The Crossing(14)

Buenas tardes, he said. El señor está?

She bit crisply into the apple with her big white teeth. She looked at him. El señor? she said.

Don Arnulfo.

She looked past him toward the horse tied to the fencepost and she looked at him again. She chewed. She watched him with her black eyes.

Él está? he said.

I’m thinking it over.

What’s there to think about? He’s either here or he aint.

Maybe.

I aint got no money.

She bit into the apple again. It made a loud cracking noise. He dont want your money, she said.

He stood holding his hat in his hands. He looked out to where he’d seen the horses but they had disappeared over the rise.

All right, she said.

He looked at her.



He’s been sick. Maybe he wont say nothin to you.

Well. He will or he wont.

Maybe you like to come back some other time.

I aint got some other time.

She shrugged. Bueno, she said. Pásale.

She held open the door and he stepped past into the low mud house. Gracias, he said.

She gestured with her chin. Atrás, she said.

Gracias.

The old man was in a dark cell of a room at the back of the house. The room smelled of woodsmoke and kerosene and sour bedding. The boy stood in the doorway and tried to make him out. He turned and looked back but the woman had gone on to the kitchen. He stepped down into the room. There was an iron bedstead in the corner. A figure small and dark prone upon it. The room smelled as well of dust or clay. As if it might be that which the old man smelled of. But then even the floor of the room was mud.

He said the old man’s name and the old man shifted in his bedding. Adelante, he wheezed.

He stepped forward, still holding his hat. He passed like an apparition through the banded rhomboid light from the small window in the western wall. The routed dustmotes reeled. It was cold in the room and he could see the pale wisps of the old man’s breath rise and vanish in the cold. He could see the black eyes in a weathered face where the old man lay on the bare ticking of his pillow.

Güero, he said. Habla español?

Sí señor.

The old man’s hand rose slightly on the bed and fell again. Tell me what you want, he said.

I come to ask you about trappin wolves.

Wolves.

Yessir.

Wolves, the old man said. Help me.

Sir?

Help me.

He was holding up one hand. It hung trembling in the partial light,disembodied, a hand common to all or none. The boy reached and took it. It was cold and hard and bloodless. A thing of leather and bone. The old man struggled up.

La almohada, he wheezed.

The boy almost put his hat on the bed but he caught himself. The old man’s grip suddenly tightened and the black eyes hardened but he said nothing. The boy put the hat on and reached behind the old man and got hold of the limp and greasy pillow and stood it against the iron bars of the bedstead and the old man clutched his other hand as well and then leaned back fearfully until he came to rest against the pillow. He looked up at the boy. He’d a strong grip for all his frailty and he seemed loath to release the boy’s hands until he’d searched out his eyes.

Gracias, he wheezed.

Por nada.

Bueno, the old man said. Bueno. He slacked his grip and Billy freed one hand and took off his hat again and held it by the brim.

Siéntate, the old man said.

He sat gingerly on the edge of the thin pad that covered the springs of the bed. The old man did not turn loose of his hand.

What is your name?

Parham. Billy Parham.

The old man said the name in silence to himself. Te conozco?

No señor. Estamos a las Charcas.

La Charca.

Sí.

Hay una historia allá.

Historia?

Sí, said the old man. He lay holding the boy’s hand and staring up at the kindlingwood latillas of the ceiling. Una historia desgraciada. De obras desalmadas.

The boy said that he did not know this history and that he would like to hear it but the old man said that it was as well he did not for out of some certain things no good could come and he thought this was one of them. His raspy breath had faded and the sound of it had faded and the faint whiteness of it also that had been briefly visible in the cold of the room. His grip on the boy’s hand remained as before.

Mr Sanders said you might have some scent I could buy off of you. He said I ought to ask.

The old man didnt answer.

He give me some that Mr Echols had but the wolf s took to diggin out the traps and springin em.

Dónde está el señor Echols?

No sé. Se fué.

El murió?

No sir. Not that I’ve heard.

The old man closed his eyes and opened them again. He lay against the ticking of the pillow with his neck slightly awry. He looked as if he’d been thrown there. In the failing light the eyes betrayed nothing. He seemed to be studying the shadows in the room.