He worked on to the end of the week and drew his pay and took the bus out on Sunday morning. He was all day on the road. Night set in just north of Socorro and the sky was filled with flights of waterfowl circling and dropping in to the river marshlands east of the highway. He watched with his face to the cold and darkening glass of the window. He listened for their cries but he could not hear them above the drone of the bus.
He slept at the YMCA and he was at the recruiting office when they opened in the morning and he was on the bus south again before noon. He’d asked the doctor if there was any medicine he could take but the doctor said that there was not. He asked if there was something you could take that would make it run all right just for a while.
Where are you from, the doctor said.
Cloverdale New Mexico.
How many different recruiting offices have you tried to enlist at?
This makes the third one.
Son, even if we did have a deaf doctor we wouldnt put him to listening to recruits with a stethoscope. I think you need to just go on home.
I dont have one to go to.
I thought you said you were from somethingdale. Where was it?
Cloverdale.
Cloverdale.
I was but I aint no more. I dont have anyplace to go. I think I need to be in the army. If I’m goin to die anyways why not use me? I aint afraid.
I wish I could, the doctor said. But I cant. It’s not up to me. I have to follow regulations like everybody else. We turn away good men every day.
Yessir.
Who told you you were going to die?
I dont know. They never told me I wasnt goin to.
Well, the doctor said. They couldnt very well tell you that even if you had a heart like a horse. Could they
No sir. I reckon not.
Go on now.
Sir?
Go on now.
When the bus pulled into the lot behind the bus station at Deming it was three oclock in the morning. He walked out to Chandler’s and went to the saddleroom and got his saddle and went to the stall and led Niño out into the bay and threw the saddleblanket over him. It was very cold. The barn was oak batboards and he could see the horse’s breath pass across the slats lit from the single yellow bulb outside. The groom Ruiz came and stood in the door with his blanket around his shoulders. He watched while Billy saddled the horse. He asked him if he had succeeded in joining the army.
No, Billy said.
Lo siento.
Yo también.
Adónde va?
No sé.
Regresa a Mexico?
No.
Ruiz nodded. Buen viaje, he said.
Gracias.
He led the horse out down the barn bay and through the door and mounted up and rode out.
He rode through the town and took the old road south to Hermanas and Hachita. The horse was newly shod and in good plight from the grain it had been fed on and he rode the sun up and he rode all day and rode it down again and rode on into the night. He slept on the high plain wrapped in his blanket and rose shivering before dawn and rode on again. He quit the road just west of Hachita and rode through the foothills of the Little Hatchet Mountains and struck the railroad coming out of the Phelps Dodge smelter to the south and crossed the tracks and reached the shallow salt lake at sunset.
There was water standing in the flats as far as he could see and the sunset on the water had turned it to a lake of blood. He tried to put the horse forward but the horse could not see across the lake and balked and would not go. He turned and rode south along the flats. Gillespie Mountain lay covered in snow and beyond that the Animas Peaks standing in the last of that day’s sun with the snow lying red in the rincons. And far to the south the pale and ancient cordilleras of Mexico impounding the visible world. He came to the remnants of an old fence and dismounted and twisted out the staples from some of the spindly posts and made a fire and sat with his boots crossed before him staring into it. The horse stood in the dark at the edge of the fire and gazed bleakly at the barren salt ground. It’s your own doin, the boy said. I got no sympathy for you.
They crossed the flat shallow lake in the morning and before noon they struck the old Playas road and followed it west into the mountains. There was snow in the pass and not a track in it. They rode down into the beautiful Animas Valley and took the road south from Animas and reached the Sanders ranch about two hours past nightfall.
He called from the gate and the girl came out on the porch.
It’s Billy Parham, he called.
Who?
Billy Parham.
Come up Billy Parham, she called.
When he entered the parlor Mr Sanders stood. He was older, smaller, more frail. Get in this house, he said.
I’m awful dirty to come in.
You come on in. We thought you’d died.
No sir. Not yet I aint.
The old man shook his hand and held it. He was looking past him toward the door. Where’s that Boyd at? he said.
They ate in the diningroom. The girl served them and then sat down. They ate roast beef and potatoes and beans and the girl passed him a bread dish covered with a linen cloth and he took a piece of cornbread and buttered it. This is awful good, he said.