by Boston Teran
"Are you a schooled man, Mr. Lourdes?"
John Lourdes finished what he was noting and then looked up. The question went to the flashpoint of his life. "Oil boy in the roundhouses at thirteen. Railroad detective for the Santa Fe at twenty. Then the BOI. A few night classes in between."
"All that with only a notepad and some native instinct."
"You're never at a loss, are you?"
"I've misfired a time or two."
"But you're always right there and ready to help someone drown."
"With a smile and good cheer."
"We'll have this done in another day, so let's not stumble-fuck over each other. Then you can get on with your miserable existence as a free man."
"I couldn't have said it better myself."
John Lourdes returned to his notebook. He took up the last wallet from the derby.
"I think you misunderstood me," said Rawbone.
"Did I?"
"I only meant you've a clear mind, and it's carried you well."
Even before the sun, came the heat. It was going to be that kind of day. The shadows fell away behind them as the sun rose over the rim of the world and bore light down upon their road.
The last wallet belonged to the man who'd spoken to John Lourdes at the roadhouse. His name was James Merrill. In a side pouch was a tiny print of him in uniform standing before a harbored warship with other members of his squad.
"The one from the roadhouse," said John Lourdes, "must have served in Cuba during the Spanish-American War."
Rawbone leaned back to try and get a look. He asked for the photo. He held it against the steering wheel. The dun-colored print was badly beaten at the edges and deeply faded. It was a moment caught bare. Soldiers laughing and at the ready. Serve a cause, change the world. It was not worth spit now. That's what death had to say about it all. There is only the ever selfish present to consider. Yet even so—
He handed back the photo. "That warship is the China," said the father, "and that's not Cuba, but Manila harbor."
His gaze returned to the road. It was an impossible leap for the son to imagine the father anywhere people embark upon a cause. Yet how else could he have known so quickly?
He went back to the wallet. In another pocket he found a cache of business cards all neatly printed and fairly new. What was written there was sobering to a fault.
They were driving in a region where the earth had been thrust up through the faults of time and the ragged line of rocks the road divided looked as if they had been shaped by a hostile blade saw. The son turned the business cards over and over in his hand.
"There's something here that falls short."
Rawbone glanced at John Lourdes, who handed him the business card. The father held it up and read:
JAMES MERRILL
STANDARD OIL COMPANY
MEXICO
THIRTEEN
HE SOCORRO MISSION was on the El Camino de Tierra Adentro just southeast of the ford where the ferry crossed the Rio Grande. Constructed on a sandy incline, the church was a simple structure with a stepped parapet above the front door on which sat the bell tower.
It was late afternoon when the truck labored up to the low mud brick wall that flanked the nave and from where they could view the ferry. The church was quiet. A few gulls sat atop the bell tower with its cross. There was no shade save for one manzanita alongside the adobe wall. The men rested there in the stifling heat and studied the ferry.
It was docked on the Texas side. There was a customs shack on each shoreline. On this side of the river, the shack stood within a small grotto of trees. The one on the opposing shore stood bare in a landscape that looked like the unfinished country of God's hand. It was still as a painting down there.
"Keep the truck company," said Rawbone. "I'll go to the river to get the feel of things. See what all we have to deal with."
John Lourdes walked to the truck and removed his shoulder holster and set it on the cab seat. He couldn't help but keep looking at the mission. From the moment they'd driven up to this lonely spot he felt as if voices from the other world were talking to him.
There was a pump down one side of the building with a boiler that had been blowtorched in half then plunked down in the sand to use as a trough. He removed his vest and shirt to shave. It was then he remembered the crucifix around his neck, the one with the broken cross beam that was his mother's. Realizing it might give him away, he slipped it off and hid it in his wallet.
JOHN LOURDES WENT into the cool and quiet of the church to wait. Something about this mission held him. Inside it was as simple as the faith that inspired it. It was the faith of his mother and her people, the faith that spoke of sacrifice, of mercy and forgiveness.
There was a statue of the crucified Christ near tall as he was beside the pulpit. There was also a pedestal that stood before the side pews holding a statue of the Virgin and Child. That is where he sat. He placed his hat beside him. Light from the windows cast dusk upon the floor. He studied the Madonna's face, the pale skin of the European, the painted stare a conception of immaculate calm and peace. What was it about this place-
"Praying?"
Caught off guard, John Lourdes came quickly around. Rawbone had entered the mission silently. He sat in the pew across from John Lourdes. He glanced at the statue of the Virgin and Child. "If you're praying to her, forget it. She sure didn't do shit for her son." Then those dusty loveless eyes motioned toward the cross.
To that John Lourdes had nothing to say. He took his hat and stood to leave. Rawbone motioned he sit again. "Nothing can happen till dark anyway."
The son sat.
The father seemed to have something on his mind.
"When you were a detective for the Santa Fe you must have worked the yards by the river."
"I did."
"You probably met a lot of people from the barrio."
"I did."
"You being part Mexican."
"I speak the language, if that's what you mean."
"I was talking about families and such. Knowing families and such."
"Families and such ... yes."
Rawbone sat a bit longer, taking in all that was about him.
"Why do you ask?" said John Lourdes.
Something moved those features momentarily.
"Another time."
He stood.
"We only have tomorrow," said John Lourdes.
"That's right. Let's see then how that goes. For both of us."
Had what he'd seen been the substance of unspeakable regret, or unresolved sorrow? And if it was, what of it? As Rawbone walked out John Lourdes asked, "How do you know this place?"
The father turned and with a way the son well remembered, said, "I was married here, Mr. Lourdes." With that he tapped down his derby and started to the door. "Go back to your mysteries, Mr. Lourdes. I'll be outside ... after I rob the poorbox."
The river lay in darkness. There were but token lights down by the ferry. Music could be heard coming from the shack on the Rio Bravo side. Rawbone had his bindle open on the cab seat when John Lourdes joined him.
"How do we go about the crossing?"
Rawbone took a bottle of whiskey and a flask from the bindle. "We ... I'm going entertaining. When it's clear to make the ferry, I'll sight you up with a lantern."
He walked away with the whiskey tucked up under his arm, whistling as if he were on a Friday night adventure.
The son watched the ferry landing from the adobe wall and smoked. Through binoculars he saw Rawbone approach the shack on the Rio Bravo side. The men, there were three, moved into the doorway light as the flatbed touched shore. Rawbone began talking, pointing with an arm, first in one direction, then the other. But always it was the arm that had the whiskey bottle. His gestures were pure story. The men measured him with their eyes, but it wasn't long before he'd hustled up an invitation into their world.
From time to time, John Lourdes glanced back at the church. Now he understood why somewhe
re in the fretwork of his memories this mission had its place.
A LIGHT APPEARED at the river. It began to firefly as the father flagged a lantern with his derby. On the American side a man briefly peered out a shack window as the truck geared through its shifts to the landing. The ferry swayed under the weight of the vehicle, the current slapped dangerously up against its sides. Pulling the haul rope was slow and difficult, and John Lourdes kept a ready watch, knowing at that moment he'd gone past the last vestiges of American law.
As the truck labored up from the ferry Rawbone leapt the sideboard. "So far from God, so close to the U.S.," he said. "Let's get from here."
John Lourdes fed the gas. The engine pulled and they passed slowly the pitiful tarpaper and adobe border station. The acute quiet caught John Lourdes's attention immediately.
No one in sight, the door partly open. He tried to spy in.
"No need to involve yourself, Mr. Lourdes."
There was a faint trace in the father's voice that had the feel of the awful. It wasn't until the last, as the truck veered into the road and away from the shack, he noticed back beyond the doorway in the half dark a chair knocked over. Rising up in him was a stirring uncertainty that John Lourdes, even against his better judgment, needed to address.
He pulled the truck over and jumped down from the cab. He started for the border station.
"I wouldn't," said the father.
FOURTEEN
3E ROOM was a scene of pitiless death. Burning candles filled that space with shadows. The bodies lay like twisted sculptures of suffering. One on the floor was doubled up, another's head arched back on a bed, the face a twisted apotheosis of horror. White froth had accumulated about the mouth. Flies already skimmed the flesh. John Lourdes stepped from the shack and the night closed in all around him. He walked to the truck where Rawbone sat behind the wheel with the motor idling.
"Shall we be on?" he asked.
"I forgot, for a moment. You're just a common assassin."
"I beg to argue, Mr. Lourdes. I am a most uncommon assassin."
John Lourdes looked back across the river.
Rawbone repeated, "So far from God, so close to the U.S."
John Lourdes closed his eyes.
"What did you think, young sir? That we would cross just as easy as buying sheets and pillows? A little liquor, a little cash? These campesinos may be street dirt and dumb as a brick, but they can sniff out a score with the truest of them."
"So you just murdered-"
"That's where you're wrong."
The son turned to the father.
"No, no, no. We murdered three men."
John Lourdes's eyes narrowed.
"We took this truck into Mexico. We are taking this truck filled with munitions to Juarez. We are together."
"I see."
"Do you, Mr. Lourdes? I'm circumspect. So just in case. Once we crossed that river and left behind everything you're built on, you became as much my field hand as I am yours. And those three," he pointed with his derby toward the shed, "seal the contract. And we'll sleep the sleep on it."
John Lourdes pushed his hat back and leaned into the cab. "Sleep the sleep, I won't forget that. No ... I won't."
"Ready to mingle it up with me? Let me remind you of something. Of a conversation Lawyer Burr had with your justice Knox about my coming. He had a name for it. A phrase. The practical-"
"-the practical application of strategy."
"There you go. That street dirt back there in the shack, they are the practical application of strategy."
"For your benefit."
"Absolute. It's a means of holding you to the cross. I don't think your justice Knox would care to see one of his own standing trial in a foreign country for a murder committed because of an order the BOI issued. That doesn't seem to me ... a practical application of strategy."
There was a grim flicker of dark accomplishment.
"How did you come to exist?" said John Lourdes.
"I came to exist in the same manner as Cain and Abel. Then I was baptized pure American for good measure."
THE LIGHTS OF Juarez stood out upon the plain. The road they were on followed the trackline. The way was lit by intermittent campfires with small groups of raggletag peons brandishing weapons. Soldiers in the making. An army of insurrection rising up out of the evening land. Their voices wild and bitter and ready to war.
"Mr. Lourdes, if they knew what we were carting ... the bad news for you, we'd spend eternity like some married couple in a common grave."
They had been riding in silence since the river. Until that moment. John Lourdes now said, "I want to know now who you are to meet, and where."
Rawbone considered. "By tomorrow you'll be sleeping in your own bed and maybe supping at the Modern Cafe there in the lobby of the Mills Building."
"I want to know."
There was gunfire and the footfalls of men. John Lourdes came about quickly, his hand going to the shoulder holster. Rawbone stayed to the wheel. Men rushed past the truck to a fight that had flared there by the roadside.
The son turned his attention back to the father, who'd still not even once looked away from the road. "Who and where?"
"Is this a test of wills?"
"If something should happen to you."
"Haven't you even heard the rumor that just thinking it can bring down bad luck? You wouldn't want that."
"My job is to see this through."
"As is mine."
"But I chose to be here. Grant me the information."
Rawbone did not answer. John Lourdes was left to wait, and wait. Then, as if an afterthought, the father said, "Alliance for Progress. Just up from the Customs House on September 16 Avenue. Hecht is the man Simic told me to address."
John Lourdes wrote all this down in his notebook. As he did, from one of the campfires came a boy in near rags running with hat in hand up alongside the truck and begging for money. The father reached into his pocket and asked the son, "The man's name from the roadhouse?"
The son scanned his notes. "James Merrill."
The father tossed the boy a crumpled buck and told him in Spanish, "Courtesy of Mr. James Merrill."
The boy took the money and swung his hat in thanks.
"Before we confront this Hecht fellow," said John Lourdes, "we have to deal with protecting the truck."
"We?"
"Where you go-I go. Where I go-you go."
"With that in mind, Mr. Lourdes. I have a place you'll find particularly fitting."
THEY DROVE THROUGH a neighborhood of blistered hovels and empty lots along the shore. Laundry hung from lines in the starlight. The smell of meals cooking in greased pans scented the air. Somewhere a mother tried to calm a crying child; somewhere there was music and laughter. It was a mirror of the barrio they could see across the streaming quiet of the river, where they'd existed once upon a time with a woman one married and the other called mother. A moment fell through time. A moment they shared without knowing because of the flaw in their existence.
At the end of that long, filthy street was factory row. There the truck pulled up to a drab squat building with a rotting sign on the roof: RODRIGUEZ FUNERARIA.
A funeral parlor.
John Lourdes asked, "You're not trying to politely tell me something, are you?"
In the gray dark Rawbone only grinned and stepped from the cab.
The door opened into what had been an entrance hall. Heavy drapes hung from garish rodding along the walls. The oxblood cloth was moth-eaten and smelled of must. The room was empty but for a desk, where a man slept all bundled up with his hands tucked under his head as a pillow. A black cloth covered a doorway and from beyond came a dramatic overture issuing from a piano.
Rawbone dragged the sleeping man from the desk and told him in no uncertain Spanish he was a ball-less toad and he better do as he was damn well ordered and let McManus know Rawbone was here.
The man went out stoop-shouldered and mumbling. The father had
the son follow him through the covered doorway. As the tarp was pulled back John Lourdes found himself at the rear of a room that had once been for the viewing of bodies but was now a theatre for the showing of movies.
People sat on poorly nailed-together benches while an old Mexican in a Florentine suit played an upright that looked as if it might have made the trip over with Columbus. There was a smoky grit to the light from the projector and on the screen came the flickering rush of images:
BRONCO BILLY ANDERSON IN THE ROAD AGENTS
Father and son remained back by the entranceway. The black cutouts that were people shadows watching the movie more than likely knew little or no English to understand the scene cards, but it mattered not at all. When the road agents thundered down on that stagecoach and robbed the payroll box, the outlaw emotion in the audience rose to the moment. Cheering wildly and screaming of revolution and down with Diaz and the government pistols were fired into the air. Chips of plaster and dust rained everywhere as the room stenched with powdersmoke.
The son looked to the father. Framed in grainy illumination Rawbone was intent upon the screen as the posse formed up for the hunt. His eyes flashed and his mouth opened and his lips reared back in anticipation as one bandit beat down the other over greed and rode off with the ill-gotten gains.
Rawbone leaned toward John Lourdes and spoke behind the cover of his hand: "I love the nickelodeon. Wished they had 'em when I was a boy. That's a world to be introduced to. There's only one thing they can't show right. Movies, I mean. And you know what that is?"
The son had no idea. The father held his hands together as if the fragile and the priceless rested there. "The dyin'," he said. "They can't get that right. The horror when a gent knows all trace of him is being wiped out of existence. The knowing you will be no more. For that's the only thing there is, one's own living self."
F'IFTEEN
CMANUS CAME THROUGH the doorway like a wind, all hail and hearty hellos for his friend, dragging Rawbone out into the atrium where they embraced and cursed each other.
