All the Pretty Horses(73)

They’d have made a bed for him but he thanked them and walked out in the dark along the road until he came to a grove of trees and there he slept. In the morning there were sheep in the road. Two trucks carrying fieldhands were coming along behind the sheep and he walked out to the road and asked the driver for a ride. The driver nodded him aboard and he dropped back along the bed of the moving truck and tried to pull himself up. He could not and when the workers saw his condition they rose instantly and pulled him aboard. By a series of such rides and much walking he made his way west through the low mountains beyond Nadadores and down into the barrial and took the clay road out of La Madrid and in the late afternoon entered once more the town of La Vega.

He bought a Coca-Cola in the store and stood leaning against the counter while he drank it. Then he drank another. The girl at the counter watched him uncertainly. He was studying a calendar on the wall. He did not know the date within a week and when he asked her she didnt know either. He set the second bottle on the counter alongside the first one and walked back out into the mud street and set off afoot up the road toward La Purísima.

He’d been gone seven weeks and the countryside was changed, the summer past. He saw almost no one on the road and he reached the hacienda just after dark.

When he knocked at the gerente’s door he could see the family at dinner through the doorway. The woman came to the door and when she saw him she went back to get Armando. He came to the door and stood picking his teeth. No one invited him in. When Antonio came out they sat under the ramada and smoked.

Quién está en la casa? said John Grady.

La dama.

Y el señor Rocha?

En Mexico.

John Grady nodded.

Se fue él y la hija a Mexico. Por avión. He made an airplane motion with one hand.

Cuándo regresa?

Quién sabe?

They smoked.

Tus cosas quedan aquí.

Sí?

Sí. Tu pistola. Todas tus cosas. Y las de tu compadre.

Gracias.

De nada.

They sat. Antonio looked at him.

Yo no sé nada, joven.

Entiendo.

En serio.

Está bien. Puedo dormir en la cuadra?

Sí. Si no me lo digas.

Cómo están las yeguas?

Antonio smiled. Las yeguas, he said.

He brought him his things. The pistol had been unloaded and the shells were in the mochila along with his shaving things, his father’s old Marble huntingknife. He thanked Antonio and walked down to the barn in the dark. The mattress on his bed had been rolled up and there was no pillow and no bedding. He unrolled the tick and sat and kicked off his boots and stretched out. Some of the horses that were in the stalls had come up when he entered the barn and he could hear them snuffling and stirring and he loved to hear them and he loved to smell them and then he was asleep.

At daylight the old groom pushed open the door and stood looking in at him. Then he shut the door again. When he had gone John Grady got up and took his soap and his razor and walked out to the tap at the end of the barn.

When he walked up to the house there were cats coming from the stable and orchard and cats coming along the high wall or waiting their turn to pass under the worn wood of the gate. Carlos had slaughtered a sheep and along the dappled floor of the portal more cats sat basking in the earliest light falling through the hydrangeas. Carlos in his apron looked out from the doorway of the keep at the end of the portal. John Grady wished him a good morning and he nodded gravely and withdrew.

María did not seem surprised to see him. She gave him his breakfast and he watched her and he listened as she spoke by rote. The señorita would not be up for another hour. A car was coming for her at ten. She would be gone all day visiting at the quinta Margarita. She would return before dark. She did not like to travel the roads at night. Perhaps she could see him before he left.

John Grady sat drinking his coffee. He asked her for a cigarette and she brought her pack of El Toros from the window above the sink and put them on the table for him. She neither asked where he’d been nor how things had been with him but when he rose to go she put her hand on his shoulder and poured more coffee into his cup.

Puedes esperar aquí, she said. Se levantará pronto.

He waited. Carlos came in and put his knives in the sink and went out again. At seven oclock she went out with the breakfast tray and when she returned she told him that he was invited to come to the house at ten that evening, that the señorita would see him then. He rose to go.

Quisiera un caballo, he said.

Caballo.

Sí. Por el día, no más.

Momentito, she said.

When she returned she nodded. Tienes tu caballo. Espérate un momento. Siéntate.