Cry Macho

by N. Richard Nash

  He tried to rise but it wasn’t easy. He held on to the tree awhile until the unsteadiness passed. Not dizzy, not as he used to feel—just unsteadiness. And he was too warm. He could feel the breeze—had heard it in the tree—but it didn’t seem to cool him. Perhaps he had a fever. He was hot, hot.

  He wondered if he dared take his coat off. The bleeding seemed to have stopped, but if he started wrenching off his coat, he might disturb the wound. He did it anyway, by slow degrees, taking the sleeve off the right arm first, then letting the coat slide down, slip away off his left shoulder and left arm. He looked at the wound. It wasn’t too bad.

  But how to hide it? How to travel with it so people didn’t turn to look? And where to go?

  One question at a time: to hide the wound. He looked at his coat. There wasn’t much blood on the shoulder. Perhaps he could wash it away and then, when he had to, put the coat back on. There wasn’t any water that he could see. He had an inspiration: don’t get the coat clean, get it dirty.

  He wasn’t sure he should bend down, wasn’t sure he could. He managed, however, by kneeling, to rub the brown soil into the red wet stain. When he saw how well it was coming out, he began not to mind the pain. There, it was done. He wouldn’t be wearing a bloody coat now, but a dirty one. Dirt is not incriminating.

  He started to get up off the ground. As he did, a minor accident. Something fell out of his jacket pocket. His billfold, everything dropping out of it—driver’s license, credit cards, everything on the ground. Damn, he’d have to stoop down again and pick it all up. As he leaned over he could feel it in his shoulder again, the wetness. The blood ran faster this time, splattered on the ground, onto the tourist card, onto the I.D. cards, onto a snapshot among the rest. He watched the scarlet on the black and white picture of a boy—Rafo, at the age of six, the picture that started the trip. He looked at the likeness—no, it wasn’t the same boy—yet, the same. Suddenly more blood fell on the face and obscured it. With a cry, Mike snatched the picture off the ground. He rubbed it on his trousers, on his shirt, rubbed the blood off, giving his precious breath to the act of it and saying no, no. Then he put it back in his trouser pocket.

  Suddenly it struck him. How ironic to be going to so much trouble to save a picture that he should be getting rid of. He certainly didn’t want to be caught with it in his possession, and he certainly had no further need of it—and never would, now that he was back in Texas.

  As he thought of being back, a chill came over him. There was the awful fact staring at him—up there, over the brow of the hill. Nothing had changed for him in Texas, nothing was different from when he had departed. There was still nobody here—no Donna, no Rachel, no Cissy, no Laurie, nor any arena to ride in. He had simply returned to his old failures, carrying a new one back with him.

  He thought of Janasco.

  Could he . . . ? Was it possible? But wouldn’t Janasco be just as heartbreaking? Whatever he were to go back to, whatever of love and work and quiet contentment he were to find there, would all be temporary, a moment of happiness, brief, quickly gone. Rafo would grow up—very fast now, at his own flying speed—and have no need of Mike; perhaps he already had no need of him. His life with Marta—supposing he married her, especially if he married her—how long could they hang on to the beauty and sweetness of it? Even the mustangs—if he could come to some peaceable terms with Porfirio—even the horses would die off, there would be more and more skeletons whitening in the sun, and the mesa would be a lonely windswept reminder of their wild magnificence. He would be going back to heartbreak, to loss and loss and loss again.

  But there was no alternative to loss, as there was none to death. To think any other way was illusion. How sad it was, he thought, to lose the illusion of permanence. The dream of durability of love, of life. Had he been lucky or unlucky to have clung to the dream so long? . . . Well, gone now.

  The tragedy was, perhaps, not so much in loss itself as the fear of it—of farewells, departures, aching memories. Janasco, for example—his fear of going there was really his fear of leaving it.

  He had no choice—he had to go there. To Rafo, to Marta, to the horses, to the mesa, for as long as they could last. To whatever love he could have, if only for a short time. To whatever love he could give, for as long as it was wanted.

  Let it all be temporary. Nothing any longer had to be permanent, no joy had to be given with a lifetime guarantee—and life itself needn’t last for eternity. Besides, compared to never, sometimes was a long time. . . . Go back.

  He turned and started downward into the ravine again, going south. The wound was still bleeding, but much less than before. Well, he had had worse—wounds of bone and flesh, wounds of the heart with no hope ahead. He supposed that always in his life he would have some damage or other—and they would all heal. And then, of course, they wouldn’t. This very trip, he had started with a damage—and a dread. Now he had one again—but with a hope.

  When he came up out of the ravine, he could breathe better then before and the wound seemed to have stopped bleeding. As to the pain, it was still there. Well, he’d have to stand it. And he would. Like joy, pain too was temporary.

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