Michener, James A. (23 page)

'My three sons!' Benita snapped. 'I call them something. And Alvaro's promotion to colonel, I call that something, too.'

Damian could not accept this reprieve: 'Once we had Santa Teresa firmly planted, I should have gone to Nacogdoches and brought order to the frontier. And after Alvaro established order here, he should have gone on to Los Adaes and done the same there. We do a little and claim it was a lot.'

Benita rose from her chair, walked to where Damian sat, and

placed her hand on his shoulder: 'We can be proud of the Bexar we built. It will stand here for a long time ... a long time.' She bit her lip and pressed Damian's shoulder: 'And you can be proud, Damian. Two hundred years from now, when the work of your mission is long completed, your church of Santa Teresa will still stand, and people will applaud it. Yes, I saw that last report of the inspectors from Queretaro: "No mission north of Saltillo, neither in Sonora nor in Tejas, excels what Friar Damian has achieved in Bexar." ' She bent down and kissed him.

Cherishing her touch, he looked up and whispered: 'I suppose it's important that Indians have food if they're to work at Christian duties. And it's very important they have decent houses. And a mission needs walls to keep goodness in and evil out. But I merely built walls. Domingo built souls.'

As the long evening ended he tried to summarize: 'I've one regret I can't erase. I failed to convince Madrid to send us enough real Spanish settlers—farmers who would farm, knitters who would knit.' When he fell silent, Alvaro nodded: 'That was our great failure.'

i don't discount the Mexican mestizo. All things considered, Simon Garza is one of the best human beings I've ever known, and there must be others like him, but what does the government in Mexico City send us? Rabble, rubbish, and they expect to build a province with such people?'

As he uttered these harsh and true indictments of Spanish policy he did concede that the Council of the Indies had made one serious effort to settle the north, and when he thought of those contentious Canary Islanders calling themselves hidalgos, he had to chuckle: 'They're the best Spaniards we have, and if the king had sent us fifty more boatloads, we could have settled Tejas and conquered Louisiana, too.' He was in this frame of mind one afternoon when the inescapable Juan Leal Coras, his long beard unkempt, appeared at the mission, his devious mind busily at work.

'Fray Damian, I do not come with pleasant news. Your men here at the mission are drawing down more water than we agreed upon, and I'm starting a lawsuit against you before you escape from Tejas.'

'How many suits have you and I had before, Don Juan?'

'Five, and eacji one essential for the protection of our interests.'

'And how many have you won?'

'None, but that's not the point. Each suit brought to your attention some grievous wrong which you then had the sense to correct.'

'Why didn't you just come and complain without the lawsuits?'

'Because you damned friars will never listen to mere words. But when I start a suit you clean out your ears.' Pushing his face close to Damian's, he added: 'And don't be fooled by the score, five suits, five losses. How could it be otherwise when the judges are all corrupt? All in the pockets of you friars.'

'All the judges?'

'I've conducted lawsuits in all parts of the world . . .'

'You mean the Canaries and Tejas?'

'It's the same the world over. Judges are corrupt.'

'Suppose that when you do engage your suit, Don juan, that I bring witnesses to prove that you've dug a branch of your canal for which you have no permit? Which was not in our agreement? And I prove that it is you who are breaking the law, not I?'

'That's the kind of argument corrupt judges listen to.'

At this point Don juan shifted the discussion dramatically: 'Fray Damian, we couldn't have had a better missionary in Bexar than you. Nor a better captain than your brother. I want him to stay on as a civilian. Why don't you stay, too, as our parish priest?'

The suggestion was so improper to make to a Franciscan, whose mission in life was to wander, not to tend a specific church, that Damian remained mute, but it was also flattering, coming as it did from Goras, who pressed on, interpreting the friar's hesitancy as indecision: 'Our whole community wants to have you stay. You're a man we've learned to trust.' Goras could see the friar thinking intensely, but not even his conniving mind could have guessed what Damian was thinking: 1 could stay here with Alvaro and Benita and watch their sons grow. My home would not be broken.

Slowly and in some confusion he told Goras: 'I'm a Franciscan. I go where God sends me.' And as soon as Goras left, Damian started making his own secret plans to go on a mission which he felt that God had authorized: once more among the Apache, hoping that this time his example of fearlessness and brotherhood would encourage them to consider peace.

One afternoon, when his preparations were almost complete, he went quietly into his little church, and in the quiet shadows he studied once more Simon Garza's Stations of the Cross, contemplating both their beauty and the religious mystery they represented: How fortunate I was to work with men like Simon and Domingo. They made the things I tried to do doubly effective. And how wonderful that I should have done my work in companionship with Jesus Christ. As he looked at Garza's depiction of the crucifixion he could feel the nails in Christ's hands, the thorns digging into His brow: He was such a good man on earth, such a kind man in heaven.

As he prayed before the last Station he noticed that the two young friars now responsible for Santa Teresa had also entered the church, and unaware that Fray Damian was there, they were talking like young enthusiasts.

'I've found this quarry. Rock so soft you cut it with a saw. But when it's sun-dried in place, it hardens like granite. Tufa they call it.'

'With such stones we could replace the adobe. Make this a real church.'

'Better yet, we could replace everything.'

At this Damian gasped, for he could not imagine sacrificing Simon's glorious Stations. The young friars now discovered him, and realizing that he must have heard their plans, were eager to apologize: 'We didn't know you were here. We're so sorry.'

'No, no! I assure you, it's time to build a new church.'

'Do you really approve?'

'Yes!' he cried vehemently. 'Each man builds only for his generation. Everything he does ought to be restudied . . . improved by those who follow.' He waved his hand deprecatingly. 'I built so poorly. They told me in Zacatecas: "You need build only in wood, for temporary use." ' His voice dropped to a whisper: 'But the heart yearns to build in stone ... for eternity.'

As he moved his right arm across the spread of the little church his eyes were directed to the Stations of the Cross, and almost as if he were a parent defending his children, he stepped before the carvings and lifted his arms to cover one of them. 'I would not want you to replace these . . . not destroy them, that is.' And his plea was so profound that one of the young friars stooped and kissed his hand.

'We would never have damaged them, Brother Damian. We planned to have them as the heart of our new church.'

'Did you?' he asked in great excitement, and as the two moved about the church, explaining to each other how the roof could be taken off and the walls replaced with minimum confusion, he stayed with them, encouraging them and talking far more than was necessary.

On 21 September 1737, when day and night stood even across the world, Damian left his mission riding a mule, with a donkey in tow. He rode westward toward Rancho El Codo, which Alvaro, Benita and their sons now owned, and here he stopped to utter a long prayer for the soul of Domingo Pacheco as it made its way through purgatory to heaven. He spent his first night at the

ranch, and rose refreshed and eager for the serious part of his journey.

Not till three days later did he make contact with any Apache; then he came upon a good-sized band which did not include either the squaw or any of the chiefs who had known him earlier, although there were members who had heard of the decent manner in which he had treated other Apache. They made him as welcome as Apache ever did, but he was aware that some of the younger braves resented him and were advising their fellows against any contact with a Spaniard.

In the two days he spent in the Apacheria he found some leaders who were willing to listen when he explained about the advantages of Christianity and an orderly life within the Spanish empire. 'Like me,' he told them, 'you will enjoy the full protection of the king.' He was convinced that the conversion of the Apache was at hand and that God had sent him to be the agent.

But on the third day, in the midst of the most serious explanation of how God and His son Jesus Christ shared responsibilities in heaven, three impatient young braves kicked aside a buffalo skin before which Damian sat, seized him and dragged him to an oak tree, from which they hung him by his thumbs. Then, before the older chiefs could protest, which they showed little inclination to do, the young men stripped the dangling body and began making little cuts across it with their flint scrapers.

They were not deep, just a slash on the arm, or on the leg, but the young men kept darting back and forth, now away from Damian, now toward him, always making another small cut, until his body was red-stained in all its parts.

The young men now called upon the women of the tribe, and with obvious delight the squaws joined them, dancing around and making deeper cuts in parts of the body hitherto untouched. One woman, hair falling across her dark face, evil-smelling, was lifted up to cut at the base of his left thumb, not severing it but nearly so; she and her sisters wanted to see how long it took for the weight . of the body to pull the damaged thumb apart, and when this I happened, and the body swung sideways, suspended only by the ■ right thumb and twirling in a tight circle, the women shrieked with pleasure, and ran back to stab at the body that now gushed blood from various deep wounds.

Damian, still conscious, for no cuts had yet been made in a vital place, held to his belief that this hideous affair was merely a ritual torture, but now two of the women rushed up and made such deep slashes in the lower part of his stomach that a great shudder ran through all his body, visible to his tormentors.

'He dies! He dies!' they screamed, and this encouraged other women to dance in and stab at him. One was even lifted high enough so that she could cut at his throat, but this terrible pain Damian ignored, for when he stared at her hawklike face he saw not an Apache woman but Benita Lirian. She smiled at him as she had on that first evening in the paseo, and as his blood spurted she leaned forward to cradle him in her arms.

. . . TASK FORCE

San Antonio! Loveliest city in Texas, Venice of the Drylands, its river runs right through the heart of town, providing a colorful waterway for festive barges and an exotic riverside walk along which one could promenade forever. How glad I was to be coming back to a city I had cherished as a boy, for this had been my family's preferred vacation spot.

I remembered well the Buckhorn Saloon, that relic of the Old West, with its fantastic guns and cattle horns. I sneaked my first beer there, my mother watching from a distance, then teasing when I spat it out. Later, when I returned from Europe to find the Buckhorn moved, 1 felt as if my youth had officially ended.

San Antonio! Conservative, always lagging behind more daring towns like Houston and Dallas, it had long been the largest city in Texas but had now given way to those two giants. Recently it had stunned the state by electing as mayor a man of Spanish heritage, and in decades to come it might once more become a leading city because of the spectacular development of its Spanish-speaking population.

For our April meeting there our staff had enlisted a Franciscan friar who served in one of the city's famous missions, Friar Clarence Cummings, born in Albany, New York. He was respected as an expert on the five surviving missions that line the river like a string of jewels on a necklace, but even before he appeared he caused animosity in our Task Force.

Rusk complained: 'I didn't join this committee to get a course in Catholic theology,' and Quimper chimed in: 'If this keeps up, next meeting will be a public baptism.'

This was too much for Professor Garza, a wise and prudent

Catholic. 'What makes you think the friar will try to proselytize you?' and Rusk growled: 'He better not try!'

In two minutes Friar Clarence won the skeptics over, or at least neutralized them. He was a tall, good-looking, robust fellow in his late thirties, clad in a brown robe, bare feet in rugged leather sandals. After the briefest introduction he said in no-nonsense style: 'I hope you'll join me in a cell we use as a projection room, because it's important that you see the slides I've prepared,' and when we were seated with our staff in the cell in the Mision San Jose, he surprised us with the title of his talk: 'Form and Legacy.'

'Now, what does that mean?' Quimper asked, and he replied: 'That's what I've come to explain.'

With carefully organized notes accompanying a set of excellent colored slides he had prepared from his own drawings and photographs, he began his talk with a promise: 'I propose to concentrate on two subjects only, the physical form of the Spanish mission in its heyday and its legacy for us today. No theology, no moralizing. We begin with this simple question, which must have preoccupied those in charge at the time: "If your mission is to fulfill its purpose, what form should it take?" '

At that he darkened the cell, and with the heavy stone walls enclosing us, we had little difficulty in imagining ourselves back in 1720: 'This drawing—I studied architecture at Cornell before joining the Franciscans at a rather advanced age—shows the landscape you will have to work with. The wandering river. The loop where the horses pasture. The flat land where your mission will ultimately stand.'

With seven choice slides he showed us the terrain of San Antonio as it must have been in 1717, with no mission visible: 'Since you are Spaniards imbued with the traditions of your homeland, you will insist upon centralization, with civilian settlers and their activities clustered closely together. A main difference between Catholic Spain and Protestant America, I've always thought, is that Spain likes to collect its citizens in villages dominated by the church. There they find mutual protection during the night. During the day, when conditions are safer, they can march out to their distant fields. Americans, fed up with clerical control both in Europe and New England, want their homes and farms as far apart as possible. I grew up in rural New York, with the nearest farm half a mile away, and you cannot imagine my amazement when I first saw the crowded little villages of Spain and Italy, one house abutting the other. How do they breathe? I thought. And how do they get to their distant fields each morning?'