The Creed of Violence

six

T HAD HAPPENED too fast and not near with the force John Lourdes had always imagined. He'd hoped some physical law of existence would be affected. There had been no suffering and no acknowledgment from that dusky figure that he would now face his end. John Lourdes felt barren and empty, as if the dust of everything that had been his life blew through the whetted bones of his chest.

John Lourdes rode with justice Knox and another agent in a poor excuse for a touring car. Agent Howell had been ordered to follow the girl from the Mills Building and stop her at the border. She was now being held incommunicado in a basement room at Immigration.

When Knox and his agents arrived, the girl was bundled up on the floor behind some filing cabinets. She was a pathetic sight rocking back and forth while keeping her face hidden behind her hands.

"What's going on here?" asked Knox.

Howell pointed at the girl, "She's an imbecile."

Lourdes walked past the agent, saying, "I told you she was deaf."

"She may be deaf, but she's an imbecile."

Knox rebuked Howell with a look. "She has information we need."

"She's an imbecile."

Lourdes knelt down. The girl clenched up at being touched, but by proceeding gently he managed to get her hands away from her face. When she finally saw who it was, she seemed to ease a bit, even as she stared at the strange men in this hostile setting. He coaxed her to stand and then to sit at a table. The room had brick walls and no windows. There was a single electric light that hung from the ceiling. It was a dire kind of place, unlikely to put one's fears at rest, but he tried by placing a hand to his heart and then touching her shoulder.

He turned to his commanding officer. "Sir?"

"Does anyone have an idea how we deal with her?"

No one did. Only John Lourdes offered, "May I try something, sir?"

"She seems to be at ease with you."

He sat at the table opposite her. He had been turning over in his head ways to try and reach her during the ride to Immigration. He took out his pocket notepad and pencil. He began to write.

"She's an imbecile," said Howell.

Lourdes did not answer that.

"And besides, she's Mex."

"I'm writing in Spanish."

"Oh," said Howell. "I forgot. You're one of them."

Lourdes turned and looked up at Howell. "That's enough," said Justice Knox.

When he was done, John Lourdes passed the notepad across the table to the girl and pointed to what he'd written: C 1, you read-wr4e? Do you unders4an2

She stared at the note, at the men, then she just sat there within the confines of a complete sadness. I understand you, he thought, I'm as alone here as you are. The men were getting restless. John Lourdes took the notebook and wrote: Be no4 afraid. God and I will See 4o your we/fare.

He passed her the notebook again. She looked at it, then at him with the naked honesty of a child. She took the pencil and began to write, line after line, and when she was done John Lourdes read aloud: Yes, I can read and write. I am much better in Spanish than English. But I can do both. I was not born deaf. That happened when I was ten. Before that I went to the nun's school at Our Lady's Church.

John Lourdes asked the commander, "What now, sir?"

"Ask why she was going back and forth across the border."

She watched as he wrote, and then wrote back: Will / be in 4rouble?

He wrote: No.

She wrote: I was carrying money s4i4cl,ed into my c/o4i es.

He read that aloud. The agents looked and talked amongst themselves. The commander instructed John Lourdes, "Ask what the money was for."

She answered: My fa4ier ordered me 4o co i4. So / did 4.

Lourdes wondered and wrote: Tie man wl,o brovjl,-I you -/o 4e border, 4I,e one wi-{I, 4e revolver. Wl o is l e?

She wrote with trepidation: He . .. is my fa4l,er. She added: Wl,a4 wi(( happen 4o me now? /fly fa4er saw me Oaken. He will demand 4o know. / will 1,ave 4o exp/ain. / am afraid.

John Lourdes looked at justice Knox, who spoke. He was sober and deliberative. "Money coming from the south. It certainly is not narcotics. Contraband ... weapons. That's most likely. So we possibly have linkage to a smuggling operation. How deep does it run here and across the border? What political ramifications does it have? We don't want to disrupt them till we know more. That means the girl has to go back. Otherwise they might assume the worst and restructure their operation."

"Threaten the man through his daughter," said Howell. "Jail her. Give her a few days in the pit, then bring the father here."

"That's a three-wheeled idea, sir," said Lourdes. "The father might be nothing more than a pair of boots."

Justice Knox removed his glasses. He rubbed at the pinch marks on his nose. He asked one of his agents about the immigration statutes.

"There are restrictions, sir, against the morally suspect, the diseased, those engaged in contract labor-"

"The LPC provision," said John Lourdes, "that would make the most sense."

"Yes," said the agent, "the-likely-to-become-a-public-charge statute. It would, sir, make sense in her case."

Knox, after some consideration, concurred. "Have Immigration write her up for an LPC. Lourdes, explain it to her, then have her released."

Later, he requested permission to make sure the girl got safely across the border. Knox agreed, and so John Lourdes drove her to the nun's school at the church. He advised her to go there and have one of the nuns escort her home, believing it would lend validity to the LPC charge and assuage any fears or suspicions her father might have as to why she'd been picked up and interrogated by Immigration.

As they sat in front of the church, where the smoky light from the sacristy cast a warm gold upon the night, justice Knox received a phone call at his office from Burr. He wanted to meet, that evening if possible, to negotiate a deal for his client with the BOI, offering in exchange relevant information about a smuggling operation.

The girl pointed to John Lourdes's pocket for his notepad and pencil. She wrote: / do/i4 4 even know your name.

He wrote: John Lourdes. I know yours-Teresa. /4 is a lovely name.

She drew on a new page a simple cross with lines from it fanning out. He pitched up his arms and shoulders as if to ask what this means.

She wrote beneath the cross: God will signs down of you when you are mos4 i/1 need.

He thanked her and slipped the pad into his pocket. He sat with a far-off stare and when he finally turned to her, she looked away. She'd been looking at him too long and too intensely and when she realized it, she became self-conscious.

He suddenly had this feeling of boyhood, of who he'd been before ... the fall of angels, so to speak. The feeling was all around him in the scented dark, in the light from the church doorway, on the dry sage breeze. And above all, in the simple portraiture of that young girl with hands folded across her lap.

The pure aesthetic of being truly alive and filled with possibility possessed him. He closed his eyes and tried to completely absorb the feeling and so hold on to it. Then she touched his arm to say she was getting out of the car.

He tried to sleep that night, but he could not. He lay in bed in the tiny room he rented that was his whole world. This day in 1910 had washed upon the opposing shores of his existence, and while he lay there a deal was being exacted that would cast him upon the shores of yet another existence.

In the morning he was awakened by his landlord. There was a call on the hall phone. Justice Knox ordered him to come immediately to the courthouse, and to speak with no one. Rawbone was going to be released.