The Creed of Violence (9 page)

"With a smile and good cheer."

"We'll have this done in another day, so let's not stumble-fuck
over each other. Then you can get on with your miserable existence as
a free man."

"I couldn't have said it better myself."

John Lourdes returned to his notebook. He took up the last wallet
from the derby.

"I think you misunderstood me," said Rawbone.

"Did I?"

"I only meant you've a clear mind, and it's carried you well."

Even before the sun, came the heat. It was going to be that kind of
day. The shadows fell away behind them as the sun rose over the rim of
the world and bore light down upon their road.

The last wallet belonged to the man who'd spoken to John Lourdes
at the roadhouse. His name was James Merrill. In a side pouch was a
tiny print of him in uniform standing before a harbored warship with
other members of his squad.

"The one from the roadhouse," said John Lourdes, "must have
served in Cuba during the Spanish-American War."

Rawbone leaned back to try and get a look. He asked for the photo.
He held it against the steering wheel. The dun-colored print was badly
beaten at the edges and deeply faded. It was a moment caught bare.
Soldiers laughing and at the ready. Serve a cause, change the world.
It was not worth spit now. That's what death had to say about it all.
There is only the ever selfish present to consider. Yet even so—

He handed back the photo. "That warship is the China," said the
father, "and that's not Cuba, but Manila harbor."

His gaze returned to the road. It was an impossible leap for the son
to imagine the father anywhere people embark upon a cause. Yet how
else could he have known so quickly?

He went back to the wallet. In another pocket he found a cache of
business cards all neatly printed and fairly new. What was written there
was sobering to a fault.

They were driving in a region where the earth had been thrust up
through the faults of time and the ragged line of rocks the road divided
looked as if they had been shaped by a hostile blade saw. The son
turned the business cards over and over in his hand.

"There's something here that falls short."

Rawbone glanced at John Lourdes, who handed him the business
card. The father held it up and read:

JAMES MERRILL

STANDARD OIL COMPANY

MEXICO

HE SOCORRO MISSION was on the El Camino de Tierra Adentro
just southeast of the ford where the ferry crossed the Rio Grande.
Constructed on a sandy incline, the church was a simple structure with
a stepped parapet above the front door on which sat the bell tower.

It was late afternoon when the truck labored up to the low mud
brick wall that flanked the nave and from where they could view the
ferry. The church was quiet. A few gulls sat atop the bell tower with its
cross. There was no shade save for one manzanita alongside the adobe
wall. The men rested there in the stifling heat and studied the ferry.

It was docked on the Texas side. There was a customs shack on
each shoreline. On this side of the river, the shack stood within a small
grotto of trees. The one on the opposing shore stood bare in a landscape that looked like the unfinished country of God's hand. It was still
as a painting down there.

"Keep the truck company," said Rawbone. "I'll go to the river to
get the feel of things. See what all we have to deal with."

John Lourdes walked to the truck and removed his shoulder holster and set it on the cab seat. He couldn't help but keep looking at the
mission. From the moment they'd driven up to this lonely spot he felt
as if voices from the other world were talking to him.

There was a pump down one side of the building with a boiler that
had been blowtorched in half then plunked down in the sand to use as
a trough. He removed his vest and shirt to shave. It was then he remembered the crucifix around his neck, the one with the broken cross beam
that was his mother's. Realizing it might give him away, he slipped it
off and hid it in his wallet.

JOHN LOURDES WENT into the cool and quiet of the church to wait.
Something about this mission held him. Inside it was as simple as the
faith that inspired it. It was the faith of his mother and her people, the
faith that spoke of sacrifice, of mercy and forgiveness.

There was a statue of the crucified Christ near tall as he was beside the pulpit. There was also a pedestal that stood before the side
pews holding a statue of the Virgin and Child. That is where he sat. He
placed his hat beside him. Light from the windows cast dusk upon the
floor. He studied the Madonna's face, the pale skin of the European,
the painted stare a conception of immaculate calm and peace. What
was it about this place-

"Praying?"

Caught off guard, John Lourdes came quickly around. Rawbone
had entered the mission silently. He sat in the pew across from John
Lourdes. He glanced at the statue of the Virgin and Child. "If you're
praying to her, forget it. She sure didn't do shit for her son." Then those
dusty loveless eyes motioned toward the cross.

To that John Lourdes had nothing to say. He took his hat and
stood to leave. Rawbone motioned he sit again. "Nothing can happen
till dark anyway."

The son sat.

The father seemed to have something on his mind.

"When you were a detective for the Santa Fe you must have worked
the yards by the river."

"I did."

"You probably met a lot of people from the barrio."

"I did."

"You being part Mexican."

"I speak the language, if that's what you mean."

"I was talking about families and such. Knowing families and such."

"Families and such ... yes."

Rawbone sat a bit longer, taking in all that was about him.

"Why do you ask?" said John Lourdes.

Something moved those features momentarily.

"Another time."

He stood.

"We only have tomorrow," said John Lourdes.

"That's right. Let's see then how that goes. For both of us."

Had what he'd seen been the substance of unspeakable regret, or
unresolved sorrow? And if it was, what of it? As Rawbone walked out
John Lourdes asked, "How do you know this place?"

The father turned and with a way the son well remembered, said, "I
was married here, Mr. Lourdes." With that he tapped down his derby
and started to the door. "Go back to your mysteries, Mr. Lourdes. I'll
be outside ... after I rob the poorbox."

The river lay in darkness. There were but token lights down by the
ferry. Music could be heard coming from the shack on the Rio Bravo side. Rawbone had his bindle open on the cab seat when John Lourdes
joined him.

"How do we go about the crossing?"

Rawbone took a bottle of whiskey and a flask from the bindle.
"We ... I'm going entertaining. When it's clear to make the ferry, I'll
sight you up with a lantern."

He walked away with the whiskey tucked up under his arm, whistling as if he were on a Friday night adventure.

The son watched the ferry landing from the adobe wall and smoked.
Through binoculars he saw Rawbone approach the shack on the Rio
Bravo side. The men, there were three, moved into the doorway light
as the flatbed touched shore. Rawbone began talking, pointing with an
arm, first in one direction, then the other. But always it was the arm
that had the whiskey bottle. His gestures were pure story. The men
measured him with their eyes, but it wasn't long before he'd hustled up
an invitation into their world.

From time to time, John Lourdes glanced back at the church. Now
he understood why somewhere in the fretwork of his memories this
mission had its place.

A LIGHT APPEARED at the river. It began to firefly as the father flagged
a lantern with his derby. On the American side a man briefly peered out
a shack window as the truck geared through its shifts to the landing.
The ferry swayed under the weight of the vehicle, the current slapped
dangerously up against its sides. Pulling the haul rope was slow and difficult, and John Lourdes kept a ready watch, knowing at that moment
he'd gone past the last vestiges of American law.

As the truck labored up from the ferry Rawbone leapt the sideboard. "So far from God, so close to the U.S.," he said. "Let's get from
here."

John Lourdes fed the gas. The engine pulled and they passed slowly
the pitiful tarpaper and adobe border station. The acute quiet caught
John Lourdes's attention immediately.

No one in sight, the door partly open. He tried to spy in.

"No need to involve yourself, Mr. Lourdes."

There was a faint trace in the father's voice that had the feel of the
awful. It wasn't until the last, as the truck veered into the road and away
from the shack, he noticed back beyond the doorway in the half dark
a chair knocked over. Rising up in him was a stirring uncertainty that
John Lourdes, even against his better judgment, needed to address.

He pulled the truck over and jumped down from the cab. He started
for the border station.

"I wouldn't," said the father.

3E ROOM was a scene of pitiless death. Burning candles filled
that space with shadows. The bodies lay like twisted sculptures
of suffering. One on the floor was doubled up, another's head arched
back on a bed, the face a twisted apotheosis of horror. White froth had
accumulated about the mouth. Flies already skimmed the flesh. John
Lourdes stepped from the shack and the night closed in all around him.
He walked to the truck where Rawbone sat behind the wheel with the
motor idling.

"Shall we be on?" he asked.

"I forgot, for a moment. You're just a common assassin."

"I beg to argue, Mr. Lourdes. I am a most uncommon assassin."

John Lourdes looked back across the river.

Rawbone repeated, "So far from God, so close to the U.S."

John Lourdes closed his eyes.

"What did you think, young sir? That we would cross just as
easy as buying sheets and pillows? A little liquor, a little cash? These
campesinos may be street dirt and dumb as a brick, but they can sniff
out a score with the truest of them."

"So you just murdered-"

"That's where you're wrong."

The son turned to the father.

"No, no, no. We murdered three men."

John Lourdes's eyes narrowed.

"We took this truck into Mexico. We are taking this truck filled
with munitions to Juarez. We are together."

"I see."

"Do you, Mr. Lourdes? I'm circumspect. So just in case. Once
we crossed that river and left behind everything you're built on, you
became as much my field hand as I am yours. And those three," he
pointed with his derby toward the shed, "seal the contract. And we'll
sleep the sleep on it."

John Lourdes pushed his hat back and leaned into the cab. "Sleep
the sleep, I won't forget that. No ... I won't."

"Ready to mingle it up with me? Let me remind you of something.
Of a conversation Lawyer Burr had with your justice Knox about my
coming. He had a name for it. A phrase. The practical-"

"-the practical application of strategy."

"There you go. That street dirt back there in the shack, they are the
practical application of strategy."

"For your benefit."

"Absolute. It's a means of holding you to the cross. I don't think
your justice Knox would care to see one of his own standing trial in a
foreign country for a murder committed because of an order the BOI issued. That doesn't seem to me ... a practical application of strategy."

There was a grim flicker of dark accomplishment.

"How did you come to exist?" said John Lourdes.

"I came to exist in the same manner as Cain and Abel. Then I was
baptized pure American for good measure."

THE LIGHTS OF Juarez stood out upon the plain. The road they were
on followed the trackline. The way was lit by intermittent campfires
with small groups of raggletag peons brandishing weapons. Soldiers in
the making. An army of insurrection rising up out of the evening land.
Their voices wild and bitter and ready to war.