by Boston Teran
Dispassion had been an essential condition to John Lourdes's successes. And rulership of the self demanded extreme concentration and commitment, so in certain respects justice Knox was correct. He had failed.
"Once in Mexico, sir, I would have no legal authority over him."
"No."
"How do we control him?"
"He knows if he fails to live up to his responsibility by trying to desert, abandon or escape, your orders are to kill him. He knows if he should pose a threat to you, your orders are to kill him. He knows if anything happens to you, even if it's no fault of his, it will be the same as if he failed his responsibility. He must get you back here alive."
"Why should he follow through with any of this, if an opportunity arises?"
"Because we have something he wants."
"And that is?"
"The ability to erase his past ... earned immunity."
There was a selfish purity to that he could understand and believe of his father,) ust as he could feel it in himself.
"You mean he has his own `practical application of strategy."'
Justice Knox's forehead furrowed deeply.
"Correct ... now, what about my concerns with regard to you?"
"Sir, I will go wherever the practical application of strategy demands I go."
A DUFFEL AND weapons lay ready on the bed. John Lourdes sat at the desk in his room. When he'd finished his last will and testament he folded the paper neatly and edged it with a thumb, then inserted it into an envelope along with his bank book. He sealed the envelope and wrote on it: To be opened in 4e eve/4 of my disappearance or dea4.
The truck was parked in an empty lot behind Burr's house. Justice Knox was to bring Rawbone there clandestinely. John Lourdes arrived early as he wanted to meet with Burr alone.
Burr sat at his desk. It was littered with open law books and longforgotten cups of coffee. The needle, as well, lay on a silk handkerchief. He wore the same ruffled shirt as the night before, and the air was spiked with marijuana smoke when Lourdes was ushered in by the silent female servant.
Burr's face took on an anguished look as he watched the young man rest his shotgun and rifle against his duffel.
"They're not here yet, as you are aware."
As John Lourdes approached the desk he removed an envelope from his coat pocket. Burr took to staring out the bay window. Across the river the red cut mountains stood out against the windless blue. He set the envelope down in front of Burr.
"What is this?"
"I'd like to hire you as my attorney."
Burr took the envelope and then turned it over. He saw what was written there.
"If I was your attorney I would advise against this quixotic nightmare."
"Are you my attorney?"
Burr nodded with despair; he would take on that duty.
A car pulled into the driveway. Knox and Howell and the murderer, turned recruit. They watched Howell walk with him to the guest quarters above the garage. Rawbone was still dressed in his suit and derby.
"He looks like a gent being escorted home after a neat bout of night prowling," said Burr.
"There's a bank book in the envelope." John Lourdes went to get his duffel and weapons. "I've signed over power of attorney. Take money for your fee. The rest is for my burial beside my mother."
Burr put the envelope down. His gaunt face looked across the room and back into a silent collection of years. "I remember how you used to sit in that chair."
John Lourdes's body arched. "So you know who I am?"
"Yes ... I have my own detectives when I need them. I remember slipping you money one night and telling you your birth was-"
"A crime of chance."
"I saw the look on your face and regretted having said it."
"If that's an apology, I accept."
"He should never have come back. I warned him."
"Some men just can't help themselves."
"I hope you're not one of those men, John."
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."
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."