Cormac McCarthy - Cities of the Plain

He sat the next night in the Moderno and waited for the maestro and his daughter. He waited for a long time and he thought perhaps they had already been or perhaps they were

not coming. When the little girl pushed open the door she saw him and looked up at her father but she said nothing. They took a table near the door and the waiter came and poured a glass of wine.

He rose and crossed the room and stood at their table. Maestro, he said.

The blind man turned his face up and smiled at the space alongside John Grady. As if some unseen double stood there.

Buenas noches, he said.

C-mo esti?

Ali, said the blind man. My young friend.

Yes.

Please. You must join us. Sit down.

Thank you.

He sat. He looked at the girl. The blind man hissed at the

waiter and the waiter came over.

QuZ toma? said the maestro.

Nothing. Thank you.

Please. I insist.

I cant stay.

Traiga un vino para mi amigo.

The waiter nodded and moved away. John Grady thumbed back his hat and leaned forward with his elbows on the table. What is this place? he said.

The Moderno? It is a place where the musicians come. It is a very old place. It has always been here. You must come on Saturday. Many old people come. You will see them. They come to dance. Very old people dancing. Here. In this place. The Moderno.

Are they going to play again?

Yes, yes. Of course. It is early. They are my friends.

Do they play every night?

Yes. Every night. They will play soon now. You will see.

Good as the maestro's word the violinists began to tune their instruments in the inner room. The cellist leaned listening with his head inclined and drew his bow across the strings. A couple who had been sitting at a table against the far wall rose and stood in the archway holding hands and then sallied forth onto the concrete floor as the musicians struck up an antique waltz. The maestro leaned forward to hear. Are they dancing? he said. Are any dancing now?

The little girl looked at John Grady. Yes, John Grady said. They're dancing.

The old man leaned back, he nodded. Good, he said. That is good.

THEY SAT AGAINST a rock bluff high in the Franklins with a fire before them that heeled in the wind and their figures cast up upon the rocks behind them enshadowed the petroglyphs carved there by other hunters a thousand years before. They could hear the dogs running far below them. Their cries trailed off down the side of the mountain and sounded again more faintly and then faded away where they coursed out along some rocky draw in the dark. To the south the distant lights of the city lay strewn across the desert floor like a tiara laid out upon a jeweler's blackcloth. Archer had stood and turned toward the running dogs the better to listen and after a while he squatted again and spat into the fire.

She aint goin to tree, he said.

I dont believe she will either, said Travis.

How do you know it's the same lion? said JC.

Travis had taken his tobacco from his pocket and he smoothed and cupped a paper with his fingers. She's done us thisaway before, he said. She'll run plumb out of the country.

They sat listening. The cries grew faint and after a while there were no more. Billy had gone off up the side of the mountain to look for wood and he came back dragging a dead cedar stump. He picked it up and dropped it on top of the fire. A shower of sparks rose and drifted down the night. The stump sat all black and twisted over the small flames. Like some amorphous thing come in out of the night to warm itself among them.

Couldnt you find a bigger chunk of wood, Parham?

It'll take here in a minute.

Parham's put the fire plumb out, said JC.

The darkest hour is just before the storm, said Billy. It'll take here in a minute.

I hear em, Travis said.

I do too.

She's crossed at the head of that big draw where the road cuts back.

We wont get that Lucy dog back tonight.

What dog is that?

Bitch out of that Aldridge line. Them dogs was bred by the Lee Brothers. They just forgot to build in the quit.

Best dog we ever had was her grandaddy, said Archer. You remember that Roscoe dog, Travis?

Of course I do. People thought he was part bluetick but he was a full leopard cur with a glass eye and he did love to fight. We lost him down in Nyarit. Jaguar caught him and bit him damn near in two.

You all dont hunt down there no more.

No.

We aint been back since before the war. It got to be a long ways to go them last few trips. Lee Brothers had about quit goin. They brought a lot of jaguars out of that country, too.

JC leaned and spat into the fire. The flames were snaking up along the sides of the stump.

You all didnt care bein way off down there in old Mexico thataway?

We always got along with them people.

You dont need to go far to get in trouble, said Archer. You want trouble you can find all you can say grace over right across that river yonder.

That's an amen on that.

You cross that river you in another country. You talk to some of these old waddies along this border. Ask em about the revolution.

Do you remember the revolution, Travis?

Archer here can tell you moren what I can.

You was in swaddlin clothes wasnt you, Travis?

Just about it. I do remember bein woke up one time and goin to the window and we looked out and you could see the guns goin off over there like it was the fourth of July.

We lived on Wyoming Street, said Archer. After Daddy died. Mama's Uncle Pless worked in a machine shop on Alameda and they brought in the firingpins out of two artillery pieces and asked him could he turn new ones and he turned em and wouldnt take a dime for it. They was all on the side of the rebels. He brought the old pins home and give em to us boys. There was one shop turned some cannon barrels out of railroad axles and they dragged em back across the river behind a team of mules. The trunnions was made out of Ford truck axle housings and they set em in wood sashes and used the wheels off of fieldwagons to mount em in. That was in November of nineteen and thirteen. Villa come into Ju++rez at two oclock in the mornin on a train he'd highjacked. It was just a flatout war. Lots of folks in El Paso had their windowlights shot out. Some people killed, for that matter. They'd go down and stand along the river there and watch it like it was a ballgame.

Villa come back in nineteen and nineteen. Travis can tell ye. We'd slip over there and hunt for souvenirs. Empty shellcases and what not. There was dead horses and mules in the street. Storewindows shot out. We seen bodies laid out in the alameda with blankets over em or wagonsheets. That sobered us up, I can tell you. They made us take showers with the Mexicans fore they'd let us back in. Disinfected our clothes and all. There was typhus down there and people had died of it.

They sat smoking quietly and looking out at the distant lights in the valley floor below them. Two of the dogs came in out of the night and passed behind the hunters. Their shadows trotted across the stone bluff and they crossed to a place in the dry dust under the rocks where they curled up and were soon asleep.

None of it done anybody any good, Travis said. Or if it did I never heard of it.

I been all over that country down there. I was a cattlebuyer for Spurlocks. Supposed to be one. I was just a kid. I rode all over northern Mexico. Hell, there wasnt no cattle. Not to speak oPS Mostly I just visited. I liked it. I liked the country and I liked the people in it. I rode all over Chihuahua and a good part of Coahuila and some of Sonora. I'd be gone weeks at a time and not have hardly so much as a peso in my pocket but it didnt make no difference. Those people would take you in and put you up and feed you and feed your horse and cry when you left. You could of stayed forever. They didnt have nothin. Never had and never would. But you could stop at some little estancia in the absolute dead center of nowhere and they'd take you in like you was kin. You could see that the revolution hadnt done them no good. A lot of em had lost boys out of the family. Fathers or sons or both. Nearly all of em, I expect. They didnt have no reason to be hospitable to anybody. Least of all a gringo kid. That plateful of beans they set in front of you was hard come by. But I was never turned away. Not a time.