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

a dejected acceptance of our fate, knowing that we deserved the misery that had befallen us and that even our captivity was a kind of blessing or mercy in that we were fortunate to at least have had our lives spared.

I would stand beneath the lone grate, looking up at three or four dim stars. I could hear as ever the rush of unseen river below, flowing through and beneath the mountain, louder and so much clearer at night, and if I strained I could hear sounds from much farther away, the breeze that seemed to bathe those stars, polishing them and making them glimmer. From just beyond the fort came the muted gabblings of the swans, and the sound of the wind lapping little waves against the moat’s walls.

I knew that at night nearly all the animals in the desert came from miles away to drink from the moat—on our stone-load oxcart trips the next day, or our cross-hauling punishments, I had seen the stipplings of their tracks in the dust, prints of deer, antelope, bobcat, bear, javelina, jaguar, raccoon, skunk, fox, and panther—and it seemed to me as I stood there at the grate that I could hear them splashing and bathing in the moat’s waters.

It seemed too that I could hear the night-mutter of red-winged blackbirds, rustling with reeds as they were disturbed briefly by the larger-bodied slither of deer and antelope into those waters, the splashing of the lions and jaguars and the wolves and coyotes, the night-trilling of frogs.

Green was cracking. He had taken to blaming us for his captivity—arguing, yet again, that we should have fought harder at Mier, should never have surrendered. His father, still on the Tennessee Supreme Court, had sent word that he had failed now in his entreaties for his son’s clemency to not one but two presidents—first Jackson, then Tyler. Green’s own letters, alternately ranting and cajoling, had gotten him nowhere, even as other prisoners, one by one, had been slipping through those iron grates.

Green began to circulate among us once more, interrupting our card games, trying to encourage others to make another escape attempt. He had several takers—most surprising of all ex-captain Reese, who had been so reluctant back at Salado, refusing to escape even when the gate had been opened.

All this time, Reese had been writing his own appeals, arguing that he should be rewarded for his moderation, but finally, seeing that he was receiving treatment no better than the rest of us, he too began to crack. “We are going to die here,” he said. “We are going to rot here. We must do what we can—no one will save us.” He agreed with Green that we had to make another attempt soon, and told us that many nights he dreamt that we were already dead and rotted, and that the dream was real, while all else—“this,” he said, pinching his wizened arm—was the dream.

“Are you going?” Charles McLaughlin asked me one night.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Do you want to get out?” he asked.

“Of course,” I said. “But...”

“But what?” he said. “Reese is right. We have to leave now.”

We began digging, working at night. The prison walls were eight feet thick, but because much of the stone was volcanic pumice, it was fairly easy to chisel. Many of the men worked in the carpentry shop, building the frames and wagons for cannons and other heavy artillery weapons, so’they had easy access to chisels and hammers.

Charles McLaughlin moved his bunk over to the wall where they were digging in order to be in a better position to illustrate the operation.

To dispose of the rubble, each of us carried a load to the latrines three times a day, whether we were in on the escape or not. The horizontal tunnel, about two feet wide, was hidden by a small boulder. If Bigfoot Wallace wanted to escape, he would have to dig his own, for it was calculated that a three-foot-wide tunnel would have taken twice as long.

Sixteen men were planning to escape. Each man would carry enough food for at least two weeks. We each began to purchase and hoard small amounts of bacon fat, chocolate, hardtack, sugar, and dried fruit, as well as anything that was packaged with rope or twine, which we then wove into one larger, stronger rope, for the prisoners to use in scaling the wall once they had passed through the tunnel.

Once the tunnel was finished, the plan called for us—for them—to wait for a rainy night, since the guards usually skipped the evening roll call, which took place in the courtyard, when it rained.

We waited for a week, trembling with anticipation—so much so that I worried the guards would hear the clamor of our hearts. I still didn’t know if I would be going or not. If I got free, I had decided to head for Texas. It would be tempting to go find Clara again, but sheer folly, too, and I had had enough of folly.

Fisher refused to be part of the escape. He had been brooding over some of Green’s accusations, and when the rain finally came, Fisher surprised us all by saying he would be remaining behind, vowing not to leave the Castle of Perve until every prisoner had been freed.

He and Green stood in front of the tunnel opening, briefly facing each other—they said nothing but shook hands stiffly, formally—and I had the impression that Fisher would have embraced Green but that Green would have none of it. Slipping out of their jewelry, the men wriggled into the tunnel one by one, as if being swallowed by the mountain itself: and I was astounded when Charles McLaughlin, who up until that point had still been sketching the goings-on, scene by scene, laid down his charcoal and tablet and stood up and followed the other prisoners into the hole, pausing at the entrance only long enough to motion for me to join him.

I hesitated, and he turned