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

us toward the nearest jail, which was at Saltillo; we could not have made it all the way to the fort, the prison, at Hacienda del Salado. And even at that, it was a difficult march. Our captors were alternatively frustrated or made compassionate by our slow progress. One day a soldier might offer any of us a hand up, assisting us from a sitting position, when it was time to march again, and the next day the same soldier might give the same prisoner but a jaunty sneer, signifying the smug knowledge that no good end lay ahead for the captive. One day the soldiers would knock us sprawling to the ground with the butts of their muskets, and the next day they would be inquiring about our health, soliciting water and extra rations of food for us from the caravan’s new leader, General Francisco Mejia. (In time-honored military tradition, Colonel Barragan had been busted down in rank for allowing us to escape.)

Some of the soldiers even got off their horses and walked so that the more emaciated of us could ride.

Our physician, Dr. Sinnickson, expired, falling off his horse as he did so, and it was a lonely feeling indeed, gathering around him and not knowing how to help him who had been helping us.

The pairings of history, the inescapable relationship between predator and prey; the way two oxen pull a plow so much more powerfully than one. I came slowly to understand that two of anything are required for the movement of history, and—no matter whether allies or combatants, friends or foes—there must be pairings. Otherwise, all is stillness, and latent powers lie unsummoned, like a planted field that receives no water.

After his defeat at San Jacinto, the Mexican president, Santa Anna, had been living in semiretirement at his Vera Cruz estate. Weary of battle, he was spending the bulk of his time raising enormous preening peafowl. He raised fighting gamecocks as well, which he would pit against one another in battles td the death.

Santa Anna had kept up a regular and, at times, warm correspondence with the general who had defeated him at San Jacinto, the Texas president, Sam Houston. It was Houston who had given Santa Anna back his freedom following his humiliating loss. (Shackled and hectored by the Texans after that battle, Santa Anna had tried to commit suicide with an overdose of laudanum. A Texas physician, James Phelps—whose son, Orlando, ironically, was still with us on this expedition—had pumped the poison from his stomach and cared for him afterward, until he could be released.)

Santa Anna would have been unlikely to order our execution without first consulting with Sam Houston, but Santa Anna was no longer always sentient, or available, disappearing for days at a time; in his absence he left the country to a fierce and impulsive associate, General Nicolás Bravo.

Bravo had been incensed to hear of our escape from Salado; when he heard that we had been recaptured, he had ordered us executed immediately.

General Mejia, who had been marching us down to Saltillo, detouring once again through all the little villages to show us off, refused to follow Bravo’s orders. The word had not come directly from Santa Anna himself, and we were too pathetic: it would have been like crushing insects. It would have been murder, not war. His pride as a soldier would not allow him to do it. Mejia was transferred, and his subordinates—kinder than ever to us now, as if we were not hardened criminals but tottering old people—escorted us the rest of the way to the Saltillo jail.

Would we Texans have been as kind, as noble, were our positions to be reversed? It shamed me to consider that some of us might not.

In Saltillo we were shoved into little cells, stacked and jammed into dank cubicles like stock, officers and irregulars alike. We were fed once a day and not allowed to cleanse ourselves.

Charles Reese was in my cell, as well as other men I did not know. Each morning, for four days in a row, we awoke—if our fitful rest, amid so much tubercular hacking and groaning, could be called sleep—to find that a man had died in the night, though, alas, our cell never became more spacious, for no sooner was the deceased carried out than another (almost as sickly) was shoved in to replace him, taken from a cell that was evidently even more crowded, incredibly, than our own.

As men came to and went from our cell, and through a clandestine system of wall-tapping, we heard rumors. Whitfield Chalk and Caleb St. Clair had made it home and were agitating for our release. The situation was delicate, for the United States wished to annex Texas, even as Mexico still desired to reconquer Texas. Further complicating things, Great Britain—Mexico’s friend—wished to remain friendly with the United States but did not want to see the United States become even more powerful by the annexation of so much territory.

The U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Waddy Thompson, had met with Santa Anna, arguing for our release, even as Santa Anna (whose hold on power in his own country was slipping fast) explained that he had to execute at least some, and perhaps all, of us. We had killed Mexican soldiers in our escape from Salado; retribution was demanded.

Sam Houston—cunning politician—had also been working for our release, but in a different way: not just for our own sake, but as leverage against both the United States and Mexico. While Waddy Thompson and the United States tried to intervene on our behalf, Sam Houston was appealing to Great Britain for help, so the British minister, Richard Pakenham, joined the discussion. Three countries were competing for our release. We were valuable as symbols even as we were all but worthless as men.

Thomas Jefferson Green—in the cell next to us—rapped out the message that if these things were true, then he hated our commander in chief, Sam Houston, and believed he