Cities of the Plain

  I'm done, he said.

  Yessir. You played a good game.

  I didnt believe you'd sacrifice a bishop.

  That was one of Schonberger's gambits.

  You read a lot of chess books?

  No sir. Not a lot. I read his.

  You told me you played poker.

  Some. Yessir.

  Why do I think that means somethin else.

  I never played that much poker. My daddy was a poker player. He always said that the problem with poker was you played with two kinds of money. What you won was gravy but what you lost was hard come by.

  Was he a good poker player?

  Yessir. He was one of the best, I reckon. He cautioned me away from it though. He said it was not any kind of a life.

  Why did he do it if he thought that?

  It was the only other thing he was good at.

  What was the first thing?

  He was a cowboy.

  I take it he was pretty good at that.

  Yessir. I've heard of some that was supposed to be better and I'm sure there were some better. I just never did see any of em.

  He was on the death march, wasnt he?

  Yessir.

  There was a lot of boys from this part of the country was on it. Quite a few of em Mexicans.

  Yessir. There was.

  Mac pulled at his cigar and blew the smoke toward the window. Has Billy come around or are you and him still on the outs?

  He's all right.

  Is he still goin to stand up for you?

  Yessir.

  Mac nodded. She aint got nobody to stand on her side?

  No sir. Socorro is bringin her family.

  That's good. I aint been in my suit in three years. I'd better make a dry run in it, I reckon.

  John Grady put the last of the pieces in the box and fitted and slid shut the wooden lid.

  Might need Socorro to let out the britches for me.

  They sat. Mac smoked. You aint Catholic are you? he said.

  No sir.

  I wont need to make no disclaimers or nothin?

  No sir.

  So Tuesday's the day.

  Yessir. February seventeenth. It's the last day before Lent. Or I guess next to last. After that you cant get married till Easter.

  Is that cuttin it kindly close?

  It'll be all right.

  Mac nodded. He put the cigar in his teeth and pushed back the chair. Wait here a minute, he said.

  John Grady listened to him going down the hall to his room. When he came back he sat down and placed a gold ring on the table.

  That's been in my dresser drawer for three years. It aint doin nobody any good there and it never will. We talked about everthing and we talked about that ring. She didnt want it put in the ground. I want you to take it.

  Sir I dont think I can do that.

  Yes you can. I've already thought of everthing you could possibly say on the subject so rather than go over it item by item let's just save the aggravation and you put it in your pocket and come Tuesday you put it on that girl's finger. You might need to get it resized. The woman that wore it was a beautiful woman. You can ask anybody, it wasnt just my opinion. But what you saw wouldnt hold a candle to what was on the inside. We would like to of had children but we didnt. It damn sure wasnt from not tryin. She was a woman with a awful lot of common sense. I thought she just wanted me to keep that ring for a remembrance but she said I'd know what to do with it when the time come and of course she was right. She was right about everthing. And there's no pride in it when I tell you that she set more store by that ring and what it meant than anything else she ever owned. And that includes some pretty damn fine horses. So take it and put it in your pocket and dont be arguin with me about everthing.

  Yessir.

  And now I'm goin to bed.

  Yessir.

  Goodnight.

  Goodnight.

  FROM THE PASS in the upper range of the Jarillas they could see the green of the benchland below the springs and they could see the thin standing spire of smoke from the fire in the stove rising vertically in the still blue morning air. They sat their horses. Billy nodded at the scene.

  When I was a kid growin up in the bootheel me and my brother used to stop where we topped out on this bench south of the ranch goin up into the mountains and we'd look back down at the house. It would be snowin sometimes or snow on the ground in the winter and there was always a fire in the stove and you could see the smoke from the chimney and it was a long ways away and it looked different from up there. Always looked different. It was different. We'd be gone up in the mountains sometimes all day throwin them spooky cattle out of the draws and bringin em down to the feedstation where we'd put out cake. I dont think there was ever a time we didnt stop and look back thataway before we rode up into that country. From where we'd stop we were not a hour away and the coffee was still hot on the stove down there but it was worlds away. Worlds away.

  In the distance they could see the thin straight line of the highway and a toysized truck running silently upon it. Beyond that the green line of the river breaks and range on range the distant mountains of Mexico. Billy watched him.

  You think you'll ever go back there?

  Where?

  Mexico.

  I dont know. I'd like to. You?

  I dont think so. I think I'm done.

  I came out of there on the run. Ridin at night. Afraid to make a fire.

  Been shot.

  Been shot. Those people would take you in. Hide you out. Lie for you. No one ever asked me what it was I'd done.

  Billy sat with his hands crossed palm down on the pommel of his saddle. He leaned and spat. I went down there three separate trips. I never once come back with what I started after.

  John Grady nodded. What would you do if you couldnt be a cowboy?

  I dont know. I reckon I'd think of somethin. You?

  I dont know what it would be I'd think of.

  Well we may all have to think of somethin.

  Yeah.

  You think you could live in Mexico?

  Yeah. Probably.

  Billy nodded. You know what a vaquero makes in the way of wages.

  Yep.

  You might luck up on a job as foreman or somethin. But sooner or later they're goin to run all the white people out of that country. Even the Babicora wont survive.

  I know it.

  You'd go to veterinary school if you had the money I reckon. Wouldnt you?

  Yep. I would.

  You ever write to your mother?

  What's my mother got to do with anything?

  Nothin. I just wonder if you even know what a outlaw you are.

  Why?

  Why do I wonder it?

  Why am I a outlaw.

  I dont know. You just got a outlaw heart. I've seen it before.

  Because I said I could live in Mexico?

  It aint just that.

  Dont you think if there's anything left of this life it's down there?

  Maybe.

  You like it too.

  Yeah? I dont even know what this life is. I damn sure dont know what Mexico is. I think it's in your head. Mexico. I rode a lot of ground down there. The first ranchera you hear sung you understand the whole country. By the time you've heard a hundred you dont know nothin. You never will. I concluded my business down there a long time ago.

  He hooked his leg over the pommel of the saddle and sat rolling a cigarette. They'd dropped the reins and the horses leaned and picked bleakly at the sparse tufts of grass trembling in the wind coming through the gap. He bent with his back to the wind and popped a match with his thumbnail and lit the cigarette and turned back.

  I aint the only one. It's another world. Everbody I ever knew that ever went back was goin after somethin. Or thought they was.

  Yeah.

  There's a difference between quittin and knowin when you're beat.

  John Grady nodded.

  I guess you dont beli
eve that. Do you?

  John Grady studied the distant mountains. No, he said. I guess I dont.

  They sat for a long time. The wind blew. Billy had long since finished his cigarette and stubbed it out on the sole of his boot. He unfolded his leg back over the horn of the saddle and slid his boot into the stirrup and leaned down and took up the reins. The horses stepped and stood.

  My daddy once told me that some of the most miserable people he ever knew were the ones that finally got what they'd always wanted.

  Well, said John Grady. I'm willin to risk it. I've damn sure tried it the other way.

  Yeah.

  You cant tell anybody anything, bud. Hell, it's really just a way of tellin yourself. And you cant even do that. You just try and use your best judgment and that's about it.

  Yeah. Well. The world dont know nothin about your judgment.

  I know it. It's worse than that, even. It dont care.

  QUINQUAGESIMA SUNDAY in the predawn dark she lit a candle and set the candledish on the floor beside the bureau where the light would not show beneath the doorway to the outer hall. She washed herself at the sink with soap and cloth and she leaned and let her black hair fall before her and passed the wet cloth the length of it a half a hundred times and brushed it as many more. She poured a frugal few drops of scent into her palm and pressed her palms together and scented her hair and the nape of her neck. Then she gathered her hair and twisted it into a rope and coiled and pinned it up.

  She dressed with care in one of the three street dresses she owned and stood regarding herself in the dimly lit mirror. The dress was navy blue with white bands at the collar and sleeves and she turned in the mirror and reached over her shoulder and fastened the topmost buttons and turned again. She sat in the chair and pulled on the black pump shoes and stood and went to the bureau and got her purse and put into it the few toilet articles it would hold. No coja nada, she whispered. She folded in her clean underwear and her brush and combs and forced the catch shut. No coja nada. She took her sweater from the back of the chair and pulled it over her shoulders and turned to look at the room she would never see again. The crude carved santo stood as before. Holding his staff so crookedly glued. She took a towel from the rack by the washstand and she wrapped the santo in the towel and then she sat in the chair with the santo in her lap and the purse hanging from her shoulder and waited.

  She waited a long time. She had no watch. She listened for the bells to toll in the distant town but sometimes when the wind was coming in off the desert you could not hear them. By and by she heard a rooster call. Finally she heard the slippered steps of the criada along the corridor and she rose as the door opened and the old woman looked in on her and turned and looked back down the hallway and then entered with her hand fanned before her and one finger to her lips and pressed the door shut silently behind her.

  Lista? she hissed.

  Si. Lista.

  Bueno. Vamonos.

  The old woman gave a hitch of her shoulder and a sort of half jaunty cock of her head. Some powdered stepdam from a storybook. Some ragged conspiratress gesturing upon the boards. The girl clutched her purse and stood and put the santo under her arm and the old woman opened the door and peered out and then urged her forward with her hand and they stepped out into the hallway.

  Her shoes clicked on the tiles. The old woman looked down and the girl bent slightly and raised her feet each in turn and slipped off the shoes and tucked them under her arm along with the santo.

  The old woman shut the door behind them and they moved down the hallway, the crone holding her hand like a child's and tugging at her apron to sort forth her keys where they hung by their thong from the piece of broomhandle.

  At the outer door she stood and put her shoes on again while the old woman muffled the heavy latch with her rebozo and turned it with her key. Then the door opened onto the cold and the dark.

  They stood facing one another. Rapido, rapido, whispered the old woman and the girl pressed the money that she had promised into her hands and then threw her arms around her neck and kissed her dry and leather cheek and turned and stepped through the door. On the step she turned to take the old woman's blessing but the criada was too distraught to respond and before she could step away from out of the doorway light the old woman had reached and seized her arm.

  No te vayas, she hissed. No te vayas.

  The girl tore her arm away from the old woman's grip. The sleeve of her dress ripped loose along the shoulder seam. No, she whispered, backing away. No.

  The old woman held out one hand. She called hoarsely after her. No te vayas, she called. Me equivoque.

  The girl clutched her santo and her purse and went down the alleyway. Before she reached the end she turned and looked back a last time. La Tuerta was still standing in the door watching her. Holding the clutch of pesos to her breast. Then her eye blinked slowly in the light and the door closed and the key turned and the bolt ran forever on that world.

  She went down the alleyway to the road and turned toward the town. Dogs were barking and the air was smoky from the charcoal fires in the low mud hovels of the colonias. She walked along the sandy desert road. The stars in flood above her. The lower edges of the firmament sawed out into the black shapes of the mountains and the lights of the cities burning on the plain like stars pooled in a lake. She sang to herself softly as she went a song from long ago. The dawn was two hours away. The town one.

  There were no cars on the road. From a rise she could see to the east across the desert five miles distant the random lights of trucks moving slowly upon the highway that came up from Chihuahua. The air was still. She could see her breath in the dark. She watched the lights of a car that crossed from left to right somewhere before her and she watched the lights move on. Somewhere out there in the world was Eduardo.

  When she reached the crossroads she studied the distance in either direction for any sign of approaching carlights before she crossed. She kept to the narrow streets down through the barrios in the outlying precincts of the city. Already there were windows lit with oil-lamps behind the walls of ocotillo or woven brush. She began to come upon occasional workmen with their lunches in lardcans they carried by the bail, whistling softly as they set forth in the early morning cold. Her feet were bleeding again in her shoes and she could feel the wet blood and the coldness of it.

  The cafe held the only light along the Calle de Noche Triste. In the darkened window of the adjacent shoestore a cat sat silently among the footwear watching the empty street. It turned its head to regard her as she passed. She pushed open the steamed glass door of the cafe and entered.

  Two men at a table by the window looked up when she came in and followed her with their eyes as she went by. She went to the rear and sat at one of the little wooden tables and put her purse and her parcel in the chair beside her and took up the menu from the chrome wire stand and sat looking at it. The waiter came over. She ordered a cafecito and he nodded and went back to the counter. It was warm in the cafe and after a while she took off the sweater and laid it in the chair. The men were still watching her. The waiter brought the coffee and set it before her with spoon and napkin. She was surprised to hear him ask where she was from.

  Mande? she said.

  De donde viene?

  She told him she was from Chiapas and he stood for a moment studying her as if to see how such people might be different from those he knew. He said that he'd been told to ask by one of the men. When she turned and looked at them they smiled but there was no joy in it. She looked at the waiter. Estoy esperando a un amigo, she said.

  Por supuesto, said the waiter.

  She sat over the coffee a long time. The street outside grew gray in the February dawn. The two men at the front of the cafe had long since finished their coffee and left and others had come to take their place. The shops remained closed. A few trucks passed in the street and people were coming in out of the cold and a waitress was now going from table to table.

  Sh
ortly after seven a blue taxi pulled up at the door and the driver got out and came in and canvassed the tables with his eyes. He came to the rear of the cafe and looked down at her.

  Lista? he said.

  Donde esta Ramon?

  He stood picking at his teeth reflectively. He said that Ramon could not come.

  She looked toward the front of the cafe. The cab stood in the street with the engine running in the cold.

  Esta bien, said the driver. Vamonos. Debemos darnos prisa.

  She asked him if he knew John Grady and he nodded and waved the toothpick. Si, si, he said. He said that he knew everyone. She looked again at the cab smoking in the street.

  He had stepped back to allow her to rise. He looked down at the chair where she'd put her purse. The santo wrapped in the whorehouse towel. She placed her hand over these things. Which he might wish to carry for her. She asked him who it was who had paid him.

  He put the toothpick back in his mouth and stood looking at her. Finally he said that he had not been paid. He said that he was cousin to Ramon and that Ramon had been paid forty dollars. He put his hand on the back of the empty chair and stood looking down at her. Her shoulders were rising and falling with her breath. Like someone about to attempt a feat of strength. She said that she did not know.

  He leaned down. Mire, he said. Su novio. El tiene una cicatriz aqui. He passed his forefinger across his cheek to trace the path of the knife that had made the scar her lover carried from the fight three years ago in the comedor of the carcel at Cuellar in the city of Saltillo. Verdad? he said.

  Si, she whispered. Es verdad. Y tiene mi tarjeta verde?

  Si. He took the greencard from his pocket and placed it on the table. On the card was printed her name.

  Esta satisfecha? he said.

  Si, she whispered. Estoy satisfecha. And rose and gathered up her things and left money on the table to pay for the coffee and followed him out into the street.

  In the cold dawn all that halfsordid world was coming to light again and as she rode in silence in the rear of the cab through the waking streets she clutched the illcarved wooden relic and said a silent goodbye to everything she knew and to each thing she would not see again. She said goodbye to an old woman in a black rebozo come to a door to see what sort of day it was and she said goodbye to three girls her age stepping with care around the water standing in the street from the recent rains who were on their way to Mass and she said goodbye to dogs and to old men at streetcorners and to vendors pushing their carts through the street to commence their day and to shopkeepers opening their doors and to the women who knelt with pail and rag to wash the walkway tiles. She said goodbye to the small birds strung shoulder to shoulder along the lightwires overhead who had slept and were waking and whose name she would never know.