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

We were astounded by how little Shannon knew about our circumstances, or about Texas, or Mexico. It seemed that Fisher and Wallace and myself spent far more time filling him in on key details than he did in giving us any information.

We showed Shannon our tunnel, which was nearly completed. We posted a sentry by our door to warn us if one of the Mexican guards approached, and lifted the tiles and offered to take him down into the tunnel, toward the sound of that river that none of us had ever seen.

Shannon recoiled in horror and bid us to replace the tiles quickly. He urged us not to attempt escape—indeed, to fill the tunnel back in—though he had no plans for getting us released. We reminded him that with the collapse of the Texas-Mexico armistice and then thé failure of the United States to annex Texas there was no longer any hope of Santa Anna releasing us.

Shannon stared at us blankly, then rose to leave. It was evening, and the sound of cannons and muskets filled the night, as they had all during the day. Bigfoot Wallace, his legs bowed and scarred by many months in chains, rose also, and placed his big hand on Shannon’s shoulder. “How about if you stay in here and try and think things through and I’ll walk out and tell them we decided to trade places for a while? And how about if I just give you a swift boot in the ass right now, to hurry things along?”

Shannon blanched, slipped free of the grasp of that huge hand, and rapped on the door for the sentries to let him out.

After Shannon was gone we settled in for our regular evening activities, even as outside the night continued to fracture with the concussive sounds of mourning and ceremony: and we waited for later in the night, when we could resume digging.

Weeks later, war resumed between Mexico and Texas, but Waddy Thompson, even in retirement, continued to work on our behalf. One morning, less than a week after the burial of Doña Inés, Thompson reappeared in our dungeon (we had decided to push through to the river that very night; we had finished drilling our bunks with dowels and pegs so that they could be disassembled, taken down into the tunnel, then reassembled into rafts, below ground) and told us to take heart, that our old nemesis, General Ampudia, who had been responsible for our initial capture so long ago in Ciudad Mier, had gotten involved in an international incident down near the Yucatán, which might have some bearing on attempts to release us.

Ampudia had captured a band of insurgents—some native, others foreign mercenaries—and although the captured band had raised a white flag of surrender, Ampudia had executed them all, and, like his associate Canales some years earlier, had decapitated the rebel leader, fried his head in oil, and displayed it in an iron cage for several days.

Among the victims had been three Americans, in addition to several French, British, and Spanish citizens.

Thompson said, “Shannon is meeting with Santa Anna at this very moment. The world is crumbling around Santa Anna. You have outlasted him. Take heart.” He placed his hand on Fisher’s shoulder. “Hold on to your men for one more day,” he said. “You have served and led and advised them honorably. Hold on for one more day.”

We had all already made the commitment to escape that night. Even I had decided to go after all my earlier years of indecision. We had all decided to go, strong or weak, lame or infirm, no matter: all of us, with Fisher following at the rear. There was a light rain falling that day; the conditions could not have been better.

“All right,” Fisher said slowly, quietly, speaking to Thompson. “I will trust you.”

We sat up all through the night, waiting. The tunnel was finished—we had lowered our lit candles into it, had seen the dark river below. We were ready to go, but we sat, and we waited.

In the morning, when the guards usually came with our breakfast, instead an armed regiment arrived in dress uniforms, and our hearts fell, believing that we were about to be executed. Someone, we feared—Shannon, perhaps—had informed them of the tunnel.

We were escorted into a large empty room, in which there was but a single long desk, with one man, a general, seated in a chair behind it.

Two candles were burning in the room, one on either side of a big Bible that sat on the desk. Next to the Bible was a ledger; one by one we were asked, or commanded, to step forward and sign the ledger and, in exchange for our freedom, swear never to take up arms against Mexico again.

Scarcely believing what was happening, and moving as if in a dream, we filed to the desk and signed our name or mark, laid our palsied hands on the Bible, and swore allegiance to this pact, and then were escorted into the courtyard.

Weeping, cheering, limping, embracing one another and even our former captors, we trembled as the chains were peeled from our scarred and rotting ankles. We were still weeping as Fisher ordered us into formation.

The day was bright and clear and cool, the sky washed blue from the previous day’s rain, and we could smell the fragrance of the desert in bloom. Fisher commanded us to march, and in formation we filed across the drawbridge, past the white swans and onto the road that led to Vera Cruz, while the guards at the Castle of Perve shouted their good wishes and fired their cannons to cheer our great fortune. Thompson and Shannon had arranged for a steamer to be waiting for us in Vera Cruz, and within two weeks we would be back home.

Perhaps I should not have followed the other seventy-two men to Vera Cruz, as I should not have followed them into Mexico. Maybe my true path, the