Mexico

by James A. Michener

  She groaned: “With this fight no one could justify that,” but he replied: “I have to say it. Besides, you will concede that each torero did do some one thing that was meritorious. You see, I never lie. What I do is suppress the ugly truths that might damage Don Eduardo when he’s trying to sell tickets to his festival.”

  The mournful ending fell most heavily on Penny. The others had no justifiable complaints. They had watched a rejoneador do passably well, a rare occurrence, and Mrs. Evans had enjoyed two enlightening conversations, with Ledesma at the hotel and with Ricardo Martín at the corrida. But shortchanged Penny had finally met a matador, had identified with him and been forced to watch him collapse and then walk away. However, I had observed during the last fight that she was a resolute young woman, and now, to my keen delight, she proved it by insisting that we find Fermín. “Let’s hurry back to the Terrace before he drives off.”

  “Where’s he going?”

  “Torreón, he told me. Has a fight there tomorrow,” and she revealed how intensely she had become involved with Sotelo during their brief conversation on the Terrace: “I wanted to borrow Mrs. Evans’s Caddy and drive him but he wouldn’t allow it. Said matadors did not travel to their fights chauffeured by women. I think he meant, especially not by American women.”

  When we reached the Terrace, now filled with guests who had attended the fight, Penny asked me to take her to Fermín’s room, where we found him in the last stages of packing for his hurried ride north. Ignoring his peóns, who were stowing his matador’s gear in specially designed suitcases, she walked to him, quietly embraced him and burst into tears. He consoled her but passed her on to me: “Take care of her. She’s a princess,” and with no further farewell he hurried to his waiting limousine, with Penny trailing behind. It wasn’t a real limo, of course; as a newly fledged matador he couldn’t afford that. What he had was a used hearse, big and spacious with room for six and a new paint job hiding the original black. It was a fine conveyance, really, and one in which he could sleep during long trips, if he could keep from thinking: I’m riding in my coffin.

  He had expected to jump in the front seat next to the driver and be on his way, but Penny reached him before he could close the door, and I overheard her say in Spanish: “Don Fermín, you were very brave. And that’s what I’ll always remember about this day and my trip to Mexico.”

  Like a caring parent, he shoved her firmly back to me and said: “If you’re her uncle, look after her. She’s lovely.” He shut the car door and headed north, the tires of the hearse kicking up pebbles.

  As we walked back to the Terrace I put my arm around her and said: “I’m proud of the way you acted at the fight. This is one you’ll never forget. The day you grew up,” and she asked almost tearfully: “How could a bull with one horn defend himself with such diabolical skill? And against my matador?” And I said: “That’s what he’s been bred to do. That’s his job.”

  15

  AMERICAN ANCESTORS: IN VIRGINIA

  When a man has a background consisting of three radically different bloodlines—in my case Mexican Indian, Spanish and Virginian—he has, in each branch, about fifteen hundred generations of ancestors, allotting thirty years to the generation. So, to describe my heritage, I would be free to start almost anywhere in history, and I reached fairly far back to recount the Indian influences, back to the sixth century. But when dealing with my Spanish ancestors I felt it proper to go back only to the early 1500s in Salamanca.

  For my American antecedents I can relate everything relevant by starting as late as 1823, when a baby boy was born to the Clay family that operated a cotton plantation near Richmond, the colorful capital of Virginia. Northeast of that city there is a large area of swamps, matted trees, gullies and rotting logs. Called the Wilderness, it is frequented by wild turkeys, feral hogs, beautiful birds and an occasional mountain lion, and its waters provide exceptional fishing. It’s a place to stay clear of, but throughout history Clay men were familiar with it and found pleasure in its cool retreats and unexpected beauties.

  Our family plantation, Newfields, lay at the extreme northeastern edge of the Wilderness where in the late seventeenth century trees could be felled from relatively flat land, broad fields constructed and cotton grown. To the east lay the rivers that flowed into the Chesapeake and then into the Atlantic, and to the west, through the Wilderness, ran the road that took us to Richmond.

  On a spring day in 1823 Joshua Clay ran from his plantation home, leaped on his horse and spurred it down our tree-lined lane, out onto the public road, into the Wilderness and on to Richmond. He galloped through the streets till he came to his club, where he told his fellow members: “It’s a boy! I’m registering him for entry into the Virginia Third!” Some of the witnesses had welcomed Joshua himself into the famed regiment forty years before.

  As far back as the people of Richmond could remember, the Clays of Newfields Plantation had been known for their ability to handle their land, all two thousand acres of it. They were knowledgeable not only about agriculture and the growing of cotton but also about horseshoeing, carpentry, irrigation and the management of Negro slaves. Joshua Clay had some two hundred slaves, whom he treated decently and from whose labor he built a modest family fortune.

  The family’s patriotism spoke for itself: Clays had served with Colonel George Washington in his frontier fight against the Indians, with General Washington at Valley Forge, and with Andrew Jackson at New Orleans after the English burned our capital during the War of 1812. Clays had also served in the Virginia government, and one branch of our family had led a settlement party to tame the frontier in Kentucky and had stayed on to help build that state.

  In 1823, when my grandfather was born, there was no war in progress in which the Clays could take part. They spent the peaceful years improving their plantation, removing the tall trees that encroached upon their cotton fields, and building strong business relationships with cotton traders in Liverpool. They also did a considerable business with the trees they cut down in the area they called the Wilderness by converting the wood into lumber, which they sold to carpenters in cities like nearby Richmond and Washington. Since the family holdings were only some dozen miles from Richmond, the Clays were often in that lively city. As soon as their newborn son was about two weeks old and able to travel, the family drove him to Richmond to visit with the relatives who preferred city living, and it was there that Uncle Clay, who served as clergyman in the Episcopal Church, baptized the child as Jubal Clay.

  The first name had occasioned debate in the family, for the boy’s father preferred a more military name like Gideon, whom the Lord had specifically called a mighty warrior; the mother, who was a delicate young woman who loved books and painting and music, begged her husband to allow her to name the boy Jubal, of whom the Bible said: “He was the father of all who play the harp and flute.” But when the father looked in Genesis to find that citation he read: “Zillah also had a son, Tubal-Cain, who forged all kinds of tools out of bronze and iron,” and so he made a pact with his wife: “You can call him Jubal if you wish, and I’ll call him Tubal,” and that is how the boy grew up. He could play the musical instruments his mother provided, but he could also work in the smithy to help his father shoe horses and forge the tools a plantation required.

  In time the mother’s name prevailed, in part because she bore a second son whom her husband was allowed to name Gideon, after the warrior who slew the Midianites. But the christening had little effect because Gideon became a banker.

  In 1846, when Jubal was a married man of twenty-three with a son of his own, he was growing dissatisfied with his life helping direct the plantation. With his father’s guidance he had made himself into a skilled toolmaker, an inventive engineer and a shrewd manager of slaves, selling off the unproductive workers to unsuspecting neighbors and buying black men and women in their late teens who could bear children while doing fruitful work in the fields. In the evenings he enjoyed playing music with his moth
er and his wife, the two women playing together on the piano, he on a clarinet imported from Germany. He also enjoyed going to Richmond to discuss affairs with businessmen there, to visit with his brother in the bank, or to attend the various plays and musical entertainments the city provided.

  Such pleasant diversions did not, however, make him neglect his work at the plantation, where his wife, Zephania, was proving as capable as he in managing the female slaves; she taught them sewing, mending, weaving and cooking, so that the Clays lived well, dressed well and dined well. This satisfactory state of affairs might have continued indefinitely had not Jubal, on one of his visits to Richmond, dined with a group of military men who spoke with some heat about events that threatened the recently admitted state of Texas and indeed the entire nation.

  “It’s intolerable!” a major was saying. “When I was a member of the army’s inspecting party, trying to decide how many forts and where we should place our new lands, I heard nothing but complaints about the continual threats Mexico was making against our borders.”

  “Didn’t the Texans thrash the Mexicans pretty badly?” a naval officer asked, and the army man explained: “That fellow named Santa Anna, a brazen sort, who’s president of Mexico and their leading general, too, won four or five stupendous victories against the Texans. But under Sam Houston, that fellow in our Senate now, the Texans finally rallied and beat him. Won their independence, too.”

  “And became a free nation.”

  “For a while,” the army man said. “But don’t make a big thing of it. In the decisive battle less than a thousand men on each side took part. A skirmish, really, but it did the trick. And I must give the Texans credit. They won that battle while losing only six men.”

  Clay could not believe such figures: “Did you say six?” and the army man said: “I told you it was a skirmish.”

  Clay persisted: “But you say it’s the same Santa Anna who’s causing trouble now?”

  “When he got back home he refused to acknowledge that Mexico lost the battle, and the war, and Texas. He has hopes of winning it all back from us.”

  “Any chance?” several of the men asked, and the reply was unequivocal: “He’s a damned good military man. If we allow him to get a running start, he could create havoc along our southern border.”

  “What should we do?”

  “I’m told President Polk is just waiting for Santa Anna to move back into Texas. It’s American territory now, and”—he banged his right fist into his left palm—“it’s war. We move south in overwhelming force and crush that would-be Napoleon.” His listeners nodded their approval.

  In the discussion that followed, a businessman who collected cotton from many plantations and shipped it to England said quietly: “It behooves everyone in this room to consider the opportunities meticulously. In your mind’s eye, draw a picture of our southern border. Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana don’t touch Mexico, but everything west of there does. I believe it’s land that can grow cotton, and the part that Mexico holds is the richest of all. Believe me, gentlemen, if we could take this Mexican head-on, whip him properly and force him to accept our terms in the peace treaty, we could take his land and win undreamed-of riches.”

  When the silence of his listeners indicated that they did not share his vision, he assumed that it must be because he had not spoken clearly, so he elucidated further: “The land we take from Mexico could grow cotton, gentlemen, and where cotton grows you must have slaves, and where will they come from? You can’t get them from Africa anymore, or Cuba either. Our laws and British ships prevent that. So where must the new landowners look for their slaves? Not Georgia or the Carolinas. They need every slave they have. Alabama and Mississippi don’t have ten extra slaves between them. Where the new owners will have to come is Virginia. We’re phasing out of cotton. Every one of you men has slaves to spare. Imagine the prices you’ll get if new cotton land opens up!”

  Although Jubal Clay was a prudent businessman who could comprehend the financial advantages a war with Mexico might yield, he was, like his ancestors, primarily a military man, and now he asked: “How do you see the situation developing?” and the army man said: “Talk is that President Polk will call for volunteers, army and navy, to go down there and teach those Mexicans a lesson.”

  “Where do I go to volunteer?” Clay asked and the man said: “The public call hasn’t gone out yet, but I can assure you that our Virginia Third has a few interesting openings, captain or better if you’ve had military training.”

  “Does militia duty count?”

  “It sure does. How old are you, Clay?”

  “Twenty-three.”

  “I could sign you up tomorrow, but at your age you’d have to be a lieutenant.”

  “My family for generations have been fighting captains. I couldn’t settle for less.”

  The army man leaned back, studied Clay, lowered his head to stare at the table, then said: “Well, now. I’d sure like to see our complement filled out, but a captain? At age twenty-three?”

  To the man’s surprise, Clay broke into a big grin. “If you look in your records, you’ll see I’ve been a member of your regiment since 1823.”

  “You one of those?”

  “Yep.” And the recruiter said: “If you mean it, by this time tomorrow I’ll have you a captain in the Virginia Third,” and Clay saluted, saying: “Like my father and his father before him.”

  But as the new captain left the table the businessman who acted as a wholesaler in cotton took Jubal aside and said: “Captain Clay, before you depart for Texas, you should give careful thought about this strategy of selling your slaves to whatever new territory we gather after a victorious war with Mexico. Do the proper thing in the next few years, and you can reap profits for decades.”

  Had Clay accepted his commission in the Virginia regiment one week earlier he would have seen service where he expected, along the Texan-Mexican border under the command of General Zachary Taylor, who was about to lead the invasion south into the heartland of Mexico. But he missed that assignment in which he would have served with many young men like himself who were destined for glory in the 1860s—Ulysses S. Grant and William Sherman fighting for the North, Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee serving the South.

  His delay placed him not on a train heading for Texas but on a troopship leaving the navy yard at New Orleans for a speedy trip to Veracruz, where the Americans would fight their way ashore and then march up through jungle roads to Mexico City. When that capital was occupied, the war would be over. Soldiers in the expeditionary force believed they could defeat the Mexicans in about a month and were eager to get the job finished.

  Sailing with them would be General Winfield Scott, commander in chief of all American forces in Mexico, sixty years old, white-haired, big in all dimensions and possessed of a furious temper and the conviction that everyone in the government at Washington and the army officers on their way to Mexico were plotting against him. But his military credentials were impeccable: fighting in Canada, heroism in the War of 1812, service against the Indians, and holder of every important position in the peacetime army. He was unquestionably the premier military man in the nation, and he intended his conquest of Mexico to be the glorious capstone to his fighting career and possibly a stepping-stone to the presidency.

  Well before the voyage began on the little ship that would take him to his meeting with destiny, Scott started assembling a team he could depend on. Aware that he would require some trustworthy aide to copy the confidential documents with which he would bombard his civilian superiors in Washington, he was on the lookout for such a man. One morning he spotted Jubal Clay exercising on deck—a fine-looking young fellow, clean-cut, well groomed and most likely with a good education. As Clay ran past Scott growled: “You, young man! Have you a steady hand?” Clay stopped and, turning back, saw the general. “I’ve shot all my life, sir.”

  Scott bellowed: “I mean can you write a page that can be read,” and Clay said humb
ly: “Yes.”

  As Clay worked in the general’s crowded quarters he required only a few days to discover that Winfield Scott, secure in the nation’s top military job, was pitifully insecure in all personal relations but at the same time ridiculously arrogant. He was, Jubal concluded after a week’s work, an impossible fellow, but also a man born to command. He said to himself, It’s going to be a stormy war.

  He soon learned that Scott hated everyone in a position of power. As a staunch conservative Whig he especially loathed President Polk, a liberal Democrat, but he also despised General Zachary Taylor, another Democrat who acted as if he too hoped to be the next president. His ultimate scorn, however, was reserved for Gideon J. Pillow, a pettifogging lawyer from a small town in Tennessee, who was so ineffectual that Clay could not understand why Scott even bothered with him.

  “I’ll tell you why,” Scott thundered. “Because he was Polk’s law partner, and the president assigned him to my staff to spy on me.” After Scott had identified three or four other spies among his generals, Clay asked: “If they’re all against you, why did the army put you in command?” and Scott roared: “I’ll tell you why. Because they knew I was the best man for the job, the only one who could force Santa Anna to surrender, and that I will do.”

  Clay, suffering daily proof of Scott’s incredible vanity and his determination to fight every official to protect what he deemed his rights, wondered how such a man could lead troops effectively, but when in March 1847 the various American warships congregated in the roads of the heavily fortified harbor of Veracruz, Clay saw what a genius Scott was. “To assault that port with its fortifications,” a junior officer said, “would mean enormous losses on our side. I do not want such a battle to start.”