Next time we will leave your skinny ass.
John Grady reached and took the reins and held the horse while Blevins lurched aboard. Let me have them reins, said Blevins. I'm a goddamned buckaroo is what I am.
John Grady shook his head. Blevins dropped the reins and reached to get them and almost slid off down the horse's shoulder. He saved himself and sat up with the reins and pulled the horse around sharply. Certified goddamn broncpeeler, what I mean, he said.
He dug his heels in under the horse and it squatted and went forward and Blevins fell backwards into the road. Rawlins spat in disgust. Just leave the son of a bitch lay there, he said.
Get on the goddamned horse, said John Grady, and quit assin around.
By early evening all the sky to the north had darkened and the spare terrain they trod had turned a neuter gray as far as eye could see. They grouped in the road at the top of a rise and looked back. The storm front towered above them and the wind was cool on their sweating faces. They slumped bleary-eyed in their saddles and looked at one another. Shrouded in the black thunderheads the distant lightning glowed mutely like welding seen through foundry smoke. As if repairs were under way at some flawed place in the iron dark of the world.
It's fixin to come a goodn, said Rawlins.
I caint be out in this, said Blevins.
Rawlins laughed and shook his head. Listen at this, he said.
Where do you think you're goin to go? said John Grady.
I dont know. But I got to get somewheres.
Why cant you be out in it?
On account of the lightnin.
Lightnin?
Yeah.
Damn if you dont look about halfway sober all of a sudden, said Rawlins.
You afraid of lightnin? said John Grady.
I'll be struck sure as the world.
Rawlins nodded at the canteen hung by its strap from the pommel of John Grady's saddle. Dont give him no more of that shit. He's comin down with the DT's.
It runs in the family, said Blevins. My grandaddy was killed in a minebucket in West Virginia it run down in the hole a hunnerd and eighty feet to get him it couldnt even wait for him to get to the top. They had to wet down the bucket to cool it fore they could get him out of it, him and two other men. It fried em like bacon. My daddy's older brother was blowed out of a derrick in the Batson Field in the year nineteen and four, cable rig with a wood derrick but the lightnin got him anyways and him not nineteen year old. Great uncle on my mother's side--mother's side, I said--got killed on a horse and it never singed a hair on that horse and it killed him graveyard dead they had to cut his belt off him where it welded the buckle shut and I got a cousin aint but four years oldern me was struck down in his own yard comin from the barn and it paralyzed him all down one side and melted the fillins in his teeth and soldered his jaw shut.
I told you, said Rawlins. He's gone completely dipshit.
They didnt know what was wrong with him. He'd just twitch and mumble and point at his mouth like.
That's a out and out lie or I never heard one, said Rawlins.
Blevins didnt hear. Beads of sweat stood on his forehead. Another cousin on my daddy's side it got him it set his hair on fire. The change in his pocket burned through and fell out on the ground and set the grass alight. I done been struck twice how come me to be deaf in this one ear. I'm double bred for death by fire. You got to get away from anything metal at all. You dont know what'll get you. Brads in your overalls. Nails in your boots.
Well what do you intend to do?
He looked wildly toward the north. Try and outride it, he said. Only chance I got.
Rawlins looked at John Grady. He leaned and spat. Well, he said. If there was any doubt before I guess that ought to clear it up.
You cant outride a thunderstorm, said John Grady. What the hell is wrong with you?
It's the only chance I got.
He'd no sooner said it than the first thin crack of thunder reached them no louder than a dry stick trod on. Blevins took off his hat and passed the sleeve of his shirt across his forehead and doubled the reins in his fist and took one last desperate look behind him and whacked the horse across the rump with the hat.
They watched him go. He tried to get his hat on and then lost it. It rolled in the road. He went on with his elbows flapping and he grew small on the plain before them and more ludicrous yet.
I aint takin no responsibility for him, said Rawlins. He reached and unhooked the canteen from John Grady's saddlehorn and put his horse forward. He'll be a lay in in the road down here and where do you reckon that horse'll be?
He rode on, drinking and talking to himself. I'll tell you where that horse'll be, he called back.
John Grady followed. Dust blew from under the tread of the horses and twisted away down the road before them.
Run plumb out of the country, called Rawlins. That's where. Gone to hell come Friday. That's where the goddamn horse'll be.
They rode on. There were spits of rain in the wind. Blevins' hat lay in the road and Rawlins tried to ride his horse over it but the horse stepped around it. John Grady slid one boot out of the stirrup and leaned down and picked up the hat without dismounting. They could hear the rain coming down the road behind them like some phantom migration.
Blevins' horse was standing saddled by the side of the road tied to a clump of willows. Rawlins turned and sat his horse in the rain and looked at John Grady. John Grady rode through the willows and down the arroyo following the occasional bare footprint in the rainspotted loam until he came upon Blevins crouched under the roots of a dead cottonwood in a caveout where the arroyo turned and fanned out onto the plain. He was naked save for an outsized pair of stained undershorts.
What the hell are you doin? said John Grady.
Blevins sat gripping his thin white shoulders in either hand. Just settin here, he said.
John Grady looked out over the plain where the last remnants of sunlight were being driven toward the low hills to the south. He leaned and dropped Blevins' hat at his feet.
Where's your clothes at?
I took em off.
I know that. Where are they?
I left em up yonder. Shirt had brass snaps too.
If this rain hits hard there'll be a river come down through here like a train. You thought about that?
You aint never been struck by lightnin, said Blevins. You dont know what it's like.
You'll get drowned settin there.
That's all right. I aint never been drowned before.
You aim to just set there?
That's what I aim to do.
John Grady put his hands on his knees. Well, he said. I'll say no more.
A long rolling crack of thunder went pealing down the sky to the north. The ground shuddered. Blevins put his arms over his head and John Grady turned the horse and rode back up the arroyo. Great pellets of rain were cratering the wet sand underfoot. He looked back once at Blevins. Blevins sat as before. A thing all but inexplicable in that landscape.
Where's he at? said Rawlins.
He's just settin out there. You better get your slicker.
I knowed when I first seen him the son of a bitch had a loose wingnut, said Rawlins. It was writ all over him.
The rain was coming down in sheets. Blevins' horse stood in the downpour like the ghost of a horse. They left the road and followed the wash up toward a stand of trees and took shelter under the barest overhang of rock, sitting with their knees stuck out into the rain and holding the standing horses by the bridlereins. The horses stepped and shook their heads and the lightning cracked and the wind tore through the acacia and paloverde and the rain went slashing down the country. They heard a horse running somewhere out in the rain and then they just heard the rain.
You know what that was dont you? said Rawlins.
Yeah.
You want a drink of this?
I dont think so. I think it's beginnin to make me feel bad.
Rawlins nodded and d
rank. I think it is me too, he said.
By dark the storm had slacked and the rain had almost ceased. They pulled the wet saddles off the horses and hobbled them and walked off in separate directions through the chaparral to stand spraddlelegged clutching their knees and vomiting. The browsing horses jerked their heads up. It was no sound they'd ever heard before. In the gray twilight those retchings seemed to echo like the calls of some rude provisional species loosed upon that waste. Something imperfect and malformed lodged in the heart of being. A thing smirking deep in the eyes of grace itself like a gorgon in an autumn pool.
In the morning they caught up the horses and saddled them and tied on the damp bedrolls and led the horses out to the road.
What do you want to do? said Rawlins.
I reckon we better go find his skinny ass.
What if we just went on.
John Grady mounted up and looked down at Rawlins. I dont believe I can leave him out here afoot, he said.
Rawlins nodded. Yeah, he said. I guess not.
He rode down the arroyo and encountered Blevins coming up in the same condition in which he'd left him. He sat the horse. Blevins was picking his way barefoot along the wash, carrying one boot. He looked up at John Grady.
Where's your clothes at? said John Grady.
Washed away.
Your horse is gone.
I know it. I done been out to the road once.
What do you aim to do?
I dont know.
You dont look like the demon rum's dealt kindly with you.
My head feels like a fat lady's sat on it.
John Grady looked out at the morning desert shining in the new sun. He looked at the boy.
You've wore Rawlins completely out. I reckon you know that.
You never know when you'll be in need of them you've despised, said Blevins.
Where the hell'd you hear that at?
I dont know. I just decided to say it.
John Grady shook his head. He reached and unbuckled his saddlebag and took out his spare shirt and pitched it down to Blevins.
Put that on before you get parboiled out here. I'll ride down and see if I can see your clothes anywheres.
I appreciate it, said Blevins.
He rode down the wash and he rode back. Blevins was sitting in the sand in the shirt.
How much water was in this wash last night?
A bunch.
Where'd you find the one boot at?
In a tree.
He rode down the wash and out over the gravel fan and sat looking. He didnt see any boot. When he came back Blevins was sitting as he'd left him.
That boot's gone, he said.
I figured as much.
John Grady reached down a hand. Let's go.
He swung Blevins in his underwear up onto the horse behind him. Rawlins will pitch a pure hissy when he sees you, he said.
Rawlins when he saw him seemed too dismayed to speak.
He's lost his clothes, said John Grady.
Rawlins turned his horse and set off slowly down the road. They followed. No one spoke. After a while John Grady heard something drop into the road and he looked back and saw Blevins' boot lying there. He turned and looked at Blevins but Blevins was peering steadily ahead from under the brim of his hat and they rode on. The horses stepped archly among the shadows that fell over the road, the bracken steamed. Bye and bye they passed a stand of roadside cholla against which small birds had been driven by the storm and there impaled. Gray nameless birds espaliered in attitudes of stillborn flight or hanging loosely in their feathers. Some of them were still alive and they twisted on their spines as the horses passed and raised their heads and cried out but the horsemen rode on. The sun rose up in the sky and the country took on new color, green fire in the acacia and paloverde and green in the roadside run-off grass and fire in the ocotillo. As if the rain were electric, had grounded circuits that the electric might be.
So mounted they rode at noon into a waxcamp pitched in the broken footlands beneath the low stone mesa running east and west before them. There was a small clear water branch here and the Mexicans had dug an open firebox and lined it with rock and scotched their boiler into the bank over it. The boiler was made from the lower half of a galvanized watertank and to bring it to this location they'd run a wooden axleshaft through the bottom and made a wooden spider whereby to bed the axle in the open end and with a team of horses rolled the tank across the desert from Zaragoza eighty miles to the east. The track of flattened chaparral was still visible bending away over the floor of the desert. When the Americans rode into their camp there were several burros standing there that had just been brought down from the mesa loaded with the candelilla plant they boiled for wax and the Mexicans had left the animals to stand while they ate their dinner. A dozen men dressed most of them in what looked to be pajamas and all of them in rags squatting under the shade of some willows and eating with tin spoons off of clay plates. They looked up but they did not stop eating.
Buenos dias, said John Grady. They responded in a quick dull chorus. He dismounted and they looked at the spot where he stood and looked at each other and then went on eating.
Tienen algo que comer?
One or two of them gestured toward the fire with their spoons. When Blevins slid from the horse they looked at each other again.
The riders got their plates and utensils out of the saddlebags and John Grady got the little enameled pot out of the blackened cookbag and handed it to Blevins together with his old wooden-handled kitchen fork. They went to the fire and filled their plates with beans and chile and took each a couple of blackened corn tortillas from a piece of sheetiron laid over the fire and walked over and sat under the willows a little apart from the workers. Blevins sat with his bare legs stretched out before him but they looked so white and exposed lying there on the ground that he seemed ashamed and he tried to tuck them up under him and to cover his knees with the tails of the borrowed shirt he wore. They ate. The workers had for the most part finished their meal and they were leaning back smoking cigarettes and belching quietly.
You goin to ask em about my horse? said Blevins.
John Grady chewed thoughtfully. Well, he said. If it's here they ought to be able to figure out it belongs to us.
You think they'd steal it?
You aint never goin to get that horse back, said Rawlins. We hit a town down here somewheres you better see if you can trade that pistol for some clothes and a bus ticket back to wherever it is you come from. If there are buses. Your buddy yonder might be willin to haul your ass all over Mexico but I damn sure aint.
I aint got the pistol, said Blevins. It's with the horse.
Shit, said Rawlins.
Blevins ate. After a while he looked up. What'd I ever do to you? he said.
You aint done nothin to me. And you aint goin to. That's the point.
Leave him be, Lacey. It aint goin to hurt us to try and help the boy get his horse back.
I'm just tellin him the facts, said Rawlins.
He knows the facts
He dont act like it.
John Grady wiped his plate with the last of the tortilla and ate the tortilla and set the plate on the ground and commenced to roll a cigarette.
I'm goddamned starved, said Rawlins. You reckon they'd care if we went back for seconds?
They wont care, said Blevins. Go ahead.
Who asked you? said Rawlins.
John Grady started to reach in his pocket for a match and then he rose and walked over to the workers and squatted and asked for a light. Two of them produced esclarajos from their clothes and one struck him a light and he leaned and lit the cigarette and nodded. He asked about the boiler and the loads of candelilla still tied on the burros and the workers told them about the wax and one of them rose and walked off and came back with a small gray cake of it and handed it to him. It looked like a bar of laundrysoap. He scraped it with his fingernail and sniffed it. He held it up and looked at it.
r /> Que vale? he said.
They shrugged.
Es mucho trabajo, he said.
Bastante.
A thin man in a stained leather vest with embroidery on the front was watching John Grady with narrowed and speculative eyes. John Grady handed back the wax and this man hissed at him and jerked his head.
John Grady turned.
Es su hermano, el rubio?
He meant Blevins. John Grady shook his head. No, he said.
Quien es? said the man.
He looked across the clearing. The cook had given Blevins some lard and he sat rubbing it into his sunburned legs.
Un muchacho, no mas, he said.
Algun parentesco?
No.
Un amigo.
John Grady drew on the cigarette and tapped the ash against the heel of his boot. Nada, he said.
No one spoke. The man in the vest studied John Grady and he looked across the clearing at Blevins. Then he asked John Grady if he wished to sell the boy.
He didnt answer for a moment. The man may have thought he was weighing the matter. They waited. He looked up. No, he said.
Que vale? said the man.
John Grady stubbed out the cigarette against the sole of his boot and rose.
Gracias por su hospitalidad, he said.
The man offered that he would trade for him in wax. The others had turned to listen to him. Now they turned and looked at John Grady.
John Grady studied them. They did not look evil but it was no comfort to him. He turned and crossed the clearing toward the standing horses. Blevins and Rawlins rose.
What did they say? said Blevins.
Nothing.
Did you ask them about my horse?
No.
Why not?
They dont have your horse.
What was that guy talkin about?
Nothing. Get the plates. Let's go.
Rawlins looked across the clearing at the seated men. He took up the trailing reins and swung up into the saddle.
What's happened, bud? he said.
John Grady mounted and turned the horse. He looked back at the men and he looked at Blevins. Blevins stood with the plates.
What was he lookin at me for? he said.
Put them in the bag and get your ass up here.
They aint washed.
Do like I told you.
Some of the men had risen. Blevins stuffed the plates into the bag and John Grady reached down and swung him up onto the horse behind him.