All The Pretty Horses Part 34

And what did she have to give in return?

I think you know that also.

That she wont see me again.

Yes.

He leaned back in the chair and stared past her at the wall. At the tapestry. At a blue ornamental vase on a sideboard of figured walnut.

I can scarcely count on my two hands the number of women in this family who have suffered disastrous love affairs with men of disreputable character. Of course the times enabled some of these men to style themselves revolutionaries. My sister Matilde was widowed twice by the age of twenty-one, both husbands shot. That sort of thing. Bigamists. One does not like to entertain the notion of tainted blood. A family curse. But no, she will not see you.

You took advantage of her.

I was pleased to be in a bargaining position at all.

Dont ask me to thank you.

I shant.

You didnt have the right. You should of left me there.

You would have died.

Then I'd of died.

They sat in silence. The hall clock ticked.

We're willing that you should have a horse. I'll trust Antonio to supervise the selection. Have you any money?

He looked at her. I'd of thought maybe the disappointments in your own life might of made you more sympathetic to other people.

You would have thought wrongly.

I guess so.

It is not my experience that life's difficulties make people more charitable.

I guess it depends on the people.

You think you know something of my life. An old woman whose past perhaps has left her bitter. Jealous of the happiness of others. It is an ordinary story. But it is not mine. I put forward your cause even in the teeth of the most outrageous tantrums on the part of Alejandra's mother-whom mercifully you have never met. Does that surprise you?

Yes.

Yes. Were she a more civil person perhaps I'd have been less of an advocate. I am not a society person. The societies to which I have been exposed seemed to me largely machines for the suppression of women. Society is very important in Mexico. Where women do not even have the vote. In Mexico they are mad for society and for politics and very bad at both. My family are considered gachupines here, but the madness of the Spaniard is not so different from the madness of the creole. The political tragedy in Spain was rehea.r.s.ed in full dress twenty years earlier on Mexican soil. For those with eyes to see. Nothing was the same and yet everything. In the Spaniard's heart is a great yearning for freedom, but only his own. A great love of truth and honor in all its forms, but not in its substance. And a deep conviction that nothing can be proven except that it be made to bleed. Virgins, bulls, men. Ultimately G.o.d himself. When I look at my grandniece I see a child. And yet I know very well who and what I was at her age. In a different life I could have been a soldadera. Perhaps she too. And I will never know what her life is. If there is a pattern there it will not shape itself to anything these eyes can recognize. Because the question for me was always whether that shape we see in our lives was there from the beginning or whether these random events are only called a pattern after the fact. Because otherwise we are nothing. Do you believe in fate?

Yes mam. I guess I do.

My father had a great sense of the connectedness of things. I'm not sure I share it. He claimed that the responsibility for a decision could never be abandoned to a blind agency but could only be relegated to human decisions more and more remote from their consequences. The example he gave was of a tossed coin that was at one time a slug in a mint and of the coiner who took that slug from the tray and placed it in the die in one of two ways and from whose act all else followed, cara y cruz. No matter through whatever turnings nor how many of them. Till our turn comes at last and our turn pa.s.ses.

She smiled. Thinly. Briefly.

It's a foolish argument. But that anonymous small person at his workbench has remained with me. I think if it were fate that ruled our houses it could perhaps be flattered or reasoned with. But the coiner cannot. Peering with his poor eyes through dingy gla.s.ses at the blind tablets of metal before him. Making his selection. Perhaps hesitating a moment. While the fates of what unknown worlds to come hang in the balance. My father must have seen in this parable the accessibility of the origins of things, but I see nothing of the kind. For me the world has always been more of a puppet show. But when one looks behind the curtain and traces the strings upward he finds they terminate in the hands of yet other puppets, themselves with their own strings which trace upward in turn, and so on. In my own life I saw these strings whose origins were endless enact the deaths of great men in violence and madness. Enact the ruin of a nation. I will tell you how Mexico was. How it was and how it will be again. You will see that those things which disposed me in your favor were the very things which led me to decide against you in the end.

When I was a girl the poverty in this country was very terrible. What you see today cannot even suggest it. And I was very affected by this. In the towns there were tiendas which rented clothes to the peasants when they would come to market. Because they had no clothes of their own and they would rent them for the day and return home at night in their blankets and rags. They had nothing. Every centavo they could sc.r.a.pe together went for funerals. The average family owned nothing machine-made except for a kitchen knife. Nothing. Not a pin or a plate or a pot or a b.u.t.ton. Nothing. Ever. In the towns you'd see them trying to sell things which had no value. A bolt fallen from a truck picked up in the road or some wornout part of a machine that no one could even know the use of. Such things as that. Pathetic things. They believed that someone must be looking for these things and would know how to value these things if only that person could be found. It. was a faith that no disappointment seemed capable of shaking. What else had they? For what other thing would they abandon it? The industrial world was to them a thing unimaginable and those who inhabited it wholly alien to them. And yet they were not stupid. Never stupid. You could see it in the children. Their intelligence was frightening. And they had a freedom which we envied. There were so few restraints upon them. So few expectations. Then at the age of eleven or twelve they would cease being children. They lost their childhood overnight and they had no youth. They became very serious. As if some terrible truth had been visited upon them. Some terrible vision. At a certain point in their lives they were sobered in an instant and I was puzzled by this but of course I could not know what it was they saw. What it was they knew.

By the time I was sixteen I had read many books and I had become a freethinker. In all cases I refused to believe in a G.o.d who could permit such injustice as I saw in a world of his own making. I was very idealistic. Very outspoken. My parents were horrified. Then in the summer of my seventeenth year my life changed forever.

In the family of Francisco Madero there were thirteen children and I had many friends among them. Rafaela was my own age within three days and we were very close. Much more so than with the daughters of Carranza. Teniamos compadrazgo con su familia. You understand? There is no translation. The family had given me my quinceanera at Rosario. In that same year Don Evaristo took a group of us to California. All young girls from the haciendas. From Parras and Torreon. He was quite old even then and I marvel at his courage. But he was a wonderful man. He had served a term as governor of the state. He was very wealthy and he was very fond of me and not at all put off by my philosophizing. I loved going to Rosario. In those days there was more social life about the haciendas. Very elaborate parties were given with orchestras and champagne and often there were European visitors and these affairs would continue until dawn. To my surprise I found myself quite popular and very likely I'd have been cured of my overwrought sensibilities except for two things. The first of these was the return of the two oldest boys, Francisco and Gustavo.

They had been in school in France for five years. Before that they had studied in the United States. In California and in Baltimore. When I was again introduced to them it was to old friends, almost family. Yet my recollection of them was a child's recollection and I must have been to them something wholly unknown.

Francisco as the eldest son enjoyed a special place in the house. There was a table under the portal where he held court with his friends. In the fall of that year I was invited to the house many times and it was in that house that I first heard the full expression of those things closest to my heart. I began to see how the world must become if I were to live in it.

Francis...o...b..gan to set up schools for the poor children of the district. He dispensed medicines. Later he would feed hundreds of people from his own kitchen. It is not easy to convey the excitement of those times to people today. People were greatly attracted to Francisco. They took pleasure in his company. At that time there was no talk of his entering politics. He was simply trying to implement the ideas he had discovered. To make them work in everyday life. People from Mexico began to come to see him. In every undertaking he was seconded by Gustavo.

I'm not sure you can understand what I am telling you. I was seventeen and this country to me was like a rare vase being carried about by a child. There was an electricity in the air. Everything seemed possible. I thought that there were thousands like us. Like Francisco. Like Gustavo. There were not. Finally in the end it seemed there were none.

Gustavo wore an artificial eye as a result of an accident when he was a young boy. This did not lessen his attractiveness to me. I think perhaps the contrary. Certainly there was no company I preferred to his. He gave me books to read. We talked for hours. He was very practical. Much more so than Francisco. He did not share Francisco's taste for the occult. Always he talked of serious things. Then in the autumn of that year I went with my father and uncle to a hacienda in San Luis Potosi and there I suffered the accident to my hand of which I have spoken.

To a boy this would have been an event of consequence. To a girl it was a devastation. I would not be seen in public. I even imagined I saw a change in my father towards me. That he could not help but view me as something disfigured. I thought it would now be a.s.sumed that I could not make a good marriage and perhaps it was so a.s.sumed. There was no longer even a finger on which to place the ring. I was treated with great delicacy. Perhaps like a person returned home from an inst.i.tution. I wished with all my heart that I'd been born among the poor where such things are so much more readily accepted. In this condition I awaited old age and death.

Some months pa.s.sed. Then one day just before Christmas Gustavo came to call on me. I was terrified. I told my sister to beg him to go away. He would not. When my father returned quite late that night he was rather taken aback to find him seated in the parlor by himself with his hat in his lap. He came to my room to talk to me. I put my hands over my ears. I dont remember what happened. Only that Gustavo continued to sit. He pa.s.sed the night in the parlor like a mozo. Here. In this house.

The next day my father was very angry with me. I will not entertain you with the scene that followed. I'm sure my howls of rage and anguish reached Gustavo's ears. But of course I could not oppose my father's will and in the end I appeared. Rather elegantly dressed if I remember. I'd learned to affect a handkerchief in my left hand in such a way as to cover my deformity. Gustavo rose and smiled at me. We walked in the garden. In those days rather better tended. He told me of his plans. Of his work. He gave me news of Francisco and of Rafaela. Of our friends. He treated me no differently than before. He told me how he had lost his eye and of the cruelty of the children at his school and he told me things he had never told anyone, not even Francisco. Because he said that I would understand.

He talked of those things we had spoken of so often at Rosario. So often and so far into the night. He said that those who have endured some misfortune will always be set apart but that it is just that misfortune which is their gift and which is their strength and that they must make their way back into the common enterprise of man for without they do so it cannot go forward and they themselves will wither in bitterness. He said these things to me with great earnestness and great gentleness and in the light from the portal I could see that he was crying and I knew that it was my soul he wept for. I had never been esteemed in this way. To have a man place himself in such a position. I did not know what to say. That night I thought long and not without despair about what must become of me. I wanted very much to be a person of value and I had to ask myself how this could be possible if there were not something like a soul or like a spirit that is in the life of a person and which could endure any misfortune or disfigurement and yet be no less for it. If one were to be a person of value that value could not be a condition subject to the hazards of fortune. It had to be a quality that could not change. No matter what. Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I'd always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it was always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals came easily.

I knew that courage came with less struggle for some than for others but I believed that anyone who desired it could have it. That the desire was the thing itself. The thing itself. I could think of nothing else of which that was true.

So much depends on luck. It was only in later years that I understood what determination it must have taken for Gustavo to speak to me as he did. To come to my father's house in that way. Undeterred by any thought of rejection or ridicule. Above all I understood that his gift to me was not even in the words. The news he brought he could not speak. But it was from that day that I began to love the man who had brought me that news and though he is dead now close on to forty years those feelings have not changed.

She took a handkerchief from her sleeve and with it touched the underlid of each eye. She looked up.

Well, you see. Anyway you are quite patient. The rest of the story is not so difficult to imagine since the facts are known. In the months that followed my revolutionary spirit was rekindled and the political aspects of Francisco Madero's activities became more manifest. As he came to be taken more seriously enemies arose and his name soon reached the ear of the dictator Diaz. Francisco was forced to sell the property he had acquired at Australia in order to finance his undertakings. Before long he was arrested. Later still he fled to the United States. His determination never wavered, yet in those years few could have foreseen that he would become president of Mexico. When he and Gustavo returned they returned with guns. The revolution had begun.

In the meantime I was sent to Europe and in Europe I remained. My father was outspoken in his views concerning the responsibilities of the landed cla.s.s. But revolution was another matter altogether. He would not bring me home unless I promised to disa.s.sociate myself from the Maderos and this I would not do. Gustavo and I were never engaged. His letters to me became less frequent. Then they stopped. Finally I was told that he had married. I did not blame him then or now. There were months in the revolution when the entire campaign was financed out of his pocket. Every bullet. Every crust of bread. When Diaz was at last made to flee and a free election was held Francis...o...b..came the first president of this republic ever to be placed in office by popular vote. And the last.

I will tell you about Mexico. I will tell you what happened to these brave and good and honorable men. By that time I was teaching in London. My sister came to join me and she stayed with me until the summer. She begged me to return with her but I would not. I was very proud. Very stubborn. I could not forgive my father either for his political blindness or for his treatment of me.

Francisco Madero was surrounded by plotters and schemers from his first day in office. His trust in the basic goodness of humankind became his undoing. At one point Gustavo brought General Huerta to him at gunpoint and denounced him as a traitor but Francisco would not hear of it and reinstated him. Huerta. An a.s.sa.s.sin. An animal. This was in February of nineteen thirteen. There was an armed uprising. Huerta of course was the secret accomplice. When he felt his position secure he capitulated to the rebels and led them against the government. Gustavo was arrested. Then Francisco and Pino Suarez. Gustavo was turned over to the mob in the courtyard of the ciudadela. They crowded about him with torches and lanterns. They abused and tormented him, calling him Ojo Parado. When he asked to be spared for the sake of his wife and children they called him a coward. Him, a coward. They pushed him and struck him. They burned him. When he begged them again to cease one of them came forward with a pick and pried out his good eye and he staggered away moaning in his darkness and spoke no more. Someone came forward with a revolver and put it to his head and fired but the crowd jostled his arm and the shot tore away his jaw. He collapsed at the feet of the statue of Morelos. Finally a volley of rifle shots was fired into him. He was p.r.o.nounced dead. A drunk in the crowd pushed forward and shot him again anyway. They kicked his dead body and spat upon it. One of them pried out his artificial eye and it was pa.s.sed among the crowd as a curiosity.

They sat in silence, the clock ticked. After a while she looked up at him.

So. This was the community of which he spoke. This beautiful boy. Who had given everything.

What happened to Francisco?

He and Pino Suarez were driven out behind the penitentiary and shot. It was no test of the cynicism of their murderers to claim that they were shot in attempting to escape. Francisco's mother had sent a telegram to President Taft asking him to intercede to save her son's life. Sara delivered it herself to the amba.s.sador at the American Emba.s.sy. Most probably it was never sent. The family went into exile. They went to Cuba. To the United States. To France. There had always been a rumor that they were of Jewish extraction. Possibly it's true. They were all very intelligent. Certainly theirs seemed to me at least to be a Jewish destiny. A latterday diaspora. Martyrdom. Persecution. Exile. Sara today lives at Colonia Roma. She has her grandchildren. We see one another seldom yet we share an unspoken sisterhood. That night in the garden here at my father's house Gustavo said to me that those who have suffered great pain of injury or loss are joined to one another with bonds of a special authority and so it has proved to be. The closest bonds we will ever know are bonds of grief. The deepest community one of sorrow. I did not return from Europe until my father died. I regret now that I did not know him better. I think in many ways he also was ill suited to the life he chose. Or which chose him. Perhaps we all were. He used to read books on horticulture. In this desert. He'd already begun the cultivation of cotton here and he would have been pleased to see the success it has made. In later years I came to see how alike were he and Gustavo. Who was never meant to be a soldier. I think they did not understand Mexico. Like my father he hated bloodshed and violence. But perhaps he did not hate it enough. Francisco was the most deluded of all. He was never suited to be president of Mexico. He was hardly even suited to be Mexican. In the end we all come to be cured of our sentiments. Those whom life does not cure death will. The world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and the reality, even where we will not. Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting. I've thought a great deal about my life and about my country. I think there is little that can be truly known. My family has been fortunate. Others were less so. As they are often quick to point out.

When I was in school I studied biology. I learned that in making their experiments scientists will take some group-bacteria, mice, people-and subject that group to certain conditions. They compare the results with a second group which has not been disturbed. This second group is called the control group. It is the control group which enables the scientist to gauge the effect of his experiment. To judge the significance of what has occurred. In history there are no control groups. There is no one to tell us what might have been. We weep over the might have been, but there is no might have been. There never was. It is supposed to be true that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. I dont believe knowing can save us. What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and a love of blood and this is a thing that even G.o.d-who knows all that can be known-seems powerless to change.

My father is buried less than two hundred meters from where we now sit. I walk out there often and I talk to him. I talk to him as I could never do in life. He made me an exile in my own country. It was not his intention to do so. When I was born in this house it was already filled with books in five languages and since I knew that as a woman the world would be largely denied me I seized upon this other world. I was reading by the time I was five and no one ever took a book from my hands. Ever. Then my father sent me to two of the best schools in Europe. For all his strictness and authority he proved to be a libertine of the most dangerous sort. You spoke of my disappointments. If such they are they have only made me reckless. My grandniece is the only future I contemplate and where she is concerned I can only put all my chips forward. It may be that the life I desire for her no longer even exists, yet I know what she does not. That there is nothing to lose. In January I will be seventy-three years old. I have known a great many people in that time and few of them led lives that were satisfactory to them. I would like my grandniece to have the opportunity to make a very different marriage from the one which her society is bent upon demanding of her. I wont accept a conventional marriage for her. Again, I know what she cannot. That there is nothing to lose. I dont know what sort of world she will live in and I have no fixed opinions concerning how she should live in it. I only know that if she does not come to value what is true above what is useful it will make little difference whether she lives at all. And by true I do not mean what is righteous but merely what is so. You think I have rejected your suit because you are young or without education or from another country but that is not the case. I was never remiss in poisoning Alejandra's mind against the conceits of the sorts of suitors available to her and we have both long been willing to entertain the notion of rescue arriving in whatever garb it chose. But I also spoke to you of a certain extravagance in the female blood of this family. Something willful. Improvident. Knowing this in her I should have been more wary where you were concerned. I should have seen you more clearly. Now I do.

You wont let me make my case.

I know your case. Your case is that certain things happened over which you had no control.

It's true.

I'm sure it is. But it's no case. I've no sympathy with people to whom things happen. It may be that their luck is bad, but is that to count in their favor?

I intend to see her.

Am I supposed to be surprised? I'll even give you my permission. Although that seems to be a thing you have never required. She will not break her word to me. You will see.

Yes mam. We will.

She rose and swept her skirt behind her to let it fall and she held out her hand. He rose and took it in his, very briefly, so fineboned and cool.

I'm sorry I shant see you again. I've been at some pains to tell you about myself because among other reasons I think we should know who our enemies are. I've known people to spend their lives nursing a hatred of phantoms and they were not happy people.

I dont hate you.

You shall.

We'll see.

Yes. We'll see what fate has in store for us, wont we?

I thought you didnt believe in fate.

She waved her hand. It's not so much that I dont believe in it. I dont subscribe to its nomination. If fate is the law then is fate also subject to that law? At some point we cannot escape naming responsibility. It's in our nature. Sometimes I think we are all like that myopic coiner at his press, taking the blind slugs one by one from the tray, all of us bent so jealously at our work, determined that not even chaos be outside of our own making.

IN THE MORNING he walked up to the bunkhouse and ate breakfast with the vaqueros and said goodbye to them. Then he walked down to the gerente's and he and Antonio went out to the barn and saddled mounts and rode up through the trap looking at the greenbroke horses. He knew the one he wanted. When it saw them it snorted and turned and went trotting. It was Rawlins' grullo and they got a rope on it and brought it down to the corral and by noon he had the animal in a half manageable condition and he walked it around and left it to cool. The horse had not been ridden in weeks and it had no cinchmarks on it and it barely knew how to eat grain. He walked down to the house and said goodbye to Maria and she gave him the lunch she had packed for him and handed him a rosecolored envelope with the La Purisima emblem embossed in the upper left corner. When he got outside he opened it and took out the money and folded it and put it into his pocket without counting it and folded the envelope and put it in his shirtpocket. Then he walked out through the pecan trees in front of the house where Antonio stood waiting with the horses and they stood for a moment in a wordless abrazo and then he mounted up into the saddle and turned the horse into the road. he walked up to the bunkhouse and ate breakfast with the vaqueros and said goodbye to them. Then he walked down to the gerente's and he and Antonio went out to the barn and saddled mounts and rode up through the trap looking at the greenbroke horses. He knew the one he wanted. When it saw them it snorted and turned and went trotting. It was Rawlins' grullo and they got a rope on it and brought it down to the corral and by noon he had the animal in a half manageable condition and he walked it around and left it to cool. The horse had not been ridden in weeks and it had no cinchmarks on it and it barely knew how to eat grain. He walked down to the house and said goodbye to Maria and she gave him the lunch she had packed for him and handed him a rosecolored envelope with the La Purisima emblem embossed in the upper left corner. When he got outside he opened it and took out the money and folded it and put it into his pocket without counting it and folded the envelope and put it in his shirtpocket. Then he walked out through the pecan trees in front of the house where Antonio stood waiting with the horses and they stood for a moment in a wordless abrazo and then he mounted up into the saddle and turned the horse into the road.

He rode through La Vega without dismounting, the horse blowing and rolling its eyes at all it saw. When a truck started up in the street and began to come toward them the animal moaned in despair and tried to turn and he sawed it down almost onto its haunches and patted it and talked constantly to it until the vehicle was past and then they went on again. Once outside the town he left the road altogether and set off across the immense and ancient lakebed of the bolson. He crossed a dry gypsum playa where the salt crust stove under the horse's hooves like trodden isingla.s.s and he rode up through white gypsum hills grown with stunted datil and through a pale bajada crowded with flowers of gypsum like a cavefloor uncovered to the light. In the shimmering distance trees and jacales stood along the slender bights of greenland pale and serried and half fugitive in the clear morning air. The horse had a good natural gait and as he rode he talked to it and told it things about the world that were true in his experience and he told it things he thought could be true to see how they would sound if they were said. He told the horse why he liked it and why he'd chosen it to be his horse and he said that he would allow no harm to come to it.

By noon he was riding a farmland road where the acequias carried the water down along the foot-trodden selvedges of the fields and he stood the horse to water and walked it up and back in the shade of a cottonwood grove to cool it. He shared his lunch with children who came to sit beside him. Some of them had never eaten leavened bread and they looked to an older boy among them for guidance in the matter. They sat in a row along the edge of the path, five of them, and the sandwich halves of cured ham from the hacienda were pa.s.sed to left and to right and they ate with great solemnity and when the sandwiches were gone he divided with his knife the freshbaked tarts of apple and guava.

Donde vive? said the oldest boy.

He mused on the question. They waited. I once lived at a great hacienda, he told them, but now I have no place to live.

The children's faces studied him with great concern. Puede vivir con nosotros, they said, and he thanked them and he told them that he had a novia who was in another town and that he was riding to her to ask her to be his wife.

Es bonita, su novia? they asked, and he told them that she was very beautiful and that she had blue eyes which they could scarcely believe but he told them also that her father was a rich hacendado while he himself was very poor and they heard this in silence and were greatly cast down at his prospects. The older of the girls said that if his novia truly loved him she would marry him no matter what but the boy was not so encouraging and he said that even in families of the rich a girl could not go against the wishes of her father. The girl said that the grandmother must be consulted because she was very important in these matters and that he must take her presents and try to win her to his side for without her help little could be expected. She said that all the world knew this to be true.

John Grady nodded at the wisdom of this but he said that he had already given offense where the grandmother was concerned and could not depend upon her a.s.sistance and at this several of the children ceased to eat and stared at the earth before them.

Es un problema, said the boy.

De acuerdo.

One of the younger girls leaned forward. Que ofensa le dio a la abuelita? she said.

Es una historia larga, he said.

Hay tiempo, they said.

He smiled and looked at them and as there was indeed time he told them all that had happened. He told them how they had come from another country, two young hors.e.m.e.n riding their horses, and that they had met with a third who had no money nor food to eat nor scarcely clothes to cover himself and that he had come to ride with them and share with them in all they had. This horseman was very young and he rode a wonderful horse but among his fears was the fear that G.o.d would kill him with lightning and because of this fear he lost his horse in the desert. He then told them what had happened concerning the horse and how they had taken the horse from the village of Encantada and he told how the boy had gone back to the village of Encantada and there had killed a man and that the police had come to the hacienda and arrested him and his friend and that the grandmother had paid their fine and then forbidden the novia to see him anymore.

When he was done they sat in silence and finally the girl said that what he must do is bring the boy to the grandmother so that he would tell her that he was the one at fault and John Grady said that this was not possible because the boy was dead. When the children heard this they blessed themselves and kissed their fingers. The older boy said that the situation was a difficult one but that he must find an intercessor to speak on his behalf because if the grandmother could be made to see that he was not to blame then she would change her mind. The older girl said that he was forgetting about the problem that the family was rich and he was poor. The boy said that as he had a horse he could not be so very poor and they looked at John Grady for a decision on this question and he told them that in spite of appearances he was indeed very poor and that the horse had been given to him by the grandmother herself. At this some of them drew in their breath and shook their heads. The girl said that he needed to find some wise man with whom he could discuss his difficulties or perhaps a curandera and the younger girl said that he should pray to G.o.d.

It was late night and dark when he rode into Torreon. He haltered the horse and tied it in front of a hotel and went in and asked about a livery stable but the clerk knew nothing of such things. He looked out the front window at the horse and he looked at John Grady.

Puede dejarlo atras, he said.

Atras?

Si. Afuera. He gestured toward the rear.

John Grady looked toward the rear of the building.

Por donde? he said.

The clerk shrugged. He pa.s.sed the flat of his hand past the desk toward the hallway. Por aqui.

There was an old man sitting in a sofa in the lobby who'd been watching out the window and he turned to John Grady and told him that it was all right and that far worse things than horses had pa.s.sed through that hotel lobby and John Grady looked at the clerk and then went out and untied the horse and led it in. The clerk had preceded him down the hallway and he opened the rear doors and stood while John Grady led the horse out into the yard. He'd bought a small sack of grain in Tlahualilo and he watered the horse in a washtrough and broke open the grainsack and poured the grain out into the upturned lid of a trashcan and he unsaddled the horse and wet the empty sack and rubbed the horse down with it and then carried the saddle in and got his key and went up to bed.

When he woke it was noon. He'd slept almost twelve hours. He rose and went to the window and looked out. The window gave onto the little yard behind the hotel and the horse was patiently walking the enclosure with three children astride it and another leading it and yet another hanging on to its tail.

He stood in line most of the morning at the telephone exchange waiting for his turn at one of the four cabinets and when he finally got his call through she could not be reached. He signed up again at the counter and the girl behind the gla.s.s read his face and told him that he would have better luck in the afternoon and he did. A woman answered the phone and sent someone to get her. He waited. When she came to the phone she said that she knew it would be him.

I have to see you, he said.

I cant.

You have to. I'm coming down there.

No. You cant.

I'm leaving in the morning. I'm in Torreon.

Did you talk to my aunt?

Yes.

She was quiet. Then she said: I cant see you.