by Boston Teran
Rawbone finally answered Doctor Stallings. "Back at the train you said something that stayed with me."
"We're here to talk about-"
"Grandeur and finality," said Rawbone. "That was it. Yeah. We'll cover last night. But first ... let's talk finality."
JOHN LOURDES SAT at his hotel room desk and folded up a letter for the man who was his father. He looked out upon the riled waters of the Panuco as he awaited Rawbone's return. That morning he had taken to the motorcycle, challenging the rains. He'd driven the oil fields with their soaking and grime-stained laborers, and their women in tarpaper cafeterias and stifling warehouses, and Indians on rickety carretas and junker wagons relegated to the lowest scraps of work. They existed under the guidon of imposed fealty. A stranglehold of the futile and the feudal that was, in fact, what had brought his mother to America. It was why she'd ridden boxcars and walked bleached wastes to cross the Rio Grande and stand naked in that fumigation shed all to reach the promise of freedom and opportunity.
He was thinking of his mother as he sat on that idling motorcycle in the rain atop the same rise where Diaz and his surrogates stood in that film, and used it to lie to the world about the state of their nation. And John Lourdes, under a rolling thunder, came to see how much he was his mother's journey. He was not only the agent of her hopes but the eternal argument of her trials toward that freedom and opportunity.
Lightning flashed across the window as John Lourdes slipped his notes into the envelope with the letter, then set it down on the desk. He drank a beer and smoked and watched the harbored storm until the door lock turned.
Rawbone took his sodden hat and put it on the bureau. He hung his coat on the closet door. He went and sat in a cushioned chair in the far corner, all without a word.
"Is it the mayor?" said John Lourdes.
The father answered in a guarded tone, aware of the effect what he was about to say would have. "We are to pick up the munitions at dusk. We are to deliver them to the appointed place at the appointed time. We are to kill the men who come for them. We are then to go to the mayor's house. I am told there is a carriage barn on the property. We are to put the munitions there-"
"What?"
"We are to put the munitions there. The mayor will be at home. We are to kill him. We are to kill anyone and everyone in the house, to leave no witness to that fact."
They sat now with the knowing. Rain spattered across the window. Drops that seemed to carry the weight of time.
"I believe Doctor Stallings sent those women to work at the house knowing full well what he had in mind. Their actions in the desert marked them. And you also. Our friend the doctor asked if I could fully trust you."
John Lourdes sat back. "And what did you say?"
"That I could only fully trust myself."
John Lourdes thought through the situation. "You were giving him clearance to put a bullet through my head."
"Would you have handled it any differently?"
John Lourdes shook his head no. It was, after all, a practical application of strategy.
"If the girl's welfare means something to you, get her out. Then strike it from here, Mr. Lourdes. You've exceeded what's expected."
John Lourdes stood. He took the envelope and walked across the room and set it on the bed against the father's bindle.
"What is that?"
"A letter to justice Knox. I had it notarized so there'd be no question as to its authenticity. My notes are in there also."
The father took a long breath. He eyed the letter.
"I put the film I took from the funeraria in your bindle."
"My bindle?"
The father leaned out from the chair and took the envelope but hesitated opening it. Rather, he looked up at the son with a frank stare.
"The letter says you've earned your immunity. I need to make sure my notes get back. I'm leaving that to you."
The father tried to absorb and understand. "Last night in the bar. I get it now."
John Lourdes walked back to the desk. He reached for the open beer and drank.
"Mr. Lourdes, why are you doing it?"
John Lourdes took to looking out the window. "You've earned it. And I'm staying."
"That's not what I asked. And you know it, Mr. Lourdes."
How does he explain without explaining himself? Or a deaf girl who in a few simple phrases spoke to a pure forgiveness. How does he open up about the woman that man across the room abandoned, for whom there was no grievance so great that she could not forgive, because the eternal, not the ephemeral, was her preeminent star? And how does he explain that place inside him where the common assassin who sat amongst the dead listening to a lullaby and the rogue who kidnapped alligators to keep them from freezing in the Texas cold held out in the absence of everything, refusing to die?
"Mr. Lourdes ... why are you doing it?"
Turning, John Lourdes, his face and voice resolute, answered, "As long as you live, don't ever ask me that. Now ... take the letter and leave."
The father looked down at the envelope. He had been fundamentally emptied, having now in his hands exactly what was necessary, but nothing else. The son was right. He had hurt him in a way the father never imagined.
"As you say, Mr. Lourdes."
ONCE ALONE, JOHN Lourdes leveled his focus on the force of dark tides he was about to confront. He left the room to make sure the truck was right, with enough gasoline and extra parts for an escape. After nightfall he drove in the rain to the mayor's house and waited amongst the dripping trees. When Sister Alicia went from the kitchen to a smokehouse by that rusting truck, he made a stealthy approach. Coming upon the unsuspecting woman, he put a hand to her mouth to keep hush. He had a note for her and Teresa and made her swear they tell no one. They must believe and wait.
Sleep was impossible. He went from one black scenario to another, planning out a strategy for survival, and all the while the shadow of the father was with him in thought, word and deed.
There was no dawn, only rain. There was no sun, only a gravel sky. There was no dusk, only a spreading mist.
The truck was parked in an alley behind the Southern. John Lourdes set his carryall on the cab floor, his shotgun and rifle within reach. He kicked the engine over and tossed his cigarette, then shifted into gear and started up the alley through a runny fog toward the street. His mind was at gunsight level when the man who was his father stepped from a last doorway.
Rawbone stood before the truck in silhouette. John Lourdes braked and draped his arms over the wheel. The father came around to the driver's side of the cab and in a quiet voice said, "Mr. Lourdes, I know who I am ... and I know who you are. I am asking ... save a seat in the truck for me."
The muscles along the son's cheeks made a sudden and unexpected flinch. He knew, without exception, this moment would never be again. It would flee every chance, escape any wish, if he did not grasp it now. Without a word John Lourdes slid across the seat. The father tossed his worldly goods on the cab floor and climbed in behind the wheel and drove.
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 concerne
d ... 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."
THIRTY-FIVE
HEY HAD WATCHED the two flatboats disappear across a night sea and into a nacre mist with their cargo of munitions and women and a disheveled half-dressed mayor and his valet. "Yesterday he'd have staked out those campesinos if it meant survival. Tonight he's one of them. That ... is a practical application of strategy. Mr. Lourdes ... the mayor reminds me of me. Except for the noble parts."
John Lourdes waited and listened until the last whisper of those poling oars. He took the wheel now. Their destination, darkness and escape. They were justified in believing the advantage of time was on their side of the ledger, but a little bad luck and an ill wind had put them in play.
Doctor Stallings was already on the hunt. He called the field garrison and ordered crews of men in vehicles and on horseback to search the roads around Tampico for a three-ton truck with AMERICAN PARTHENON painted on the side. Outlying pipeline stations and warehouse depots were alerted by telegraph to be on the lookout for two suspects in an act of possible murder and sabotage. As for the Mexican authorities, these Stallings waited to inform till he was certain of political advantage.
Son and father struck inland toward San Luis Potosi. A river of night stars appeared wondrously through the failing mist. In the bare light of a building along the pipeline the shifting truck gears drew a watchman's suspicions. He stood in the road while it rumbled past with Rawbone tipping his hat to the old man in a gesture of good evening.
Word was telegraphed, and with that a mandala of armed men was on the move. John Lourdes and Rawbone had dug up the small cache of weapons they'd hidden away. If they reached the city, their plan was to sell them to fund a run to the border.
They drove on through an expanding emptiness, the shadow of their rig running an ocean of creosote. Suddenly a spire rose burning skyward behind them.
"Mr. Lourdes, we've got the Fourth of July on us."
John Lourdes stopped the truck and came about in his seat. A trailing flare miles back, but before it died away another, well to the west, was fired into the air.
"We're being marked," said John Lourdes.
RAWBONE DROVE WHILE John Lourdes sat with flashlight and map, charting a new course of deceptions to cheat capture. But even in the dark the pursuit advanced, their flares marking the coal-black heavens, determined and absolute.
Son and father kept on through the black and wild night, hunted like nameless migrants, climbing up through lonely miles of pinon and chiseled rock. Along the battered remains of mining roads and mule trails, the truck managed the ascent like a slow and hulky beast toward vested cloudbanks. Along the crest they detonated the battened passage behind them to slow the pursuit. But even so, before dawn by a spring at the entrance to a stark plain they could see a retinue of lights traversing the darkened rock face in steady order. From there, a flare went up.
Son and father scanned the desert floor and in the country to their flank there came an answering flare, followed yet by a third atop the distant flats of a mesa. Their pursuers were closing in with the punitive resolve of some fabled deity.
While the father filled the water bags and gassed the truck from a drum, John Lourdes studied the map. But he saw they were beyond remedy now, so he tossed the map in that shallow waterway where it floated briefly before the ink ran, then paled, and the paper sank.
"It's here ... or there."
The father looked out to where a cresset light rose over a day's run of hammered dust bordered by windless foothills.
"Take your choice, Mr. Lourdes."
"I say we make them earn our blood."
They pushed hard into an emptiness where the dark burned away and the earth reddened and the air choked you dry. Rawbone was in the back, mounting the .50 caliber on its tripod. He had rigged a tarp over part of the truckbed. Removing his derby, he wrapped a bandana around his head. John Lourdes whistled and the father turned.
To the west, thin ripples of smoke. A flare arrowed out toward where the truck was running. From behind them another. On their far flank another. The flares were gridding them and so the son looked back at the father. Their faces were harrowed and stained with red dust. It would be soon.
