Fiction: Jaudon – An American Family (a novel) [22]

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Chapter 22. Au revoir Paree

In the summer of 1893, Claude, Dominique, who was with child, and their daughter, Donna, who would turn three on the 10th of November, passed the Statue of Liberty as their ship came into New York Harbor.
    It had been three long years since Claude had said good-bye to the Lady in the bay. He wiped an eye as a tear slid down his cheek. He hadn’t thought his homecoming would be so emotional.
    The two-year job on the bridge had stretched into three, but Rafilo had promised an adventure, and that it had been. Rafilo had been in charge of designing the foundation that the feet of the Eiffel Tower sat on. It had been no easy feat. As with the Tower, the foundation of the bridge had to be tilted so the weight would be straight on the pad. But unlike the Tower, where there was flat ground to work on, they had to build the pads on the side of a cliff. Three men had fallen to their deaths even with all the safety protocols they had in place. The working conditions were unimaginable. The men and scaffolding would be lowered over the cliff’s edge and the scaffolding was the only working platform the men had to stand on. Then out of nowhere wind would rush through the gorge, knocking men and scaffolding about as though they were small toys. Then everything would have to be reset and started over. Rafilo and Claude had made a perfect team, and they both felt that the bridge could never have been built by anyone else. Claude left the project with pride and knowledge. At the age of twenty-seven, he had his name on a bridge as one of its engineers.

    Immigration laws had changed between the time he had left the United States and now. They were opening a processing center for new arrivals on an island in New York Harbor. Claude and Dominique had gone to the U.S. Embassy in Paris before the new laws came into effect and filled out the forms that allowed her and their children to enter without being processed. They had been lucky, for Claude hadn’t known the laws would change.
    With Ricardo running a bank in Houston, they knew no one in New York, so they headed directly to the train station. Claude paid for a room on the Pullman car. This was a private, closed cabin with four pull out and pull-down beds and a large seating area. They also had room service and their own bathroom. Claude booked the Pullman through St. Louis, and then to Houston and on to San Antonio.
    The trip went without incident, and three days later the Jaudon family stepped off the train in San Antonio. They boarded the carriage that his father had sent, and their trunks were loaded onto a wagon that trailed behind them. Dominique couldn’t get over the vastness of the country – not just Texas, but the entire trip had been awe-inspiring to her. Donna was only starting to talk fluently, and she was questioning everything and following up questions with a why. Claude enjoyed telling them both about his country, even with all of the whys that followed.
    James was on the porch when the carriage stopped. He shouted to them as they came up the steps: “Welcome home, son!” He pulled Claude close and they hugged.
    Claude stepped back and brought Dominique and Donna forward, and introduced them. “This is my wife, Dominique, and your granddaughter, Donna.”
    James hugged Dominique. “Welcome to the family. I see I have another grandchild on the way.”
    She smiled and touched her stomach. “We’re hoping for a boy this time.”
    James bent and picked Donna up and lifted her high into the air. “I don’t know why. You make very beautiful young ladies.”
    James turned with Donna in his arms and headed into the house. “I’ve had the entire west wing turned into an apartment for you. I know at some point you might want a place of your own, but in the meantime” – he tickled Donna’s belly – “you can stay right here with grandpa.”
    They put Donna down for a nap, and Dominique began organizing the help of two Mexican ladies to deal with their trunks, which were being brought into their new living quarters.

    Claude and James sat in his study and talked over whiskey. “Well, son, you did very well for yourself. A beautiful wife and a beautiful child. The child is a little dark, but for Texas she is lighter than most Mexicans. Let’s hope your luck holds. Ever since Caterino Garza started his damn revolution, the race relations in southern Texas, which have never been good, have gotten really bad.”
    “I haven’t heard about this revolution. Was it in Mexico? How does it affect Texas?”
    “Well, Garza was a Texmex. That’s what they’re calling Mexicans who are Texans. He and a bunch of others declared war on the President of Mexico and started raiding across the border down in the Rio Grande Valley. I remember Garza. He was a friend of Alejandro Cortez, my ex-business partner that the fucking Texas Rangers hung. He didn’t strike me as a revolutionary.”
    Claude finished his drink and brought the bottle to James’ desk. “When did all this start? I saw nothing in the French papers about it.”

    James refilled his glass. “Well, it was sometime in ’91 that Garza made his first raid into Mexico with about 50 or 60 men. That brought in the Union troops. You can’t attack another country from U.S. soil; it’s against the law. It wasn’t but maybe a year later that Garza vanished. Most of his men were arrested and are in jail. But then a rancher by the name of Francisco Benavides, a man I had done business with for years, picked up the flag and started anew. They have at last captured or killed most of the rebels – or bandits, as the Army calls them. Benavides was arrested a few months ago, and is in jail, and may be sent back to Mexico to stand trial for murder after he gets out of jail here. No word of Garza’s whereabouts has been heard.”
    Claude thought a moment. “That’s an interesting story, but why would that have anything to do with race relations in Texas?”
    James drank his whiskey and set the glass on his desk. “The Union Army is more like the Confederate Army these days. There are more Southerners in blue uniforms now than Yankees.”
    “They still have to uphold the law.”

    “The Army doesn’t give a shit about what happens to Texans who aren’t white. This little war has let the hate for anything or anyone that isn’t white out of the bag. I’m not sure how it will ever be put back into that bag. It took a Civil War last time. I heard that the Rangers who were front and center in all of this hung a number of Mexicans, claiming they were part of Garza’s Revolution. Nobody knows if they were or they weren’t.”
    “How about Rafael, Juan, and my brothers? Are they okay?”
    “I guess I forgot to tell you that Juan died last year. The boys are living with Rafael. They are all doing fine.”
    Claude finished his drink and looked thoughtfully into the bottom of the glass. “I’m sorry to hear about Juan. I guess after Maria died he had a hard time going on by himself. But with all that is happening, the real question for me is, have they turned on the colored people?”
    “This is Texas. There are only two colors that they don’t turn on. One is white, although that can change; the other is the green-back dollar. Nothing has been happening right around here, but there are very few colored people in these parts. The Ku Klux Klan is still in power in San Antonio.”
    Claude poured another drink. He didn’t want James going off on his uncle, who was Sara’s husband and the head of the Klan. James hated the man so much he would go on for hours about killing the S.O.B. “To change the subject, what is this thing you’re involved in with Ricardo? A bank and oil deal? What do you know about either one of those things?”
    James refilled his glass. “I don’t know a damn thing about them, but I figured that between you and Ricardo we might make some money out of it.”
    “How do I fit into this deal?”
    “Hell, son, I want you to run the damn thing.”

Copyright © 2019 by Ed Rogers