The Crossing(137)

They sat for a long time. Finally Quijada leaned forward and studied his cup. He should have gone home, he said.

Yes.

Why didnt he?

I dont know. Maybe the girl.

The girl would not have gone with him?

I suppose she would have. He didnt rightly have a home to go to.

Maybe you are the one who should have cared for him better. He wasnt easy to care for. You said it yourself.

Yes.

What does the corrido say?

Quijada shook his head. The corrido tells all and it tells nothing. I heard the tale of the güerito years ago. Before your ‘brother was even born.

You dont think it tells about him?

Yes, it tells about him. It tells what it wishes to tell. It tells what makes the story run. The corrido is the poor man’s history. It does not owe its allegiance to the truths of history but to the truths of men. It tells the tale of that solitary man who is all men. It believes that where two men meet one of two things can occur and nothing else. In the one case a lie is born and in the other death.

That sounds like death is the truth.

Yes. It sounds like death is the truth. He looked at Billy. Even if the güerito in the song is your brother he is no longer your brother. He cannot be reclaimed.

I aim to take him back with me.

It will not be permitted.

Who would I go to?

There is no one to go to.

Who would I go to if there was someone?

You could apply to God. Otherwise there is no one.

Billy shook his head. He sat regarding his own dark visage where it yawed in the white ring of the cup. After a while he looked up. He looked into the fire. Do you believe in God? he said.

Quijada shrugged. On godly days, he said.

No one can tell you what your life is goin to be, can they? No.

It’s never like what you expected.

Quijada nodded. If people knew the story of their lives how many would then elect to live them? People speak about what is in store. But there is nothing in store. The day is made of what has come before. The world itself must be surprised at the shape of that which appears. Perhaps even God.

We come down here to get our horses. Me and my brother. I dont think he even cared about the horses, but I was too dumb to see it. I didnt know nothin about him. I thought I did. I think he knew a lot more about me. I’d like to take him back and bury him in his own country.

Quijada drained his cup and sat holding it in his lap.

I take it you dont think that’s such a good idea.

I think you may have some problems.

But that aint all you think.

No.

You think he belongs where he’s at.

I think the dead have no nationality.

No. But their kin do.

Quijada didnt answer. After a long time he stirred. He leaned forward. He turned the white porcelain bowl up and held it in the palm of his hand and regarded it. The world has no name, he said. The names of the cerros and the Sierras and the deserts exist only on maps. We name them that we do not lose our way. Yet it was because the way was lost to us already that we have made those names. The world cannot be lost. We are the ones. And it is because these names and these coordinates are our own naming that they cannot save us. That they cannot find for us the way again. Your brother is in that place which the world has chosen for him. He is where he is supposed to be. And yet the place he has found is also of his own choosing. That is a piece of luck not to be despised.

GRAY SKY, gray land. All day he slouched north on the wet and slouching horse through the sandy muck of the upcountry roads. The rain went harrying over the road before him in the gusts of wind and rattled over his slicker and the hooftracks oozed shut behind him. In the evening he heard again the cranes overhead, passing high above the overcast, balancing beneath them the bight of the earth’s curve, earth’s weather. Their metal eyes grooved to the pathways which God has chosen for them to follow. Their hearts in flood.

He rode into the town of San Buenaventura in the evening and he rode through pools of standing water past the alameda with its whitepainted treetrunks and the old white church and out along the old road to Gallego. The rain had stopped and rain dripped from the alameda trees and dripped from the high canales in the mudwalled houses he passed. The road led up through the low hills to the east of the town and set in a bench of land there a mile or so above the town lay the cemetery.

He turned off and slogged out along the muddy lane and halted his horse before the wooden gates. The cemetery was a large and wild enclosure set in a field filled with loose stones and brambles and surrounded by a low mud wall already then in ruins. He halted and looked out over this desolation. He turned and looked back at the packhorse and he looked at the gray scud of clouds and at the evening light failing in the west. A wind was blowing down from the gap in the mountains and he stepped down and dropped the reins and passed through the gate and started out across the rough cobbled field. A raven flew up out of the bracken and parried away on the wind croaking thinly. The red sandstone dolmens that stood upright among the low tablets and crosses on that wild heath looked like the distant ruins of some classic enclave ringed about by the blue mountains, the closer hills.