The Creed of Violence (24 page)

John Lourdes walked back to the desk. He reached for the open
beer and drank.

"Mr. Lourdes, why are you doing it?"

John Lourdes took to looking out the window. "You've earned it.
And I'm staying."

"That's not what I asked. And you know it, Mr. Lourdes."

How does he explain without explaining himself? Or a deaf girl
who in a few simple phrases spoke to a pure forgiveness. How does
he open up about the woman that man across the room abandoned,
for whom there was no grievance so great that she could not forgive,
because the eternal, not the ephemeral, was her preeminent star? And
how does he explain that place inside him where the common assassin who sat amongst the dead listening to a lullaby and the rogue who
kidnapped alligators to keep them from freezing in the Texas cold held
out in the absence of everything, refusing to die?

"Mr. Lourdes ... why are you doing it?"

Turning, John Lourdes, his face and voice resolute, answered, "As
long as you live, don't ever ask me that. Now ... take the letter and
leave."

The father looked down at the envelope. He had been fundamentally emptied, having now in his hands exactly what was necessary, but
nothing else. The son was right. He had hurt him in a way the father
never imagined.

"As you say, Mr. Lourdes."

ONCE ALONE, JOHN Lourdes leveled his focus on the force of dark
tides he was about to confront. He left the room to make sure the
truck was right, with enough gasoline and extra parts for an escape.
After nightfall he drove in the rain to the mayor's house and waited
amongst the dripping trees. When Sister Alicia went from the kitchen
to a smokehouse by that rusting truck, he made a stealthy approach.
Coming upon the unsuspecting woman, he put a hand to her mouth to
keep hush. He had a note for her and Teresa and made her swear they
tell no one. They must believe and wait.

Sleep was impossible. He went from one black scenario to another,
planning out a strategy for survival, and all the while the shadow of the
father was with him in thought, word and deed.

There was no dawn, only rain. There was no sun, only a gravel sky.
There was no dusk, only a spreading mist.

The truck was parked in an alley behind the Southern. John Lourdes
set his carryall on the cab floor, his shotgun and rifle within reach. He
kicked the engine over and tossed his cigarette, then shifted into gear
and started up the alley through a runny fog toward the street. His
mind was at gunsight level when the man who was his father stepped
from a last doorway.

Rawbone stood before the truck in silhouette. John Lourdes braked
and draped his arms over the wheel. The father came around to the
driver's side of the cab and in a quiet voice said, "Mr. Lourdes, I know
who I am ... and I know who you are. I am asking ... save a seat in
the truck for me."

The muscles along the son's cheeks made a sudden and unexpected
flinch. He knew, without exception, this moment would never be again.
It would flee every chance, escape any wish, if he did not grasp it now.
Without a word John Lourdes slid across the seat. The father tossed his
worldly goods on the cab floor and climbed in behind the wheel and
drove.

HE ROAD THROUGH the oil fields was grouted in mud, the derricks mere speculations in the mist. The Agua Negra compound
was quiet, save for a handful of station guards. Authorization was already in hand for independent contractors to pick up the makings of an
icehouse. But in this case there were no bills of lading, no paper trail of
signatures, no receipts that shipment had been received in good order.
The process was faceless, the loading of the truck a tired repetition.

The father asked John Lourdes how this night was supposed to
play out. John Lourdes said he had already forewarned the women with
the note telling them to be ready for tonight and leaving and that their
survival depended on it. Once there, he would warn the mayor, get him
out. He would then deliver the weapons and hope to flee Tampico with
his own life.

"You were right," added the son.

"About?"

"Exactly what worried justice Knox. Me. My character where it
concerned ... the practical application of strategy."

Rawbone was now staring into the lifeline of his own child. "The
world is a tricky place, Mr. Lourdes. It's mostly gestures and gratuities.
So I'd wait in judgment on myself."

John Lourdes glanced at the father. "You're trying to tell me
something."

"I don't even whisper and you can hear me."

Tampico was shoring in mist. The river black and roily. Window
light guided their truck through the darkened gray of the streets as the
father went on. "When I was in Manila, insurgents had improvised
explosives. They meant to bomb the funeral of an American general
named Lawton. There were to be consuls there. Politicians, dignitaries.
They wanted to create an incident. Isn't that what Stallings and the others are doing to make their case for intervention?"

"Where are you going with this?"

"The practical application of strategy ... the women and the mayor
may need to be dead."

EVERYTHING HAPPENED VERY quickly after that. While the son waited
with the truck, the father walked the grounds with a shotgun. There was
only a bare crew down by the derricks. They were hard cases but the
father persuaded them at barrel point to "politely fuckin' remove themselves from the vicinity." When the son saw them scattering through
the high weeds up the laguna, he sped forward.

They were in the house moments later. The cook screaming, the
father demanding the mayor's whereabouts. While she told him he was
in his private quarters showering, John Lourdes had Alicia gather up
the women and get them onto the truck. Then he took Teresa by the
hand and pulled her out of there.

The mayor near fainted when a rowdy with a shotgun burst into
the bath where he showered. He looked like some stricken popinjay
cowering there and covering up his noble parts. Reaching through the
streaming water Rawbone grabbed the man by the hair and told him
in no uncertain terms, "From the looks of you, that's the last thing you
need to worry about protecting."

The mayor begged for his life with hands clasped while Rawbone
dragged him through the bedroom, shouting over his pleas to explain
what in the miserable hell was going on.

Five women and a valet were being packed up onto the truck when
the screen door was kicked open, near coming off its hinges. Rawbone
had the mayor in tow. He was still naked and barefoot but clung to a
waistcoat and pair of pants. Dripping wet and shivering, he had to be
pushed and booted up onto the truckbed.

Rawbone walked past the rig and opened the gate to the corral
around the rusting truck and fired a double of shots into the air to
chase off the goats and horses and mules. He shouted at that scattering
menagerie, "You'll thank me one day, you filthy beggars."

He returned to the truck and dumped the shotgun on the cab seat
then clapped his hands together and called out, "Got them for me?"

John Lourdes tossed him two wraps of dynamite he'd just finished
binding together.

"Mr. Lourdes, get this damn parade out of here."

As the truck rumbled forward and swung about, teeter-tottering
wildly, Rawbone lit one wrap and flung it into the kitchen. He then ran
down to the derricks through all the oily slop. He lit the next fuse and
set the bound sticks on the decking.

They had turned into the tramway road when the first explosion
went off. Not a minute later the wells detonated and flames hollowed
up through the mist maybe two hundred feet. The oil had ignited and
a fuming black char began to billow over the rooftops and out upon the laguna. Rawbone yelled to the mayor who was trying desperately
to worm into his trousers. "Hey, Alcalde ... look at them flames. You
and the witches here are now officially dead. How does it feel?"

THE SIGNAL WAS to be a lantern placed high on a stake where the Laguna and the channel merged. The shoregrass was near high as a man
and they hid there with the truck.

Because he meant to return to Texas, John Lourdes had written the
address of Wadsworth Burr and the BOI headquarters so Teresa could
let him know where she could be found.

Teresa was sixteen, going into the wilds with nothing. He felt a
severe apprehension touched with farewell. He clutched her hand and
what she felt there and saw in his face made her lean over and kiss
him.

Rawbone called out through the dark, "Boats are coming!"

You could not see them; there was only this slow metronomic poling somewhere in the mist. John Lourdes put a finger to his ears and his
eyes and pointed to the laguna. She understood and stretched up a bit
to see. He still had her hand and she cupped the other over his and they
remained like that until the boats appeared, flat and square, ferrying
out of a deathly gray. She asked for his pencil and wrote: / will F nd my
way, as you will yours.

While Rawbone walked to the shore to get a jump on explaining
what they'd hidden there in the weeds, John Lourdes pulled out his wallet and took from it the crucifix. He put the gold memory in Teresa's
hand and she was reminded of that first night in Juarez at the church
when she wrote in his notebook. The moments to express anything
more were vanishing as the chalans touched shore.

AT THE AGUA Negra compound Doctor Stallings received a report by
phone of a derrick fire along the north shore of Tampico. A sudden foreboding came over him even as he asked where. He called together a
squad of men under Jack B and they sped in touring cars to the site.

The house was near consumed, the derricks gone, the rusting truck
in the backyard glowed with heat. Walls of flame turned and flagged as
they breathed up air. The doctor was given a report by one of the derrick hands who'd been run off. He described a man with a shotgun and
a derby whose description left little room for doubt.

Doctor Stallings had Jack B and part of the crew sweep the grounds
and laguna looking for bodies. On the far side of the collapsing house
was the carriage barn. It alone had been saved as the wind kept the
flames from having at it. With faces hidden behind bandanas Stallings
and a few men kicked open the latch doors. The barn was dark and
gritted with smoke and Doctor Stallings could hear Rawbone in his
head, "Let's talk finality."

HEY HAD WATCHED the two flatboats disappear across a night
sea and into a nacre mist with their cargo of munitions and
women and a disheveled half-dressed mayor and his valet. "Yesterday
he'd have staked out those campesinos if it meant survival. Tonight he's
one of them. That ... is a practical application of strategy. Mr. Lourdes
... the mayor reminds me of me. Except for the noble parts."

John Lourdes waited and listened until the last whisper of those
poling oars. He took the wheel now. Their destination, darkness and
escape. They were justified in believing the advantage of time was on
their side of the ledger, but a little bad luck and an ill wind had put
them in play.

Doctor Stallings was already on the hunt. He called the field
garrison and ordered crews of men in vehicles and on horseback to
search the roads around Tampico for a three-ton truck with AMERICAN PARTHENON painted on the side. Outlying pipeline stations and warehouse depots were alerted by telegraph to be on the lookout for two
suspects in an act of possible murder and sabotage. As for the Mexican
authorities, these Stallings waited to inform till he was certain of political advantage.

Son and father struck inland toward San Luis Potosi. A river of
night stars appeared wondrously through the failing mist. In the bare
light of a building along the pipeline the shifting truck gears drew a
watchman's suspicions. He stood in the road while it rumbled past
with Rawbone tipping his hat to the old man in a gesture of good
evening.

Word was telegraphed, and with that a mandala of armed men was
on the move. John Lourdes and Rawbone had dug up the small cache
of weapons they'd hidden away. If they reached the city, their plan was
to sell them to fund a run to the border.