The Crossing(118)

He looked for them for weeks but he found only shadow and rumor. He found the little heartshaped milagro in the watchpocket of his jeans and he hooked it out with his forefinger and held it in the palm of his hand and he studied it long and long. He rode as far south as Cuauhtémoc. He rode north again to Namiquipa but could find no one who owned to know the girl and he rode as far west as La Norteña and the watershed and he grew thin and gaunted in his travels and pale with the dust of the road but he never saw them again. He sat the horse at dawn in the crossroads at Buenaventura and watched waterfowl trailing over the river and the lonely lagunas, the dark liquid movement of their wings against the red sunrise. He passed back north through the small mud hamlets of the mesa, through Alamo and Galeana, settlements through which he’d passed before and where his return was remarked upon by the poblanos so that his own journeying began to take upon itself the shape of a tale. It was cold at night on the high plains in these early days of December and he had little to keep him warm. When he rode once more into Casas Grandes he’d not eaten in two days and it was past midnight and a cold rain falling.

He rapped long at the zaguán gates. Toward the rear of the house a dog barked. Finally a light came on.

When the mozo opened the gate and looked out to see him standing there in the rain holding the horse he did not seem surprised. He asked after his brother and Billy said that his brother had recovered from his wounds but that he had disappeared and he apologized for the hour but wished to know if he might see the doctor. The mozo said that the hour was of no consequence for the doctor was dead.

He didnt ask the mozo when had the doctor died or of what cause. He stood with his hat and held it in both hands before him. Lo siento, he said.

The mozo nodded. They stood there in silence and then the boy put on his hat and turned and put one foot into the stirrup and stood up into the saddle and sat the dark wet horse and looked down at the mozo. He said that the doctor had been a good man and he looked off down the street toward the lights of the town and he looked again at the mozo.

Nadie Babe to que le espera en este mundo, said the mozo.

De veras, the boy said.

He nodded and touched his hat and turned and rode back down the darkened street.





Border Trilogy 2 - The Crossing





IV


HE CROSSED THE BORDER at Columbus New Mexico. The guard in the gateshack studied him briefly and waved him through. As if he saw his like too often these days to be in doubt about him. Billy halted the horse anyway. I’m an American, he said, if I dont look like it.

You look like you might of left some bacon down there, the guard said.

I aint come back rich, that’s for sure.

I guess you come back to sign up.

I reckon. If I can find a outfit that’ll have me.

You neednt to worry about that. You aint got flat feet have you,

Flat feet?

Yeah. You got flat feet they wont take you.

What the hell are you talkin about?

Talkin about the army.

Army?

Yeah. The army. How long you been gone anyways?

I dont have no idea. I dont even know what month this is.

You dont know what’s happened?

No. What’s happened?

Hell fire, boy. This country’s at war.

He took the long straight clay road north to Deming. The day was cold and he wore the blanket over his shoulders. The knees were out of his trousers and his boots were falling apart. The pockets which had hung by threads from his shirt he’d long ago torn off and thrown away‑ and the back of the shirt where it had separated was sewn with agave and the collar of his jacket had separated and the shredded facing stood about his neck like some tawdry sort of lace and gave him the improbable look of a ruined dandy. The few cars that passed gave him all the berth that narrow road afforded and the people looked back at him through the rolling dust as if he were a thing wholly alien in that landscape. Something from an older time of which they’d only heard. Something of which they’d read. He rode all day and he crossed in the evening through the low foothills of the Florida Mountains and he rode on across the upland plain into the dusk and into the dark. In that dark he passed a file of five horsemen riding south back the way he’d come and he spoke to them in spanish and wished them a good evening and they spoke back to him each one in their soft voices as they passed. As if the closeness of the dark and the straitness of the way had made of them confederates. Or as if only there would confederates be found.

He rode into Deming at midnight and rode the main street from one end to the other. The horse’s shoeless hooves clapping dully on the blacktop in the silence. It was bitter cold. Nothing was open. He spent the night in the bus station at the corner of Spruce and Gold, sleeping on the tile floor wrapped in the filthy serape with his warbag for a pillow and the stained and filthy hat over his face. The sweatblackened saddle stood against the wall along with the shotgun in its scabbard. He slept with his boots on and he got up twice in the night and went out to see about his horse where he’d left it tethered to a lampstandard by the catchrope.