Cities of the Plain tbt-3

by Cormac McCarthy

  Dont be afraid, said Eduardo. It doesnt hurt so bad. It would hurt tomorrow. But there will be no tomorrow.

  John Grady stood holding himself. His hand was slick with blood and he could feel something bulging through into his palm. They met again and Eduardo laid open the back of his arm but he held himself and would not move the arm. They turned. His boots made a soft sloshing sound.

  For a whore, the pimp said. For a whore.

  They closed again and John Grady lowered his knife arm.

  He felt Eduardo's blade slip from his rib and cross his upper stomach and pass on. It took his breath away. He made no effort to step or to parry. He brought his knife up underhand from the knee and slammed it home and staggered back. He heard the clack of the Mexican's teeth as his jaw clapped shut. Eduardo's knife dropped with a light splash into the small pool of standing water at his feet and he turned away. Then he looked back. The way a man might look getting on a train. The handle of the huntingknife jutted from the underside of his jaw. He reached and touched it. His mouth was clenched in a grimace. His jaw was nailed to his upper skull and he held the handle in both hands as if he would withdraw it but he did not. He walked away and turned and leaned against the warehouse wall. Then he sat down. He drew his knees up to him and sat breathing harshly through his teeth. He put his hands down at either side of him and he looked at John Grady and then after a while he leaned slowly over and lay slumped in the alleyway against the wall of the building and he did not move again.

  John Grady was leaning against the wall on the opposite side of the alley, holding himself with both hands. Dont sit down, he said. Dont sit down.

  He steadied himself and blew and got his breath and looked down. His shirt hung in bloody tatters. A gray tube of gut pushed through his fingers. He gritted his teeth and took hold of it and pushed it back and put his hand over it. He walked over and picked up Eduardo's knife out of the water and he crossed the alley and still holding himself he cut away the silk shirt from his dead enemy with one hand and leaning against the wall with the knife in his teeth he tied the shirt around himself and bound it tight. Then he let the knife fall in the sand and turned and wobbled slowly down the alleyway and out into the road.

  He tried to keep off the main streets. The wash of the lights from the city by which he steered his course hung over the desert like a dawn eternally to come. His boots were filling up with blood and he left bloody tracks in the sand streets of the barrios and dogs came into the street behind him to take his scent and raise their hackles and growl and slink away. He talked to himself as he went. He took to counting his steps. He could hear sirens in the distance and at every step he felt the warm blood ooze between his clutched fingers.

  By the time he reached the Calle de Noche Triste he was lightheaded and his feet were reeling beneath him. He leaned against a wall and gathered himself to cross the street. No cars passed.

  You didnt eat, he said. That's where you were smart.

  He pushed himself off the wall. He stood at the streetcurb and felt before him with one foot and he tried to hurry in case a car should come but he was afraid he'd fall and he didnt know if he could get up again.

  A little later he remembered crossing the street but it seemed a long while ago. He'd seen lights ahead. They turned out to be from a tortilla factory. A clanking of old chaindriven machinery, a few workers in flourdusted aprons talking under a yellow lightbulb. He lurched on. Past dark houses. Empty lots. Old slumped mud walls half buried in winddriven trash. He slowed, he stood teetering. Dont sit down, he said.

  But he did. What woke him was someone going through his bloodsoaked pockets. He seized a thin and bony wrist and looked up into the face of a young boy. The boy flailed and kicked and tried to pull away. He called out to his friends but they were on the run across the empty lot. They'd all thought he was dead.

  He pulled the boy close. Mira, he said. Est++ hien. No to molestarZ.

  DZjame, said the boy.

  Est++ bien. Est++ bien.

  The boy wrenched about. He looked after his friends but they'd vanished in the darkness. DZjame, he said. He was close to tears.

  John Grady talked to him the way he'd talk to a horse and after a while the boy stopped pulling and stood. He told him that he was a great filero and that he had just killed an evil man and that he needed the boy's help. He said that the police would be looking for him and that he needed to hide from them. He spoke for a long time. He told the boy of his exploits as a knifefighter and he reached with great difficulty to his hip pocket and got his billfold and gave it to the boy. He told him that the money in it was his to keep and then he told him what he must do. Then he had the boy repeat it back. Then he turned loose of the boy's wrist and waited. The boy stepped back. He stood holding the bloodstained wallet. Then he squatted and looked into the man's eyes. His arms clutching his bony knees. Puede andar? he said.

  Un poquito. No mucho.

  Es peligroso aqu'.

  S'. Tienes raz-n.

  The boy got him up and he leaned on that narrow shoulder while they made their way to the farther corner of the lot where behind the wall was a clubhouse made from packingcrates. The boy knelt and pulled back a drapery of sacking and helped him to crawl in. He said that there was a candle there and matches but the wounded filero said that it was safer in the dark. He'd started to bleed all over again. He could feel it under his hand. Vete, he said. Vete. The boy let drop the curtain.

  The cushions he lay on were damp from the rain and they stank. He was very thirsty. He tried not to think. He heard a car pass in the street. He heard a dog bark. He lay with the yellow silk of his enemy's shirt wrapped about him like a ceremonial sash gone dark with blood and he held his bloodied claw of a hand over the severed wall of his stomach. Holding himself close that he not escape from himself for he felt it over and over, that lightness that he took for his soul and which stood so tentatively at the door of his corporeal self. Like some lightfooted animal that stood testing the air at the open door of a cage. He heard the distant toll of bells from the cathedral in the city and he heard his own breath soft and uncertain in the cold and the dark of the child's playhouse in that alien land where he lay in his blood. Help me, he said. If you think I'm worth it. Amen.

  WHEN HE FOUND the horse standing saddled in the bay of the barn he led it out and mounted up and rode out in the dark up the old road toward John Grady's little adobe house. He hoped the horse would tell him something. When he reached the house and saw the light in the window he put the horse forward at a trot and went splashing through the little creek and into the yard where he pulled up and dismounted and halloed the house.

  He pushed open the door. Bud? he said. Bud?

  He walked into the bedroom.

  Bud?

  There was no one there. He went out and called and waited and called again. He went back in and opened the stove door. A fire was laid with stovechunks and kindling and newsprint. He shut the door and went out. He called but no one answered. He mounted up and gave the horse its head and kneed it forward but it only wanted to set out across the creek and back down the road again.

  He turned and rode back and waited at the little house for an hour but no one came. By the time he got back to the ranch it was almost midnight.

  He lay on his bunk and tried to sleep. He thought he heard the whistle of a train in the distance, thin and lost. He must have been sleeping because he had a dream in which the dead girl came to him hiding her throat with her hand. She was covered in blood and she tried to speak but she could not. He opened his eyes. Very faintly he had heard the phone ring in the house.

  When he got to the kitchen Socorro was on the phone in her robe. She gestured wildly at Billy. S', s', she said. S', joven. EspZrate.

  HE WOKE COLD and sweating and raging with thirst. He knew that it was the new day because he was in agony. When he moved the crusted blood in his clothes cracked about him like ice. Then he heard Billy's voice.

  Bud, he said. Bud.
r />   He opened his eyes. Billy was kneeling over him. Behind him the boy was holding back the cloth and outside the world was cold and gray. Billy turned to the boy. cndale, he said. R++pido. R++pido.

  The curtain fell. Billy struck a match and held it. You daggone fool, he said. You daggone fool.

  He reached down the stub of a candle in its saucer from the shelf nailed to the crate and lit the candle and held it close. Aw shit, he said. You daggone fool. Can you walk?

  Dont move me.

  I got to.

  You couldnt get me across the border noway.

  The hell I cant.

  He killed her, bud. The son of a bitch killed her.

  I know.

  The police are huntin me.

  JC's bringin the truck. We'll run the goddamn gate if we have to.

  Dont move me, bud. I aint goin.

  The hell you aint.

  I cant make it. I thought there for a while I could. But I cant. Just take it easy now. I aint listenin to that shit. Hell, I've had worse scratches than that on my eyeball.

  I'm cut all to pieces Billy.

  We'll get you back. Dont quit on me now, goddamn it.

  Billy. Listen. It's all right. I know I aint goin to make it.

  I done told you.

  No. Listen. Whew. You dont know what I'd give for a cool drink of water.

  I'll get it.

  He started to set the candle by but John Grady took hold of his arm. Dont go, he said. Maybe when the boy gets back.

  All right.

  He said it wouldnt hurt. The lyin son of a bitch. Whew. It's gettin daylight, aint it?

  Yeah.

  I seen her, bud. They had her laid out and it didnt look like her but it was. They found her in the river. He cut her throat, bud.

  I know.

  I just wanted him. Bud, I wanted him.

  You should of told me. You didnt have no business comin down here by yourself.

  I just wanted him.

  Just take it easy. They'll be here directly. You just hang on.

  It's okay. Hurts like a sumbitch, Billy. Whew. It's okay.

  You want me to get that water?

  No. Stay here. She was so goddamned pretty, bud.

  Yes she was.

  I worried about her all day. You know we talked about where people go when they die. I just believe you go someplace and I seen her layin there and I thought maybe she wouldnt go to heaven because, you know, I thought she wouldnt and I thought about God forgivin people and I thought about if I could ask God to forgive me for killin that son of a bitch because you and me both know I aint sorry for it and I reckon this sounds ignorant but I didnt want to be forgiven if she wasnt. I didnt want to do or be nothin that she wasnt like goin to heaven or anything like that. I know that sounds crazy. Bud when I seen her layin there I didnt care to live no more. I knew my life was over. It come almost as a relief to me.

  Hush now. They aint nothin over.

  She wanted to do the right thing. That's got to count for somethin dont it? It did with me.

  It does with me too.

  There's a pawnshop ticket in the top of my footlocker. If you wanted to you could get my gun out and keep it.

  We'll get it out.

  There's thirty dollars owin on it. There's some money in there too. In a brown envelope.

  Dont worry about nothin now.. Just take it easy.

  Mac's ring is in that little tin box. You see he gets it back. Whew. Like a sumbitch, bud.

  You just hang on.

  We got the little house lookin good, didnt we?

  Yes we did.

  You reckon you could keep that pup and kindly look after him?

  You'll be there. Dont you worry now.

  Hurts, bud. Like a sumbitch.

  I know it. You just hang on.

  I think maybe I'm goin to need that sup of water.

  You just hang on. I'll get it. I wont be a minute either.

  He set the candlestub in its saucer of grease on the shelf and backed out and let the curtain fall. As he trotted out across the vacant lot he looked back. The square of yellow light that shone through the sacking looked like some haven of promise out there on the shore of the breaking world but his heart misgave him.

  Midblock there was a small cafe just opening. The girl setting up the little tin tables started when she saw him there, wild and sleepless, the knees of his breeches red with blood where he'd knelt in the bloodsoaked mat.

  Agua, he said. Necesito aqua.

  She made her way to the counter without taking her eyes off him. She took down a tumbler and filled it from a bottle and set it on the counter and stepped back.

  No hay un vaso m++s grande? he said.

  She stared at him dumbly.

  Dame dos, he said. Dos.

  She got another glass and filled it and set it out. He put a dollar bill on the counter and took the glasses and left. It was gray dawn. The stars had dimmed out and the dark shapes of the mountains stood along the sky. He carried the glasses carefully one in each hand and crossed the street.

  When he got to the packingcrate the candle was still burning and he took the glasses both in one hand and pushed back the sacking and crouched on his knees.

  Here you go, bud, he said.

  But he had already seen. He set the waterglasses slowly down. Bud, he said. Bud?

  The boy lay with his face turned away from the light. His eyes were open. Billy called to him. As if he could not have gone far. Bud, he said. Bud? Aw goddamn. Bud?

  Aint that pitiful, he said. Aint that the most goddamn pitiful thing? Aint it? Oh God. Bud. Oh goddamn.

  When he had him gathered in his arms he rose and turned. Goddamn whores, he said. He was crying and the tears ran on his angry face and he called out to the broken day against them all and he called out to God to see what was before his eyes. Look at this, he called. Do you see? Do you see?

  The Sabbath had passed and in the gray Monday dawn a procession of schoolchildren dressed in blue uniforms all alike were being led along the gritty walkway. The woman had stepped from the curb to take them across at the intersection when she saw the man coming up the street all dark with blood bearing in his arms the dead body of his friend. She held up her hand and the children stopped and huddled with their books at their breasts. He passed. They could not take their eyes from him. The dead boy in his arms hung with his head back and those partly opened eyes beheld nothing at all out of that passing landscape of street or wall or paling sky or the figures of the children who stood blessing themselves in the gray light. This man and his burden passed on forever out of that nameless crossroads and the woman stepped once more into the street and the children followed and all continued on to their appointed places which as some believe were chosen long ago even to the beginning of the world.

  EPILOGUE

  HE LEFT three days later, he and the dog. A cold and windy day. The pup shivering and whining until he took it up in the bow of the saddle with him. He'd settled up with Mac the evening before. Socorro would not look at him. She set his plate before him and he sat looking at it and then rose and walked down the hallway leaving it untouched on the table. It was still there when he went out through the kitchen again ten minutes later for the last time and she was still there at the stove, bearing on her forehead in ash the thumbprint of the priest placed there that morning to remind her of her mortality. As if she had any thought other. Mac paid him and he folded the money and put it in his shirtpocket and buttoned it. When are you leavin? In the mornin.

  You dont have to go.

  I dont have to do nothin but die. You wont change your mind?

  No sir.

  Well. Nothin's forever. Some things are.

  Yeah. Some things are. I'm sorry Mr Mac.

  I am too, Billy.

  I should of looked after him better. We all should oPS

  Yessir.

  That cousin of his got here about a hour ago. Thatcher Cole.

  Called from town. He said
they finally got hold of his mother.

  What did she have to say?

  He didnt say. He said they hadnt heard from him in three years. What do you make of that?

  I dont know.

  I dont either.

  Are you goin to San Angelo?

  No. Maybe I ought to. But I aint.

  Yessir. Well.

  Let it go, son.

  I'd like to. I think it's goin to be a while.

  I think so too.

  Yessir.

  Mac nodded toward his blue and swollen hand. You dont think you ought to get somebody to look at that?

  It's all right.

  You've always got a job here. The army's goin to take this place, but we'll find somethin to do.

  I appreciate that.

  What time will you be leavin?

  Early of the mornin.

  You told Oren?

  No sir. Not yet.

  I reckon you'll see him at breakfast.

  Yessir.

  But he didnt. He rode out in the dark long before daylight and he rode the sun up and he rode it down again. In the oncoming years a terrible drought struck west Texas. He moved on. There was no work in that country anywhere. Pasture gates stood open and sand drifted in the roads and after a few years it was rare to see stock of any kind and he rode on. Days of the world. Years of the world. Till he was old.

  In the spring of the second year of the new millennium he was living in the Gardner Hotel in El Paso Texas and working as an extra in a movie. When the work came to an end he stayed in his room. There was a television set in the lobby and men his age and younger sat in the lobby in the evening in the old chairs and watched the television but he cared little for it and the men had little to say to him or he to them. His money ran out. Three weeks later he was evicted. He'd long since sold his saddle and he set forth into the street with just his AWOL bag and his blanketroll.

  There was a shoe repair place a few blocks up the street and he stopped in to see if he could get his boot fixed. The shoeman looked at it and shook his head. The sole was paper thin and the stitching had pulled through the leather. He took it to the rear and sewed it on his machine and returned and stood it on the counter. He wouldnt take any money for it. He said it wouldnt hold and it didnt.