All the Pretty Horses

  He reined in the horse and it stopped and stood trembling and stepped about in the road slinging its head in a froth from side to side. She sat her horse. He took off his hat and passed his shirtsleeve across his forehead and waved her forward and put his hat back on and reined the horse off the road and through the sedge and turned so that he could watch her pass. She put the horse forward and came on and as she came abreast of him he touched the brim of his hat with his forefinger and nodded and he thought she would go past but she did not. She stopped and turned her wide face to him. Skeins of light off the water played upon the black hide of the horse. He sat the sweating stallion like a highwayman under her gaze. She was waiting for him to speak and afterwards he would try to remember what it was he'd said. He only knew it made her smile and that had not been his intent. She turned and looked off across the lake where the late sun glinted and she looked back at him and at the horse.

  I want to ride him, she said.

  What?

  I want to ride him.

  She regarded him levelly from under the black hatbrim.

  He looked out across the sedge tilting in the wind off the lake as if there might be some help for him in that quarter. He looked at her.

  When? he said.

  When?

  When did you want to ride him?

  Now. I want to ride him now.

  He looked down at the horse as if surprised to see it there.

  He dont have a saddle on.

  Yes, she said. I know.

  He pressed the horse between his heels and at the same time pulled on the reins of the hackamore to make the horse appear uncertain and difficult but the horse only stood.

  I dont know if the patron would want you to ride him. Your father.

  She smiled at him a pitying smile and there was no pity in it. She stepped to the ground and lifted the reins over the black horse's head and turned and stood looking at him with the reins behind her back.

  Get down, she said.

  Are you sure about this?

  Yes. Hurry.

  He slid to the ground. The insides of his trouserlegs were hot and wet.

  What do you aim to do with your horse?

  I want you to take him to the barn for me.

  Somebody will see me at the house.

  Take him to Armando's.

  You're fixin to get me in trouble.

  You are in trouble.

  She turned and looped the reins over the saddlehorn and came forward and took the hackamore reins from him and put them up and turned and put one hand on his shoulder. He could feel his heart pumping. He bent and made a stirrup of his laced fingers and she put her boot into his hands and he lifted her and she swung up onto the stallion's back and looked down at him and then booted the horse forward and went loping out up the track along the edge of the lake and was lost to view.

  He rode back slowly on the Arabian. The sun was a long time descending. He thought she might overtake him that they could change the horses back again but she did not and in the red twilight he led the black horse past Armando's house afoot and took it to the stable behind the house and removed the bridle and loosed the cinches and left it standing in the bay saddled and tied with a rope halter to the hitchingrail. There was no light on at the house and he thought perhaps there was no one home but as he walked back out down the drive past the house the light came on in the kitchen. He walked more quickly. He heard the door open behind him but he didnt turn to look back to see who it was and whoever it was they did not speak or call to him.

  The last time that he saw her before she returned to Mexico she was coming down out of the mountains riding very stately and erect out of a rainsquall building to the north and the dark clouds towering above her. She rode with her hat pulled down in the front and fastened under her chin with a drawtie and as she rode her black hair twisted and blew about her shoulders and the lightning fell silently through the black clouds behind her and she rode all seeming unaware down through the low hills while the first spits of rain blew on the wind and onto the upper pasturelands and past the pale and reedy lakes riding erect and stately until the rain caught her up and shrouded her figure away in that wild summer landscape: real horse, real rider, real land and sky and yet a dream withal.

  THE DUENA ALFONSA was both grandaunt and godmother to the girl and her life at the hacienda invested it with oldworld ties and with antiquity and tradition. Save for the old leatherbound volumes the books in the library were her books and the piano was her piano. The ancient stereopticon in the parlor and the matched pair of Greener guns in the Italian wardrobe in Don Hector's room had been her brother's and it was her brother with whom she stood in the photos taken in front of cathedrals in the capitals of Europe, she and her sister-in-law in white summer clothes, her brother in vested suit and tie and panama hat. His dark moustache. Dark Spanish eyes. The stance of a grandee. The most antique of the several oilportraits in the parlor with its dark patina crazed like an old porcelain glazing was of her great-grandfather and dated from Toledo in seventeen ninety-seven. The most recent was she herself full length in formal gown on the occasion of her quinceanera at Rosario in eighteen ninety-two.

  John Grady had never seen her. Perhaps a figure glimpsed passing along the hallway. He did not know that she was aware of his existence until a week after the girl returned to Mexico he was invited to come to the house in the evening to play chess. When he showed up at the kitchen dressed in the new shirt and canvas pants Maria was still washing the supper dishes. She turned and studied him where he stood with his hat in his hands. Bueno, she said. Te espera.

  He thanked her and crossed the kitchen and went up the hall and stood in the diningroom door. She rose from the table where she was sitting. She inclined her head very slightly. Good evening, she said. Please come in. I am senorita Alfonsa.

  She was dressed in a dark gray skirt and a white pleated blouse and her gray hair was gathered up behind and she looked like the schoolteacher she in fact had been. She spoke with an english accent. She held out one hand and he almost stepped forward to take it before he realized that she was gesturing toward the chair at her right.

  Evenin, mam, he said. I'm John Grady Cole.

  Please, she said. Be seated. I am happy that you have come.

  Thank you mam.

  He pulled back the chair and sat and put his hat in the chair beside him and looked at the board. She set her thumbs against the edge and pushed it slightly towards him. The board was pieced from blocks of Circassian walnut and birdseye maple with a border of inlaid pearl and the chessmen were of carved ivory and black horn.

  My nephew will not play, she said. I trounce him. Is it trounce?

  Yes mam. I believe it is.

  Like him she was lefthanded or she played chess with her left hand. The last two fingers were missing and yet he did not notice it until the game was well advanced. Finally when he took her queen she conceded and smiled her compliments and gestured at the board with a certain impatience. They were well into the second game and he had taken both knights and a bishop when she made two moves in succession which gave him pause. He studied the board. It occurred to him that she might be curious to know if he would throw the game and he realized that he had in fact already considered it and he knew she'd thought of it before he had. He sat back and looked at the board. She watched him. He leaned forward and moved his bishop and mated her in four moves.

  That was foolish of me, she said. The queen's knight. That was a blunder. You play very well.

  Yes mam. You play well yourself.

  She pushed back the sleeve of her blouse to look at a small silver wristwatch. John Grady sat. It was two hours past his bedtime.

  One more? she said.

  Yes mam.

  She used an opening he'd not seen before. In the end he lost his queen and conceded. She smiled and looked up at him. Carlos had entered with a tea tray and he set it on the table and she pushed aside the board and pulled the tray forward and set out the cu
ps and saucers. There were slices of cake on a plate and a plate of crackers and several kinds of cheese and a small bowl of brown sauce with a silver spoon in it.

  Do you take milk? she said.

  No mam.

  She nodded. She poured the tea.

  I could not use that opening again with such effect, she said.

  I'd never seen it before.

  Yes. It was invented by the Irish champion Pollock. He called it the King's Own opening. I was afraid you might know it.

  I'd like to see it again some time.

  Yes. Of course.

  She pushed the tray forward between them. Please, she said. Help yourself.

  I better not. I'll have crazy dreams eatin this late.

  She smiled. She unfolded a small linen napkin from off the tray.

  I've always had strange dreams. But I'm afraid they are quite independent of my dining habits.

  Yes mam.

  They have a long life, dreams. I have dreams now which I had as a young girl. They have an odd durability for something not quite real.

  Do you think they mean anything?

  She looked surprised. Oh yes, she said. Dont you?

  Well. I dont know. They're in your head.

  She smiled again. I suppose I dont consider that to be the condemnation you do. Where did you learn to play chess?

  My father taught me.

  He must be a very good player.

  He was about the best I ever saw.

  Could you not win against him?

  Sometimes. He was in the war and after he come back I got to where I could beat him but I dont think his heart was in it. He dont play at all now.

  That's a pity.

  Yes mam. It is.

  She poured their cups again.

  I lost my fingers in a shooting accident, she said. Shooting live pigeons. The right barrel burst. I was seventeen. Ajejandra's age. There is nothing to be embarrassed about. People are curious. It's only natural. I'm going to guess that the scar on your cheek was put there by a horse.

  Yes mam. It was my own fault.

  She watched him, not unkindly. She smiled. Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real. The events that cause them can never be forgotten, can they?

  No mam.

  Alejandra will be in Mexico with her mother for two weeks. Then she will be here for the summer.

  He swallowed.

  Whatever my appearance may suggest, I am not a particularly oldfashioned woman. Here we live in a small world. A close world. Alejandra and I disagree strongly. Quite strongly in fact. She is much like me at that age and I seem at times to be struggling with my own past self. I was unhappy as a child for reasons that are no longer important. But the thing in which we are united, my niece and I ...

  She broke off. She set the cup and saucer to one side. The polished wood of the table held a round shape of breath where they'd stood that diminished from the edges in and vanished. She looked up.

  I had no one to advise me, you see. Perhaps I would not have listened anyway. I grew up in a world of men. I thought this would have prepared me to live in a world of men but it did not. I was also rebellious and so I recognize it in others. Yet I think that I had no wish to break things. Or perhaps only those things that wished to break me. The names of the entities that have power to constrain us change with time. Convention and authority are replaced by infirmity. But my attitude toward them has not changed. Has not changed.

  You see that I cannot help but be sympathetic to Alejandra. Even at her worst. But I wont have her unhappy. I wont have her spoken ill of. Or gossiped about. I know what that is. She thinks that she can toss her head and dismiss everything. In an ideal world the gossip of the idle would be of no consequence. But I have seen the consequences in the real world and they can be very grave indeed. They can be consequences of a gravity not excluding bloodshed. Not excluding death. I saw this in my own family. What Alejandra dismisses as a matter of mere appearance or outmoded custom ...

  She made a whisking motion with the imperfect hand that was both a dismissal and a summation. She composed her hands again and looked at him.

  Even though you are younger than she it is not proper for you to be seen riding in the campo together without supervision. Since this was carried to my ears I considered whether to speak to Alejandra about it and I have decided not to.

  She leaned back. He could hear the clock ticking in the hall. There was no sound from the kitchen. She sat watching him.

  What do you want me to do? he said.

  I want you to be considerate of a young girl's reputation.

  I never meant not to be.

  She smiled. I believe you, she said. But you must understand. This is another country. Here a woman's reputation is all she has.

  Yes mam.

  There is no forgiveness, you see.

  Mam?

  There is no forgiveness. For women. A man may lose his honor and regain it again. But a woman cannot. She cannot.

  They sat. She watched him. He tapped the crown of his seated hat with the tips of his four fingers and looked up.

  I guess I'd have to say that that dont seem right.

  Right? she said. Oh. Yes. Well.

  She turned one hand in the air as if reminded of something she'd misplaced. No, she said. No. It's not a matter of right. You must understand. It is a matter of who must say. In this matter I get to say. I am the one who gets to say.

  The clock ticked in the hall. She sat watching him. He picked up his hat.

  Well. I guess I ought to say that you didnt have to invite me over just to tell me that.

  You're quite right, she said. It was because of it that I almost didnt invite you.

  ON THE MESA they watched a storm that had made up to the north. At sundown a troubled light. The dark jade shapes of the lagunillas below them lay in the floor of the desert savannah like piercings through to another sky. The laminar bands of color to the west bleeding out under the hammered clouds. A sudden violetcolored hooding of the earth.

  They sat tailorwise on ground that shuddered under the thunder and they fed the fire out of the ruins of an old fence. Birds were coming down out of the half darkness upcountry and shearing away off the edge of the mesa and to the north the lightning stood along the rimlands like burning mandrake.

  What else did she say? said Rawlins.

  That was about it.

  You think she was speakin for Rocha?

  I dont think she speaks for anybody but her.

  She thinks you got eyes for the daughter.

  I do have eyes for the daughter.

  You got eyes for the spread?

  John Grady studied the fire. I dont know, he said. I aint thought about it.

  Sure you aint, said Rawlins.

  He looked at Rawlins and he looked into the fire again.

  When is she comin back?

  About a week.

  I guess I dont see what evidence you got that she's all that interested in you.

  John Grady nodded. I just do. I can talk to her.

  The first drops of rain hissed in the fire. He looked at Rawlins.

  You aint sorry you come down here are you?

  Not yet.

  He nodded. Rawlins rose.

  You want your fish or you aim to just set there in the rain?

  I'll get it.

  I got it.

  They sat hooded under the slickers. They spoke out of the hoods as if addressing the night.

  I know the old man likes you, said Rawlins. But that dont mean he'll set still for you courtin his daughter.

  Yeah, I know.

  I dont see you holdin no aces.

  Yeah.

  What I see is you fixin to get us fired and run off the place.

  They watched the fire. The wire that had burned out of the fenceposts lay in garbled shapes about the ground and coils of it stood in the fire and coils of it pulsed red hot deep in the coals. The horses had come in out of the darkness and stoo
d at the edge of the firelight in the falling rain dark and sleek with their red eyes burning in the night.

  You still aint told me what answer you give her, said Rawlins.

  I told her I'd do whatever she asked.

  What did she ask?

  I aint sure.

  They sat watching the fire.

  Did you give your word? said Rawlins.

  I dont know. I dont know if I did or not.

  Well either you did or you didnt.

  That's what I'd of thought. But I dont know.

  FIVE NIGHTS later asleep in his bunk in the barn there was a tap at the door. He sat up. Someone was standing outside the door. He could see a light through the board joinings.

  Momento, he said.

  He rose and pulled on his trousers in the dark and opened the door. She was standing in the barn bay holding a flashlight in one hand with the light pointed at the ground.

  What is it? he whispered.

  It's me.

  She held the light up as if to verify the truth of this. He couldnt think what to say.

  What time is it?

  I dont know. Eleven or something.

  He looked across the narrow corridor to the groom's door.

  We're going to wake Esteban, he said.

  Then invite me in.

  He stepped back and she came in past him all rustling of clothes and the rich parade of her hair and perfume. He pulled the door to and ran shut the wooden latch with the heel of his hand and turned and looked at her.

  I better not turn the light on, he said.

  It's all right. The generator's off anyway. What did she say to you?

  She must of told you what she said.

  Of course she told me. What did she say?

  You want to set down?

  She turned and sat sideways on the bed and tucked one foot beneath her. She laid the burning flashlight on the bed and then she pushed it under the blanket where it suffused the room with a soft glow.

  She didnt want me to be seen with you. Out on the campo.

  Armando told her that you rode my horse in.

  I know.

  I wont be treated in such a manner, she said.

  In that light she looked strange and theatrical. She passed one hand across the blanket as if she'd brush something away. She looked up at him and her face was pale and austere in the uplight and her eyes lost in their darkly shadowed hollows save only for the glint of them and he could see her throat move in the light and he saw in her face and in her figure something he'd not seen before and the name of that thing was sorrow.