The Creed of Violence - Boston Teran [43]
"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