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

a lone upright, uninjured soldier appeared in the plaza, walking toward us and waving a white flag of surrender, and several among Fisher’s command, still drunk on the orgy of blood lust, were keen to cut him down as he approached.

Even as Fisher was ordering them to wait, half a hundred rifles were being cocked, heated barrels bristling from almost every opening, and it was only as the soldier drew nearer that we recognized him as old Ezekiel Smith, who had been captured and made to dress in one of the Mexican uniforms—and the message old Smith carried was not a surrender by the Mexican army nor the town of Mier, but rather a request by Ampudia that we surrender.

Green, Fisher, and Cameron, and a few others conferred, and Ezekiel Smith advised, “Do what you want, boys, but they’ve still got seven hundred or more at the ready, and have sent messengers out to Santa Anna and Huerta and Woll. I believe in another day or two they may have another two or three thousand here.”

He stood waiting for our decision, and now Green’s and Fisher’s voices rose in argument, and in reversal—Fisher counseling surrender in order to be able to fight another day, while Green, Cameron, Wallace, and others wanted to stay and fight at least one more day.

I looked over at Shepherd, who was still standing by that same slotted window. He had tossed the near-useless pistol aside and held a Texan rifle upright, with the hammer already cocked. He was listening to Fisher, but his silent attitude, the righteous indignation and aggression, indicated that he wanted to stay with Green, and to try to kill, with our remaining hundred and fifty or so, the last seven hundred of the enemy before the reinforcements arrived.

And then what? I wanted to shout.

He looked like a monster, without that arm and shoulder, wrapped in that big oilcloth coat. He looked like a gigantic vulture. I had plenty left to live for and was all for surrendering with Fisher, beginning the first steps of gaining my life back, if it could still be had—but our sentiments were divided, and we all grumbled and groused and argued while old Smith waited patiently. If we chose to fight, he would stay; if we surrendered, he would take that message back across the street.

Capitalizing immediately on our indecision, two Mexican officers came hurrying across the street with their own white flags, ostensibly to begin discussing the terms of surrender, but also to assess the morale and injuries among us. As they prattled on with their offers, guaranteeing that we would be treated as prisoners of war, they kept peering into our ranks, taking note.

There was a new flurry of hope and ambiguity among us at the news that if we surrendered we would be treated as prisoners of war rather than as the plunderers and marauders we were. All through the chain of fractured adobe homes, the translation was passed along: They say they will let us live. We had slain more than thirteen hundred of their men in an evening, and they said they would let us live.

Fisher and Green continued to argue, more vehemently now, and in the new light I could see that Fisher’s thumb was completely torn off.

As they argued, it appeared that Green was beginning to sway Fisher into staying and fighting for at least another day.

But several men had pushed past Fisher, surrendering even before any terms had been agreed on; and as that first flow broke ranks, others followed them. Shepherd, Franklin, and Simmons tried to stop them, as did Cameron and Wallace, but they dodged and twisted past them like fish through a rend in a net. Realizing that with this depletion, further resistance would be futile, thumbless Fisher changed his mind and decided once more to surrender, though he had to hurry after the others to do so, catching up with them only after they had already been escorted into General Ampudia’s command.

And suddenly, despite my best intentions to depart and wash my hands of the entire expedition, I found myself victim once again of my own inaction, my tendency to sit and wait and observe rather than to act impulsively. I was now one of two dozen soldiers remaining—Green, Cameron, and Wallace among us—holed up in the adobe, our numbers whittled suddenly down to less than a tenth of what they had been when we’d departed LaGrange back in the autumn, so full of verve.

We watched Fisher and a few of his stragglers being bound and carted off—the officers with their flags of surrender, as well as old Ezekiel Smith, had disappeared—how much of my own choice was loyalty and how much simple indecision?—and we set about gathering and loading all of the weapons we could find, knowing that we were going to die but preparing, as soldiers and warriors have, across the millennia, to sell our lives dearly.

Such accounting had worked at the Alamo—had yielded the victory a month later at San Jacinto and the birth of a new nation—and even if it had not made sense, it was the only value left to us, it seemed, so we began settling ourselves into the repetition of that story, that cycle. And among those of us who were left, it seemed to me that I was the only one who was now frightened of dying, that the others were accepting it matter-of-factly—the end of this glorious life—as might animals in a stockyard, being prepared for market.

If these men were pondering the things I was pondering as we waited for the day to unfold, they gave no indication of remorse. Instead, there was only grim resolve, filtered with a kind of firm peace or satisfaction, if not quite contentment, and I marveled at this manifestation of pure courage, and at how far I had to travel yet to reach it myself.

For about half an hour we conversed among ourselves, roundly denouncing Fisher and what was