The Creed of Violence (16 page)

And with that he passed out.

Rawbone pulled the son's head back by the hair. "Mr. Lourdes,"
he said, and then, "son-of-a-bitch," he let the body drop back against
the truck tire, then sag over.

"I ought to throw your ass from the train."

RAWBONE APPEARED IN the darkened passenger car doorway, banging
on the window. He confronted a huddled wall of faces illuminated by
a few candle tips of light as he tried to explain in Spanish about John Lourdes lying back there on the flatbed and asking for the deaf girl
named Teresa.

The women just stared at this intent and hard-faced stranger. He
then tried to push the door open, but it had been braced shut and he
cursed their Goddamn souls for not moving and told them to open the
damn door or he'd put a fist through it.

Teresa watched in confusion from the back of the car till she saw
the familiar pocket notebook pressed against the glass. She came forward cautiously and when Rawbone caught sight of her stepping from
the motty shadows he motioned as he yelled for her to get the hell over
here.

As she read the note the father had written, he pointed to John
Lourdes lying unconscious at the edge of the flatbed where Tuerto had
dragged him. An owlish crone of a woman came forward and took
charge, ordering Rawbone to bring the boy to her.

He jumped the gap between cars and with Tuerto lugged John
Lourdes up over his shoulder. He straddled that rattling flatbed like a
drunk and readied himself and then jumped over the couplings. One
boot missed the landing and were it not for a flock of arms grabbing at
him amidst pitched cries both men would have gone under the wheels.

The seats in the car had been torn out. The women had set up
blankets and bedding on the floor and Rawbone was told to lay the boy
down on one of the dozen or so filthy straw mattresses Stallings had
brought onboard. He was then pushed and prodded and shooed down
the length of that car cursing their sorry asses as they shut the door on
him and braced it. Cupping his hands on the window and looking into
that swaying corridor through a current of moving dresses and candles,
he managed to get a glimpse of John Lourdes being stripped of his
clothes while a small circle of women sat around a patchquilt suitcase.
That crone of a woman was removing small pouches from the suitcase
and from what he could make out of their sorry birdlike chatter, they were discussing herbs and homegrown medicinals. Then a shawl was
draped over the window and he was left staring at black.

HE SAT ON the truck seat, smoking in the dark. A troubled anger cauled
his insides as he stared into the swiftly passing desert where hills rose
close to the tracks near claustrophobically, only to disappear in the
lifetime of a second.

It was not about whether John Lourdes would die or not; for purely
selfish reasons he did not want him to die. But if he did, well—

He looked back at the passenger car cradling and pitch dark. Maybe
it was the women with their raven hair and Indian faces and poisonous
mix of delicacy and strength. Maybe it was the smells that clung to their
clothes and hair. Lemon and vanilla, the musk of candlesmoke. Maybe
it was the discarded family he should never have Goddamn gone back
to El Paso for, as that act had fated him to this forsaken place and hour.
These moments, this feeling, he knew from other times as prison. Not
where you were the prisoner, no, but where you were the walls.

The beam of a flashlight tracered across his face.

Rawbone looked up. Jack B approached while Doctor Stallings remained at the far end of the flatcar. "The kid with you. I heard he's
sick bad."

Rawbone pointed his cigarette. The light swung toward the passenger car silhouetting that shawl-covered window.

"We don't pay slackers."

Rawbone did not look at Jack B. Instead he busied himself investigating the tip of his burning cigarette.

"Next stop, we're tossing him."

Rawbone smoked, then said, "Promise."

The light moved in on his face till it was more than a trifle too
close. Still, there was no acknowledgment and the standoff was broken
only by the warning cry of a train whistle well up the tracks.

HERE CAME A second, longer warning call and the men began to
lean out the car windows and crane their necks or stand at the
edge of the flatcars, looking to where the trackline reached well into the
black. Even in the women's car faces were hard-angled against the glass
that steamed with their breath. The fleeting whistle soon fell away and
there was only the sound of the Mastodon moving into that vast and
murky landscape.

A guard on the tender shouted for Doctor Stallings and pointed a
carbine as direction. Far off into the dead of night there appeared a pyre
of flame. Singular and wind-taken. Doctor Stallings ordered the men to
weapon up. He told Rawbone to remain on guard at the truck.

It took another quarter hour moving through the desert before they
came upon a burning water depot and junction station for the Mexican
Telegraph Company. A half-dozen slotted wood structures stood out in the dark like incinerated cages. The water tower had collapsed and was
a smoldering ruin. The first train stood beyond the destruction. Guards
from the coal car formed a protective perimeter. The second train stopped
well short of the fires. Doctor Stallings and his officers moved in quick
order upon the scene. The man in command of the first train waited on
the tracks to report to Doctor Stallings. Rawbone leapt from the flatcar
and came up the line enough to hear what was being said.

The fire was no mean accident of nature nor the foolish result of
a human mistake, for there was no person nor animal, no vehicle nor
wagon anywhere to be found. The man talking to Doctor Stallings
pointed to a cross near three feet high made of wood slats that had
been set in the sand beside the tracks. A printed sheet had been staked
to it. It was a copy of a decree by the president pro tem Madero, from
exile-the revolution had officially begun.

Mr. Stars and Stripes read the sheet after Doctor Stallings passed it
to him and, when finished, slapped that paper with the back of his hand
and said, "We got ourselves the war, commander."

The man in charge of the first train went over and pulled the cross
out of the ground. He started back toward Doctor Stallings and was
in the process of breaking it apart when there was a volley of rifle fire.
Three, maybe four shots. Arterials of powdered cloth and blood jumped
from his body and he was blown back onto the tracks still holding that
crucifix, where he lay stretched out dead.

A firefight began. Flashbursts along the ravined darkness. Jack B
led a group of guards to meet the attack under Stallings's command.

There was firing all up and down the line. Another man was hit and
fell facedown in the sand. From the passenger car women screamed.
Rawbone yelled for them to quiet and he knelt on one leg, rifle poised
and ready.

He could hear the cries of horses as half a dozen riders spurred
their mounts and dashed past one of the burning sheds that yawed and flared with the wind. Their shadows rose up immense and branded
against the flames, there one moment and then gone.

Campesinos-the people.

They were in the midst of a war now. A shooting war. The gratification of political causes, thought Rawbone. The common assassin in
him had scorn for such things.

Doctor Stallings walked past him checking the line and said, "You
were right about one thing."

Rawbone asked, "One?"

"Casualties."

Once alone, Rawbone cursed his luck.

RIFLE FIRE STIRRED him. Through a waterish dim John Lourdes saw
bits of flaming ash rush past the windows like some wind-riven army
of stars. He thought he was back on that plat in the Hueco Mountains
until he heard men outside shouting and the train begin to move.

His eyes cleared enough to see women all about him in the quietude. A hand rested on his shoulder and his eyes lifted and there was
the girl Teresa sitting on the floor with her back against the wall beside
him. She had in her other hand his notebook and pencil.

Of anyone he asked in Spanish, "How did I get here?"

The old crone answered and he lifted his head slightly. She, too, sat
nearby, overseeing a watercan with a leather strap being heated over a
bed of candles in the bottom of a clay bowl.

It turned out she was a curandera, or healer, named Sister Alicia.
She was preparing teas of cayenne and Peruvian Samento. These he was
given to drink and later, under watchful eyes, he slept.

With morning the trains entered the shipping yards of Chihuahua.
A fog immersed the city. It clung to the earth and the trains made their
slow and cumbersome way from switch to switch through a gray and
otherworldly brew that floated about the wheels.

On the wall of a three-story brick warehouse someone had painted
a vast but clumsy headstone with the name MAL-o on it. Standing at the
edge of the flatcar urinating into that vapory murk Rawbone noticed,
as he hitched his pants, Doctor Stallings atop the last passenger car
surveying the yard. Both men were regarding the headstone. Rawbone
used his derby as a pointer. "Not a chance, that happens!" he yelled.

He was sure Doctor Stallings spoke Spanish and knew the word
malo meant "evil."

The train ferried past the roundhouse and the tooling sheds when
came the sounds of cheering and gunfire. Figures began to appear out
of the nothingness. Campesinos alive to the belief God was finally going
to shine down his alien grace upon their lives, even if such grace were
to be delivered by a little bloodshed.

They were everywhere in the mist. Rawbone could see them across
the trainyard, hordes up on boxcars and clinging to the stacks of black
and silent locomotives. They yelled to the men on the train and the
women in the passenger cars, possessed as they were with the furious
excitement of possibility.

One of the campesinos ran up to the flatcar and shouted that la rev-
olucion had begun and Rawbone answered with glorious indifference,
smiling, "Yes, my friend, you've got a great future ... behind you."

A woman now called to Rawbone from the landing of the passenger car. The young man, it seemed, was asking for him.

John Lourdes was pale and in pain, but the shivering had subsided
and his mind steadied.

"I see the witches haven't killed you yet."

"Last night," he asked, "what happened?"

The father squatted. All around them were women watching.
"War, Mr. Lourdes, that's what happened. We're right in the middle of
a country that's goin' down for the count."

Sister Alicia was preparing another batch of medicinals. She poked
Rawbone and told him to pass the cup to the young man. He took the
steaming tin gingerly and ran it under his nose. The smell seemed to
touch a nerve. Tangible it was with memories. He was torn by the moment then put it aside. "You got your magic down, don't you, you damn
witch." He had a swallow himself. "Tastes of my youth," he said.

He passed the cup to John Lourdes, who sipped as he was told, "It
seems our employer has a dog in this fight. I heard Mr. Stars and Stripes
talking. Of course, I'm passing the information on to you as befitting
our station."

The son thought on this a while. "But who is our employer? Mr.
Hecht? Do you think so? I don't."

"I see your point, Mr. Lourdes."

The father stood. "Listen to me, you damn witches. Take care
of the young master here. He's a true verdadero hombre." Rawbone
grabbed his crotch. "Mucho caliente."

The women either laughed with embarrassment or turned away in
disgust. "He's also a climber, in case you didn't know. Intends to make
a name for himself. Thinks he can carry the weight of the world on his
shoulders." He looked at Teresa, who was staring up at him. "You're
in for a surprise."

As he started out, the son called to him. He wanted to say something but hesitated. He set the cup down, he brushed the hair back from
his drawn face. "For bringing me in here ... thank you."

To see him in such discomfort at having to say the thing gave
Rawbone unequalled pleasure. Yet, to his absolute dismay, John Lourdes
sounded utterly genuine.

HEY EXISTED NOW in a state of war and so guards were stationed on the car roofs. Through a country that changed from
lush canyons and fertile cropland to hills of boned and caking pumice,
there was only that island of a train infinitesimal in a landscape marked
by the eternal. Came nightfall they entered the Sierras, its remote and
silent peaks rising toward a rind of moon. The tide of John Lourdes's
bleeding had been stemmed and his reservoirs of strength were beginning to return.