A week later he was somewhere in central Arizona. A rain had come down from the north and the weather turned cool. He sat beneath a concrete overpass and watched the gusts of rain blowing across the fields. The overland trucks passed shrouded in rain with the clearance lights burning and the big wheels spinning like turbines. The eastwest traffic passed overhead with a muted rumble. He wrapped himself in his blanket and tried to sleep on the cold concrete but sleep was a long time coming. His bones hurt. He was seventyeight years old. The heart that should have killed him long ago by what the army's recruiting doctors had said still rattled on in his chest, no will of his. He pulled the blankets about him and after a while he did sleep.
In the night he dreamt of his sister dead seventy years and buried near Fort Summer. He saw her so clearly. Nothing had changed, nothing faded. She was walking slowly along the dirt road past the house. She wore the white dress her grandmother had sewn for her from sheeting and in her grandmother's hands the dress had taken on a shirred bodice and borders of tatting threaded with blue ribbon. That's what she wore. That and the straw hat she'd gotten for Easter. When she passed the house he knew that she would never enter there again nor would he see her ever again and in his sleep he called out to her but she did not turn or answer him but only passed on down that empty road in infinite sadness and infinite loss.
He woke and lay in the dark and the cold and he thought of her and he thought of his brother dead in Mexico. In everything that he'd ever thought about the world and about his life in it he'd been wrong.
Toward the small hours of the morning the traffic on the freeway slacked and the rain stopped. He sat up shivering and hitched the blanket about his shoulders. He'd put some crackers from a roadside diner in the pocket of his coat and he sat eating them and watching the gray light flush out the raw wet fields beyond the roadway. He thought he heard the distant cries of cranes where they would be headed north to their summering grounds in Canada and he thought of them asleep in a flooded field in Mexico in a dawn long ago, standing singlefooted in the wetlands with their bills tucked, gray figures aligned in rows like hooded monks at prayer. When he looked across the overpass to the far side of the turnpike he saw another such as he sitting also solitary and alone.
The man raised his hand in greeting. He raised his back.
Buenos d'as, the man called.
Buenos d'as.
QuZ tiene de comer?
Unas galletas, nada m++s.
The man nodded. He looked away.
Podemos compartirlas.
Bueno, called the man. Gracias.
M' voy.
But the man stood. I will come to you, he called.
He descended the concrete batterwall and crossed the roadway and climbed over the guardrail and crossed the median between the round concrete pillars and crossed the northbound lanes and climbed up to where Billy was sitting and squatted and looked at him.
It aint much, Billy said. He pulled the remaining few packages of crackers from his pocket and held them out.
Muy amable, the man said.
Est++ bien. I thought at first you might be somebody else.
The man sat and stretched out his legs before him and crossed his feet. He tore open a package of the crackers with his eyetooth and took one out and held it up and looked at it and then bit it in two and sat chewing. He wore a wispy moustache, his skin was smooth and brown. He was of no determinable age.
Who did you think I might be? he said.
Just somebody. Somebody I sort of been expectin. I thought I caught a glimpse of him once or twice these past few days. I aint never got all that good a look at him.
What does he look like?
I dont know. I guess more and more he looks like a friend.
You thought I was death.
I considered the possibility.
The man nodded. He chewed. Billy watched him.
You aint are you?
No.
They sat eating the dry crackers.
Ad-nde vas? Billy said.
Al sur. Y toe?
Al none.
The man nodded. He smiled. QuZ clase de hombre comparta sus galletas con la muerte?
Billy shrugged. What kind of death would eat them?
What kind indeed, said the man.
I wasnt tryin to figure anything out. De todos modos el compartir es la ley del camino, verdad?
De veras.
At least that's the way I was raised.
The man nodded. In Mexico on certain days of the calendar it is the custom to set a place at the table for death. But perhaps you know this.
Yes.
He has a big appetite.
Yes he does.
Perhaps a few crackers would be taken as an insult.
Perhaps he's got to take what he can get. Like the rest of us. The man nodded. Yes, he said. That could be.
Traffic had picked up on the turnpike. The sun was up. The man opened the second package of crackers. He said that perhaps death took a larger view. That perhaps in his egalitarian way death weighed the gifts of men by their own lights and that in death's eyes the offerings of the poor were the equal of any.
Like God.
Yes. Like God.
Nadie puede sobornar a la muerte, Billy said.
De veras. Nadie.
Nor God.
Nor God.
Billy watched the light bring up the shapes of the water standing in the fields beyond the roadway. Where do we go when we die? he said.
I dont know, the man said. Where are we now?
The sun rose over the plain behind them. The man handed him back the last remaining packet of crackers.
You can keep em, Billy said.
No quieres m++s?
My mouth's too dry.
The man nodded, he pocketed the crackers. Para el camino, he said. I was born in Mexico. I have not been back for many years.
You goin back now?
No.
Billy nodded. The man studied the coming day. In the middle of my life, he said, I drew the path of it upon a map and I studied it a long time. I tried to see the pattern that it made upon the earth because I thought that if I could see that pattern and identify the form of it then I would know better how to continue. I would know what my path must be. I would see into the future of my life.
How did that work out?
Different from what I expected.
How did you know it was the middle of your life?
I had a dream. That was why I drew the map.
What did it look like?
The map?
Yes.
It was interesting. It looked like different things. There were different perspectives one could take. I was surprised.
Could you remember all the places you'd been?
Oh yes. Couldnt you?
I dont know. There's been a bunch of em. Yeah. I suppose. If I put my mind to it. If I was to set down and study about it.
Yes. Of course. That was my method. One thing leads to another. I doubt that our journey can be lost to us. For good or bad.
What sorts of things did it look like? The map.
At first I saw a face but then I turned it and looked at it other ways and when I turned it back the face was gone. Nor could I find it again.
What happened to it?
I dont know.
Did you see it or did you just think you did?
The man smiled. QuZ pregunta, he said. What would be the difference?
I dont know. I think there has to be a difference.
So do I. But what is it?
Well. It wouldnt be like a real face.
No. It was a suggestion. Un bosquejo. Un borrador, quiz++s. Yes.
In any case it is difficult to stand outside of one's desires and see things of their own volition.
I think you just see whatever's in front of you.
Yes. I dont think that.
What was the dream?
The dream, the man said.
&nb
sp; You dont have to tell me.
How do you know?
You dont have to tell me anything.
Perhaps. Nevertheless there was this man who was traveling through the mountains and he came to a place in the mountains where certain pilgrims used to gather in the long ago.
Is this the dream?
Yes.
cndale pues.
Gracias. Where pilgrims used to gather in the long ago. En tiempos antiguos.
You've told this dream before.
Yes.
cndale.
En tiempos antiguos. It was a high pass in the mountains that he had come to and here there was a table of rock and the table of rock was very old and it had fallen in the early days of the earth from a high pe-asco in the mountains and lay in the floor of the pass with its flat and cloven side to the weather and the sun. And on the face of that rock there were yet to be seen the stains of blood from those who'd been slaughtered upon it to appease the gods. The iron in the blood of these vanished beings had blackened the rock and there it could be seen. Together with the hatching of axemarks or the marks of swords upon the stone to show where the work was done.
Is there such a place?
I dont know. Yes. There are such places. But this was not one of them. This was a dream place.
cndale.
So the traveler arrived at this place at nightfall when the mountains about were darkening and the wind in the pass was growing cold with night's onset and he put down his burden to rest himself and he removed his hat to cool his brow and then his eyes fell upon this bloodstained altarstone which the weathers of the sierra and the sierra's storms had these millennia been impotent to cleanse. And there he elected to pass the night, such is the recklessness of those whom God has been so good as to shield from their just share of adversity in this world.
Who was the traveler?
I dont know.
Was it you?
I dont think so. But then if we do not know ourselves in the waking world what chance in dreams?
I'd think I'd know if it was me.
Yes. But have you not met people in dreams you never saw before? In dreams or out?
Sure.
And who were they?
I dont know. Dream people.
You think you made them up. In your dream.
I guess. Yeah.
Could you do it waking?
Billy sat with his arms over his knees. No, he said. I guess I couldnt.
No. Anyway I think the self of you in dreams or out is only that which you elect to see. I'm guessing every man is more than he supposes.
cndale.
So. This traveler was such a man. He laid down his burden and surveyed the darkening scene. In that high pass was naught but rock and scree and as he thought to at least raise himself above the feasible paths of serpents in the night so he came to the altar and placed his hands upon it. He paused, but he did not pause long enough. He unrolled his blanket upon the stone and weighted down the ends with rocks that it not be blown away by the wind before he could remove his boots.
Did he know what kind of stone it was?
No.
Then who knew?
The dreamer knew.
You.
Yes.
Well I reckon you and him had to of been two different people then.
How so?
Because if you were the same then one would know what the other knew.
As in the world.
Yes.
But this is not the world. This is a dream. In the world the question could not occur.
cndale.
Remove his boots. When he had removed them he climbed onto the stone and rolled himself in his blanket and upon that cold and terrible pallet he composed himself for sleep.
I wish him luck.
Yes. Yet sleep he did.
He fell asleep in your dream.
Yes.
How do you know he was asleep?
I could see him sleeping.
Did he dream?
The man sat looking at his shoes. He uncrossed his legs and recrossed them the other way. Well, he said. I'm not sure how to answer you. Certain events occurred. Some things about them remain unclear. It is difficult to know, for instance, when it was that these events took place.
Why?
The dream I had was on a certain night. And in the dream the traveler appeared. What night was this? In the life of the traveler when was it that he came to spend the night in that rocky posada? He slept and events took place which I will tell you of, but when was this? You can see the problem. Let us say that the events which took place were a dream of this man whose own reality remains conjectural. How assess the world of that conjectural mind? And what with him is sleep and what is waking? How comes he to own a world of night at all? Things need a ground to stand upon. As every soul requires a body. A dream within a dream makes other claims than what a man might suppose.
A dream inside a dream might not be a dream.
You have to consider the possibility.
It just sounds like superstition to me.
And what is that?
Superstition?
Yes.
Well. I guess it's when you believe in things that dont exist.
Such as tomorrow? Or yesterday?
Such as the dreams of somebody you dreamt. Yesterday was here and tomorrow's comin.
Maybe. But anyway the dreams of this man were his own dreams. They were distinct from my dream. In my dream the man was lying on his stone asleep.
You still could of made them up.
En este mundo todo es posible. Vamos a ver.
It's like the picture of your life in that map.
C-mo?
Es un dibujo nada m++s. It aint your life. A picture aint a thing. It's just a picture.
Well said. But what is your life? Can you see it? It vanishes at its own appearance. Moment by moment. Until it vanishes to appear no more. When you look at the world is there a point in time when the seen becomes the remembered? How are they separate? It is that which we have no way to show. It is that which is missing from our map and from the picture that it makes. And yet it is all we have.
You aint said whether your map was any use to you or not.
The man tapped his lower lip with his forefinger. He looked at Billy. Yes, he said. We will come to that. For now I can only say that I had hoped for a sort of calculus that would sum the convergence of map and life when life was done. For within their limitations there must be a common shape or shared domain between the telling and the told. And if that is so then the picture also in whatever partial form must have a direction to it and if it does then whatever is to come must lie in that path. You say that the life of a man cannot be pictured. But perhaps we mean different things. The picture seeks to seize and immobilize within its own configurations what it never owned. Our map knows nothing of time. It has no power to speak even of the hours implicit in its own existence. Not of those that have passed, not of those to come. Yet in its final shape the map and the life it traces must converge for there time ends.
So if I'm right still it's for the wrong reasons.
Perhaps we should return to the dreamer and his dream.
cndale.
You might wish to say that the traveler woke and that the events which took place were not a dream at all. But I think to view them as a dream is the wiser course. For if these events were else than a dream he would not wake at all. As you will see.
cndale.
My own dream is another matter. My traveler sleeps a troubled dream. Shall I wake him? The proprietary claims of the dreamer upon the dreamt have their limits. I cannot rob the traveler of his own autonomy lest he vanish altogether. You see the problem.
I think I'm beginnin to see several problems.
Yes. This traveler also has a life and there is a direction to that life and if he himself did not appear in this dream the dream would be quite otherwise and there could be no talk of him at all.
You may say that he has no substance and therefore no history but my view is that whatever he may be or of whatever made he cannot exist without a history. And the ground of that history is not different from yours or mine for it is the predicate life of men that assures us of our own reality and that of all about us. Our privileged view into this one night of this man's history presses upon us the realization that all knowledge is a borrowing and every fact a debt. For each event is revealed to us only at the surrender of every alternate course. For us, the whole of the traveler's life converges at this place and this hour, whatever we may know of that life or out of whatever stuff it mad be made. De acuerdo?
Andale.
So. He composed himself for sleep. And in the night there was a storm in the mountains and the lightning cracked and the wind moaned in the gap and the traveler's rest was a poor rest indeed. The barren peaks about him were hammered out of the blackness again and again by the lightning and in the flare of that lightning he was surprised to see descending down through the rocky arroyos a troupe of men bearing torches in the rain and singing some low chant or prayer as they came. He raised himself up from his stone the better to make them out. He could see little more than their heads and shoulders jostling in the torchlight but they seemed to wear a variety of adornments, primitive headpieces contrived from the feathers of birds or the hides of jungle cats. The fur of marmosets. They wore necklaces of bead or stone or ocean shell and shawls of woven stuff that may have been moss. By the smoky lamps hissing in the rain he could see that they carried upon their shoulders a litter or bier and now he could hear echoing among the rocks the floating notes of a horn and the slow beat of a drum.
When they came into the road he could see them better. In the forefront was a man in a mask made from the carved shell of a seaturtle all inlaid with agate and jasper. He carried a sceptre on the head of which was his own likeness and the likeness carried also such a sceptre in miniature and this sceptre too in what we must imagine to be some unknown infinitude of alternate being and likeness.
Behind him came the drummer with his drum of saltcured rawhide stretched upon a frame of ash and this he beat with a sort of flail made of a hardwood ball tethered to a stick. The drum gave off a low note of great resonance and he struck it with an upward swing of the flail and at each beat he bent his head to listen as perhaps a man might who were tuning a drum.
Cities of the Plain tbt-3 Page 25
