"You're going to be searched now," said Jack B. "Turn about. You, put your hands on the hood. You, hands on the truckbed."
Both did as they were ordered. The father glanced at the son. At the pocket where the notebook was tucked away.
Rawbone got his head shoved by a calloused hand into the truck siding and was told to look forward. His pockets were burrowed into and a wallet loosed. It had nothing in it save money. John Lourdes's wallet had no money, but it did have a photo of his mother and the cross with its chipped-off beam. The father kept trying to steal a look, edging his head a bit, angling his eyes sidewise. He caught a glint of sunlight on that crucifix but it didn't register a meaning. This was not where his ruin lay, or so he thought.
TWENTY-TWO
"You can both come around now."
The father eyed the son while he nonchalantly pushed the pockets back in place. Both men were tossed their wallets and personals. Jack B took security cards from his shirt pocket and handed one to each man. John Lourdes looked the card over. Rawbone wasn't the least interested and couldn't get it in his pocket quick enough. The card, as John Lourdes read it:
AGUA NEGRA
PRIVATE SECURITY
"The truck is your responsibility. You'll stay on the flatcar with it. You'll sleep there with it. Unless and until you are ordered otherwise."
Jack B was yelling orders now to the hoist crew about the truck when Rawbone asked, "Hey stars and stripes, where's this parade goin'?"
"What does it matter to you?"
Rawbone pushed his derby back and leaned casually against the truck. "If I knew I could write my dear old mom and tell her what kind of dresses she should send me to wear."
John Lourdes did his best to seem like he had not heard that. Jack B, on the other hand, said, "This ain't Texas."
He walked away to Rawbone whistling "I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy." Then, the father's attention turned to the son. "The notebook-"
The son strode past the father and leaned down and reached in under the back of the cab. When he stood he had the notebook in his hand. He held it up, then slipped it back in his pocket. He'd hidden it away before they left Juarez as a precaution.
Rawbone leaned over the hood now and called to a roustabout who was carrying over a set of chains to hook to the chassis for lifting the truck. "Hey, gent, where's this parade goin'?"
The man wiped a gloved hand across his heavily bearded chin. "You're here and you don't know?"
"I'm here and I don't know and how much of an offspring of morons does that make me?"
"The Zone, brother. That's where we're bound."
"Aye. Thank you, gent. And be so kind as not to tell anyone you just talked to a buffoon with an empty boot for brains."
"That's our secret, brother."
The father spit. Both men grew quiet. They knew what the Zone meant-oil country. The Gulf Coast from Tampico to Tuxpan.
The Golden Lane is how it was described in newspapers or defined on maps. But if you'd been there and seen, you damn well knew it was an unreckonable sweep of devastation and fires, black rain and poisoned earth. The father had been witness to the place; he'd done time on the streets and in the bars and oil fields of Tampico and Puerto Lobos and Cerro Azul and case-hardened as he was, he wanted none of it. "Next stop, one thousand miles," he said.
"Yeah."
"Talk about a blackened scrap of meat."
John Lourdes wiped at an unusual amount of sweat coming off his forehead.
"Mr. Lourdes-"
"We're going."
"Going does not mean getting there."
"We'll get there."
"Take a look at yourself."
The son wiped at the sweat again.
"You look like a pile of salt sitting out in the noon sun." He pointed his derby at the young man's back. "You're leaking blood, Mr. Lourdes."
The son wiped at his face. He looked around. He walked over to the last passenger car and climbed the steps judiciously. He peered into the door window. Rawbone turned up at his elbow. The sunlight that fell across the window helped tell the story. His face was drained of color alright and the cheeks were close to the look of skimmed ice.
His glance went from himself to the father's, and like the night before in the hearse glass when the two were side by side, there was not even the slightest recognition from the father that a few demarked features of each were so much alike. Maybe the resemblance was too quiet, or some nameless trait inside the man who was Rawbone made such moments impossible. The son grinned and the father grew suddenly uncomfortable.
"I'm bleeding alright. But ... we're going on. You will not use me, against me."
"Why should I bother, Mr. Lourdes, when you do such an exemplary job on yourself? I'll just stand here and beat the drum."
As they stood and argued the father picked up on a figure stepping from the shadows of the tent. "Mr. Lourdes, I believe you have attracted someone's attention."
With that he angled his head toward where the son should look. There Teresa was, stepping from the tent's shadow. She was with the women and she arced a hand over her eyes to cut off the sunlight and be sure.
He could not fathom it any more than the girl. She put out her hands uncertainly as if to ask what he was doing here. Realizing the danger, he quickly gathered himself and came down the train steps scrambling for his notepad and pencil. He began to write furiously. Then he tore the sheet of paper from the pad and handed it to her: You mus4 say no- L ij abou4 wl,o / am, or I,ow you know me. /4 is ompor4a114. 14 m~i4 mead my /Se, if you do. / wd( explain /a4er.
Rawbone watched as the girl regarded the note wide-eyed and frightened. She wanted to ask questions, for she pointed to the notepad and pencil and scribbled on the air, but John Lourdes motioned no, and pointed to the word-/a4er-.
He took the page he'd written on and tore it up as he started back to the train. Climbing the steps, he tossed the pieces in the air. He stood with Rawbone as Teresa was taken in tow by another woman and prodded back to work. John Lourdes was decidedly troubled.
"That wouldn't be the girl you told me about, would it?"
"It would."
"The one whose father you killed?"
"The same."
"Well, I hope she takes the news as well as her father did."
BY LATE AFTERNOON the great Mastodon whistle blew. Along the creek birds struck from the treetops skyward in a frenzy. The battalion of roustabouts and thugs ran along the rail line and jumped the car steps or leapt to the flatbed. The truck had been chained down and braced to the last flatcar.
John Lourdes sat with his back against the cab tire facing the sun, hoping it would ease the chills and fever that were beginning to overcome him. Rawbone stood nearby, arms folded, and watched Doctor Stallings and his committee of security officers pose for a last photo before they embarked. The Mexican with the camera was animated and lively as he posed the men before the steaming wheels of that black monster engine. They then boarded and the photographer ran to the first flatbed and put out a hand and was hauled up with legs kicking wildly.
The boiler chest flooded with steam that entered the cylinders through valve sleeves and the pistons were driven backward and the wheels began to turn. That metal and wood chain of hulls groaned and creaked and steam escaped through the exhaust port and there was a long low huff followed by another and then another and the train labored forward. The trek to the Gulf and what awaited had begun.
TWENTY-THREE