The Creed of Violence

THIRTY'-FOUR

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."