The Diezmo by Rick Bass (top fiction books of all time TXT) 📗

Contents

Title Page

Contents

Copyright

Dedication

Summons

Glory

Victory

Escape

The Tacubaya Road

The Castle of Perve

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Read More from Rick Bass

About the Author

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First Mariner Books edition 2006

Copyright © 2005 by Rick Bass

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

www.hmhbooks.com

The Library of Congress of has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Bass, Rick, date.

The Diezmo / Rick Bass,

p. cm.

ISBN 0-395-92617-3

1. Texan Mier Expedition (1842–1844)—Fiction. 2. Mexican-American Border Region—Fiction. 3. Texas—History—To 1846—Fiction. 4. Americans—Mexico—Fiction. 5. Prisoners of war—Fiction. 6. Torture victims—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3552.A8213D54 2005

813'.54—dc22 2004062755

ISBN-13: 978-0-618-71050-8 (pbk.)

ISBN-10: 0-618-71050-7(pbk)

eISBN 978-0-547-34694-6

v3.1216

For Elizabeth, Mary Katherine, Lowry

1

Summons

I WAS AS WILD for glory as any of us. Before too much time had passed, we had all changed our minds, had given up on dreams of glory and were fighting only to win. And not too much longer after that, all that was on our minds was a good cool drink of water; and before it was over, all any of us wanted was simply to get back home.

How much of it was hate, and how much love? In our expedition, there was plenty of both. Our commanders, Thomas Jefferson Green (named for his great-uncle in Virginia) and Captain William S. Fisher, were adept from the start at braiding the two together, love and hate, in such a fashion as ultimately to possess us. We became a rope that they kept coiled, and then used for their purposes—Thomas Jefferson Green pursuing love, I think, while Fisher was intent on chasing down his hatred. It’s a miracle that any of us got out alive, and though I was only sixteen when they came riding through, asking for volunteers, I do not hold them accountable for my own free-will choice. They were just passing through: one counseling patriotism, the other vengeance. Between them, they caught the few of us who were left unclaimed by that one emotion or the other.

The purpose of our militia, Fisher informed us, would be to hunt down a band of infidels, Mexican nationals, who had come across the new border of Texas and staged an attack on San Antonio. There would be plenty of fighting, he assured us, all we could ever wish for. The glory existed just beyond our reach, he told us, but only barely. All we had to do was go out and search for it, he promised, and it would be delivered to us.

Too young to have fought at the Alamo, my friend James Shepherd and I thought we had missed our opportunity for war. We thought that with the victory at San Jacinto less than a month after the fall of the Alamo, a disgusting wave of peace and softness had settled on the land and that weakness had come flooding in. We thought our manhood would never be tested.

Thomas Jefferson Green, like his namesake, was in love with his new homeland and the potential of the new republic—he had political aspirations and was said to be one war away from being eminently electable—as popular one day, perhaps, as General Houston himself—while Fisher simply wanted to injure, maim, and destroy.

My own town of LaGrange had a firsthand acquaintance with such sentiments. One of our native sons, Captain Nicholas Dawson, had rushed to the defense of San Antonio against one of General Woll’s invasions. It was infuriating to all Texans that Mexico was coming back for more: six years earlier Mexico had surrendered half her nation—the whole of Texas—following Santa Anna’s expensive victory at the Alamo and humiliating defeat at San Jacinto—and then the Mexican army, having pinned Dawson into a position of surrender, went ahead and massacred thirty-five of his men, despite the truce. Only five had escaped the terms of the “surrender,” including our own Dawson, who spoke ceaselessly of revenge, and how he would never trust the flag of Mexico again.

I had one day helped him repair a fence, through which some of his father’s cows had escaped—he was a quiet, strong, pleasant young man, only four years older than I was—though when he came back from the Dawson Expedition his arm was shattered and held by a makeshift sling, a saber scar ran across his thigh, and he was no longer pleasant but always angry and frightened.

So we knew, or should have known, what we were getting into, but we couldn’t help it.

A great victory had been achieved at San Jacinto, and there was no call, save pride and fury, to risk ourselves now. We should have let the bandits be. We should never have joined when Captain Fisher and Captain Green came calling. And having joined their militia, we should have pulled up shy at the Rio Grande, letting Mexico understand that we would defend our newly gained territory, but we should never have gone on into their country.

Five hundred of us left LaGrange that day—three hundred and eight of us would go on to cross the river into Mexico, and only a handful returned. That was fifty years ago, and whenever young people ask, I tell them that there is no shortage of war in the world, and that wars always come looking for someone to fight them—particularly if you’re from Texas, with war born in blood. But young people don’t often ask and instead plunge into war.

I live on the outskirts of a small town, and I watch mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers grieve. And it’s not only the blood of the enemy and of their own that they grieve, but also the heart’s blood—the heart’s drying out.

What fun, what glory, what joy must war hold, to summon them thus?

I remember how it seemed that the voice of a beautiful woman was calling and that a spacious country filled with bounty lay just ahead.

Why was I one of the tiny handful who survived the entire journey? I can find no clue, no scrap of