The Creed of Violence (11 page)

Each table had across it a flag naming the organization or association it represented. One read ALLIANCE FOR PROGRESS.

"Mr. Lourdes, this country is gonna burn. So let's get this done and
be gone out of here."

John Lourdes heard the father well enough, but his mind was turning like the earth as he took dogged inventory of the facts at hand, trying to distill an answer-how one pawn of a truck, moving through a
conspiracy of allegiances, meant to affect the world at large.

"Mr. Lourdes?"

The son stared into the Customs House. "This is where we're going," he said.

The father grabbed his arm. "What for?"

"The cause of things."

ITH THAT RAWBONE gravely followed. The air in the
Customs House was a heady reek of tobacco, nervous sweat
and body tonics. John Lourdes led them through a swell of arguments
over how these men might best preserve their financial world, till he got
close enough to the ALLIANCE FOR PROGRESS table that he could spy
unnoticed.

A cadre of businessmen stood around the booth. A flier was being
handed out while a poised gentleman, with hands folded and a face
near expressionless as a piece of paper, calmly spoke.

"As a member of the American consulate I can speak clearly to the
one issue I am constantly asked about. If there is to be a revolution,
and it certainly looks as if there will be, what can America do to maintain stability here? Of course, by that you mean, beyond diplomacy, military intervention. Now I know what I'm going to say you don't
want to hear, but it's exactly what I have expressed to Mr. Hecht."

The consul looked to the man handing out the fliers in acknowledgment. This Hecht fellow, the one to whom the truck was to be delivered, was old and slightly hunched but had fierce eyes in an otherwise
stagnant face.

Rawbone whispered, "He doesn't look much more than a cadaver."

"America is not now, nor should ever be, in the business of nation building," said the consul. "And that is what American military
intervention here would mean. It would be a great calamity. And in the
end all other nations would stand to reap the advantages, whatever the
outcome. And I warn you, our country would end up bearing all the
expense only to reap the crop of resulting hatred and revenge unlike
anything you could imagine."

The agitated men forced questions but the consul made an officious
movement with his hand to signal he was continuing.

"Consider what military intervention would symbolize. What it
might foment amongst certain sections of the citizenry. The destruction
of the oil fields, the tank farms, the pipelines, the refineries. Do you
know what that means in revenues? What the solution is, is open to
discussion. What it is not, is-"

A shot registered across that vaulted ceiling. Men scattered from
around the stage where a verdadero hombre now stood behind the podium with a smoking revolver he used as a gavel. He had a formal and
very charged face, with a mustache grown to the shores of his chin line,
and he spoke in the crude but poetic Spanish of a rural hacendado.

"I've come all the way from the south. I listen and I listen before I
speak. But I speak. You think with your pockets. Sadly. But you know
what is between your pockets." He stood away from the platform. The gun
hung from one hand and with the other he grabbed his crotch. There was
a wall of laughter and applause that he waved away with his revolver.

"You know what else is between your pockets." He touched his
heart reverently. "And this also." He then touched his head. "What
are the right principles? Our people live to be only thirty. Most are in
homes that are uninhabitable. Because you are all only of the pockets.
God on high is watching. And God on high is taking measure of your
souls. I've come all the way from the south to tell you this."

A squad of customs guards responding to the shot now appeared.
They drove through the crowd in a phalanx of rifles toward the man on
the stage with the gun who was speaking to that crowd, near yelling. "I
am not finished yet ... I have one thing more to say before I am taken
by the wolves."

His arm swung toward the soldiers and Rawbone had to pull John
Lourdes back or he would have been driven under by a rush of boots
and bayonets. And then, of all things, it was the crowd around the stage
that refused the soldiers a pathway. These businessmen and merchants,
these signposts for a kind of strangled masculinity, once in the presence
of a true verdadero hombre, wanted to prove their mettle, at least for a
few minutes. And so the speaker continued.

"It was God at his most blessed who gave you this." He touched
his head. "So you would know what is right. It was God at his most
blessed who gave you this." And he touched his heart. "So you could
feel what is right. And it was God who gave you these," he grabbed
his crotch again, "so you would have the fuckin' cojones to do what
is right even if it means your own death. That is God's holy trinity on
earth. And if you do not live by that you are just useless pockets-"

He'd barely gotten out the last word when the customs guards on
an order surged and took the stage. The hombre belted his weapon and
put up no resistance and a pathway of retreating bodies opened and
he was shuttled out and the pathway closed and he was gone almost
before his words fell silent. Then it was as if he had never been there
at all.

John Lourdes bent down to pick up a couple of ALLIANCE FOR
PROGRESS fliers that had fallen to the floor. They were about a fund
drive and petition signing to rally support for American intervention in
case of war.

As he stood Rawbone said, "There's only one thing missing in this
place, and you know what it is ... the headstones, Mr. Lourdes, the
headstones."

"Come with me."

"Too staunchly orthodox to appreciate the humor in it?"

John Lourdes looked for a quiet place along the far wall. One
thing he could say about what he'd seen of the evening so far, it was
as if they'd stumbled upon a well-defended and determined institution
whose charter read, "Justice is secondary; security is the byword."

He took out his notepad.

"Do you take down anything I say, Mr. Lourdes? For posterity, I
mean."

He handed Rawbone one of Merrill's business cards and the pencil.
"Write Anthony Hecht ... Alliance for Progress ... and the address."

He turned so the father could use his back. Rawbone placed the
card there and did as he was commanded. Still, he wanted to know,
"Why am I doing this? I can see the bastard from here. I know the address. It's just a matter of me delivering the truck."

John Lourdes turned. "There's been a change of plans. You're not
delivering the truck."

"What the hell is going on in your head?"

The son pointed over the father's shoulder and he turned to see.
The walls of the Customs House had been decorated with murals. The
one they stood beneath was of a Christ somewhere in the Mexican desert, ministering to two angels.

"And I thought you didn't have a sense of humor. Well, shame on
me, Mr. Lourdes."

NTHONY HECHT HAD no idea whatsoever about this unshaved
and slightly filthy rough calling him by name. Looking at a
business card held up like a cigarillo between two fingers told him even
less.

Hecht took the card. Saw what was scribbled on the back. He had
been in dialogue with the consul and excused himself.

"You are?"

"Rawbone, Mr. Hecht."

"And the card means to me?"

"I saw Merrill two days ago outside El Paso. He told me to meet
him here. Introduce myself to you. Said there might be some work for
me with him."

"Two days? Where again?"

"A roadhouse near Fort Bliss. He was with a couple of gents."

The old man rubbed his lower lip with the tip of his finger. Was
that worry or doubt in those fierce old eyes?

"How do you know James?"

Rawbone laughed. "You ever see that photo he carries in his wallet? Manila Harbor. The China. Him and members of his squad. The
one on the far right is yours truly. 'Course I was younger." He winked.
"And more brash."

He could see the old man was taking the trap. "Is Merrill back?"
he asked.

"He is not."

"Oh," said Rawbone. He'd edged the word in disappointment.
Then, with a hint of worry himself, said, "I thought he would be."

"I thought he would be, too."

The son watched the two men from the street. They might look
like a curious pair, but stripped down, the son had a feeling they were
brothers of necessity. The talking went on for a while, though it was
mostly Rawbone, who seemed appropriately toned down and serious. The son-of-a-bitch even got to the point where he was showing
Hecht the automatic he carried in his belt, the old man regarding it
deferentially.

THE BOY FOUND Anthony Hecht easily enough. He had been working the Customs House rally with a gang of other boys, running to get
buggies for tips, sprinting to the tobacconist or the saloon around the
corner for beer and liquor.

"I was asked to deliver this to you, sir." He held out one of the
ALLIANCE FOR PROGRESS fliers. It had been folded in half.

Rawbone watched as the old man read. The shill was being applied
to him alright, and hard. Hecht's eyes grew enormous and wild, and
that but for an instant, otherwise the old man was as self-contained as
a can of processed meat.

"Who asked you to deliver this?"

"A fella outside."

Hecht followed the boy as best he could, but he was already amongst
the night crowd on the sidewalk when Hecht caught up with him.

"He was here," said the boy.

"Was he driving a truck?"

"No. He was standing here. And he pointed at you."

JOHN LOURDES WALKED back to the funeraria to wait. It was quiet when
he arrived. Upstairs was an apartment. Panes of light emanated from the
adobe walls where a hulking shadow leaned into the porch railing above.
It was McManus. He called for John Lourdes to come upstairs.

The apartment was filthy. Wash hung from a line in an area by the
stove. A near-hairless mongrel drank from drip puddles that had accumulated on the floor. There were reels of film everywhere. An old ratty
couch was literally buried under them. McManus sat at a table strewn
with beer bottles. He was rolling what looked to be a cigarette when he
told John Lourdes to sit and steal himself a Single X.

Rolling that cigarette with just one hand, he was dexterous as some
dancing fancy. "You were asking about the Alliance for Progress and
Anthony Hecht." He licked the paper closed and pointed it at a reel of
film lying on the table. "I've got something to runup on the projector. If
you find it valuable, maybe you'll toss a little extra goodwill my way."

John Lourdes thumbed open the beer cap. "Why not." He drank.
"It's not my goodwill I'll be handing out."

McManus raised his prosthesis with its oddly spread fingers.
"There we go."

"You lose your arm in the war?"

McManus lit up, and when John Lourdes got a scent of that tobacco he knew what it was. McManus offered the young man a draw.

"I'll stick with the beer."

"Too bad Rawbone's not here. He's partial to the reefer. It's a little
something we all picked up in Manila, besides the clap." McManus
set the cigarette down on the edge of the table. He reached inside his
stained shirt and pulled out a necklace. Resting in his palm was this
enormous snow-white human front tooth, root and all.

"I got into a stupid fight with a stupider drunk. I hit him so hard
his tooth embedded in the bone of my middle knuckle. Right to the
root it went. The fool must have had rabies or something 'cause I got
an infection and the arm had to come off. I wear it to remember-don't
never do anything stupid."

He slipped the cigarette in his mouth and stood. He tucked the reel
of film up under his arm. "Let's go see about some goodwill."

McManus threaded the projector in the dark. A charge of smoky
light shot past where John Lourdes stood. Out of the dark a world
opened. He was suddenly a traveler on the Gulf Coast of Mexico. From
a sandy ridgetop a vast panorama of oil fields. Moments cut from one
to the next-plumes of charred air rising from refineries, a legion of
worker huts, a train moving off into a seared wasteland.