The Man In Black I rode across the snow fields
in the moonlight holding myself in steady relation
to the stars.
The black timber on either side lay flat
against the slopes running down before me
into the bottom of the night.
In the dusk I had seen rabbits and once
a fox like the point of a flame flickering among the trees.
But now for miles I had seen nothing but the night.
There were wolves about, I believed in them
for the near edge of their presence cut
into the nerves of my horse, and our going on
was hectic and cautious.
And it was cold.
The cold was absolute, at length nothing
mattered not even the wolves because of the cold.
At 9 o'clock perhaps, I saw the lights at Arroyo Seco.
The man sitting across the table from me was slight of build
and rather unseemly in appearance.
He affected the wearing of black which
in another more imposing figure might have been dramatic
even ominous.
But in this man it was an unremarkable aspect.
Save that it accentuated something that laid deeper
than his appearance--
a certain somberness a touch of grief.
It was as if the angel of death had long ago
found out his name.
His skin was nearly colorless and his front teeth
protruding to such an extent that his thin lips seemed never
to come together.
His eyes were blue just the blue of water
in milk and devoid of expression so
that it was impossible to say what he was thinking
or indeed that he was thinking.
Thought seemed somehow irrelevant to his real being
apart from his true nature.
I have heard that certain organisms, sharks for example,
are virtually mindless, that they
are creatures of pure instinct.
So it was with this man I believe.
If a rational thought or a whole emotion
had ever grown up inside of him, he
should have suffered a great dislocation of his mind
and soul.
Such was my impression.
He should have been like a plate of glass
that is shattered upon a stone.
But at the same time, I had the sense
that his instincts were nearly infallible.
Nothing should ever take him by surprise and no one
except perhaps himself.
Only one principle motivated him, that of survival
his own mean and exclusive survival.
For him there was no morality in the universe but that
neither choice nor question.
And for that reason, he was among the deadliest creatures
on the face of the Earth.
His hands were remarkably small and delicately formed.
I've heard it said that they were like a woman's hands
and with respect to size and shape that is true.
But they were rough too and marked by hard use
with something like propriety in all their attitudes
and great utility.
You looked at them and you thought at once of fine tools
precision instruments.
They were steady and extraordinarily expressive.
You could read this man in his hands
as you could never read him in his eyes.
His hands articulated him in the way
that a leaf articulates the wind or the currents of a stream.
And yet, they were nearly evasive too in their propriety.
There was no resonance in his voice
but it was thin and hard and flat wood clacking lightly
upon wood.
He was ill at ease within the element of language.
I believe that silence was his natural habitat.
Notwithstanding, his speech was plain and direct
and disarmingly polite.
Thank you for coming, he said.
I will go with you, I replied.
And this is how it began and this
is the strange and true story of my life with Billy the Kid.