Integrité

46 Intégrité: A Faith and Learning Journal littlest bit.‖ Reaffirming his adherence to principles, John Grady rejects the insinuation, saying, ―No. I dont believe in it‖ (93).

John Grady‘s love for Magdalena is no casual emotional attachment.

Love, not lust, motivates him. He is relentless in his quest for the girl. He goes from bar to bar, from whorehouse to whorehouse looking for her. He makes repeated visits to Mexico. He gives his last thirty-six dollars to get information about her whereabouts (58). When he learns that the prostitute has moved to the White Lake, an expensive whorehouse that Billy says, ―Aint no place for a cowboy,‖ John Grady seeks a month's pay advance of one-hundred dollars in order to have enough money to spend the entire night with her.

His friends soon realize that his relationship with Magdalena is no fleeting affair. When John Grady no longer joins them in their dancing and drinking nights out on the town, Billy forces the issue into the open, noting that John Grady manifests all of the symptoms of a man in love: ―Have you got a girl you're seein?‖ Grady admits it: ―Tryin to.‖ Even the shoeshine boy says John Grady has the look of someone who's getting married (95). Recognizing that he will need to buy Magdalena‘s freedom, he pawns his most prized possession, his grandfather's pistol, and he eventually sells his horse. And he sends the reluctant and wiser Billy to Mexico to negotiate the purchase of Magdalena. In Billy‘s judgment, John Grady has left his senses: ―Tell me you aint gone completely crazy.‖ ―I aint gone completely crazy.‖ ―The hell you aint.‖ ―I‘m in love with her, Billy.‖ (118) But Billy, always the realist, sees how impossible the goal is. Having never recovered his innocence and haunted by the death of his brother, Billy tells John Grady that he is not making sense. ―What the hell kind of people do you think it is you're talkin about? Do you really think you can go down there and dicker with some greaser pimp that buys and sells people outright like you was going down to the courthouse lawn to trade knives?‖ (118-9). John Grady‘s response is, ―I cant help it‖ (120). Billy knows the tragic Mexican mind as John Grady does not. He knows, in Rodriguez‘s phrase, that ―life will break your heart.‖ Rather than submitting to a tragic view of life, John Grady believes optimistically that rescuing Magdalena is his destiny. When Billy asks him how the attachment developed this far, John Grady says, ―I dont know. I feel some way like I didnt have nothing to do with it. Like it‘s just the way it is. Like it was always this way‖ (121).

John Grady has no doubt that he will be able to make a home with Magdalena. He persuades Mac to allow him to repair the dilapidated adobe house out on the mesa. Even though Billy does not believe that John Grady's vision will ever be realized, he helps John Grady paint the house. Billy finds John Grady as stubborn as his brother Boyd was. Billy says, ―Most people get smacked around enough after a while they start to pay attention. More and more you remind me of Boyd. Only way I could ever get him to do anything was to tell him not to‖ (146).