All the Pretty Horses(69)

He practiced walking up and down. He polished the underside of the messtray with the sleeve of his shift and standing in the center of the room under the lightbulb he studied the face that peered dimly out of the warped steel like some maimed and raging djinn enconjured there. He peeled away the bandage from his face and inspected the stitches there and felt them with his fingers.

When next he woke the demandadero had opened the door and stood with a pile of clothes and with his boots. He let them fall in the floor. Sus prendas, he said, and shut the door.

He stripped out of the shift and washed himself with soap and rag and dried himself with the towel and dressed and pulled on the boots. Someone had washed the blood out of the boots and they were still wet and he tried to take them off again but he could not and he lay on the bunk in his clothes and boots waiting for God knew what.

Two guards came. They stood at the open door and waited for him. He got up and walked out.

They went down a corridor and across a small patio and entered another part of the building. They walked down another corridor and the guards tapped at a door and then opened it and one of them motioned for him to enter.

At a desk sat the commandante who’d been to his cell to see if he could walk.

You be seated, said the commandante.

He sat.

The commandante opened his desk drawer and took out an envelope and handed it across the desk.

This is you, he said.

John Grady took the envelope.

Where’s Rawlins? he said.

Excuse me?

Dónde está mi compadre.

You friend.

Yes.

He wait outside.

Where are we going?

You going away. You going away to you house.

When.

Excuse me?

Cuándo.

You going now. I dont want to see you no more.

The commandante waved his hand. John Grady put one hand on the back of the chair and rose and turned and walked out the door and he and the guards went down the hallway and out through the office to the sallygate where Rawlins stood waiting in a costume much like his own. Five minutes later they were standing in the street outside the tall ironshod wooden doors of the portal.

There was a bus standing in the street and they climbed laboriously aboard. Women in the seats with their empty hampers and baskets spoke to them softly as they made their way down the aisle.

I thought you’d died, said Rawlins.

I thought you had.

What happened?

I’ll tell you. Let’s just sit here. Let’s not talk. Let’s just sit here real quiet.

Are you all right?

Yeah. I’m all right.

Rawlins turned and looked out the window. All was gray and still. A few drops of rain had begun to fall in the street. They dropped on the roof of the bus solitary as a bell. Down the street he could see the arched buttresses of the cathedral dome and the minaret of the belltower beyond.

All my life I had the feelin that trouble was close at hand. Not that I was about to get into it. Just that it was always there.

Let’s just sit here real quiet, said John Grady.

They sat watching the rain in the street. The women sat quietly. Outside it was darkening and there was no sun nor any paler place to the sky where sun might be. Two more women climbed aboard and took their seats and then the driver swung up and closed the door and looked to the rear in the mirror and put the bus in gear and they pulled away. Some of the women wiped at the glass with their hands and peered back at the prison standing in the gray rain of Mexico. So like some site of siege in an older time, in an older country, where the enemies were all from without.

It was only a few blocks to the centro and when they eased themselves down from the bus the gaslamps were already on in the plaza. They crossed slowly to the portales on the north side of the square and stood looking out at the rain. Four men in maroon band uniforms stood along the wall with their instruments. John Grady looked at Rawlins. Rawlins looked lost standing there hatless and afoot in his shrunken clothes.

Let’s get somethin to eat.

We dont have no money.

I got money.

Where’d you get any money at? Rawlins said.

I got a whole envelope full.

They walked into a cafe and sat in a booth. A waiter came over and put menus in front of them and went away. Rawlins looked out the window.

Get a steak, said John Grady.

All right.

We’ll eat and get a hotel room and get cleaned up and get some sleep.

All right.

He ordered steaks and fried potatoes and coffee for both of them and the waiter nodded and took the menus. John Grady rose and made his way slowly to the counter and bought two packs of cigarettes and a penny box of matches each. People at their tables watched him cross the room.

Rawlins lit a cigarette and looked at him.

Why aint we dead? he said.

She paid us out.

The señora?

The aunt. Yes.

Why?

I dont know.