All the Pretty Horses

My grandaddy was killed in a minebucket in West Virginia it run down in the hole a hunnerd and eighty feet to get him it couldnt even wait for himto get to the top. They had to wet down the bucket to cool it fore they could get him out of it, him and two other men. It fried em like bacon. My daddy’s older brother was blowed out of a derrick in the Batson Field in the year nineteen and four, cable rig with a wood derrick but the lightnin got him anyways and him not nineteen year old. Great uncle on my mother’s side—mother’s side, I said—got killed on a horse and it never singed a hair on that horse and it killed him graveyard dead they had to cut his belt off him where it welded the buckle shut and I got a cousin aint but four years oldern me was struck down in his own yard comin from the barn and it paralyzed him all down one side and melted the fillins in his teeth and soldered his jaw shut.
    I told you, said Rawlins. He’s gone completely dipshit.
    They didnt know what was wrong with him. He’d just twitch and mumble and point at his mouth like.
    That’s a out and out lie or I never heard one, said Rawlins.
    Blevins didnt hear. Beads of sweat stood on his forehead. Another cousin on my daddy’s side it got him it set his hair on fire. The change in his pocket burned through and fell out on the ground and set the grass alight. I done been struck twice how come me to be deaf in this one ear. I’m double bred for death by fire. You got to get away from anything metal at all. You dont know what’ll get you. Brads in your overalls. Nails in your boots.
    Well what do you intend to do?
    He looked wildly toward the north. Try and outride it, he said. Only chance I got.
    Rawlins looked at John Grady. He leaned and spat. Well, he said. If there was any doubt before I guess that ought to clear it up.
    You cant outride a thunderstorm, said John Grady. What the hell is wrong with you?
    It’s the only chance I got.
    He’d no sooner said it than the first thin crack of thunder reached them no louder than a dry stick trod on. Blevins tookoff his hat and passed the sleeve of his shirt across his forehead and doubled the reins in his fist and took one last desperate look behind him and whacked the horse across the rump with the hat.
    They watched him go. He tried to get his hat on and then lost it. It rolled in the road. He went on with his elbows flapping and he grew small on the plain before them and more ludicrous yet.
    I aint takin no responsibility for him, said Rawlins. He reached and unhooked the canteen from John Grady’s saddlehorn and put his horse forward. He’ll be a lay in in the road down here and where do you reckon that horse’ll be?
    He rode on, drinking and talking to himself. I’ll tell you where that horse’ll be, he called back.
    John Grady followed. Dust blew from under the tread of the horses and twisted away down the road before them.
    Run plumb out of the country, called Rawlins. That’s where. Gone to hell come Friday. That’s where the goddamn horse’ll be.
    They rode on. There were spits of rain in the wind. Blevins’ hat lay in the road and Rawlins tried to ride his horse over it but the horse stepped around it. John Grady slid one boot out of the stirrup and leaned down and picked up the hat without dismounting. They could hear the rain coming down the road behind them like some phantom migration.
    Blevins’ horse was standing saddled by the side of the road tied to a clump of willows. Rawlins turned and sat his horse in the rain and looked at John Grady. John Grady rode through the willows and down the arroyo following the occasional bare footprint in the rainspotted loam until he came upon Blevins crouched under the roots of a dead cottonwood in a caveout where the arroyo turned and fanned out onto the plain. He was naked save for an outsized pair of stained undershorts.
    What the hell are you doin? said John Grady.
    Blevins sat gripping his thin white shoulders in either hand. Just settin here, he said.
    John Grady looked out over the plain where the last remnants of sunlight were being driven toward the low hills to the south. He leaned and dropped Blevins’ hat at his feet.
    Where’s your clothes at?
    I took em off.
    I know that. Where are they?
    I left em up yonder. Shirt had brass snaps too.
    If this rain hits hard there’ll be a river come down through here like a train. You thought about that?
    You aint never been struck by lightnin, said Blevins. You dont know