XIX
A CORNER OF THE WALL
A room of his own. It was a cell with wooden bars, looking out upon the court where the prisoners and soldiers still played and lounged. A huge moon, almost full, came up over the opposite roof of low cells, and in the distant shadow there, Mamie squealed and let fly—a plebeian pony venturing too close, no doubt.
A sickish smile he was not aware of hung around Elbert’s mouth. The floor of the cell was of stone. The wooden bars very thick, the ceiling low. There was a wide wooden bench for him to lie upon—blanket roll, saddle, and saddle-bags had been brought.... So the voluble rurale had had but one idea all the time in the afternoon; and crafty little Ramon Bistula with amiable guile—so pleasantly impersonal in leading one astray and putting men to death—Ramon, keeping him in the plaza while his men doubtless went through saddle-bags and roll. But they could have found nothing to implicate him—some silver and canned stuff. His papers of identification were in order. Then he remembered his mention of San Isidro; he would have to prove that Mamie was not one of the stolen horses. Perhaps they would think his papers were stolen, too!
The sickish smile remained—the smile of one who has seen his quest ending in failure. He thought of Mr. Leadley’s affection and care for Mamie, and he had known no better than to let her show her speed on a highroad, and mention the name of San Isidro to the rurale.
His hand came up to his mouth—an ache of muscles that didn’t seem to know enough to relax by themselves. The moonlight felt cold, a creeping cold on the stone floor.... The same song from the patio—guitar and corn-dust maiden—but so different, coming to him through the bars. El capitan was at the door, the sentry unlocking the cell.
‘I have brought blankets of my own for you, Señor. Very soft and warm blankets. I am grieved; but it is only for the present—this interesting mare of yours—a puzzle to the soldiers of Cordano.... A very good night, Señor—’
He had actually dozed, for the plaza was empty. Elbert had heard of people going to sleep as usual, with death hanging over, but he wouldn’t have believed it of himself. All was still, the moon very white upon the turf. The blank wall of the main building within forty feet from where he lay.... This very morning ... word from Cordano all that was necessary for more executions ... ‘mere formality.’ Now gradually, he entered one of the deep and memorable hours of his life, lying propped up against the saddle, looking out through the bars, moonlight flooding down outside, everything so still that he could hear the drops of water from the pail into the cistern in the center of the prison patio. He waited for the isolated drops, but his mind often wandered before the sound came—back to his own house in the East, to his own room, where he had dreamed so much, but nothing like this—slowly through the days at Heaslep’s and the leather-store; the noon-hour in the latter place, when the door was pushed open and a certain whimsical voice started the whole works going:
‘The first thing cow-people does, when they don’t know what to do—’
And that very saddle was under his head! Heaslep’s again, Nacimiento. His Spanish book said that word ‘Nacimiento’ meant Birth ... the old Señora with her castanets, and her house in the town called Birth.... Then the part he never remembered clearly, not even now—the ride to San Pasquali, the ride back; Nogales, its smell of drugs, and the Letter; Tucson and that still room where so many flowers were, still as the patio out yonder.
Until just now, he had never let himself go, in thinking about that room. Too much of a magnet about it all; it drew all the strength of mind and feeling back to it, taking the force from the work at hand here in Sonora. But this was a sort of show-down—locked up here in Arecibo. He dared now to remember that Tucson hour, moment by moment.
... And what did she mean—that she could see the car below—see right through it, and their own bodies, sort of little and broken? He knew what she meant. More than that, he knew her meaning when she said, ‘And I could feel our pain, but we were really together outside and above.’ And ‘You were like one dead, yet you still drove.’... ‘Your face was like stone, eyes open, but no life, the skin pulled back over the bones from behind.’... ‘It was when the dawn came—the time we were in the awful cold—’
Such a stillness around her as she spoke, the stillness of the mountains. He didn’t remember that dawn part after reaching Nogales, but she remembered it all. There was another thing now that he dared to ponder a moment, because he was locked up in this place of birth—no, death. ‘We will know all about everything when the time comes.’ How much did she mean by that?
It would likely be a lot harder to keep on looking for Bart, after letting these memories have their way, but was there to be any more mission? Was this not the end—a cell in Arecibo? His eyes focalized again on the moonlit patio. Deserted and ashen white now, but he was seeing once more the figures of the condemned men—that face of the youth with the guitar and song of the corn-dust maiden—one of the boys who had ridden with Monte Vallejo, ridden with Bart, perhaps.
Elbert had fallen asleep and awakened again to find the silvery sheen gone from the patio. Gray light was there, but no moonlight. A calling of Mexican names:
‘Revas—Marcè—Trastorno—Sarpullir—’
There were one or two more, but he missed hearing the names, curiously struck by the meaning of the last ‘Sarpullir’—‘to be covered with flea-bites,’ as he recalled from his Spanish book. Now the clanging of an iron door broke in upon him, and a thudding on the turf, which he recognized without having heard it before—the dropping of rifle-butts as the pieces were stacked. The Mexican voice was still carrying on. It made him think of the voice of the phonograph record back home, announcing the singer of ‘La Paloma.’
Straight across the patio, one of the sentries was unlocking a cell door. The sentry stood back, as the prisoner emerged. Neither hurried. The prisoner made the sign of the cross, and then held forth his hand. The sentry gave him a cigarette and struck the match on his own box. Then they moved forward—out of sight.
Elbert was on his feet now, rubbing his eyes. It had all been mixed with his dream so far, but now he knew that it was really dawn and the Mexican voice was telling off the deaths of ‘Sarpullir’ and the others. The one across the patio had moved forward to the wall.
It was altogether incredible. The rurale’s story of yesterday, all the stories of death he had ever heard, did not make the present moment believable. It could not be so, here and now.... Men fell off horses, off cliffs, out of parachutes; men were run over by cars, blown to pieces in mines, broken by many labors and inventions, but men could not be put to death—a’ sangre fria—at daybreak by other men!
Now he was standing at the bars of his own cell. Something was pulling him back to the bench, but another force more rigidly held his right cheek-bone pressed between two wooden bars. Only the far corner of the wall could be seen, even so—just one man standing at the blank wall—face of a youth, looking away, head uncovered and looking away.... And now from the left, where Elbert’s eye could not reach, came an old man’s voice raised in wailing. It was like the voice of an old beggar at some city gate—crying out softly against what he saw, not desperately, a low mourning; and all the time the phonograph-voice gave commands—until a shock of volley-fire and a few ragged shots.
The hands of the youth lifted, as if he were treading water, as if he were pushing something from him, as if he were trying not to fall—an altogether different, divided look—the face of one being stoned, yet exalted, too—all this in the succession of shots, and Elbert had drawn back by this time, rubbing his cheek which was bruised from the wood, and there was something in him older, far older and quieter, than he had ever known before; something in him that could not laugh yet, but would sometime, something that knew that the corn-dust maiden would be waiting in that far doorway.