All The Pretty Horses Part 11

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 h.e.l.l come Friday. That's where the G.o.dd.a.m.n 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 h.e.l.l 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 bra.s.s 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 b.i.t.c.h 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 drank. 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 a.s.s.

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 h.e.l.l'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 pa.s.sed a stand of roadside cholla against which small birds had been driven by the storm and there impaled. Gray nameless birds espaliered in att.i.tudes of stillborn flight or hanging loosely in their feathers. Some of them were still alive and they twisted on their spines as the horses pa.s.sed and raised their heads and cried out but the hors.e.m.e.n 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 gra.s.s 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 a.s.s all over Mexico but I d.a.m.n sure aint.

I aint got the pistol, said Blevins. It's with the horse.

s.h.i.t, 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 G.o.dd.a.m.ned 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 sc.r.a.ped it with his fingernail and sniffed it. He held it up and looked at it.

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.