reached them. That’s why, in 1834, the Mexican authorities came to an arrangement with the Cherokees and other tribes, offering them land, the opportunity to trade, and even livestock. One year later, 300 Comanches stopped in San Antonio en route to Matasánchez to sign a peace treaty with Mexico but the deal fell through. The day eventually came when the Mexicans began trading with them, and that was the end of the Indian threat, at least for a short time.
ON THE DAY that the Shears-Nepomuceno incident took place, Matasánchez celebrated its 85TH anniversary as a Christian town.
Who knows how big the population was in that year of our lord 1859, no one had counted heads recently. To hazard a guess, it was around eight thousand, if not more.
Matasánchez is, and always has been, the big city of the region. Bruneville doesn’t even come close. Eleven years ago, Bruneville was nothing more than a dock on the north bank of the river, used only when the city’s docks were full, or for goods that were en route to a ranch to the north, unless they were headed to the Santa Fe Trail, in which case it was better to continue even further up the muddy river.
Matasánchez, on the other hand, continued to grow, blessed with endless showers of riches. Here’s one example from the era when the Spanish were still in charge: for ten years Matasánchez had the export license for all Mexican silver; the customs office earned a fortune (seven out of every ten ships that docked in New Orleans originated in Matasánchez), and despite the facts that (as previously mentioned) hurricane after hurricane battered the city and regional conflicts cut the population in half, Matasánchez continued to be the principal metropolis and beating heart of the region.
When Bruneville was founded, Matasánchez converted one of its docks, down where the Río Bravo meets the sea, into its principal port. They christened it Bagdad. Bagdad quickly became wealthy, because that’s where the customs house was located, and there was a tremendous amount of traffic.
In fact, no sooner has Sheriff Shears uttered the now-infamous phrase than the dove-keeper Nicolaso Rodríguez scrawls it on a piece of paper, which he folds and slips into the ring around Favorita’s foot. She’s his favorite of all the messenger pigeons that fly back and forth between Bruneville and Matasánchez every day, carrying all sorts of messages: “The Frenchie dry goods vendor wants to know if they want beans.” “Need strychnine urgently; please send on next ferry. Rosita’s in a bad way.” “From the priest to the nuns: bake some more host quickly. We ran out and soon we’ll have to use bread as a substitute.” (This particular message caused a commotion at the convent; one nun swore that unleavened bread attracted the devil and claimed to have “scientific proof” of this, because in San Luis Potosí the mayor’s wife had become delirious after taking unleavened bread for communion when the host ran out.) “Fetch my daughter from the afternoon ferry.” “Don’t come, the steamboat has already left for Point Isabel.” If the message said “Rigoberto” it wasn’t good news—the priest’s name was used when some unhappy soul needed the last rites, on either side of the river; for example, “Rigoberto to Oaks” or “Rigoberto to Rita” or just “Rigoberto” when everyone knew who was at death’s door.
Favorita has shiny eyes and tiny pupils, she’s the cleverest pigeon; nothing distracts her. On Favorita’s foot Shears’ phrase crosses the river, over the levees, over Fort Paredes and its casemate, over the moat and the sentry boxes, all of which Matasánchez had built to try to keep the prairie Indians, the mercenaries, the pirates, and the river at bay. She arrives in the center of the town where Don Nepomuceno is so deeply and widely respected, and alights on the eaves of the courtyard behind Aunt Cuca’s house, where the other Rodríguez, Nicolaso’s brother Catalino, keeps Matasánchez’s dovecote.
Favorita is their favorite for good reason. Without entering the dovecote, she pecks on the door, which rings the bell. Catalino takes the message from her and, her work done, Favorita enters the dovecote. Catalino takes the message to the central patio.
The sun above Matasánchez is the same one that’s roasting Bruneville.
In the middle of the courtyard Catalino Rodríguez reads the message aloud for all to hear, including:
1 Aunt Cuca (who is crocheting in her rocking chair on the balcony outside the living room).
2 The women in the kitchen (who are making tamales; two of them are kneading the hominy while one of them adds small pats of lard, until it makes a paste with the maize flour that they use as a base, while Lucha and Amalia cut the banana leaves that they’ll roast over the fire).
3 Doctor Velafuente (who’s in his office).
4 And his patient (whose name we can’t reveal because he was seeing the doctor for a malady he picked up in an encounter off a noisy street in New Orleans, where he should never have set foot, but the deed is done).
Aunt Cuca sets her crocheting aside, puts on her shawl and goes to tell her godmother the news. Lucha and Amalia leave the kitchen on an urgent trip to the market: “We’re just going to get another quarter-ream of banana leaves, there aren’t enough for the tamales.” Doctor Velafuente ends his appointment; the patient leaves quickly for the church and the Doctor heads to the arcade. Each of them will go spread the word about how the Sheriff has insulted Don Nepomuceno.
The news is like a bomb going off in Matasánchez. The city wonders, How could a dirtbag like Shears (who was nothing more than a carpenter’s apprentice, and a bad one) speak like that to Don Nepomuceno?
But this general sentiment doesn’t mean that people don’t have bones to pick with Nepomuceno.
The old ladies who attend mass every day, shrouded in black, pray for Nepomuceno but wonder if the insult might be punishment “for doing things that embarrassed Doña Estefanía”; they haven’t forgiven him for romancing the widow Isa sixteen years ago when he was fifteen, or for the way his marriage to his cousin Rafaela ended (he had agreed to it reluctantly, only to please his mother). When Rafaela died in childbirth they blamed him: “How could she have survived the ordeal with her broken heart?” (Some people swore that she hadn’t been kissed during the entire marriage, and that Nepomuceno did it to her quickly just to get her with child. Although others said—out of maliciousness, no doubt—that she had already been with child when they wed.) Nor had they forgiven him for his subsequent marriage to his former lover, Isa, the widow who bore him his first daughter (they’re still married); nor for the other dalliances people whisper about on the way out of mass.
On the other hand, everybody was full of sympathy and compassion for Lázaro, Shears’ victim: an old vaquero who could no longer rope or keep up with the cattle, though he could still play the violin beautifully—they’d invited him to play at baptisms but he refused to cross the river. He’d been around forever—grew up in Matasánchez till he was taken north while still just a child, violin in hand, not knowing how to rope cattle; they said that his aunt sold him to the Escandón family, ranchers who gave him to their cousins. Later, Doña Estefanía would brag about how well the boy roped cattle and how he could sing and play, too.
Jones, a runaway slave, is leaning against the (so-called) cathedral portico, frightened by the news he overheard while selling candles and soaps from his basket. He leaves his spot and goes from house to house with his soaps and the gossip, heading toward the Franciscan monastery, always adding something along the lines of, “Like it or not, that’s how they are; they don’t know what respect is,” in his excellent, newly learned Spanish.
He knocks on the Carranzas’ door to offer his wares and deliver the news, which causes quite a commotion. The boy of the house, Felipillo Holandés—whom the Carranzas adopted not knowing
