Cormac McCarthy - All The Pretty Horses

Just remember that two pesos is two bits.

You remember it. How much are they?

A dollar and eighty-seven cents.

Hell, said Rawlins. We're in good shape. We get paid in five days.

They bought socks and underwear and they piled everything on the counter while the woman totted up the figures. Then she wrapped the new clothes in two separate parcels and tied them with string.

What have you got left? said John Grady. Four dollars and somethin.

Get a pair of boots.

I lack some havin enough.

I'll let you have the difference. You sure?

Yeah.

We got to have some operatin capital for this evenin. We'll still have a couple of dollars. Go on.

What if you want to buy that sweet thing a soda pop? It'll set me back about four cents. Go on.

Rawlins handled the boots dubiously. He stood one against the sole of his own raised boot.

These things are awful small.

Try these.

Black?

Sure. Why not.

Rawlins pulled on the new boots and walked up and down the floor. The woman nodded approvingly.

What do you think? said John Grady.

They're all right. These underslung heels take some gettin used to.

Let's see you dance.

Do what?

Dance.

Rawlins looked at the woman and he looked at John Grady. Shit, he said. You're lookin at a dancin fool.

Hit it there a few steps.

Rawlins executed a nimble ninestep stomp on the old board floor and stood grinning in the dust he'd raised.

Qué guapo, said the woman.

John Grady grinned and reached in his pocket for his money.

We've forgot to get gloves, said Rawlins.

Gloves?

Gloves. We get done sportin we're goin to have to go back to work.

You got a point.

Them old hot maggie ropes have eat my hands about up.

John Grady looked at his own hands. He asked the woman where the gloves were and they bought a pair apiece.

They stood at the counter while she wrapped them. Rawlins was looking down at his boots.

The old man's got some good silk manilla ropes in the barn, said John Grady. I'll slip one out to you quick as I get a chance.

Black boots, said Rawlins. Aint that the shits? I always wanted to be a badman.

ALTHOUGH THE NIGHT was cool the double doors of the grange stood open and the man selling the tickets was seated in a chair on a raised wooden platform just within the doors so that he must lean down to each in a gesture akin to benevolence and take their coins and hand them down their tickets or pass upon the ticketstubs of those who were only returning from outside. The old adobe hall was buttressed along its outer walls with piers not all of which had been a part of its design and there were no windows and the walls were swagged and cracked. A string of electric bulbs ran the length of the hall at either side and the bulbs were covered with paper bags that had been painted and the brushstrokes showed through in the light and the reds and greens and blues were all muted and much of a piece. The floor was swept but there were pockets of seeds underfoot and drifts of straw and at the far end of the hall a small orchestra labored on a stage of grainpallets under a bandshell rigged from sheeting. Along the foot of the stage were lights set in fruitcans among colored crepe that smoldered throughout the night. The mouths of the cans were lensed with tinted cellophane and they éast upon the sheeting a shadowplay in the lights and smoke of antic demon players and a pair of goathawks arced chittering through the partial darkness overhead.

John Grady and Rawlins and a boy named Roberto from the ranch stood just beyond the reach of light at the door among the cars and wagons and passed among themselves a pint medicinebottle of mescal. Roberto held the bottle to the light.

A las chicas, he said.

He drank and handed off the bottle. They drank. They poured salt from a paper onto their wrists and licked it off and Roberto pushed the cob stopper into the neck of the bottle and hid the bottle behind the tire of a parked truck and they passed around a pack of chewing gum.

Listos? he said.

Listos.

She was dancing with a tall boy from the San Pablo ranch and she wore a blue dress and her mouth was red. He and Rawlins and Roberto stood with other youths along the wall and watched the dancers and watched beyond the dancers the young girls at the far side of the hall. He moved along past the groups. The air smelled of straw and sweat and a rich spice of colognes. Under the bandshell the accordion player struggled with his instrument and slammed his boot on the boards in countertime and stepped back and the trumpet player came forward. Her eyes above the shoulder of her partner swept across him where he stood. Her black hair done up in a blue ribbon and the nape of her neck pale as porcelain. When she turned again she smiled.

He'd never touched her and her hand was small and her waist so slight and she looked at him with great forthrightness and smiled and put her face against his shoulder. They turned under the lights. A long trumpet note guided the dancers on their separate and collective paths. Moths circled the paper lights aloft and the goathawks passed down the wires and flared and arced upward into the darkness again.

She spoke in an english learned largely from schoolbooks and he tested each phrase for the meanings he wished to hear, repeating them silently to himself and then questioning them anew. She said that she was glad that he'd come.

I told you I would.

Yes.

They turned, the trumpet rapped.

Did you not think I would?

She tossed her head back and looked at him, smiling, her eyes aglint. AI contrario, she said. I knew you would come.

At the band's intermission they made their way to the refreshment stand and he bought two lemonades in paper cones and they went out and walked in the night air. They walked along the road and there were other couples in the road and they passed and wished them a good evening. The air was cool and it smelled of earth and perfume and horses. She took his arm and she laughed and called him a mojado-reverso, so rare a creature and one to be treasured. He told her about his life. How his grandfather was dead and the ranch sold. They sat on a low concrete watertrough and with her shoes in her lap and her naked feet crossed in the dust she drew patterns in the dark water with her finger. She'd been away at school for three years. Her mother lived in Mexico and she went to the house on Sundays for dinner and sometimes she and her mother would dine alone in the city and go to the theatre or the ballet. Her mother thought that life on the hacienda was lonely and yet living in the city she seemed to have few friends.

She becomes angry with me because I always want to come here. She says that I prefer my father to her.

Do you?

She nodded. Yes. But that is not why I come. Anyway, she says I will change my mind.

About coming here?

About everything.

She looked at him and smiled. Shall we go in?

He looked toward the lights. The music had started.

She stood and bent with one hand on his shoulder and slipped on her shoes.

I will introduce you to my friends. I will introduce you to Lucia. She is very pretty. You will see.

I bet she aint as pretty as you.

Oh my. You must be careful what you say. Besides it is not true. She is prettier.

He rode back alone with the smell of her perfume on his shirt. The horses were still tied and standing at the edge of the barn but he could not find Rawlins or Roberto. When he untied his horse the other two tossed their heads and whinnied softly to go. Cars were starting up in the yard and groups of people were moving along the road and he untracted the greenbroke horse out from the lights and into the road before mounting up. A mile from the town a car passed full of young men and they were going fast and he reined the horse to the side of the road and the horse skittered and danced in the glare of the headlights and as they passed they called out at him and someone threw an empty beercan. The horse reared and pitched and kicked out and he held it under him and talked to it as if nothing at all had happened and after a while they went on again. The boil of dust the car had left lay before them down the narrow straight as far as he could see roiling slowly in the starlight like something enormous uncoiling out of the earth. He thought the horse had handled itself well and as he rode he told it so.