee, she cried. Aiee. He gripped her wrists and shook her. D-nde est++ mi compa-ero? he said.

Aiee, she cried. She tried to pull away to go to the pimp lying in the floor.

D'game. D-nde est++ mi cuate?

No sZ. No sZ. Por Dios, no sZ nada.

D-nde est++ la muchacha? Magdalena? D-nde est++ Magdalena?

Jesoes Mar'a y JosZ ten compasi-n no est++. No est++.

D-nde est++ Eduardo?

No est++. No est++.

Aint a damn soul est++, is there?

He turned her loose and she threw herself on the fallen pimp and raised his face to her breast. Billy shook his head in disgust and went down the hall and picked up the knife and stuck the blade between the door and the jamb and snapped the blade off and slung the handle away and turned and came back. The criada cowered and held up one hand over her head but he reached down past her and snatched away the silver chain from the pimp's waistcoat and broke off the blade of the penknife also.

Has this son of a bitch got any more knives on him?

Aiee, moaned the criada, rocking back and forth with the pimp's oiled head in her bosom. The pimp had come awake and was looking up at him with one walled eye through the woman's stringy hair. One arm flailed about loosely. Billy reached down and got him by the hair and pulled his face up.

D-nde est++ Eduardo?

The criada was moaning and blubbering and sat trying to unclamp Billy's fingers from the pimp's hair.

En su oficina, wheezed the pimp.

He turned him loose and straightened up and wiped his oily hand on the leg of his jeans and walked down the hallway to the far end. Eduardo's foilcovered door had no doorknob to it and he stood looking at it for a minute and then raised one boot and kicked it in. It came completely off the hinges in a great splintering of wood and turned slightly sideways and fell into the room. Eduardo sat at his desk. He seemed strangely unalarmed.

Where is he? said Billy.

The mysterious friend.

His name is John Cole and if you've harmed a hair on his head you're a dead son of a bitch.

Eduardo leaned back. He opened the drawer of his desk.

You better have a shoebox full of pistols in there, said Billy.

Eduardo took a cigar from the desk drawer and closed it and took his gold cigarcutter from his pocket and held up the cigar and clipped it and put the cigar in his mouth and the cutter back in his pocket.

Why would I need a pistol?

I'm fixin to point out several reasons if I dont get some sense out of you.

The door was not locked.

What?

The door was not locked.

I aint studyin your damn door.

Eduardo nodded. He'd taken his lighter from his pocket and was wafting the flame across the end of the cigar and rotating the cigar in his mouth slowly with his fingers. He looked at Billy. Then he looked past Billy. When Billy turned the alcahuete was standing in the door, one hand on the splintered jamb, breathing slowly and evenly. One eye was swelled half shut and his mouth was puffed and bleeding and his shirt was torn. Eduardo gestured him away with a small toss of his chin. Surely, he said, you dont believe that we are unable to protect ourselves from the riffraff and drunks that come here?

He put the lighter in his pocket and looked up. Tiburcio was still standing in the doorway. cndale pues, he said. Tiburcio looked at Billy for a moment with no more expression than a pitviper and then turned and went back down the hall.

Your friend is being sought by the police, said Eduardo. The girl is dead. Her body was found in the river this morning.

Damn you to hell.

Eduardo studied the cigar. He looked up at Billy. You see what has come to pass.

You couldnt just cut her loose, could you.

You remember our conversation when last we met.

Yeah. I remember it.

You did not believe me.

I believed you.

You spoke to your friend?

Yeah. I spoke to him.

But your words carried no weight with him.

No. They didnt.

And now I cannot help you. You see.

I didnt come here for your help.

You might wish to consider the question of your own implication in this matter.

I got nothin to answer for.

Eduardo drew deeply on the cigar and blew the smoke slowly into the uninhabited center of the room. You present an odd picture, he said. In spite of whatever views you may hold everything that has come to pass has been the result of your friend's coveting of another man's property and his willful determination to convert that property to his own use without regard for the consequences. But of course this does not make the consequences go away. Does it? And now I find you before me breathless and half wild having wrecked my place of business and maimed my help. And having almost certainly colluded in enticing away one of the girls in my charge in a manner that has led to her death. And yet you appear to be asking me to help you to resolve your difficulties for you. Why?

Billy looked at his right hand. It was already badly swollen. He looked at the pimp seated sideways at the desk. The expensive boots crossed before him.

You think I got no recourse, dont you?

I dont know what you have or do not have.

I know this country too.

No one knows this country.

Billy turned. He stood in the doorway and looked down the corridor. Then he looked at the pimp again. Damn you to hell, he said. You and all your kind.

HE SAT IN A STEEL CHAIR in an empty room with his hat on his knee. When the door finally opened again the officer looked at him and motioned him forward with the tips of his fingers. He rose and followed the man down the corridor. A prisoner was mopping the worn linoleum and as they passed he stepped back and waited and then went to mopping again.

The officer knocked at the captain's door with one knuckle and then opened the door and gestured for Billy to enter. He stepped in and the door closed behind him. The captain sat at his desk writing. He glanced up. Then he went on writing. After a while he gestured slightly with his chin toward two chairs to his left. Please, he said. Be seated.

Billy sat in one of the chairs and set his hat in the chair beside him. Then he picked it up again and held it. The captain laid his pen aside and stood the papers and tapped and edged them square and set them aside and looked at him.

How may I help you? he said.

I come to see you about a girl that was found dead in the river this mornin. I think I can identify her.

We know who she is, the captain said. He leaned back in his chair. She was a friend of yours?

No. I seen her one time is all.

She was a prostitute.

Yessir.

The captain sat with his hands pressed together. He leaned forward and took from an oakwood tray at the corner of his desk a large and glossy photo and handed it across.

Is that the girl?

Billy took the photo and turned it and looked at it. He looked up at the captain. I dont know, he said. It's kindly hard to tell.

The girl in the photo looked made of wax. She'd been turned so as to afford the best view of her severed throat. Billy held the photo gingerly. He looked up at the captain again.

I expect that's probably her.

The captain reached and took the photo and returned it to the tray face down. You have a friend, he said.

Yessir.

What was his relationship with this girl?

He was goin to marry her.

Marry her.

Yessir.

The captain picked up his pen and unscrewed the cap. What is his name?

John Grady Cole.

The captain wrote. Where is your friend? he said.

I dont know.

You know him well?

Yes. I do.

Did he kill the girl?

No.

The captain screwed the cap back onto the pen and leaned back. All right, he said.

All right what.

You are free to go.

I was free to go when I come in here.

Did he send you?

No he didnt send me.

All right.

Is that all you got to say?

The captain put his hands together again. He tapped at his teeth with the tips of his fingers. Outside the sound of people talking in the corridor. Beyond that the traffic in the street.

How do you say your name?

Sir?

How do you say your name.

Parham. You say Parham.

Parham.

You aint goin to write it down?

No.

You've already got it writ.

Yes.

Well.

You are not going to tell me anything. Are you?

Billy looked down into his hat. He looked up at the captain. You know that pimp killed her.

The captain tapped his teeth. We would like to talk to your friend, he said.

You'd like to talk to him but not to the pimp.

The pimp we have already talked to.

Yeah. And I know what talks, too.

The captain shook his head wearily. He looked at the name on the pad. He looked up at Billy.

Mr Parham, he said. Every male in my family for three generations has been killed in defense of this republic. Grandfathers, fathers, uncles, brothers. Eleven men in all. Any beliefs they may have had now reside in me. Any hopes. This is a sobering thought to me. You understand? I pray to these men. Their blood ran in the streets and gutters and in the arroyos and among the desert stones. They are my Mexico and I pray to them and I answer to them and to them alone. I do not answer elsewhere. I do not answer to pimps.

If that's true then I take back what I said.

The captain inclined his head.

Billy nodded toward the photo in the box. What have they done with her? The body.

The captain raised one hand and let it fall again. He has already made his visit. This morning.

He saw that?

Yes. Before we knew the identity of the girl. Thehow do you call him? The practicante. The practicante told my lieu?tenant that he spoke excellent spanish. He has a cicatriz. A scar. Here.

That dont make him a bad person.

Is he a bad person?

He's as good a boy as I ever knew. He's the best.

You dont know where he is.

No sir. I dont.

The captain sat for a moment. Then he stood up and held out his hand. I thank you for coming, he said.

Billy rose and they shook hands and Billy put on his hat. At the door he turned.

He dont own the White Lake, does he? Eduardo.

No.

I dont reckon you'd tell me who does.

It is not important. A businessman. He has nothing to do with any of this.

You dont consider him to be a pimp, I reckon.

The captain studied him. Billy waited.

Yes, the captain said. I do so consider him.

I'm glad to hear it, Billy said. I'm the same way.

The captain nodded.

I dont know what happened, Billy said. But I know why it happened.

Tell me then.

He fell in love with her.

Your friend.

No. Eduardo.

The captain drummed his fingers lightly on the edge of his desk. Yes? he said.

Yes.

The captain shook his head. I dont see how a man could run such a place if he fell in love with the girls.

I dont either.

Yes. Why this girl?

I dont know.

You told me you only saw her once.

I did.

You think your friend was not such a fool.

I told him to his face he was. I might of been wrong.

The captain nodded. I'm not a fool either, Mr Parham. I know you would not bring him to me. Even if his hands were dripping. Especially not then.

Billy nodded. You take care, he said.

He walked out up the street and went into the first bar he came to and ordered a shot of whiskey and carried it to the pay?phone on the back wall. Socorro answered and he told her what had happened and asked for Mac but Mac was already on the phone.

I guess you'll tell me what all this is about.

Yessir. I Will. If he shows up there dont let him leave if you can help it.

Maybe you'll let me know how you propose to keep him someplace he dont want to be kept.

I'll be there quick as I can get there. I'm just goin to check a few places.

I knew there was somethin about this that didnt rattle right.

Yessir.

Do you know where he's at?

No sir. I dont.

You call me back as quick as you know somethin. You hear?

Yessir.

You call me back anyways. Dont leave me settin here all evenin.

Yessir. I will.

He hung the phone up and drank the shot and carried the empty tumbler to the bar and set it down. Otra vez, he said. The barman poured. The place was empty save for a single drunk. He drank the second shot and laid a quarter on the bar and went out. Walking up Ju++rez Avenue the cabdrivers kept calling out to him to go and see the show. To go and see the girls.

Joan GRADY drank one whiskey neat at the Kentucky Club and paid and went out and nodded to the cabman standing at the corner. They got in and the cabdriver turned and looked at him.

Where are you going my friend?

The White Lake.

He turned and started the engine and they pulled away into the street. The rain had settled into a steady light drizzle but the streets were flooded and the cab moved out slowly and went up Ju++rez Avenue like a boat with the garish lights reflected in the black water dishing and wobbling and righting themselves again in its wake.

Eduardo's car was parked in the alley under the dark of the warehouse wall and he crossed to where it stood and tried the door. Then he raised his boot and kicked in the doorglass. The glass was laminated and it spidered whitely in the light and sagged inward. He put his boot to it again and it caved down into the seat and he reached in and laid the heel of his hand on the horn and blew it three times and stepped back. The sound echoed in the alley and died. He took off his slicker and took the knife out of the pocket and he squatted and tucked his jeans into his boottops and stuck the knife and sheath down into his left boot. Then he laid the slicker across the hood of the car and blew the horn again. The echo had barely died when the door at the rear of the building opened and Eduardo stepped out and stood back against the wall away from the light.

John Grady walked out from the side of the car. A match flared and Eduardo's face leaned in the flame with one of his little cigarillos in his teeth. The dying match arced out into the alley.

The suitor, he said.

He stepped forward into the light and leaned on the iron railing. He smoked and looked out at the night. He looked down at the boy.

You could have just knocked at my door.

John Grady had taken the slicker from the hood of the car and he stood in the alley with it folded under his arm. Eduardo smoked.

You have come to pay me the money you owe me, I suppose.

I come to kill you.

The pimp drew slowly on the cigarillo. He tilted his head slightly and blew the smoke upward in a thin stream from his thin lips.

I dont think so, he said.

He turned and slowly descended the three steps into the alley. John Grady moved out to the left and stood waiting.

I think you do not even know why you are here, Eduardo said. Which is very sad. Perhaps I can teach you. Perhaps there is still time to learn. He drew again on the cigarillo and then dropped it and twisted it out with his boot.

John Grady never even saw him reach for the knife. Perhaps he'd palmed it in his hand the while. There was a sharp little click and a wink of light off the blade. And then the wink again. As if he were turning it in his hand. John Grady drew his knife from the top of his boot and wrapped the slicker around his right forearm and caught the loose end in his fist. Eduardo walked out into the alley so as to have the light behind him. He stepped carefully to avoid the pools of rainwater. His pale silk shirt rippled in the light. He turned and looked at the boy. Change your mind, he said. Go back. Choose life. You are young.

I come to kill you or be killed.

Ah, said Eduardo.

I didnt come to talk.

It is only a formality. Because of your youth.

You dont need to worry about my youth.

The pimp stood in the alleyway. His shirt open at the neck. His sleek oiled head blue in the light. Holding the thin switchblade knife loosely in one hand. I wanted you to know that I was still willing to forgive you, he said.

He had come forward by steps almost imperceptible. He stood. His head slightly cocked to one side. Waiting.

I will give you every advantage. Perhaps you have not been in so many fights. I think you will find that often in a fight the last one to speak is the loser.

He put two fingers to his lips to caution silence. Then he cupped his hand and gestured the boy forward. Come, he said. We must make a beginning. It is like a first kiss.

He did. He stepped forward and feinted and passed the knife sideways at the pimp and stepped back. Eduardo arched his back like a cat and held his elbows up that the blade pass beneath them. His shadow on the wall of the warehouse looked like some dark conductor raising his baton to commence. He smiled and circled. His sleek head shone. When he moved in it was very low and from left to right and the knife passed before him three times too fast to follow and almost too fast to see. John Grady fended the blade away with his wrapped right arm and stumbled back and recovered but Eduardo was circling again, smiling.

You think we have not seen your kind before? I have seen your kind before. Many and many. You think I dont know America? I know America. How old do you think I am?

He stopped and crouched and feinted and moved on, circling. I am forty years old, he said. An old man, no? Deserving respect, no? Not this fighting in alleys with knives.

He moved in again and when he stepped back his arm was cut just below the elbow and the yellow silk shirt was dark with blood. He seemed not to notice.

Not this fighting with suitors. With farmboys. Of whom there can be no end.

He stopped in his tracks and turned and started back the other way. He looked like an actor pacing a stage. At times he hardly seemed to notice the boy.

They drift down out of your leprous paradise seeking a thing now extinct among them. A thing for which perhaps they no longer even have a name. Being farmboys of course the first place they think to look is in a whorehouse.

The blood dripped from his sleeve. The slow dark gouts vanished in the dark sand underfoot. He swung the knife back and forth before him on his slow clockwise walk. Like a man hacking randomly at weeds.

By now of course longing has clouded their minds. Such minds as they may possess. The simplest truths are obscured. They cannot seem to see that the most elementary fact concerning whores

He was suddenly very low before John Grady. Almost kneeling. Almost like a supplicant. The boy could not say how he got there but when he stepped away and commenced his circling again the boy's thigh was laid open in a deep gash and the warm blood was running down his leg.

Is that they are whores, said Eduardo.

He crouched and feinted and circled again. Then he stepped in and with the knife backhand made another cut no more than an inch above the first.

Do you think she did not beg me to come to her? Should I tell you the things she wished me to do? Things beyond a farmboy's imagining, I can assure you.

You're a liar.

The suitor speaks.

He lunged with his knife but Eduardo stepped aside and drew himself up so small and narrow and turned his head away in disdain in the manner of toreros. They circled.

Before I name you completely to myself I will give you even yet a last chance to save yourself. I will let you walk, suitor. If walk you will.

The boy moved sideways, watching. The blood had gone cold on his leg. He passed the sleeve of his knifehand across his nose. Save yourself, he said. If you can. Save yourself, whoremaster.

He calls me names.

They circled.

He is deaf to reason. To his friends. The blind maestro. All. He wishes nothing so fondly as to throw himself into the grave of a dead whore. And he calls me names.

He had turned his face upward. He held out one hand as if to display the vanity of counsel and he seemed to address some unseen witness.

This is quite a farmboy, he said. This is some farmboy.

He feinted to the left and cut John Grady a third time across the thigh.

I will tell you what I am doing. What in fact I have already done. For even knowing you will have no power to stop it. Do you wish me to tell you?

He says nothing, the suitor. Very well. Here is my plan. A medical transplant. To put the suitor's mind inside his thigh. What do you think of that?

He circled. The knife wafted slowly back and forth. I think it may be there already. And how is such a man to think? Whose mind has undergone such a relocation. He still hopes to live. Of course. But he is becoming weaker. The sand is drinking his blood. What do you think, suitor? Will you speak?

He feinted again with the switchblade and stepped away and continued his circling.

He says nothing. Yet how many times was he warned? And then to try to buy the girl? From that moment to this all was certain as dark and day.

John Grady feinted and slashed twice with the knife. Eduardo twisted like a falling cat. They circled.

You are like the whores from the campo, farmboy. To believe that craziness is sacred. A special grace. A special touch. A partaking of the godhead.

He held the knife before him at the level of his waist and passed it slowly back and forth.

But what does this say of God?

They moved simultaneously. The boy tried to grab his arm. They grappled, hacking. The pimp pushed him away and backed, circling. His shirt was sliced open at the front and there was a red slash across his stomach. The boy stood with his hands low, the palms down, waiting. His arm was laid open and he'd dropped the knife in the sand. He did not take his eyes off the pimp. He was cut twice across his stomach and he was reeking blood. The slicker had come unraveled and hung from his forearm and he slowly wound it up again and caught the end of it in his fist and stood.

The suitor seems to have lost his knife. Not so good, eh?

He turned, he circled back. He looked down at the knife.

What are we going to do now?

The boy didnt answer.

What will you give me for the knife?

The boy watched him.

Make me an offer, said Eduardo. What would you give at this point to have the knife back?

The boy turned his head and spat. Eduardo turned and paced slowly back.

Will you give me an eye?

The boy feinted to bend and reach for the knife but Eduardo warned him away and stood on the blade with his thin black boot.

If you let me pry one eye from your head I will give you your knife, he said. Otherwise I will simply cut your throat.

The boy said nothing. He watched.

Think about it, said Eduardo. With one eye in your head you still might kill me. A careless slip. A lucky thrust. Who knows? Anything is possible. What do you say?

He paced away slightly to the left and returned. The knife lay crushed into its mold in the sand.

Nothing, eh? I'll tell you what. I'll make you a better offer. Give me one ear. What about that?

The boy lunged and grabbed for his arm. He spun away and passed the blade twice more across the boy's belly. The boy made a lunge for the fallen knife but Eduardo was already standing over it and he backed away, holding his stomach, the warm blood running between his fingers.

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 molestarZ.

DZjame, said the boy.

Est++ bien. Est++ bien.

The boy wrenched about. He looked after his friends but they'd vanished in the darkness. DZjame, 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. EspZrate.

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. cndale, 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.

It does with me too.

There's a pawnshop ticket in the top of my footlocker. If you wanted to you could get my gun out and keep it.

We'll get it out.

There's thirty dollars owin on it. There's some money in there too. In a brown envelope.

Dont worry about nothin now.. Just take it easy.

Mac's ring is in that little tin box. You see he gets it back. Whew. Like a sumbitch, bud.

You just hang on.

We got the little house lookin good, didnt we?

Yes we did.

You reckon you could keep that pup and kindly look after him?

You'll be there. Dont you worry now.

Hurts, bud. Like a sumbitch.

I know it. You just hang on.

I think maybe I'm goin to need that sup of water.

You just hang on. I'll get it. I wont be a minute either.

He set the candlestub in its saucer of grease on the shelf and backed out and let the curtain fall. As he trotted out across the vacant lot he looked back. The square of yellow light that shone through the sacking looked like some haven of promise out there on the shore of the breaking world but his heart misgave him.

Midblock there was a small cafe just opening. The girl setting up the little tin tables started when she saw him there, wild and sleepless, the knees of his breeches red with blood where he'd knelt in the bloodsoaked mat.

Agua, he said. Necesito aqua.

She made her way to the counter without taking her eyes off him. She took down a tumbler and filled it from a bottle and set it on the counter and stepped back.

No hay un vaso m++s grande? he said.

She stared at him dumbly.

Dame dos, he said. Dos.

She got another glass and filled it and set it out. He put a dollar bill on the counter and took the glasses and left. It was gray dawn. The stars had dimmed out and the dark shapes of the mountains stood along the sky. He carried the glasses carefully one in each hand and crossed the street.

When he got to the packingcrate the candle was still burning and he took the glasses both in one hand and pushed back the sacking and crouched on his knees.

Here you go, bud, he said.

But he had already seen. He set the waterglasses slowly down. Bud, he said. Bud?

The boy lay with his face turned away from the light. His eyes were open. Billy called to him. As if he could not have gone far. Bud, he said. Bud? Aw goddamn. Bud?

Aint that pitiful, he said. Aint that the most goddamn pitiful thing? Aint it? Oh God. Bud. Oh goddamn.

When he had him gathered in his arms he rose and turned. Goddamn whores, he said. He was crying and the tears ran on his angry face and he called out to the broken day against them all and he called out to God to see what was before his eyes. Look at this, he called. Do you see? Do you see?

The Sabbath had passed and in the gray Monday dawn a procession of schoolchildren dressed in blue uniforms all alike were being led along the gritty walkway. The woman had stepped from the curb to take them across at the intersection when she saw the man coming up the street all dark with blood bearing in his arms the dead body of his friend. She held up her hand and the children stopped and huddled with their books at their breasts. He passed. They could not take their eyes from him. The dead boy in his arms hung with his head back and those partly opened eyes beheld nothing at all out of that passing landscape of street or wall or paling sky or the figures of the children who stood blessing themselves in the gray light. This man and his burden passed on forever out of that nameless crossroads and the woman stepped once more into the street and the children followed and all continued on to their appointed places which as some believe were chosen long ago even to the beginning of the world.