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under the seat. They carried one of the spares out into the road and laid
     it down and stood on it to break the bead and then the man who'd taken the tools from
     Billy stepped forward and began to pry the tire up off the rim while the others watched.
     The innertube that he snaked out of the tire's inner cavity was made of red rubber and
     there was a whole plague of patches upon it. He laid it out on the macadam and Billy
     trained the light over it. Hay parches sobre los parches, he said.
    Es verdad, the man said.
    La otra?
    Est‡ peon
    One of the younger men manned the tirepump and the tube bloated slowly up in the road and
     sat hissing. He knelt and put his ear to the various leaks. Billy flipped open the tin lid
     of the patchcan and thumbed the number of repairs it contained. Troy had climbed out of
     the truck and he walked back and stood smoking quietly and looking at the tire and the
     tube and the Mexicans.
    The Mexicans wheeled the blown tire around the side of the truck and Billy put the light
     on it. There was a great ragged hole in the sidewall. It looked like it had been chewed by
     bulldogs. Troy spat quietly in the road. The Mexicans threw the tire up onto the bed of
     the truck.
    Billy took the stub of chalk from the patchkit and circled the leaks in the tube and they
     unscrewed the valvestem from the valve and sat on the tube and then walked it down till it
     was dead flat. Then they sat in the road with the white line running past their elbows and
     the gaudy desert night overhead, the myriad constellations moving upon the blackness
     subtly as sealife, and they worked with the dull red shape of rubber in their laps,
     squatting like tailors or menders of nets. They scuffed the rubber with the little tin
     grater stamped into the lid of the kit and they laid on the patches and fired them with a
     match one by one till all were fused and all were done. When they had the tube pumped up
     again they sat in the road in the quiet desert dark and listened.
    Oye algo? said Billy.
    Nada.
    They sat listening.
    He unscrewed the valvestem again and when they had the tube deflated the man slid it down
     inside the tire and worked it around the rim and fitted the valve and the boy came forward
     with the pump and began to pump up the tire. He was a long time pumping. When the bead
     popped on the rim he stopped and they unscrewed the hose from the valve and the man took
     the valvestem from his mouth and screwed it into the hissing valve and then they stepped
     back and looked at Billy. He spat and turned and walked back to the truck to get the
     tiregauge.
    Troy was asleep in the front seat. Billy got the gauge out of the glovebox and walked back
     and they gauged the tire and then rolled it over to the truck and slid it onto the hub and
     tightened down the lugnuts with a wrench made from a socket welded onto a length of heavy
     iron pipe. Then they let down the jack and pulled it from under the truck and handed it to
     Billy.
    He took the jack and tiretools and put the patchkit and the gauge in his shirtpocket and
     the flashlight in the back pocket of his jeans. Then they shook hands all the way around.
    Ad—nde van? said Billy.
    The man shrugged. He said that they were going to Sanderson Texas. He turned and looked
     off across the dark headlands to the east. The younger men stood about them.
    Hay trabajo all‡?
    He shrugged again. Espero que s’, he said. He looked at Billy. Es vaquero?
    S’. Vaquero.
    The man nodded. It was a vaquero's country and other men's troubles were alien to it and
     that was about all that could be said. They shook hands again and the Mexicans clambered
     aboard the truck and the truck cranked and coughed and started and lumbered slowly out
     onto the roadway. The men and boys in the bed of the truck stood and raised their hands.
     He could see them above the dark hump of the cab, against the deep burnt cobalt of the
     sky. The single