by Texas
His health deteriorated rapidly, and it was only the care of Benita, sent to the mission by Alvaro, that saved him. She was a woman of thirty-two now, and as lively in spirit as when Damian had first seen her promenading around the square at Zacatecas. Her eyes still glowed mischievously and her skin remained unblemished, as if time were loath to touch something so flawless. Most surprising of all, under these deplorable circumstances, she still retained a cheerfulness that prevented her from taking troubles too seriously.
'Come now, Damian! We need you in Bexar,' she said teasingly. Disregarding mission rules, she propped open the door to his cell,
brought in flowers, and personally cooked nourishing meals for him. When he seemed to revive, with senses clarified so that he could understand what she was saying, she assured him that her husband did not blame him for the disaster with the Apache: They're savage brutes, and what could anyone expect?'
i expected peace,' Damian said.
'No one should have been so easily deceived.' she said.
'Were you?'
She reflected on this for some moments, then said the right thing: 'No, but I love you for being such a dear, good man and I prayed that you might be right.' As soon as she said this she realized that her words stressed the fact that he had been wrong, so she added quickly: 'It's always good to try, Damian. Maybe another time . . .'
As he watched her move about his cell he appreciated anew the miracle that even though he was forbidden by church law to have her for himself, she was nevertheless a part of his being, a mystical wife in another world whose conventions he could not fathom. She was the woman he had loved from that first moment when he saw her laughing with the other girls, and that she should now be so close to him, and mending his broken spirit, was a joy he could share with no one, not even with Jesus Christ in his prayers.
When Damian finally rose from his cot, a most pleasing honor awaited him: Simon Garza had finished his fourteen Stations of the Cross, but their installation had been deferred until Damian could supervise it. Actually, all he did was stand in his adobe church and tell the workmen how to hang the carvings, but when the light fell across them, showing the marvelous detail Garza had achieved with his rude chisels, tears came to his eyes and he fell to his knees and prayed. It seemed that God Himself must have bent down and guided Garza's hand, for Damian could not conceive how an illiterate mestizo carpenter could otherwise have accomplished such a work.
When the carvings were in place, Captain Alvaro, supported by friars from the other missions, told Damian: 'We must have a celebration to dedicate your Stations,' and it was arranged that a cloth covering would be draped over each carving, and that Garza would move from one location to the next, pulling aside the cloth to reveal the beauty beneath. Damian would expound the religious significance while the choir trained by Fray Domingo sang holy verses he had taught them. Fray Eusebio, still protesting that he was not worthy of such high honor, would represent the other missions.
It was the culmination of Damian's custodianship. Indian women filled the rude church with flowers, and as the veils fell away and sunlight illuminated the carvings, Damian thought that Jesus Christ Himself had come to Bexar to relive those tragic, hallowed moments when he moved painfully along the road to Golgotha.
Damian's exultation was short-lived, because when word of the episode with the Apache reached Mexico City, the viceroy cast about for a new governor of Tejas who would bring stricter order to the region. Unfortunately, he had no one available to send, but a conniving assistant who wanted to rid himself of a real incompetent whispered: 'Excellency, why not send Franquis? He's a Canary Islander and he'll know how to handle things.'
What a sad miscalculation! If one searched the archives to find an example of Spanish colonial policy at its worst, one would surely select Don Carlos Benites Franquis de Lugo, a vain, arrogant, opinionated fop who never displayed a shred of either courage or discernment but who did distinguish himself as one of the most inept and vengeful Spaniards ever to function overseas. In fact, he was too obtuse even to realize that his assignment to Tejas was a demotion, for he boasted to his friends: 'I'm to restore Spanish dignity in an area which has forgotten what discipline means.'
The character of his administration was defined when he reached San Luis Potosi, where he raged at the local garrison for not having fired enough salutes to honor a dignitary of his exalted stripe: i am, after all, Governor of Tejas!' At Saltillo he abused the entire establishment because not all the officials were lined up to meet him as he entered town, but he reserved his most ridiculous behavior for San )uan Bautista, a hard-working post with limited amenities. He was so incensed by the lack of spit-and-polish in the presidio that he dismissed everyone on the spot, and then had to hire them back when he learned that no replacements could reach the forlorn outpost in less than a year.
In Tejas he took immediate dislike to the Saldana brothers, accusing Fray Damian of being tardy in asking Zacatecas for a replacement for Fray Domingo, and of deepening the Santa Teresa ditch without written authority. But his special scorn was reserved for Captain Alvaro, whom he denigrated as follows:
Through arrant cowardice he failed to protect the ranch of Mision Santa Teresa against the Apache, causing the Blessed Fray Domingo, may God smile upon his martyrdom, to lose his life most horribly. Later, acting without reason or military competence, he allowed the very
Apache who killed Fray Domingo, may God smile upon his martyrdom
He became so indignant as he composed this report, he ended by convincing himself that Alvaro was a cowardly incompetent: 'Handcuff the recreant and throw him in jail, being sure that his legs are tightly chained.'
To demonstrate his own heroism, he organized a hastily put-together expedition to subdue the Apache—about fifty Spaniards and their poorly armed helpers against ten thousand scattered Apache—and his troops would have been annihilated had not Simon Garza and two Yuta scouts detected a concentration of warriors hiding in a mountain pass and prevailed upon the governor to beat a disorganized retreat. As it was, the Apache overtook three stragglers and tortured them viciously.
In this sad year of 1736, Tejas saw Spanish occupancy at its worst. Travel between Bexar and the distant capital at Los Adaes was interdicted by the Apache; food was scarce because the irrigation ditches, without Damian's supervision, were not functioning properly; and all else was in disarray because so many of the able administrators languished in jail with chains about their legs.
It was in this ugly setting that Fray Damian proved what a quintessential Spaniard he was; the first responsibility of any man, even before his duty to God, was to protect his own family. Lands for his son, a husband for his daughter, a job for his nephew, an appointment for his brother-in-law—these were the obligations of a Spanish man.
He was so outraged by the arrest of his brother, and so distraught by what might happen to Benita and her three sons, who were, after all, like his own, that he devised a procedure that would have delighted Machiavelli, for he used stamped paper stolen from the presidio on which to press it:
Respected Archbishop Vizarron. Congratulations on your great success as Viceroy of all Mexico. The King could have chosen no one better fitted for that exalted position, and I stand ready as a humble friar to assist you in all you do.
My brother, Captain Alvaro de Saldana of the Saldafias of Saldana, has served bravely on the frontier, and I believe there is a law which states that an officer who has seen active duty in any new territory is entitled to six leagues of Crown lands upon retirement. On behalf of my brother, now occupied with other matters, I beg you to make this award
There is, a few miles west of here in a bend of the Medina, a stretch of land called Rancho El Codo, once occupied by the ranch of this mission. It has now been abandoned because of Apache raids and is of no practical use to anyone until the Apache arc subdued. My brother and his wife, in years to come, can tame this land if you will cede it to them now in reward for the hard work
they have completed on the frontier of your dominion.
In composing this seditious letter, Damian was aware of three crimes he was committing: The ranch belongs to the church, and I'm stealing it for my family. I'm drafting letters when Governor Franquis has forbidden anyone to do so. And I'm trying to slip my letters past the officials at San Juan Bautista, who have orders to prevent the entry into Mexico proper of clandestine letters. But then he thought of Benita and her children: I must take the chances.
In one of the other missions he found a Franciscan who was heading back to Zacatecas, and since this friar also hated Franquis, he volunteered to take the risk. The letter reached the archbishop, who was now viceroy,.and when he inquired about the reputation of the Saldanas he found it to be exemplary, whereupon he signed a grant awarding former Captain Saldaria more than nine thousand leagues, twenty-five thousand acres, along the Medina.
Later, when he learned of Damian's insubordination, he bore no resentment, for by this time it was evident even to Madrid that Governor Franquis was a horrendous mistake, and he was deposed after little more than a year of his reckless despotism. The unfortunate man had been correct, however, in some of his charges against Damian: he had been so preoccupied with building the mission that he had not attended to the winning of souls, and repeatedly he had left the mission without permission to go wandering through the Apacheria. When it became apparent that he was to be removed from Santa Teresa, Damian recommended that Fray Eusebio be given permanent charge of the mission, but Eusebio protested that he was far too humble to warrant such an exalted position. Instead, Zacatecas sent up the trail to Bexar two young friars to assume control at Santa Teresa, one with major orders, to replace Fray Damian, and one with minor, to take over the work done by Fray Domingo.
Damian greeted the two with the warmest brotherhood and even relief, for he knew that his effectiveness had waned. He was fifty-one now, and extremely tired, so that rest in some quiet corner of the Franciscan empire seemed highly desirable, but as the
father-principal in Zacatecas had proposed, he would stay on at Santa Teresa until the transition had been smoothly made.
The new friars were enthusiastic young men prepared to repair the situation in Bexar, as they phrased it, and their eagerness to take command provided Damian time to evaluate what he had accomplished on the frontier.
'Nothing,' he told Alvaro and Benita. 'I feel my life's been a waste.' When they asked why, he replied: 'Conversions to Jesus? I haven't brought two dozen souls to salvation.'
'That was Domingo's task,' Benita said consolingly.
'But I've done so little.' He felt old, and futile, and superseded.
'Let's look at what you and I have accomplished,' Alvaro proposed, and he recited their litany of constructive deeds: 'We brought order to a region which knew it not. And we've established regular mail connections with Saltillo.' On he went, naming those simple deeds which taken together represented the quiet triumph of civilization.
But this was not enough for Benita, because she better than either of the brothers thought she knew the cause of Damian's malaise: He sees his life running out, and without a wife or children to represent him when he's gone, he fears it might have been in vain. So she began to tick off his particular achievements: 'You built the irrigation systems, and when Mision Espada needed an aqueduct for its water supply, you showed them how to build one.' Stopping, she formed an arch with her fingers and said: 'Building an arch that will stand is something, believe me.'
She spoke of the compound walls he had erected, of the church, of the houses for the Indians. And then she mentioned the one thing of which she knew he was truly proud: 'You encouraged Simon to finish his Stations of the Cross. Yes, when we three die we shall leave in Bexar an enduring memory.'
When she uttered the word die, applying it even to herself, Damian shuddered, and in the silence that followed he acknowledged for the first time that his mournfulness stemmed from growing awareness of his own approaching death: 'Life is so brief. We should have accomplished so much and we did so little.'
'My three sons!' Benita snapped. 'I call them something. And Alvaro's promotion to colonel, I call that something, too.'
Damian could not accept this reprieve: 'Once we had Santa Teresa firmly planted, I should have gone to Nacogdoches and brought order to the frontier. And after Alvaro established order here, he should have gone on to Los Adaes and done the same there. We do a little and claim it was a lot.'
Benita rose from her chair, walked to where Damian sat, and
placed her hand on his shoulder: 'We can be proud of the Bexar we built. It will stand here for a long time ... a long time.' She bit her lip and pressed Damian's shoulder: 'And you can be proud, Damian. Two hundred years from now, when the work of your mission is long completed, your church of Santa Teresa will still stand, and people will applaud it. Yes, I saw that last report of the inspectors from Queretaro: "No mission north of Saltillo, neither in Sonora nor in Tejas, excels what Friar Damian has achieved in Bexar." ' She bent down and kissed him.
Cherishing her touch, he looked up and whispered: 'I suppose it's important that Indians have food if they're to work at Christian duties. And it's very important they have decent houses. And a mission needs walls to keep goodness in and evil out. But I merely built walls. Domingo built souls.'
As the long evening ended he tried to summarize: 'I've one regret I can't erase. I failed to convince Madrid to send us enough real Spanish settlers—farmers who would farm, knitters who would knit.' When he fell silent, Alvaro nodded: 'That was our great failure.'
i don't discount the Mexican mestizo. All things considered, Simon Garza is one of the best human beings I've ever known, and there must be others like him, but what does the government in Mexico City send us? Rabble, rubbish, and they expect to build a province with such people?'
As he uttered these harsh and true indictments of Spanish policy he did concede that the Council of the Indies had made one serious effort to settle the north, and when he thought of those contentious Canary Islanders calling themselves hidalgos, he had to chuckle: 'They're the best Spaniards we have, and if the king had sent us fifty more boatloads, we could have settled Tejas and conquered Louisiana, too.' He was in this frame of mind one afternoon when the inescapable Juan Leal Coras, his long beard unkempt, appeared at the mission, his devious mind busily at work.
'Fray Damian, I do not come with pleasant news. Your men here at the mission are drawing down more water than we agreed upon, and I'm starting a lawsuit against you before you escape from Tejas.'
'How many suits have you and I had before, Don Juan?'
'Five, and eacji one essential for the protection of our interests.'
'And how many have you won?'
'None, but that's not the point. Each suit brought to your attention some grievous wrong which you then had the sense to correct.'
'Why didn't you just come and complain without the lawsuits?'
'Because you damned friars will never listen to mere words. But when I start a suit you clean out your ears.' Pushing his face close to Damian's, he added: 'And don't be fooled by the score, five suits, five losses. How could it be otherwise when the judges are all corrupt? All in the pockets of you friars.'
'All the judges?'
'I've conducted lawsuits in all parts of the world . . .'
'You mean the Canaries and Tejas?'
'It's the same the world over. Judges are corrupt.'
'Suppose that when you do engage your suit, Don juan, that I bring witnesses to prove that you've dug a branch of your canal for which you have no permit? Which was not in our agreement? And I prove that it is you who are breaking the law, not I?'
'That's the kind of argument corrupt judges listen to.'
At this point Don juan shifted the discussion dramatically: 'Fray Damian, we couldn't have had a better missionary in Bexar than you. Nor a better captain than your brother. I want him to stay on as a civilian. Why don't you stay, too,
as our parish priest?'
The suggestion was so improper to make to a Franciscan, whose mission in life was to wander, not to tend a specific church, that Damian remained mute, but it was also flattering, coming as it did from Goras, who pressed on, interpreting the friar's hesitancy as indecision: 'Our whole community wants to have you stay. You're a man we've learned to trust.' Goras could see the friar thinking intensely, but not even his conniving mind could have guessed what Damian was thinking: 1 could stay here with Alvaro and Benita and watch their sons grow. My home would not be broken.
Slowly and in some confusion he told Goras: 'I'm a Franciscan. I go where God sends me.' And as soon as Goras left, Damian started making his own secret plans to go on a mission which he felt that God had authorized: once more among the Apache, hoping that this time his example of fearlessness and brotherhood would encourage them to consider peace.
One afternoon, when his preparations were almost complete, he went quietly into his little church, and in the quiet shadows he studied once more Simon Garza's Stations of the Cross, contemplating both their beauty and the religious mystery they represented: How fortunate I was to work with men like Simon and Domingo. They made the things I tried to do doubly effective. And how wonderful that I should have done my work in companionship with Jesus Christ. As he looked at Garza's depiction of the crucifixion he could feel the nails in Christ's hands, the thorns digging into His brow: He was such a good man on earth, such a kind man in heaven.
As he prayed before the last Station he noticed that the two young friars now responsible for Santa Teresa had also entered the church, and unaware that Fray Damian was there, they were talking like young enthusiasts.
'I've found this quarry. Rock so soft you cut it with a saw. But when it's sun-dried in place, it hardens like granite. Tufa they call it.'
