A Sinister Splendor

by Mike Blakely

The private cringed, having recognized the harsh voice of his sergeant at the edge of the field. “Yeah, Sarge?”

  “Come here!”

  Singer felt a touch of dread crawling about his skin as he wondered how long the sergeant had been watching. It was just a little clod. He marched quickly past uprooted corn plants and around a few tents his messmates in Company C of the Eighth Infantry were staking to the ground.

  “Come with me,” the sergeant said. “General Worth wants to talk to you.”

  “The general? What for?”

  “You’ll have to ask him.”

  “Am I in trouble?”

  “Probably.”

  Singer’s mind whirled back over the past several days, wondering what he might have done that would warrant an audience with General Worth. They had crossed the Arroyo Colorado without trouble from the Mexican Army. They had proceeded to march out of the rough chaparral country and into a land of pastures and croplands, many of which had been abandoned by the Mexican farmers in the face of the invading Yankee army. They came to this bend in the river across from the pretty little city of Matamoras yesterday and started making camp, fearful of an enemy attack at any given moment.

  They had seen hundreds of Mexican troops across the river, drilling to martial music all day yesterday and today. Singer had to admit that their army band beat all hell out of the Americans’ fifes and drums. Across the Rio Bravo, as it was sometimes called, the enemy army flaunted a marching ensemble with a whole brass section.

  He had seen Mexican women, too, bathing naked on the far bank, causing many a man to gravitate toward the water when not on fatigue duty. It was Singer, himself, who had come up with the idea to teach off-duty “swimming lessons” to his messmates, and his classes had been well attended.

  Thinking back on all this, though, he couldn’t remember any serious mischief he had gotten into that might cause General Worth, of all people, to want to interview him.

  When they arrived at the general’s tent, the sergeant spoke to the adjutant, who spoke to the general. General Worth came out of his tent.

  Singer saluted.

  “Are you Private Andrew Singer, Company C, Eighth Infantry?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Come with me. General Taylor wants to have a word with you.”

  General Taylor himself? Old Rough and Ready?

  Singer followed Worth to the nearby camp headquarters, past guards who saluted General Worth. On a whim, Singer himself returned one of the salutes, then thought he’d better straighten up and act proper. They marched on, among officers from different regiments, who stood around smoking pipes, conversing, looking at maps, gazing across the river. Worth spoke to Taylor’s adjutant, Captain Bliss, who leaned into Taylor’s tent and said something to the general.

  “Come on in, gentlemen,” Bliss said.

  Singer followed on Worth’s heels, saluting left and right to every officer who looked his way.

  “General, I have brought Private Singer to see you.”

  Singer stepped around Worth and came to attention, brandishing one more salute. He found Old Rough and Ready sitting on a trunk, darning a sock with a needle and thread. He had a boot on his right foot but the other was bare, the left boot lying beside the trunk on which the general sat.

  “Forgive me for not returning your salute just now, Private.”

  Singer dropped his arm to his side. “Of course, sir. I wouldn’t want you to poke yourself in the general’s eye with that there needle.”

  Taylor looked up from his task, his calm, knowing gaze sizing up his visitor. Singer thought he might already have stepped in it, but then the general’s thick lips formed a smile.

  “You may stand at ease,” Taylor said, resuming the mending of his sock. “Singer, I’m told you speak some Spanish.”

  “I understand more than I speak, sir.”

  “Where did you come by these linguistic skills?”

  “My father served with the Duke of Wellington against Napoleon’s forces in Spain, sir. He met a senorita and married her.”

  “Your mother.”

  “Yes, sir. She rarely spoke English to me. Mostly just Spanish.”

  General Taylor knotted his thread and used his teeth to cut it free from his sock. “How do you feel about the prospects for this war against Mexico?”

  “I’m a soldier, sir. I don’t feel; I just follow orders.”

  General Worth, standing by, grunted approvingly.

  Taylor struggled to get the darned sock over his toes, for he was a little thick through the middle and, Singer concluded, a mite stove up from years of hard service on the frontier.

  “I’m asking for your opinion, Singer. Speak your mind.”

  “Well, sir, I read the newspapers. Ten years ago, when he lost at the battle of San Jacinto, Santa Anna signed a treaty naming the border between Texas and Mexico at the Rio Grande. Texas being a state now, I’d say we’re well within our rights to defend that border. I’d hate for them boys at the Alamo to have died for nothin’. Hell, that’s the reason I enlisted. To defend American soil.”

  Taylor pulled on his boot and stood up, pushing at the small of his back. He smiled at Singer, apparently in approval of the private’s answer. “General Worth tells me you have a knack for talking your way out of a bind when need be.”

  Singer glanced at Worth. “Sir, that may be true. But that might also point out a knack for getting into the bind in the first place.”

  The two generals laughed, and Singer began to relax. He still didn’t know what the hell he had gotten himself into, but so far it was more interesting than being bucked and gagged on the parade ground—or pulling up some poor farmer’s corn plants, for that matter.

  “General Worth tells me that you are to be commended for teaching your messmates how to swim.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “So, you are a strong swimmer?”

  “Oh, yes, sir. I was swimmin’ before I could walk.”

  “Your lessons have nothing to do with the scenery across the river?”

  Singer grinned. “Well that helped in recruiting pupils, sir. But it seems to me President Polk might want us to cross that river any day now, and I figured the boys in Company C ought to be ready.”

  Taylor looked at Worth and they nodded at each other.

  “You’ve been handpicked to carry out an assignment, Private Singer. You can accept it or refuse it. If you accept it, and survive, you will be promoted to corporal and given an extra gill of whiskey. If you refuse, you will return to your company and continue to serve your nation.”

  “Sir, may I ask what the assignment is?”

  “That I cannot tell you, unless you accept.”

  Singer mulled the matter over. This had something to do with understanding Spanish, being able to talk one’s way out of trouble, and knowing how to swim. It sounded to him as if the generals were looking for a spy. “Corporal Andrew Singer,” he said, mostly to himself. “Has a nice sound to it. My mother will be proud.”

  “Once you’re in, there’s no backing out,” Worth warned.

  Singer had had his fill of the boredom of fatigues. He could already see himself lording his corporal’s stripes over the boys in his company. “Deal me in, sir.”

  Taylor smiled. “Bill, where’s that circular?”

  The general’s adjutant, Captain William Bliss, produced the flyer from a stack of papers on the general’s desk. He handed it to Taylor.

  “Have you seen this?” the general asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Singer admitted. He had read a copy of it. It was a printed invitation, in English, from General Ampudia, across the river, for U.S. soldiers to desert. It was aimed at the immigrant soldiers, and the Catholic Irishmen in particular. It offered rank, pay, friendship, and farmland for the deserter who would cross the river to join Mexican forces.

  Taylor gestured toward General Worth. Worth turned to address Singer.

  “Your assignment is to feign desertion. Ta
ke this flyer with you and swim across the river. Pretend that you don’t understand Spanish. Observe what you can of the enemy’s forces. Stay a day or two and swim back over.” General Worth thrust the printed circular at him.

  Singer accepted the handbill.

  General Taylor extended his thick palm toward his new spy. “Good luck, son. General Worth will explain the details to you.”

  Singer shook the general’s hand, came to attention, and saluted. This time, Old Rough and Ready returned the salute.

  * * *

  After twilight, General Worth’s personal guard escorted Private Singer to the banks of the river. Along this stretch of the undulating rio, the stream ran north to south, so crossing the river meant heading due west. The glow of the sunset silhouetting the cathedral belfry in Matamoras would guide Singer’s way. Only a sliver of the waxing moon would appear tonight. It was the perfect hour to swim the river undetected.

  As his guard withdrew, Singer clawed his way through the thorny underbrush and slipped into the cold waters of the Rio Grande. He reasoned that rain must have fallen somewhere upstream, for the current had picked up considerably since his last “swimming lesson” with his messmates. No matter. He really was a strong swimmer, and he had no weapons weighing him down.

  The current carried him to his left as he dog-paddled his way across. Reaching the other side, he grabbed a tree branch along the stretch where the women bathed and washed laundry by day. He pulled himself ashore and immediately fished General Ampudia’s flyer out of his shirt. There were trails here that the women used to carry their laundry to and from the Bravo. He followed one up the bank, his heart beating with the excitement of his lone mission.

  Peeking over the brink of the trail, he found himself looking at a peaceful cobblestoned street fronting the river. Lamplight illuminated the windows of some houses, a café, and what appeared to be a busy cantina on the corner down the way. Couples strolled arm in arm. A small gathering of old men stared across the river at the campfires of the U.S. Army.

  Singer caught himself thinking what a shame it would be to have to blast hell out of this pretty little town, should the stubborn politicians fail to agree on where the border ought to lie. But that was not his concern. He was a private on his way to earning his stripes as a corporal, and he had a job to do that might actually prevent his own friends from getting blasted to hell.

  After watching for a minute or two, shivering from nerves and the chill water, he spotted four armed soldiers patrolling the street. When they had passed by, he slipped out of the riverbank timber and fell in behind them.

  Might as well get on with it, he thought.

  “Por favor!” he shouted, in the worst American accent he could muster. His mother would have twisted his ear for butchering the language that way.

  As the soldiers wheeled around, he stepped into the light from a window and held his hands up and away from his body, his right hand clutching Ampudia’s circular. This was the moment, he thought, in which he was most likely to get shot. He was wearing a U.S. Army uniform on the wrong side of the river. His heart beat furiously against his chest.

  The four soldiers shouted all manner of Spanish orders at one another, and at him, but he pretended not to understand any of it. With the muzzles of ancient muskets pointing at him, he brandished the printed flyer.

  “Por favor,” he repeated.

  The soldiers approached cautiously, one of them yanking the handbill from his grasp.

  “Let’s shoot him,” one of the soldiers suggested in Spanish.

  “He has no guns. No weapons at all. It would be cowardly.”

  “He wants to join us.”

  “Let’s take him to Capitan Huerta,” said the apparent leader of the patrol. “Huerta speaks English.” The soldier thrust the muzzle of his musket toward Singer. “Habla español?” he demanded.

  Per his orders, Private Singer pretended to understand nothing.

  He was marched around the corner and down a street to the west, a guard to either side, one leading the way, one guarding his rear. Pedestrians turned to gawk and point. He felt the worst part was over. Now he simply had to convince the capitan that he wanted to join the Mexican Army.

  Walking into the town plaza, where restaurants and cantinas carried on a lively trade, Singer passed a woman sitting at an outdoor café table, smoking a cigarette. A woman! Smoking! And no one seemed to mind. He noticed two artillery pieces across the square—antique six-pounders aimed in the direction of the U.S. camp. He had to remember to take note of weapons, troop numbers, horses, wagons, supplies.

  Citizens gathered closer, shouting their excitement over his arrival.

  “They have captured a Yankee!”

  “He’s soaking wet!”

  “Will they hang him, or shoot him?”

  “Save bullets,” an old ranchero shouted at the soldiers. “A single noose can be used many times!”

  A crowd laughed.

  His guards escorted him to a two-story hotel at the corner of the plaza, where many soldiers languished. The Spanish language hummed all around him. This was a different kind of Spanish from that which his mother had spoken to him as a child and it began to overwhelm him, to the point that he deciphered very little of it.

  Singer found the inside of the hotel lobby clouded with tobacco smoke and crowded with exquisitely uniformed officers of all ages gathered around painted jugs of what he thought must be tequila. He was ordered to halt here as one of his guards ran up the stairs. After Singer endured the cool-eyed stares of the officer corps for a long minute, the guard whistled down at his comrades and Singer was hustled up the steps and pushed into a lavish suite overlooking the plaza.

  Singer found a man at a desk, writing a report of some kind, his face bent over his work, his fingers clutching a quill pen. A dark blue tunic with captain’s bars on the epaulets was hanging on the back of the desk chair.

  The captain looked up from the paperwork. “So, you are the deserter,” he said, his English perfect.

  Singer came to attention and saluted. “Private Andrew Singer at your service, sir.”

  The captain brushed his fingertips across his brow. “Of course, you know my name already.”

  “I’m afraid I do not, sir. We have only now just met.”

  He scoffed. “I am Captain Emilio Huerta.”

  “Thank God you speak English, sir. I didn’t know what these fellers might have in mind for me.” He tossed his head toward the guards who had captured him.

  The captain drilled him with a cold stare. “You are a deserter. Is this true?”

  “Sir, I think of myself as a recruit, not a deserter. I found myself on the wrong side of the fight, so I come over to the right side.”

  The captain jabbed his pen into an inkwell and left it there. “Why do you want to join the Army of Mexico?”

  “A lot of reasons, sir.”

  The captain leaned back in his chair. “I am ‘all ears,’ as you say in your country.”

  He decided to start with a lie. “My father was Irish. My mother is Spanish. I am an American by birth only, sir. My folks were both Catholics.”

  “Irish and Spanish? How did this come to be?”

  Singer told the true story of his father’s service in Spain with the English Army.

  “If your mother is Spanish, why don’t you speak Spanish?”

  “My father died when I was young. My mother married one of them heretic Protestants. He wouldn’t let her speak Spanish no more. Wouldn’t let her go to mass, either.”

  “How did your father die?”

  Singer had thought this story out in advance. “A pine tree fell on him, sir.”

  The captain’s brows revealed his skepticism. “In the forest?”

  “No, sir. It rolled off a wagon at the sawmill.”

  “I see. My, uh … condolences.”

  “Sir, my recruiter lied to me. He told me I was going to fight the Brits in Oregon. He told me I’d make rank and be a serge
ant by now. The American officers have got it in for us Irish—even a half-Irish boy like me. I just can’t see taking up arms against Catholics and Spanish speakers.”

  Huerta seemed a bit stunned by the outburst. He looked at the guards waiting at the door. In Spanish, he gave his order: “Corporal, go downstairs and find a rope so we can hang this spy in the plaza.”

  The translation came gradually in Singer’s mind, and that was good, for it gave him a chance to mask his reaction to the shocking directive. General Worth had warned him that the Mexicans would test his knowledge of Spanish in this way. He knew the captain was studying his facial expression, so he took care to appear clueless.

  “Capitan?” the Mexican corporal asked. “Seguro?”

  “No, not really.” Huerta replied, in Spanish. “I was only testing him. You are dismissed.”

  The guards smiled, elbowed one another, and left the room. Captain Huerta got up from his chair and walked slowly around the desk, looking Singer over from head to toe. He came face-to-face with the spy. “You are my size, more or less. You should get rid of that uniform before you get shot. I have some dry clothes you can put on. Then I’ll show you around town. Tomorrow you will meet General Mejia. Are you hungry?”

  “Starved, sir.”

  The captain smiled and slapped him on the shoulder. “Welcome to Mexico.”

  Brigadier General

  ZACHARY TAYLOR

  Rio Grande

  March 30, 1846

  “General? Sir?”

  General Zachary Taylor found himself staring at the map of the lower Rio Grande Valley, but he realized that his mind had drifted far away, to his Cypress Grove plantation in Louisiana. A slow rain pattered hypnotically on the tent canvas above his head.

  “Sorry, Bill,” he said to Captain William Bliss. He rubbed his eyes, feeling the fatigue of his commandership sinking deep into his bones. He had been wondering how his overseers and his servants—as he called his slaves—were getting on at Cypress Grove. Had the last frost come and gone? Had the rains loosened the rich, black soil for the plowshares?

  “Sir, perhaps we should continue in the morning.” Bliss rolled the map into a perfect scroll and tied it with a blue ribbon. He pulled a watch from the pocket of his tunic. “It’s almost midnight, after all.”