The Crossing(107)

He stepped aside and Billy entered and the mozo resecured the door. Espere aquí, he said. Then he went padding away over the cobbles and disappeared in the dark.

He waited a long time. From the rear of the zaguán came the smell of green plants and earth and humus. A rustle of wind. Of things disturbed that had been sleeping. Outside the gate Niño whinnied softly. Finally a light came on in the patio and the mozo reappeared. Behind him the doctor.

He was not dressed but came forward in his robe, one hand in his robe pocket. A small and unkempt man.

Dónde está su hermano’, he said.

En el ejido de San Diego.

Y cuándo ocurrió ese accidente?

Hace dos días.

The doctor studied the boy’s face in the pale and yellow light. He is very hot?

I dont know. Yes. Some.

The doctor nodded. Bueno, he said. He told the mozo to start the car and then turned back to Billy. I will need some minutes, he said. Five minutes.

He held up one hand and spread his fingers.

Yessir.

You have nothing to pay of course.

I got a good horse outside. I’ll give you the horse.

I dont want your horse.

I got papers on him. Tengo los papeles.

The doctor had already turned to go. Bring in the horse, he said. You can put the horse here.

Have you got room to where we can take the saddle with us? The saddle?

I’d like to keep the saddle. My daddy give it to me. I got no way to carry it back.

You can carry it back on the horse.

You wont take the horse?

No. It is all right.

He stood outside in the street holding Niño while the mozo slid back the bars and opened the tall wooden gates. He started through leading the horse but the mozo cautioned him back and told him to wait and then turned and disappeared. After a while he heard the car start up and the mozo came driving up through the zaguán in an old Dodge opera coupe. He drove out into the street and got out and left the motor running and took the bridlereins and led the horse in through the gates and on toward the rear.

In a few minutes the doctor appeared. He was dressed in a dark suit and the mozo followed behind carrying his medical bag.

Listo, the doctor said.

Listo.

The doctor walked around the car and climbed in. The mozo handed in the bag and shut the door. Billy climbed in the other side and the doctor turned on the lights and the motor died.

He sat waiting. The mozo opened the door and reached under the seat and got the crank and walked around in front of the car and the doctor turned the lights off. The mono bent and fitted the crank into the slot and raised up and gave it a turn and the motor started again. The doctor ran the engine up loudly and turned the lights back on and rolled down the window and took the crank from the mozo. Then he pulled the shiftlever in the floor down into first and they pulled away.

The street was narrow and ill lit and the yellow beams of the headlamps ran out to a wall at the end of it. A family of people were just entering the street, the man walking ahead, behind him a woman and two halfgrown girls carrying baskets and shabbily tied bundles. They froze in the headlights like deer and their postures mimicked the shadows volunteered outsized upon the wall behind them, the man standing upright and erect and the woman and the older girl throwing up one arm as if to protect themselves. The doctor levered the big wooden steering wheel to the left and the headlights swung away and the figures vanished once more into the indenominate dark of the Mexican night.

Tell me of this accident, the doctor said.

My brother got shot in the chest with a rifle.

And when did this happen?

Two days ago.

Does he speak?

Sir?

Does he speak? Is he awake?

Yessir. He’s awake. He never did talk much.

Yes, said the doctor. Of course. He lit a cigarette and smoked quietly on the road south. He said that the car had a radio and that Billy could play it if he wished but Billy thought that the doctor would play it himself if he wanted to hear it. After a while the doctor did so. They listened to american hillbilly music coming out of Acuña on the Texas border and the doctor drove and smoked in silence and the hot eyes of cattle feeding in the bar ditches at the side of the road floated up in the carlights and everywhere the desert stretched away in the dark beyond.

They turned up the ejido road through the river loam and the pale shapes of the cottonwood trunks passing in the lights and lumbered over the wooden bridge and up the hill and into the compound. The ejido dogs crossed back and forth in the lights howling. Billy pointed their way and they drove up past the darkened doors of the sleeping communals and halted before the dim yellow light where his brother lay within among his offerings like some feastday icon. The doctor shut off the engine and the lights and reached for the bag but Billy had already taken it to carry. He nodded and stepped out of the car and adjusted his hat and entered the house with Billy behind him.