‘I put him in the stable, the stall,’ Mr McCallum said. ‘But it was all right. It was the little stable, with just one stall in it, with nothing else in it. He told me I wouldn’t need to worry, because there wouldn’t be anything else in it. He had it already picked out and ready when I got there. But I looked, myself, at the doors and fences both. The stable was all right. If it hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have left the horse, no matter how much he paid me for it.’
‘I know that,’ his uncle said. ‘What little stable?’
‘The one that’s off to itself, that he built last summer, behind some trees, away from the other stables and the paddocks too. With a paddock of its own, and nothing else in the stable but the one big stall and a tack room and I looked in the tack room too: just a saddle and bridle and blankets and a curry-comb and brush and some feed. And he said that anybody that touched that saddle and bridle or the feed either, was going to already know about the horse and I told them they had certainly better, because if anybody walked into that lot and opened that stall door expecting to find just an ordinary horse behind it, it would not only be a considerable worry to the one that did the walking and the opening, but to the one that owned the horse too. And he said that at least that let me out, because I was just the one that sold it. But the stable was all right. There was even an outside window where a man could climb into the loft and throw down feed until the horse got used to him.’
‘And when would that be?’ his uncle said.
‘I learned how to do it,’ Mr McCallum said.
‘Then maybe in a minute now we can watch you,’ his uncle said.
Because they were almost there. They hadn’t gone out as quick as Max Harriss had come in, but already they were running between the white fences which, in the moonlight, didn’t look any more substantial than cake-icing, with the broad moon-filled pastures beyond them where his uncle could probably remember cotton growing—or at least his uncle would probably claim he did—while the old owner sat in his home-made chair on the gallery, to look out over them for a while, then turn back to his book and his toddy again.
Then they turned through the gates, with his uncle and Mr McCallum both sitting on the edge of the seat now, and ran fast up the drive between the combed and curried lawns, the bushes and shrubs and trees as neat as laid-by cotton, until they could see what had been the old owner’s house too: the tremendous sprawl of columns and wings and balconies that must have covered half an acre.
And they were in time. Captain Gualdres must have come out the side door just in time to see their lights in the drive. Anyway, he was already standing there in the moonlight when they saw him and he was still standing there when the three of them got out of the car and approached, bareheaded, in a short leather jacket and boots and a light crop dangling from his wrist.
It began in Spanish. Three years ago he had reached optional Spanish in high school and he didn’t remember now, in fact he never had really understood, how or why he started taking it; just exactly what his uncle had done, as a result of which he, Charles, found himself committed to taking the Spanish which he had never really intended to commit himself to. It wasn’t persuasion and it wasn’t a bribe, because his uncle said you didn’t need to be bribed to do something you wanted to do, needed to do, whether you knew at the time you needed it, would ever need it, or not. Perhaps his mistake was in dealing with a lawyer. Anyway, he was still taking Spanish and he had read Don Quixote and he could keep up with most Mexican and South American newspapers and he had started the Cid only that was last year and last year was 1940 and his uncle said, ‘But why? It should be easier than Quixote because the Cid is about heroes.’ But he couldn’t have explained, to anyone, least of all a man fifty years old, even his uncle, how to assuage the heart’s thirst with the dusty chronicle of the past when not fifteen hundred miles away in England men not much older than he was were daily writing with their lives his own time’s deathless footnote.
So most of the time he could understand them; only a little of the Spanish went too fast for him. But then, some of the English was too fast for Captain Gualdres too, and at one time he was even about to believe there were two of them who were not keeping up with his uncle’s Spanish too.
‘You go to ride,’ his uncle said. ‘In the moonlight.’
‘But certainly,’ Captain Gualdres said, still courteous, still only a little startled, his black eyebrows up only a little—so courteous that the voice never showed the surprise at all and not even the tone of it was actually saying, in whatever way a Spaniard would say it, So what?
‘I’m Stevens,’ his uncle said, in that same rapid voice—which to Captain Gualdres, he realised, was much worse than just rapid since to a Spaniard the rapidity and abrupt ness would be the worst crime of all; which (the Spanish), realised also, was the trouble: there had not been time; his uncle had not had time to do anything but just talk in it. ‘This is Mr McCallum. And this is my sister’s son, Charles Mallison.’
‘Mr McCallum I know well,’ Captain Gualdres said in English, turning; they could see his teeth for a second too. ‘He has one much horse too. A pity.’ He shook hands with Mr McCallum, sudden and brief and hard. But even doing that he still looked like bronze, for all his soft worn moon-gleamed leather and brilliantined hair, as if he had been cast from metal, hair boots jacket and all, in one jointless piece. ‘The young gentleman, not so well.’ He shook hands with him, Charles, quick and brief and hard too. Then he stepped back. And this time he didn’t shake hands. ‘And Mr Stevens, not so well. A pity too, perhaps.’ And still even the tone of the voice didn’t say, You may now present the apologies for consideration. It didn’t even say, yes, gentlemen? Only the voice itself said, perfectly courteous, perfectly heatless, with no inflection whatever:
‘You come out for ride? Is no horse up for now, but plenty on the little campo. We go to catch.’
‘Wait,’ his uncle said in Spanish. ‘Mr McCallum has had to look at the ends of too many horses every day to need to ride one tonight, and my sister’s son and I do not have to look at enough of them to want to. We have come to do you a favor.’
‘Ah,’ Captain Gualdres said, in Spanish too. ‘And that favor?’
‘All right,’ his uncle said, still in the rapid voice, in that quick splatter of Captain Gualdres’ native tongue resonant, not quite musical, like partly detempered metal: ‘There was a great haste. Perhaps I came so fast that my manners could not keep up.’
‘That politeness which a man can outride,’ Captain Gualdres said, ‘was it ever his to begin with.’ With deference: ‘what favor?’
And he, Charles, thought too: What favor? Captain Gualdres hadn’t moved. There had never been doubt, disbelief in his voice; now there wasn’t even astonishment, surprise in it. And he, Charles, was ready to agree with him: that there could be anything anything could do to him that his uncle or anybody else would need to warn him against or save him from: thinking (Charles) of not only Mr McCallum’s horse but a whole drove like it cracking their cannons and crowns on him, maybe rolling him in the dust and getting him dirty even and maybe even chipping his edges or possibly even denting him a little, but that was all.
‘A wager then,’ his uncle said.
Captain Gualdres didn’t move.
‘A request then,’ his uncle said.
Captain Gualdres didn’t move.
‘A favor to me then,’ his uncle said.
‘Ah,’ Captain Gualdres said. Nor did he move even then: only the one word not even Spanish nor even English either because it was the same in all the tongues that he, Charles, had ever heard of.
‘You ride tonight,’ his uncle said.
‘Truth,’ Captain Gualdres said.
‘Let us go with you to the stable where you keep your night riding-horse,’ his uncle said.
Again Captain Gualdres moved, even though it was only the eyes, he—Charles—and Mr McCallum watching the gleam of the whites as Captain Gualdres looked at him then at Mr McCallum t
hen back to his uncle and then no more, no more at all, apparently not even that of breathing, while he, Charles, could have counted sixty almost. Then Captain Gualdres did move, already turning.
‘Truth,’ he said, and went on, the three of them following, around the house that was too big, across the lawn where the bushes and shrubs were too many, past the garages that would have held more cars than just four people could ever have used and the conservatories and hothouses of too many flowers and grapes for just four people ever to have eaten or smelled, crossing that moon-still moon-blanched moon-silent barony with Captain Gualdres leading the way on the hard bowed pistons of boot-gleamed and glinted legs, then his uncle then himself then Mr McCallum carrying the white-oak cudgel, the three of them in single file behind Captain Gualdres like three of his family gauchos if Captain Gualdres had a family and they were not gauchos instead or maybe even something else altogether ending in ones.
But not toward the big stables with the electric clocks and lights and gold-plated drinking fountains and mangers, nor even toward the lane which led to them. Instead, they crossed the lane, climbing the white fence and crossing the moonlit pasture, on to and around and then beyond a small patch of woods and there it was and he could even still hear Mr McCallum talking almost: the small paddock inside its own white fence, and a single stable about the size of a two-car garage, all new since last September without doubt and neat and fresh with paint and the upper half of the single stall door open; a black square in the dazzling white; and suddenly behind him Mr McCallum made a kind of sound.
And this was where it began to go too fast for him. Even Captain Gualdres went Spanish now, turning, his back to the fence, compact, durable, even somehow managing to look taller, saying to his uncle what until now even the tone of the voice had not said, the two of them facing one another in the rapid splatter of Captain Gualdres’ native language so that they sounded like two carpenters spitting tacks at each other’s handsaw. Though his uncle began in English and at first Captain Gualdres followed, as if his uncle anyway felt that Mr McCallum was at least entitled to this much:
‘Now, Mr Stevens. You explain?’
‘With permission?’ his uncle said.
‘Truth,’ Captain Gualdres said.
‘This is where you keep your night horse, the blind one.’
‘Yes,’ Captain Gualdres said. ‘No horse here but the little mare. For night. Is left in the stable by the negrito each afternoon.’
‘And after supper—dinner—midnight, whenever it’s dark enough, you come out here and go into that paddock and walk across to that door and open it, in the dark, like now.’
And at first he had thought how there were too many people here, one too many, anyway. Now he realised that they were short one: the barber: because Captain Gualdres said,
‘I set first up the jumps.’
‘The jumps?’ his uncle said.
‘The little mare does not see. Soon she will not see forever. But she can still jump, not by seeing but by the touch, the voice. I teach her the—how you say it?—faith.’
‘I think the word you want is invulnerability,’ his uncle said. Then it went into Spanish, fast, the two of them, except for the rigidity, like boxers. And he might have kept up with Cervantes just writing it, but having the Batchelor Sampson and the chief of the Yanguesians trading a horse right before his face, was too much for him until his uncle explained it afterward when (or so he thought) it was finally all over—or came as near to explaining it as he, Charles, ever really expected.
‘Then what?’ he said. ‘What did you say then?’
‘Not much,’ his uncle said. ‘I just said, “That favor.” And Gualdres said, “For which, naturally, I thank you beforehand.” And I said, “But which, naturally, you do not believe. But of which, naturally, you wish to know the price.” And we agreed on the price, and I performed the favor, and that was all.’
‘But what price?’ he said.
‘It was a bet,’ his uncle said. ‘A wager.’
‘A wager on what?’ he said.
‘On his fate,’ his uncle said. ‘He called it. Because the only thing a man like that believes in is his destiny. He doesn’t believe in a fate. He doesn’t even accept one.’
‘All right,’ he said. ‘The bet. Bet him what?’
But his uncle didn’t even answer that, just looking at him, sardonic, whimsical, fantastical and familiar still, even though he, Charles, had just discovered that he didn’t know his uncle at all. Then his uncle said:
‘A knight comes suddenly out of nowhere—out of the west, if you like—and checks the queen and the castle all in that same one move. What do you do?’
At least he knew the answer to that by now. ‘You save the queen and let the castle go.’ And he answered the other one too: ‘Out of western Argentina.’ He said: ‘It was that girl. The Harriss girl. You bet him the girl. That he didn’t want to cross that lot and open that stable door. And he lost.’
‘Lost?’ his uncle said. ‘A princess and half a castle, against some of his bones and maybe his brains too? Lost?’
‘He lost the queen,’ he said.
‘The queen?’ his uncle said. ‘What queen? Oh, you mean Mrs Harriss. Maybe he realised that queen had been moved the same instant he realised he would have to call the bet. Maybe he realised that queen and the castle both had been gone ever since the moment he disarmed the prince with that hearth-broom. If he ever wanted her.’
‘Then what was he doing here?’ he said.
‘Why was he waiting?’ his uncle said.
‘Maybe it was a pleasant square,’ he said. ‘For the pleasure of being able to move not only two squares at once but in two directions at once.’
‘Or indecision, since he can,’ his uncle said. ‘And almost fatal for this one, because he must. At least, he’d certainly better. His threat and his charm are in his capacity for movement. This time, he forgot that his safety lay in it too.’ But that was tomorrow. Right now he couldn’t even keep up with what he was watching. He and Mr McCallum just stood there looking and hearing while his uncle and Captain Gualdres stood facing each other, rapping out the brittle splattering syllables, until at last Captain Gualdres made a motion, not quite a shrug and not quite a salute, and his uncle turned to Mr McCallum.
‘What about it, Rafe?’ his uncle said. ‘Will you walk over there and open that door?’
‘I reckon so,’ Mr McCallum said. ‘But I dont see—’
‘I’ve made a bet with Captain Gualdres,’ his uncle said. ‘If you wont do it, I’ll have to.’
‘Wait,’ Captain Gualdres said. ‘I think it is for me to—’
‘You wait yourself, Mister Captain,’ Mr McCallum said. He shifted the heavy stick to the other hand and stood looking across the white fence into the empty moon-filled lot, at the silent white wall of the stable with its single black square of half-door, for almost a half minute. Then he shifted the cudgel back to the other hand and climbed up onto the fence and put one leg over it and turned his head and looked back down at Captain Gualdres. ‘I just found out what all this is about,’ he said. ‘And so will you in a minute.’
Then they watched him climb, still without haste, down into the paddock: a compact light-poised deliberate man with about him something of the same aura, sense of horses which Captain Gualdres had, walking steadily on in the moonlight, toward the blank white stable and the single black square of emptiness, of utter of absolute silence, in the center of it, reaching the stable at last and lifting the heavy wrought-iron latch and opening the closed lower half of the door; only then moving with unbelievable speed, jerking the half-door quickly back and out on its hinges and already moving with it, swinging it all the way back to the wall until he stood slightly behind it, between it and the wall, the heavy cudgel clutched in his other hand; swinging the door back barely an instant before the stallion, itself the same color as the inky blackness of the inside, exploded out into the moonlight as if it had been tied to the door it
self with a rope no longer than a watch-chain.
It came out screaming. It looked tremendous, airborne even: a furious mass the color of doom or midnight in a moonward swirling of mane and tail like black flames, looking not merely like death because death is stasis, but demoniac: the lost brute forever unregenerate, bursting out into the moonlight, screaming, galloping in a short rushing circle while it flung its head this way and that, searching for the man until it saw Mr McCallum at last and quit screaming and rushed toward him, not recognising him until he stepped out from the wall and shouted at it.
Then it stopped, its fore feet bunched and planted, its body bunching against them, until Mr McCallum, again with that unbelievable quickness, walked to it and swung the cudgel with all his strength across its face, and it screamed again and whirled, spun, already galloping, and Mr McCallum turned and walked toward the fence. He didn’t run: he walked, and although the horse galloped two complete circles around him before he reached the fence and climbed it, it never quite threatened him again.
And during another time Captain Gualdres didn’t move, metal-hard, inviolable, not even pale. Then Captain Gualdres turned to his uncle; it was in Spanish still, but now he could follow it.
‘I have lost,’ Captain Gualdres said.
‘Not lost,’ his uncle said.
‘Truth,’ Captain Gualdres said. ‘Not lost.’ Then Captain Gualdres said, ‘Thanks.’
4
Then Saturday, no school: the whole unchallengeable day in which to have sat around the office and attended the little rest of it, the cleaning up; the what little rest of it remained, or so he thought, who even at that late hour of December afternoon had not yet known his own capacity to be astonished and amazed.
He hadn’t even really believed that Max Harriss would come back from Memphis. Mr Markey, in Memphis, hadn’t believed it either apparently.
‘Memphis city police cant transport a prisoner back to Mississippi,’ Mr Markey said. ‘You know that. Your sheriff will have to send someone—’
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