Carmen Boullosa: Texas: The Great Theft

Nepomuceno’s strategy bears his trademark: catching the enemy off guard. The U.S. troops aim their guns at Mrs. Big’s Hotel to respond to the shots that have left two of their men wounded. Meanwhile, their backs are turned on Nepomuceno and his men.

They soon arrive at the other side of the dock, where they’re least expected.

There are hundreds of them aboard the boats, vessels of varying size — canoes and skiffs that people on both sides of the river use for their daily errands, some of which are well-kept, others half-rotting rafts. Some (the Mexican ones) have their names painted in bright colors: Lucita, Maria, Mama, Petronila, and Dr. Velafuente’s White Lily (which is one of the finest, he uses it just for sport fishing, a luxury he seldom indulges in, and the occasional family outing).

The flare has also alerted Nepomuceno’s men who are waiting further inland for the sign to charge in on their horses.

Nepomuceno’s men begin firing from different vantage points.

It’s worth taking note of the skill they display on the water (they’ve grown up alongside the river or by the sea, they may as well have been born with fishtails). The “mermen” attack the U.S. troops from behind. They don’t hesitate, the goal is to kill as many as possible.

If the vaqueros weren’t so adept at handling horses, they wouldn’t have been able to guide them toward the crossfire. They deserve recognition too. They arrive at Mrs. Big’s when the field of gringos’ cadavers is ready to be harvested. Riding atop their mounts, followed closely by their comrades who run and yell, they burst into Bruneville. Bang, bang, bullets fly left and right, it’s a real shoot-out, a veritable hail of bullets.

Luis, the distractable boy who carried Miss Lace’s shopping baskets, is hit — he doesn’t have any baskets now, but he pays for them. The bullet enters his mouth and lodges in his head.

Without pausing, Nepomuceno’s men gather on the dock, board their boats, and “ Adiós, amigos gringos , we’re outta here.”

In addition to the dead, they leave pages printed with another proclamation scattered in their wake and a message at the foot of the Town Hall steps: “This is a warning. Return Lázaro to us within two days or we’ll be back again every third.”

Sid Cherem, the Maronite who sells cloth at the market — and who’s diverted some of his orders to the encampment at Laguna del Diablo to support Nepomuceno’s men without getting directly involved — had been prepared. He got up on the roof terrace of his house. He lay down with his rifle so no one could see him defending Nepomuceno if it became necessary.

Dan Print, who’s been living it up (every time he goes to the Café Central he stays longer) and hasn’t returned to work in his room at the Ángeles del Río Bravo, hears news of the attack from one of his informants. “Now that’s news!” He awakens Matasánchez’s telegraphist, saying it’s urgent, asking him to send a report about Nepomuceno’s attack without delay. He ends his message with a note that’s almost longer than the message itself: THE RECENT DISTURBANCES ON THE BANKS OF THE RIO GRANDE WERE INITIATED BY TEXANS AND CARRIED OUT BY THEM. THIS NEPOMUCENO AND THE MAJORITY OF THE BANDITS WHO SUPPORT HIM ARE CITIZENS OF TEXAS … VERY FEW MEXICANS FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE RIVER, IF ANY, HAVE TAKEN PART IN THESE DISTURBANCES.

Eleonor escapes from the Adventurer after several encounters similar to the first, him taking her mechanically and quickly, without so much as looking at her. She mounts her horse and heads off without a destination. The stars watch over her.

On the day of the attack she arrives at the Aunts’, the ranch of the Amazons. They welcome her with open arms.

When he reads the telegram in New York, Dan Print’s editor answers as follows: WHERE IS YOUR ARTICLE? STOP. THE CLOCK IS TICKING. STOP. THANKS FOR THE NEWS. STOP. I WANT MORE.

After the attack, Nepomuceno and his men (both “mermen” and vaqueros ) return across the river but they don’t disembark at the Old Dock. Fearing an ambush, they look for a landing further upriver; though there’s nothing even resembling a dock, the tide makes it easy to disembark. The Kids’ Brigade ties all the boats together — forty-seven in total, a rosary of vessels — and lets them go. They have allies on the lookout at the Matasánchez dock, they won’t miss them.

By the time Nepomuceno and his men arrive in Laguna del Diablo, negotiations between the mayors of Matasánchez and Bruneville have already begun.

By the next day Lázaro’s release has been agreed upon. An official messenger goes to Laguna del Diablo to tell Nepomuceno.

The atmosphere in camp is tense. It’s not like a party anymore, rather a military outpost.

“There’s no date set? Go back and tell them they can count on my compliance once they give me a date.”

“But the mayors are the ones setting the conditions.”

“What conditions? This isn’t a prisoner exchange. They kidnapped Lázaro, I want him back.”

“You can say that, Nepomuceno,” says Jones, “but according to their laws Lázaro is a prisoner because he broke the law …”

“Their laws … their laws … they can take their laws and go to hell! They can stick ‘em where the sun don’t shine!”

Jones ignores this outburst, but everyone else present is taken aback.

“So now what?” the messenger asks. “What should I tell them? They’re waiting for an answer.”

“Tell them,” Jones speaks up in response to the messenger, “that Nepomuceno accepts the truce but that they have to tell us when they’re going to set Lázaro free, and it should be sooner rather than later. This truce isn’t indefinite.”

“Give them one week,” Nepomuceno says, coming down from his cloud of fury.

“One week.”

“We’ll write our response down for you,” Salustio adds sagely.

The horses Nepomuceno’s men used, all of which were stolen, have been left at Mrs. Big’s Hotel — they haven’t even had time to rebrand them (though some have been rebranded before) — and there are a few mustangs and mavericks among them, too. No sooner have they freed themselves from where the Mexicans hitched them than Mrs. Big asks the first cowboy she can find to get some help and round them up. She plans to sell them. She’s decided to leave town with the money.

In the Bruneville town papers there’s an article about Nepomuceno, preceded by a letter from the editor:

“To the Mexican residents of the State of Texas:

“The arch-murderer and robber has been induced by some inflated coxcomb to allow his name to be put to the following collection of balderdash and impudence. We shall not inquire now who wrote it, but it certainly was no one who has the least acquaintance with American laws or character. We invite the attention of the people abroad to his pretension that the Mexicans of this region (we suppose he means from the Nueces to the Rio Grande) claim the right to expel all Americans within the same.”

Some excerpts from the article:

“He claims to lead a secret society, organized to this end. He modestly describes his fellow villains as virtuous, especially courteous, pure, and good-humored. This is what he says about himself and his followers, even after stabbing and shooting the dead bodies of the Smiths’ daughter, Caroline, and three of our own men, Mallett and Greer and McCoy, who were killed in the fight he and his men started …” and “His men survive by stealing horses — that’s always been their livelihood. They’ve escaped justice with the help of perjurers. They broke into the jailhouse, stole the mail …”

Stealman orders Chaste, the sort-of mayor, to ship a new boatload of crazies across the river, in response to the damage and the losses incurred (in theory) by Nepomuceno’s raid. He writes that it’s more critical than ever to keep Bruneville free of burdens on society.