They didn’t say anything. Slowly he undressed and got into the water. He didn’t get too close to her. He felt as if it were the first time they had met—not only because of the strangeness of her look but because he knew, and she must have sensed, this would be the last time—and the last time exposes to lovers what strangers they are to one another.
They swam separately and quietly.
Then she went underwater and, because the water gave her protection against his staring eyes, she began swimming closer and closer to him. Then, as he stood near the falls and couldn’t see beneath the white disturbance on the surface, he thought he felt her hand on him, but it could have been a water current—and in a moment he saw her surface at a distance. Again she submerged herself; again he thought he felt her close—this time, unmistakably, she was touching, caressing him. When he could no longer stand the pleasure and pain of it, he got out of the pool and lay on the grass. He felt her naked, wet body, cold at first, on top of him. He made her lift herself a little so he could, with his tongue and mouth, dry some of the water off her breasts. When he sucked them, she quickly turned and he turned on top of her and entered her. She was screaming and he didn’t know how much of it was the pain of his touching her wounded arm and neck, and how much was the outcry of her coming, as he came too. Then they lay alongside each other and were still.
After a while, he tried to tell her he was going, he would never see her again. He was talking quietly and, he thought, seriously enough for her to hear the sorrow in his voice. But she was saying things, he was quite sure, she wanted him to smile at. They were not talking together, not at all—she didn’t understand anything he said. The only other time she hadn’t understood him was when he had told her the jacal had to be set afire. And now again. All other times they had clearly understood each other. He wondered why language between them had been so intelligible when their words were full of happiness—and so meaningless in misery.
But he was wrong. She wasn’t laughing at all. Nor was she crying. He had never seen her cry, not when he went in to kill the animal, not when the jacal was burning, not when she was hurt. She probably hadn’t cried when her husband died. She knew how to take leave of things, this woman. Perhaps to her too, lost was more real when found.
He thought: how good it would be if we could cry together.
But they didn’t. They lay there, in silence now, for silence was at last the only way they could talk to each other. Then, when the ache was too unbearable, he got up and went away.
* * *
• • •
When Mike returned to the shrine house, Rafo was out looking for him on the mesa. Hearing the car, the boy came running.
“Where were you?” he asked.
“Gas—oil—food for the trip,” Mike said. He started to carry one of the bags inside. “I’m sorry, kid, you must be starved.”
“No,” said Rafo. His voice was subdued. He was watching Mike closely, noticing that the latter didn’t meet his glance. “You went to see Marta,” he said.
Mike didn’t answer. He walked indoors. It was cooler there, out of the sun, and Mike could catch a breath. He didn’t hear Rafo come in, but knew the boy was standing behind him.
“Did you?” Rafo asked.
“Yes,” he confessed. “I’m sorry I didn’t take you. I didn’t know I was going.”
“I knew you would go,” Rafo said. There was such quiet confidence in the boy’s voice, such profound belief in him—with so little reason, Mike thought—that he couldn’t bear to look at the boy. “You better eat,” he said.
Rafo nodded but didn’t attack his food with the ususal ferocity. He was chewing quietly, hardly noticing what he ate.
“You’re not hungry?” Rafo asked.
“No.” Then, on an impulse. “I’ll have a drink.”
He poured some tequila in a paper cup. He drank it and poured himself another one.
“You will have to drive,” the boy said without any reproof, “and you will be dizzy.”
Mike felt a flush of pleasure. He turned to Rafo. He could feel his face smiling and he hoped Rafo heard the gratitude in his voice. “I don’t get dizzy anymore.”
“I know,” the boy said. “I was only . . .” He couldn’t find the word.
“. . . teasing.”
“Yes.”
They smiled at each other and Mike finished his second and had a third drink. I better not have another one, he thought; I better pack the truck and get going. He busied himself, while Rafo was finishing his meal, putting things in order in the back of the truck. They might be off the main road all the way, so he started to double-check everything. As he did so, he realized something was missing. His blanket. He had given it to Marta. He was glad of it; he hoped it would keep her warm on winter nights; he hoped it would remind her of the first night they had been together, in the jacal, of the warmth of their bodies together, of the warmth of them lying on the bankside in the hot morning sun. He hoped it would rest lightly on her, not heavily as the thought of her lay on him right now. He had another drink and, finished with the truck, he went indoors.
Rafo wasn’t eating anymore. The remainder of the food had been taken away, all crumbs gone, the earthen floor had been swept level again, the place was spotless.
Rafo stood by the icon of Mary. He put a wildflower in front of the picture, a bluish-red flower, a mallow possibly, then he lay a small piece of cactus across it, finally a peso coin. Last, he lighted a fresh candle. Hearing Mike come in, he turned.
“I want to tell her something.”
Mike nodded and started to go.
“No,” the boy said softly. “I want you to be here.”
Mike would have preferred not to listen. He was uncomfortable with deities. But he waited.
Rafo pointed to the icon. “You want to . . . tell her something?”
“I . . . think not, kid.”
“Then I will tell her for both of us. In English—so you will understand.”
He turned to the picture of Santa Maria. “I would like to—we would like to thank you for everything. For a place to sleep . . . and the horses. Especially the horses.” Then he indicated his offerings. “Here is a candle and a piece of cactus, which is good for the stomach. And a peso which is good for the pocket. And a flower which is good for the heart.” He paused a moment, then, “I ask you one more favor.” He turned his head a little to indicate Mike. “He is not a Cat’lic so he does not know how to pray to God. But I don’t want you to make a mistake about him. He is a good man. So—please—you tell your friend to be good to my friend.”
He walked away from the icon and slipped outdoors.
For a moment Mike remained inside the chapel, not daring to follow Rafo and look at the boy’s face. It was too sentimental, he thought—all that your-friend-my-friend stuff—too damn sweet. He couldn’t possibly have been touched by it—as deeply moved as he was now—if he hadn’t had a few drinks. Oh, Christ, he thought, I’d like to be more sober than I am, or drunker.
He had a final look at the room, trying to think what is done when leaving a place. Turn out the lights . . . but they were candles. They had to burn—for thanksgiving, for worship, for grace. Drunker, yes, he’d like to be drunker. He went outdoors.
Rafo was a distance from him, alone on the tableland, a small figure against the sky. He didn’t want to intrude on the boy, wanted him to have his last view of the mesa alone, to store the memory the way his own eyes had seen it. Yet Mike had a strong inclination to share these last few moments with Rafo. For nearly everything they had done on this plateau they had done together: the first night they had slept here, the first horse they had captured, the first fear allayed, hope fulfilled had all happened to them together.
He walked slowly toward the horizon. He didn’t stand too close to the boy. Nor did either of them speak for a long while. Then Rafo sai
d quietly, “I don’t want to leave Janasco, Mike.”
“I know you don’t.”
“What would happen if . . .” He stopped, then went on unevenly, “I want to stay here.”
It was a wish he was expressing—but more than that, he was broaching a plan. “You mean . . . really stay?” Mike asked.
“Yes.”
“And not go on—at all?”
Rafo nodded. There was a tremulous excitement in his face. He was afraid, but he was hopeful. “And I want you to stay with me.”
“But . . . how about your father—and the rodeo?” The thought had come too uncertainly for his drink-slowed brain. He wondered—father, rodeo, Texas—if the boy would think he was talking about unimportant things.
“I would like to go to him—yes,” Rafo was saying. “And the rodeo—yes.” Then inarticulately, trying to find his way. “But up there . . .” He made a gesture to the north, encompassing all the unknown. “I . . . I do not know what it is—but—I am a little bit afraid, Mike.” His face lightened. “But in Janasco . . . I am not afraid of anything. I can be okay in this town.”
Mike rubbed his eyes—perhaps rubbing them would clear his head of the tequila. “No, you can’t, Rafo.”
“Why not, Mike—why not?”
Unable to pull his fuddled wits together, he said the first thing that came to mind. “Because it’s a poor town. And you—you don’t have to live in a poor town. You’re a rich kid.” He could hear himself mouthing the emptiness. His tongue and lips moved and the muscles of his face worked and he spoke words and they weren’t there. The air was as void as if he had put no sound in it. Perhaps, he thought, if he repeated them: “A rich kid—you’re a rich kid!”
“But I am not rich!” Rafo cried. “I have never been rich in my life. The first time I feel rich was when we make a few pesos selling horses! Please, Mike—let’s stay here!”
“It’s the wrong place.”
“It’s the only place I was ever happy! It’s the first place I ever have a home! Mike—please!”
Mike started to move away. “I can’t, kid.”
Rafo followed him. “Yes, you can! You will also be happy here!”
“No! What’ll I do here? When the mustangs run out, what next?”
“Something! We will find something else!”
“Where? In a dead-end Mexican town? In a country where I can’t eat the food and can’t even speak the language? What can I do here?”
The boy was desperate. “You will be happy here, Mike! I promise you! Please stay—you will be happy—we will both be happy—please!”
He started to cry. The boy didn’t know how to cry and it frightened him. He kept putting his hand over his mouth, trying to hold back the sobs, trying to choke himself into silence, but the sobs came. For a moment he was a complete child, letting go—and trying not to let go—his precociously acquired maturities, the heavy baggage he was no longer able to carry, the false prides, the uncertain strengths, the lies that said he was older and braver and smarter than his years.
The tears were too much for Mike to handle. “Stop it! Goddamn it, stop it!”
There was no stopping. Through the sobs, the boy begged, “Why can’t we stay? Why? What’s the matter with you? Why can’t you stay and be my friend?”
“Because I’m taking you to your father!”
“Why can’t you be my father?”
“Because I’m not—and I don’t want to be!”
“Why not? Because you don’t like children? That’s what you say—but it’s a lie! It’s a lie, Mike! You like me!”
“So what?” He was berserk now, striking at anything. “So I like you—so what good is it? Liking something and losing it! What the hell good is it? What good?”
He kept repeating what good is it, what good, his body shaking. He stood there, in the middle of the mesa, shouting and shaking. It scared Rafo. The reckless self-exposure—of each of them—was more than either of them could stand. They both felt naked, too naked with each other, too openly in the sun.
If Rafo was scared, so was Mike. He made himself quiet at last, then walked away from the boy toward the truck. In a little while Rafo followed him and got in.
And they left Janasco.
16
Once, ages ago it seemed to Mike, when he was driving Cissy Brewer somewhere, the sweetly demented girl had said that riding north was something people did when they couldn’t ride south. It was the kind of empty, lovable nonsense that frequently came out of her mouth—and Mike told himself that the fact he remembered it now, on his journey north with Rafo, had no significance at all.
They rode for five hours through the scorching heat of the afternoon, and didn’t get very far. In five hours, Mike thought irascibly, if they could have used the main roads instead of these rutted narrow goat tracks in the hills, they’d be halfway to Texas. As it was, at this rate, they’d be lucky to make Texas by late tomorrow.
When darkness came and they were bumping along a wider section of the road, Mike pulled over on the shoulder of it and decided to park for the night. The hills were too steep to travel in the dark, the barrancas too deep, and he was getting hungry.
They ate their meal in silence. Rafo had been almost mute the whole afternoon. Twice, when they had stopped for gas in small towns, he had been content to stay in the truck—and didn’t even bother to untie Macho. No bounding curiosity about a new place, as had been his habit, no jouncing of muscles, no greed for food and mischief. When they had driven off, he didn’t even ask the names of the villages.
Now too he seemed disinterested—not only in the progress of the trip but in what he ate. Yet, Mike noticed, he didn’t sulk. He certainly didn’t complain. He simply seemed forlorn. Silent and bewildered, out of touch with himself.
As he sobered, Mike couldn’t put together how it had happened. It hurt him that the boy had discarded all defenses and offered himself so openly—and it hurt him more that he had to reject the boy. But how could he do otherwise—a strange kid, a child who didn’t belong to him? He could see himself getting attached to the boy—oh, yes, he could imagine it. Not a week ago, certainly—but now, yes, he could, easily. Even if he didn’t admire the brightness of the boy—which hell knows he did—even if he didn’t admire his guts, his eagerness, his warmth of heart, he could hurt for Rafo’s hurt, and maybe, someday, love him. How stupid it would be to let himself do that. He must repeat to himself that the boy was a stranger. And no matter what affection Rafo had for him, he was just a child going through a stage, that’s all, a brief stage in his life. By next year, next month perhaps, he’d have forgotten Mike’s last name. As he should. And Mike would forget him too. As he should.
Still, it wounded Mike to see the boy so desolate. As they were eating, Mike tried to engage him once or twice in conversation, but it was no good. Rafo was not the least bit hostile about his disinterest—he was simply away somewhere, in a lonely place.
When it was time for sleep, Mike puzzled whether to get into the back of the truck or to sleep on the front seat. He knew the boy would rather be alone, but didn’t want to be the one to suggest the separation. Finally, on the excuse that he had nothing to sleep on, the blanket being gone, Mike said he’d rather sleep up front on the upholstered seat. Rafo nodded, that was all. During the night Macho squawked a few times, but Mike didn’t hear a sound from the boy.
At lunchtime the following day they stopped at a roadside stand. Rafo had a cheese taco and Mike had some plain tortillas and coffee. Just once more, he decided, he would try to engage the boy in conversation.
“Did you see the vulture back there?” he asked. It had been a huge, naked-headed bird, the largest vulture he had ever seen.
Rafo showed only a glimmer of interest. “Vulture?”
“You didn’t see him?”
“No.”
“Big son of a b
itch. Black. Wingspread this wide.” He held his arms out as far as they could go.
“Do they hurt people?” Rafo asked, making conversation.
“No—they only go for carrion.”
“What means carrion?”
“Dead.”
Mike felt hopeful when the boy asked the questions, but Rafo didn’t ask anything else. He barely finished his taco and when Mike suggested that he have some dessert he said no thank you and went back to the truck, leaving Mike to finish his coffee alone.
In midafternoon, they rode into the dust storm. There was nothing dangerous about it at first, hardly more than a fine powdering of white ash. It came in the gentlest gusts and was a kind of blessing the way it filtered the glare and took the burning out of the sun. The nuisance of it was keeping the windshield clean; the wipers weren’t fast enough.
An hour later, when the storm was grittier, they saw the patrol car.
Mike saw it first, through his rearview mirror, but wasn’t sure, looking through the dust cloud, that it was pursuing them. It might simply happen to be on the same road by chance, he thought with an irrational hope.
It was pursuing them. Rafo, looking out the space where the back door had been, could see the car on the road below them, coming up the hairpin turns, making better time than they themselves could manage. “You better come up front,” Mike said. “I’m going to speed up. I don’t want you bouncing around back there.”
Obediently Rafo climbed over the front seat and sat beside him. Mike glanced at him. The boy wasn’t absent anymore, but if he was at all excited by the chase, he was keeping it concealed—Mike couldn’t interpret his mood at all.
Shoving his foot down on the accelerator until the truck grumbled, Mike pushed still farther, into overdrive. The windshield wipers, momentarily robbed of some of their power, slowed down, and the dust collected on the glass. A thicker dust now, hurled by a more violent wind, loud gales of dirt and sand. It was as if the sierras hated where they were and where they’d come from and were flinging themselves, all their grits and gravels, elsewhere, anywhere the wind would carry them.
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