Diezmo

by Rick Bass

  A few of us rallied briefly, but soon another wave of the illness hit, fiercer the second time around, and now the contagion leapt not just from prisoner to prisoner but to our guards, and from our guards to the surrounding town of Perote.

  At the time it was not understood that the lice were carriers of the typhus—that it was in their feces, which entered our bloodstream through our scratching at our endless bedsores, and then was passed to the guards and on to the rest of the town through the tiny drops of saliva in our coughs.

  The disease raged through the winter, killing half of our number and thousands of Mexicans, in results that were ironically far superior to any we might have achieved through battle.

  Every day, all through that autumn and winter, several of us were hauled across the drawbridge over the moat in oxcarts—some dead, some dying—to be dropped off at the hospital or buried in the desert beyond. During that time, we had to stop work on our new tunnel, for none of us was strong enough. We could hear the river below but could not travel to it.

  Bigfoot Wallace was given last rites, but he survived somehow, and proclaimed of his Mexican physician afterward that he was “one of the best-hearted men” he ever knew. But we also saw some of the guards, and indeed some of the physicians and nurses, taking the last coins from the pockets of men whose bodies were still warm.

  Men who had once been comrades now argued even unto their deaths. One relatively healthy prisoner refused to give a dying partner the twelve cents he needed to buy a piece of fruit in his final hours. Others prowled among the dying, crafting last wills and testaments in which they would inherit the paltry possessions of the dead. Through it all, the lice continued to scuttle from the porous stones, and the winter rains beat down upon the baked-clay tile roofs, flooding the courtyard and turning the old castle into a choking, coughing, stinking quagmire. Those of us who continued to survive grew as gaunt as skeletons, and so hollow of dreams that we could barely remember our past lives.

  We burned Charles McLaughlin’s many hundreds of sketches for warmth, and often we wondered if those who died were not in a better place than those who survived. At the hospital we were lashed to cots so that we could not scratch at the sores and blisters that riddled our bodies, and we were gagged in order to keep from driving the nurses berserk with our screams of agony, and sometimes we were even blindfolded so that the nurses did not have to bear the torture of being watched by our agonized and pleading eyes. I spent two weeks there in a delirium, unable to do anything but feel the blisters spreading across my body.

  And in my delirium, I was visited in dreams by James Shepherd, who was no longer missing an arm—the Shepherd of my youth, before he turned angry—and by Charles McLaughlin as well, who was angry, disappointed that I had not talked him out of his escape attempt. He was lost in the mountains, he said, and needed water again, he was dying and needed water, and then he was gone, and there was only my own fever.

  We were always thirsty. In the hospital we were allowed a little coffee in the morning, and a little brandy in the evening—still blindfolded and still lashed to the hospital beds. Of the few senses still available to us, our sense of sound was the sharpest: we would hear the creak of gurney wheels each day carrying out the dead, not knowing who had survived and who had succumbed. Like divers, then, we would each descend back into the day’s fevers, never knowing if each would be our own final descent as well.

  Healed and back in our indoor cell, with the out-of-date New Orleans Times-Picayunes brought to us occasionally by Waddy Thompson, we tried to keep up with the volatile international reversals and convolutions.

  Sam Houston was increasingly considering the benefits of Texas’s joining the United States, but only under his republic’s own terms, which would allow it to secede any time it wished. He knew that Texas would be a more attractive annexation package if he could effect an armistice with Texas’s most troublesome neighbor, Mexico. Santa Anna, renegade warrior and tyrant, was also interested in an armistice, though for different reasons: his army had run out of food and supplies and needed to take a breather if they were to keep alive at all the dream of recapturing Texas.

  Sam Houston, the most manipulative politician the young republic had produced to date, let Britain work toward the brokering of that armistice while he continued to pretend to be interested in the cowardly Robinson plan, hatched from one of our own prisoners in the Castle of Perve, in which Texas would actually rejoin Mexico, though with some autonomy retained. Nothing could have pleased Great Britain more, neither Santa Anna; and nothing could have made the United States more anxious, and in turn more eager to annex Texas. And in the weeks and months following our slow recovery from the typhus, we wondered if the proposed armistice might lead to our ultimate release.

  Sam Houston continued to manipulate the British, Santa Anna, and the United States masterfully, and it occurred to us daily that if he was successful in the armistice, then Mexico might release us as a symbol of the newfound goodwill and cease-fire between the two countries.

  Back in Texas, the newly elected House member Thomas Jefferson Green, not understanding that Houston’s discussions with Robinson and Santa Anna were but a feint, was haranguing Houston like a bulldog, as were some of our other successful escapees, who would not forget those whom they had been forced to leave behind. We read with gusto of how they kept up the drumbeat for our release, forcing it to become an issue for Sam Houston, so that gradually that demand became part and parcel of the armistice talks.

  A newspaperman named Francis Moore was particularly incensed by the Robinson plan and railed that the blood of the patriots at the Alamo and San Jacinto, in addition to the “heroism” of the Mier Expedition, would be in vain were Texas to be annexed by either Mexico or the United States; and many of the letters now making their way out of the Castle of Perve contained the same complaints.

  “We hear that annexation of Texas to the United States will take place,” wrote nineteen-year-old Joseph McCutchan from our dark, damp dungeon. “If I could for myself exercise influence it would be to say to Texas and the Texians hold dear those rights so dearly bought and promptly payed for in the blood and misery of your countrymen. Part not so freely with that which has cost you your best citizens at the Alamo, Goliad, and San Jacinto. Remain a nation yourselves, or Nobly Perish!”

  And in a letter to the Telegraph and Texas Register, McCutchan wrote, “We are not much elated with the idea of Texas sallying under another nation for protection... as for myself (and it is, I believe, the opinion of the majority)—let me die—let me perish, neglected, and obscure in prison—let my frame sink under cruelties such as man never endured—let me go among the unnumbered (and innumerable) dead—and, in short, let my body decay in obscurity and my name sink into oblivion! But annex not Texas to any government.”

  A tentative, informal armistice was finally agreed on between Houston and Santa Anna as a preliminary step toward annexation, but loose gangs of Texas irregulars began scourging the Rio Grande again—without Houston’s encouragement or permission, this time—harassing and sometimes murdering Mexican citizens living on both sides of the tenuous border, particularly in a remote region known as the Nueces Strip.

  Houston was forced to put the entire area under martial law, authorizing Captain Jack Hays and the Texas Rangers to restore peace, which they were eventually able to do, though not before one especially notorious band of renegades known as the Man-Slayers had killed dozens of Mexican nationals on both sides of the river, forcing Santa Anna to call. an end to the brief armistice. He had not yet saved enough money to go back to war, and he no longer had British support for war as he had in the past, but Santa Anna had to pretend that he was ready and willing to fight. Our chances, which had seemed brighter during the armistice, were now dashed by bandits whose actions were little different from our own.

  Still weakened by typhus, we resumed digging late at night, clawing at the stony earth with our bare hands. Our knuckles were bloodied, our
fingertips raw, but the guards didn’t seem to notice, and as we dug deeper, the sound of the river became louder and clearer: it sounded as if it were running faster.

  Waddy Thompson had fallen in love with a young Mexican woman, a general’s daughter, in Mexico City. At the age of sixty-eight, he was about to retire, and he planned to remain in Mexico.

  He came to visit us: an old man made young again, even if only for a while longer. He had bittersweet news; his labors had borne fruit, although unfortunately not for us.

  Held elsewhere in the castle was another regiment of Texas prisoners who had been taken hostage during one of General Woll’s last invasions into Texas. Santa Anna wished to reward Waddy Thompson for his service as ambassador by releasing some of Woll’s captives and asked Thompson to submit a list of prisoners who should receive highest priority.

  Thompson asked that we be considered for release along with Woll’s prisoners, but Santa Anna held firm, reiterating his position—and it was an accurate one—that we were thieves, murderers, and pillagers, not soldiers. He would consider only some of Woll’s captives, and asked again for a list of “the important ones.”

  “How can I distinguish between men,” Thompson responded, “all strangers to me personally, whose cases are in all respects identical, and why should you?”

  Santa Anna ended up signing an executive proclamation that released all of Woll’s prisoners. Thompson reported to his superiors in the United States, “Nothing could have been more handsome than the manner in which this release was executed, and I am sure I have never experienced a more heartfelt pleasure.”

  He sat quietly among us. Our number was down to seventy-three by that point, so he was able to address all of us at once.

  “I have failed at this aspect of my job,” he said, speaking quietly. He looked around at each of us, his eyes as haunted and sorrowful as if it were his actions and not our own that had sealed our doom. His eyes settled on our torn and scabrous hands—he knew nothing of our second tunnel—and then told us that although it would be inappropriate for him to counsel escape, and that we would surely be executed if captured, the time might be drawing nigh for that last resort.

  “I am about to marry a beautiful, loving woman,” he said. He gestured at our dark cell. “I am about to leave all of this behind.” He shook his head. “My failure to get you released has been the greatest regret of my professional life.”

  We were to see Thompson only once again. A week later—following a feast in his honor—General Woll’s captives were escorted from the castle, marching in single file across the drawbridge, into the noonday sun. We were all gathered in the courtyard to watch their march to freedom, and a few of the more daring from our expedition, Bigfoot Wallace among them, had maneuvered themselves into position to slip into the ranks of Woll’s captives to march out with them: and they did so, passing successfully out of the fort and all the way across the drawbridge. They made it a hundred yards out into the desert before one of the guards recognized them, ordered them out of the line, and returned them to the castle.

  But rather than being executed, as was customary protocol for anyone caught attempting an escape, the returning prisoners were treated with good-natured ridicule and hoots of derision from the soldiers. And, as if in reward for the entertainment provided, we received extra rations that night, but after eating we did not play cards or sing or dance but sat around in morose silence, the castle feeling emptier and lonelier than it had before.

  We waited for midnight, and then beyond, so that we could begin quietly digging.

  The new U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Wilson Shannon, met with us, and we could see right away that he was not proud of his post, that he found the entire country disagreeable and resented in particular that part bf his duty that called him to the Castle of Perve. He spoke no Spanish (neither would he trouble himself to learn any), and he was aghast at our stumbling, mumbling, nearly naked condition, and by the autumn swelter, and by the lice. He had had to ride a mule to Perote, accompanied by an armed regiment to protect him against bandits, and the day he arrived the entire country had been resounding with the steady fire of cannons, rifles, and pistols. At first we had believed the country to be under attack, but we soon learned that the shots were being fired in mourning for the death of Santa Anna’s wife, Dona Inés, who, though only thirty-three, had died that day after a long illness.

  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 bel
ow. 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 one laid down for me even before my birth—as might all men, of all nations, have various paths laid down before them, to choose, or not to choose—lay in the direction of Mexico City, and a return to Clara. As a released man, finally, if not yet free, I might have been able to impress myself upon Bustamente and claim and make a life with Clara, in either her country or mine, no matter.