Nova Cruces is a wretched town of about two hundred people. It is made of whitewashed adobe buildings and is surrounded by fields of irrigated crops. The largest buildings are the church and the "Sheriff's Office", a combination fort, barracks, and administrative center. Nova Cruces would be unremarkable compared to any other small town in the southern part of the state, save that it is located south of what was, in the Old World, the Mexican-American border. I find Father Thomas Gonzalez Gonzalez in the church's hospital wing, completing his checkup on a convalescent.
Our conversation is translated from the good Father's native Spanish.
In the Old World, as they say, I was just a lay priest. Then everything went very, very badly. For everyone, I mean, not only the Church.
The faith has barely survived, but the same cannot be said for the Catholic Church. There were no Cardinals in the state, and both the Bishops of Phoenix and Tucson chose to stay at their posts until the very end, God rest their souls. The Church hierarchy was shattered. There have been...many angry letters, I understand, regarding the new authority, sent between the surviving priests in the north and in the east.
It seems that we will each have to tend to our own flocks, doing what we can, for the time being. Perhaps one day a new Pope will be selected...or he will appoint himself. We can only pray. And in the meantime, we fret and worry as to how far we are straying from Catholic doctrine. I understand that in these dark times, many pray to Santa Muerte, and others insist that this is not to be done. What were once decried as mere "folk saints" are now worshiped openly in congregations. Who is to say which is the right way to ask for intercession? I only serve my flock in the way that is best for them.
[How do you serve your congregation?]
It seems that I must help them with both their spiritual and physical ailments. I take confession and give communion, and christen infants, and do all other things that a priest must, but in this town we have no village doctor, and as it happens I still know a little of medicine and such things. There are also midwives, and not so many of our newborns die as they would without them, so it seems that God blesses their work.
He fidgets.
And of course, we must work to eat, and labor under the eye of our Sheriff. It is...good, that he and his Deputies have elected to attend our services. He is...a good patron of my church.
[How did you come to be here?]
A pause.
After the Lord...well. After Phoenix and Tucson burned, many fled to this part of the state. There were...many people. In the border cities of Nogales and Douglas, there were many who...well, they were not from the state.
Not just the undocumented, you understand, but travelers, people here on work, that sort of thing. Many people crossed the border legally, every day, simply to do their jobs.
But...to many, the cities had too many mouths. And when it came time to decide who went to the farms...
He fidgets again.
It was a...difficult first year. We were not completely helpless, as we had been able to gather a number of supplies before we were forced out, some of them given to us by the authorities. We had some tools and seeds, goats and donkeys...and even a few weapons.
This land has never been tended by the hand of man, so it was lush with birds and beasts and edible plants. But our little shelters, which were all we could build between trying to dig and plant and water the fields, were not always enough to get all of through that first. And many were sick, from improper diets and other things. Some of them died. A band of men, perhaps they had been criminals, took over. They were...cruel.
Still, our town survived for a year, and then for two. We had a larger harvest that second year...and fewer mouths. There were other towns nearby, and we marked out paths, and a few craftsmen and other such men worked a circuit, and we tried to help each other.
Then...
He stops, fidgeting.
[It's alright, I won't tell anyone about this.]
The Sheriff and his Deputies came. They said this village was under his "jurisdiction". And that meant he was in charge, and the crops were his.
There was a fight. The boss of our village and his men, and some supporters, they tried to force the Sheriff out, but he had horses, and guns, and more men. By the end of that third year he was in charge, and now the part of the harvest that we did not eat were being sold, and there were cattle coming in, but to graze on the Sheriff's land.
Now, we hear the Sheriff has signed the Cochise Treaty, and there are laws and such things decided by the Senate. Other times, we have other ranchers come in, and talk to our Sheriff.
[Is the Sheriff as cruel as your first boss?]
...no. He tells his men to keep of the village girls, and we never have more food taken from us than we can bear. As I said, he is a patron of this church.
[But who gave him the authority to rule here?]
When he came to town he had a paper from the Senate placing this village and the land within ten miles of it under his "jurisdiction". I read it myself, when he nailed it to the door of the church. On its face, Cochise wanted to secure its borderlands. In practice, it soon came out that the Sheriff was the brother of a prominent rancher.
[Has this happened to the other villages?]
Oh, yes. There were some half a thousand of us scattered across this land - it's decently watered, most people decided to set up home here rather than go another step further. We are still only a short journey from the old border.
[What do you think the future holds?]
I cannot say. I hear there has been fighting in other parts of the state, between ranchers fighting over land and water. That hasn't happened here. Not yet. But maybe the fighting will not need to come here - I hear that our Sheriff's brother has fought a skirmish with his neighbor, and since he came here the Sheriff has been training some of our young men to be "guardsmen". One day he may need to march off to war.
He sighs and runs a hand through his thinning hair.
Who can say what the future holds? War, peace, freedom, servitude? Only God knows for sure.
***
This has been the chapter on the Cochise Treaty, tanks for reading! I hope to complete this TL very soon, perhaps by the end of the month - from here, we only have one place left to go.
The Wasteland, the Monument to Man's Arrogance itself, the Corpse City.
Phoenix.
