The Son

Chapter Twenty-one. Diaries of Peter McCullough, MARCH 10, 1916

Yesterday Pancho Villa crossed the border into New Mexico, killing twenty. Today, hardly a white man to be seen without a pistol or slung rifle, even to buy groceries.

The Germans have promised to reinforce Mexican troops with German infantry should they choose to cross the border. Whole town in a frenzy; we are only ten miles from the river.

I do not point out there is little likelihood of the Kaiser sending troops to McCullough Springs when he is losing them ten thousand a day in France. I do not point out that the number of Americans killed in Columbus is the same as the number of Tejanos shot in bar ditches on any given night in South Texas. I do not point these things out because everyone seems happy with the news of this new threat; neighbors who didn’t speak are suddenly friendly, wives have new reasons to make love with their husbands, disobedient children do their schoolwork and come home early for dinner.

FOUR MEXICANS FOUND shot outside town, all teenagers. No one is sure who they are or who killed them. The vaqueros think they are fuereños, men from the interior of Mexico, though how they can deduce this from a bloated corpse is beyond me. Incident not mentioned in newspaper. If it were four dead mules, there would have been an investigation, but there is nothing except general grumbling about the burial costs.

MARCH 14, 1916

Yet more blood on our hands and Charles has been taken to Carrizo. He was in town buying supplies when he ran into Dutch Hollis. Though it was only noon, Dutch was quite drunk and in front of a lunchtime crowd of onlookers accused our family of various crimes (of which we are certainly guilty), including engineering the death of the Garcias to gain their land.

After a short struggle Dutch got the better of him; Charles went to the truck and returned with his pistol. Dutch may or may not have reached for his knife (a folding jackknife in a pouch, same as all the men here carry). Charles shot him in the face.

Our caporal Garza arrived in time to see the final act: Madonna, you should have seen it, his hand did not even tremble. He related this expecting I would be proud.

Shortly after getting home, Charles saddled his horse and rode for Mexico. The Colonel and I caught him a few miles short of the river and convinced him to come back.

“It’ll be all right,” I said to him, as we returned.

He shrugged.

“We’ll muddle through.” He did not say anything. I felt the old impotence rising within me — what was the point of my even existing — or so everyone else seems to think.

“He had it coming,” said Charles. “He’s been talking like that all over town.”

“With his brother dying…”

“His brother? How about my brother?” He kicked his horse and caught up to the Colonel, who was riding ahead of us. They nodded to each other, did not speak, some wordless understanding, the same as my father and Phineas. My skin began to tingle… it occurred to me that I was the one who ought to be fleeing to Mexico….

Was he right? He and Sally seem to think the same way… is a near death equal to a death?

When we returned to the house, Sheriff Graham was waiting. Charles, bluffing over, turned white. Graham told us there was no hurry. He was thirsty.

The four of us spent the rest of the evening on the gallery drinking whiskey and watching the sunset, the three of them sitting together and chatting easily about how to best handle the incident, the sky going its typical blood red, which to me alone seemed symbolic, as I was sitting off a small distance from the others.

To listen to the three of them talk about the death of Dutch Hollis, you might have thought there had been some accident, a lightning strike, flash flood, the hand of God. Not my son’s. Had to do it, acted on instinct, the sheriff just nodding away, sipping our whiskey, my father refilling his glass.

Considered interrupting them to note that the entire history of humanity is marked by a single inexorable movement — from animal instinct toward rational thought, from inborn behavior toward acquired knowledge. A half-grown panther abandoned in the wilderness will grow up to be a perfectly normal panther. But a half-grown child similarly abandoned will grow up into an unrecognizable savage, unfit for normal society. Yet there are those who insist the opposite: that we are creatures of instinct, like wolves.

Once darkness had fallen and all were convinced of my son’s righteousness, Graham drove Charles back to Carrizo, all agreeing it was best if Charles spent a night in jail for appearance’s sake. Glenn meanwhile has been keeping his distance. He is confused by Charlie’s actions, to say the least.

MARCH 15, 1916

Went to see Dutch Hollis’s body before they bury him. He was lying in Graham’s back shed with several blocks of ice. He was unshaven, had not been washed; his face and clothes were filthy and clotted with blood and, like all the dead, he had lost control of his waste. Not long ago, twenty years maybe, he was a child reaching for his mother… a boy becoming a man… I had a sudden memory of him playing the fiddle, together with his brother, at the Midkiffs’ house. I peered into the dark spot, just at the edge of his eyebrow, an intricate machine, broken forever; there had been words and music… we had put a stop to that.

There was something shiny inside his shirt, a woman’s locket… I lifted it but could not quite make it out in the dimness. I broke the chain, jerking his head in the process. Then I left the room quickly and walked back into the light.

When I got home (heart racing the entire time, as if I’d committed some great felony, as if the crime was not killing him but taking his locket), there was no picture, no message, no piece of hair: the locket was empty. I took it to the Garcias’ and buried it there, along with our other victims, the whole time expecting I was being followed, the criminal feeling lingering. There are those born to hunt and those born to be hunted… I have always known I was the latter.

MARCH 16, 1916

Charles has returned, but he is not allowed to leave any of the four counties in which our property extends. He strides about with his chin up; I find it difficult to look at him. Judge Poole assures us there will be no indictment. In fact he and the sheriff and my father went calling at the homes of those likely to be empaneled.

Would like to report I have been torn between a hope he might receive punishment and hope he’ll be exonerated. I have not. I want only for him to be acquitted. And yet his crimes multiply… this the son I raised with my own hands.

Have been in to buy supplies, keeping my hat pulled low, terrified the entire time I would run into Esther Hollis, Dutch and Bill’s mother, but this evening, with enormous relief, I remembered that she has been dead several years.

No one seems particularly bothered, least of all the Mexicans. The coraje, they say, the heat and dust and thorns. Even horses get it. For the grandson of a great patrón—a man with blood — to get the coraje, it is only to be expected. Especially when a man slanders his family. And in public… In truth it was the only reasonable action.

Meanwhile both Hollis brothers now lie rotting. Impossible to believe we are truly in God’s image. Something of the reptile in us yet, the caveman’s allegiance to the spear. A vestige of our time in the swamps. And yet there are those wish to return. Be more like the reptile, they say. Be more like the snake, lying in wait. Of course they do not say snake, they say lion, but there is little difference in character between the two, only in appearance.

MARCH 24, 1916

Grand jury refused to indict.

APRIL 2, 1916

Despite Dutch Hollis, despite the Garcias, our name carries more weight than ever. Where I expect bitterness, I receive respect; where I expect jealousy, I receive encouragement. Do not steal from the McCulloughs — they will kill you; do not slander the McCulloughs — they will kill you. My father thinks this the proper state of affairs. I tell him this is the tenth century of the second millennium.

In the end it is as he says — they think we are made of different stuff. If it ever occurred to them that we eat and bleed the same as they do, they would run us down with torches and pitchforks. Or, more accurately, holy water and wooden stakes.

IN NEWS OF the broader suffering, Villa’s men attacked the barracks at Glenn Spring yesterday. My sympathies for the Mexican people aside, my father and I are both anxious for the arrival of our Lewis gun, which fires ten.30-caliber rounds per second. A true blessing for the few holding out against the many. Due to war in Europe they are running a severe backlog.

Serious talk that the Mexican government is planning an assault on Laredo — Carranza’s troops are massing across the river. The Mexicans believe we ought to hew to the original border (the Nueces). Texans believe the border belongs another three hundred miles south, somewhere around Durango.

SALLY WANTS TO move to San Antonio or Dallas or even Austin — anywhere but here.

“We are perfectly safe,” I told her. “Neither the Huns nor the Mexican army will be approaching our gate anytime soon.”

“That is not what I care about,” she said.

“Is this about the boys?”

“It’s about all three of them. The two living and the one buried.”

“They will be fine.”

“Until they do something like this again. Or until someone’s brother finds them.”

“There are no more Hollises left. We have seen to that.”

“There will be someone else,” she said.

Considered mentioning this was her reward for marrying into the family of the great Eli McCullough, but said nothing. All the energy had left me.

“My nephews in Dallas have guns,” she said. “They use them to hunt deer. They go to school, they chase after the wrong sort of girls, but…” She choked up. “I went to see the boy…”

“Dutch?” I said gently.

“… they had him laid out in a shed behind Bill Graham’s office. It was a disgrace.”

I did not say anything. Things have been so bad between us for so long and every time I have had hope, she has smashed it. I looked away from her and closed myself off.

“You might be staying here alone, Pete. I have lost all the sons I care to lose.”