All the Pretty Horses(68)

He was not much older than John Grady and he backed into the room with the tray and turned, his eyes looking everywhere but at the bed. Other than a steel bucket in the floor there was nothing in the room but the bed and nowhere to put the tray but on it.

He approached and stood. He looked at once uncomfortable and menacing. He gestured with the tray. John Grady eased himself onto his side and pushed himself up. Sweat stood on his forehead. He was wearing some sort of rough cotton gown and he’d bled through it and the blood had dried.

Dame el refresco, he said. Nada más.

Nada más?

No.

The demandadero handed him the glass of orangewater and he took it and sat holding it. He looked at the little stone block room. Overhead was a single lightbulb in a wire cage.

La luz, por favor, he said.

The demandadero nodded and went to the door and turned and pulled it shut after him. A click of the latch in the darkness. Then the light came on.

He listened to the steps down the corridor. Then the silence. He raised the glass and slowly drank the soda. It was tepid, only faintly effervescent, delicious.

He lay there three days. He slept and woke and slept again. Someone turned off the light and he woke in the dark. He called out but no one answered. He thought of his father in Goshee. He knew that terrible things had been done to him there and he had always believed that he did not want to know about it but he did want to know. He lay in the dark thinking of all the things he did not know about his father and he realized that the father he knew was all the father he would ever know. He would not think about Alejandra because he didnt know what was coming or how bad it would be and he thought she was something he’d better save. So he thought about horses and they were always the right thing to think about. Later someone turned the light back on again and it did not go off again after that. He slept and when he woke he’d dreamt of the dead standing about in their bones and the dark sockets of their eyes that were indeed without speculation bottomed in the void wherein lay a terrible intelligence common to all but of which none would speak. When he woke he knew that men had died in that room.

When the door opened next it was to admit a man in a blue suit carrying a leather bag. The man smiled at him and asked after his health.

Mejor que nunca, he said.

The man smiled again. He set the bag on the bed and opened it and took out a pair of surgical scissors and pushed the bag to the foot of the bed and pulled back the bloodstained sheet.

Quién és usted? said John Grady.

The man looked surprised. I am the doctor, he said.

The scissors had a spade end that was cold against his skin and the doctor slid them under the bloodstained gauze cummerbund and began to cut it away. He pulled the dressing from under him and they looked down at the stitches.

Bien, bien, said the doctor. He pushed at the sutures with two fingers. Bueno, he said.

He cleaned the sutured wounds with an antiseptic and taped gauze pads over them and helped him to sit up. He took a large roll of gauze out of the bag and reached around John Grady’s waist and began to wrap it.

Put you hands on my shoulders, he said.

What?

Put you hands on my shoulders. It is all right.

He put his hands on the doctor’s shoulders and the doctor wrapped the dressing. Bueno, he said. Bueno.

He rose and closed the bag and stood looking down at his patient.

I will send for you soap and towels, he said. So you can wash yourself.

All right.

You are a fasthealer.

A what?

A fasthealer. He nodded and smiled and turned and went out. John Grady didnt hear him latch the door but there was no place to go anyway.

His next visitor was a man he’d never seen before. He wore a uniform that looked to be military. He did not introduce himself. The guard who brought him shut the door and stood outside it. The man stood at his bed and took off his hat as though in deference to some wounded hero. Then he took a comb from the breastpocket of his tunic and passed it once along each side of his oiled head and put the hat back on again.

How soon you can walk around, he said.

Where do you want me to walk to?

To your house.

I can walk right now.

The man pursed his lips, studying him.

Show me you walk.

He pushed back the sheets and rolled onto his side and stepped down to the floor. He walked up and back. His feet left cold wet tracks on the polished stones that sucked up and vanished like the tale of the world itself. The sweat stood quivering on his forehead.

You are fortunate boys, he said.

I dont feel so fortunate.

Fortunate boys, he said again, and nodded and left.

He slept and woke. He knew night from day only by the meals. He ate little. Finally they brought him half a roast chicken with rice and two halves of a tinned pear and this he ate slowly, savoring each bite and proposing and rejecting various scenarios that might have occurred in the outer world or be occurring. Or were yet to come. He still thought that he might be taken out into the campo and shot.