Cities of the Plain tbt-3

by Cormac McCarthy

  Yep. I did.

  How was that?

  Hard work. That's how it was.

  I guess that aint changed.

  Oh it probably has. Some. I was never in love with the cattle business. It's just the only one I ever knew.

  He smoked.

  Can I ask you somethin' said John Grady.

  Ask it.

  How old were you when you got married?

  I was never married. Never found anybody that'd have me.

  He looked at John Grady.

  Margaret was my brother's girl. Him and his wife both was carried off in the influenza epidemic in nineteen and eighteen.

  I didnt know that.

  She never really knowed her parents. She was just a baby. Well, five. Where's your coat at?

  I'm all right.

  I was in Fort Collins Colorado at the time. They sent for me. I shipped my horses and come back on the train with em. Dont catch cold out here now.

  No sir. I wont. I aint cold.

  I had ever motivation in the world but I never could find one I thought would suit Margaret.

  One what?

  Wife. One wife. We finally just give it up. Probably a mistake. I dont know. Socorro pretty much raised her. She spoke better spanish than Socorro did. It's just awful hard. It liked to of killed Socorro. She still aint right. I dont expect she ever will be.

  Yessir.

  We tried ever way in the world to spoil her rotten but it didnt take. I dont know why she turned out the way she did. It's just a miracle I guess you could say. I dont take no credit for it, I'll tell you that.

  Yessir.

  Look yonder. The old man nodded toward the moon.

  What?

  You cant see em now. Wait a minute. No. They're gone.

  What was it?

  Birds flyin across the moon. Geese maybe. I dont know.

  I didnt see em. Which way were they headed?

  Upcountry. Probably headed for that marsh country on the river up around Belen.

  Yessir.

  I used to love to ride of a night.

  I did too.

  You'll see things on the desert at night that you cant under?stand. Your horse will see things. He'll see things that will spook him of course but then he'll see things that dont spook him but still you know he seen somethin.

  What sort of things?

  I dont know.

  You mean like ghosts or somethin?

  No. I dont know what. You just knows he sees em. They're out there.

  Not just some class of varmint?

  No.

  Not somethin that will booger him?

  No. It's more like somethin he knows about.

  But you dont.

  But you dont. Yes.

  The old man smoked. He watched the moon. No further birds flew. After a while he said: I aint talkin about spooks. It's more like just the way things are. If you only knew it.

  Yessir.

  We was up on the Platte River out of Ogallala one night and I was bedded down in my soogan out away from the camp. It was a moonlit night just about like tonight. Cold. Spring of the year. I woke up and I guess I'd heard em in my sleep and it was just this big whisperin sound all over and it was geese just by the thousands headed up the river. They passed for the better part of a hour. They blacked out the moon. I thought the herd would get up off the grounds but they didnt. I got up and walked out and stood watchin em and some of the other young waddies in the outfit they had got up too and we was all standin out there in our longjohns watchin. It was just this whisperin sound. They was up high and it wasnt loud or nothin and I wouldnt of thought about somethin like that a wakin us wore out as we was. I had a nighthorse in my string named Boozer and old Boozer he come to me. I reckon he thought the herd'd get up too but they didnt. And they was a snuffy bunch, too.

  Did you ever have a stampede?

  Yes. We was drivin to Abilene in eighteen and eightyfive. I wasnt much more than a button. And we had got into it with a rep from one of the outfits and he followed us to where we crossed the Red River at Doane's store into Indian Territory. He knew we'd have a harder time gettin our stock back there and we did but we caught the old boy and it was him for you could still smell the coaloil on him. He come by in the night and set a cat on fire and thowed it onto the herd. I mean slung it. Walter Devereaux was comin in off the middle watch and he heard it and looked back. Said it looked like a comet goin out through there and just a squallin. Lord didnt they come up from there. It took us three days to shape that herd back and whenever we left out of there we was still missin forty some odd head lost or crippled or stole and two horses.

  What happened to the boy?

  The boy?

  That threw the cat.

  Oh. Best I remember he didnt make out too well. I guess not.

  People will do anything. Yessir. They will.

  You live long enough you'll see it. Yessir. I have.

  Mr Johnson didnt answer. He flipped the butt of his cigarette out across the yard in a slow red arc.

  Aint nothin to burn out there. I remember when you could have grassfires in this country.

  I didnt mean I'd seen everthing, John Grady said.

  I know you didnt.

  I just meant I'd seen things I'd as soon not oPS

  I know it. There's hard lessons in this world.

  What's the hardest?

  I dont know. Maybe it's just that when things are gone they're gone. They aint comin back.

  Yessir.

  They sat. After a while the old man said: The day after my fiftieth birthday in March of nineteen and seventeen I rode into the old headquarters at the Wilde well and there was six dead wolves hangin on the fence. I rode along the fence and ran my hand along em. I looked at their eyes. A government trapper had brought em in the night before. They'd been killed with poison baits. Strychnine. Whatever. Up in the Sacramentos. A week later he brought in four more. I aint heard a wolf in this country since. I suppose that's a good thing. They can be hell on stock. But I guess I was always what you might call superstitious. I know I damn sure wasnt religious. And it had always seemed to me that somethin can live and die but that the kind of thing that they were was always there. I didnt know you could poison that. I aint heard a wolf howl in thirty odd years. I dont know where you'd go to hear one. There may not be any such a place.

  When he walked back through the barn Billy was standing in the doorway.

  Has he gone back to bed?

  Yeah.

  What was he doin up?

  He said he couldnt sleep. What were you?

  Same thing. You?

  Same thing.

  Somethin in the air I reckon.

  I dont know.

  What was he talkin about?

  Just stuff.

  What did he say?

  I guess he said cattle could tell the difference between a flight of geese and a cat on fire.

  Maybe you dont need to be hangin around him so much.

  You might be right.

  You all seem to have a lot in common.

  He aint crazy, Billy.

  Maybe. But I dont know as you'd be the first one I'd come to for an opinion about it.

  I'm goin to bed.

  Night.

  Night.

  HE TOLD THE WOMAN in spanish that he intended to keep his hat and he carried it with him up the two steps to the bar and then he put it on again. There were some Mexican businessmen standing at the bar and he nodded to them as he passed. They nodded back curtly. The barman placed a napkin down. Se-or? he said.

  Old Grandad and water back.

  The barman moved away. Billy took out his cigarettes and lighter and laid them on the bar. He looked in the backbar mirror. Several whores were draped about on the couches in the lounge. They looked like refugees from a costume ball. The barman returned with the shot of whiskey and set it and the glass of water on the bar and Billy picked up the whiskey and rocked it once in a slow circular motion and then rai
sed it and drank. He reached for his cigarettes, he nodded to the barman.

  Otra vez, he said.

  The barman came with the bottle. He poured.

  D-nde est++ Eduardo, said Billy.

  QuiZn?

  Eduardo.

  The barman poured reflectively. He shook his head.

  El patr-n, said Billy.

  El patr-n no est++.

  Cu++ndo regresa?

  No sZ. He stood holding the bottle. Hay un problema? he said.

  Billy shook a cigarette from the pack and put it in his mouth and reached for the lighter. No, he said. No hay un problema. I need to see him on a business deal.

  What is your business?

  He lit the cigarette and laid the lighter on top of the pack and blew smoke across the bar and looked up.

  I dont feel like we're makin much progress here, he said.

  The barman shrugged.

  Billy took his money from his shirtpocket and laid a tendollar bill on the bar.

  That aint for the drinks.

  The barman looked down the bar to where the businessmen were standing. He looked at Billy.

  Do you know what this job is worth? he said.

  What?

  I said do you know what this job is worth?

  You mean you make pretty good on tips.

  No. I mean do you know what it costs to buy a job like this? I never heard of nobody buyin a job.

  You do lots of business in Mexico?

  No.

  The barman stood with the bottle. Billy took out his money again and put down two fives on top of the ten. The barman palmed the money off the bar and put it in his pocket. Un momento, he said. EspZrate.

  Billy took up the whiskey and swirled it and drank. He set the glass down and passed the back of his wrist across his mouth. When he looked in the backbar glass the alcahuete was standing at his left elbow like Lucifer.

  S' se-or, he said.

  Billy turned and looked at him.

  Are you Eduardo?

  No. How may I help you?

  I wanted to see Eduardo.

  What do you want to see him about?

  I wanted to talk to him.

  Yes. Talk to me.

  Billy turned to look at the barman but the barman had moved away to serve the other patrons.

  It's just somethin personal, Billy said. Hell, I aint goin to hurt him.

  The alcahuete's eyebrows moved slightly upward. That is good to know, he said. You find something you dont like?

  I got a deal he might be interested in.

  Who is the dealer.

  What?

  Who is the dealer.

  Me. I'm the dealer.

  Tiburcio studied him for a long time. I know who you are, he said.

  You know who I am?

  Yes.

  Who am I?

  You are the trujam++n.

  What's that?

  You dont speak spanish?

  I speak spanish.

  You come with the mordida.

  Billy took out his money and laid it on the bar. I got eighteen dollars. That's all I got. And I aint paid for the drinks yet.

  Pay for the drinks.

  What?

  Pay for the drinks.

  Billy left a five on the bar and put the thirteen dollars in his shirtpocket along with his cigarettes and lighter and stood.

  Follow me.

  He followed him out through the lounge past the whores in their whore's finery. Through the kaleidoscope of pieced light from the overhead chandelier and past the empty bandstand to a door at the rear.

  The door was covered in winecolored baize and there was no doorknob to it. The alcahuete opened it anyway and they entered a corridor with blue walls and a single blue bulb screwed into the ceiling above the door. The alcahuete held the door and he stepped through and the alcahuete closed it behind them and turned and went down the corridor. The musky spice of his cologne hung in the air. At the farthest end of the corridor he stopped and tapped twice with his knuckles upon a door embossed with silver foil. He turned, waiting, his hands crossed before him at the wrist.

  A buzzer buzzed and the alcahuete opened the door. Wait here, he said.

  Billy waited. An old woman with one eye came down the corridor and tapped at one of the doors. When she saw him there she blessed herself with the sign of the cross. The door opened and she disappeared inside and the door closed and the corridor stood empty once again in the soft blue light.

  When the silver door opened the alcahuete motioned him inside with a cupping motion of his thin ringed fingers. He stepped in and stood. Then he took off his hat.

  Eduardo was sitting at his desk smoking one of his slender black cigars. He was sitting sideways with his feet crossed before him propped in the open lower drawer of his desk and he appeared to be examining his polished lizardskin boots. How may I help you? he said.

  Billy looked back at Tiburcio. He looked again at Eduardo. Eduardo lifted his feet from the drawer and swiveled slowly in his chair. He was dressed in a black suit with a pale green shirt open at the neck. He rested his arm on the polished glass top of the desk, he held the cigar. He looked like he had nothing much on his mind.

  I got a business proposition for you, Billy said.

  Eduardo held up the little cigar and studied it. He looked at Billy again.

  Somethin you might be interested in, Billy said.

  Eduardo smiled thinly. He looked past Billy at the alcahuete and he looked at Billy again. My fortunes are to change for the better, he said. How very good.

  He took a long slow pull on the cigar. He made a strange and graceful gesture with the hand that held it, turning it in an arc and holding it palm up. As if it cupped something unseen. Or were accustomed to holding something now absent.

  Do you care if we talk alone? Billy said.

  He nodded and the alcahuete withdrew and closed the door. When he was gone Eduardo leaned back in his chair and turned again and recrossed his boots in the drawer. He looked up and waited.

  What I wanted, said Billy, was to buy one of these girls.

  Buy, said Eduardo.

  Yessir.

  How do you mean, buy.

  I give you the money and take her out of here.

  You believe these girls are here against their will.

  I dont know what they are.

  But that's what you think.

  I dont think anything.

  Of course you do. Otherwise what would there be to buy?

  I dont know.

  Eduardo pursed his lips. He studied the end of the cigar. He doesnt know, he said.

  You're tellin me that these girls are free to just walk out of here.

  That is a good question.

  Well what would be a good answer.

  I would say that they are free in their persons.

  In their what?

  In their persons. They are free in their persons. Whether they are free here? He placed his forefinger alongside his temple. Well, who can say?

  If one of em wanted to leave she could leave.

  They are whores. Where would they go?

  Suppose one of em wanted to get married.

  Eduardo shrugged. He looked up at Billy.

  Tell me this, he said.

  All right.

  Are you principal or agent?

  Am I what?

  Is it you who wishes to buy this girl?

  Yes.

  Do you come often to the White Lake?

  I was here one time.

  Where did you meet this girl?

  At La Venada.

  And now you wish to marry her.

  Billy didnt answer.

  The pimp pulled slowly on the cigar and blew the smoke slowly toward his boots. I think you are the agent, he said.

  I aint no agent. I work for Mac McGovern at the Cross Fours out of Orogrande New Mexico and you can ask anybody.

  I think you are not here on your own behalf.

  I'm here to make
you a offer.

  Eduardo smoked.

  Cash money, Billy said.

  This girl has an illness. Does your friend know that?

  I didnt say I had a friend.

  She has not told him that, has she?

  How do you know what girl it is.

  Her name is Magdalena.

  Billy studied him. You knew that because of what I said about La Venada.

  This girl will not leave here. Perhaps your friend thinks that she will but she will not. Perhaps even she thinks it. She is very young.

  Let me ask you this.

  Ask it.

  What is wrong with your friend that he falls in love with whores?

  I dont know.

  Does he think she is not really a whore?

  I couldnt tell you.

  You cannot talk to him?

  No.

  Because she is whore to the bone. I know her.

  I expect you do.

  Your friend is very rich?

  No.

  What can he offer this girl? Why would she leave?

  I dont know. I reckon he thinks she's in love with him.

  Heavens, said Eduardo. Do you believe such a thing?

  I dont know.

  Do you believe such a thing?

  No.

  What are you going to do?

  I dont know. What do you want me to tell him?

  There is nothing to tell him. He drinks a great deal, your friend?

  No. Not especially.

  I am trying to help you.

  Billy tapped his hat against the side of his leg. He looked at Eduardo and he looked around the room that was his office. In the corner against the far wall there was a small bar. A sofa upholstered in white leather. A glasstopped coffeetable.

  You dont believe me, said Eduardo.

  I dont believe you dont have some money invested in this girl.

  Did I say that?

  I thought you did.

  She owes me a certain amount. Money that was advanced to her for her costumes. Her jewelry.

  How much money.

  Would I ask you such a question?

  I dont know. I guess I wouldnt be in a position to be asked. You think I am a whiteslaver.

  I didnt say that.

  That is what you think.

  What do you want me to tell him. What difference does it make?

  I guess it might make a difference to him.

  Your friend is in the grip of an irrational passion. Nothing you say to him will matter. He has in his head a certain story. Of how things will be. In this story he will be happy. What is wrong with this story?