Cormac McCarthy - All The Pretty Horses

My name is Emilio Pérez, he said. Please. Sit down.

They pulled out chairs at the table and sat. The floor of the room was made of boards but they were not nailed to anything. The blocks of the walls were not mortared and the unpeeled roofpoles were only dropped loosely into the topmost course and the sheets of roofingtin overhead were held down by blocks stacked along their edges. A few men could have disassembled and stacked the structure in half an hour. Yet there was an electric light and a gasburning heater. A carpet. Pictures from calendars pinned to the walls.

You young boys, he said. You enjoy very much to fight, yes?

Rawlins started to speak but John Grady cut him off. Yes, he said. We like it a lot.

Pérez smiled. He was a man about forty with graying hair and moustache, lithe and trim. He pulled out the third chair and stepped over the back of it with a studied casualness and sat and leaned forward with his elbows on the table. The table had been painted green with a brush and the logo of a brewery was partly visible through the paint. He folded his hands.

All this fighting, he said. How long have you been here?

About a week.

How long do you plan to stay?

We never planned to come here in the first place, Rawlins said. I dont believe our plans has got much to do with it.

Pérez smiled. The Americans dont stay so long with us, he said. Sometimes they come here for some months. Two or three. Then they leave. Life here is not so good for the Americans. They dont like it so much.

Can you get us out of here?

Pérez spaced his hands apart and made a shrugging gesture. Yes, he said. I can do this, of course.

Why dont you get yourself out, said Rawlins.

He leaned back. He smiled again. The gesture he made of throwing his hands suddenly away from him like birds dismissed sorted oddly with his general air of containment. As if he thought it perhaps an american gesture which they would understand.

I have political enemies. What else? Let me be clear with you. I do not live here so very good. I must have money to make my own arrangements and this is a very expensive business. A very expensive business.

You're diggin a dry hole, said John Grady. We dont have no money.

Pérez regarded them gravely.

If you dont have no money how can you be release from your confinement?

You tell us.

But there is nothing to tell. Without money you can do nothing.

Then I dont guess we'll be goin anywheres.

Pérez studied them. He leaned forward and folded his hands again. He seemed to be giving thought how to put things.

This is a serious business, he said. You dont understand the life here. You think this struggle is for these things. Some shoelaces or some cigarettes or something like that. The lucha. This is a naive view. You know what is naive? A naive view. The real facts are always otherwise. You cannot stay in this place and be independent peoples. You dont know what is the situation here. You dont speak the language.

He speaks it, said Rawlins.

Pérez shook his head. No, he said. You dont speak it. Maybe in a year here you might understand. But you dont have no year. You dont have no time. If you dont show faith to me I cannot help you. You understand me? I cannot offer to you my help.

John Grady looked at Rawlins. You ready, bud?

Yeah. I'm readv.

They pushed back their chairs and rose.

Pérez looked up at them. Sit down please, he said.

There's nothin to sit about.

He drummed his fingers on the table. You are very foolish, he said. Very foolish.

John Grady stood with his hand on the door. He turned and looked at Pérez. His face misshapen and his jaw bowed out and his eye still swollen closed and blue as a plum.

Why dont you tell us what's out there? he said. You talk about showin faith. If we dont know then why dont you tell us?

Pérez had not risen from the table. He leaned back, and looked at them.

I cannot tell you, he said. That is the truth. I can say certain things about those who come under my protection. But the others?

He made a little gesture of dismissal with the back of his hand.

The others are simply outside. They live in a world of possibility that has no end. Perhaps God can say what is to become of them. But I cannot.

The next morning crossing the yard Rawlins was set upon by a man with a knife. The man he'd never seen before and the knife was no homemade trucha ground out of a trenchspoon but an italian switchblade with black horn handles and nickle bolsters and he held it at waist level and passed it three times across Rawlins' shirt while Rawlins leaped three times backward with his shoulders hunched and his arms outflung like a man refereeing his own bloodletting. At the third pass he turned and ran. He ran with one hand across his stomach and his shirt was wet and sticky.

When John Grady got to him he was sitting with his back to the wall holding his arms crossed over his stomach and rocking back and forth as if he were cold. John Grady knelt and tried to pull his arms away.

Let me see, damn it.

That son of a bitch. That son of a bitch.

Let me see.

Rawlins leaned back. Aw shit, he said.

John Grady lifted the bloodsoaked shirt.

It aint that bad, he said. It aint that bad.

He cupped his hand and ran it across Rawlins' stomach to chase the blood. The lowest cut was the deepest and it had severed the outer fascia but it had not gone through into the stomach wall. Rawlins looked down at the cuts. It aint good, he said. Son of a bitch.

Can you walk?

Yeah, I can walk.

Come on.

Aw shit, said Rawlins. Son of a bitch.

Come on, bud. You cant set here.

He helped Rawlins to his feet.

Come on, he said. I got you.

They crossed the quadrangle to the gateshack. The guard looked out through the sallyport. He looked at John Grady and he looked at Rawlins. Then he opened the gate and John Grady passed Rawlins into the hands of his captors.

They sat him in a chair and sent for the alcaide. Blood dripped slowly onto the stone floor beneath him. He sat holding his stomach with both hands. After a while someone handed him a towel.

In the days that followed John Grady moved about the compound as little as possible. He watched everywhere for the cuchillero who would manifest himself from among the anonymous eyes that watched back. Nothing occurred. He had a few friends among the inmates. An older man from the state of Yucatán who was outside of the factions but was treated with respect. A dark indian from Sierra León. Two brothers named Bautista who had killed a policeman in Monterrey and set fire to the body and were arrested with the older brother wearing the policeman's shoes. All agreed that Pérez was a man whose power could only be guessed at. Some said he was not confined to the prison at all but went abroad at night. That he kept a wife and family in the town. A mistress.

He tried to get some word from the guards concerning Rawlins but they claimed to know nothing. On the morning of the third day after the stabbing he crossed the yard and tapped at Pérez's door. The drone of noise in the yard behind him almost ceased altogether. He could feel the eyes on him and when Pérez's tall chamberlain opened the door he only glanced at him and then looked beyond and raked the compound with his eyes.

Quisiera hablar con el señor Pérez, said John Grady.

Con respecto de que?

Con respecto de mi cuate.

He shut the door. John Grady waited. After a while the door opened again. Pásale, said the chamberlain.

John Grady stepped into the room. Pérez's man shut the door and then stood against it. Pérez sat at his table.

How is the condition of your friend? he said.

That's what I come to ask you.

Pérez smiled.