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Cities of the Plain(3)

By:rmac McCarthy


Billy spooned the eggs and set the bowl down and reached for the sausage. Mornin Oren, he said. Mornin JC.

JC looked up from his plate. I guess you been fightin that bear all night too.

Fightin that bear, said Billy. He reached and took a biscuit and refolded the cloth back over the plate and reached for the butter.

Let’s see them eyes again, said JC.

Aint nothin wrong with these eyes. Pass the salsa yonder.

He spooned the hot sauce over his eggs. Fight fire with fire. Aint that right John Grady?

An old man had come into the kitchen with his braces hanging. He wore an oldfashioned shirt of the kind the collar buttoned to and it was open at the neck and no collar to it. He had just shaved and there was shaving cream on his neck and on the lobe of one ear. John Grady pushed back his chair.

Here Mr Johnson, he said. Set here. I’m all done.

He rose with his plate to take it to the sink but the old man waved him down and went on toward the stove. Set down, he said, set down. I’m just gettin me some coffee.

Socorro unhooked one of the white porcelain mugs from the underside of the cabinet shelf and poured it and turned the handle facing out and handed it to the old man and he took it and nodded and went back across the kitchen. He stopped at the table and spooned two huge scoops of sugar out of the bowl into his cup and left the room taking the sugarspoon with him. John Grady put his cup and plate on the sideboard and got his lunchbucket off the counter and went out.

What’s wrong with him? said JC.

Aint nothin wrong with him, said Billy.

I meant John Grady.

I know who you meant.

Oren folded the paper and laid it on the table. Dont you all even start, he said. Troy, you ready?

I’m ready.

They pushed back from the table and rose and went out. Billy sat picking his teeth. He looked at JC. What are you doin this mornin?

I’m goin into town with the old man.

He nodded. Out in the yard the truck started. Well, he said. It’s light enough to see, I reckon.

He rose and crossed the kitchen and got his lunchpail from the counter and went out. JC reached across the table and got the paper.

John Grady was sitting behind the wheel of the idling truck. Billy got in and set the lunchpail on the floor and shut the door and looked at him.

Well, he said. You ready to put in a day’s work for a day’s wages?

John Grady put the truck in gear and they pulled away down the drive.

Daybreak to backbreak for a godgiven dollar, said Billy. I love this life. You love this life, son? I love this life. You do love this life dont you? Cause by god I love it. Just love it.

He reached into his shirtpocket and shook out a cigarette from the pack there and lit it with his lighter and sat smoking while they rolled down the drive through the long morning shadows of fence and post and oaktree. The sun was blinding white on the dusty windshield glass. Cattle standing along the fence called after the truck and Billy studied them. Cows, he said.

They nooned on a grassy rise on the red clay ranges ten miles south of the ranch house. Billy lay with his rolled jacket under his head and his hat over his eyes. He squinted out at the gray headlands of the Guadalupes eighty miles to the west. I hate comin out here, he said. Goddamn ground wont even hold a fencepost.

John Grady sat crosslegged chewing a weedstem. Twenty miles to the south a live belt of green ran down the Rio Grande valley. In the foreground fenced gray fields. Gray dust following a tractor and cultivator down the gray furrows of a fall cottonfield.

Mr Johnson says the army sent people out here with orders to survey seven states in the southwest and find the sorriest land they could find and report back. And Mac’s ranch was settin right in the middle of it.

Billy looked at John Grady and looked back at the mountains.

You think that’s true? said John Grady.

Hell, who knows.

JC says the old man is gettin crazier and crazier.

Well he’s still got more sense crazy than JC’s got sane so what does that make JC?

I dont know.

There aint nothin wrong with him. He’s just old is all.

JC says he aint been right since his daughter died.

Well. There aint no reason why he should be. He thought the world of her.

Yeah.

Maybe we ought to ask Delbert. Get Delbert’s view of things.

Delbert aint as dumb as he looks.

I hope to God he aint. Anyway the old man always had a few things peculiar about him and he’s still got em. This place aint the same. It never will be. Maybe we’ve all got a little crazy. I guess if everbody went crazy together nobody would notice, what do you think?

John Grady leaned and spat between his teeth and put the stem back in his mouth. You liked her, didnt you?

Awful well. She was as nice to me as anybody I ever knew.

A coyote came out of the brush and trotted along the crest of a rise a quarter mile to the east. I want you to look at that son of a bitch, said Billy.