All the Pretty Horses(96)

In the evening descending he saw lights in the distance and he pushed on toward them and did not stop and in the dead of night in deep exhaustion both he and the horses they reached the town of Los Picos.

A single mud street rutted from the recent rains. A squalid alameda where there stood a rotting brushwood gazebo and a few old iron benches. The trees in the alameda had been freshly whitewashed and the upper trunks were lost in the dark above the light of the few lamps yet burning so that they looked like plaster stagetrees new from the mold. The horses stepped with great weariness among the dried rails of mud in the street and dogs barked at them from behind the wooden gates and doors they passed.

It was cold when he woke in the morning and it was raining again. He’d bivouacked on the north side of the town and he rose wet and cold and stinking and saddled the horse and rode back into the town wrapped in the serape and driving the two horses before him.

In the alameda a few small tin foldingtables had been set out and young girls were stringing paper ribbon overhead. They were wet from the rain and they were laughing and they were throwing the spools of crepe over the wires and catching them again and the dye was coming off the paper so that their hands were red and green and blue. He tied the horses in front of the tienda he’d passed the night before and went in and bought a sack of oats for the horses and he borrowed a galvanized bucket with which to water them and he stood in the alameda leaning on the rifle and watching them drink. He thought he’d be an object of some curiosity but the people he saw only nodded gravely to him and passed on. He carried the bucket back into the store and went down the street to where there was a small cafe and he entered and sat at one of the three small wooden tables. The floor of the cafe was packed mud newly swept and he was the only customer. He stood the rifle against the wall and ordered huevos revueltos and a cup of chocolate and he sat and waited for it to come and then he ate very slowly. The food was rich to his taste and the chocolate was made with canela and he drank it and ordered another and folded a tortilla and ate and watched the horses standing in the square across the street and watched the girls. They’d hung the gazebo with crepe and it looked like a festooned brush-pile. The proprietor showed him great courtesy and brought him fresh tortillas hot from the comal and told him that there was to be a wedding and that it would be a pity if it rained. He inquired where he might be from and showed surprise he’d come so far. He stood at the window of the empty cafe and watched the activities in the square and he said that it was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they’d have no heart to start at all.

By midmorning the rain had stopped. Water dripped from the trees in the alameda and the crepe hung in soggy strings. He stood with the horses and watched the wedding party emerge from the church. The groom wore a dull black suit too large for him and he looked not uneasy but half desperate, as if unused to clothes at all. The bride was embarrassed and clung to him and they stood on the steps for their photograph to be taken and in their antique formalwear posed there in front of the church they already had the look of old photos. In the sepia monochrome of a rainy day in that lost village they’d grown old instantly.

In the alameda an old woman in a black rebozo was going about tilting the metal tables and chairs to let the water run off. She and others began to set out food from pails and baskets and a group of three musicians in soiled silver suits stood by with their instruments. The groom took the bride’s hand to help her negotiate the water standing in front of the church steps. In the water they were gray figures reflected against a gray sky. A small boy ran out and stamped in the puddle and sprayed a sheet of the muddy gray water over them and ran away with his companions. The bride clutched her husband. He scowled and looked after the boys but there was nothing to be done and she looked down at her dress and she looked at him and then she laughed. Then the husband laughed and others in the party also and they crossed the road laughing and looking from one to the other and entered the alameda among the tables and the musicians began to play.

With the last of his money he bought coffee and tortillas and some tinned fruit and beans. The tins had been on the shelves so long they’d tarnished and the labels faded. When he passed out along the road the wedding party was seated at the tables eating and the musicians had stopped playing and were squatting together drinking from tin cups. A man sitting alone on one of the benches who seemed no part of the wedding looked up at the sound of the slow hooves in the road and raised one hand to the pale rider passing with blanket and rifle and he raised a hand back and then rode on.