The sanctity and emotion of the scene was broken by shrill yelling from outside, where the young boy who had brought the message to the forger’s shop had taken a severe dislike to Yancey Quimper, much older and heavier than he. For no good reason but with lethal skill the little ragamuffin was belaboring Yancey, bringing blood to the nose and blackening to the eyes.
‘Stop it!’ young Quimper pleaded, and when his assailant continued pummeling him, he dropped to the ground, protecting his face with his hands. He had assumed, from having watched grown men fight in Tennessee, that when he fell to earth the fight would end, but in the Neutral Strip such a fall merely encouraged the attacker to finish off the job, and now, to the approving yells of the watchers, the fierce little tiger kicked at Yancey’s head, then leaped upon him, boxing him about the ears with both fists.
‘Finish him!’ some of the men shouted, and the boy might have done so had not Father Clooney come out from the house where the dead woman lay. Striding into the middle of the cheering men, he drove off the boy and raised Yancey to his feet, brushing away the dirt and helping to stop the tears.
Deprived of this amusement, the men roiled about for some minutes, after which one of them cried: ‘You can’t do nothin’ with Black Abe. Let’s hang him.’ So a posse was organized and Abe was soon apprehended trying to escape through the canebrakes.
Dragged back to the informal village on the Sabine, he was reminded of his many crimes and castigated for having slain one of the few women in the area: ‘Abe, you gonna die. You want a prayer from this here priest passin’ through?’ When Abe said that he did, Father Clooney stepped to the tree from which the rope dangled: ‘Son, despite your wicked ways, the Lord Jesus Christ intercedes for you at the throne of God. Your repentance is marked. Your immortal soul is saved and you shall die in peace and in the perpetual love of Jesus Christ.’
When the rope was hauled up by four big men, one of them the smith, and Black Abe’s kicking stopped, Clooney said: ‘I pronounce him dead. Bury him.’ As an afterthought he said: ‘Bury her too. Side by side, as they lived in this turbulent vale of tears.’
That night the Quimpers observed for the first time that their priest, in times of stress, as after this hanging, would search about for alcohol in which to drown his emotional insecurities. Tippling at first, he would progress quickly to real gulps, and when he was comfortably drunk he would wander among whatever groups were sharing the whiskey, introducing himself with a benign smile: ‘Me name’s Father Clooney of Ballyclooney on Clooney Bay in County Clare, servant of God and the government of Mexico.’ He would sing the words, continuing for about an hour, after which he would calmly lie on the floor wherever he was and fall asleep.
When morning broke, the four immigrants were so eager to enter Texas that the priest prevailed upon the forger, who operated a small ferry, to load them into his water-logged craft and pole them across the muddy Sabine. As they reached the midpoint Jubal happened to say the name of the river, whereupon the forger proved that he’d had a fair education: ‘Ever’ newcomer says it like you just did. Say-bine, no accent, rhymes with wine. Ancient Greek. Us locals call it Suh-bean, heavy accent last syllable, rhymes with queen.’
He deposited them on the slippery western bank just as a true deluge broke, inundating everything and especially the unprotected ferry, whose profane operator cursed God, the storm and the crazy Catholic priest who had lured him into this predicament.
Father Clooney paid no attention to either outburst. Shepherding his new flock as if they were a thousand devout souls passionately addicted to his church, he asked them to kneel in the storm, and with water cascading down their faces and soaking their bodies in a kind of heavenly baptism, the Quimpers entered Tejas, and when Jubal rose he proclaimed rather sententiously: ‘We wanted to come. God brought us acrost the Strip. And now we enter our inheritance.’
Mattie did not immediately rise from her kneeling; fingering the mud, she delivered an important judgment: ‘This earth can grow things. Let’s find our land and get the seed in.’
‘We have time,’ her amiable husband assured her, but she said: ‘Even in paradise, if we miss the growin’ season, we run into trouble,’ and it was she who led the way south.
Father Clooney, now fifty-eight and engaged in what would surely be his final assignment, felt himself fortunate to have found the Quimpers, whom he discussed with God in his prayers: The boy’s not much. He needs Your help. The mother could build Rome in a week, and I hope You’ll bless her. Did You see her gun down that bandit and then throw me the other rifle? The father? Now there You have a problem. Big, likable, in some ways younger than his son. But he’s a good shot and he does keep us in food. Tighten him up a bit.
Together the ill-assorted troop headed south and west into Mexican Tejas toward the new Stephen Austin colony earmarked for American settlers. As they went they lived off the land, and now Quimper was delighted to have Father Clooney as a hunting companion, for as a boy in Ireland the priest had learned the mystiqué of firearms and enjoyed the ritual of stalking almost as much as the satisfaction of bringing home game. Clooney was a voracious eater, almost a glutton, so he felt a vested interest in killing a deer or a bear with regularity, and he was good at butchering, so that during their journey the Quimpers and their spiritual leader fared well.
Mattie did not entirely trust this Irish priest who claimed he worked for the Mexican government, but she was growing grateful to him for the work he did in their caravan. Always he was first to volunteer for any task, something her husband never did except where hunting or eating was concerned; she must make the fire, and do the cooking, and form the lead bullets, and tend the clothing, and at times seem to carry everything but the guns. With the arrival of this smiling priest always eager to help if food was in the offing, she had a chance to breathe and to be a woman rather than a beast of burden. In fact, after their fifth day together, she found herself liking him, but her stern Protestantism prevented her from showing it.
Two of his weaknesses disturbed her. The Methodist clergymen she had known stormed against drink and gambling, but Clooney engaged in both, for while she labored at cooking or sewing, he and Jubal would play at cards, using awkward pebbles as counters. The betting would become quite furious, and she would hear Clooney cry: ‘Aha, Quimper! You tried to hide that ace, and now you’ll eat it.’
One night when they were well into Texas, the two men sat playing cards as Mattie inspected the precious corn seed to see if the two wads of smelly plug tobacco were still keeping away the weevils which would otherwise infest it. Clooney, seeing the colorful, easily handled kernels, cried: ‘I say, Mattie. Lend us a handful for our game.’ She demurred, for to her the corn was sacred, the agency of all that was to follow, but in the end Jubal supported the priest: ‘Come on, Matt! We’ll guard the corn with our lives. Aren’t we using it like money?’
So now the two noisy gamblers fought for kernels of corn, and the competition could not have been more keen had they been using Spanish pieces, but at the close of each session there stood Mattie, reaching out to reclaim and count her corn, which she put safely back into the canvas bag, with the tobacco.
When they were some thirty miles inside Texas they came to their first settlement, a fragile collection of houses on Ayish Bayou, and the comparison of this bayou with the one they had known in Louisiana was so favorable that Jubal had to comment: ‘This here is civilization. A man could choose his land right here and be happy.’
The citizens at Ayish Bayou were so proud of their settlement that they suggested to the Quimpers: ‘Stay here. This land was made for farmers.’ But their real joy came when they learned that Father Clooney was a properly ordained priest, for they had seen no clergyman for many years, and early on the first morning a family that had moved down from Kentucky approached him with a compelling problem. Their daughter, seven months pregnant, and her young man, a farmer also skilled in building log houses, had entered into a bond two years before, wh
ich they now presented to the priest as they were by honor required to do. Clooney had heard of such agreements and had been instructed in how to handle them, but he had not yet seen one, and he inspected the paper with a solemnity which the Quimpers had not previously observed:
Know all men by these presents, that with the public knowledge of this community the maid Rachel King and the bachelor Harry Burdine do undertake to live together as Man and Wife without benefit of clergy, there being none in these parts. We hold them to be truly married in the Eyes of God, and on their part they undertake a solemn pact to marry legally as soon as a Priest of the Holy Roman Catholic Church shall pass this way. In furtherance of this Vow they promise to pay a fine of $10,000 each if they fail to present themselves to said Priest at first opportunity.
We do this thing, all of us, because we are lost in the wilderness without church or clergy but secure in the knowledge that Jesus Christ Himself knew marriage to be a Holy Communion blessed by God Himself. Rachel and Harry are duly married, and promise they will confirm when the Priest passes by.
‘This is a precious document,’ Father Clooney said as he returned it to the couple. ‘If the others will join in a circle, we shall ask God’s blessing on this marriage.’ So the Quimpers and all from the Bayou who were available formed a tight circle about the priest and the young couple, and in the simplest words the Irishman conducted a wedding and then gave a blessing. Recovering the paper for a moment, he scratched upon it the notation: ‘Rachel and Harry were duly and properly married on 10 January 1823 at Ayish Bayou, Provincia de Tejas. Father Francis X. Clooney, cleric of the Mexican Government.’
As he was about to hand back the certificate, Jubal stopped him: ‘Write that the couple, as good Catholics, are now entitled to their league-and-a-labor.’
‘We already have it,’ Harry Burdine said, but Quimper told him: ‘It’s good to have it in writin’.’ And Father Clooney made the notation.
At the wedding feast—real bread made from hoarded flour and real whiskey made from corn, with venison and bear abundant—four couples asked Father Clooney if he would convert them to his religion and give them certificates of proof, and Quimper noted the offhand manner in which the priest did this. ‘It’s as if he took the marriage seriously,’ he told his wife, ‘and the conversions as a kind of necessary joke.’
‘Priests don’t make jokes,’ Mattie protested.
‘I think this one does. He knows we’re doing this just to get some land, and he doesn’t mind. But a marriage … that’s forever, whether it’s Catholic or whatever.’
This speculation ended when citizens of the Bayou warned the newcomers as to what confronted them in their new homeland: ‘Have all your papers in order when you get to Nacogdoches. You, too, Father. Because in Nacogdoches they’re very strict.’
The way this difficult Indian name was pronounced reminded the Quimpers that they were now in a new country, for the sister town in Louisiana, Natchitoches, had been pronounced French style, NAK-uh-tush, while only a few miles to the west its sister town was called in the Spanish manner Na-ku-DOE-chess, and whenever the locals uttered it they betrayed the fear and respect in which they held it. One old Mexican who had lived most of his life along the Bayou, explained why: ‘Long ago we had a big, important settlement across the Sabine in Louisiana. Los Adaes it was called, capital of all Texas. So one day what happens? This Barón de Ripperdá from Spain arrives, finds that the people at Los Adaes were tradin’ with the French in New Orleans, and why not? There were no Spaniards in the area to trade with. And he becomes so angry that he finished Los Adaes. Just wiped it out. Five hundred settlers were given five days to gather all their goods and march down to San Antonio, four hundred miles through forest and over swollen streams. They pleaded with him. No avail. Off they had to go, and one in three died on the way. Starvation … Indians … fever.’
The old man rocked back and forth, then pointed at Father Clooney: ‘The priests did nothin’ to help. Everyone was afraid of Barón de Ripperdá. And do you know what? Tell them what, Christopher.’
Christopher, a talkative farmer who ran a meager general store and lodging house, was quick to share bad news: ‘When you reach Nacogdoches, who do you suppose you’ll find in charge? The nephew of Barón de Ripperdá. Same kind of man. Same kind of ideas. Says he wants to shut down Ayish Bayou the way his uncle closed down Los Adaes.’ He spat.
‘Yes,’ the old Mexican resumed, ‘you’ll find this new Ripperdá in control, and just as mean.’
‘You’re still here,’ Quimper said, and the old man explained: ‘The expulsion happened fifty years ago, and when we reached this spot my father knew his family couldn’t complete the journey. We’d all die. So he broke away. Wife … three children … me just ten weeks old. And he said: “Barón de Ripperdá can go to hell.” Father built us a log cabin—you can see it acrost that little stream—and there he raised corn and children and added rooms to the cabin.’
‘What you must do with this new Ripperdá,’ the settlers advised, ‘is agree with everything he says.’
‘He won’t issue you any land, of course,’ one of the women warned. ‘He refuses to honor promises or contracts. Says we American Protestants are creeping in to steal Texas.’
‘I have papers,’ Quimper said. ‘I’m a good Catholic’
Several people laughed: ‘We’re all good Catholics. We’re all entitled by law. But Ripperdá gives us no land.’
‘You seem to have yours.’
‘We’ve been here a while. Most of us came during the worst days of the Neutral Ground. Just crept in, as Ripperdá says.’
‘How do you get title?’
‘We don’t. What we do is hope that Ripperdá dies … or goes away … or somebody shoots him.’
When the four travelers reached Nacogdoches they found two surprises: the little settlement was a real town with a store and a lodging house, and to Father Clooney, Víctor Ripperdá was not at all as he had been described by the dissidents at Ayish Bayou. When the priest reported to him, he found a young man, thin as the noontime shadow of a reed, with a small mustache and a winning smile that displayed teeth of extreme whiteness. He was polite, deferential to any visitor, and meticulous where governmental detail was involved: ‘You must understand from the start, I’m not the alcalde. I’m an army major guarding the frontier while the real alcalde is absent.’ Almost distastefully he handed Clooney an order issued by that vanished official: ‘Behold your alcalde!’
Sittazins of Nakadochy. I shal be abbsint sevvin weaks. You must obbay Majer Riperdee til I git bak.
Sined,
James Dill, yore alcaldy.
‘He’s one of your norteamericanos,’ Ripperdá explained. ‘From Pennsylvania.’
‘How did he become alcalde of an important post?’ Clooney asked, and Ripperdá laughed: ‘How did an Irishman become our priest?’ He then offered Clooney a drink and asked: ‘What did they tell you about me when you entered Tejas?’
Clooney did not want to reply, but when Ripperdá insisted, he said: ‘They spoke of your uncle … the expulsion.’
Ripperdá shrugged: ‘What lies they tell in their cabins. You know, he had little to do with that sad affair. The Marqués de Rubí, he made the decision, told my uncle to enforce it.’
‘Did five hundred leave? Did a hundred die?’
‘Yes, and my uncle did everything possible to help the survivors regain their old homes. He was a gentleman.’
Waving his hand before his face as if to expunge recollections of the tragedy, he said: ‘Father Clooney, we’re so glad to see you. We haven’t had a priest for some time, so you come to a land which hungers for your care!’
‘I’m proud to have so large a parish … so important a parish.’
‘Sit down, please. Manuel, fetch us more wine. Now tell me, how did an Irishman who speaks such halting Spanish become priest of this vast area?’
Father Clooney took a copious draft of wine, savored it, wiped his forehead w
ith the back of his hand, and smiled at his new superior: ‘Francis X. Clooney, of Clooney Bay in County Clare, Ireland. I told my bishop to go to hell—’
‘You never did!’
‘And he told me where I could go. New Orleans. Your Mexican consul found me there, hired me to work in Tejas. Told me to report to you and bring Christianity to this wilderness.’
‘You must not tell me to go to hell,’ Ripperdá said with an easy laugh.
‘I have learned that superiors have powers which …’ He stopped. ‘If I did, where would you send me?’
Without hesitation Ripperdá said: ‘Yucatán. That’s where we send our bad boys … and our bad priests. It’s a dreadful place.’
‘I’m here to help, as you command,’ Clooney said, but Ripperdá corrected him: ‘I’m your superior, yes. But years may pass without my seeing you.’ And he pointed to a rude map of what the Mexican government assumed settled Tejas to be—a thin sliver running from northeast to southwest—and Father Clooney saw that his territory extended from the Red River on the north almost to San Antonio on the south, a distance of more than three hundred and fifty wilderness miles, and at least a hundred miles from east to west, a staggering total of thirty-five thousand square miles.
‘In Ireland I had a parish of three villages. Of a Sunday I could walk from one to the other.’
‘Here you’ll have a parish bigger than all of Ireland.’
‘My word, I do wish me old bishop could hear you say that.’
‘To walk this one will take six or seven years. Marriages, baptisms, burials, they all await you.’ The serious official leaned back, stared at the priest, and said frankly: ‘I would have expected a younger man,’ and Clooney replied: ‘I’ve spent my life preparing to do some great work. Tejas is it.’