DC03 - Though Mountains Fall (36 page)

More than a thousand miles to the north, Caleb spent most of that winter working on the dawdi haus, with help from Andy and a steady stream of neighbors and friends. The people of the church couldn’t seem to do enough to help the “Mexican Amish,” as they came to be known. People knew they had not been able to sell their farms, that they had left everything and
come home virtually penniless after years of toil. Their undisguised pity was a matter of some annoyance to Caleb. Nearly everything these days was cause for annoyance.

Worse, the Mexican Amish were treated like celebrities. Everyone wanted to hear tales of a foreign land, especially the part about the bandits. Some people were happy to oblige them, but Caleb never said much, and when asked about it would usually just mutter something like, “Farming is farming. It’s all the same, except Mexicans don’t eat cabbage.”

People finally stopped asking him about Mexico, which he didn’t mind at all, but he also noticed that no one ever asked him about Miriam. They offered condolences for Aaron yet never mentioned Miriam. Perhaps it was just as well. Already sometimes he had trouble remembering her face.

Chapter 30

N
oceda was difficult to convince, but after the third close call Domingo finally got him to wear a slouch hat over his skullcap and button his jacket up over the clerical collar.

The Cristeros were becoming seasoned fighters, and Domingo’s reputation as a fierce warrior was growing. They won skirmish after skirmish, but only against local militia, mostly farmers themselves. They didn’t face the battle-hardened federales until late February.

In his first real test, at the battle of San Francisco del Rincón, Father Vega did in fact prove to be a genius. His Cristeros anticipated every move of the federal troops, countering and outflanking with astonishing prescience.

By nightfall the battle was over, the federales utterly routed. Noceda and Domingo sat by a campfire, eating tortillas and beans from tin plates.

Noceda gloated. “I told you, didn’t I? Father Vega will teach these federales humility.”

A volley of rifle fire echoed from a nearby ravine before Domingo could answer, and both men looked up.

“What was that?” Noceda asked.

Domingo turned back to his beans. “Your warrior priest is executing prisoners.”

Another volley echoed from the ravine as the campfire crackled and sparks shot skyward. The grin disappeared from Noceda’s face. “Well, I suppose he has no choice. We can’t spare men to guard prisoners, and if we release them we will have to fight the same men again tomorrow.”

Domingo stared at the priest, but didn’t answer. His doubts were his own. Noceda was an educated man, and anyway his logic was sound. Released prisoners would be armed again tomorrow, and Cristeros would die at their hands. It was war, and difficult choices had to be made.

A week later the Cristeros won another decisive battle against regular army troops. Four days later, in desperation, the federales hurled a company of crack cavalry against them. It should have been a mismatch—seasoned soldiers on horseback against an army of peasants on foot—but again Vega outsmarted them. He sacrificed a squad to draw the cavalry into a narrow rocky valley, where his men held the high ground on both sides, then cut off their escape route. The Cristeros suffered heavy losses, while the cavalry was annihilated.

Domingo and Noceda distinguished themselves fighting shoulder to shoulder in the battle, and as a result were awarded two of the captured horses.

They spent the evening grooming their horses in a stable at the edge of a newly conquered town. Noceda was ecstatic.

“The Cristeros are undefeated, Domingo, and Father Vega is becoming something of a legend. What do you think of him now?”

Domingo stroked the side of the fine bay horse with a brush. “My opinion of him has not changed,” he said without looking up. “He still goes to his tent every night with women and tequila.”

“But our cause is just,” Noceda said, “and the general fights like a madman! We are winning the war because of him, ridding our country of these atheist dogs. Is it not enough for you that he serves God’s cause?”

Domingo shrugged. “How does a priest serve God’s cause and trample his vows at the same time?”

Noceda’s eyes narrowed. “Do you not think the end justifies the means? Do you not think religious freedom is bigger than the petty indiscretions of one libertine cleric?”

Domingo lowered his currying brush and turned to face Noceda. “Petty? Raul, do you remember what happened after our last ‘victory’ over the federales? We didn’t hear the shooting of the prisoners that night, and you said you thought perhaps Vega had grown a conscience.”

“Sí. He didn’t execute the prisoners.”

“But he
did
. Martinez was there, assigned to the detail. He said our supply train was ambushed and we were running low on ammunition, so Vega ordered them to slit the prisoners’ throats.
That
was why we heard no gunshots.”

Noceda was quiet for a moment, then asked, “Are you sure about this?”

“Sí.”

Some of the zeal went out of the priest’s eyes then, and he spoke quietly. “But in the end, Domingo, what is the difference? Guns or knives, dead is dead.”

“The difference is
honor
,” Domingo snapped. “There is no honor in dying like a butcher’s pig, and there is no honor in Vega. I was not always a Christian, and I remember well what people thought and said about the church. In Vega I see everything people have hated, for centuries, about the church. I’m sorry, Raul, but I’m starting to wonder about that collar you wear.”

“That’s unfair. Not all priests are like him.”

“No, they are not. You’re as upright as any man I have ever met, but Vega is the one whose name everyone knows, the one who is becoming a legend. He is our
champion
. And he is evil.”

On a Sunday afternoon in March, right before planting time, Abe Detweiler and his family came to visit the Benders. Caleb and Martha had just moved into the dawdi haus. Caleb took Abe out to show him around the farm while Sarah and the children ate cookies in the dawdi haus with Mamm.

The bishop trailed a hand along the top edge of a fence, walking out the back lane as they made small talk about the weather and about Caleb’s children. After a while there was a long pause, having exhausted all the news, and Abe Detweiler said, “People are worried about you, Caleb.”

Caleb’s eyebrows went up. “About me? Why?”

“They say you’re not the same. You don’t hardly talk, and they say you’re . . . grouchy.”

“Pfff. Grouchy. Have I been grouchy with you?”

“No, but to be honest you don’t seem like you’re at peace with yourself. Or with Gott. Is everything all right?”

They were walking along the edge of a field, angling down toward the pond. Caleb sighed. “I just don’t understand, that’s all.” And then he told Abe Detweiler about the discussion he’d had with Emma on the train, about Emma’s suggestion that Gott had sent them to Mexico to fail, to learn something. “But I’ve pondered these things all winter and I can’t come up with it,” Caleb said. “In the beginning I knew for sure that Gott wanted me to go to Mexico, but look what happened. I failed. I lost everything, and I drug others down with me. Tell me, Bishop, what am I supposed to learn from humiliation and defeat, from losing my children and ruining the lives of my friends?”

Detweiler thought about it for a minute and said, “Well, maybe it’s all in how you look at it. Why did you go to Mexico in the first place?”

“So our children wouldn’t have to go all the time to the consolidated school.”

“Because of the new law—the government. And what did you find?”

“You already know. In the beginning bandits robbed us and there were no police to protect us. When we finally got troops, why, we found out they’re worse than bandits.”

“Jah,” Abe said thoughtfully. “So maybe that’s what Gott was trying to tell you. That one government is as bad as another.”

Caleb crossed his arms on his chest and stared out across the pond, his eyes hard. “I know that now, but what does it profit me?”

Abe shrugged. “Caleb, Anabaptists have always been persecuted and we always will be, one way or another, because we are different. It was the government who chased our forefathers out of Europe in the first place. The trouble with government is that it is always run by men who seek power and fortune. A government has the power to take away a man’s money, or even his life.”

Caleb nodded, remembering the look of horror on Abe Detweiler’s face when the rifles roared.

“But short of making a man angry and discontent,” Abe said, “or putting him in prison, or killing him, they cannot change him. They can make a man a little safer maybe, but they can’t change his heart or show him the right way to live. Only Gott can do that. Maybe Gott took you down there to teach you to put your faith in
Him
. ‘We live, not by power or might—’ ”

“ ‘But by the spirit of the Lord of hosts.’ I know. I didn’t have to go all the way to Mexico to learn that, Abe.”

They talked on through the afternoon, yet as he watched the bishop’s buggy driving away that evening Caleb knew nothing had been resolved. Everything Abe Detweiler said was true, some of it even insightful, but none of it was new to Caleb. He had already thought through these things. He had searched his own heart and satisfied himself that he had
never
really put his faith in government.

Nor did he now.

Whatever Gott was trying to tell him was still beyond his grasp. Even the bishop couldn’t put his finger on it.

Emma’s words still rang in his head.
“Gott’s questions are personal . . . somewhere inside you
lies a question, a choice only you can make, and
the rest of your life hangs on which way you
choose.”

But how could he choose when he didn’t even know Gott’s question? And Gott these days was eerily silent.

Caleb’s darkness remained.

Miriam grew heavy with child. By early April her daily walk to the post office in San Rafael became something of a struggle, and Kyra started going with her. Emma and Rachel wrote her regularly, and since the first of the year she’d gotten a letter from Domingo at least once a week. Emma’s baby was due sometime in early May, the same as her own. Rachel planned on being Emma’s midwife, which made Miriam a little jealous, but what really bothered her was her dat. Though she never talked about it, when she picked up the mail she always flipped through it immediately, looking for her father’s familiar handwriting. It was never there, but she couldn’t keep herself from looking, from hoping.

Coming back home one afternoon Miriam opened a letter from Domingo and read it as she walked.

“What does he say?” Kyra asked, trying to sneak a peek.

Miriam pressed the letter against her chest. “He says the things a husband says to his wife when he is away. Things meant only for my eyes.”

“All right,” Kyra said, backing away. “But what
else
does he say? Surely he sends news of how the war is going.”

“You mean news of how
Raul
is doing. He says Father Noceda is well and he misses us all, that so far they have been lucky and only gotten a scratch now and then. But I wouldn’t be too optimistic, Kyra. What Domingo calls a ‘scratch’ might be a mangled arm or leg.”