Empire of bones Page 5

  "You come because your husband said so," Simon's sister said.

  "Well, I don't want for a husband no more. I don't care if he never comes back."

  "See!" the mother cried. "She wants my brother dead. Her own husband. You heard the evil woman. She's cursed our kin."

  Houston grimaced, feeling caught in the middle. He wanted to walk away, but intuited he was somehow part of this. And all he'd wanted was to ride into town and take possession of his radiant army and maybe hear the people cheer a little.

  "That ain't so," the invisible Molly retorted.

  " 'Tis," the hag wailed, "and if you kill Simon you kill them all, that's how the hex works."

  Now the woman called Molly barged past Mosely into the light of day and Houston's jaded petulance melted away. She was a tall beauty with a dense bundle of red hair that blazed in the drizzle. Her beauty tugged at him like a promise of something larger or better than this muddy street. Right away Houston judged that on the eve of war his handsome colonel had found himself a sloe-eyed lass to fall in love with. It was a natural thing to do. In a way so was the fact that one soldier was cuckolding another. What was different was how extraordinarily fine the two of them looked together, and it lifted them above what might have been carnal or just plain common. Reading Homer could be like that, too.

  Out in the open now Molly blinked at the size of the crowd and turned bashful, and Houston saw why. From chin to eye the girl's right side was streaked with a narrow crimson birthmark. It was a mark, and Houston understood about disfigurement, hidden and otherwise. Molly darted her green eyes around at the watching faces and licked her lips. She pawed at her mass of red hair, shielding herself, and swallowed hard. But for all her shrinking she stayed her ground and had her say. "I ain't evil," she murmured.

  "Look at you, like a bitch mutt in front of the whole town." The older woman spat and glared right past Molly to her colonel in the doorway. "Where's your shame, sinner?"

  "My sins ain't none of your business," Molly whispered.

  "When Simon comes home from soldiering, we'll see whose business, sure."

  "I won't have him back."

  "You're in his house, witch."

  "I'll leave."

  "He'll hunt you."

  At that the girl trembled. Houston had once known a sweet girl like this Molly. She'd had a lover, very possibly one as dashing as Mosely, certainly one who was younger than the man her family meant her to marry. The marriage had happened, only to end weeks later in disaster, in divorce and scandal and the end of Houston's governorship of Tennessee. His golden-haired bride had gone back to her family and, after a fashion, Houston had come to Texas. Eliza had broken his heart and he still couldn't forgive her. Even so he was grateful she'd been spared this kind of public scourging. At a certain level, unfaithfulness was almost the same as love. They were matters of the heart and Molly was right, such things were no one else's business.

  Now the wags started in. "Come to the bower with me, Molly darling," someone called from the crowd.

  "I got a silver peso," another offered. "I'll be your husband."

  Molly's gauntlet had begun. It would get cruder, Houston knew. Catcalls were how a mob tiptoed into being.

  In the background Mosely's jaw bunched, but he kept his distance. Come on out here and save your poor gal, Houston silently urged. He tried to recollect from their May card game what kind of man this Mosely might be, but all that came to him was the memory of a hot night with fireflies and a cow in the yard. The cow was trying to give birth and kept mooing, which progressively annoyed the players. Now he remembered that Travis had recommended shooting the beast to be rid of the sound, but Mosely had suggested reaching in and turning the calf or tying a rope to it and pulling. Nobody had done anything, of course, and the game had dragged on. The point was, Mosely

  had it in him to ease this Molly's suffering. But as miserable as he looked, the colonel couldn't seem to find his gallantry. That's how young men were, always too little or too much.

  Molly had begun leaking tears. The catcalls were getting lewder. They were building a credibility of their own, making her into something she wasn't.

  "Enough," Houston suddenly blurted out.

  The harpy's eyes bulged and Mosely jerked as if getting kicked awake. No one was more surprised than Houston himself. There was nothing to gain by stepping between two town women in a squabble. But having opened his mouth he went ahead and physically placed himself between Molly and her fury, his shoulders and chest like a log wall.

  "Sure, you say," the mother hectored him. "You lay your army on our town. You sleep your soldiers in our homes and foul our street. You eat up our corn and chickens and burn our property and steal our women. But you won't go fetch our men. And you say enough? Our men are alone out there. And you stand about and curse them with your cowardice."

  There was a grousing through the crowd. She had stung them.

  "Hush, woman," said Houston. He looked down into her face. The eyes were bloodshot from breakfast smoke and ringed with her children's same pinkeye. Her hair hung in dirty strings, what teeth she had left were too crooked to chew with or else rotting in the gum. Anger and worry and spite had twisted into a mask that was easy to loathe. There was precious little to love in that face with its sallow bones and hateful desperation. Houston tried to open his compassion to her anyway.

  "Don't you hush me," she snarled, and her spit flew. "I'll put the whammy on you and yours."

  "Quit that juju talk or you'll kill us all." He said it sternly, but without edge. "Now you cover up your nakedness. Take your children home." Houston wiped the rain from his eyes. He scraped through the ugliness and mean poverty standing before him and searched for the beauty that was going to be Texas. It would have been far easier to find in a pretty young belle like Molly, but that wasn't the crux of the matter.

  The woman winced at his soft words. Her fury shifted, emptied like a sail dumping loose its wind. A teardrop welled in one eye and her cheek twitched, and now it was her turn for

  the tears to run. Houston didn't dare touch her head, afraid she might react strangely, with a rake of her fingernails, say. She had so much fury and malice in her. But this mother and wife and sister was about to suffer more than she'd ever suffered. If the Mexicans were truly on their way here, then the very earth was about to disappear—literally—from under her feet. She needed kindness and mercy and whatever inspiration Houston could offer.

  "I know it seems our army has invaded your home." He cast his voice like a fisherman throwing his net. He wanted everyone to know what this was about, even though he wasn't quite sure himself.

  "On to Bear," someone shouted. "Let us catch Santy Any and kill him."

  "No, to Goliad," another cried. "We can join Colonel Fannin in his fort and draw the Mexicans south to us and hold forever."

  As Houston had feared, they all had plans to promote.

  "Go south. Matamoros lies open to us," yet another insisted. "We can lay their town to waste."

  "Here's the place to stay," another voice hollered out. "Let them come into hell."

  "North, by Jesus, cut them off on the Camino Real."

  "Which goddamn way, General?"

  Houston waited for the hubbub to dwindle and the eyes to come back onto him. In the excitement, Molly had been forgotten.

  "Were I to consult the wishes of all," Houston said to them, "why I'd be like the ass between two stacks of hay. One says up, the other says down, one north, one south, one west. No, sir, they are many, and we are few. So we must find our place."

  "One more time, Houston, what place will that be?"

  "I will know it when I see it," Houston said.

  "Ha," someone brayed. "Through the lens of a jug you'll see it."

  Houston pretended not to hear. He made his face stone. What else could he do? If they ever did try to usurp him the way they had Burleson, it would be with a joke, not a bullet. As much as he feared their sloth and violence and illiter
acy and, yes, their patriotism, he feared their wit even more. But their slander would have to come sharper than calling him Big Drunk

  and sniggering about his jug. For one thing he'd sworn off the ardor on his way from Washington-on-the-Brazos. This would be a cold water campaign, at least for him. Cold water and hot coffee, if they didn't run short of the black bean.

  "What is important," Houston called to the jeering crowd, but they weren't really listening. Already his army was falling to pieces. He tried again. "What is important is to remember, Santa Anna is out there."

  Houston swept his arm up. He pointed off to the dark western horizon. And at that something remarkable happened and it made the whole town fall silent.

  Taking Houston's motion to be a command, the ugly tan mongrel with the fierce jaws laid the remains of his chewed ears back along his skull and suddenly dashed off toward the west. It was as if Houston had just fired a bullet at the enemy, that muscular singleminded sprint. The dog didn't look back once. A minute later it was almost out of sight, still tearing into the barren reaches. It was frightening and magical at the same time, like an ability to rule the animals and the elements. Houston was stunned, too, but he recovered fast enough to keep the moment his.

  "You aren't a town," he spoke to them, making it up instant by instant, "and we aren't an army, not unless we are a people, all of us together. And we cannot be a people so long as we savage ourselves. It will be a long pull and a strong pull and a pull all together. That's the only way we'll get Texas. In the days ahead, we must reach inside us and find the best in ourselves. We must be better than our enemy. We must be worthy. That is what Texas will be made of."

  It was a good enough speech, Houston could tell because every eye was on him and the catcalls had died. He could hear the children playing in the distance and a late rooster cracking the dawn. He started to step away, highly pleased with himself, thinking the people—his people—had listened with their very souls. But that spiteful woman caught him by the sleeve.

  "What about my chickens?" she demanded.

  Chapter Three

  He had fled the heartbreak of Eliza on a raft up the Mississippi, fled like a fugitive, leaving behind everything so that he could be free for a new beginning. That's how it felt now as Houston closed the door and shut the world out, as if he were casting himself upon a river. For the rest of the morning he took his time and let himself settle into the empty shack. He hadn't occupied a place of his own for years, not since leaving the governor's mansion. As a result Houston had developed the wanderer's trick of inhabiting wherever he was, for as long as he had it, as if it were home.

  Someone had carved a primitive sunburst into the edge of the mantle. Because there was no furniture, the general sat crosslegged on the dirt floor, choosing to face the hearth and its sunburst. He dragged his saddlebags close and withdrew his two pistols, his Caesar and Swift, a long twist of tobacco, and a hawk wing, plus some smaller fetishes and good luck pieces. Last of all he found his packet of writing gear wrapped in a tube inside an oilcloth.

  Setting out his paper, ink, and pen, he got his thoughts straight, then leaned over his knees and wrote two dispatches. One was a war report he'd promised to the convention members, the other an order to Colonel Fannin down at Goliad. He reread his words while the ink dried. Satisfied, he folded the letters and took them outside to the couriers who were taking turns with tongue twisters. He sent two of the three riders galloping off, one to the east, one to the south. Back inside, he

  pegged the door shut again and did some reading and took a nap, resting, waiting.

  Around noon Houston emerged from the shack to warm himself. The drizzle had ebbed. A pewter sun was swimming in the overcast. He caught a passing soldier by the sleeve.

  "Do you know the man they call Deaf Smith?" Houston asked.

  "I know who he is," the soldier answered.

  "Has he come into town this morning?"

  "You're the only one, General."

  "If you see him, you tell him I'm here. This house here is headquarters."

  "If I see him."

  Houston found a stick the size of his forearm and took a seat on an anvil rusting by the wall. He unfolded his clasp knife and set to whittling. Cutting, chewing, he filled his lap with fragrant blond curlicues of wood and listened to the children. His knife went still and Houston circled back through his schoolmaster days when he'd held class with a fresh hickory stick in one hand, half white, half blue from the fire. His hair had been thick back then and he'd kept it bound in a Revolutionary War—style queue that dropped between his shoul-derblades. They had called him Master Houston and loved him for his stories about life among the Cherokee and because he didn't whip them. He leaned out to see them down the street.

  The children had cut some river cane for guns and made touch holes above the green joints with a cobbler's awl. Some amused soldiers had donated a few measures of gunpowder and the children tamped it down their cane barrels, using rocks for musket balls. With burning twigs, they fired away. Naturally, it didn't take long for the combat to draw blood and raise knots and bruises, at which point mothers and older sisters searched out their wounded and dragged them home to do chores.

  Houston had long recognized that there was a warrior in every child. That was easy to trigger: Hand them a stick and a war cry and let them go. The real challenge was to somehow preserve the child in every warrior. That was how he preferred to see his soldiers at any rate, not as a necessary evil but as a loan against their fundamental innocence. His perception didn't change facts, of course. Their little revolution was still a

  bald land grab. But he kept hoping it could be something more, too, something different, maybe even democratic.

  Houston enjoyed another fifteen minutes with his dwindling stick before the colonels approached. They came in a pack down the middle of the street, sidestepping tree stumps that the Gonzales men had never quite gotten around to pulling. Houston bent and spit in the shavings nested between his boots.

  The colonels were spread out, breasting the still air with fierce, martial expressions. Houston leaned back against the wall and the nails squeaked in the clapboard under his weight. He'd known their breed all his life. From genesis, it seemed, America had abounded in the species, bright-eyed men from the dark side of the Appalachians, hungry to where you could see their ribs, dry to where a spark—one word, even—would detonate them. He watched them come on.

  J. S. Neill was bringing up the left with his lank lope of a walk and his starved-looking beard. He was supposed to have been commanding the Alamo garrison, but just a few weeks before the Mexicans showed up he had taken a leave from duty. He was a man with natural good fortune.

  Sidney Sherman carried the right side of the pack. By virtue of having shown up with his own militia—the Buck Eye Rangers or Kentucky Rifles or some such—the tall red-haired businessman had brought with him the rank he'd bestowed on himself back in Kentucky. Houston hadn't met him yet, but he envied Sherman's fancy uniform with its squared shoulders and buttonholes embroidered with silver thread. Besides giving real stature to what was otherwise ordinary-looking clay, the uniform showed a wife's loving touch. Houston wondered what Sherman would say if it were recommended that he ought to leave Texas and return to his wife before this thing became an outright war, and on his way out to hand over his uniform for a general to wear. Houston wanted that uniform, but he also wanted Sherman to clear out. He and his men had showed up scarcely a week ago bearing a silk flag and the bloodlust of crusaders first hitting the Holy Land. So far they'd been nothing but trouble.

  "Houston," Wylie Martin announced. "Since you won't see fit to call your officers to a war council, we've done it for you." His manner suggested that there was a time when his voice had cracked like a bullwhip and men obeyed him. That would be

  back in the days when he'd been thick with Aaron Burr and his grand scheme to take Texas, back before the disgrace. After that Wylie had come to Texas and become a Mexican an
d snatched up much of the prime land and sat on it, waiting for the United States to come in and with it citizens eager for real estate. It had been a long wait. Wylie had gotten old. His voice was like fingernails scratching against the window.

  "Is that so," Houston said mildly. He carved a long white slice from his stick, then another. If there had been a child at hand, he would have put his knife to work sculpting a frog's head or a dog's. For the little girls, and the big ones, too, he usually liked to cut a heart.

  "The Alamo cries to us," J. S. Neill said.

  "Cries to us," Houston drolly repeated. He stood up, dusted his pants of shavings, and walked inside the shack, leaving the door open for the colonels to follow him in. There was no sense sharing their rancor with the street, though these walls weren't likely to hold much in. The officers filled the tiny place.

  "We must save her," Neill pleaded from the hearth with the sunburst. "Buttressed with our courage and arms, she can hold back the dark tide. I know those walls."

  "Tell me," Houston asked him with an offhand curiosity, "when Bowie brought to you my order to destroy the Alamo, how come you didn't obey?"

  Neill stiffened. "It wasn't mine to obey. My wife was sick. I had to leave. I gave my command over to Bowie."

  "And what was Bowie's excuse?" Houston bore down. He wanted this beanpole of a colonel to know that his insubordination had not been forgotten in the sweep of events.

  Neill narrowed his eyes, resenting the humble pie. Houston didn't mind Neill's bitterness one bit, especially if his example would serve to keep the others obedient in the future.

  "We talked about your orders," Neill said. "We went walking around the outside of the Alamo and Bowie told me those walls were as sacred as liberty to him. He called it a chalice of holy freedom."