Cormac McCarthy - Cities of the Plain

People will do anything. Yessir. They will.

You live long enough you'll see it. Yessir. I have.

Mr Johnson didnt answer. He flipped the butt of his cigarette out across the yard in a slow red arc.

Aint nothin to burn out there. I remember when you could have grassfires in this country.

I didnt mean I'd seen everthing, John Grady said.

I know you didnt.

I just meant I'd seen things I'd as soon not oPS

I know it. There's hard lessons in this world.

What's the hardest?

I dont know. Maybe it's just that when things are gone they're gone. They aint comin back.

Yessir.

They sat. After a while the old man said: The day after my fiftieth birthday in March of nineteen and seventeen I rode into the old headquarters at the Wilde well and there was six dead wolves hangin on the fence. I rode along the fence and ran my hand along em. I looked at their eyes. A government trapper had brought em in the night before. They'd been killed with poison baits. Strychnine. Whatever. Up in the Sacramentos. A week later he brought in four more. I aint heard a wolf in this country since. I suppose that's a good thing. They can be hell on stock. But I guess I was always what you might call superstitious. I know I damn sure wasnt religious. And it had always seemed to me that somethin can live and die but that the kind of thing that they were was always there. I didnt know you could poison that. I aint heard a wolf howl in thirty odd years. I dont know where you'd go to hear one. There may not be any such a place.

When he walked back through the barn Billy was standing in the doorway.

Has he gone back to bed?

Yeah.

What was he doin up?

He said he couldnt sleep. What were you?

Same thing. You?

Same thing.

Somethin in the air I reckon.

I dont know.

What was he talkin about?

Just stuff.

What did he say?

I guess he said cattle could tell the difference between a flight of geese and a cat on fire.

Maybe you dont need to be hangin around him so much.

You might be right.

You all seem to have a lot in common.

He aint crazy, Billy.

Maybe. But I dont know as you'd be the first one I'd come to for an opinion about it.

I'm goin to bed.

Night.

Night.

HE TOLD THE WOMAN in spanish that he intended to keep his hat and he carried it with him up the two steps to the bar and then he put it on again. There were some Mexican businessmen standing at the bar and he nodded to them as he passed. They nodded back curtly. The barman placed a napkin down. Se-or? he said.

Old Grandad and water back.

The barman moved away. Billy took out his cigarettes and lighter and laid them on the bar. He looked in the backbar mirror. Several whores were draped about on the couches in the lounge. They looked like refugees from a costume ball. The barman returned with the shot of whiskey and set it and the glass of water on the bar and Billy picked up the whiskey and rocked it once in a slow circular motion and then raised it and drank. He reached for his cigarettes, he nodded to the barman.

Otra vez, he said.

The barman came with the bottle. He poured.

D-nde est++ Eduardo, said Billy.

QuiZn?

Eduardo.

The barman poured reflectively. He shook his head.

El patr-n, said Billy.

El patr-n no est++.

Cu++ndo regresa?

No sZ. He stood holding the bottle. Hay un problema? he said.

Billy shook a cigarette from the pack and put it in his mouth and reached for the lighter. No, he said. No hay un problema. I need to see him on a business deal.

What is your business?

He lit the cigarette and laid the lighter on top of the pack and blew smoke across the bar and looked up.

I dont feel like we're makin much progress here, he said.

The barman shrugged.

Billy took his money from his shirtpocket and laid a tendollar bill on the bar.

That aint for the drinks.

The barman looked down the bar to where the businessmen were standing. He looked at Billy.

Do you know what this job is worth? he said.

What?

I said do you know what this job is worth?

You mean you make pretty good on tips.

No. I mean do you know what it costs to buy a job like this? I never heard of nobody buyin a job.

You do lots of business in Mexico?

No.

The barman stood with the bottle. Billy took out his money again and put down two fives on top of the ten. The barman palmed the money off the bar and put it in his pocket. Un momento, he said. EspZrate.

Billy took up the whiskey and swirled it and drank. He set the glass down and passed the back of his wrist across his mouth. When he looked in the backbar glass the alcahuete was standing at his left elbow like Lucifer.

S' se-or, he said.

Billy turned and looked at him.

Are you Eduardo?

No. How may I help you?

I wanted to see Eduardo.

What do you want to see him about?

I wanted to talk to him.

Yes. Talk to me.

Billy turned to look at the barman but the barman had moved away to serve the other patrons.

It's just somethin personal, Billy said. Hell, I aint goin to hurt him.

The alcahuete's eyebrows moved slightly upward. That is good to know, he said. You find something you dont like?

I got a deal he might be interested in.

Who is the dealer.

What?

Who is the dealer.

Me. I'm the dealer.

Tiburcio studied him for a long time. I know who you are, he said.

You know who I am?

Yes.

Who am I?

You are the trujam++n.

What's that?

You dont speak spanish?

I speak spanish.

You come with the mordida.

Billy took out his money and laid it on the bar. I got eighteen dollars. That's all I got. And I aint paid for the drinks yet.

Pay for the drinks.

What?

Pay for the drinks.

Billy left a five on the bar and put the thirteen dollars in his shirtpocket along with his cigarettes and lighter and stood.

Follow me.

He followed him out through the lounge past the whores in their whore's finery. Through the kaleidoscope of pieced light from the overhead chandelier and past the empty bandstand to a door at the rear.

The door was covered in winecolored baize and there was no doorknob to it. The alcahuete opened it anyway and they entered a corridor with blue walls and a single blue bulb screwed into the ceiling above the door. The alcahuete held the door and he stepped through and the alcahuete closed it behind them and turned and went down the corridor. The musky spice of his cologne hung in the air. At the farthest end of the corridor he stopped and tapped twice with his knuckles upon a door embossed with silver foil. He turned, waiting, his hands crossed before him at the wrist.

A buzzer buzzed and the alcahuete opened the door. Wait here, he said.

Billy waited. An old woman with one eye came down the corridor and tapped at one of the doors. When she saw him there she blessed herself with the sign of the cross. The door opened and she disappeared inside and the door closed and the corridor stood empty once again in the soft blue light.

When the silver door opened the alcahuete motioned him inside with a cupping motion of his thin ringed fingers. He stepped in and stood. Then he took off his hat.

Eduardo was sitting at his desk smoking one of his slender black cigars. He was sitting sideways with his feet crossed before him propped in the open lower drawer of his desk and he appeared to be examining his polished lizardskin boots. How may I help you? he said.

Billy looked back at Tiburcio. He looked again at Eduardo. Eduardo lifted his feet from the drawer and swiveled slowly in his chair. He was dressed in a black suit with a pale green shirt open at the neck. He rested his arm on the polished glass top of the desk, he held the cigar. He looked like he had nothing much on his mind.