The Creed of Violence

EIGHT

AWBONE WAS BY the truck, giving it a close looking-over, when John Lourdes came out of the house. He still had on that derby, but now he wore a white Mexican shirt and canvas pants tucked into some hard-traveled boots. He had a bindle slung over his shoulder and his hands were pressed flat into a native sash around his waist. Knox and Howell flanked him and when he saw John Lourdes approach he tipped his hat and said, grinning, "Doctor ... something or other ... I presume."

John Lourdes walked right past and began to stow his belongings in the truck cab.

"What was his name?" said Rawbone to no one in particular. "I remember reading about it years ago in The Herald. This gent travels all of darkest Africa looking for some famous doctor and when he finds him he's living in some shantytown with a tribe of spades and he says, `Doctor so and so, I presume.' What the hell was his name?"

John Lourdes walked past him again. He joined Knox and Howell, who stood off a few yards, and they finalized plans. While he was alone Rawbone leaned around and tried to inconspicuously look down into the back of the cab housing to see if a weapon he'd nested away was still there.

The men finished their talk and shook hands. Rawbone eased away from the cab as John Lourdes approached him and said, "Get in the truck. I'll drive."

"Aye, sir," said Rawbone.

The truck rumbled out of the weeded lot, then down the driveway and past the veranda where Burr now stood watching. He had a gray stare for both men, and implicit at the heart of it was how flaws in the world so shaped human destiny.

Rawbone leaned out the cab window and called to his friend, "When I've done my penance I'll come back and then you and I can gent up and get some sinning under our belt."

He sat back and told John Lourdes, "If you ever need a righteous good attorney, he's your man. That son-of-a-bitch could have gotten Christ off."

"I can imagine," said John Lourdes, "as he seems to have done alright for Satan."

THEY DROVE IN silence through the city, then turned onto a road that led past Fort Bliss. Their destination, according to Rawbone, was somewhere in the Hueco Mountains where the arms were hidden away.

The truck scaled a rutted series of low and gravel-faced escarpments from which they could look back and see El Paso. The Rio Grande Valley had become a vast keep of civilization, with the thread of roadways and train tracks etching out in all directions and on into an ocean of heat. The valley, at that hour, on that day, so perfectly marked the years of Rawbone's wandering that he quietly cursed himself.

John Lourdes noted the vexed look on the father's face but checked it off as pure self-regard.

Rawbone turned away from the sight of El Paso. "Your name is Lourdes, right? John Lourdes?"

He eyed the father warily. "That's right."

"How do you like to be called?"

"It doesn't matter."

"It'll be Mr. Lourdes then." Rawbone reached into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes. "As befitting our stations."

John Lourdes kept to the road. But he was thinking now, I'd forgotten the voice, the tones and inflections. He had the huckster's gift to make you feel, even as he was unfaithful to anything he said.

Rawbone looked the young man over as he lit a cigarette. The khaki pants and polished boots. The vest and cravenetted Mallory hat. He was strictly Montgomery Ward's. An escapee from that blue-collar catalogue. Except for the automatic he carried in a shoulder holster.

"Is that a Browning?"

"It's a Browning."

"Cigarette?"

"I have my own."

"You from El Paso?"

"I am."

"Lourdes sounds French. Is it a French name? Are you French?"

John Lourdes leaned into the steering wheel. "It's a French name."

"You have some Mexican blood in you. I heard that."

"I am part Mexican."

"How about Anglo blood? Or is being French now considered being Anglo?"

"I have Anglo blood in me."

"You're a mutt then."

"Why not."

Rawbone set his legs up on the door frame to stretch them out. He crossed his arms. "Of course, we're all mutts, aren't we? Except for the damn Hun, who considers himself pure as some nun's noble parts." He used his cigarette as a pointer now, jabbing at the air. "Even Christ, he was a mutt. The ultimate mutt. Part man, part god. If you believe in such nonsense. What do you say to that?"

"I'm fuckin' overwhelmed."

Rawbone laughed right over that dark-eyed malicious stare and told the whole empty world around them in a booming voice, "Hey, we got a young man here who can bite without hardly opening his mouth."

HE HAS NO inkling, thought John Lourdes, not even a breath of remembrance that the one beside him in the truck is his son. John Lourdes was just another nondescript face in a tide of faces. This should have been his passport to emotional indifference, but it was not. He wanted the hard features and steady gaze to be recognized for what they were.

Soon ahead upon the plain was Fort Bliss. First they could make out the three- and two-story barracks and then row upon row of newly pitched tents. The camp had increased dramatically over the last months and there were columns of mounted infantry and supply wagons making slow headway through a steady pall of dust.

"They're getting ready for the revolution to come."

"Is that what you think?" said Rawbone. "How old are you?"

John Lourdes stared, but did not answer.

"Take a look over there. See all that artillery."

Spread out over acres of sand and sage was an armada of caissons and heavy guns.

"The Mexican is just target practice. An inconsequential. These boys are down here to drill for the war to come in Europe against the Hun and his dago bitch. The agents of war need something to practice on. Who better than some filthy, ignorant peon."

Columns of cavalry approached. John Lourdes veered toward the shoulder of the road. Rawbone swung out of the open truck and stood on the cab seat, holding to the frame with his head above the canvas roofing. As they drove along he pulled off his derby and amidst all that throated dust began to sing to the passing troops:

That road-tired legion of riders either laughed or hurrahed and others just stared at Rawbone as if he were some sidewalk pathetic to be avoided. Yelling out, "The country is proud of you!" he swung back down into the cab.

He greeted John Lourdes's stare with a burnt wink. "Take a look at those boys, Mr. Lourdes. A good healthy look, 'cause what you're seeing there is as dumb a bunch of mules as could ever be assembled. And you know what else? They're about as equipped for where they're going as you coming with me."