Los San Patricios

Alex Egervary

Oren aimed his rifle at the Mexican with one hand and with the other pulled at the cloth wrapped around his neck. He was covered with sweat although he had only woken a few hours ago. The late August air was thick with humidity. The Mexican stood with his back to Oren and was pissing on a scruffy bush. He had two pistols stuck into his belt and a machete strapped to his leg. The machete was dull and pockmarked and the wooden handgrips of the pistols were missing. Oren walked toward the Mexican carefully, stepping over thick dried branches and discarded equipment. Oren was a poor shot, so he crept closer to the pissing soldier, reaching a tree about fifteen paces away from him. The Mexican sighed and scratched himself and Oren knelt behind the tree without taking his eyes off him. Oren aimed the rifle again and shot the Mexican in the back of the neck.

The Mexican’s hands darted to his neck, where they scrabbled at the wound. They quickly tangled in his long matted hair as blood soaked the collar of his ragged shirt. Oren eased out from behind the tree and walked toward the dying Mexican, who was sinking to his knees and noisily struggling to breathe. The sun was low in the eastern sky, an indefinite orange hulk shimmering through the humid air. It reflected off the surface of Lake Xochimilco and arrowed into Oren’s eyes as he approached the Mexican. He was prone and silent. Blood leaked from his neck onto the ground and spread quickly through the dry dirt. Oren bent over the body and slipped the revolvers out of the dead man’s belt. The Mexican twitched and gurgled. Oren flipped his body over and was saw a white face staring blankly up at him. The Mexican looked to be about sixteen years old, pale white skin spotted equally with freckles and acne. His undersized Mexican Army cap was jammed over long red hair, stained redder with the young man’s blood. Around his neck was a tarnished silver chain. Oren pulled it off the body, expecting identification tags but instead finding a small oval medallion with the embossed figure of the Virgin Mary on it. The obverse showed a crucifix. Oren stuffed the medallion into his breast pocket. He walked to the lake, rinsed his hands of the Irishman’s blood, and threw the worthless revolvers into the lake. They sank quickly.

When it rained in Mexico, it flooded almost instantly. Conleth walked carefully atop a low ridge as rivulets of muddy water rushed downhill on either side. The ground was saturated within minutes of the appearance of storm clouds above the mountains to the east. The floodwater bit into the ridge, carving off shallow clumps of dirt held together by the pale, thin grass that covered much of the ground around the Churubusco convent, where Conleth was headed. Captain Riley had sent him out to look for Hagan two hours ago, when the clouds to the east had only begun to darken and gather.

Conleth picked at his shirt. His uniform was heavy with rain, and the rough fabric abraded his skin. The Mexican uniforms were cheap and his were already threadbare with use. The medallion around his neck felt cold. His boots were full of water and the blisters on his feet chafed against the stiff leather. Hagan was gone, as far as he could tell. The plains outside Churubusco were empty, and he walked toward the lake without much hope. Hagan was the youngest, a teenaged boy from New York City who grew up in Fa Keeragh, near Captain Riley’s hometown. In New York he was a rascal – occasional paperboy, frequent pickpocket, constant lapdog of Riley (a garbageman back in the city). His mum had enlisted him forcibly, picturing military obedience and respect after a Mexican tour. But Riley had dragged him along back in March, during the protracted siege on Veracruz.

March had been a bad month. Boatfuls of recent recruits made the trek down the Gulf of Mexico to Veracruz, where General Scott sat patiently in the harbor, lobbing shells at the angular walls of the Mexican fortifications. Conleth and Hagan sailed south on the same ship, arriving two weeks into the siege with a small detail of Irishmen manning the supply boat Francis Scott. The noise was incredible. Their ship had cruised into the harbor deliberately, allowing the men on deck ample time to view the chaos. A dozen or so American battleships floated serenely amidst great clouds of smoke and ash. They bobbed back and forth occasionally with the recoil of the cannons; stubby protrusions pincushioning their hulls. They went off irregularly, dull whomps of explosions followed by billows of smoke and corresponding collisions with the fortress walls, where unthinkably large hunks of stone would crash noisily into the gulf below, sending their wakes rolling across the harbor to the Francis Scott and the bewildered expressions of the Irishmen aboard.

The siege had continued for another two weeks, and by the time the men reached the cratered dry land outside Veracruz, Riley’s plans for desertion sounded plenty feasible. Fiftysome of them, Conleth and Hagan included, from a half-dozen battalions stationed around Veracruz stole away on a June night. Within a month, there were close to two hundred Irishmen sitting in the courtyards of Mexico City, smoking irregularly rolled cigars and complaining about the heat. Riley sent them out on occasional patrols to keep up appearances, but they had seen little action since their defection. The Mexicans hardly spoke to them, interacting only at church on Sundays, where their Catholic faith briefly bridged their cultural gap. Riley had swayed them by appealing to their faith, but it seemed to be the only thing keeping them in uniform.

The ridge Conleth balanced gingerly on broadened and met a plain just on the Mexican side of the long, unpronounceable lake that separated the Mexicans from Scott’s troops. He stood there briefly, watching the twin runoffs he followed home course down a steep hill into the lake. Hagan’s body lay facedown just a few yards away, but the sheeting rain obscured him. Conleth returned to the convent empty-handed.

The sky was dark, but not with clouds. This had been a sunny day, cheerfully bright and oppressively hot when Conleth reported for duty early in the morning. Hours of exchanged artillery fire had ensued as Riley’s men fought the Americans first on the bridge, then in the fort, and now from within the convent at Churubusco. Conleth wiped sweat from his eyes and ducked a spray of mortar chips as he reloaded his rifle. He was positioned on the convent’s wall; firing haphazardly into the thick fog below that he was certain contained several regiments of American soldiers. Riley passed by periodically with boxes of ammunition and bandages. The Mexicans had retreated to the convent’s inner walls after trying repeatedly to surrender. Their commanding officer was unconscious in the courtyard – Riley had punched him twice after he refused to take down the dusty white flag his men had raised. There was a frantic look in Riley’s eyes that none of his men – fellow deserters all – had needed explained.

And so the Americans continued firing, briefly glimpsed rows of blue-shirted men and boys progressing slowly behind a dozen cannons that spat shells at the thin convent walls. They were nearly at those walls, cannons pointing almost vertical and sending their shells over the walls into the courtyard, where the wounded crawled for shelter. Conleth fired and fired again, tracking the movement of a blue boy who sprinted toward the convent walls. He threw a loose stone at the boy as he reached the doors, where he crouched briefly behind a pile of rubble as one of the cannons fired directly into the wooden planks. They shattered noisily and Conleth shouted a warning into the courtyard, drowned out by a hail of shots from the Americans outside the walls. He dove for the ladder leading to ground level and watched as the blue boy darted between wounded bodies and unexploded shells for the flagpole at the center of the yard. The boy pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and Conleth sighed.

It was no longer summer, officially, but Oren would be damned if he believed that. It was more than a week into September and the heat was as oppressive as it had been at the height of August. He was slumped against a flagpole inside Chapultepec Castle, just outside Mexico City. There had been another battle, of course, outside the castle that had only ended a few hours ago. It had been very much like every other battle Oren had seen since he quit his job at a ranch outside Corpus Christi to join the Army. Cannons thundered, rifles chattered, and the Mexicans retreated slowly as waves of Americans threw themselves at their fortifications. Oren pulled a nearly-empty bag of tobacco from his pocket and quickly rolled a smoke. They’d want the flag up soon.

He stood slowly, easing himself up and feeling the bullet wound in his leg bite. He retied the loosening bandage and took a long drag on his cigar. He kicked at the dirt at his feet and watched the dust billow into tiny clouds that quickly the wind quickly blew away. He looked up at the smoky sky and wished he didn’t have to be the one to do this.

When Colonel Harney saw the flag climb the impromptu flagpole set up inside Chapultepec Castle, he nodded toward the gallows. At the signal, a man wearing an uncomfortable black hood blinked sweat from his eyes and hit the switch that dropped out the floor from beneath the feet of thirty deserters who had been waiting since daybreak with scratchy nooses fit around their necks, watching the explosions above the castle with nervous anticipation.