A Ballad of Love and Glory(51)

He let go of Ximena so quickly, she nearly lost her balance.

“Beg your pardon, lass. I didn’t mean to—”

“No worry, teniente Riley,” she said, composing herself. She wrapped her rebozo over her head and shoulders, her face in shadow. “It’s a nice evening, but I go to sleep now. Buenas noches.”

Upon hearing the hurt in her voice, he reached for her and said, “Wait a blessed minute, lass.” But she disappeared into the throng, and he didn’t have the courage to follow.

Maloney came to stand beside him. “Och, small blame to you, laddie. You’re only human after all.”

Riley turned to look at his friend. “Let’s have a drop together, ould fella. I’m buyin’.”



* * *



He had avoided the taverns, but that night, he and Maloney found an empty table at the cantina across from the plaza. As the musicians played their sorrowful ballads and laments, Riley took a swig of tequila. And then another. A liquid ray of Mexican sunshine.

“Easy now. You’ll get tipsy, you will,” Maloney said, putting the bottle on his side of the table.

“?’Tis Independence Day, a day to celebrate!” Riley held his mug out to Maloney and kept it there in the air. The old man refused to refill it. Riley put his empty mug down and sighed. He knew his friend was right, and he was ashamed the tables had turned. It was now Maloney who was keeping him from getting deep in liquor. “?’Tis a drop of comfort, isn’t that what Franky used to say?”

“Poor creature you are, John Riley, that your whole soul is tortured by what couldn’t be helped,” Maloney said. “Faith, even a blind fella would take a fancy to that lassie. The sight of her fills one with the same delight as the first shovel of upturned earth after a hard winter.”

Riley knew what he meant. Like the breath of spring, her voice, her smell, her very essence, made him feel there was hope in the world. He shook his head. “I left a wife back home, left her to shed many a bitter tear for me, I did. And now I’m disrespectin’ her. Betrayin’ her. Fightin’ someone else’s war. Hankerin’ for another woman—Arrah!” Riley grabbed the bottle from the old man and refilled his mug, but midway to his mouth he stopped and threw the liquid over his shoulder in defeat and stood up. “I best stop makin’ a holy show of myself and turn in. I’ll see you in the morrow.”



* * *



He avoided Ximena for the next few days. He didn’t have courage enough to see her, so he gave up his quarters in the private residences where the officers were lodging and stayed in the citadel with the other gunners. Using his canteen as a pillow, he lay stretched beside the cannons, rolled in a coarse multicolored Mexican blanket damp from midnight dew. The night was keen, and he shivered as he looked at the sky above, trying to find answers written in the heavens. He wrote letters to Nelly by the feeble glimmer of a tin lantern but tore them up and let the pieces flutter in the wind. What could he tell her that wouldn’t be a lie? That he missed her, that he longed for her? Even as he wrote down those very words, his eyes kept drifting to the steeple of the cathedral in the distance, knowing Ximena was in the hospital nearby. It took every ounce of willpower to not climb down the citadel and ride his horse the half mile into the city, down the cobblestones that would lead to her. No, he couldn’t write to his wife and tell her half-truths. What manner of man had he become? One who betrayed his soul and suffered his wife to hold on to false promises? He couldn’t be that manner of man.

“Forgive me, Nelly,” he said as he tore up yet another letter and watched the pieces swirl away in the wind toward the peaks of the dark stone mountains scratching at the sky. He looked at the moon and fancied himself in Clifden, walking through a dark misty field upon a solitary lane. His cottage stood against a slope at the bottom of the glen, and guided by the stars glowing above him, he traversed the land of his youth, jumping across a stream whose silvery waters disappeared into the depths of the winding valley and the rolling hills beyond, and just as the sleepy cottage came into view, he paused to look at it, the stone walls softened in the moonlight, splendid in the quietude of the night. He continued down the slope until he found himself standing before the door. Placing his hand against it, he hesitated, too much of a coward to open it just yet. He fancied Nelly sleeping inside, Johnny on his cot by the hearth, the turf fire popping. What would Riley say to them? What would they say to him?

He opened his eyes and fixed his gaze upon the pale Mexican moon being swallowed up by a mass of rain clouds thickening above him. He couldn’t allow himself to fancy his first reunion with his family. It all depended on what manner of man he was by then. An accomplished one or a broken one.



* * *



He couldn’t believe how grateful he felt when, at length, a cloud of dust rose in the distance, and he knew the hour had come to fight. It was only then that he could put Ximena out of his thoughts, when, at the blaring of the bugles and the beating of the drums, the soldier inside him took over, his unsettled mind gathered focus, and all he could think of was how to carry out the absolute defeat of the enemy.

“Yonder come the Yankees!” the gunners yelled.

The troops in the citadel fixed their gaze upon the road, at the growing cloud of dust. Through his field glasses, Riley spotted Taylor’s forces marching toward them. He watched as they came to a halt and a reconnoitering party led by the Yankee general left the main columns and approached the city to get a closer view. The general, his staff, and the Texas Rangers had stopped out of range of the citadel’s guns, but even so, Riley yelled the command for his crew to fire in their direction. “Let’s give them a warm welcome, fellas,” he said. He ordered another round and another, his guns spitting fire, followed by the boom of the cannons as loud as thunder, echoing against the mountains. It was a warning. A challenge. A defiance. Through the white smoke rolling out of his cannon’s mouth, Riley could see Taylor’s party turning around and heading back to the rest of their army.