Philipp Meyer - The Son

She had done right. Made something out of nothing. The human life span had doubled, you did not get to the hospital without oil, the medicines you took could not be made, the food you ate did not reach the store, the tractor did not leave the farmer’s barn. She took something useless under the ground and brought it to the surface, into the light, where it meant something. It was creation. Her entire life.

Once, she had not been unique in this. The industrialists built the country, the oilmen made it run. Now it was just the oilmen. The industrialists, or whatever they called themselves these days, led lives based on destruction, closing down factories and moving them abroad. She did not expect to be loved but there were bastards and there were bastards; those men had taken apart the country brick by brick and if there was anything she hated more than unions, it was people who couldn’t work.

Other memories came back in a rush. Visiting the houses of the Mexican hands with her father, the women out of another century, pregnant and carrying water buckets from distant wells, irons over a wood fire, bluing to steaming washpots, wringing the boiling clothes. Canning fruits and vegetables in the worst of the summer heat — hotter in the jacals than it was outside. The men in the shade, braiding lariats from horsehair. Why don’t they buy their ropes from the store? she asked, but her father didn’t answer.

Walking through the pasture hours before sunup, crouching low to find the horses against the dark sky. All around her, the hands roping their mounts. Blowing of horses, clicking of cinches, voices soothing in Spanish. Some of the ponies gave in to the rope, others bucked and kicked, not wanting to spend the day running in the sun and thorns. Many of them were nothing but scar tissue from wither to hoof; the brush took all the hair off.

A never-ending creak of windmills, kneeling with the Colonel to study the wet ground at the stock tanks, the night’s fresh tracks. Cattle, deer, foxes, javelina, rabbits, paisano, hares, mice, raccoons, snakes, turkey, bobcats. The appearance of a panther track brought her father and brothers, an old Mexican with his dogs. At some point, she did not remember when, the Colonel began to put his hand over every panther track he saw, obliterating it completely. Don’t tell anyone . The adult world ran on secrets. The derision of her father and brothers when she said she wanted to see a wolf or bear. They are better in zoos, said her father. They are better gone forever.

And what had she learned? She had lost half her family before their time. The land was hard on its sons, harder yet on the sons of other lands. Her grandmother had once proposed a bounty for each pair of Mexican ears— treat them the same as coyotes. She thought of her brothers killed by the Germans, her uncle Glenn blown to bits in a trench.

She had tried to retire twelve years ago. She had been a child kneeling by the stock tank and then her own children were middle-aged; she had not been perfect, she wanted to patch things, she wanted to know her grandchildren. There had been a window. But oil had been low, cheaper than water, they said, and the bids she got for her leases were a fraction of what they should have been. She knew it was her last chance to make things right with the family. But to sell at such a bottom — the thought made her physically ill.

Then the Arabs hit New York. She began hiring drillers. Her children had their own lives, they did not need her, oil began to climb. To see a well come in where there had just been desert, to see flow after a good frac job, from a hole everyone had given up on — that was what she lived for. Something out of nothing. Act of creation. There would always be time for family.

Memory is a curse. When I close my eyes I see Pedro’s shot-off face and the weeping hole in Lourdes’s cheek, a clear fluid issuing forth like a tear. Aná’s blood-soaked dress. When I sleep I am back in their room. Pedro is sitting up in bed, pointing at me, speaking in some ancient language, and as I get closer I realize the sound is not coming from his mouth, but from the hole in his temple. Upon waking I lie still a long time and hope for my heart to stop beating, as if death might absolve me from my place in this.

What happened at the Garcias’ was only the beginning. In town, there are at least a hundred armed men that no one knows, carrying rifles and shotguns as if it were half a century ago, as if there were no town at all. Amado Batista was murdered sometime in the night, his store looted, an attempt made to burn the building though the fire did not catch.

The Garcias are described in all the papers as Mexican radicals; in truth they were the most conservative landowners in Webb and Dimmit Counties. The picture of their bodies is reprinted in every corner of the state and in Mexico, where, despite the fact that old landowners are not quite in favor, they will doubtless go down as martyrs.

Glenn remains in San Antonio, recovering at the hospital. Neither he nor Sally reacted to the news of the Garcias’ annihilation. I wonder if I am going crazy or if I do not love my family enough, or if it is the opposite, if I love them too much. If I am the only sane person I know.

Meanwhile, the rooming houses are full of the worst sorts the Rio Grande Valley has to offer and the Rangers are having trouble keeping order. I suggested to Sergeant Campbell (Was he the one to shoot Pedro and Lourdes? Was it my own son?) that he send for the rest of his company, but they are occupied up and down the border, guarding other ranches.

Campbell, despite his mean looks, is troubled that half the dead were women and children. I refuse to talk to him about it. People like him think you can apologize things away, that you can confess over and over until you are free to repeat your crime.

OUR HOUSE WAS busy all day with well-wishers; at one point I drove into town to escape them, whereupon I came on two trucks with a dozen men each, well armed and hoping to make battle with Mexican insurgents. I told them everyone was dead. They looked disappointed but after some discussion they decided to go into town anyway: no point giving up hope just yet.

Returned to find Judge Poole eating our beef and drinking our whiskey and taking statements from all present. I gave him my story— just the facts —he corrected me several times— not your interpretation . Finally he asked me to step outside, away from the others.

“This is just a formality, Pete. Don’t let anyone think I’ll side with a wetback over a white man.”

Nearly pointed out that we are the wetbacks, having swum our horses across the Nueces a century after the Garcias first settled here. But of course I said nothing. He clapped me on the back — his butcher’s hands — and went in to eat more free beef.

People continued to arrive at the house, bringing cakes, roasts, and regrets that they had not been able to reach us in time to help — how brave we were to assault the Mexicans with such a small force. By that they mean seventy-three against ten. Fifteen if you count the women. Nineteen if you count the children.

AUGUST 14, 1915

Sally asked why I had not yet come to see Glenn at the hospital. I explained my reasons:

Three houses were burned last night and eight townspeople killed, all Mexican except Llewellyn Pierce, who had a Mexican wife.

Sergeant Campbell shot at least three looters, though two escaped into the brush. The dead man is from Eagle Pass. The three were in the process of setting fire to the home of Custodio and Adriana Morales. The Moraleses were already dead. I thought of Custodio and how he loved our fine horses; he always charged too little to repair the tack and other goods I brought him. I had been meaning to invite him over to ride for twenty years now.