From time to time, John Lourdes glanced back at the church. Now he understood why somewhere 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.'
