In the morning he rode the horse through the border crossing at Douglas Arizona. The guard nodded to him and he nodded back.
You look like maybe you stayed a little longer than what you intended, the guard said.
The boy sat the horse, his hands resting on the pommel of the saddle. He looked down at the guard. You wouldnt loan a man a half dollar to eat on would you? he said.
The guard stood a minute. Then he reached into his pocket.
I live over towards Cloverdale, the boy said. You tell me your name and I'll see that you get it back.
Here you go.
The boy cupped the spinning coin out of the air and nodded and dropped it into his shirtpocket. What's your name?
John Gilchrist.
You aint from around here.
No.
I'm Billy Parham.
Well I'm pleased to meet you.
I'll send you that half dollar soon as I catch somebody comin back this way. You neednt to worry about it.
I aint worried about it.
The boy sat holding the reins loosely. He looked out up the broad street lying before him and at the barren hills about. He looked at Gilchrist again.
How do you like this country? he said.
I like it fine.
The boy nodded. I do too, he said. He touched the brim of his hat. Thanks, he said. I appreciate it. Then he touched the wildlooking horse with his heels and rode off up the street into America.
HE WAS ALL DAY on the old road from Douglas to Cloverdale. By evening he was high in the Guadalupes and it was cold and cold in the pass with the early dark coming and the wind that shunted through the gap. He rode slouched loosely in the saddle with his elbows at his side. He read names and dates where they'd been written in the rock by men long dead who'd passed the same as he. Below him in the long enshadowed twilight lay the beautiful Animas Plain. Coming down the eastern side of the pass the horse suddenly knew where it was and it raised its nose and nickered and quickened its step.
It was past midnight when he reached the house. There were no lights. He went to the barn to put the horse up and there were no horses in the barn and there was no dog and before he'd even traversed half the length of the barn bay he knew that something was bad wrong. He pulled the saddle off the horse and hung it up and pulled down some hay and shut the stall door and walked down to the house and opened the kitchen door and walked in.
The house was empty. He walked through all the rooms. Most of the furniture was gone. His own small iron bed stood alone in the room off the kitchen, bare save for the tick. In the closet a few wire hangers. He went into the pantry and found some canned peaches and he stood in the dark at the sink eating them out of the glass jar with a cookingspoon and looking out through the window at the pastureland to the south blue and silent under the rising moon and the fence running out into the darkness under the mountains and the shadow of the fence crossing the land in the moonlight like a suture. He turned on the tap at the sink but it gave only a dry gasp and then nothing. He finished the peaches and went to his parents' room and stood in the doorway looking at the empty bedstead, the few rags of clothes in the floor. He went to the front door and opened it and walked out onto the porch. He walked down to the creek and stood listening. After a while he went back to the house and went to his room and lay down on his bed and after a while he slept.
He was up in the morning at daylight sorting through the jars on the shelves in the pantry. He found some stewed tomatoes and ate them and he walked out to the barn and found a brush and led the horse out into the sun and stood brushing him for a long time. Then he led him back into the barn bay and saddled him and mounted up and rode out through the standing gate and took the road north toward the SK Bar.
When he rode into the yard old man Sanders was sitting on the porch much as he'd left him. He didnt know the boy. He didnt even know the horse. He called for him to get down anyway.
It's Billy Parham, the boy called. The old man didnt answer for a minute. Then he called into the house. Leona, he called. Leona.
The girl came to the door and shaded her eyes with one hand and looked at the rider. Then she came out and stood with her hand on her grandfather's shoulder. As if it was the rider had come with bad news for the old man.
*
WHEN HE GOT BACK to the house again it was past noon. He left the horse saddled and standing in the yard and walked in and took off his hat. He walked through all the rooms. He thought the old man was crazy but he couldnt account for the girl. He walked into his parents' room and stood. He stood for a long time. He saw how the ticking of the mattress bore the rusty imprint of the springcoils and he looked at that for a long time. Then he hung his hat on the doorknob and walked over to the bed. He stood beside it. He reached down and got hold of the mattress and dragged it off the bed and stood it up and let it fall over backwards in the floor. What came to light beneath was an enormous bloodstain dried near black and soaked so thick it cracked and splintered like some dark ceramic glaze. A faint sour dust rose. He stood there. His hands reached about in the air and finally he took hold of the bedpost and gripped it for support. After a while he looked up and after a while he walked over to the window. Where the noon light lay over the fields. Over the new green of the cottonwoods along the creek. Bright on the Animas Peaks. He looked at it all and he fell to his knees in the floor and sobbed into his hands.
When he rode through Animas the houses seemed deserted. He stopped at the store and filled his canteen from the spigot at the side of the building but he didnt go in. He slept that night on the plains north of the town. He'd nothing to eat and he made no fire. He woke all night and at each waking the signature of Cassiopeia had swung further about the polestar and at each wakening all was as it had been and would forever be. At noon the following day he rode into Lordsburg.
THE SHERIFF LOOKED UP from his desk. He pursed his thin lips.
My name's Billy Parham, the boy said.
I know who you are. Come on in. Set down.
He sat in a chair opposite the sheriff's desk and put his hat on his knee.
Where have you been, son?
Mexico.
Mexico.
Yessir.
What caused you to run off?
I didnt run off.
Were you havin trouble at home?
No sir. Pap never allowed it.
The sheriff leaned back in his chair. He tapped his lower lip with his forefinger and contemplated the ragged figure before him. Pale with road dust. Thin to emaciation. A rope holding up his trousers.
What were you doin in Mexico?
I dont know. I just went down there.
You just got a wild hair up your ass and there wouldnt nothin else do but for you to go off to Mexico. Is that what you're tellin me?
Yessir. I reckon.
The sheriff reached and pushed a stapled set of papers from the edge of the desk and squared them with this thumb. He looked at the boy.
What do you know about this business, son?
I dont know nothin about it. I come here to ask you.
The sheriff sat watching him. All right, he said. If that's your story you'll be held to it.
It aint a story.
All right. We took trackers down there. There was six horses left out of there. Mr Sanders says he thinks that's all the horses there was on the place. Is that right?
Yessir. There was seven countin mine.
Jay Tom and his boy said that there was two of em and that they left out with the horses about two hours before daylight.
They could tell that?
They could tell that.
They showed up down there on foot.
Yes.
What does Boyd say?
Boyd dont say nothin. He run off and hid. He laid out in the cold all night and walked up to Sanders' the next day and they couldnt get no sense out of him. Miller had to get in the truck and drive down there and find that mess. They'd been shot with a shotgun.
Billy lo
oked past the sheriff out to the street. He tried to swallow but he couldnt. The sheriff watched him.
First thing they done was they caught the dog and cut its throat. Then they set and waited to see would anybody come out. They waited there long enough that one of em went to take a leak. They waited to see that everbody was asleep again after the dog quit barkin and all.
Were they Mexicans?
They was indians. Or Jay Tom says they was indians. I reckon he would know. The dog never died.
What?
I said the dog never died. Boyd's got it. It's mute as a stone.
The boy sat looking at the greasestained hat cocked on his knee.
What kind of guns did they get? the sheriff said.
There wasnt any to get. The only gun on the place was a forty-four forty carbine and I had that with me.
It wasnt much use to em, was it?
No sir.
We got nothin to go on. You know that.
Yessir.
Have you?
Have I what?
Do you know anything you aint told me.
Have you got jurisdiction in Mexico?
No.
Then what difference does it make?
That aint much of a answer.
No it aint. It's about like yours.
The sheriff watched him for a while.
If you think I dont care about this, he said, you're wrong as hell.
The boy sat. He put the back of his forearm to one eye and then the other and turned and looked out the window again. There was no traffic in the street. Out on the sidewalk two women were talking in Spanish.
Could you give me a description of the horses?
Yessir.
Was any of em branded?
One of em was. That Nino horse. Pap bought him off of a Mexican.
The sheriff nodded. All right, he said. He leaned down and pulled out a drawer in his desk and took out a tin deedbox and put it on top of the desk and opened it.
I dont guess I'm supposed to give you this stuff, he said. But I dont always do what I'm told. You got any place to keep it?
I dont know. What's in there?
Papers. Marriage license. Birth certificates. There's some papers on horses in here but most of em goes back a few years. Your mama's weddin ring is in here.
What about Pap's watch?
There wasnt no watch. There's some household effects out at the Websters'. If you want I'll put these papers in the bank. They aint even appointed a conservator so I dont know what else to do with em.
There ought to be papers on Nino and on that Bailey horse.
The sheriff turned the box around and slid it across the desk. The boy began to thumb through the documents.
Who's Margarita Evelyn Parham? the sheriff said.
My sister.
Where is she at?
She's dead.
How come her to have a Mexican name?
She was named after my grandmother.
He pushed the deedbox back on the desk and refolded the two papers he'd removed from it along their three lines and slid them inside his shirt.
Is that everthing you want? the sheriff said.
Yessir.
He closed the lid on the box and put it back in the drawer of his desk and shut the drawer and leaned back in his chair and looked at the boy. You aint fixin to go back down there are you? he said.
I aint decided what all I'm goin to do. First thing I got to do is go get Boyd.
Go get Boyd?
Yessir.
Boyd aint goin nowhere.
If I am he is.
Boyd's a juvenile. They aint goin to turn him over to you. Hell. You're a juvenile yourself.
I aint askin.
Son, dont get crosswise of the law over this.
I dont intend to. I dont intend for it to get crosswise of me neither.
He took his hat off his knee and held it briefly in both hands and then stood. I thank you for the papers, he said.
The sheriff put his hands on the arms of his chair as if he might be going to rise but he didnt. What about the descriptions on them horses? he said. You want to write them out for me?
What would be the use in it?
You didnt learn no manners down there while you was gone, did you?
No sir. I guess not. I learned some things but they sure wasnt manners.
The sheriff nodded toward the window. Is that your horse out there?
Yessir.
I see that scabbard boot. Where's the rifle at?
I traded it.
What did you trade it for?
I dont think I could say.
You mean you wont say.
No sir. I mean I aint sure I could put a name to it.
When he walked out into the sun and untied the horse from the parking meter people passing in the street turned to look at him. Something in off the wild mesas, something out of the past. Ragged, dirty, hungry in eye and belly. Totally unspoken for. In that outlandish figure they beheld what they envied most and what they most reviled. If their hearts went out to him it was yet true that for very small cause they might also have killed him.
THE HOUSE where his brother was staying was out on the east side of town. A small stucco house with a fenced yard and a front porch. He tied Bird at the fence and pushed open the gate and started up the walk. The dog came around the corner of the house and bared its teeth at him and raised its hackles.
It's me, numbnuts, he said.
When it heard his voice it flattened its ears and began to squirm across the yard toward him. It hadnt barked and it didnt whine.
Hello the house, he called.
The dog twisted itself against him. Git away, he said.
He called the house again and then went up on the porch and knocked at the front door and stood. No one came. He walked around to the back. When he tried the kitchen door it was unlocked and he pushed it open and looked in. It's Billy Parham, he called.
He entered and shut the door. Hello, he called. He walked through the kitchen and stood in the hallway. He was about to call again when the kitchen door opened behind him. He turned and Boyd was standing there. He stood with a steel pail in one hand and his other hand on the doorknob. He was taller. He leaned against the jamb.
I reckon you thought I was dead, Billy said.
If I'd of thought you was dead I wouldnt be here.
He shut the door and set the pail on the kitchen table. He looked at Billy and he looked out the window. When Billy spoke to him again his brother wouldnt look at him but Billy could see that his eyes were wet.
Are you ready to go? he said.
Yeah, said Boyd. Just waitin on you.
They took a shotgun from a closet in the bedroom and they took nineteen dollars in coins and small bills from a white china box in a bureau drawer and stuffed it all into an oldfashioned leather changepurse. They took the blanket off the bed and they found Billy a belt and some clothes and they took all the shotshells out of a Carhart coat hanging on the wall at the back door, one double-ought buckshot and the rest number five and number seven shot, and they took a laundry bag and filled it with canned goods and bread and bacon and crackers and apples from the pantry and they walked out and tied the bag to the horn of the saddle and mounted up and rode out the little sandy street riding double with the dog trotting after them. A woman with clothespins in her mouth in a yard they passed nodded to them. They crossed the highway and they crossed the tracks of the Southern Pacific Railway and turned west. Come dark they were camped on the alkali flats fifteen miles west of Lordsburg before a fire made of fenceposts they'd dragged out of the ground with the horse. East and to the south there was water on the flats and two sandhill cranes stood tethered to their reflections out there in the last of the day's light like statues of such birds in some waste of a garden where calamity had swept all else away. All about them the dry cracked platelets of mud lay curing and the fencepost fire ran tattered in the wind and the balled papers from the gro
ceries they opened loped away one by one downwind into the gathering dark.
They fed the horse on oatmeal they'd taken from the house and Billy skewered bacon along a length of fencewire and hung it to cook. He looked at Boyd where he sat with the shotgun across his lap.
You and Pap ever get your differences patched up?
Yeah. About half way.
Which half?
Boyd didn't answer.
What is that you're eatin?
A raisin sandwich.
Billy shook his head. He poured water from the canteen into a fruitcan and set it in the coals.
What happened to your saddle? Boyd said.
Billy looked at the saddle with the mutilated offside fender but he didnt answer.
They'll be huntin us, Boyd said.
Let em hunt.
How are we goin to pay em back for what all we took?
Billy looked up at him. Maybe you better just get used to the idea of bein a outlaw, he said.
Even a outlaw dont rob them that's took him in and befriended him.
How much of this are we goin to have to listen to?
Boyd didnt answer. They ate and unrolled their beds and turned in to sleep. The wind blew all night. It burned up the fire and burned up the coals of the fire and the balled and twisted shape of redhot wire burned briefly like the incandescent armature of an enormous heart in the night's darkness and then faded to black and the wind blew the coals to ash and blew the ash away and scoured the clay where coals and ash had been till other than the blackened wire there was no trace of fire at all and all night things passed in the dark that had of themselves no articulation yet had a destination for that.
Are you awake? Billy said.
Yeah.
What did you tell em?
Nothin.
Why?
What would be the use in it?
The wind blew. The migrant sands seethed past.
Billy?
What?
They knew my name.
Knew your name?
They called for me. Called Boyd. Boyd.
It dont mean nothin. Go to sleep.
Like we was friends.
Go to sleep.
Billy?
What?
You dont have to try and make it better than what it is.
Billy didnt answer.
It is what it is.
I know it. Go to sleep.
In the morning they sat eating and they watched across the flats where something was articulating in the sunrise far out on the steelcolored clay of the playa. After a while they could see that it was a rider. He was perhaps a mile out and he approached in a series of thin and trembling images which in those places where the footground was flooded would suddenly augment in their length and then shrivel and draw up again so that the rider appeared to advance and recede and advance again. The sun rose into the red reefs of cloud along the eastern shore and the rider came on, crossing a lake ten miles wide and three inches deep. Billy got up and got the shotgun and came back and put it under the blanket and sat again.
The Crossing Page 17