The Creed of Violence - Boston Teran [4]
If they'd understood Spanish, what John Lourdes said in reply as he started toward the bridge could not have been confused as an answer.
HE FOLLOWED HER down the Avenida Paseo de Triunfo. There was a black mood about the streets. Wall graffiti insulted the regime; groups of men stood in heated conversation. Young boys carrying rifles in a primitive street militia marched past the Monument to the Fighting Bulls and, holding their weapon muzzles high and cursing El Presidente, fired into the air.
Heads turned. Birds slanted skyward down the length of the Paseo. Only from the girl was there no reaction as she walked on. It was then John Lourdes understood her calm silence and those wary stares-she was deaf.
Next to a movie theatre was a two-story office building the girl entered. A shop on the first floor had a sign in the window: TRAVEL MEXICO. Out front were a couple of Maytag Touring Cars that had painted on the side: WE'LL TAKE YOU ANYWHERE THE WIND CAN GO!
He followed her into the building. The hall was dark and filthy. He could hear her footsteps on the stairs. On the second floor she went into an office. He reached the landing as the door closed. He walked past cautiously. He could hear voices through the open transom and see light angling down a far wall from a skylight. He looked to one end of the hall and then the other, where there was a stairway to the roof.
On the roof he walked a row of skylights; most were poled open to let the dead air escape the paltry offices. When he reached the one instinct said was it, he took off his hat and squatted down near the opening, but far back enough not to be seen. He could just make out the girl in a picture frame of light.
With head downcast, she stood alone. There were cloudy voices, men speaking English and Spanish. A door opened and closed. A shadow climbed the wall. A man spoke. He had a gritty voice. John Lourdes could not see his face, only his trouser legs and mountain boots. An arm stretched out holding a blanket, and the girl began to undress.
Her clothes slipped to the floor. The blanket was tossed to her. She wrapped it around herself, while averting her eyes from the man. He knelt down and scooped up the clothes and left.
THREE
AWBONE HAD A decision to make as he sat in the idling truck iforty miles east of Fort Bliss. Primal simplicity would dictate he forget El Paso. Best he swing south to Socorro or Zaragaza, then stake his way north to Juarez. People on the verge of a bloodletting will always pay top dollar for weapons and a truck. He had enough gasoline to make the journey and he'd robbed both men before he burned their bodies.
He smoked as he looked out toward the bladed hills that preceded El Paso. On that day in the year of our Lord, Rawbone was forty-five years old. On the truck seat was a photo he'd taken from the driver's wallet. He and his wife were posed on the platform of the Stanton Street Depot with their blank-faced kids.
He knew the depot well from that other life. He'd met his wife just blocks away on the Lerdo Tramway. Mules pulling the streetcar in the rain. Her voice like candlesmoke when he asked could he sit beside her. He swore his youth belonged to someone else, not him. Though he closed his eyes, the stillness of distance did nothing to strip the past away. It was there yet, forsaken but not forgotten.
There had been a city attorney in El Paso. A more corrupt or kinder man he'd never known. Wadsworth Burr would tell Rawbone, "Things happen that cannot be explained by any laws we know and they carry the damn secret with them all the way to our oblivion."
RAWBONE DROVE TO the barrio he'd