IT WAS STILL DARK when John Grady woke him. He was up and dressed and had already been to the kitchen and back and had spoken to the horses and he stood in the doorway of Billy's bunkroom with the canvas curtain pushed back against the jamb and a cup of coffee in one hand. Hey cowboy, he said.
Billy groaned.
Let's go. You can sleep in the winter.
Damn.
Let's go. You been layin there damn near four hours.
Billy sat up and swung his feet onto the floor and sat with his head in his hands.
I dont see how you can lay there like that.
Damn if you aint a cheerful son of a bitch in the mornin. Where's my by god coffee at?
I aint carryin you no coffee. Get your ass up from there. Grub's on the table.
Billy reached up and took his hat from a wallpeg over the bed and put the hat on and squared it. Okay, he said. I'm up.
John Grady walked back out up the barn bay toward the house. The horses nickered at him from their stalls as he passed. I know what time it is, he told them. At the end of the barn a length of hayrope hung from the loft overhead and he drained the last of his coffee and slung the dregs from the cup and leaped up and batted the rope and set it swinging and went out.
They were all at the table eating when Billy pushed open the door and came in. Socorro came and took the plate of biscuits and carried them to the oven and dumped them into a pan and put the pan in the warmer and took hot biscuits from the warmer and put them on the plate and carried the plate back to the table. On the table was a bowl of scrambled eggs and one of grits and there was a plate of sausage and a boat of gravy and bowls of preserves and pico de gallo and butter and honey. Billy washed his face at the sink and Socorro handed him the towel and he dried his face and laid the towel on the counter and came to the table and stepped over the back of the empty chair and sat and reached for the eggs. Oren glanced at him over the top of his paper and continued reading.
Billy spooned the eggs and set the bowl down and reached for the sausage. Mornin Oren, he said. Mornin JC.
JC looked up from his plate. I guess you been fightin that bear all night too.
Fightin that bear, said Billy. He reached and took a biscuit and refolded the cloth back over the plate and reached for the butter.
Let's see them eyes again, said JC.
Aint nothin wrong with these eyes. Pass the salsa yonder.
He spooned the hot sauce over his eggs. Fight fire with fire. Aint that right John Grady?
An old man had come into the kitchen with his braces hanging. He wore an oldfashioned shirt of the kind the collar buttoned to and it was open at the neck and no collar to it. He had just shaved and there was shaving cream on his neck and on the lobe of one ear. John Grady pushed back his chair.
Here Mr Johnson, he said. Set here. I'm all done.
He rose with his plate to take it to the sink but the old man waved him down and went on toward the stove. Set down, he said, set down. I'm just gettin me some coffee.
Socorro unhooked one of the white porcelain mugs from the underside of the cabinet shelf and poured it and turned the handle facing out and handed it to the old man and he took it and nodded and went back across the kitchen. He stopped at the table and spooned two huge scoops of sugar out of the bowl into his cup and left the room taking the sugarspoon with him. John Grady put his cup and plate on the sideboard and got his lunchbucket off the counter and went out.
What's wrong with him? said JC.
Aint nothin wrong with him, said Billy.
I meant John Grady.
I know who you meant.
Oren folded the paper and laid it on the table. Dont you all even start, he said. Troy, you ready?
I'm ready.
They pushed back from the table and rose and went out. Billy sat picking his teeth. He looked at JC. What are you doin this mornin?
I'm goin into town with the old man.
He nodded. Out in the yard the truck started. Well, he said. It's light enough to see, I reckon.
He rose and crossed the kitchen and got his lunchpail from the counter and went out. JC reached across the table and got the paper.
John Grady was sitting behind the wheel of the idling truck. Billy got in and set the lunchpail on the floor and shut the door and looked at him.
Well, he said. You ready to put in a day's work for a day's wages?
John Grady put the truck in gear and they pulled away down the drive.
Daybreak to backbreak for a godgiven dollar, said Billy. I love this life. You love this life, son? I love this life. You do love this life dont you? Cause by god I love it. Just love it.
He reached into his shirtpocket and shook out a cigarette from the pack there and lit it with his lighter and sat smoking while they rolled down the drive through the long morning shadows of fence and post and oaktree. The sun was blinding white on the dusty windshield glass. Cattle standing along the fence called after the truck and Billy studied them. Cows, he said.
They nooned on a grassy rise on the red clay ranges ten miles south of the ranch house. Billy lay with his rolled jacket under his head and his hat over his eyes. He squinted out at the gray headlands of the Guadalupes eighty miles to the west. I hate comin out here, he said. Goddamn ground wont even hold a fencepost.
John Grady sat crosslegged chewing a weedstem. Twenty miles to the south a live belt of green ran down the Rio Grande valley. In the foreground fenced gray fields. Gray dust follow
ing a tractor and cultivator down the gray furrows of a fall cottonfield.
Mr Johnson says the army sent people out here with orders to survey seven states in the southwest and find the sorriest land they could find and report back. And Mac's ranch was settin right in the middle of it.
Billy looked at John Grady and looked back at the mountains.
You think that's true? said John Grady.
Hell, who knows.
JC says the old man is gettin crazier and crazier.
Well he's still got more sense crazy than JC's got sane so what does that make JC?
I dont know.
There aint nothin wrong with him. He's just old is all.
JC says he aint been right since his daughter died.
Well. There aint no reason why he should be. He thought the world of her.
Yeah.
Maybe we ought to ask Delbert. Get Delbert's view of things.
Delbert aint as dumb as he looks.
I hope to God he aint. Anyway the old man always had a few things peculiar about him and he's still got em. This place aint the same. It never will be. Maybe we've all got a little crazy. I guess if everbody went crazy together nobody would notice, what do you think?
John Grady leaned and spat between his teeth and put the stem back in his mouth. You liked her, didnt you?
Awful well. She was as nice to me as anybody I ever knew.
A coyote came out of the brush and trotted along the crest of a rise a quarter mile to the east. I want you to look at that son of a bitch, said Billy.
Let me get the rifle.
He'll be gone before you get done standin up.
The coyote trotted out along the ridge and stopped and looked back and then dropped off down the ridge into the brush again.
What do you reckon he's doin out here in the middle of the day?
He probably wonders the same about you.
You think he seen us?
Well I didnt see him walkin head first into them nopal bushes yonder so I dont expect he was completely blind.
John Grady watched for the coyote to reappear but the coyote didnt.