A Ballad of Love and Glory(13)

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Throughout the following days, gunshots were heard at all hours. Deserters were steadily bolder, no longer waiting for darkness to brave the river. Seeking what? Riley wondered. What do they think they’ll find? He held no sentimental notions of life on the other side. But he seemed to be in the minority. Some deserters didn’t make it across, but the ones who did would wave and shout at them from across the river. As Riley toiled under the brutal sun to build the fort, he recognized his comrades, not two hundred yards away.

“Come join us, fellas!” they yelled. “The Mexicans are treatin’ us as friends!”

The Yanks raised their muskets, but Taylor had ordered men shot only in the act of desertion, not after. So they focused their anger on the foreigners in their ranks—the punishments escalated, and, in turn, so did the desertions. The Negro slaves the Yankee officers had brought to cook and wait on them soon joined the trend to swim south. Mexican abolition laws made them free as soon as they set foot across the river.

General Taylor ordered round-the-clock work on the field fort, and Riley and his team on the fatigue details labored day and night. When the redoubt was finished, the walls held four cannons, 18-pounders, which gleamed in the sunlight as they aimed at the city. One gun pointed straight at the Mexican general’s headquarters.

Ignoring his sore limbs and sunburned skin, Riley carried on. But Engineer Captain Mansfield’s grueling orders pushed some to the brink. Five of the men on fatigue duty, driven by exhaustion, deserted in broad daylight. They tossed their shovels aside and threw themselves into the Río Grande. Before the pickets could raise their muskets to shoot, four were pulled underwater and didn’t surface again. The fifth was shot down as soon as he emerged on the other side.

Riley saw Maloney’s and Sullivan’s eyes widen in horror as they worked a few paces from him up on the parapets of the fort. Riley wanted to say, You see the danger now? He took his eyes off the dead man and studied the additional sandbag barriers and earthworks the Mexicans had thrown up the night previous. By now, their emplacements contained several cannons that pointed straight at the camp. But thus far, their guns had remained silent. A rumor was afloat in the camp that the Mexicans were waiting for reinforcements. If that was true, Riley realized they were losing their opportunity since the Yankee army grew more entrenched with each passing day, and General Taylor had plenty of time to strengthen his ranks.

Riley was surprised when Mexican soldiers appeared on the other side of the river, accompanied by a priest, and proceeded to bury the deserter who had been shot down. “Fidelium animae, per misericordiam Dei, requiescant in pace. Amen…” The Latin prayer was carried over to him by the breeze, and he savored the familiar words. The proper burial heartened him too.

“The Mexicans are our brethren,” Maloney said, coming to stand next to Riley. “If we die there, we’ll at least die as Catholics.”

“And as traitors,” Riley said.

“Or heroes,” Sullivan shot back, coming to join them.

Riley glanced up the river at the Mexican colors flying from their commander’s headquarters. In the two armies he’d served, officers had never treated outsiders as friends, much less as equals. Why would the Mexicans be any different?

“Quiet, Micks. And back to work!” Captain Mansfield yelled from down below.

Riley did as he was told, but he pondered what Sullivan said about heroes. He remembered his uncle back home, who’d joined the Ribbonmen, a secret society that fought against the Irish tenant farmer’s miserable conditions. Riley remembered the day the redcoats captured them and hanged them from the gallows. He had been only nine when he gazed up at his uncle dangling from the rope, raindrops sliding down him like tears. That’s what happens to heroes, Riley thought.





5


April 1846

Rancho Los Meste?os, Río Bravo

The village was burning all around them, yet she wouldn’t leave. Though the smoke stung her eyes, and her lungs screamed for air, she remained by his side watching as he took his last breaths. She tried pushing down on his chest to stem the flow, but his blood seeped through her fingers, an unstoppable river of red. Fire, blood, fear, all choking her. Don’t die, Joaquín, don’t leave me! A building collapsed nearby, then another, and soon his body succumbed as well. In his lifeless eyes, she could see across the months, the years, everything that was to come.

“Mijita, wake up, wake up.”

Ximena bolted awake drenched in sweat, choking down a scream. Nana Hortencia was shaking her, pulling her into her arms, soothing her. The old woman smelled of raw earth, of wild herbs and sweet acacia blooms quivering in the balmy breeze, her voice as soft and gentle as the murmur of an arroyo. Ximena clung to her grandmother and breathed her in. Closing her eyes, she listened to the thump-thump-thump of her own heart. She concentrated on taking a deep breath, and then another, until slowly the pressure in her chest subsided and the acrid smell of smoke and blood faded away.

“Was it the same dream?”

Ximena nodded, still feeling the weight of her dead husband in her arms. She’d been having the same dream for several nights now, ever since Joaquín had gone off with Juan Cortina. But never before had the image been so vivid, the blood so real.

“It’s the susto you got from seeing the village burn,” Nana Hortencia said. “I will give you a limpia later today to cure you of your fright.”