All the Pretty Horses

he said: Where’d you get the knife?
    Off the Bautistas. I bought it with the last forty-five pesos we had.
    Blevins’ money.
    Yeah. Blevins’ money.
    Rawlins was lying on his side in the springshot iron bedstead watching him in the dark. The cigarette glowed a deep red where John Grady drew on it and his face with the sutures in his cheek emerged from the darkness like some dull red theatric mask indifferently repaired and faded back again.
    I knew when I bought the knife what I’d bought it for.
    I dont see where you were wrong.
    The cigarette glowed, it faded. I know, he said. But you didnt do it.
    In the morning it was raining again and they stood outside the same cafe with toothpicks in their teeth and looked at the rain in the plaza. Rawlins studied his nose in the glass.
    You know what I hate?
    What?
    Showin up at the house lookin like this.
    John Grady looked at him and looked away. I dont blame you, he said.
    You dont look so hot yourself.
    John Grady grinned. Come on, he said.
    They bought new clothes and hats in a Victoria Street haberdashery and wore them out into the street and in the slow falling rain walked down to the bus station and bought Rawlins a ticket for Nuevo Laredo. They sat in the bus station cafe in the stiff new clothes with the new hats turned upside down on the chairs at either side and they drank coffee until the bus was announced over the speaker.
    That’s you, said John Grady.
    They rose and put on their hats and walked out to the gates.
    Well, said Rawlins. I reckon I’ll see you one of these days.
    You take care.
    Yeah. You take care.
    He turned and handed his ticket to the driver and the driver punched it and handed it back and he climbed stiffly aboard. John Grady stood watching while he passed along the aisle. He thought he’d take a seat at the window but he didnt. He sat on the other side of the bus and John Grady stood for a while and then turned and walked back out through the station to the street and walked slowly back through the rain to the hotel.
    He exhausted in the days following the roster of surgeons in that small upland desert metropolis without finding one to do what he asked. He spent his days walking up and down in the narrow streets until he knew every corner and callejón. At the end of a week he had the stitches removed from his face, sitting in a common metal chair, the surgeon humming to himself as he snipped with his scissors and pulled with his clamp. The surgeonsaid that the scar would improve in its appearance. He said for him not to look at it because it would get better with time. Then he put a bandage over it and charged him fifty pesos and told him to come back in five days and he would remove the stitches from his belly.
    A week later he left Saltillo on the back of a flatbed truck heading north. The day was cool and overcast. There was a large diesel engine chained to the bed of the truck. He sat in the truckbed as they jostled out through the streets, trying to brace himself, his hands at either side on the rough boards. After a while he pulled his hat down hard over his eyes and stood and placed his hands outstretched on the roof of the cab and rode in that manner. As if he were some personage bearing news for the countryside. As if he were some newfound evangelical being conveyed down out of the mountains and north across the flat bleak landscape toward Monclova.

T A CROSSROADS STATION somewhere on the other side of Paredón they picked up five farmworkers who climbed up on the bed of the truck and nodded and spoke to him with great circumspection and courtesy. It was almost dark and it was raining lightly and they were wet and their faces were wet in the yellow light from the station. They huddled forward of the chained engine and he offered them his cigarettes and they thanked him each and took one and they cupped their hands over the small flame against the falling rain and thanked him again.
    De dónde viene? they said.
    De Tejas.
    Tejas, they said. Y dónde va?
    He drew on his cigarette. He looked at their faces. One of them older than the rest nodded at his cheap new clothes.
    Él va a ver a su novia, he said.
    They looked at him earnestly and he nodded and said that it was true.
    Ah, they said. Qué bueno. And after and for a long time to come he’d have reason to evoke the recollection of those smiles and to reflect upon the good will which provoked them for it had power to protect and to confer honor and to strengthen resolve