Diezmo

by Rick Bass

  And though I thought he might, I told him that no, he wasn’t; and this calmed him so that, slowly, he stopped trembling.

  The wound had a clear exit hole on the inside of his arm, just below the armpit, so there was probably no shrapnel left inside. He was bleeding heavily, and I hoped the bullet hadn’t nicked an artery. I took off my shirt and bound a tight bandage, almost a tourniquet, and then sat him down under an oak tree and told him to remain still.

  He was as pale as his blood was bright—there was so much of it—and we sat quietly and listened to the exchanges of gunfire and shouting. A couple of times he said, “I’m scared,” but I told him to be still and hold on, that he was going to be all right; and he quieted down and clung to that advice as if I held the key to his survival. He started to shake again, and I laid my jacket across him like a blanket, and it was enough to stop his shaking.

  After a while the shooting stopped—only the shouting persisted—and then there was relative silence. Not long after that, I heard our men regrouping—the burr and bray of Ewen Cameron, the occasional shouts of Green and Fisher, and the calmer declarations of Somervell—and I wanted to go and join them, but Shepherd became so pale and agitated—the crimson stains on his bandage dampening as he raised his good arm to restrain me—that I feared he would not survive my leaving, and so I stayed.

  I was worried that the others might think that Shepherd and I had run away from the battle, but there was nothing I could do about that. We sat side by side beneath that oak in the failing light and listened to the sounds of our army’s reassembly. It was cold—the last day of November—and as the night grew quieter, Shepherd reached for my hand and gripped it, clenching it so tightly that I thought for certain he was dying.

  But he wasn’t; instead, he just sat there gripping it, even as he slept. I had no matches for a fire, and no blanket with which to keep myself warm, but I did not move and tried instead to remember how warm and pleasant the day had been only hours earlier. I had almost fallen asleep in my saddle, lulled by the mild heat and the steady rocking of my horse.

  We awoke later in the evening to renewed shouts, and the cries and screams of men, women, children, and horses, and dogs barking, and guns firing again. I saw by the moon that we had not slept more than an hour, but it felt that a great deal of time had passed, time not measured in minutes and hours but weighed in tons, or scaled in rods and cubits.

  “Looting,” Shepherd said quietly, almost wisely—as if he were the veteran of many such campaigns. His hand still gripped mine as if in lockjaw death, then released slightly.

  After a while we saw reflections of firelight through the trees—how I longed to edge closer and stand beside those warming fires!—as one building after another was torched. I felt certain that these buildings, and the people that lived in them, were not the enemy: that they Were merely fodder for the path of Fisher and Green, the path of history, the path of glory. And it was not I who had lit any of the torches: not a single one. What would it have hurt for me to go and warm myself beside, and benefit from, even one of them? But I could not, and so we remained back in the shadows, beyond the throw of firelight, quiet and invisible: history dust, ourselves. We heard the whoops and revelry of our own men, and their galloping horses. All through the night, people fled through the thicket, running past our spot without noticing us. Around midnight, the shouts from our men began to sound more drunken; and not much after that, musical instruments began to play—horns and fifes and guitars—a mock-joyful symphony issuing from the burning town.

  A fiddle was found, though no true fiddler, for the sounds that emanated from those tortured strings were dirgelike and anguished; and from elsewhere in the village there came random and occasional drumming—stones against overturned empty barrels, wooden clubs against the sides of buildings, musket butts against doorways—and more laughter and revelry, more cries of fright.

  If we slept again at all, we might have done so for a few moments just before the cold dawn. Then, only because we had no more water, and because James Shepherd felt that he would die of thirst without some, he allowed me to leave the grasp of his hand and venture into the village to get water and to take stock of what had happened.

  “If they capture you,” he said, “don’t leave me here. Make them come get me.”

  His arm was hurting terribly, all soft-tissue tear, without a bone broken—and I told him not to be ridiculous, that I couldn’t be captured because they were on my side and I was on theirs. But he just looked at me, understanding what I didn’t. I have no idea how two boys growing up in the same small town could know such disparate things and, in the end, turn out so differently.

  Corrals and barns stood empty, their gates and doors de molished. Low fires smoldered and crackled almost everywhere I looked. A mist was beginning to fall, mingling smoke with the morning’s fog, and I smelled not only the charred odor of wood but other things not meant to burn—a scent of trash, like spoiled fruit, and burning metal, and wet cloth.

  There were dead animals everywhere—dogs and chickens strewn in the street, with a layer of dust absorbing the morning’s mist and slowly transforming to mud. There were dead horses and cattle, mules and pigs, too, some shot and others killed by swords.

  Murdered men and women lay in the street, too, their congealed blood loosened in the light rain. Scraps and rags of clothing lay the streets, a man hung from a second-story balcony, a crude noose around his neck, his head and arms drooping.

  In the gray light, I saw that some of the outstretched bodies were stirring. A man tried to sit up, put his hands to his head, then tipped over on his side. A woman with a battered face reached down to pull her shawl up farther over her and then lay looking up into the rain.

  I didn’t know whom to help or where to turn; there was too much carnage. I found a bloodless severed hand in the street—a woman’s? A young man’s?—and walked past it, puking bile. I would find water for James Shepherd and then go back to him. And after that, we would return home and start over. Our quiet lives would be enough.

  I understood that I was looking into some horrific new territory that could never be forgotten, and more than anything I wanted to flee, even abandoning Shepherd, but I stepped over and around carcasses and went up the stairs of the only building left unharmed. The downstairs was some sort of lobby. I ascended to the second floor and saw why the building was unscathed. Green and Fisher had commandeered it for their headquarters—Wallace was there, too, and half a dozen others whose looks were terrifying.

  They sat in a circle of mismatched chairs. Green and Somervell’s chairs were turned backwards so that they straddled them like horses. They leaned forward in the chairs, resting the weight of their torsos against the backs, as if even here they intended to somehow charge into battle. Of them all, only Fisher seemed relaxed, with one leg stretched out before him. All of the men’s boots and pants were wet, and a dull fire in the stove was only now beginning to warm enough to send up steam.

  Empty whiskey bottles lay on the floor, and several men held partly finished tumblers, though while I was there, none of them drank, as if, finally, they’d had enough.

  Ashy-faced, nearly all were smoking, a raft of blue smoke hanging halfway to the ceiling. They looked at me with a mix of curiosity and hostility. I wondered if any of them had hung the man across the street, and for what offense.

  There was a little sound from outside on the porch, a kind of a hiss or gasp, like the air going out of something—the sound of an injured man or woman dying—and the men gave no indication of noticing. After a moment, I eased out of the room and went back downstairs.

  Outside, a raven filtered down from the fog and smoke and settled onto the shoulder of one of the fallen, as if that man were his master and the raven had been seeking him out, returning after a long night’s absence. The raven perched for a moment, clutching the man’s stiff shoulder as if waiting for him to awaken, and, when he did not, the raven edged a couple of hops closer to the man’
s clenched face, and with a delicate motion of his heavy bill, pulled the lids open and daintily pecked his eyes.

  I hurried out into the street and shooed the raven away. I walked closer to the man and saw a crumpled trumpet lying in the mud next to him. I looked up and saw across the street, in the downstairs doorway of the building from which the hanged man was suspended, a young child watching, barely a toddler. I went back to the sidewalk and picked up several of the empty whiskey bottles, filled them from a watering trough, and hurried off, three clinking bottles in each arm.

  Knowing Shepherd’s sensitive nature, his queasiness regarding blood and pain and entrails, I wasn’t sure I should tell him what I’d seen. I came hurrying down the trail through the thicket and found him awake and watching for me. He had been crying, and little rivers and deltas of salt tracked the dust and grime on his face. He asked what took me so long, and I told him that, yes, there had been looting.

  He greedily drank the water. His arm was so swollen that he could barely move it, and I was about to examine it when Fisher came galloping down the narrow trail, brush thwacking his small agile horse at every turn, so that Fisher seemed barely in control.

  He reined to a slashing stop, spraying a shower of sand across us. At first I didn’t understand that he had come after me. I thought the rage in his eyes was about his horse’s behavior, or that he was chasing someone else—some bandit, some infidel to the republic.

  He leapt down from his horse, one hand on the reins and the other on his sword. He glanced at Shepherd and then at me.

  “What is your intent?” Fisher demanded, glancing possessively at Shepherd, believing perhaps that I had kidnapped him and would form a splintered ragtag militia of two. Fisher gripped the butt of his sword. “Just where did you think you were going?” he asked. “We can’t be having desertions. The mission hasn’t even begun.” He gestured toward town.

  “My friend is hurt,” I answered. “I’m taking care of him.”

  Then Fisher went to Shepherd and held his arm almost tenderly and examined the blood-soaked bandage with a critical and scornful but concerned air.

  “May I look at it?” he asked.

  The wound hurt and Shepherd could barely tolerate the lightest touch, but he didn’t protest while Fisher touched the wound with his long fingers, then traced the blood-streaked tracks of impending infection.

  Sweat beaded around Shepherd’s scalp and trickled down his nose and fell in splattering drops. Fisher studied upon the wound almost admiringly.

  “Another inch to the left or the right, and you’d be as dead as the ones we left behind,” Fisher said. “Still, you’re not out of it. We’ll have to get this dressed.” He looked up at me inquiringly and then remembered who I was—he did not need my permission—and he gestured for one of the whiskey bottles of water.

  Taking a rumpled, dirty handkerchief from his coat pocket, he dabbed the water onto it. At the first firm touch, Shepherd’s eyes sought mine, wildly, as if pleading, and Fisher tensed. Shepherd bit his lip and didn’t cry out, but simply shuddered, and Fisher relaxed and went on cleaning the wound.

  Soon I untied the horses and held Shepherd’s as Fisher helped him into the saddle. I felt I was betraying him, sending him off to his doom.

  We rode the brushy trail back into the clearing where the fighting had begun. We saw dead horses, dead villagers, dead Texans. Our horses shied, and Shepherd glanced at me, starting to understand, I think, that we were traveling in the wrong direction.

  I followed them at a distance. James Shepherd, never a good rider, listed in his saddle, unable to lift his damaged arm. Fisher rode on his bad side to catch him should he fall.

  In Laredo, Somervell and his men were cleaning the streets. In the daylight hours, I had seldom seen him dismounted. He walked bandy-legged along with several of his men, gathering torn, ragged garments from mud puddles, carrying armloads of them like washerwomen, and dragging corpses off the streets and leaning them against the sides of buildings, their heads down-tipped and shoulders slumped, as if they were only napping.

  When we came to the hotel in which the officers had gathered that morning, a fire burned in the middle of the street, with half a hundred men gathered around. I smelled meat cooking and saw that the men were roasting several pigs.

  Fisher dismounted and helped Shepherd dismount. He handed me their reins to hitch their horses and gestured Shepherd to precede him up the stairs. When I followed, Fisher turned and I thought he was going to tell me to remain downstairs, but he said nothing.

  Upstairs, he sat down with Green and the others, and then Somervell came up the steps, angry, and informed Green and Fisher that he was taking his men north and disbanding them, that this regiment was a disgrace to the republic.

  Fisher’s face darkened and he rose with his hand on his sword, half-drawn, but Green intervened by firing his pistol into the floor.

  Green’s volley was answered by the whoops and shouts of the soldiers down by the pig roast—they started firing their own weapons—and after a moment of cold staring between Somervell and Fisher, Somervell turned and went back toward the stairs to gather his men and leave. I knew I should go with him.

  Somervell was two paces away, and then he was three and four. Even at five and then six paces there was time. And how would my life have been different, if I had left? The difference was not along a fine line or in a shade of gray. It was a stark and enormous abyss.

  We had a feast, and after the last of the pigs were eaten, along with a great iron kettle of hominy, seasoned with chili peppers and dotted with flecks of ash from the fire, we bid farewell to the terrorized town, Green and Fisher vowing loudly to whoever might be within hearing that we would return and erase Laredo from the face of the earth if we were fired upon again and that the same would hold true for any other village along the border.

  Shepherd rode at the front, next to Fisher, and wore an expression of foolish pride. I remembered what Green’s face looked like when the shooting started: how eager he had looked, and how instantaneous the change had been. As if he had been listening for that one sound all along. He was in his mid-thirties—twice my age—and had seen war, and had become not just accustomed to it, but something more.

  I think that Lieutenant Somervell loved war, too—a harsh word, loved, but I think the only one for it—but loved it so much that he could not tolerate what had happened at Laredo and the way his men had behaved, in their sack and plunder. I think he loved war so much that he was truly surprised that it had turned out that way.

  It was here, at the feast—the ruined town still cowering as we celebrated in the street—that Somervell announced his intent to turn back, to return home with his men, numbering nearly a hundred, while they still could. And it was here where we learned the unspoken contents of the letter that Green had been reading to us.

  Fisher had seen the letter, as had Somervell. Only they knew its entire contents. Somervell, a learned man, knew it well enough to quote it by heart: as if in the days preceding the debacle at Laredo and then the hours following he had been pondering it.

  “You will be controlled by only the most civilized warfare, and you will find great advantage of exercising great humanity towards the common people.” He said nothing more, but rose and mounted his mud-caked horse, called his men into formation, and left, riding back north: and I think that I was not the only one who wanted to go with them.

  “He cracked,” Fisher said reflectively, after they were gone, seeming completely unconcerned by our diminishment. “I’ve seen it before. You never know who will crack.”

  I looked over at Green, my captain, expecting him to disparage Somervell also. But Green said nothing, was only staring down at the coffee mug he held in both hands.

  We wandered for nearly three weeks up and down the river, no longer searching for bandits but daily reminded by Fisher and Green of the importance of the great new country claimed from Mexico, by the blood spent at the Alamo and San Jacinto, and how
much the Mexicans wanted Texas back.

  In each village on our side of the river we found Texans and Mexicans living, all speaking Spanish. The fear in their eyes said that they’d heard of the atrocities at Laredo. They greeted us with great masks of hospitality—Buenos dias, señores caballeros; nos gustan mucho los Americanos. Bienvenidos, estranjeros! Beinvenidos! Good day, gentlemen; we like the Americans very much. Welcome, strangers, welcome!

  No longer were banquets prepared in our honor, but the villagers offered dried fruits, vegetables, beef, and other stock, and during the next month we patrolled the border for days at a time, searching for war, until we wore ourselves ragged and hungry and returned to one of the villages we claimed to defend, where we received provisions. Then we pressed back on into the wilderness.

  Shepherd’s arm was deteriorating. We had a surgeon along, a Dr. Sinnickson, who treated numerous men with mercury following the soiree at Laredo, fearing the onset of syphilis. He tended to Shepherd’s arm, cleaning it and dousing it with alcohol, saying that the cooler weather of December would serve him well, and that had he received the wound in midsummer, insects would have immediately found it.

  The insects found it anyway, and the arm began to swell with an odor now so ripe that all of the men could smell it. We talked about whether it would have to be amputated.

  But Shepherd blossomed in his position at the front of the line. Green and Fisher, disparate yet as conjoined as sun and moon, continued to flank either side of the column, and Shepherd shadowed, and was shadowed by, Fisher at almost every turn.

  Shepherd didn’t ignore me but didn’t petition me to join him up front. He was growing away from me, yet I kept him in sight, if only to be able to report back to his family.

  Occasionally, after taking his dinner with the officers, Shepherd rode over to whichever fire I was seated at, ostensibly to check on me. His horsemanship had improved, as had his self-assurance, and when he sat with me for a few minutes, he filled me in on how his life was changing.