The Creed of Violence (7 page)

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."

"Where are the weapons?"

"Why, Mr. Lourdes, they're in plain sight."

And they were, in a manner of speaking. The father had the son
follow him beyond the meeting house to a sandy incline scarred with
crevasses. Then he waved the son to keep step behind as he scaled that
crag following a plumb line of fist-sized stones and upon reaching the
last near the apex, squatted down.

"Notice the line of rocks. They mark the spot. Now. Stand close,
Mr. Lourdes, and watch the magic."

The father reached into the sand and his arms vanished near up to
the elbows. As he pulled the sand began to ribbon and twill and the hill
face moved like the back of some hidden monster coming to life.

"Kneel down here and light a match."

A vein of light fell upon the stacked crates hidden there in a recess
beneath a tarp that had been covered by sand.

"What all is down there?"

"Your garden-variety arsenal. Carbines, ammunition, hand grenades, dynamite and detonators, and a .50 caliber machine gun. Mr.
Lourdes, you could hold off the Holy Roman Empire with all that
firepower."

John Lourdes blew out the match.

JOHN LOURDES HAD Rawbone move the truck far back of the meeting
house and away from where the weapons were cached. He swung the
shotgun strap over his shoulder. He carried rifle and binoculars loose.
While he ran to a place from where he would watch the road Rawbone,
alone now, slipped down under the chassis.

Before arriving in El Paso, Rawbone had hammered a strip of flap
leather to the underside of the chassis housing. He'd nailed it into the
wood on three sides, leaving the fourth open to form a sort of pocket or
pouch where he stashed away an automatic. When that was done he'd
hammered the last side closed so the weapon wouldn't shake loose.

HE SKYLINE WAS settling out, the blue softening away till there
was only the marked approach of nightfall. John Lourdes sat in
silence near the headway of the plat. Rawbone approached and stood
near, scanning the moonless world to the road below.

"You have any idea how you intend to make this fight?"

John Lourdes was staring up that street of crumbling foundations
to the meeting house. "What was this place? Do you know?"

Rawbone ran the back of his fingers along his cheek. "You never
heard and you're from El Paso?" He set the derby back. "It was one
of those ... utopias. You know what they are, right? Well ... this one
was different. There was only women. Women from all over the world.
Anglo women, Mexican. Women from India. China. Even Africa. They
lived like a tribe. And they had ceremonies where they went about naked. Naked, Mr. Lourdes."

The son now looked upon those forgotten remains and tried to
imagine—

The father threw his head back laughing. "Mr. Lourdes, if ever
I saw an expression of pure and ridiculous gullibility." He shook his
head in comedic despair.

The son was forced to accept the moment and he took it stoically,
but not without a smile that he was had. "By the way," John Lourdes
asked, "did you retrieve the gun?"

Rawbone cocked his head. "Excuse me?"

"The automatic stashed under the chassis. I checked the damn vehicle early this morning."

Rawbone pulled up his shirt where the gun had been tucked away.
"Mr. Lourdes, the tide of opinion about you has just risen some." He
pulled the weapon and held the black .32 just so in his palm and, mocking, added, "Bat Masterson swears by this gun. Or so says the ad. And
another promises ... it's a housewife's best friend against burglars."
He tucked the shirt back in his pants and slipped the weapon down
into his belt sash. He paused to set his derby right. "Mr. Lourdes, it's a
right-thinking world when they start running ads with guns and women
in nightgowns."

The son went back to considering how a fight was to be made. The
father stood watch. And so the night went about its workings.

"Mr. Lourdes, do you come from a good Christian family?"

The son looked up at the father and in a pointed quiet said, "In part."

"Well, you better pack that good Christian part away for a while
... because they're here."

John Lourdes rose. He looked down into that banded decline of
shadows but saw nothing. Rawbone stepped behind him and pointed,
his arm resting just over the rim of the son's shoulders. There was a
narrow slit of brightness, not even really a light, for one moment. "Far,
far down the canyon. There! Did you see it?"

"No."

"I believe it's one of those flashlights with the sliding bridge slip.
You know. And they're keeping it near to the ground so all you see is a
bit of wash from the light."

The father was so close now the son could feel the weapon he had
tucked away pressing against his back.

"You can't look right at a thing at night that far to see it, Mr. Lourdes.
The trick is you have to look off just a bit. Use the outer ring of your eye."

The son did as the father said and in the space of a minute there
was a singular emanation so minute as to be barely made out.

"Yes," said John Lourdes, "I see it. You're right."

"That's a trick you learn from years of being on the hunt."

The son turned. "You mean being hunted, don't you?"

"That too, Mr. Lourdes. But when they're as close as you and I are
now, hunter and hunted, it's all the same."

John Lourdes studied the man he was born of. "Is that a threat, or
a word of advice?"

"I leave it to your good judgment, sir. But either way, the clock is
about to expire on the quiet around here."

THE PLAT WHERE the settlement had been was akin to a darkened lake
that night. Father and son crouched on elbows. Men appeared in slow
and hunched silence from the foothills. The father rose three fingers and
the son agreed.

They approached low behind their guns, totally unaware their
souls might well be swallowed up. A wind sprang from nowhere and
sent dust across the broken terrain. The father whispered to the son,
"How well do you hear?"

"Why?"

The father touched his ear and held up one finger and pointed toward the rocks beyond the meeting house. The son understood.

"I'll give that one a hello for you." Then Rawbone snaked up the
ravine from where they lay in wait till there was only the faint movement of loose shale where he had just been.

John Lourdes now stayed rigid against the earth. He had never
killed before and this would be something else altogether. Those figures
of the night reached the adobe foundations. They must not be thought
of as men. They are just vestments really. Blackish shapes there to extinguish life. They started their slow and deadly trek up that once-upon-atime street. The night had not grown colder, yet John Lourdes was shivering. The wind moved through his clothes like the ghost of something
insidious and horrible.

These men will kill without so much as a reckoning. They will fire
down till you're not even one whittled breath. One of the men put out
a hand for the others to stop. He took a few cautious steps forward and
John Lourdes recognized the bowed and partly lame stride as belonging
to the gent at the roadhouse with the stiff mustache and cheery smile.
He had seen something. John Lourdes hoped it was the bedrolls laid out
like sleeping men within the meeting house walls.