Ride the Pink Horse Read Online Free PDF

o’clock but the kids were still lined up knee deep, pushing against the red palings. The music strummed with a thin brightness, Tio Vivo spun about, young not old, around and around. Over the heads of the kids he could see the brigand, sweat running from his broad brown face, his muscles bulging as he wound the crank that sent the horses galloping over their circled course.
    Later he’d see Pancho. About a beer and a room. He lit a cigarette and strolled on, out of the Plaza, back to the ledge under the portal of the Old Museum. It was occupied now; in one corner a thin mother with a weary, hopeless face held a sleeping child across her lap. Two brown-skinned punks with loose lips took up the rest of the ledge, swinging their legs over the edge, boasting in spic of their intended prowess during La Fiesta.

3
    He leaned against the wall watching the movement of the Plaza, the dark leaves turning under the strand of lights, the Spanish musicians sawing their strings in the lighted bandstand, the shrill of laughter and the thin whine of tired children, the cries of the vendors. Over it all he could hear, or thought he could hear, the tinkling music and the whir of Tio Vivo.
    In the streets the costumed, giggling girls walked clockwise and the slack-mouthed boys counter-clockwise. They spat insult and their eyes invited as they passed. Until the game was worn dull and they stopped together to regroup boy and girl, girl and boy.
    “Hello.” He hadn’t realized that he too was a part of the Fiesta night until she spoke.
    It was the same kid he’d almost bumped into earlier. She was just as immature as he’d thought on first glance, her breasts barely formed, her legs and arms thin, child-voiced, wise-eyed. Her small face and mouth were painted, her hair was a black fuzz. But she wore a red rose in her hair, her red flowered skirt was full and gay, her thin white blouse was embroidered bright. She was La Fiesta. She was pretty in a pert, child way; he wanted none of her. None of any woman until this business was done. Then he could have one worth having, a sleek one, washed and ironed and perfumed, one he’d find in La Fonda, not on the streets. He said “Hello” and looked away, waiting for her to move on, wanting her to move on.
    But she didn’t move. She stood there in front of him, looking up at him out of her bold black eyes, laughing up at him. “What’s your name?” she asked.
    He said, “Sailor.”
    She giggled and the girl with her giggled. The girl with her had the red rose and the flowered skirt and the thin blouse, the frizz of black hair and the bold black eyes but she wasn’t so young. She had a big nose and big witless mouth smeared with lipstick. Her breasts sagged under the blouse. When she giggled, he looked at her with revulsion. “That’s a funny one,” she said.
    “Is it?” he asked coldly and he looked back at the pretty one, the kid.
    She said, “Sailor. That’s a funny name, Sailor.”
    The homely girl said, “My brother, he was a sailor in the war. That is where you get the name Sailor, no?”
    “No,” he said, and he didn’t smile. “I got it because I had trouble with the whole damn Great Lakes navy.” He hadn’t thought for a long time where the name came from.
    “My brother he was in the Army,” the kid said. “Were you a soldier, Sailor?” She giggled when she said it that way and her friend giggled with her.
    He said, “I wasn’t in the war. I had flat feet.” It was a lie. The Sen had kept him out of the war. He wanted to get away from the girls but they had him backed against the wall. They saw him shift and they stopped laughing.
    “I am Rosita,” the kid said. “This is my friend, Irene.”
    “Pleased to meetcha,” Irene said.
    Rosita was craning around for something. She found it because she beckoned with her thin hand. “This is my cousin, Pila.”
    He hadn’t seen the third girl until that moment. With the introduction, Rosita diminished her again to