There was a shoe repair place a few blocks up the street and he stopped in to see if he could get his boot fixed. The shoeman looked at it and shook his head. The sole was paper thin and the stitching had pulled through the leather. He took it to the rear and sewed it on his machine and returned and stood it on the counter. He wouldnt take any money for it. He said it wouldnt hold and it didnt.
A week later he was somewhere in central Arizona. A rain had come down from the north and the weather turned cool. He sat beneath a concrete overpass and watched the gusts of rain blowing across the fields. The overland trucks passed shrouded in rain with the clearance lights burning and the big wheels spinning like turbines. The eastwest traffic passed overhead with a muted rumble. He wrapped himself in his blanket and tried to sleep on the cold concrete but sleep was a long time coming. His bones hurt. He was seventyeight years old. The heart that should have killed him long ago by what the army's recruiting doctors had said still rattled on in his chest, no will of his. He pulled the blankets about him and after a while he did sleep.
In the night he dreamt of his sister dead seventy years and buried near Fort Summer. He saw her so clearly. Nothing had changed, nothing faded. She was walking slowly along the dirt road past the house. She wore the white dress her grandmother had sewn for her from sheeting and in her grandmother's hands the dress had taken on a shirred bodice and borders of tatting threaded with blue ribbon. That's what she wore. That and the straw hat she'd gotten for Easter. When she passed the house he knew that she would never enter there again nor would he see her ever again and in his sleep he called out to her but she did not turn or answer him but only passed on down that empty road in infinite sadness and infinite loss.
He woke and lay in the dark and the cold and he thought of her and he thought of his brother dead in Mexico. In everything that he'd ever thought about the world and about his life in it he'd been wrong.
Toward the small hours of the morning the traffic on the freeway slacked and the rain stopped. He sat up shivering and hitched the blanket about his shoulders. He'd put some crackers from a roadside diner in the pocket of his coat and he sat eating them and watching the gray light flush out the raw wet fields beyond the roadway. He thought he heard the distant cries of cranes where they would be headed north to their summering grounds in Canada and he thought of them asleep in a flooded field in Mexico in a dawn long ago, standing singlefooted in the wetlands with their bills tucked, gray figures aligned in rows like hooded monks at prayer. When he looked across the overpass to the far side of the turnpike he saw another such as he sitting also solitary and alone.
The man raised his hand in greeting. He raised his back.
Buenos d'as, the man called.
Buenos d'as.
QuZ tiene de comer?
Unas galletas, nada m++s.
The man nodded. He looked away.
Podemos compartirlas.
Bueno, called the man. Gracias.
M' voy.
But the man stood. I will come to you, he called.
He descended the concrete batterwall and crossed the roadway and climbed over the guardrail and crossed the median between the round concrete pillars and crossed the northbound lanes and climbed up to where Billy was sitting and squatted and looked at him.
It aint much, Billy said. He pulled the remaining few packages of crackers from his pocket and held them out.
Muy amable, the man said.
Est++ bien. I thought at first you might be somebody else.
The man sat and stretched out his legs before him and crossed his feet. He tore open a package of the crackers with his eyetooth and took one out and held it up and looked at it and then bit it in two and sat chewing. He wore a wispy moustache, his skin was smooth and brown. He was of no determinable age.
Who did you think I might be? he said.
Just somebody. Somebody I sort of been expectin. I thought I caught a glimpse of him once or twice these past few days. I aint never got all that good a look at him.
What does he look like?
I dont know. I guess more and more he looks like a friend.
You thought I was death.
I considered the possibility.
The man nodded. He chewed. Billy watched him.
You aint are you?
No.
They sat eating the dry crackers.
Ad-nde vas? Billy said.
Al sur. Y toe?
Al none.
The man nodded. He smiled. QuZ clase de hombre comparta sus galletas con la muerte?
Billy shrugged. What kind of death would eat them?
What kind indeed, said the man.
I wasnt tryin to figure anything out. De todos modos el compartir es la ley del camino, verdad?
De veras.
At least that's the way I was raised.
The man nodded. In Mexico on certain days of the calendar it is the custom to set a place at the table for death. But perhaps you know this.
Yes.
He has a big appetite.
Yes he does.
Perhaps a few crackers would be taken as an insult.
Perhaps he's got to take what he can get. Like the rest of us. The man nodded. Yes, he said. That could be.
Traffic had picked up on the turnpike. The sun was up. The man opened the second package of crackers. He said that perhaps death took a larger view. That perhaps in his egalitarian way death weighed the gifts of men by their own lights and that in death's eyes the offerings of the poor were the equal of any.
Like God.
Yes. Like God.
Nadie puede sobornar a la muerte, Billy said.
De veras. Nadie.
Nor God.
Nor God.
Billy watched the light bring up the shapes of the water standing in the fields beyond the roadway. Where do we go when we die? he said.
I dont know, the man said. Where are we now?
The sun rose over the plain behind them. The man handed him back the last remaining packet of crackers.
You can keep em, Billy said.
No quieres m++s?
My mouth's too dry.
The man nodded, he pocketed the crackers. Para el camino, he said. I was born in Mexico. I have not been back for many years.
You goin back now?
No.
Billy nodded. The man studied the coming day. In the middle of my life, he said, I drew the path of it upon a map and I studied it a long time. I tried to see the pattern that it made upon the earth because I thought that if I could see that pattern and identify the form of it then I would know better how to continue. I would know what my path must be. I would see into the future of my life.
How did that work out?
Different from what I expected.
How did you know it was the middle of your life?
I had a dream. That was why I drew the map.
What did it look like?
The map?
Yes.
It was interesting. It looked like different things. There were different perspectives one could take. I was surprised.
Could you remember all the places you'd been?
Oh yes. Couldnt you?
I dont know. There's been a bunch of em. Yeah. I suppose. If I put my mind to it. If I was to set down and study about it.
Yes. Of course. That was my method. One thing leads to another. I doubt that our journey can be lost to us. For good or bad.
What sorts of things did it look like? The map.
At first I saw a face but then I turned it and looked at it other ways and when I turned it back the face was gone. Nor could I find it again.
What happened to it?
I dont know.
Did you see it or did you just think you did?
The man smiled. QuZ pregunta, he said. What would be the difference?
I dont know. I think there has to be a difference.
So do I. But what is it?
Well. It wouldnt be like a real face.