All the Pretty Horses(61)

I dont know. I’d say a lot.

I would too.

We aint heard from the captain’s buddies in here. I guess they’re waitin to see if there’s goin to be anything left to bail out.

He held out the can toward Rawlins.

Finish it, said Rawlins.

Take it. There aint but a sup.

He took the can and drained it and poured a little water in and swirled it about and drank that and sat looking into the empty can.

If they think we’re rich how come they aint looked after us no better? he said.

I dont know. I know they dont run this place. All they run is what comes in and what goes out.

If that, said Rawlins.

The floodlights came on from the upper walls. Figures that had been moving in the yard froze, then they moved again.

The horn’s fixin to blow.

We got a couple of minutes.

I never knowed there was such a place as this.

I guess there’s probably every kind of place you can think of.

Rawlins nodded. I wouldnt of thought of this one, he said.

It was raining somewhere out in the desert. They could smell the wet creosote on the wind. Lights came on in a makeshift cinderblock house built into one corner of the prison wall where a prisoner of means lived like an exiled satrap complete with cook and bodyguard. There was a screen door to the house and a figure crossed behind it and crossed back. On the roof a clothesline where the prisoner’s clothes luffed gently in the night breeze like flags of state. Rawlins nodded toward the lights.

You ever see him?

Yeah. One time. He was standin in the door one evenin smokin him a cigar.

You picked up on any of the lingo in here?

Some.

What’s a pucha?

A cigarette butt.

Then what’s a tecolata?

Same thing.

How many damn names have they got for a cigarette butt?

I dont know. You know what a papazote is?

No, what?

A big shot.

That’s what they call the dude that lives yonder.

Yeah.

And we’re a couple of gabachos.

Bolillos.

Pendejos.

Anybody can be a pendejo, said John Grady. That just means asshole.

Yeah? Well, we’re the biggest ones in here.

I wont dispute it.

They sat.

What are you thinkin about, said Rawlins.

Thinkin about how much it’s goin to hurt to get up from here.

Rawlins nodded. They watched the prisoners moving under the glare of the lights.

All over a goddamned horse, said Rawlins.

John Grady leaned and spat between his boots and leaned back. Horse had nothin to do with it, he said.

That night they lay in their cell on the iron racks like acolytes and listened to the silence and a rattling snore somewhere in the block and a dog barking faintly in the distance and the silence and each other breathing in the silence both still awake.

We think we’re a couple of pretty tough cowboys, said Rawlins.

Yeah. Maybe.

They could kill us any time.

Yeah. I know.

Two days later the papazote sent for them. A tall thin man crossed the quadrangle in the evening to where they sat and bent and asked them to come with him and then rose and strode off again. He didnt even look back to see if they’d rise to follow.

What do you want to do? said Rawlins.

John Grady rose stiffly and dusted the seat of his trousers with one hand.

Get your ass up from there, he said.

The man’s name was Pérez. His house was a single room in the center of which stood a tin foldingtable and four chairs. Against one wall was a small iron bed and in one corner a cupboard and a shelf with some dishes and a threeburner gas-ring. Pérez was standing looking out his small window at the yard. When he turned he made an airy gesture with two fingers and the man who’d come to fetch them stepped back out and closed the door.

My name is Emilio Pérez, he said. Please. Sit down.

They pulled out chairs at the table and sat. The floor of the room was made of boards but they were not nailed to anything. The blocks of the walls were not mortared and the unpeeled roofpoles were only dropped loosely into the topmost course and the sheets of roofingtin overhead were held down by blocks stacked along their edges. A few men could have disassembled and stacked the structure in half an hour. Yet there was an electric light and a gasburning heater. A carpet. Pictures from calendars pinned to the walls.

You young boys, he said. You enjoy very much to fight, yes?

Rawlins started to speak but John Grady cut him off. Yes, he said. We like it a lot.

Pérez smiled. He was a man about forty with graying hair and moustache, lithe and trim. He pulled out the third chair and stepped over the back of it with a studied casualness and sat and leaned forward with his elbows on the table. The table had been painted green with a brush and the logo of a brewery was partly visible through the paint. He folded his hands.

All this fighting, he said. How long have you been here?