The Crossing

by Cormac McCarthy

  They rode into Casas Grandes across the high banked tracks of the Mexican Northeast Railroad and they rode past the depot and up the street and tied their horses in front of a cafe and entered. Screwed into their receptacles in the ceiling and casting a hard yellow light over the tables were the first electric lightbulbs they'd seen since leaving Agua Prieta on the American border. They sat at a table and Boyd took off his hat and put it on the floor. There was no one in the place. After a while a woman came from behind the curtained doorway at the rear and walked over and stood at their table and looked down at them. She had no pad to write on and there seemed to be no menu. Billy asked her if she had any steaks and she nodded and said that she did. They ordered and sat looking out the small window at the darkened street where the horses stood.

  What do you think? Billy said.

  About what?

  About anything.

  Boyd shook his head. His thin legs stretched out before him. On the far side of the street a family of Mennonites passed along before the dimly lighted shopfronts in their overalls with the women behind them in their sunfaded motherhubbards carrying marketbaskets.

  You aint sullin up on me are you?

  No.

  What are you thinkin?

  Nothin.

  All right.

  Boyd watched the street. After a while he turned and looked at Billy. I was thinkin it was too easy, he said.

  What was?

  Comin up on Keno thataway. Gettin him back.

  Yeah. Maybe.

  He knew that they wouldnt have the horse back until they crossed the border with it and that nothing was easy but he didnt say so.

  You dont trust nothin, he said.

  No.

  Things change.

  I know. Some things.

  You worry about everthing. But that dont change nothin. Does it?

  Boyd sat studying the street. Two riders passed in what looked to be band uniforms. They both looked at the horses tied in front of the cafe.

  Does it, Billy said.

  Boyd shook his head. I dont know, he said. I dont know how it would of turned out if I hadnt worried.

  They slept that night in a field of dusty weeds just off the railroad right of way and in the morning they washed in an irrigation ditch and mounted up and rode back into town and ate at the same cafe. Billy asked the woman if she knew the whereabouts of the offices of a ganadero named Soto but she did not. They ate a huge breakfast of eggs and chorizo and tortillas made from wheat flour such as they had not seen before in that country and they paid with what proved to be very nearly the last of their money and walked out and mounted up and rode through the town. Soto's offices were in a brick building three blocks south of the cafe. Billy was watching the reflections of two riders passing in the glass of the building's window across the street where the gaunted horses slouched by segments through the wonky panes when he saw the illjoined dog appear also and realized that the rider at the head of this unprepossessing parade was he himself. Then he saw that the lettering on the glass above the rider's head said Ganaderos and above that it said Soto y Gillian.

  Look yonder, he said.

  I see it, said Boyd.

  Why didnt you say somethin if you seen it?

  I'm sayin it now.

  They sat the horses in the street. The dog sat in the dirt and waited. Billy leaned and spat and looked back at Boyd.

  You care for me to ask you somethin?

  Ask it.

  How long do you aim to stay sulled up like this?

  Till I get unsulled.

  Billy nodded. He sat looking at their reflections in the glass. He seemed at odds to account for their appearance there. I thought you might say that, he said. But Boyd had seen him studying the tableau of ragged pilgrims paired with their horses all askew in the puzzled grid of the ganadero's glass with the mute dog at their heels and he nodded toward the window. I'm lookin at the same thing you are, he said.

  They returned twice more to the ganadero's office before they found him in. Billy left Boyd to tend the horses. You keep Keno out of sight, he said.

  I aint ignorant, said Boyd.

  He crossed the street and raised one hand at the door to break the glare on the glass and looked in. An oldfashioned office with dark varnished wainscotting, dark oak furniture. He opened the door and entered. The glass in the door rattled when he closed it and the man at the desk looked up. He was holding the receiver of an oldfashioned pedestal telephone to his ear. Bueno, he said. Bueno. He winked at Billy. He gestured with one hand for him to come forward. Billy took off his hat.

  Si, si. Bueno, said the ganadero. Gracias. Es muy amable. He hung the receiver back in the cradle and pushed the telephone away from him. Bueno, he said. Pendejo. Completamente sin verguenza. He looked up at the boy. Pasale, pasale.

  Billy stood holding his hat. Busco al senor Soto, he said.

  No esta.

  Cuando regresa?

  Todo el mundo quiere saber. Who are you?

  Billy Parham.

  And who is that?

  I'm from Cloverdale New Mexico.

  Is that a fact?

  Yessir. It is.

  And what was your business with senor Soto?

  Billy turned his hat a quarter turn through his hands. He looked toward the window. The man looked with him.

  I am Senor Gillian, he said. Perhaps I can help you.

  He pronounced it Geeyan. He waited.

  Well, Billy said. You all sold a horse to a German doctor named Haas.

  The man nodded. He seemed anxious for the story to unfold.

  And I was huntin the man you bought the horse off of. It might could of been a indian.

  Gillian leaned back in his chair. He tapped his lower teeth.

  It was a dark bay gelding about fifteen and a half hands high. What you might call a castano oscuro.

  I am familiar with the particulars of this horse. Needless to say.

  Yessir. You might of sold him moren one horse.

  Yes. I might have but I did not. What was your interest in this horse?

  I aint really concerned about the horse. I was just huntin the man that sold him.

  Who is the boy in the street?

  Sir?

  The boy in the street.

  That's my brother.

  Why is he outside?

  He's all right outside.

  Why dont you bring him in?

  He's all right.

  Why dont you bring him in?

  Billy looked out the window. He put on his hat and went out.

  I thought you was watchin the horses, he said.

  Yonder they stand, said Boyd.

  The horses were in the sidestreet tethered by their bridlereins to a spike in a telegraph pole.

  That's a sorry way to leave a horse.

  I aint left em. I'm right here.

  He seen you settin out here. He wants you to come in.

  What for?

  I didnt ask him.

  You dont think we might be better off to just keep ridin?

  It'll be all right. Come on.

  Boyd looked toward the ganadero's window but the sun was on the glass and he couldnt see in.

  Come on, said Billy. We dont go back in he'll think somethin.

  He thinks somethin now.

  No he dont.

  He looked at Boyd. He looked off up the street at the horses. Them horses look terrible, he said.

  I know it.

  He stood with his hands in the back of his overall pants and chopped his bootheel into the dirt of the street. He looked at Boyd. We come a pretty hard ride to see this man, he said.

  Boyd leaned and spat between his boots. All right, he said.

  Gillian looked up when they entered. Billy held the door for his brother and Boyd walked in. He didnt take off his hat. The ganadero leaned back and studied them one and then the other. As if he'd been called upon to judge their consanguinity.

  This here's my brother Boyd, Billy said
.

  Gillian gestured for him to come forward.

  He was worried about the way we look, Billy said.

  He can tell me himself what are his worries.

  Boyd stood with his thumbs in his belt. He still hadnt taken off his hat. I wasnt worried about how we look, he said.

  The ganadero studied him anew. You are from Texas, he said.

  Texas?

  Yes.

  Where'd you get a notion like that?

  You came here from Texas, no?

  I aint never been in Texas in my life.

  How do you know Dr Haas?

  I dont know him. I never laid eyes on the man.

  What is your interest in his horse?

  It aint his horse. The horse was stole off our ranch by indians.

  And your father sent you to Mexico to recover this horse.

  He didnt send us nowhere. He's dead. They killed him and my mother with a shotgun and stole the horses.

  The ganadero frowned. He looked at Billy. You agree with this? he said.

  I'm like you, said Billy. Just waitin to hear what's comin next.

  The ganadero studied them for a long time. Finally he said that he had come to his present position by way of trading horses on the road in both their own country and his and that he had learned as all such traders must how to reconstruct the histories of those with whom he came in contact largely by eliminating their own alternatives. He said that he was seldom wrong and seldom surprised.

  What you have told me is preposterous, he said.

  Well, said Boyd. You have it your own way.

  The ganadero swiveled slightly in his chair. He tapped his teeth. He looked at Billy. Your brother thinks I am a fool.

  Yessir.

  The ganadero arched his brows. You agree with him?

  No sir. I dont agree with him.

  How come you believe him and not me? said Boyd.

  Who would not? the ganadero said.

  I reckon you just enjoy to hear people lie.

  The ganadero said that yes he did. He said that it was a prerequisite for being in this business at all. He looked at Billy.

  Hay algo mas, he said. Something else. What is it?

  That's all I know to tell.

  But not all there is to be told.

  He looked at Boyd. Is it? he said.

  I dont know what you'd be askin me for.

  The ganadero smiled. He rose laboriously from his desk. He was a smaller man standing. He went to an oak filecabinet and opened a drawer and thumbed through some papers and came back with a folder and sat and placed the folder on the desk before him and opened it.

  Do you read Spanish? he said.

  Yessir.

  The ganadero was tracing the document with his forefinger.

  The horse was purchased at auction on March the second. It was a lot purchase of twenty-three horses.

  Who was the seller?

  La Babicora.

  He turned the open folder and pushed it across the desk. Billy didnt look at it. What's La Babicora? he said.

  The ganadero's unkempt eyebrows lifted. What is the Babicora? he said.

  Yessir.

  It is a ranch. It is owned by one of your countrymen, a senor Hearst.

  Do they sell a lot of horses?

  Not so many as they buy.

  Why did they sell the horse?

  Quien sabe? The capon is not so popular in this country. There is a prejudice I think is how you would say.

  Billy looked down at the sales sheet.

  Please, said the ganadero. You may look.

  He picked up the folder and scanned the list of horses detailed under lot number forty-one eighty-six.

  Que es un bayo lobo? he said.

  The ganadero shrugged.

  He turned the page. He scanned the descriptions. Ruano. Bayo. Bayo cebruno. Alazan. Alazan Quemado. Half the horses were colors he'd never heard of. Yeguas and caballos, capones and potros. He saw a horse he thought could have been Nino. Then he saw another that could also have been. He closed the folder and placed it back upon the ganadero's desk.

  What do you think? said the ganadero.

  What do I think about what?

  You told me it was the seller of the horse that brought you here and not the horse itself.

  Yessir.

  Perhaps your friend works for senor Hearst. That could be.

  Yessir. That could be.

  It is not such an easy thing to find a man in Mexico.

  No sir.

  The monte is extensive.

  Yessir.

  A man can be lost.

  Yessir. He can.

  The ganadero sat. He tapped the arm of his chair with his forefinger. Like a retired telegrapher. Algo mas, he said. What is it?

  I dont know.

  He leaned forward on his desk. He looked at Boyd and he looked down at Boyd's boots. Billy followed his gaze. He was looking for the marks of spur straps.

  You are far from home, he said. Needless to say. He looked up at Billy.

  Yessir, said Billy.

  Let me advise you. I feel the obligation.

  All right.

  Return to your home.

  We aint got one to return to, Boyd said.

  Billy looked at him. He still hadnt taken off his hat.

  Why dont you ask him why he wants us to go home, said Boyd.

  I will tell you why he wants this, said the ganadero. Because he knows what perhaps you do not. That the past cannot be mended. You think everyone is a fool. But there are not so many reasons for you to be in Mexico. Think of that.

  Let's go, said Boyd.

  We are close to the truth here. I do not know what that truth is. I am no gypsy fortuneteller. But I see great trouble in store. Great trouble. You should listen to your brother. He is older.

  So are you.

  The ganadero leaned back in the chair again. He looked at Billy. Your brother is young enough to believe that the past still exists, he said. That the injustices within it await his remedy. Perhaps you believe this also?

  I dont have a opinion. I'm just down here about some horses.

  What remedy can there be? What remedy can there be for what is not? You see? And where is the remedy that has no unforeseen consequence? What act does not assume a future that is itself unknown?

  I quit this country once before, Billy said. It wasnt the future that brought me back here.

  The ganadero was holding his hands forward one above the other, a space between. As if he held something unseen shut within an unseen box. You do not know what things you set in motion, he said. No man can know. No prophet foresee. The consequences of an act are often quite different from what one would guess. You must be sure that the intention in your heart is large enough to contain all wrong turnings, all disappointments. Do you see? Not everything has such a value.

  Boyd was standing at the door. Billy turned and looked at him. He looked at the ganadero. The ganadero dismissed the air before him with the back of his hand. Yes, yes, he said. Go.

  In the street Billy looked back to see if the ganadero was watching from his window.

  Dont be lookin back, said Boyd. You know he's watchin us.

  They rode south out of the town and took the road toward San Diego. They rode in silence, the mute and footsore dog trotting and walking by turns before them down the center of the shadowless noon road.

  Do you know what he was talkin about? said Billy.

  Boyd turned slightly on the bareback horse he rode and looked back.

  Yeah. I know what he was talkin about. Do you?

  They rode out through the last of the small colonias south of the town. In the fields they passed there were men and women picking cotton among the gray and brittle plants. They watered the horses at a roadside acequia and loosed the latigos to let them blow. Across the pieced land they watched a man turning the earth with an ox yoked by its horns to a singlehanded plow. The plow was of a type that was old in Egypt and was little mo
re than a treeroot. They mounted up and rode on. He looked back at Boyd. Thin atop the unfurnished horse. Thinner yet in shadow. The tall dark horse that trod the road with its great angular articulations arch and slanting in the dust more true of horse than horse he rode. Late in the day from the crest of a rise in the road they halted the horses and looked out over the broken plats of dark ground below them where the sluicegates had been opened into the newplowed fields and where the water standing in the furrows shone in the evening light like grids of burnished barmetal stretching away in the distance. As if the boundary gates to some ancient enterprise lay fallen there beyond the ditchside cottonwoods, the evening's singing birds.

  By and by they overtook on the darkening road a young girl walking barefoot and carrying upon her head a cloth bundle that hung to either side like a great soft hat. So that as they clopped slowly past she was obliged to turn her whole body sideways to see them. They nodded and Billy wished her a good evening and she wished them one back and they rode on. A little farther and they came to a place where the overflow from the acequias had left water standing in the bar ditch and they dismounted and led the horses along the bank and sat in the grass and watched geese walk stiffly about on the darkening fields. The girl passed along the road. They thought at first that she was singing softly to herself but she was crying. When she saw the horses she stopped. The horses raised their heads and looked toward the road. She went on and they lowered their heads and drank again. When they led the horses back up into the road she was very small and almost motionless in the distance before them. They mounted up and set out and after a while they overtook her once again.

  Billy crossed his horse to the far side of the road. So that she must turn her face to the west in the last of the light to answer him if he spoke to her as he rode past. But when she heard the horses on the road behind her she crossed also and when he spoke to her she did not turn at all and if she answered he did not hear it. They rode on. A hundred yards and he stopped and got down into the road.

  What are you doin? said Boyd.

  He looked back at the girl. She had stopped. There was nowhere for her to go. Billy turned and lifted the near stirrup and hung it over the horn and checked the latigo.

  It's gettin dark, said Boyd.

  It is dark.

  Well let's go on.

  We're goin.

  The girl had begun to walk again. She approached slowly keeping to the farthest edge of the road. As she came abreast of them Billy asked her if she wanted to ride. She didnt answer. She shook her head under the bundle and then she hurried past. Billy watched her go. He stroked the horse and took up the reins and started down the road afoot leading the horse behind. Boyd sat Keno and watched him.