"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 cha.s.sis 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 d.a.m.n 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 sc.r.a.p 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 pa.s.senger 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 hea.r.s.e gla.s.s 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.

-3E PLACE FROM whence they came disappeared in the heat like a mirage. John Lourdes still sat with his back against the cab tire. He was trying to write down all that had transpired since the funeraria, but fever left his hands trembling and eyes unclear. He looked toward the pa.s.senger car coupled to the flatbed where all the women traveled together.

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 gla.s.s 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 acc.u.mulate 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 ..."

"G.o.dd.a.m.n 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 pa.s.sed out.

Rawbone pulled the son's head back by the hair. "Mr. Lourdes," he said, and then, "son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h," he let the body drop back against the truck tire, then sag over.

"I ought to throw your a.s.s from the train."

RAWBONE APPEARED IN the darkened pa.s.senger 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 G.o.dd.a.m.n souls for not moving and told them to open the d.a.m.n 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 gla.s.s. 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 h.e.l.l 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 a.s.ses 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 pa.s.sing desert where hills rose close to the tracks near claustrophobically, only to disappear in the lifetime of a second.

It was not about whether John Lourdes would die or not; for purely selfish reasons he did not want him to die. But if he did, well- He looked back at the pa.s.senger car cradling and pitch dark. Maybe it was the women with their raven hair and Indian faces and poisonous mix of delicacy and strength. Maybe it was the smells that clung to their clothes and hair. Lemon and vanilla, the musk of candlesmoke. Maybe it was the discarded family he should never have G.o.dd.a.m.n gone back to El Paso for, as that act had fated him to this forsaken place and hour. These moments, this feeling, he knew from other times as prison. Not where you were the prisoner, no, but where you were the walls.

The beam of a flashlight tracered across his face.

Rawbone looked up. Jack B approached while Doctor Stallings remained at the far end of the flatcar. "The kid with you. I heard he's sick bad."

Rawbone pointed his cigarette. The light swung toward the pa.s.senger car silhouetting that shawl-covered window.

"We don't pay slackers."

Rawbone did not look at Jack B. Instead he busied himself investigating the tip of his burning cigarette.

"Next stop, we're tossing him."

Rawbone smoked, then said, "Promise."