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.
McManus was a great hulk of a man with a flabby nose and a quarter-size chin. He was also missing an arm, the left one. He wore a prosthesis up past the elbow with a shaped wooden oval wrist and detachable wooden hand. The fingers, oddly, were spread out wide as if in a state of perpetual surprise. And the arm itself looked to be a few sizes too small for him, as it was at least six inches shorter than the other. It was with this arm and hand he pointed at John Lourdes. 'What is this?'
'This ... is a Mr. Lourdes.'
'Really. One of those, heh. Did you serve in Manila, Mr. Lourdes? Is that how you came to be under the spell of this bugger?'
'Look at him, you brainless shit. He would have been a boy.'
'They had boys fighting that were thirteen.'
'Mr. Lourdes, would you mind,' said Rawbone, 'waiting by the truck.'
The tenor of the two men's talk changed immediately upon John Lourdes leaving.
'Since when did you start running a boy's home?'
'Since I was ... engaged ... to work with a certain former railroad detective on a ... particular matter.'
McManus jerked a thumb toward the outside. 'That one?'
'That one.'
'If he don't look like a lightning bug trying to pass for lightning.'
'I got a truck outside that needs to be parked away in your warehouse till morning. You will be neatly compensated for your charity.'
