Diezmo

by Rick Bass

  Skeletons already, we stumbled down the mountain, falling often and helping each other up, making our way toward the distant threads of smoke. When we arrived in the camp and saw the too familiar sight of our comrades housed once again in makeshift corrals, we were rewarded for our surrender with a few sips of water. Colonel Barragan escorted Wallace and Cameron away from the rest of the skeletons and placed them in their own separate corral.

  From time to time we would look across at them, peering through our rails to where the two big men sat hunch-shouldered and conversing, and as we recovered and felt the flow of life returning to us, many of the men allowed that they felt awful and lamented that they had not stayed on the main road all the way home, as the Englishman had advised.

  For the next few days, Barragan’s cavalry scoured the countryside, bringing in stragglers. The Mexicans had gathered several wild longhorns, and they slaughtered some of these and fed us. After we had eaten the meat, the soldiers then prepared us for another march by binding our wrists and ankles with strips of damp hide cut from the same cattle. The intestines of the slaughtered animals were turned inside out and given to us to use for water vessels. We filled them and hung them around our necks, and as we resumed our marching, southward again toward that coppery sun, the sloshing of the water in those intestines made the same sound it must have made in the cattle, back when they had still been living.

  And still our numbers kept diminishing. Two of our men, Priest Gibbons and Crandall Nash, crawled out from beneath the corral one night, sneaked into the water reserves, and drank all they could hold, and then died in agony a few hours later, their systems shocked into exploding.

  The soldiers marched 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 was too little a soldier and too much a politician.

  While negotiations for our freedom were taking place, one of our men, Billy Reese (brother of the reluctant-to-escape Charles Reese), was allowed to go down to Mexico City, because of his general intelligence and eloquence, to meet with Waddy Thompson and Pakenham.

  Reese—who had heard Fisher read aloud to us countless times Sam Houston’s tattered secret letter exhorting rebellion—found out from Thompson that in his letter to the British minister asking for our release, Houston had stated that we had marched into Mexico without orders.

  Our little pissant expedition, begun with such high hopes for glory—indeed, sustained by the near-religious fervor that what we were doing mattered more than anything in the world—had crumbled. For a while we had felt powerful, significant, filled with life and meanin
g. Now we lay moaning with illness, wracked by pneumonia, on cold stone floors in a foreign country, while the world, we were to find out later, continued to argue over us as if we were stray poker chips.

  Still, we fought, if only for our own lives. Still, some of us held on to hope.

  We were not recovering. We were languishing. Occasionally another one or two men would be strained from out of the mountains and thrown back into the mix, gaunt and fevered. We were still receiving only one meal per day, though when we pointed out we were dying we were given an extra piece of bread and a ration of coffee to improve our spirits.

  I held on to my beans more as talismans now than nutrition. For some illogical reason, I had it in my mind that when they were all gone I would be free, that however many beans I had left, that was how many days I had: but that I was allowed, by some unknown law of the world, to eat only one per day.

  We had no blankets. The sound of coughing kept us awake all night. Sometimes we dozed in the daytime, when it was slightly warmer. One boy became deathly ill with pneumonia. When visited by a local padre who wished to administer last rites, he refused. He died three days later. This made some among us believe that if they accepted the Catholic faith, they might be rewarded with better treatment. They converted, but, alas, no special dispensation was forthcoming, save for the loathing and censure cast their way now by the rest of us.

  In Mexico City, Santa Anna made his decision, though we were not to learn of it immediately. Certain of us would live, and certain of us would die.

  After three weeks, Mejia’s replacement, Colonel Ortiz, told us that we would be leaving the prison at Saltillo and would be marched south toward Mexico City, where we would be freed. We had heard by now of General Mejia’s defiance of the initial order to execute us weeks earlier, and so we believed this wonderful news and were swayed by Colonel Ortiz’s cheerful manner as he told us to walk fast, for we would soon be free men. Among us all, he said, only Fisher and Green would be punished—they were to be banished to the horrible Castle of Perve in the faraway town of Perote. Hearing this, we were sorry for the fate of our captains, though there were some among us also who, after our long months of captivity, during which time the captains had occasionally been squired and wined and dined, felt that things were evening out some, now. Still, we vowed to ourselves to lobby for their release upon our return to Texas.

  On the first day of the march, when Ortiz saw that we were bothered by the dust kicked in our faces by the cavalrymen who rode alongside us, he ordered the riders to fall to the rear, leaving us out in front and alone, and for a short, glorious while, it felt as if we were free already.

  It was but two long days’ march to Hacienda del Salado, the site of our initial escape, and later on that second day, as we drew nearer to it, Ortiz’s co-commander, Colonel Huerta, ordered us to stop, and placed our manacles back upon us.

  The day was warm and sunny, but as we paused on the hill to look down at the old prison, a dark swirling cloud blew across the sun, a sudden sandstorm that completely obscured our view. We could not see our hands in front of our faces, and we cowered, then fell to the ground, seeking cover wherever we could: behind a log, in the scalloped lee of a dune, or even against one another.

  Cursing, Ortiz and Huerta and the rest of their cavalry dismounted and hid behind their horses, trying to block the stinging sand. Jerking the manacled pack-train of us to our feet, they pushed us on.

  We reached the walls of the prison, feeling them with our hands more than seeing them, and moved laterally in the blinding storm until we reached the gate and then entered, where the one hundred seventy-six of us encountered thirty well-armed infantrymen. As soon as we had entered the fort and were unmanacled, the storm stopped. And as we took our coats off, emptying the sand from our sleeves and shaking it from our bodies as if we had been deeply buried and had just emerged, we all noticed the terrible stillness and silence within the fort.

  Through an interpreter, we were told only now of Santa Anna’s decision to implement the diezmo to determine our fates. The terrible Colonel Huerta took pleasure in explaining that one out of every ten of us was going to be killed. “You came seeking glory but sacrificed your own freedom,” the interpreter told us.

  In a daze, I heard the words. Libertad. Muerto. The interpreter said something about blood and soil, but I was too weak to hear it all clearly.

  “You will draw from ajar of black beans and white beans,” the interpreter told us. “Some of you will draw the black bean of death,” he said. “Others of you will draw a white bean and will be spared, if but a little longer.” The interpreter—a young man not much older than myself, and seeming nervous in his uniform—related all of this in a calm voice, as if. he were giving us directions to some long-sought destination only a short distance farther down the road. Colonel Huerta, however, was smiling wickedly.

  We were all silent for a minute, stuporous. Then Cameron went berserk, charging the guards, followed by a small group around him, and the guards had to beat them back with the butts of their muskets.

  Almost immediately, altar boys brought out an earthen crock and a bench. The crock was placed on the bench. Colonel Huerta brought out a sack of white beans and counted out one hundred fifty-nine of them, one by one, speaking quietly in Spanish, dropping them into the clay pot as we watched. Then a smaller sack was brought to him—black beans—and from this sack he counted out seventeen and poured them in on top of the white beans, then shook the pot weakly in a thinly veiled attempt to keep the black beans of death near the top, as our officers and captains would be drawing first.

  We were further surprised to see Shepherd again, standing among the fort’s cavalrymen, though he no longer appeared to be in their ranks. He was bruised, beaten, and cowed, and the guards shoved him roughly toward us, making it clear that he, too, was expected to draw a bean.

  All my life up to that point, I had been a conscious creature of restraint, more comfortable standing back and waiting and watching, observing things to the fullest extent possible before making a decision. I felt that this course was prudent, and it had usually served me well.

  But there in the stone fort, when I saw Huerta counting, with pleasure, the white and black beans into the pot, I was lifted suddenly by a tremendous wave. All of my life’s inaction had been but a quiet gathering for the action that was demanded now. I had been seized as if by a great storm, and I had no choice.

  As the Mexican officers were posting sentries on the walls all around us, I sorted surreptitiously through my small handful of beans for the cleanest white ones I could find.

  I could see no way, in the chaos of the moment, to gather and explain to all those for whom I cared deepest the nature of my surprising and secret bounty. In my first surge of panic, I had the thought that survival would be as easy as merely passing out white beans, and I started to do this, making a mental list, an awful prioritization of those whom I wanted to survive.

  On the far side of our throng, I saw Charles McLaughlin, who even at this dire time was seated on an overturned saddle, sketching. I was alarmed to see that Cameron and Wallace were also over on the far side of the courtyard; I did not think there would be time to reach them.

  Clearly the protection of Fisher and Green was my duty, one of my loyal obligations, and yet something in me counseled hesitation as I made my way toward them, and then I realized what it was. If any of the other men to whom I gave a white bean was to draw a black bean, and then discarded it, revealing the white bean I’d given him, the Mexicans’ quota would be off. Whoever I handed a white bean would have also to somehow secretly drop two beans into the pot, even while they were reaching in to select another. Because there would be no chance to put one’s hand into the pot a second time—to add another white or black bean to replace whatever color each prisoner had drawn honestly—we could only guess what those colors would be: Somehow, they had to add up to seventeen black beans. It was possible that by dropping another black bean in and re
vealing in the palm of one’s hand the substitute white, there might end up being eighteen black beans in the pot. Perhaps General Huerta would think it possible that they had somehow miscounted, despite their painstaking care, but what would he make of nineteen or even twenty black beans drawn?

  And if an eighteenth black bean did appear, from my sleight of hand—my assurance—that would mean my survival had come at the expense of not just one but two of my comrades.

  The switchings required were too complex to explain to more than one person in the time remaining, and only I and possibly one other could get through the gate of life, even if only for a little while longer. I made my choice.

  James Shepherd was standing off from the rest of us, shoulders hunched up in the big officer’s coat he still wore, head tipped down, as if he were studying the soil in which he might soon be buried. He looked young again, younger even than he had been when he’d started out, and though he was diminished by the loss of his arm, he still possessed the handsomeness and elegance that had first caused the officers of both nations to take him in under their wing.

  I hesitated, then hurried over and reached for his hand, took it, and pressed a white bean into his palm.

  He looked down at it with no emotion that I could discern, and then looked back at me, and I saw with a shock that he was angry—and my breath caught, and I stared back at him, uncomprehending. Looking away from me then, he clenched the bean in his fist, then cast it to the ground fiercely.