Cities of the Plain

  She didnt answer.

  Y como es que me recuerda?

  She half turned away, she almost whispered. Tambien yo, she said.

  Mande?

  She turned and looked at him. Tambien yo.

  In the room she turned and closed the door behind them. He couldnt even remember how they got there. He remembered her hand in his, small and cold, so strange to feel. The prism-broken light from the chandelier that ran in a river over her naked shoulders when they passed beneath. Half stumbling after her like a child.

  She went to the bedside and lit two candles and then turned off the lamp. He stood in the room with his hands at his sides. She reached to the back of her neck and undid the clasp of her gown and reached behind and pulled down the zipper. He began to unbutton his shirt. The room was small and the bed all but filled it. It was a fourpost bed with a canopy and curtains of winecolored organza and the candles shone through onto the pillows with a winey light.

  There was a light knock at the door.

  Tenemos que pagar, she said.

  He took the folded bills from his pocket. Para la noche, he said.

  Es muy caro.

  Cuanto? He was counting out the bills. He had eighty-two dollars. He held it out to her. She looked at the money and she looked at him. The knock came again.

  Dame cincuenta, she said.

  Es bastante?

  Si, si. She took the money and opened the door and held it out and whispered to the man on the other side. He was tall and thin and he smoked a cigarette in a silver holder and he wore a black silk shirt. He looked at the client for just a moment through the partly opened door and he counted the money and nodded and turned away and she shut the door. Her bare back was pale in the candlelight where the dress was open. Her black hair glistened. She turned and withdrew her arms from the sleeves of the dress and caught the front of it before her. She stepped from the pooled cloth and laid the dress across a chair and stepped behind the gauzy curtains and turned back the covers and then she pulled the straps of her chemise from her shoulders and let it fall and stepped naked into the bed and pulled the satin quilt to her chin and turned on her side and put her arm beneath her head and lay watching him.

  He took off his shirt and stood looking for some place to put it.

  Sobre la silla, she whispered.

  He draped the shirt over the chair and sat and pulled off his boots and put his socks in the tops of them and stood them to one side and stood and unbuckled his belt. He crossed the room naked and she reached and turned back the covers for him and he slid beneath the tinted sheets and lay back on the pillow and looked up at the softly draped canopy. He turned and looked at her. She'd not taken her eyes from him. He raised his arm and she slid against him the whole length of her soft and naked and cool. He gathered her black hair in his hand and spread it across his chest like a blessing.

  Es casado? she said.

  No.

  He asked her why she wished to know. She was silent a moment. Then she said that it would be a worse sin if he were married. He thought about that. He asked her if that was really why she wished to know but she said he wished to know too much. Then she leaned and kissed him. In the dawn he held her while she slept and he had no need to ask her anything at all.

  She woke while he was dressing. He pulled on his boots and crossed to the bedside and sat and put his hand against her cheek and smoothed her hair. She turned sleepily and looked up at him. The candles in their holders had burned out and the bits of wick lay blackened in the scalloped shapes of wax.

  Tienes que irte?

  Si.

  Vas a regresar?

  Si.

  She studied his eyes to see if he spoke the truth. He leaned and kissed her.

  Vete con Dios, she whispered.

  Y tu.

  She put her arms around him and held him against her breast and then she let him go and he rose and walked to the door. He turned and stood looking back at her.

  Say my name, he said.

  She reached and parted the canopy curtain. Mande? she said.

  Di mi nombre.

  She lay there holding the curtain. Tu nombre es Juan, she said.

  Yes, he said. Then he pulled the door closed and went down the hall.

  The salon was empty. It smelled of stale smoke and sweet ferment and the fading lilac rose and spice of the vanished whores. There was no one at the bar. In the gray light there were stains on the carpet, worn places on the arms of the furniture, cigarette burns. In the foyer he unlatched the painted half door and entered the little cloakroom and retrieved his hat. Then he opened the front door and walked out into the morning cold.

  A landscape of low shacks of tin and cratewood here on the outskirts of the city. Barren dirt and gravel lots and beyond them the plains of sage and creosote. Roosters were calling and the air smelled of burning charcoal. He took his bearings by the gray light to the east and set out toward the city. In the cold dawn the lights were still burning out there under the dark cape of the mountains with that precious insularity common to cities of the desert. A man was coming down the road driving a donkey piled high with firewood. In the distance the churchbells had begun. The man smiled at him a sly smile. As if they knew a secret between them, these two. Something of age and youth and their claims and the justice of those claims. And of the claims upon them. The world past, the world to come. Their common transiencies. Above all a knowing deep in the bone that beauty and loss are one.

  *

  THE OLD ONE-EYED CRIADA was the first to reach her, trotting stoically down the hallway in her broken slippers and pushing open the door to find her bowed in the bed and raging as if some incubus were upon her. The old woman carried her keys tied by a thong to a short length of broomstick and she wrapped the stick with a quick turn of the bedclothes and forced it between the girl's teeth. The girl arched herself stiffly and the criada climbed up onto the bed and pinned her down and held her. A second woman had come to the doorway bearing a glass of water but she waved her away with a toss of her head.

  Es como una mujer diabolica, the woman said.

  Vete, called the criada. No es diabolica. Vete.

  But the housewhores were gathering in the doorway and they began to push through into the room all of them in face-cream and hairpapers and dressed in their varied nightwear and they gathered clamoring about the bed and one pushed forward with a statue of the Virgin and raised it above the bed and another took one of the girl's hands and commenced to tie it to the bedpost with the sash from her robe. The girl's mouth was bloody and some of the whores came forward and dipped their handkerchiefs in the blood as if to wipe it away but they hid the handkerchiefs on their persons to take away with them and the girl's mouth continued to bleed. They pulled her other arm free and tied it as well and some of them were chanting and some were blessing themselves and the girl bowed and thrashed and then went rigid and her eyes white. They'd brought little figures from their rooms and votive shrines of gilt and painted plaster and some were at lighting candles when the owner of the establishment appeared in the doorway in his shirtsleeves.

  Eduardo! Eduardo! they cried. He strode into the room backhanding them away. He swept icons and candles to the floor and seized the old criada by one arm and flung her back.

  Basta! he cried. Basta!

  The whores huddled whimpering, clutching their robes about their rolling breasts. They retreated to the door. The criada alone stood her ground.

  Por que estas esperando? he hissed.

  Her solitary eye blinked. She would not move.

  He'd brought from somewhere in his clothes an italian switchblade knife with black onyx handles and silver bolsters and he leaned and cut the sashes from the girl's wrists and seized the covers and pulled them up over her nakedness and folded the knife away as silently as it had appeared.

  No la moleste, hissed the criada. No la moleste.

  Callate.

  Golpeame si tienes que golpear a alguien.

 
He turned and seized the old woman by the hair and forced her to the door and shoved her into the hallway with the whores and shut the door behind her. He'd have latched it but those doors latched only from without. The old woman nevertheless did not enter again but stood outside calling that she needed her keys. He stood looking at the girl. The piece of broomstick had fallen from her mouth and lay on the bloodstained sheets. He picked it up and went to the door and opened it. The old woman shrank back and raised one arm but he only threw the keys rattling and clattering down the corridor and then slammed the door shut again.

  She lay breathing quietly. There was a cloth lying on the bed and he picked it up and held it for a moment almost as if he might bend to wipe the blood from her mouth but then he flung it away also and turned and looked once more at the wreckage of the room and swore softly to himself and went out and shut the door behind him.

  WARD BROUGHT THE STALLION out of the stall and started down the bay with it. The stallion stopped in the middle of the bay and stood trembling and took small steps as if the ground had got unsteady under its feet. Ward stood close to the stallion and talked to it and the stallion jerked its head up and down in a sort of frenzied agreement. They'd been through it all before but the stallion was no less crazy for that and Ward no less patient. He led the horse prancing past the stalls where the other horses circled and rolled their eyes.

  John Grady was holding the mare by a twitch and when the stallion entered the paddock she tried to stand upright. She turned at the end of the rope and shot out one hindfoot and then she tried to stand again.

  That is a pretty decent lookin mare, Ward said.

  Yessir.

  What happened to her eye?

  Man that owned her knocked it out with a stick.

  Ward led the walleyed stallion around the perimeter of the paddock. Knocked it out with a stick, he said.

  Yessir.

  He couldnt put it back though, could he?

  No sir.

  Easy, said Ward. Easy now. That's a sweet mare.

  Yessir, said John Grady. She is.

  He walked the stallion forward by fits and starts. The little mare rolled her good eye till it was white as the blind one. JC and another man had entered the paddock and closed the gate behind them. Ward turned and looked past them toward the paddock walls.

  I aint tellin you all again, he called. You go on to the house like I told you.

  Two teen-age girls came out and started across the yard toward the house.

  Where's Oren at? said Ward.

  John Grady turned with the skittering mare. He was leaning all over her and trying to keep her from stepping on his feet.

  He had to go to Alamogordo.

  Hold her now, Ward said. Hold her.

  The stallion stood, his great phallus swinging.

  Hold her, said Ward.

  I got her.

  He knows where it's at.

  The mare bucked and kicked one leg. On the third try the stallion mounted her, clambering, stamping his hindlegs, the great thighs quivering and the veins standing. John Grady stood holding all of this before him on a twisted tether like a child holding by a string some struggling and gasping chimera invoked by sorcery out of the void into the astonished day-world. He held the twitchrope in one hand and laid his face against the sweating neck. He could hear the slow bellows of her lungs and feel the blood pumping. He could hear the slow dull beating of the heart within her like an engine deep in a ship.

  He and JC loaded the mare in the trailer. She look knocked up to you? JC said.

  I dont know.

  He bowed her back, didnt he?

  They raised the tailgate on the trailer and latched it at either side. John Grady turned and leaned against the trailer and wiped his face with his kerchief and pulled his hat back down.

  Mac's done got the colt sold.

  I hope he aint spent the money.

  Yeah?

  She's been bred twice before and it didnt take.

  Ward's stud?

  No.

  I got my money on Ward's studhorse.

  So does Mac.

  Are we done?

  We're done. You want to swing by the cantina?

  Are you buyin?

  Hell, said JC. I thought I'd get you to back me on the shuffleboard. Give us a chance to improve our financial position.

  Last time I done that the position we wound up in wasnt financial.

  They climbed into the truck.

  Are you broke sure enough? said JC.

  I aint got a weepin dime.

  They started slowly down the drive. The horsetrailer clanked behind. Troy was counting change in his hand.

  I got enough for a couple of beers apiece, he said.

  That's all right.

  I'm ready to blow in the whole dollar and thirty-five cents.

  We better get on back.

  HE WATCHED BILLY RIDE down along the fenceline from where it crested against the red dunes. He rode past and then sat the horse and looked out across the windscoured terrain and he turned and looked at John Grady. He leaned and spat.

  Hard country, he said.

  Hard country.

  This used to be grama grass to a horse's stirrups.

  I've heard that. Did you see any more of that bunch?

  No. They're scattered all to hell and gone. Wild as deer. A man needs three horses to put in a day up here.

  Why dont we ride up Bell Springs Draw.

  Were you up there last week?

  No.

  All right.

  They crossed the red creosote plain and picked their way up along the dry arroyo over the red rock scree.

  John Grady Cole was a rugged old soul, Billy sang.

  The trail crossed through the rock and led out along a wash. The dirt was like red talc.

  With a buckskin belly and a rubber asshole.

  An hour later they sat their horses at the spring. The cattle had been and gone. There were wet tracks at the south end of the cienega and wet tracks in the trail leading out south down the side of the ridge.

  There's at least two new calves with this bunch, Billy said.

  John Grady didnt answer. The horses raised their dripping mouths from the water one and then the other and blew and leaned and drank again. The dead leaves clinging to the pale and twisted cottonwoods rattled in the wind. Set in a flat above the springs was a small adobe house in ruins these many years. Billy took his cigarettes from his shirtpocket and shook one out and hunched his shoulders forward and lit it.

  I used to think I'd like to have a little spread up in the hills somewhere like this. Run a few head on it. Kill your own meat. Stuff like that.

  You might one day.

  I doubt it.

  You never know.

  I wintered one time in a linecamp up in New Mexico. You get a pretty good ration of yourself after a while. I wouldnt do it again if I could help it. I like to froze in that damn shack. The wind would blow your hat off inside.

  He smoked. The horses raised their heads and looked out. John Grady pulled the latigo on his catchrope and retied it. You think you'd of liked to of lived back in the old days? he said.

  No. I did when I was a kid. I used to think rawhidin a bunch of bony cattle in some outland country would be just as close to heaven as a man was likely to get. I wouldnt give you much for it now.

  You think they were a tougher breed back then?

  Tougher or dumber?

  The dry leaves rattled. Evening was coming on and Billy buttoned his jacket against the cold.

  I could live here, John Grady said.

  Young and ignorant as you are you probably could.

  I think I'd like it.

  I'll tell you what I like.

  What's that?

  When you throw a switch and the lights come on.

  Yeah.

  If I think about what I wanted as a kid and what I want now they aint the same thing. I guess what I wanted wasnt what I wanted. You ready?
br />   Yeah. I'm ready. What do you want now?

  Billy spoke to the horse and reined it around. He sat and looked back at the little adobe house and at the blue and cooling country below them. Hell, he said. I dont know what I want. Never did.

  They rode back in the dusk. The dark shapes of cattle moved off sullenly before them.

  This is the tag end of that bunch, Billy said.

  Yep.

  They rode on.

  When you're a kid you have these notions about how things are goin to be, Billy said. You get a little older and you pull back some on that. I think you wind up just tryin to minimize the pain. Anyway this country aint the same. Nor anything in it. The war changed everthing. I dont think people even know it yet.

  The sky to the west darkened. A cold wind blew. They could see the aura of the lights from the city come up forty miles away.

  You need to wear more clothes than that, Billy said.

  I'm all right. How did the war change it?

  It just did. It aint the same no more. It never will be.

  EDUARDO STOOD at the rear door smoking one of his thin cigars and looking out at the rain. There was a sheetiron warehouse behind the building and there was nothing much there to see except the rain and black pools of water standing in the alley where the rain fell and the soft light from the yellow bulb screwed into the fixture over the back door. The air was cool. The smoke drifted in the light. A young girl who limped on a withered leg passed carrying a great armload of soiled linen down the hall. After a while he closed the door and walked back up the hallway to his office.

  When Tiburcio knocked he did not even turn around. Adelante, he said. Tiburcio entered. He stood at the desk and counted out money. The desk was of polished glass and fruit-wood and there was a white leather sofa against one wall and a low coffeetable of glass and chrome and there was a small bar against the other wall with four white leather stools. The carpeting on the floor was a rich cream color. The alcahuete counted out the money and stood waiting. Eduardo turned and looked at him. The alcahuete smiled thinly under his thin moustache. His black greased hair shone in the soft light. His black shirt bore a glossy sheen from the pressings of an iron too hot.

  Eduardo put the cigar between his teeth and came to the desk. He stood looking down. He fanned with one slender jeweled hand the bills on the glass and he took the cigar from his teeth and looked up.

  El mismo muchacho?

  El mismo.

  He pursed his lips, he nodded. Bueno, he said. Andale.