Cities of the Plain(74)

I was supposed to get married in two days’ time, the boy said.

The rider nodded but the boy said no more.

I take it you changed your mind.

The boy didnt answer. The rider looked off to the north and looked back again.

We might get some rain out of that.

We might. It’s rained over in town the last two nights.

Have you had your dinner?

No. I guess I aint.

Why dont you come on to the house.

I better get on back.

I reckon she changed hers.

The boy looked away. He didnt answer.

There’ll be anothern along directly. You’ll see.

No there wont.

Why dont you come on to the house and take dinner with us.

I appreciate it. I need to get back.

You remind me some of myself. Get somethin on your mind and just ride.

John Grady sat loosely holding the reins. He looked a long time out at the running country before he spoke. When he did speak the rider had to lean to catch his words. I wish I could ride, he said. I wish I could.

The rider wiped the corners of his mouth with the heel of his thumb. Maybe you’d better ought not to go back just yet, he said. Maybe you ought to just wait a little while.

I’d ride and I’d never look back. I’d ride to where I couldnt find a single day I ever knew. Even if I was to turn back and ride over ever foot of that ground. Then I’d ride some more.

I’ve been thataway, said the rider.

I better get on.

You sure you wont change your mind? We feed pretty good.

No. I thank you.

Well.

I hope you get that rain up here.

I appreciate it.

He turned the horse and set out south down the broad floodplain. The rider turned his own horse and started back upcountry but he stopped before he’d gone far. He sat the horse and watched the boy riding out down the broad valley and he watched him for a long time. When he could see him no more he raised himself slightly in the stirrups. As if he might call after him. The boy never looked back. When he was gone the rider stayed a while yet. He’d dropped the reins and he sat with one leg crossed over the fork of the saddle and he pushed back his hat and leaned and spat and studied the country. As if it ought to have something to tell him for that figure having passed through it.


IT WAS LATE EVENING and almost dark when he rode the horse through the ford and dismounted under the cottonwoods in the glade at the far side. He let drop the reins and crossed to the cabin and pushed open the door. Inside it was dark and he stood in the doorway and looked back out at the evening. The darkening land. The sky to the west blood red where the sun had gone and the small dark birds blowing down before the storm. The wind in the flue moaned with a long dry sound. He went into the bedroom and stood. He got a match and lit the lamp and turned down the wick and put back the glass chimney and sat on the bed with his hands between his knees. The carved wooden santo leered from the shadows. His own shadow from the lamp rose up the wall behind him. A hulking shape which looked no description of him at all. After a while he took off his hat and let it drop to the floor and lowered his face into his hands.

When he rode out again it was dark and windy and starless and cold and the sacaton grass along the creek thrashed in the wind and the small bare trees he passed hummed like wires. The horse quivered and stepped and raised the flues of its nose to the wind. As if to sort what there might be in the coming storm that was not storm alone. They crossed the creek and set out down the old road. He thought he heard a fox bark and he looked for it along the rimrock skylined above the road to the left. Evenings in Mexico he used to see them come out and walk the traprock dikes above the plains for the vantage of the view there. To spy out what smaller life might venture forth in the dusk. Or they would simply sit upon those godlaid walls in silhouette like icons out of Egypt, silent and still against the deepening sky, sufficient to all that might be asked of them.

He’d left the lamp burning in the cabin and the softly lit window looked warm and inviting. Or it would have to other eyes. For himself he was done with all that and after he’d crossed the creek and taken the road he had to take he did not look back again.

When he rode into the yard it was raining lightly and he could see them all at supper through the rainbleared glass of the kitchen window. He rode on toward the barn and then halted the horse and looked back. He thought it was like seeing these people in some other time before he’d ever come to the ranch. Or they were like people in some other house of whose lives and histories he knew nothing. Mostly they all just seemed to be waiting for things to be a way they’d never be again.

He rode into the barn and dismounted and left the horse standing there and went to his room. The horses looked out over the stall doors and watched him as he passed. He did not turn on the light. He got his flashlight from the shelf and knelt and opened the footlocker and rummaged out his slicker and a dry shirt and he got the huntingknife that had belonged to his father from the bottom of the locker and the brown envelope that held his money and laid them on the bed. Then he stripped out of his shirt and put on the dry shirt and pulled on the slicker and put the huntingknife in the slicker pocket. He took some bills from the envelope and put the envelope back in the locker and closed the lid. Then he switched off the flashlight and set it back on the shelf and went out again.