IT WAS LATE EVENING and almost dark when he rode the horse through the ford and dismounted under the cottonwoods in the glade at the far side. He let drop the reins and crossed to the cabin and pushed open the door. Inside it was dark and he stood in the doorway and looked back out at the evening. The darkening land. The sky to the west blood red where the sun had gone and the small dark birds blowing down before the storm. The wind in the flue moaned with a long dry sound. He went into the bedroom and stood. He got a match and lit the lamp and turned down the wick and put back the glass chimney and sat on the bed with his hands between his knees. The carved wooden Santo leered from the shadows. His own shadow from the lamp rose up the wall behind him. A hulking shape which looked no description of him at all. After a while he took off his hat and let it drop to the floor and lowered his face into his hands.
When he rode out again it was dark and windy and starless and cold and the sacaton grass along the creek thrashed in the wind and the small bare trees he passed hummed like wires. The horse quivered and stepped and raised the flues of its nose to the wind. As if to sort what there might be in the coming storm that was not storm alone. They crossed the creek and set out down the old road. He thought he heard a fox bark and he looked for it along the rimrock skylined above the road to the left. Evenings in Mexico he used to see them come out and walk the traprock dikes above the plains for the vantage of the view there. To spy out what smaller life might venture forth in the dusk. Or they would simply sit upon those godlaid walls in silhouette like icons out of Egypt, silent and still against the deepening sky, sufficient to all that might be asked of them.
He'd left the lamp burning in the cabin and the softly lit window looked warm and inviting. Or it would have to other eyes. For himself he was done with all that and after he'd crossed the creek and taken the road he had to take he did not look back again.
When he rode into the yard it was raining lightly and he could see them all at supper through the rainbleared glass of the kitchen window. He rode on toward the barn and then halted the horse and looked back. He thought it was like seeing these people in some other time before he'd ever come to the ranch. Or they were like people in some other house of whose lives and histories he knew nothing. Mostly they all just seemed to be waiting for things to be a way they'd never be again. He rode into the barn and dismounted and left the horse standing there and went to his room. The horses looked out over the stall doors and watched him as he passed. He did not turn on the light. He got his flashlight from the shelf and knelt and opened the footlocker and rummaged out his slicker and a dry shirt and he got the huntingknife that had belonged to his father from the bottom of the locker and the brown envelope that held his money and laid them on the bed. Then he stripped out of his shirt and put on the dry shirt and pulled on the slicker and put the huntingknife in the slicker pocket. He took some bills from the envelope and put the envelope back in the locker and closed the lid. Then he switched off the flashlight and set it back on the shelf and went out again.
When he reached the end of the road he dismounted and tied the reins together over the saddlehorn and led the horse a ways back up the road sliding in the mud and then let go the cheekstrap and stepped away and slapped the horse on the rump and stood watching as it trotted off up the road in the heavy muck to disappear in the rain and the dark.
The first lights that picked him up standing by the side of the highway slowed and stopped. He opened the car door and looked in.
My boots are awful muddy, he said.
Get in here, the man said. You cant hurt this thing.
He climbed in and pulled the door shut. The driver put the car in gear and leaned forward and squinted out at the road. I cant see at night worth a damn, he said. What are you doin out in the rain like this?
You mean aside from gettin wet?
Aside from gettin wet.
I just needed to get to town.
The driver looked at him. He was an old rancher, lean and rawboned. He wore the crown of his hat round the way some old men used to do. Damn, son, he said. You a desperate case.
It aint nothin like that. I just got some business to attend to.
Well I reckon it must be somethin that wont keep or you wouldnt be out here, would you?
No sir. I wouldnt.
Well I wouldnt either. It's a half hour past my bedtime right now.
Yessir.
Errand of mercy.
Sir?
Errand of mercy. I got a animal down.
He was bent over the wheel and the car was astraddle of the white center line. He looked at the boy. I'll get over if anything comes, he said. I know how to drive. I just cant see.
Yessir.
Who you work for?
Mac McGovern.
Old Mac. He's one of the good'ns. Aint he?
Yessir. He is.
You'd wear out a Ford pickup truck findin a better.
Yessir. I believe I would.
Got a mare down. Young mare. Tryin to foal.
You leave anybody with her?
My wife's at the house. At the barn, I should say.
They drove. The rain slashed over the road in the lights and the wipers rocked back and forth over the glass.
We'll be married sixty years April twentysecond.
That's a long time.
Yes it is. It dont seem like it, but it is. She come out here with her family from Oklahoma in a covered wagon. Got married we was both seventeen. We went to Dallas to the exposition on our honeymoon. They didnt want to rent us a room. Didnt neither one of us look old enough to be married. There aint been a day passed in sixty years I aint thanked God for that woman. I never done nothin to deserve her, I can tell you that. I dont know what you could do.
BILLY PAID HIS TOLL at the booth and walked across the bridge. The boys along the river beneath the bridge held up their buckets on poles and called out for money. He walked down Ju++rez Avenue among the tourists, past the bars and curioshops, the shills calling to him from the doorways. He went into the Florida and ordered a whiskey and drank it and paid and went out again.
He walked up Tlaxcala to the Moderno but it was closed. He tapped and waited under the green and yellow tiled arch. He walked around the side of the building and looked in through a broken corner in one of the barred windows. He could see the small light over the bar at the rear of the building. He stood in the rain looking out down the street where it lay in a narrow corridor of shops and bars and lowbuilt houses. The air smelled of dieselsmoke and woodfires.
He went back to ju++rez Avenue and got a cab. The driver looked at him in the mirror.
Conoce el White Lake?
S'. Claro.
Bueno. V++monos.
The driver nodded and they pulled away. Billy sat back in the cab and watched the bleak streets of the bordertown pass in the rainy afternoon light. They left the paved road and went out through the mud roads of the outlying barrios. Vendors' burros piled high with cordwood turned away their heads as the taxi passed splashing through the potholes. Everything was covered with mud.
When they pulled up in front of the White Lake Billy got out and lit a cigarette and took his billfold from the hip pocket of his jeans.
I can wait for you, the driver said.
That's all right.
I can come in and wait.
I might be a while. What do I owe you?
Three dollars. You dont want me to wait for you?
No.
The driver shrugged and took the money and rolled the window back up and pulled away. Billy put the cigarette in his mouth and looked at the building there at the edge of the barrio between the mud and cratewood hovels and the pleated sheetiron walls of the warehouse.
He walked on to the rear of the place and turned up the alley past the warehouse and knocked at the first of two doors and waited. He flipped the butt of the cigarette into the mud. He'd reached to knock at the door again when it opened and the old criada looked out. As soon as she saw him
she tried to shut the door but he shoved it back open and she turned and went scuttling down the hallway with one hand atop her head crying out. He shut the door behind him and looked down the hall. Whores' heads in curlingpapers ducked out and ducked back like chickens. Doors closed. He'd not gone ten feet along the hallway when a man in black with a thin and weaselshaped face stepped out and tried to take his arm. Excuse me, the man said. Excuse me.
Billy jerked his arm away. Where's Eduardo? he said.
Excuse me, the man said. He tried to take Billy's arm again. Mistake. Billy took him by the front of his shirt and slammed him against the wall. He was so light. There was nothing to him at all. He put up no resistance but seemed to be merely reaching about him as if he'd lost something and Billy turned loose of the handful of black silk knotted up in his fist just in time. The thin blade of theknife snickered past his belt and he leapt back and raised up his arms. Tiburcio crouched and feinted with the knife before him.
You little son of a bitch, said Billy. He hit the Mexican squarely in the mouth and the Mexican slammed back against the wall and sat down on the floor. The knife went spinning and clattering down the hallway. The old woman at the end of the hall was watching with her fingers in her teeth. Her eye closed and opened again in a huge and obscene wink. He turned to the pimp and was surprised to see him struggling to his feet holding a small silver penknife still fastened to the chain draped across the front of his pegged black trousers. Billy hit him in the side of the head and heard bone crack. The pimp's head spun away and he slid several feet down the hallway and lay in a twisted black pile in the floor like a dead bird. The old woman came down the hall at a tottering run crying out. He caught her as she went past and pulled her around. She threw up her hands and closed her good eye. Aiee, she cried. Aiee. He gripped her wrists and shook her. D-nde est++ mi compa-ero? he said.
Aiee, she cried. She tried to pull away to go to the pimp lying in the floor.
D'game. D-nde est++ mi cuate?
No sZ. No sZ. Por Dios, no sZ nada.
D-nde est++ la muchacha? Magdalena? D-nde est++ Magdalena?
Jesoes Mar'a y JosZ ten compasi-n no est++. No est++.
D-nde est++ Eduardo?
No est++. No est++.
Aint a damn soul est++, is there?
He turned her loose and she threw herself on the fallen pimp and raised his face to her breast. Billy shook his head in disgust and went down the hall and picked up the knife and stuck the blade between the door and the jamb and snapped the blade off and slung the handle away and turned and came back. The criada cowered and held up one hand over her head but he reached down past her and snatched away the silver chain from the pimp's waistcoat and broke off the blade of the penknife also.
Has this son of a bitch got any more knives on him?
Aiee, moaned the criada, rocking back and forth with the pimp's oiled head in her bosom. The pimp had come awake and was looking up at him with one walled eye through the woman's stringy hair. One arm flailed about loosely. Billy reached down and got him by the hair and pulled his face up.
D-nde est++ Eduardo?
The criada was moaning and blubbering and sat trying to unclamp Billy's fingers from the pimp's hair.
En su oficina, wheezed the pimp.
He turned him loose and straightened up and wiped his oily hand on the leg of his jeans and walked down the hallway to the far end. Eduardo's foilcovered door had no doorknob to it and he stood looking at it for a minute and then raised one boot and kicked it in. It came completely off the hinges in a great splintering of wood and turned slightly sideways and fell into the room. Eduardo sat at his desk. He seemed strangely unalarmed.
Where is he? said Billy.
The mysterious friend.
His name is John Cole and if you've harmed a hair on his head you're a dead son of a bitch.
Eduardo leaned back. He opened the drawer of his desk.
You better have a shoebox full of pistols in there, said Billy.
Eduardo took a cigar from the desk drawer and closed it and took his gold cigarcutter from his pocket and held up the cigar and clipped it and put the cigar in his mouth and the cutter back in his pocket.
Why would I need a pistol?
I'm fixin to point out several reasons if I dont get some sense out of you.
The door was not locked.
What?
The door was not locked.
I aint studyin your damn door.
Eduardo nodded. He'd taken his lighter from his pocket and was wafting the flame across the end of the cigar and rotating the cigar in his mouth slowly with his fingers. He looked at Billy. Then he looked past Billy. When Billy turned the alcahuete was standing in the door, one hand on the splintered jamb, breathing slowly and evenly. One eye was swelled half shut and his mouth was puffed and bleeding and his shirt was torn. Eduardo gestured him away with a small toss of his chin. Surely, he said, you dont believe that we are unable to protect ourselves from the riffraff and drunks that come here?
He put the lighter in his pocket and looked up. Tiburcio was still standing in the doorway. cndale pues, he said. Tiburcio looked at Billy for a moment with no more expression than a pitviper and then turned and went back down the hall.
Your friend is being sought by the police, said Eduardo. The girl is dead. Her body was found in the river this morning.
Damn you to hell.
Eduardo studied the cigar. He looked up at Billy. You see what has come to pass.
You couldnt just cut her loose, could you.
You remember our conversation when last we met.
Yeah. I remember it.
You did not believe me.
I believed you.
You spoke to your friend?
Yeah. I spoke to him.
But your words carried no weight with him.
No. They didnt.
And now I cannot help you. You see.
I didnt come here for your help.
You might wish to consider the question of your own implication in this matter.
I got nothin to answer for.
Eduardo drew deeply on the cigar and blew the smoke slowly into the uninhabited center of the room. You present an odd picture, he said. In spite of whatever views you may hold everything that has come to pass has been the result of your friend's coveting of another man's property and his willful determination to convert that property to his own use without regard for the consequences. But of course this does not make the consequences go away. Does it? And now I find you before me breathless and half wild having wrecked my place of business and maimed my help. And having almost certainly colluded in enticing away one of the girls in my charge in a manner that has led to her death. And yet you appear to be asking me to help you to resolve your difficulties for you. Why?
Billy looked at his right hand. It was already badly swollen. He looked at the pimp seated sideways at the desk. The expensive boots crossed before him.
You think I got no recourse, dont you?
I dont know what you have or do not have.
I know this country too.
No one knows this country.
Billy turned. He stood in the doorway and looked down the corridor. Then he looked at the pimp again. Damn you to hell, he said. You and all your kind.
HE SAT IN A STEEL CHAIR in an empty room with his hat on his knee. When the door finally opened again the officer looked at him and motioned him forward with the tips of his fingers. He rose and followed the man down the corridor. A prisoner was mopping the worn linoleum and as they passed he stepped back and waited and then went to mopping again.
The officer knocked at the captain's door with one knuckle and then opened the door and gestured for Billy to enter. He stepped in and the door closed behind him. The captain sat at his desk writing. He glanced up. Then he went on writing. After a while he gestured slightly with his chin toward two chairs to his left. Please, he said. Be seated.
Billy sat in one of the chairs and set h
is hat in the chair beside him. Then he picked it up again and held it. The captain laid his pen aside and stood the papers and tapped and edged them square and set them aside and looked at him.
How may I help you? he said.
I come to see you about a girl that was found dead in the river this mornin. I think I can identify her.
We know who she is, the captain said. He leaned back in his chair. She was a friend of yours?
No. I seen her one time is all.
She was a prostitute.
Yessir.
The captain sat with his hands pressed together. He leaned forward and took from an oakwood tray at the corner of his desk a large and glossy photo and handed it across.
Is that the girl?
Billy took the photo and turned it and looked at it. He looked up at the captain. I dont know, he said. It's kindly hard to tell.
The girl in the photo looked made of wax. She'd been turned so as to afford the best view of her severed throat. Billy held the photo gingerly. He looked up at the captain again.
I expect that's probably her.
The captain reached and took the photo and returned it to the tray face down. You have a friend, he said.
Yessir.
What was his relationship with this girl?
He was goin to marry her.
Marry her.
Yessir.
The captain picked up his pen and unscrewed the cap. What is his name?
John Grady Cole.
The captain wrote. Where is your friend? he said.
I dont know.
You know him well?
Yes. I do.
Did he kill the girl?
No.
The captain screwed the cap back onto the pen and leaned back. All right, he said.
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