The Creed of Violence

NINE

'OHN LOURDES SAID nothing. He remained fixed on the task at hand. As a boy he had seen this pattern of subversion in the man. The pure willingness to destroy, even when it was contrary to his own best interests. If that's what the father now had in mind for the man named John Lourdes, then the son would meet the assault with defiant silence. Draw from that well all you want, but it isn't me, thought John Lourdes, who'll drink the water.

"That's right," said Rawbone, "pay no attention. I tend to speak on what I see. That's what comes from being a lifer at this game. Not that I have anything against those soldiers. In fact, I have a particular fondness for our military."

He took off his derby and wiped at the sweat on the inside crown with a bandana. John Lourdes looked at him, and he in turn stared back at the young man with reasoned disquiet.

"Mr. Lourdes, do you believe love can be as much a poison as hatred?"

"Very well."

"It's a wisdom alright. I was born in a place called Scabtown. A filthy pile of sewage and humankind it was. It sat across the river from Fort McKavett. San Saba County. Mostly it was built by Germans. A lot of Germans there. My mother was German. She made her living on her back. The pimp who ran the brothel used to say his girls spent so much time with their legs in the air he was surprised no one had ever tried to hoist the flag on one of them."

John Lourdes watched as the father moved through one room after another of his past. It was part of a shadow world the son had never heard, never known.

"My father, it turns out, could have been a soldier. There sure was a parade of them. Enlisted men and officers alike. Of course, he could have been some creeping Jesus of a clerk with fishbones for a spine. Or maybe some padre who had to bless his pecker every time he got hold of it. A crime of chance ... that's what Lawyer Burr calls that kind of being born ... a crime of chance."

Rawbone was overcome suddenly with a grimness. The unrealizable conjoined with the contradictory. Only imagine what is forward, as you cannot reimagine that which has been left behind. He was alone now in a scorching daylight with the secret company of his soul. Bitterness as raw as road dust upon the eyes.

He looked at the young man who was his warden and the young man looked away and reached for a pack of smokes in his shirt pocket. Rawbone saw and leaned over and was ready with a struck match. John Lourdes lit up from it begrudgingly. "By the way, I don't speak just to wander. I'm calling a turn here."

"Get on with it, then."

"Within two days we'll be in Juarez and I'll do my penance and be out. But you have the look of Montgomery Ward's to me and I'm not sure Montgomery Ward's will see us through."

The son stared at the father from under the brim of his hat. The face was shaded away and so the father waited.

"Do you know why you're here?" asked John Lourdes.

"Why I'm here?"

"Yes."

"Is this about my derelict life or-"

"It is not."

"Well then, why don't you tell me."

"Think about it."

"Just give me the sermon."

"You're here because of me. I brought you down."

The father sat back.

"Understand." The son's eyes flared. "You were a free man till I arrived. So I haven't done too bad so far."

East of Fort Bliss were natural springs where a stopover of sorts had been hammered up out of castoff lumber and tarpaper. There was a roadhouse the troops frequented when they were in need of a little damnation with its two eateries and a handful of merchandisers and a part-time brothel in a mechanics' shed. It always had its share of travelers, this being the main thoroughfare between El Paso and Carlsbad.

It was here they pulled off the road. And while John Lourdes checked the radiator and filled the gas tank from one of a set of drums lashed down in the truckbed, Rawbone hit the roadhouse to stack up on a few beers for the drive to the Huecos, where he'd hidden away the armaments.

John Lourdes leaned against the truckbed and looked toward the mountains. He was considering how best to preserve himself while carrying an illegal cargo of contraband into Mexican territory.

"I'm Goddamn envious."

He turned. Approaching was a man with a broad face and stiff mustache. He had a ruddy smile and a laborer's body, but his clothes spoke of someone well appointed.

"Fine truck. One of those new three-tonners, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir."

The man was bowlegged and hitched some when he walked. "Mind if I look her over?"

"No, sir."

He walked the chassis, admiring the workmanship with an unerring eye and a taste for detail. He pointed to AMERICAN PARTHENON painted on the siding. "That your company?"

"No sir. I'm just a driver."

"Well, you look like a climber to me." He winked. Then he looked over the cab interior, studying the steering wheel and shift, the floor starter. "Keep an eye to the future, son. It's exciting times. God, what I would give to be your age now."

Rawbone walked up to the truck. He was carrying a couple of bottles of beer and he put them on the cab seat. He'd overheard the man, who now looked at him. "Your partner there can tell you. It all goes by quick as a piss. Look to the future, son, like you were at those mountains a few minutes ago. Damn, what I wouldn't give to take the ride again-"

As the man walked away, John Lourdes came around the truck. Rawbone said, "I hope me buying you a beer doesn't constitute a bribe."

"Get in the truck. We're rolling out of here now. You drive."

The truck rumbled out into the roadway and made for the east. John Lourdes crabbed through his duffel till he found binoculars.

"What's got you, Mr. Lourdes?"

"He was admiring the truck alright, but it was my shoulder holster and the weapons in the cab that clocked most of his interest."

The father glanced back toward the springs as the son focused his binoculars. Through the dazzling heat a tight pack of men on horseback and one on a motorcycle made the road and started their way. The motorcycle sped out and took the lead.

"At least four riders, one motorcycle."

"Was he one of them?"

"Too much dust."

"They could be road thugs."

"Or worse."

"Is there a weapon anywhere in my future, Mr. Lourdes?"

"I'm no fortuneteller."

"Well, I guess I'll have a beer then."

THE MOTORCYCLE WAS far in advance of the horsemen but not so far back it could not keep the truck in sight. A stand would have to be made. That was becoming more obvious with the failing light. John Lourdes decided it should be the place where the weapons had been cached away. They ascended the windswept remains of a cart path into the Huecos. The rocks hulked up in the paling light on all sides to become brooding silhouettes. The silence deepened till there was only the sound of that laboring engine.

On a plat of ground surrounded by shaly hills were the crumbling walls of a village. A single block of adobes led to a roofless meeting hall of two stories. The wind had begun to rise up and that barren range became engulfed in a deepening sense of isolation and emptiness. The sun on a far promontory burned with the last of the day. John Lourdes traced that cart path down through the hills as best he could with his binoculars for any sign of their pursuers.

"It'll be two hours yet," said Rawbone, "before those horsemen catch up with the one on the motorcycle. And that long again to sneak their way up here."

"Where are the weapons?"

"Why, Mr. Lourdes, they're in plain sight."

And they were, in a manner of speaking. The father had the son follow him beyond the meeting house to a sandy incline scarred with crevasses. Then he waved the son to keep step behind as he scaled that crag following a plumb line of fist-sized stones and upon reaching the last near the apex, squatted down.

"Notice the line of rocks. They mark the spot. Now. Stand close, Mr. Lourdes, and watch the magic."

The father reached into the sand and his arms vanished near up to the elbows. As he pulled the sand began to ribbon and twill and the hill face moved like the back of some hidden monster coming to life.

"Kneel down here and light a match."

A vein of light fell upon the stacked crates hidden there in a recess beneath a tarp that had been covered by sand.

"What all is down there?"

"Your garden-variety arsenal. Carbines, ammunition, hand grenades, dynamite and detonators, and a .50 caliber machine gun. Mr. Lourdes, you could hold off the Holy Roman Empire with all that firepower."

John Lourdes blew out the match.

JOHN LOURDES HAD Rawbone move the truck far back of the meeting house and away from where the weapons were cached. He swung the shotgun strap over his shoulder. He carried rifle and binoculars loose. While he ran to a place from where he would watch the road Rawbone, alone now, slipped down under the chassis.

Before arriving in El Paso, Rawbone had hammered a strip of flap leather to the underside of the chassis housing. He'd nailed it into the wood on three sides, leaving the fourth open to form a sort of pocket or pouch where he stashed away an automatic. When that was done he'd hammered the last side closed so the weapon wouldn't shake loose.