Cities of the Plain(58)

Eduardo stood in the doorway. The criada saw the girl’s eyes and turned. He jerked his chin at her and she went to the dresser and laid down the hairbrush and put the pins in a china tray and went past him and out the door.

He came in and shut the door behind him. The girl stood quietly in the center of the room.

Voltéate, he said. He made a stirring motion with his forefinger.

She turned.

Ven aquí.

She came slowly forward and stood. He took her jaw in the palm of his hand and raised her face and looked into her painted eyes. When she lowered it again he put his hand into the gathered hair at her neck and pulled her head back. She turned her eyes up toward the ceiling. Her pale throat exposed. The visible bloodpulse in the thick arteries at either side of her neck and the small tic at the corner of her mouth. He told her to look at him and she did but she seemed to have power to cause those dark and hooded eyes of hers to go opaque. So that the visible depth in them was lost or shrouded. So that they hid the world within. He recaught his grip in her hair and the smooth skin tautened over her cheekbones and her eyes widened. He commanded again that she look at him but she was already looking at him and she did not answer.

A quién le rezas? he hissed.

A Dios.

Quién responde?

Nadie.

Nadie, he said.

That night she felt the cold pneuma come upon her as she lay naked in the bed. She turned and called to the cliente standing in the room.

I’m bein as quick as I can, he said.

By the time he’d slid into the bed beside her she’d cried out and gone rigid and her eyes white. In the muted light he could not see her but he placed his hand on her body and felt her bowed and trembling under his palm and taut as a snaredrum. He felt the tremor of her like the hum of a current running in her bones.

What is it? he said. What is it?

He came out into the hallway half dressed and pulling on his clothes. Tiburcio appeared from nowhere. He pushed the man aside and knelt in the girl’s bed and unbuckled his belt and whipped it from about his waist and caught it and folded it and seized the girl’s jaw and forced the leather between her teeth. The cliente watched from the doorway. I didnt do nothin, he said. I never even touched her.

Tiburcio rose and strode toward the door.

She just went that way, the cliente said.

Speak to no one, Tiburcio said. You understand me?

You got it, old buddy. Just you let me get my shoes.

The alcahuete shut the door after him. The girl was breathing harshly through the belt. He sat and pulled back the covers. He studied her without expression. He bent over her slightly in his black silk. The soft false whisper of it. A morbid voyeur, a mortician. An incubus of uncertain proclivity or perhaps just a dark dandy happened in from off the neon streets who aped imperfectly with his pale and tapered hands those ministrations of the healing arts that he had seen or heard of or as he imagined them to be. What are you? he said. You are nothing.

* * *



WHEN HE STEPPED OUT onto the porch and let the screendoor to behind him Mr Johnson was sitting on the edge of the porch with his elbows propped on his knees watching the sunset where it deepened and flared over the Franklins to the west. Distant flocks of geese were moving downriver along the jornada. They looked no more than bits of string against the raucous red of the sky and they were far too distant to be heard.

Where are you off to? said the old man.

John Grady walked to the edge of the porch and stood picking his teeth and looking out across the country along with him. What makes you think I’m off to somewhere?

Hair all slicked back like a muskrat. Boots.

He sat on the boards beside the old man. Goin to town, he said.

The old man nodded. Well, he said. I reckon it’s still there.

Yessir.

You couldnt prove it by me.

When was the last time you were in El Paso?

I dont know. Been a year, I’d say. Maybe longer.

You dont get tired bein out here all the time?

I do. At times.

You dont ever want to make a run in to sort of see what’s goin on?

I dont believe it would help. I dont believe there’s anything goin on.

Did you used to go over to Juárez?

Yes I did. Back when I was a drinkin man. The last time I was in Juárez Mexico was in nineteen and twenty-nine. I seen a man shot in a bar. He was standin at the bar drinkin a beer and this man come in and walked up behind him and pulled a government forty-five out of his belt and shot him in the back of the head with it. Stuck the gun back in his breeches and turned and walked out again. He wasnt even in a hurry about it.

Shot him dead?

Yes. He was dead standin there. Thing I remember is how quick he fell down. Just dead weight. The movies dont ever get that part right neither.

Where were you?

I was standin almost next to him. I seen it in the bar mirror. I’m partially deaf to this day in this one ear on account of it. His head just damn near come off. Blood everwhere. Brains. I had on a brand new Stradivarius gabardine shirt and a pretty good Stetson hat and I burned everthing I had on save the boots. I bet I took nine baths handrunnin.