The Crossing tbt-2

by Cormac McCarthy

  Nada, nada, he said. Tenga prisa.

  The wheel slapped, slapped. He took a card.

  Espere, cried the pitchman. Espere…

  The wheel turned a last soft click and stopped.

  La calavera, cried the pitchman.

  He turned over his card. Printed on it was the calavera.

  Alguien? cried the pitchman. In the crowd they looked from one to the other.

  The small man at his side seized his elbow. Lo tiene, he hissed. Lo tiene.

  Que gano?

  The man shook his head impatiently. He tried to hold up his hand that held the card. He said that he would get to see.

  Ver que?

  Adentro, hissed the man. Adentro. He reached and snatched the card from his grip and held it aloft. Aqui, he called. Aqui tenemos la calavera.

  The pitchman swept his cane in a slow acceleration over the heads of the crowd and then suddenly pointed the silver cap toward Billy and the shill.

  Tenemos ganador, he cried. Adelante, adelante.

  Venga, wheezed the shill. He tugged at Billy's elbow. But Billy had already seen bleeding through the garish paintwork old lettering from a prior life and he recognized the caravan of the traveling opera company that he'd seen standing with its gilded wheelspokes in the smoky courtyard of the hacienda at San Diego when he and Boyd had first ridden through the gates there in that long ago and the caravan he'd seen stranded by the roadside while the beautiful diva sat beneath her awning and waited for men and horses to return who would not return ever. He pushed the shill's hand from his sleeve. No quiero ver, he said.

  Si, si, slurred the shill. Es un espectaculo. Nunca ha visto nada como esto.

  He seized the shill's thin wrist and held it. Olga, hombre, he said. No quiero verlo, me entiende?

  The shill shrank in his grip, he cast a despairing look back over his shoulder toward the pitchman who stood waiting with his cane resting across the rostrum before him. All had turned to see the winner at the outermost reach of the lights. The woman by the wheel stood coquettishly, her forefinger twisted into the dimple in her cheek. The pitchman raised his cane and made with it a sweeping motion. Adelante, he cried. Que paso?

  He pushed the shill from him and released his wrist but the shill far from being cast down only crept to his side and plucking with small motions of his fingers at his clothes began to whisper at his ear of the attractions of the spectacle within the caravan. The pitchman called out to him again. He said that everyone was waiting. But Billy had already turned to go and the pitchman called after him a last time and made some comment to the crowd which set them laughing and trying to see over their shoulders. The shill stood forlornly with the barata in his hands but the pitchman said that there would be no third assay with the wheel but rather the woman who turned the wheel would make a selection herself as to who should enter free. She smiled and scanned the faces with her painted eyes and pointed out a young boy at the forefront of the crowd but the pitchman said that he was too young and that it would not he permitted and the woman made a pout and said that all the same he was muy guapo and then she selected a brownskinned peon who stood stiffly before her in what may have been rented clothes and came down the steps and took him by the hand and the pitchman held up a roll of tickets in his fist and the men pressed forward to purchase them.

  He walked out beyond the strung lights and crossed the field to where he'd left his horse and he paid the establero and led Nino clear of the other animals and mounted up. He looked back at the haze of the carnival lights burning in the crisp and smoky air and then rode out across the railtracks and took the road south out of Madera toward Temosachic.

  A week later he rode again through Babicora in the early morning dark. Cool and quiet. No dogs. The hoofclop of the horses. The blue moonshadow of the horses and the rider passing slant along the street in a constant headlong falling. The road north had been freshly graded with a fresno and he rode along the selvedge through the soft dirt of the endspill. Dark junipers out on the plain islanded in the dawn. Dark cattle. A white sun rising.

  He watered the horses at a grassy cienega where ancient cottonwoods stood in an elfin round and rolled himself into his soogan and slept. When he woke a man was sitting a horse watching him. He sat up. The man smiled. Te conozco, he said.

  Billy reached and got his hat and put it on. Yeah, he said. And I know you.

  Mande?

  Donde esta su companero?

  The man lifted one hand from the pommel in a vague gesture. Se murio, he said. Donde esta la muchacha?

  Lo mismo.

  The man smiled. He said that God's ways were strange ones.

  Tiene razon.

  Y su hermano'

  No se. Muerto tambien, tal vez.

  Tantos, said the man.

  Billy looked toward where the horses were grazing. He'd been sleeping with his head on the mochila where his pistol was buckled away. The man's eyes followed his where they looked. He said for every man that death selects another is reprieved and he smiled in a conspiratorial manner. As one met with another of his kind. He leaned forward with his hands squared on the pommel of his saddle and spat.

  Que piensa? he said.

  Billy wasnt sure what it was that he was being asked. He said men die.

  The man sat his horse and weighed this soberly. As if there might be some deeper substrate to this reflection with which he must reckon. He said that men believe death's elections to be a thing inscrutable yet every act invites the act which follows and to the extent that men put one foot before the other they are accomplices in their own deaths as in all such facts of destinv. He said that moreover it could not be otherwise that men's ends are dictated at their birth and that they will seek their deaths in the face of every obstacle. He said that both views were one view and that while men may meet with death in strange and obscure places which they might well have avoided it was mire correct to say that no matter how hidden or crooked the path to their destruction yet they would seek it out. He smiled. He spoke as one who seemed to understand that death was the condition of existence and life but an emanation thereof.

  Que piensa usted? he said. Billy said that he had no opinion beyond the one he'd given. He said that whether a man's life was writ in a book someplace or whether it took its form day by day was one and the same for it had but one reality and that was the living of it. He said that while it was true that men shape their own lives it was also true that they could have no shape other for what then would that shape be?

  Bien dicho, the man said. He looked across the country. He said that he could read men's thoughts. Billy didnt point out to him that he'd already asked him twice for his. He asked the man could he tell what he was thinking now but the man only said that their thoughts were one and the same. Then he said he harbored no grudge toward any man over a woman for they were only property afoot to be confiscated and that it was no more than a game and not to be taken seriously by real men. He said that he had no very high opinion of men who killed over whores. In any case, he said, the bitch was dead, the world rolled on.

  He smiled again. He had something in his mouth and he rolled it to one side and sucked at his teeth and rolled it back. He touched his hat.

  Bueno, he said. El camino espera.

  He touched his hat again and roweled the horse and sawed it around until its eyes rolled and it squatted and stamped and then went trotting out through the trees and into the road where it soon disappeared from sight. Billy unbuckled the mochila and took out the pistol and thumbed open the gate and turned the cylinder and checked the chambers and then lowered the hammer with his thumb and sat for a long time listening and waiting.

  On the fifteenth of May by the first newspaper he'd seen in seven weeks he rode again into Casas Grandes and stabled his horse and took a room at the Camino Recto Hotel. He rose in the morning and walked down the tiled hallway to the bath. When he came back he stood in the window where the morning light fell slant upon the raw cords in the worn car
pet underfoot and listened to a girl singing in the garden below. She was sitting on a cloth of white canvas and piled on the canvas were nueces or pecans some bushels in quantity. She sat with a flat stone in the crook of her knees and she was breaking the pecans with a stone mano and as she worked she sang. Leaning forward with her dark hair veiled about her hands she worked and sang. She sang:

  Pueblo de Bachiniva

  Abril era el mes

  Jinetes armados

  Llegaron los seis

  She crushed the hulls between the stones, she separated out the meats and dropped them in a jar at her side.

  Si tenia miedo

  No se le veia en su cara

  Cuantos vayan llegando

  El guerito les espera

  Splitting out with her fineboned fingers the meat from the hulls, the delicate fissured hemispheres in which is writ we must believe each feature of the tree which bore them, each feature of the tree they'd come to bear. Then she sang the same two verses over. He buttoned his shirt and got his hat and went down the stairs and out into the courtyard. When she saw him coming across the cobbles she stopped singing. He touched his hat and wished her a good day. She looked up and smiled. She was a girl of perhaps sixteen. She was very beautiful. He asked her if she knew any more verses of the corrido which she sang but she did not. She said that it was an old corrido. She said that it was very sad and that at the end the guerito and his novia die in each other's arms for they have no more ammunition. She said that at the end the patron's men ride away and the people come from the town and carry the guerito and his novia to a secret place and bury them there and the little birds flew away but that she did not remember all the words and anyway she was embarrassed that he had been listening to her sing. He smiled. He told her that she had a pretty voice and she turned away and clucked her tongue.

  He stood looking out across the courtyard toward the mountains to the west. The girl watched him.

  Deme su mano, she said.

  Mande?

  Deme su mano. She held out her own hand in a fist before her. He squatted on his bootheels and held out his hand and she gave him a handful of the shelled pecans and then closed his hand with hers and looked about as if it were some secret gift and someone might see. Andale pues, she said. He thanked her and stood and walked back across the courtyard and up to his room but when he looked from the window again she was gone.

  Days to come he rode up through the high country of the Babicora. He'd build his fire in some sheltered swale and at night sometimes he'd walk out over the grasslands and lie on the ground in the world's silence and study the burning firmament above him. Walking back to the fire those nights he often thought about Boyd, thought of him sitting by night at just such a fire in just such country. The fire in the bajada no more than a glow, hid in the ground like some secret glimpse of the earth's burning core broke through into the darkness. He seemed to himself a person with no prior life. As if he had died in some way years ago and was ever after some other being who had no history, who had no ponderable life to come.

  He saw in his riding occasional parties of vaqueros crossing the high grasslands, sometimes mounted on mules for their good footing in the mountains, sometimes driving beeves before them. It was cold in the mountains at night but they seemed thinly dressed and had only their serapes in which to sleep. They were called mascarenas for the whitefaced cattle bred on the Babicora and they were called agringados because they worked for the white man. They crossed in silent defile over the talus slopes and rode up through the passes toward the high grassy vegas, sitting their horses with their easy formality, the low sun catching the tin cups tied to their saddlehorns. He saw their fires burning on the mountain at night but never did he go to them.

  On a certain evening just before dark he entered into a road and turned and followed it west. The red sun that burned in the broad gap of the mountains before him sloughed out of its form and was slowly sucked away to light all the sky in a deep red afterflash. When darkness had come there stood in the distance on the plain the single yellow light from a dwelling and he rode on until he came to a small weatherboard cabin and sat the horse before it and called out.

  A man came to the door and stepped out onto the gallery. Quien es? he said.

  Un viajero.

  Cuantos son ustedes?

  Yo solo.

  Bueno, the man said. Desmonte. Pasale.

  He stepped down and tied the bridlereins about the porch post and mounted the steps and removed his hat. The man held the door for him and he entered and the man followed and shut the door and nodded toward the fire.

  They sat and drank coffee. The man's name was Quijada and he was a Yaqui Indian from western Sonora and he was the same gerente of the Nahuerichic division of the Babicora who'd told Boyd to cut their horses out of the remuda and take them. He'd seen the lone guero riding in the mountains and told the alguacil not to molest him. He told his guest that he knew who he was and why he'd come. Then he leaned back in his chair. He raised the cup to his lips and drank and watched the fire.

  You're the man give us back our horses, Billy said.

  He nodded. He leaned forward and he looked at Billy and then he sat looking into the fire. The thick handleless porcelain cup from which he drank looked like a chemist's mortar and he sat with his elbows on his knees and held it before him in both hands and Billy thought that he would say something more but he did not. Billy drank from his cup and sat holding it. The fire ticked. Outside in the world all was silence. Is my brother dead? he said.

  Yes.

  He was killed in Ignacio Zaragosa?

  No. In San Lorenzo.

  The girl too?

  No. When they took her away she was covered in blood and she was falling down and so it was natural that people thought that she had been shot but it was not so.

  What became of her?

  I dont know. Perhaps she went back to her family. She was very young.

  I asked about her in Namiquipa. They didnt know what had become of her.

  They would not tell you in Namiquipa.

  Where is my brother buried?

  He is buried at Buenaventura.

  Is there a stone?

  There is a board. He was very popular with the people. He was a popular figure.

  He didnt kill the manco in La Boquilla.

  I know.

  I was there.

  Yes. He killed two men in Galeana. No one knows why. They did not even work for the latifundio. But the brother of one was a friend to Pedro Lopez.

  The alguacil.

  The alguacil. Yes.

  He'd seen him once in the mountains, he and his henchmen, the three of them descending a ridgeline in the twilight. The alguacil carried a short sword in a beltscabbard and he answered to no one. Quijada leaned back and sat with his boots crossed before him. The cup in his lap. Both watched the fire. As if some work were there annealing. Quijada raised his cup as if to drink. Then he lowered it again.

  There is the latifundio of Babicora, he said. With all the wealth and power of Mr Hearst to call upon. And there are the campesinos in their rags. Which do you believe will prevail?

  I dont know.

  His days are numbered.

  Mr Hearst?

  Yes.

  Why do you work for the Babicora?

  Because they pay me.

  Who was Socorro Rivera?

  Quijada tapped the rim of his cup softly with the gold band on his finger. Socorro Rivera tried to organize the workers against the latifundio. He was killed at the paraje of Las Varitas by the Guardias Blancas five years ago along with two other men. Crecencio Macias and Manuel Jimenez.

  Billy nodded.

  The soul of Mexico is very old, said Quijada. Whoever claims to know it is either a liar or a fool. Or both. Now that the yankees have again betrayed them the Mexicans are eager to reclaim their Indian blood. But we do not want them. Most particularly the Yaqui. The Yaqui have long memories.

  I believe
you. Did you ever see my brother again after we left with the horses?

  No.

  How do you know about him?

  He was a hunted man. Where would you go? Inevitably he was taken in by Casares. You go to the enemy of your enemies.

  He was only fifteen. Sixteen, I guess.

  All the better.

  They didnt take very good care of him, did they?

  He didnt want to be taken care of. He wanted to shoot people. What makes one a good enemy also makes one a good friend.

  Yet you work for Mr Hearst?

  Yes.

  He turned and looked at Billy. I am not a Mexican, he said. I dont have these loyalties. These obligations. I have others.

  Would you have shot him yourself?

  Your brother?

  Yes.

  If it had come to that. Yes.

  Maybe I ought not to be drinkin your coffee.

  Maybe not.

  They sat for a long time. Finally Quijada leaned forward and studied his cup. He should have gone home, he said.

  Yes.

  Why didnt he?

  I dont know. Maybe the girl.

  The girl would not have gone with him?

  I suppose she would have. He didnt rightly have a home to go to.

  Maybe you are the one who should have cared for him better. He wasnt easy to care for. You said it yourself.

  Yes.

  What does the corrido say?

  Quijada shook his head. The corrido tells all and it tells nothing. I heard the tale of the guerito years ago. Before your 'brother was even born.

  You dont think it tells about him?

  Yes, it tells about him. It tells what it wishes to tell. It tells what makes the story run. The corrido is the poor man's history. It does not owe its allegiance to the truths of history but to the truths of men. It tells the tale of that solitary man who is all men. It believes that where two men meet one of two things can occur and nothing else. In the one case a lie is born and in the other death.

  That sounds like death is the truth.

  Yes. It sounds like death is the truth. He looked at Billy. Even if the guerito in the song is your brother he is no longer your brother. He cannot be reclaimed.