The Creed of Violence

SIXTEEN

ITH THAT RAWBONE gravely followed. The air in the Customs House was a heady reek of tobacco, nervous sweat and body tonics. John Lourdes led them through a swell of arguments over how these men might best preserve their financial world, till he got close enough to the ALLIANCE FOR PROGRESS table that he could spy unnoticed.

A cadre of businessmen stood around the booth. A flier was being handed out while a poised gentleman, with hands folded and a face near expressionless as a piece of paper, calmly spoke.

"As a member of the American consulate I can speak clearly to the one issue I am constantly asked about. If there is to be a revolution, and it certainly looks as if there will be, what can America do to maintain stability here? Of course, by that you mean, beyond diplomacy, military intervention. Now I know what I'm going to say you don't want to hear, but it's exactly what I have expressed to Mr. Hecht."

The consul looked to the man handing out the fliers in acknowledgment. This Hecht fellow, the one to whom the truck was to be delivered, was old and slightly hunched but had fierce eyes in an otherwise stagnant face.

Rawbone whispered, "He doesn't look much more than a cadaver."

"America is not now, nor should ever be, in the business of nation building," said the consul. "And that is what American military intervention here would mean. It would be a great calamity. And in the end all other nations would stand to reap the advantages, whatever the outcome. And I warn you, our country would end up bearing all the expense only to reap the crop of resulting hatred and revenge unlike anything you could imagine."

The agitated men forced questions but the consul made an officious movement with his hand to signal he was continuing.

"Consider what military intervention would symbolize. What it might foment amongst certain sections of the citizenry. The destruction of the oil fields, the tank farms, the pipelines, the refineries. Do you know what that means in revenues? What the solution is, is open to discussion. What it is not, is-"

A shot registered across that vaulted ceiling. Men scattered from around the stage where a verdadero hombre now stood behind the podium with a smoking revolver he used as a gavel. He had a formal and very charged face, with a mustache grown to the shores of his chin line, and he spoke in the crude but poetic Spanish of a rural hacendado.

"I've come all the way from the south. I listen and I listen before I speak. But I speak. You think with your pockets. Sadly. But you know what is between your pockets." He stood away from the platform. The gun hung from one hand and with the other he grabbed his crotch. There was a wall of laughter and applause that he waved away with his revolver.

"You know what else is between your pockets." He touched his heart reverently. "And this also." He then touched his head. "What are the right principles? Our people live to be only thirty. Most are in homes that are uninhabitable. Because you are all only of the pockets. God on high is watching. And God on high is taking measure of your souls. I've come all the way from the south to tell you this."

A squad of customs guards responding to the shot now appeared. They drove through the crowd in a phalanx of rifles toward the man on the stage with the gun who was speaking to that crowd, near yelling. "I am not finished yet ... I have one thing more to say before I am taken by the wolves."

His arm swung toward the soldiers and Rawbone had to pull John Lourdes back or he would have been driven under by a rush of boots and bayonets. And then, of all things, it was the crowd around the stage that refused the soldiers a pathway. These businessmen and merchants, these signposts for a kind of strangled masculinity, once in the presence of a true verdadero hombre, wanted to prove their mettle, at least for a few minutes. And so the speaker continued.

"It was God at his most blessed who gave you this." He touched his head. "So you would know what is right. It was God at his most blessed who gave you this." And he touched his heart. "So you could feel what is right. And it was God who gave you these," he grabbed his crotch again, "so you would have the fuckin' cojones to do what is right even if it means your own death. That is God's holy trinity on earth. And if you do not live by that you are just useless pockets-"

He'd barely gotten out the last word when the customs guards on an order surged and took the stage. The hombre belted his weapon and put up no resistance and a pathway of retreating bodies opened and he was shuttled out and the pathway closed and he was gone almost before his words fell silent. Then it was as if he had never been there at all.

John Lourdes bent down to pick up a couple of ALLIANCE FOR PROGRESS fliers that had fallen to the floor. They were about a fund drive and petition signing to rally support for American intervention in case of war.

As he stood Rawbone said, "There's only one thing missing in this place, and you know what it is ... the headstones, Mr. Lourdes, the headstones."

"Come with me."

"Too staunchly orthodox to appreciate the humor in it?"

John Lourdes looked for a quiet place along the far wall. One thing he could say about what he'd seen of the evening so far, it was as if they'd stumbled upon a well-defended and determined institution whose charter read, "Justice is secondary; security is the byword."

He took out his notepad.

"Do you take down anything I say, Mr. Lourdes? For posterity, I mean."

He handed Rawbone one of Merrill's business cards and the pencil. "Write Anthony Hecht ... Alliance for Progress ... and the address."

He turned so the father could use his back. Rawbone placed the card there and did as he was commanded. Still, he wanted to know, "Why am I doing this? I can see the bastard from here. I know the address. It's just a matter of me delivering the truck."

John Lourdes turned. "There's been a change of plans. You're not delivering the truck."

"What the hell is going on in your head?"

The son pointed over the father's shoulder and he turned to see. The walls of the Customs House had been decorated with murals. The one they stood beneath was of a Christ somewhere in the Mexican desert, ministering to two angels.

"And I thought you didn't have a sense of humor. Well, shame on me, Mr. Lourdes."