He worked another nine months for Aja and when he left he had a packhorse that he'd traded for and a regular bedroll and soogan and an old singleshot 32 caliber Stevens rifle. He rode south across the high plains west of Socorro and he rode through Magdalena and across the plains of Saint Augustine. When he rode into Silver City it was snowing and he checked into the Palace Hotel and sat in the room and watched the snow falling in the street. There was no one about. He went out after a while and walked down Bullard Street to the feed store but it was closed. He found a grocery store and bought six boxes of breakfast cereal and came back and fed them to the horses and put the horses in the yard behind the hotel and got his supper in the hotel diningroom and went up and went to bed. When he came down in the morning he was the only one at breakfast and when he went out to try and buy some clothes all the shops were closed. It was gray and cold in the streets and a mean wind blew out of the north and there was no one about. He tried the door of the drugstore because there was a light on inside but it was closed too. When he got back to the hotel he asked the clerk if today was Sunday and the clerk said it was Friday.
He looked out at the street. There aint no stores open, he said.
It's Christmas day, the clerk said. Aint no stores open on Christmas day.
He drifted into the north Texas panhandle and he worked out most of the following year for the Matadors and he worked for the? Diamond. He drifted south and he worked small spreads some no more than a week. By the spring of the third year of the war there was hardly a ranch house in all of that country that did not have a gold star in the window. He worked until March on a small ranch out of Magdalena New Mexico and then one day he got his pay and saddled his horse and tied his bedroll onto the packhorse and rode south again. He crossed the last blacktop highway just east of Steins and two days later rode up to the SK Bar gate. It was a cool spring day and the old man was sitting on the porch in his rocker with his hat on and a bible in his lap. He'd bent forward to see if he could tell who it was. As if the extra foot of proximity might bring the rider into focus. He looked older and more frail, much reduced from his former self in the two years since he'd seen him. Billy called his name and the old man said for him to get down and he did. When he got to the foot of the steps he stopped with one hand on the paintflaked baluster and looked up at the old man. The old man sat with the bible closed over one finger to mark its place. Is that you, Parham? he said.
Yessir. Billy.
He walked up the steps and took off his hat and shook hands with the old man. The old man's eyes had faded to a paler blue. He held Billy's hand a long time. Bless your heart, he said. I've thought about you a thousand times. Set down here where we can visit.
He pulled up one of the old canebottomed chairs and sat and put his hat over his knee and looked out over the pasturelands toward the mountains and he looked at the old man.
I reckon you knew about Miller, the old man said.
No sir. I've not had much news.
He was killed on Kwajalein Atoll.
I'm awful sorry to hear that.
We've had it pretty rough here. Pretty rough.
They sat. There was a breeze coming up the country. A pot of asparagus fern hanging from the porch eaves at the corner swung gently and its shadow oscillated over the boards of the porch slow and random and uncentered.
Are you doin all right? Billy said.
Oh I'm all right. I had a operation for cataracts back in the fall but I'm makin it. Leona went off and got married on me. Now her husband's shipped out and she's livin in Roswell I dont know what for. Got a job. I tried to reason with her but you know how that goes.
Yessir.
By rights I got no business bein here atall.
I hope you live forever.
Dont wish that on me.
He'd leaned back and closed the bible shut. That rain is comin this way, he said.
Yessir. I believe it is.
Can you smell it?
Yessir.
I always loved that smell.
They sat. After a while Billy said: Can you smell it?
No.
They sat.
What do you hear from that Boyd? the old man said.
I aint heard nothin. He never come back from Mexico. Or if he did I never heard it.
The old man didnt speak for a long time. He watched the darkening country to the south.
I seen it rain on a blacktop road in Arizona one time, he said. It rained on one side of the white line for a good half mile and the other side bone dry. Right down the centerline.
I can believe that, Billy said. I've seen it rain thataway.
It was a peculiar thing to see.
I seen it thunder in a snowstorm one time, Billy said. Thunder and lightnin. You couldnt see the lightnin. Just everthing would light up all around you, white as cotton.
I had a Mexican one time to tell me that, the old man said. I didnt know whether to believe him or not.
It was in Mexico was where I seen it.
Maybe they dont have it in this country.
Billy smiled. He crossed his boots on the boards of the porch in front of him and watched the country.
I like them boots, the old man said.
I bought em in Albuquerque.
They look to be good'ns.
I hope they are. I give enough for em.
Everthing's higher than a cat's back with the war and all. What all you can even find to buy.
Doves were coming in and crossing the pasture toward the stockpond west of the house.
You aint got married on us have you? the old man said.
No sir.
People hate to see a man single. I dont know what there is about it. They used to pester me about gettin married again and I was near sixty when my wife died. My sister in law primarily. I'd done already had the best woman ever was. Aint nobody goin to be that lucky twice runnin.
No sir. Most likely not.
I remember old Uncle Bud Langford used to tell people, said: It would take one hell of a wife to beat no wife at all. Course then he was never married, neither. So I dont know how he would know.
I guess I've got to say that I dont understand the first thing about em.
What's that.
Women.
Well, said the old man. At least you aint took to lyin.
There wouldnt be no use in it.
Why dont you put your horses up fore your plunder gets wet out yonder.
I reckon I'd best be gettin on.
You aint goin to ride off in the rain. We're fixin to eat supper here in just a few minutes. I got a Mexican woman cooks for me.
Well. I probably need to move while the spirit's on me.
Just stay and take supper. Hell, you just got here.
When he came back from the barn the wind was blowing harder but it still had not begun to rain.
I remember that horse, the old man said. That was your daddy's horse.
Yessir.
He bought it off a Mexican. He claimed the horse when he bought it didnt know a word of english.
The old man pushed himself up from his rocker and clutched the bible under his arm. Even gettin up out of a chair gets to be work. You wouldnt believe that, would you?
Do you think horses understand what people say?
I aint sure most people do. Let's go in. She's done hollered twice.
He was up in the morning before daybreak and he went through the dark house to the kitchen where there was a light. The woman was sitting at the kitchen table listening to an old wooden radio shaped like a bishop's hat. She was listening to a station out of Ciudad Juarez and when he stood in the door she turned it off and looked at him.
Esta bien, he said. No tiene que apagarlo.
She shrugged and rose. She said that it was over anyway. She asked him if he would like his breakfast and he said that he would.
While she was fixing it he walked out to the barn and brushed the horses and cleaned their hooves and then saddled
Nino and left the latigo loose and he strapped the old visalia packframe onto his bedhorse and tied on his soogan and went back to the house. She got his breakfast out of the oven and set it on the table. She'd cooked eggs and ham and flour tortillas and beans and she set it in front of him and poured his coffee.
Quiere crema? she said.
No gracias. Hay salsa?
She set the salsa at his elbow in a small lavastone molcajete.
Gracias.
He thought that she would leave but she didnt. She stood watching him eat.
Es pariente del senor Sanders? she said.
No. El era amigo de mi padre.
He looked up at her. Sientate, he said. Puede sentarse.
She made a little motion with her hand. He didnt know what it meant. She stood as before.
Su salud no es buena, he said.
She said that it was not. She said that he had had trouble with his eyes and that he was very sad over his nephew who was killed in the war. Conocio a su sobrino? she said.
Si. Y usted?
She said that she had not known the nephew. She said that when she came to work here the nephew was already dead. She said that she had seen his picture and that he was very handsome.
He ate the last of the eggs and wiped the plate with the tortilla and ate the tortilla and drank the last of the coffee and wiped his mouth and looked up and thanked her.
Tiene que hacer un viaje largo? she said.
He rose and put the napkin on the table and took his hat up from the other chair and put it on. He said that he did indeed have a long journey. He said he did not know what the end of his journey would look like or whether he would know it when he got there and he asked her in Spanish to pray for him but she said she had already decided to do so before he even asked.
*
HE SIGNED the horses through the Mexican customs at Berendo and folded the stamped entry papers into his saddlebag and gave the aduanero a silver dollar. The aduanero saluted him gravely and addressed him as caballero and he rode south into old Mexico, State of Chihuahua. He'd last passed through this port of entry seven years ago when he was thirteen and his father rode the horse he now rode and they had taken delivery of eight hundred head of cattle from two Americans rawhiding the back acres of an abandoned ranch in the mountains to the west of Ascension. At that time there had been a cafe here but now there was none. He rode down the little mud street and bought three tacos from a woman sitting beside a charcoal brazier in the dust of the roadside and ate them as he went.
Two days' riding brought him at evening to the town of Janos, or to the lights thereof sited on the darkening plain below him. He sat the horse in the old rutted wagonroad and looked off toward the western sierras black against the bloodred drop of the sky. Beyond lay the Bavispe River country and the high Pilares with the snow still clinging in the northern rincons and the nights still cold up there on the alto plano where he had ridden another horse in another time long ago.
He approached from the east in the dark, riding past one of the crumbling mud towers of the ancient walled town and riding slowly through a settlement composed wholly of mud and in ruins a hundred years. He rode past the tall mud church and past the old green Spanish bells hung from their trestlepole in the yard and past the open doors of the houses where men sat smoking quietly. Behind them in the yellow light of the oil lamps the women moved at their tasks. Over the town hung a haze of charcoal smoke and from somewhere in those dusky warrens music was playing.
He followed the sound down the narrow mud corridors and hove up at last before a door nailed up out of raw pine boards crusted with dried rosin and hung on bullhide hinges. The room he entered was but one more in the row of cribs inhabited or abandoned that lined either side of the little street. When he entered the music ceased and the musicians turned and looked at him. There were several tables in the room and all had ornately turned legs that were stained with mud as if they'd stood outside in the rain. At one of the tables sat four men with glasses and a bottle. Along the back wall was an ornate Brunswick bar brought here from God knew where and on the shelves of the carved and dusty backbar there were half a dozen bottles, some with labels, some without.
Esta abierto? he said.
One of the men pushed back his chair on the clay floor and stood. He was very tall and when he stood his head vanished into the darkness above the single shaded bulb that hung over the table. Si, caballero, he said. Como no?
He went to the bar and took down an apron from a nail and tied it about his waist and stood before the dimly lit carved mahogany with his hands crossed before him. He looked like a butcher standing in a church. Billy nodded at the other three men at the table and wished them a good evening but none spoke back. The musicians rose with their instruments and filed out into the street.
He pushed his hat back slightly on his head and crossed the room and put his hands on the bar and studied the bottles on the back wall.
Deme un Waterfills y Frazier, he said.
The barman held up one finger. As if agreeing with the wisdom of this choice. He reached and took down a tumbler from among a varied collection and righted it on the bar and reached down the whiskey and poured the glass half full.
Agua? he said.
No gracias. Tome algo para usted.
The barman thanked him and reached down another tumbler and poured it and set the bottle on the bar. On the dust of the bottle his hand had left an imprint visible in the sallow glare from the lamp. Billy held up his glass and looked at the barman across the rim of it. Salud, he said.
Salud, said the barman. They drank. Billy set his glass down and gestured at it with a circling motion of his finger that included the barman's glass also. He turned and looked at the three men sitting on the table. Y sus amigos tambien, he said.
Bueno, said the barman. Como no.
He crossed the room in his apron with the bottle and poured their glasses and they toasted his health and he raised his own glass and they drank. The barman returned to the bar where he stood uncertainly, glass and bottle in hand. Billy set his glass on the bar. Finally a voice from the table spoke to ask that he join them. He picked up the glass and turned and thanked them. He did not know who had spoken.
When he pulled back the chair which the barman had earlier vacated and sat in it and looked up he could see that the oldest of the three men was very drunk. He wore a sweatstained guayabera and he slouched in his chair with his chin resting in the open collar of it. The black eyes in their redrimmed cups were sullen and depthless. Like lead slag poured into borings to seal away something virulent or predacious. In the slow shuttering of the lids an overlong interval. It was the younger man on his right who spoke. He said that it was a long distance between drinks of whiskey for a traveler in this country.
Billy nodded. He looked at the bottle standing on their table. It was slightly yellow, slightly misshapen. There was no stopper to it nor label and it held a thin lees of fluid, a thin sediment. A thinly curved agave worm. Tomamos mescal, the man said. He leaned back in his chair and called to the barman. Venga, he called. Sientate con nosotros.
The barman set the whiskey bottle on the bar but Billy said for him to bring it. He untied his apron and took it off and hung it back on the nail and came over with the bottle. Billy waved at the glasses on the table. Otra vez, he said.
Otra vez, said the barman. He poured the glasses round. When he had filled all save the glass of the man who was drunk he hesitated for the prior pouring yet stood before him. The younger man touched his elbow. Alfonso, he said. Tome.
Alfonso drank not. He stared leadenly at the pale newcomer. He seemed not so much reduced by drink as restored to some atavistic state once lost to him. The younger man looked across the table at the American. Es un hombre muy serio, he said.
The barman stood the bottle before them and dragged a chair across from a nearby table and sat. All raised their glasses. They would have drunk except that Alfonso chose that moment to speak. Quien
es, joven? he said.
They paused. They looked at Billy. Billy lifted his glass and drank and sat the empty glass down and looked across the table at those eyes again.
Un hombre, he said. No mas.
Americano.
Claro. Americano.
Es vaquero?
Si. Vaquero.
The drunk man did not move. His eyes did not move. He could have been speaking to himself.
Tome, Alfonso, said the younger man. He raised his own glass and looked around the table. The others raised their glasses. All drank.
Y usted? said Billy.
The drunk man did not answer. His wet red underlip hung loosely away from the perfect white teeth. He seemed not to have heard.
Es soldado? he said.
Soldado no.
The younger man said that the drunk man had been a soldier in the revolution and that he had fought at Torreon and at Zacatecas and that he had been wounded many times. Billy looked at the drunk man. The opaque black of his eyes. The younger man said that he had received three bullets in the chest at Zacatecas and lain in the dirt of the streets in darkness and cold while the dogs drank his blood. He said that the holes were there in the patriot's chest for all to see.
Otra vez, said Billy. The barman leaned forward with the bottle and poured.
When all the glasses were filled the younger man raised his glass and offered a toast to the revolution. They drank. They set their glasses down and wiped their mouths with the backs of their hands and looked at the drunk man. Por que viene aqui? the drunk man said.
They looked at Billy.
Aqui? said Billy.
But the drunk man did not respond to questions, he only asked them. The younger man leaned slightly forward. A este pais, he whispered.
A este pais, said Billy. They waited. He leaned forward and reached across the table and took the drunk man's glass of mescal and slung its contents out across the room and set the glass back on the table. No one moved. He gestured to the barman. Otra vez, he said.
The barman reached slowly for the bottle and slowly poured the glasses once again. He set the bottle down and wiped his hand on the knee of his trousers. Billy picked up his glass and held it before him. He said that he was in their country to find his brother. He said that his brother was a little crazy and he should not have abandoned him but he did.
The Crossing Page 35