He ate. She watched him.
They sent dead people, she said.
Mam?
They sent dead people. Crated em up and shipped em railway express. It got out of hand. You cant do nothin with a dead person. Only Jesus could do that.
Yes mam.
Did you want some more buttermilk?
Yes please mam. This is awful good.
Well I’m glad you’re enjoyin it.
She poured his glass and sat again.
He works so hard for his ministry. People have no idea. Did you know his voice reaches all over the world?
Is that right?
We’ve got letters from China. It’s hard to imagine. Them little old people settin around their radios over there. Listenin to Jimmy.
I wouldnt think they’d know what he was sayin.
Letters from France. Letters from Spain. The whole world. His voice is like a instrument, you see. When he has the layin on of the hands? They could be in Timbuctoo. They could be on the south pole. It dont make no difference. His voice is there. There’s not anyplace you can go he aint there. In the air. All the time. You just turn on your radio.
Of course they tried to close the station down, but it’s over in Mexico. That’s why Dr Brinkley come here. To found that radio station. Did you know that they can hear it on Mars?
No mam.
Well they can. When I think about them up there hearin the words of Jesus for the very first time it just makes me want to cry. It does. And Jimmy Blevins done it. He was the one.
From inside the house there sounded a long rattling snore. She smiled. Poor darlin, she said. He’s just wore out. People have no idea.
He never found the owner of the horse. Along toward the end of February he drifted north again, trailing the horses in the bar ditches along the edge of the blacktop roads, the big semi’s blowing them up against the fences. The first week of March he was back in San Angelo and he cut across the country so familiar to him and reached the Rawlins pasture fence just a little past dark on the first warm night of the year and no wind and everything dead still and clear on the west Texas plains. He rode up to the barn and dismounted and walked up to the house. There was a light on in Rawlins’ room and he put two fingers to his teeth and whistled.
Rawlins came to the window and looked out. In a few minutes he came from the kitchen and around the side of the house.
Bud is that you?
Yeah.
Sum buck, he said. Sum buck.
He walked around him to get him in the light and he looked at him as if he were something rare.
I figured you might want your old horse back, said John Grady.
I caint believe it. You got Junior with you?
He’s standin down yonder at the barn.
Sum buck, said Rawlins. I caint believe it. Sum buck.
They rode out on the prairie and sat on the ground and let the animals drift with the reins down and he told Rawlins all that had happened. They sat very quietly. The dead moon hung in the west and the long flat shapes of the nightclouds passed before it like a phantom fleet.
Have you been to see your mama? said Rawlins.
No.
You knew your daddy died.
Yeah. I guess I knew that.
She tried to get word to you in Mexico.
Yeah.
Luisa’s mother is real sick.
Abuela?
Yeah.
How are they makin it?
I guess all right. I seen Arturo over in town. Thatcher Cole got him a job at the school. Cleanin up and stuff like that.
Is she goin to make it?
I dont know. She’s pretty old.
Yeah.
What are you goin to do?
Head out.
Where to?
I dont know.
You could get on out on the rigs. Pays awful good.
Yeah. I know.
You could stay here at the house.
I think I’m goin to move on.
This is still good country.
Yeah. I know it is. But it aint my country.
He rose and turned and looked off toward the north where the lights of the city hung over the desert. Then he walked out and picked up the reins and mounted his horse and rode up and caught the Blevins horse by its halter.
Catch your horse, he said. Or else he’ll follow me.
Rawlins walked out and caught the horse and stood holding it.
Where is your country? he said.
I dont know, said John Grady. I dont know where it is. I dont know what happens to country.
Rawlins didnt answer.
I’ll see you old pardner, said John Grady.
All right. I’ll see you.
He stood holding his horse while the rider turned and rode out and dropped slowly down the skyline. He squatted on his heels so as to watch him a little while longer but after a while he was gone.
THE DAY of the burial out at Knickerbocker it was cool and windy. He’d turned the horses into the pasture on the far side of the road and he sat for a long time watching down the road to the north where the weather was building and the sky was gray and after a while the funeral cortege appeared. An old Packard hearse with a varied assortment of dusty cars and trucks behind. They pulled up along the road in front of the little Mexican cemetery and people got out into the road and the pallbearers in their suits of faded black stood at the rear of the hearse and they carried Abuela’s casket up through the gate into the cemetery. He stood across the road holding his hat. No one looked at him. They carried her up into the cemetery followed by a priest and a boy in a white gown ringing a bell and they buried her and they prayed and they wept and they wailed and then they came back down out of the cemetery into the road helping each other along and weeping and got into the cars and turned one by one on the narrow blacktop and went back the way they’d come.