Carmen Boullosa: Texas: The Great Theft

The young mulatto puts Hidalgo in the pigeon loft and begins to pray: “Holy Mother, look after Don Nepomuceno.”

A third pigeon flies the first leg of his trip alongside Hidalgo. When Hidalgo lands in Pulla, the other pigeon continues across a stretch of bare land, where there’s not even one lonely huisache , just stone-hard earth, before landing on the adobe arch that guards the Well of the Fallen.

That’s how Noah Smithwick, the Texan pioneer who leads slave-hunting parties, hears the news. These men make a fortune by returning slaves to their so-called owners for ransom. As you might imagine, Shears’ insult is a joy to Noah Smithwick’s ears. He detests Nepomuceno and anyone else who so much as resembles a Mexican. Mexico ruins his trade, with its nonsensical ideas about property and other crazy notions, which would drive any self-respecting businessman to rack and ruin.

“The Mexicans will never amount to anything, they’re a people without wherewithal, good for nothing but cooking and looking after the horses.”

Two Born-to-Run Indians carry the news northward from the Well of the Fallen.

The news quickly reaches the King Ranch, neither by pigeon nor by Born-to-Run. A godlike horseman (dressed in white, riding a white mare) delivers the news, so quickly, in fact, that it was said to have been delivered by lightning bolt.

The news travels north toward the Coal Gang with the Born-to-Run Indians.

The Coal Gang are bandits who roam both sides of the frontier; they go wherever the loot is. The majority are Mexicans. They have their preferred targets:

1Gringos. And anyone who looks like them, with the exception of their leader, Bruno, who has the blondest beard in the region — his men say it’s because of the sun, which has bleached it, but those who knew him back when he hid beneath his mother’s dark skirts and the brim of his father’s (very elegant) hat know that he was born with white hair, and skin so white it was almost blinding. But now Bruno is dark as ebony. A miner who made his own fortune rather than inheriting one, he had silver mines in Zacatecas and a gold mine further north. Business was doing so well there that he decided to sell the silver mines to finance his prospecting, investing everything but the shirt on his back. But it was his bad luck that the Great Theft had begun, and they took his mine from him using the law. He had conquered the bowels of the earth, but he couldn’t prevail against evil.

2Stealman’s friends. Stealman is the one who, from his office in New York, carried out the aforementioned legal proceedings.

3The Nouveau Riche, who made their fortunes off the new frontier.

4Priests, and especially bishops, who knows why.

Their guiding principles were clear: first their profit and their benefit. Secondly, their benefit and their profit. Thirdly, their profit and their benefit. Fourthly, their enjoyment — and that’s where things get complicated.

The Coal Gang is like a family. Their leader, Bruno, was born on an island in the distant north. Some call him The Viking, but he doesn’t look it — his father was the bastard son of the King of Sweden. The rest of the gang was born in the region, in or near the Río Bravo Valley. It’s all the same to them.

Each of them has been betrayed by his nearest and dearest:

Their leader, Bruno, by his own blood. His father was the first-born — though illegitimate — and he’s also the first-born, and illegitimate too, in keeping with family tradition. Logic and justice would see him crowned king. He believes he is the true heir of Gustav, the Grace of God, King of Rügen and Lord of Wismar, Duke of Norway, Schleswig-Holstein, Stormarn and Dithmarschen, Count of Oldenburg and Delmenhorst. But he’s just a bandit from the heart of Mexico: the Prince of Highway Bandits, the King of Terror (it wasn’t that he didn’t like the idea of being king, but since he didn’t like the cold he would have moved the capital of his kingdom to Africa; and King of Terror sounded pretty good to him).

His right-hand man, nicknamed Pizca, betrayed by his older brother, who stole his birthright and left him with nothing but his own two hands, against their father’s wishes. Tall as Bruno, with the same Viking complexion, his skin has become black as coal.

The others have their own less well-known stories of betrayal.

Bruno the Viking and his men have just eaten. Most of them have gone back to work (brushing the horses, laying out strips of beef to dry); the boss is lying by the embers of the fire, next to a demijohn of sotol . A Mexican falcon flies overhead. Bruno takes his slingshot from his shirt pocket. He places a smooth pebble into the rubber band. He aims …

The shot misses, despite the fact he had plenty of time. It’s the falcon’s good luck that the hunter had too much to drink.

The falcon circles. Once again Bruno has him within reach, he reloads his slingshot … But the sun plays a trick on him and blinds him just as he’s about to take his shot.

The falcon is one-in-a-million, and it escapes! This infuriates Bruno, mostly because of the sotol running in his veins, which puts him in a foul mood. He hides his face beneath the brim of his hat. And, just like that, he falls asleep.

He snores.

Pierced Pearl, his captive — the Comanches recently sold her to him but she won’t last long, he can’t stand having a woman around — has watched the whole scene with the lucky, free falcon.

It pleases Pierced Pearl — bravo for the falcon! A hand’s breadth from Bruno, she lays her head on the ground — there’s nowhere else to lay it — and curls up to try to sleep — it was a bad night. She dreams:

That Bruno’s snoring is the falcon’s voice. That the falcon approaches, flying close over her, flapping its wings noisily. It has a human torso. It’s neither man nor woman. It caws:

“There. Theeere. Theeere.”

The falcon develops legs, they grow till they reach the ground. It bends them. Continues flapping. It speaks:

“Leave this place. Here. You’re … hic. You’re interrupting my … hic … hic … hic … I’m … like a fish …”

The falcon stretches its legs, swaggers around, and disappears into thin air, like smoke.

Pierced Pearl, Bruno’s prisoner, awakens. Yet again she is overcome by anxiety and bitterness. Knowing the falcon escaped gives her the only flicker of hope she’s had in a long time. And then the falcon became meaningless in her dream.

Pierced Pearl grinds her teeth.

Just then one of the Born-to-Run arrives in a cloud of dust, like a ghostly apparition at a vigil, his eyes bulging. He pulls up short. He drinks from the goat’s bladder he wears around his neck. This liquid is poison to most, but it makes him feel tireless, immortal.

Pierced Pearl forgets her worries for a moment and pays close attention to the messenger. She hears him swallow, listens to him gargle, making sounds to clear his throat.

“Bruno!” the Indian messenger shouts. Bruno awakens immediately, lifts his hat, and his pupils are still adjusting when the messenger drops the news about Nepomuceno like a hot potato.

And in the blink of an eye, the messenger, like a flying arrow, whizzes off, back to the Well of the Fallen, his blood burning with the poison that fuels him.

The pigeon Hidalgo has just passed over Bruneville when Bob Chess arrives to visit Ranger Neals. Bob’s not a Ranger — not even close—“I’m a Texan, from this side of the river, the American side.” He likes horses, women, guns, conquering Indians, and killing Mexicans. He thinks sitting in the Café Ronsard drinking and shooting the breeze is stupid. “I’m a man of action, life is about what you do, everything else is a waste of time; it’s thanks to places like that, and to temples and churches, that Texas is going to hell in a handbasket.”