A Rock between Two Rivers

The Fracturing of a Texas Family Ranch

Hugh Asa Fitzsimons III

• Publisher: Trinity University Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781595348401
• eBook ISBN: 9781595348418
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

A Rock between Two Rivers is the story of a man coming to terms with the environmental legacy of his family's ranch in Dimmitt County, Texas, and reckoning with the birthright he'll leave for the generations who follow. What began for Hugh Fitzsimons as a mission to expose local ecological hazards from hydraulic fracking has turned into a lifelong ache to understand the more complicated story of how his family changed the land inherited from his grandfather, and deeper still, how the land irrevocably changed the family.Water is the lens through which this fifth-generation rancher tells his story. While the discovery of oil in this part of Texas fueled the region's growth, water has the upper hand, determining where people live and how they make their living. Agriculture, ranching, drilling for oil, and now fracking all require water, with each pursuit requiring more and more but giving back less and less to the communities they've helped enrich. In A Rock between Two Rivers, Fitzsimons struggles with the inheritance he wants for his own children, one that considers the future consequences of our actions toward the land we are born to and owns the broader threats to our natural resources that loom in the near distance.Interweaving a family narrative of a life built on the U.S.-Mexico border and the history of European colonization with its brutal consequences on the land and indigenous peoples, Fitzsimons explores how our attitudes toward this precious resource have changed alongside our relationship to the places we call home.

· SEVEN ·

Cathedral Rock

It was still dark in the last hour before dawn when I woke. Ink dark. A crescent moon accompanied by stars set like tiny precious jewels into the black void of space slipped beneath the western horizon. Infinity defined. It felt like the kind of dark that can give cover, and it wrapped itself around me like an old, frayed blanket. It held me close as I balanced on a tightrope stretched between terror and tranquility.

I couldn’t sleep. Nightmares, maybe, like the frightening vision of an eighteen-wheeler tanker truck with its grill opened wide, a drunken steel predator careening down a ranch road toward me. In this recurring nightmare, I watch helplessly as the truck crashes into the old red wooden swing gate at the Number 5 windmill. The peeling, faded red planks of lumber splinter into shards that launch skyward, and the rusty chain and O-ring that has been there since before the war snaps, its links flying in all directions.

I was on a mission. I knew where I had to go, and it wasn’t too far away. I tried to pay attention to everything as I walked slowly across the ranch. My senses would soon be filled with what was actual as the gradual liberation of light gave new life to all that surrounded me. But at that moment my eyes were glued to the ground.

My destination was Cathedral Rock. On the flat plains of South Texas, it’s a notable landmark. I made that journey not for the pleasure of the view, but because there was something I had to see.

A dreaded phone call had set me in motion. Without my knowledge a decision had been made, one that had been suspended over my head like the thin, finely honed blade of the executioner’s ax, and I didn’t see it coming until my neck was on the chopping block. From Cathedral Rock I thought I might be able to glimpse my fate, or at least get some perspective on the forces that threatened all I hold dear.

As a boy, I rode a little bay Mexican gelding named Cacahuate, which means “Peanut,” to that remote corner of the ranch. His restless nature would not tolerate an extended viewing of the rock, but the sight of it was enough to set the hook of its mystery deep inside me. Back then the place was off-limits, corralled by a neighbor’s fence. In midlife, with permission, I approached this monolith on foot in the manner of a supplicant, as a seeker, a son, a brother, but also a husband, a father, a rancher attempting to be a good steward of this land that had been handed down to me. Above all, I was a man arriving with questions. But how do you talk to a rock?

The oil company man wanted me to meet his survey crew the following week. They were coming to my pasture to drill ten wells on two five-acre pad sites, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. But I wanted to get a clear view of what had already happened to my brother and sister’s land, south of mine. On the other side of their fence was the rock I was determined to climb.

The light grew by degrees. I paid less attention to my feet and more to what was ahead of me, but I moved slowly, for it was early spring, and that meant rattlesnakes were on the move. They had been snug and warm all winter in their dens and burrows, luxuriating in their torpid state of suspended motion as their cold-blooded bodies slowly digested the pale yellow fat they had stored all year. Waking to a ravenous reality, cranky and hungry like some hungover frat boy the day after Mardi Gras, they would strike at any heat source that even remotely resembled prey.

The biggest rattlesnake I ever saw was more than eight feet long and weighed ninety-seven pounds and four ounces. It had thirty-two rattles, and the diamonds on its back were the size of playing cards. Game warden Herbert Ward had killed the snake as it crossed the road near Pendencia Creek. He said he knew it was big when the rattler’s head got to the far side of the road and the tail had yet to emerge from the brush.

Being struck by a snake that size would be like taking one in the solar plexus from Sonny Liston. The girth was the size of the trunk of a small mesquite. When they slit open that prehistoric reptile’s belly, two slightly decomposed baby jackrabbits were halfway down its digestive track. Above them reposed the slimy gooey-feathered mass of the snake’s final morsel, a male mockingbird whose ebony black eyes were now forever frozen, as if locked in disbelief that it had come to this.

A mere photograph of the snake was enough to keep most people in their cars. And while the length was impressive—with a six-foot cowboy holding it up, there were still two feet of snake coiled at his boots—it was the girth of this serpent that got your attention. At its widest point it measured nine and a half inches. Almost one hundred pounds of pure muscle, capable of driving twin hypodermics the size of small fountain pens deep into prey that never had a chance.

With that memory fixed in my mind’s eye, I scanned the rock slowly, trying to quiet an imagination gone astray, then rose to my knees and took a step. The pasture-walking rule in South Texas is that you only look up at your surroundings when you stop moving. It’s a habit you quickly acquire after your first encounter with Charlie-No-Shoulders.

I walked toward the final boundary of the fence and found the worn passage of a deer trail under the barbed wire. The telltale patches of dark gray hair follicles suspended from the rusty barbs floated gently back and forth in time with the morning breeze. Falling to my belly, I inched forward at eye level; I stood up and began to walk again. With each stride the rock grew in size until I stood at the base. Slowly, reverently, I felt the coarse sandstone with the tips of my fingers. Here, where words fail, touch can tell.

Its color is ghostly, flecked with variegated shades of lichen that adorn its sides, forest green giving way to pale gray and then to black. The lichen are here because they have found a home that will have them, advancing imperceptibly to grow when there is moisture and receding to tiny brittle flakes that do their best to cling to their foundation as heat and dry winds scour the stone’s surface. For millennia this land has endured despite its limited capacity to reproduce, self-regulated by whatever might come from the sky above, a hydrologic cycle that came and went and circled back with an irregular wobble that humbled all who entered its realm. Life adapted. Little rain meant a profusion of mesquite beans, scorching temperatures, and animals like the jackrabbit, which evolved with long ears to dissipate the heat.

I chose a circular path to take in the magnitude of what I was seeing around the base, studying indentations and fallen pieces of smaller rock until I found what I was looking for. There are seven wide and deep grinding holes incised on a narrow, waist-high ledge. They have a language all their own. For as the rock was slowly and painstakingly abraded and the holes deepened, they took on a different force and tone: the deeper you go, the longer you last. And in the world of the native peoples who first set their eyes on this rock, longevity was somewhat ephemeral. Cathedral Rock is the height of a very large four-story building rising over an open sea of grass, cactus, and brush. In geologic parlance it is known as a pillar, a wholly inadequate term for such an imposing anomaly. It was formed more than 35 million years ago, a remnant of a shoreline that bordered the sea during the Eocene epoch. What kept it from eroding was that it was different from the surrounding stone. As the saltwater flowed through it, a stronger rock was exposed, and sand changed to quartz. An alchemical transformation ensured that this pillar of stone would stand.

You have to adapt to such places, not the other way around. But the dust and the din, the clamor of pipe and the raucous cacophony of chain beating against iron propelled me toward that rock refuge. Here I could be surrounded by the reality of time and money, but I was also held safe in the shelter of another time and place.

Halfway up the rock, a wide flat ledge unfolds in layered patterns of undulating sandstone. On the largest of these slabs are the names of an entire squad of National Guard cavalry troopers—Troop L of the Illinois State National Guard—and a date: November 2, 1916.

I wonder what those Corn Belt farm boys and Chicago slum kids must have thought as they stood on this rock, sent into the middle of nowhere to protect their country from the revolution across the river. Mexican bandits were the main threat, crossing the river to loot and pillage as far as they dared. These young guardsmen in scratchy wool uniforms, lean and in their prime, were likely bored stifff by a life of dull routines and drilling, but a midnight raid by the light of a full moon pierced their world with the power of the vengeful and the righteously indignant.

On June 19, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson mobilized the entire National Guard and sent them to the Mexican border. Pancho Villa and his gang had been raiding Texas ranches for livestock and then trading the cattle back for rifles and ammunition. For several weeks after the arrival of the guard, the river country was abuzz with rumors of a large-scale raid by a band of disgruntled Villistas. They had nothing to lose in this no-holds-barred border warfare. When a New York Times reporter tried to explain the Geneva Convention to Villa, all he got was a furrowed brow and a two-word response: ¿Por qué? Why? Villa knew full well that personal enrichment was a short ride away, and safety a sure thing, with a fast horse and a speedy retreat across the shallow river. After each raid and subsequent retreat across the river, there would be the inevitable retaliation by Texas Rangers or angry ranchers.

Three years before that inscription, not five miles distant from Cathedral Rock, Dimmit County had its most notorious encounter with the Mexican Revolution. They were doomed from the start, those revolutionaries, a ragtag confederation of Marxists, Zapatistas, and Wobblies known as the “Red Flaggers,” born of desperation and cemented by anger. President Wilson had recently invoked the neutrality laws that were designed to place impediments on just such groups as this, but in the wilds of the Rio Bravo, a law is a long way from its enforcement.

The revolutionaries’ plan was to open a northern front for Zapata, to be launched on September 16, the day Mexico declared independence from Spain. Their flag bore the prophetic words Tierra y Libertad, a slogan borrowed from the newspaper published by the anarchist Flores Magón brothers. The revolutionaries smuggled German Mausers, cases of dynamite, and various other munitions by train to Carrizo Springs. As the wagon bearing the arms left town, it was spotted by Deputy City Marshal Candelario Ortiz, who shadowed the group until they discovered him and took him prisoner. They loaded him down with bandoliers of ammunition, and when he collapsed from exhaustion they shot him dead. Likely they viewed Candelario as a turncoat because he was a Mexican enforcing the white man’s law in a land that they saw as theirs.

Word was telegraphed to Fort Duncan upriver, and a contingent of cavalry on motorcycle and horseback started downriver. Meanwhile, a posse from Carrizo Springs rode out to trail the gang. It was September and hot, a four-inch rain had deluged the area the night before, and the earth turned to muck while the humidity suffocated the posse and the revolutionaries alike.

When the revolutionaries reached the San Ambrosia Creek, which flows through the West River pasture of the San Pedro, the water had risen so much that they thought they had reached the Rio Grande. Once they had crossed the creek, they killed a deer and built a fire, believing they were safe in Mexico. The posse and the cavalry saw the fire and charged down on the unsuspecting men with guns blazing, killing one, wounding two, and capturing the rest. Sheriff Gardner and Deputy Gene Buck were hailed as heroes, as was Lieutenant Terry de la Mesa Allen, who would become George S. Patton’s second in command during the Second World War.

Buck sent a film crew to Carrizo Springs in 1914 and produced a silent film about the incident, starring himself and other members of the posse. As for the revolutionaries, they were sentenced to prison terms in Huntsville, only to be pardoned in 1928 by Governor Miriam A. Ferguson, who declared their imprisonment unjust because their actions were an act of war.

A few years ago I set out with my father and a friend to locate the long-forgotten battlefield of these insurgents. I knew the approximate whereabouts of the firefight and was determined to see what I could find. After hours of searching, I retreated to a small ravine and sat down in the shade. When I got to my feet again after cooling down, an unnatural object caught my eye. Bending down, I unearthed an unfired rifle cartridge. The short stubby round was a Winchester .351, an exact match for the rifle used by Sheriff Gardner. I had found my object of desire, a link to the past that has connected me and kept me questing and wondering to this very day.

Tierra y libertad: the battle cry of the disenfranchised revolutionaries. They had each other. I related to a group who knew they had a right to what was lost, knew the injustice brought on by years of subjugation, dominated by a force as pernicious as it was mysterious.

There is a wonderful quote by Gen. Porfirio Díaz, the Mexican dicator who ruled the country for more than three decades: “Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States.” In February 1915 the Mexican Revolution finally gained a foothold in Texas that shook the border to its core. As a means of instilling fear in Texans and fomenting retribution against their enemies, a group of disgruntled revolutionaries who were imprisoned in Monterrey hatched the infamous Plan de San Diego.

The idea was to turn up the heat on the smoldering relationship between Anglos and Tejanos. The manifesto, named for the small town in Duval County where the plan was eventually discovered, stated that any white male over the age of sixteen would be executed. A no-quarter race war that exempted only women and children would also repatriate Native Americans to their lands and spare African Americans. The ultimate objective was to free the territory that the United States had seized from Mexico after the Mexican War.

It is likely that Venustiano Carranza, the leader of one of the revolution’s most prominent factions, was behind the plot. By sending small guerrilla bands into Texas and killing Anglos and Tejanos who were allied with Anglos, he managed to create an atmosphere of paranoia along the river that permeated the border.

As a direct result of the killings, the Texas Rangers and the US Cavalry took revenge on innocent Mexicans in Texas and across the river. “Shoot first, ask questions later” became the theme.

President Woodrow Wilson eventually recognized Carranza as the legitimate president of Mexico, a move intended to bring stability to the region. The raids and depredations ceased, for recognition meant arms and ammunition could be legally exported from the United States to Mexico, which in turn meant supremacy for Carranza.

During the heyday of La Raza Unida the heat was turned up once again. The reality that the Anglo population in South Texas was outnumbered wormed its way into my father’s thoughts one day in the early 1970s. Both of his Anglo managers had gone to town, and he was sitting alone in the office at headquarters. Looking out the window, he saw the cowboys sitting on the bunkhouse porch smoking and drinking coffee. Wow, he thought to himself. Now I know how Davy Crockett felt at the Alamo.

Ever since Stephen F. Austin and his “Old 300” set foot in the Lone Star State, the coexistence of Tejanos and Anglos has been unsettled. We need each other, yet history has imprinted both sides with equal parts fear and suspicion.

The rock was warming with the day, and the slow southeast breeze off the prairie was steady now. Below me I watched as intermittent gusts of wind pulsed in waves, sending fluorescent green new-growth mesquite into temporary spastic fits and twists. Above me was a perfect foothold, and with an extended reach and stretch I wedged my boot firmly in the crevice, swung my leg up, and came face to face with a name I know.

“Billy, and Tommie, Ward. Family picnic, 1968” was etched in stone. When I first met Billy, the patriarch of the clan, he was standing by a swimming pool and holding a can of Lone Star beer. He was wearing a sleeveless cowboy shirt, replete with pearl snap buttons, over a pair of bathing trunks that he had probably outgrown in junior high. On his head was an enormous Mexican sombrero; on his feet, hand-tooled lizard-skin cowboy boots. A silver belt buckle the size of a small dinner plate was cinched around his trunks, holding up the rather sizable reservoir of a lifetime of Lone Star and completing a one-of-a-kind sartorial statement. Billy obviously considered this a formal pool party.

When I joined the group tha...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• One · The First Days of Oil
• Two · The Land
• Three · A Poor Man’s Heaven
• Four · Rio Bravo
• Five · Boyhood
• Six · Lessons
• Seven · Cathedral Rock
• Eight · Natural Resources
• Nine · The Arc of Instability
• Ten · Politics
• Eleven · River Journey
• Twelve · Legacies
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• Captions