He once saw the girl Teresa in the door window like a lonely portrait, watching him. In the paling light she put a hand to the glass and with a finger traced a cross with rays coming from it. He remembered that was what she had written in his notebook that night at the church and he pulled that notebook from his coat pocket and opened to the page and held it for her to see.
The night winds came with the dusk. The men bundled up in their coats to contend with the cold desert dark. The one with the camera was making the rounds from car to car flashing a business card and trying to hustle up commissions. John Lourdes whistled to him and weakly waved the man over his way.
He leapt to the car all lithe and smart. He wasn't much older than John Lourdes and spoke in a blaze of Spanish and sawed-off English and he flashed his business card.
TUERTO FOTOGRAFIA EXTRAORDINARIA
John Lourdes pointed up to the truck cab. "The gent up there brooding." Tuerto glanced at Rawbone. "He saw you posing Doctor Stallings today and it got him pretty jealous 'cause there's nothing he'd like better than having a photographer primp him while he had his picture taken. I'll even pay for it."
The father, in fact, had been brooding, till Tuerto overwhelmed him with compliments about his verdadero hombre features. It was an inspiring hustle and he let Rawbone handle the folding pocket Kodak. As part of his pitch he began to instruct him on its use. He showed how to open it, explained what the maroon leather bellows was for, demonstrating the metal tool to steady it for longer horizontal exposures.
Tuerto pulled out a deck of Kodak penny postcards. "The newest rage," he said in English. "Take a picture, Kodak will have it printed on a penny postcard. Mail it anywhere in the world, to anyone you want. A loved one, perhaps?"
Rawbone went through each, looking them over as if they were charged relics from the time of Christ. Tuerto explained about how he studied photography in Mexico City and wanted to be a great picture postcard artist. "Tuerto," he said, "means one-eyed." He ran a finger around the single lens opening in the camera's black frontpiece. "Tuerto," he repeated. He had taken it as a sort of nom de plume, for his given name was Manuelito Miguel Tejara Flores.
"If I wanted to get pictures of this train," said John Lourdes, "you could do that?"
"Of course."
"And of the people on it?"
"Of course."
"And you could have them delivered somewhere. El Paso, say. If I gave you an address?"
"Of course."
"And if I wanted to buy from you copies of pictures you'd already taken, could I do that?"
Tuerto thought that a most unusual request.
"He's a most unusual fellow," said Rawbone.
"I guess," said Tuerto, "for a fee."
John Lourdes put his head back and closed his eyes. His head began to swim. "You have been commissioned."
Tuerto thanked both men enthusiastically. Rawbone then climbed down from the cab seat and squatted beside John Lourdes.
"You hustled him."
The son did not open his eyes.
"I'm trying to accumulate information and possible evidence that pertains to this investigation any way I can. So I can go home. And you can earn your immunity."
"That's why you called him over."
"Who told me once to keep my gunsights at eye level?"
Rawbone continued to regard John Lourdes, who without opening his eyes, moved his head slightly.
"You're blocking what little light there is," said the son.
The father remained as he was, clicking his jaw left, then right. Finally he admitted, "There's times, Mr. Lourdes, you've said things. Like to that photographer about me jealous wanting my picture taken. It was like you knew me all my life."
The son opened his eyes. "Or all my life."
"Exact."
His eyes shut now in spite of him. The father continued to block the light and the son shifted a bit more.
"Mr. Lourdes, did you ever have something you wanted to do with your life more than anything else?"
"I'm doing it now."
"Ah. Me ... if I was your age and could start over, I'd go where they make those moving-picture shows. I would gent up and ..."
"With a smile and good cheer ..."
"Goddamn right. That would be me up there."
The son's eyelids fluttered, the pupils now barely visible. The face before him blurred into a landscape where the last of the sun bled away everything before it and the endless clackety-clack of the train wheels became that of the film tailing wildly through the sprockets. The image suddenly fever rushed up of the father as this terrifying wonder in flickering black and white adorned with near heroic indifference to life. He leaned forward shivering horribly and grabbed hold of Rawbone's coat. "Think how you'd ... be able to ... help them get ... the dyin', right." John Lourdes grinned and the father stared down at him confounded and the son grinned yet and tried with a falling voice to sing, "You're a Yankee ... Doodle ... Dandy, a-"
And with that he passed out.
Rawbone pulled the son's head back by the hair. "Mr. Lourdes," he said, and then, "son-of-a-bitch," he let the body drop back against the truck tire, then sag over.
"I ought to throw your ass from the train."
RAWBONE APPEARED IN the darkened passenger car doorway, banging on the window. He confronted a huddled wall of faces illuminated by a few candle tips of light as he tried to explain in Spanish about John Lourdes lying back there on the flatbed and asking for the deaf girl named Teresa.
The women just stared at this intent and hard-faced stranger. He then tried to push the door open, but it had been braced shut and he cursed their Goddamn souls for not moving and told them to open the damn door or he'd put a fist through it.
Teresa watched in confusion from the back of the car till she saw the familiar pocket notebook pressed against the glass. She came forward cautiously and when Rawbone caught sight of her stepping from the motty shadows he motioned as he yelled for her to get the hell over here.
As she read the note the father had written, he pointed to John Lourdes lying unconscious at the edge of the flatbed where Tuerto had dragged him. An owlish crone of a woman came forward and took charge, ordering Rawbone to bring the boy to her.
He jumped the gap between cars and with Tuerto lugged John Lourdes up over his shoulder. He straddled that rattling flatbed like a drunk and readied himself and then jumped over the couplings. One boot missed the landing and were it not for a flock of arms grabbing at him amidst pitched cries both men would have gone under the wheels.
The seats in the car had been torn out. The women had set up blankets and bedding on the floor and Rawbone was told to lay the boy down on one of the dozen or so filthy straw mattresses Stallings had brought onboard. He was then pushed and prodded and shooed down the length of that car cursing their sorry asses as they shut the door on him and braced it. Cupping his hands on the window and looking into that swaying corridor through a current of moving dresses and candles, he managed to get a glimpse of John Lourdes being stripped of his clothes while a small circle of women sat around a patchquilt suitcase. That crone of a woman was removing small pouches from the suitcase and from what he could make out of their sorry birdlike chatter, they were discussing herbs and homegrown medicinals. Then a shawl was draped over the window and he was left staring at black.
HE SAT ON the truck seat, smoking in the dark. A troubled anger cauled his insides as he stared into the swiftly passing desert where hills rose close to the tracks near claustrophobically, only to disappear in the lifetime of a second.