The lights of New Orleans set a glow in the distance, across the flat marshland of St. Bernard Parish. Pablo Fernandez, of Delacroix Island, sat on a grassy slope of Bayou Terre aux Bœufs, waiting for the whistling sound a duck's wings make when skimming low for a landing. Ice formed at his feet on the edge of the bayou. Moving water glistened only in the moonlight on the channel, at the center of the bayou, the deepest part. The world was frozen. Frost, ice and moonlight all seemed the same.
Pablo Fernandez sang softly to himself the old 'decima' songs, an unwritten record of his people from the earliest times, from even before they left the Canary Islands for Louisiana. In the tongue of his ancestors, the soft Spanish best for poetry and prayers, he intoned the story of the The War of the Texans.
En mille novecientos treinta y dos
Venieron malos hombres para conquistarnos ....
In nineteen hundred thirty two
Bad men came here to conquer us.
And take away our furs for some men in Chicago
Who said they had deeds to our precious marshland.
Guarded by Texas Rangers with machineguns at hand,
They came up the bayou to kill and to maim.
But the people of the Islands, the speakers of Spanish,
Hid in the grass with their shotguns and rifles.
When they came up the bayou, we offered them truce.
A boy held up a white flag.
We thought we could reason
With any man of the marshland who traps for his keep.
Our answer was bullets, they spoke with the Thompsons.
The bullets flew everywhere, the flag was abandoned.
We answered with bullets and pellets of shotguns.
Men, women and children with practiced precision
Relentlessly fired at the long line of boats.
So fierce was the gunfire, the men had to take cover
We fired from above them so they could not rise
To level their deadly Thompsons at St. Bernard Island.
In one boat they had the rapid Browning Machinegun.
Brave men in that flatboat jumped to the far shore
To set up the tripod, rake the island with gunfire.
But Juan Eldepaul and Pedro Domínguez,
Swimming like otters and running like deer,
Crossed to the usurpers and clubbed them all senseless.
Now the Browning Machinegun mercenary as Rangers
Spoke for us against the bad Texas strangers.
Until they surrendered and begged us for mercy.
We lined them all up and questioned them thoroughly
"Why have you come with machineguns in hand
To St. Bernard Islands with blood on your mind?"
"We came not for blood but for money," they answered ....
Pablo Fernandez paused. Swift wing-beats approaching. Grisa, gray-duck flying the channel. The shot from his shoulder seemed to shatter the night, as though the cold were glass as splintery as the wedges of ice. The duck fell lifeless, a limp bundle of feathers, to splash on the surface instead of settling gently.
With push-pole he brought in the trophy, set it down right beside him. The moon was so bright he could see the red of the blood against the white-frozen grass. He began again.
Salen ustedes con sus heridos y muertos,
Nunca a regresar en las Islas San Bernardo.
Leave here bearing your own wounded and dead
Never to return to the islands of St. Bernard.
Pablo Fernandez sang with great pleasure the songs of his heritage without really noting the words. A big French Duck flew down the channel. He raised shotgun to shoulder, set his lead, swung with him, squeezed the trigger.
The shot in the clear winter crispness seemed louder than usual, like the grunt of a man-killing rifle. The duck in its death throes, wings knifing wind, came directly on him, hit the barrel of the shotgun, sent the muzzle biting into his forehead. His shoulders hit the frozen ground. He was stunned. Sight blurred. Senses jumbled. Hot turned to cold, the moon to the sun. The blood from his head wound anointed face, neck and fingers. The white flag in his hand was now splattered with gore, his own blood.
"Fuego-o!"
Now the coughs of the rifles and the boom of the shotguns. Men, women and children hid in the grass and fired as swiftly as their weapons could fire. The wood of the Texans' boats splintered and the men had to lower their heads and hope that the boats would stop all the lead.
So fierce was the firepower from every Isleño on Delacroix Island that the boats were actually pushed to the far shore. One Texan in desperation tried to stand to establish cover fire for his comrades to elevate the butts of their Thompsons and Browning machinegun. He managed to stand and fire two bursts, his Texas Ranger badge glittering in the sunlight.
But the Isleños had chosen their time and their place. The sun was their ally and the deep chunk! of the .45 caliber rapid fire found no mark. They fired at the glitter of the badge, right over the heart. He slumped to the gunwale, his own dead weight lowering the floating battlement and exposing all his fellows in that boat.
Mercilessly, as merciless as the Texans when they fired upon the boy, the Isleños slaughtered every man in the boat. The shotguns blasted huge chunks of flesh away in bloody spray and decapitated one Texas trapper. Their firepower was superior.
One boat, blasted against the far bank, belched one burst of .30 caliber fire. Then the crew jumped to the shore, scrambled for the high bank with the Browning machinegun and the tripod for controlled, deliberate murder.
"Juanito! Domínguez! Les cogen!" shouted Vasito Menocal, the organizer of the resistance.
At once, they jumped into the dark water tinted red. White froth billowed before them as they swam strongly. The Texans were swinging the Browning on them when the two Isleños sprinted to them, clubbed them down, killing one, crumpling two.
The fight was over. But still the Isleños fired. They fired into the boats as though to blast a hole clear through to the men. Until finally a piece of underwear was raised tied to the barrel of a rifle.
"Basta! Basta, Isleños!" Menocal called.
In the manner they did everything – together – they ceased firing but did not set the safeties on their weapons. They had seen the honor of the Texans when they fired upon the boy with the white flag. Maria Romero found Joselito Fernandez lying on the bloody piece of cloth, a bullet crease on the forehead. As she rolled him over, he groaned, still alive. He was the only one hit by Texan bullets. She staunched the blood.
Isleños pulled the boats to shore. Almost every Texan was hit. Some were dead. Others were dying.
Menocal lined them up on the bank of the bayou. Those who could stand were forced to hold up those who could not. Menocal looked each one in the eye. The only human sounds were the groans of the wounded and dying. The Isleño leader had a Thompson submachine gun in his hand.
"De quien es esta máquina?" he demanded. "This gun, who owns?"
"Reckon she's mine, podnah," said an older Ranger. He was a tall man, face wincing from pain. His abdomen leaked blood through his bayou-water soaked jeans.
Menocal walked slowly, in deadly fashion up to him. The Texan was so tall that Menocal had to crane his neck to stand close and look into his eyes. He jerked the butt of the Thompson up to the Texan's eyes, so that the notches there were only inches away.
'These marks, for what they are?" Menocal demanded again, this time running his thumb over the notches so that the thumbnail rose and fell like a skiff on the choppy waters of Lake Catherine. The Ranger slowly, sadly, knowing what would come, shook his head deliberately.
"Wal ..." he said, "that's how many men I killed."
Menocal, red with rage like a boiler holding pressure, raised the Thompson high and brought it down hard on the Ranger's head. The scalp split. The skull crushed. The Ranger went down to the ground in a heap of water, blood and human waste.
Inserting a fresh magazine and working the bolt of the Thompson, Menocal retreated to an effective firing distance. The line was long and it would take a broad sweep of the gun. The other Isleños stood silently. The Texans protested. Some of them went to their knees and prayed not to El Dios but to their Isleño captors.
Menocal was deaf to them. He lowered the rifle. His finger tightened on the trigger. And then stepped in the boy Joselito Fernandez, blood dried like rusty crystals upon his forehead. Menocal elevated the muzzle.
"Mine was the only blood of the islands shed here," Joselito Fernandez said in Spanish. "Mine is the only right to shed the blood of the Texans."
There were murmurs of assent. The only objections were to the tenderness of his age. But Menocal handed over the Thompson.
Joselito Fernandez faced his fellow Isleños. He held the submachine gun high. When he spoke it was with all his force.
"Isleños! Hear me! These shall be the final shots fired in this War of the Texans!"
When the gun went off in one mighty burst, the Isleños winced. He let all the bullets run through the machinegun, spurting lead into the heavens and casings in a swift, yellow stream like urine from the breech. The war was over, the last shots had been fired. The Texans had been spared by the blood-right of a boy.
The scent of gun smoke was still acrid and heavy when Pablo Fernandez came out of his stupor on the frozen bayou bank. The blood had ceased flowing and was frozen-dried upon his forehead, exactly where his own father carried the scar of the old bullet wound. Quickly, head aching with each movement, he looked around.
Existence was calm, frozen, quiet. The corpse of the French Duck was solid as ice beside him. The duck had forced the barrel of the shotgun to his head. He groaned, picked himself up, started for his boat.
The power of his father's song had conjured up the vision, he reasoned. And yet … the gun smoke hung like a mist in the still, cold air, as though it was frozen, too, in time. And, in the winter moonlight, it seemed he saw Bayou Terre aux Bœufs tinted with diluted blood. Thinking himself still affected by the blow, he finally made it home.