Crockett of Tennessee Read online

  The talk about Winchester’s generosity proved true. Once again David was clothed, as were all his men, and if his purse was still empty, at least his belly and his glass were full. Winchester had gladly given aid to the hapless men—especially when he learned the identity of David, whose name had become quite well-known in the State of Tennessee during the years that had intervened between Polly’s death and his freshly concluded misadventure as a boatman.

  David sat across a table from Winchester in the latter’s parlor, sipping from his glass from time to time as he told his life’s story. Not only David himself, but his crew, had been given lodging by the good man, but at the moment only David shared Winchester’s company, the others having retired.

  Winchester was openly fascinated with his guest’s biography and sat in rapt attention, frowning in concentration, asking the occasional prompting question. An hour or more of talk behind, David had just recounted Polly’s death, and now he paused. Even though much time and change had come about since her passing, the subject still was difficult for him to discuss.

  “What a tragic thing, losing one’s wife at so young an age, and with children in the home,” Winchester said. “What happened to you after that?”

  “For a time my younger brother Joe and his own brood lived with us,” David said. “They were a help to me, no question, but nothing seemed right, not with Polly gone. I struggled to do what I could for my young ones, working hard, trying to farm. And hunting. I hunted a lot, for meat, for pelts to sell.…” He paused, tapping his finger on his glass and looking wistful. “And mostly for my own sake. Just to get away, to be alone. I’d roam the woods with my dogs and talk to Polly, just like she was there.” Now David glanced up, embarrassed. He had revealed more of his inner self to Winchester than he was comfortable showing. He blamed the liquor, but took another sip anyway.

  “And now you’ve married again.”

  “Yes, yes. It didn’t take me long to see that I couldn’t raise a bunch of children proper without a mother in the home. So I commenced to looking for a good woman.”

  “And you found one, obviously.”

  “Yes sir. Elizabeth Patton was her name, though I call her Betsy, same name as one of my sisters. Betsy’s a big-boned North Carolina gal. I married her a year or so after Polly’s passing. It was a providential union. She was widowed by the Creek War, you see, and left alone with her own children, as I was with mine. We had that in common and it drew us together.” David paused a moment, then smiled. “The day we was married—it was in her house—a pig come walking in on the wedding, grunting and such. It was a pet of Betsy’s. I booted it out and told the folks that from then on, it would be me and not that pig doing all the grunting thereabouts.”

  Winchester laughed. “I’m glad you found a good wife, David. Few men were made to make it through life without a helpmeet.”

  “I believe that’s true, sir.” He chuckled suddenly. “But you know, after I married Betsy, I come near leaving her in the same situation we were trying to get out of by marrying. I came nigh to joining Polly in the life hereafter.”

  “What? You were hurt or something?”

  “No, it was illness. It happened while I was away from home too, and there ain’t no sickness worse than the one that strikes you on the trail.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Down south. Alabama country. After remarrying, I was struck with the wanderlust and took a good long trek into Alabama, looking for land to move to. I had a few neighbors with me. When some of our horses took off, I took chase after them a whole day, and never come across them, and that night I put up for rest in a house—and by the next morning I was sick as a dog, sick nigh to death. They brought in a man to bleed me, and before long I went looking for my fellows again, but the fever just gripped me all the harder and I fell out by the road. Some Injuns come along and helped me get to another house for rest, and by some circumstance or another my old partners came by there and took me on to another man’s place and left me to die. They bought horses and rode home to give word of my passing. But I reckon I surprised them. Two weeks later I was quite a lot better, and hitched me a wagon ride home again. When I got there, Betsy thought I was a ghost, having been told I was gone from this world. And I reckon I did look like a ghost; up until that time I’d always had two bright streaks of color in my cheeks, and I ain’t seen a sign of them since.”

  He told Winchester how the next spring he moved his family westward into Lawrence County, Tennessee, settling on Shoal Creek in territory recently obtained through treaty from the Chickasaws. There he and Elizabeth—who had brought some minor wealth of her own into the marriage—began to build up a sizable distillery, powder mill, and grist mill, all standing together on the bank of the creek. And there the fires of political ambition that had begun to flicker some years before finally broke into flame. David was made an unofficial local magistrate, then a state-appointed justice of the peace. He affiliated with the state militia as well, and through election gained the rank of colonel, a title he attached proudly to his name. He would no longer be merely David Crockett, or even Mr. Crockett. He would be Colonel Crockett, a title with the kind of dignity and authority he valued.

  “I involved myself in politics,” he related, a look of pride slipping onto his face. “I was elected town commissioner in Lawrenceburg right about that time. I had begun thinking about politicking while I was still in military service during the war. There was little enough government there at the time, so the people come together and set one up, and I had the pleasure to be part of it. And I’ll confess to you, sir, I enjoyed holding office, and it began to grow in my mind that I might be suited for higher things yet.”

  “You were beginning to think, I assume, of your legislative run?”

  “Yes sir. By the first of the year of 1821, I had settled on it firm. I laid aside my commissionership and put my hat in the ring for the state legislature. It was the grandest enterprise I had ever put myself upon, and I did my best at it. But I knew I had an advantage, if I can be so bold as to claim such a thing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  David’s eyes grew brighter and he spoke with even more vigor. This was a topic he had thought out in detail. “My advantage is that I understand the people, Mr. Winchester. The common people, I’m talking about. Poor folk, folk who have to scrape and fight just to survive. Folk who care more about a man’s character than about his schooling or how many big words he can toss out from a stump. And I’ll tell you something else, though I may sound the braggart for it: since the days I was a boy, I saw time and again that folks just … well, liked me, took to me. There was many a time when people offered me work, and them hardly knowing who I was. There was a sea captain once tried to talk me into sailing to England with his crew, and he had only just laid eyes on me when he made the offer. I believe it’s a gift providence has given me, Mr. Winchester. There’s something about me that draws people, at least some of them. I don’t know why it is. But I know it surely helped me when I made that first campaign for the legislature.”

  “I’ve heard some word-of-mouth about your campaign style, Colonel Crockett. Colorful, I suppose you could call it.”

  “It’s common sense, that’s all. A man running for office has to present himself in his best lights. And mine ain’t as a speaker, no sir. Me, I’m more at ease with a joke or two, a little jab at myself and then a deeper one at my opponent, and then winding it up by offering to buy every man in shouting distance a good stout drink. Let me tell you, that’ll earn you the vote of a Tennessee stump-grubber quicker than the finest words you try to sparkle his ears with.” He grinned and winked.

  “You’re a clever man, Colonel.”

  “Just a man who knows the people, and himself.”

  “And your majority was impressive in that first race, I believe.”

  “Double my opponent’s vote, with nine more to spare.”

  “You are a man of great potential, Colonel. There are grea
t things ahead of you.”

  It seemed to David that there was something more than mere politeness in Winchester’s last statement. But he left the matter unprobed when Winchester went on to question him about details of his legislative career. David was struck by Winchester’s knowledge and his perceptiveness of the issues that he had centered on. Winchester knew that David had voted against double taxation of delinquent landowners, had promoted various steps to ensure fair land issuances and surveys, and had supported efforts toward a constitutional convention much needed by western district settlers. An impressive show of concern for the welfare of the common man who he so extolled, Winchester declared it, and once again David puffed with pride.

  “I’ll tell you, sir,” David said. “I soon had personal reason to look out for the concerns of the western district. There was a fierce bad flood on Shoal Creek, just as bad, or worse, than one that swamped out a mill of my father’s back in Greene County when I was small. Every bit of what Betsy and me had worked for got washed away, clean as you please. Three thousand dollars worth of loss—that’s what we faced. Betsy, bless her soul, just took it in stride, and declared we would just pay up as best we could, take our family and make a new start.”

  Winchester looked appalled. “How the devil did you deal with such a load of debt?”

  “At great personal loss,” David replied. “And it hurt, mighty bad. We turned over lands and slaves and every bit of property we had left, to cover our debts. I guess you could say we invited them who we owed to sue us, and didn’t fight paying all that we could. But it wiped us out. We couldn’t stay thereabouts no longer after all that. I turned my eyes west. To the Obion River country.”

  “Beautiful country.”

  “Yes. We settled in to try to make our way as best we could, which as often as not was from me selling wolf scalps and pelts and such. I had no notion of running for the legislature again—then I’m shot if somebody didn’t go and put an announcement in the newspaper saying I was in the ring again. It was a joke, I reckon, but it got me hot, and I decided to see it through just to turn the laugh back the other way, you see. I made myself a shirt of buckskin with big old pockets, and carried a bottle of whiskey in one of them and a good twist of tobacco in the other, and every man I met, I’d offer him a swallow and then a chew to replace the one he had to spit out to take the whiskey. So he was better off when I left him, you see, than he had been before. And I was running against Dr. William Butler, you may recall, who had married one of Andy Jackson’s nieces. I made hay over old Butler’s money, of which he’s got plenty, reminding voting men that their own wives had to wear worser cloth on their persons than old Butler wiped his feet on in his big fine house. Oh, I gigged Butler like a frog!” He drained his glass and refilled it.

  “I hear you once gave one of Butler’s own speeches word for word before his chance to give it himself. Is that true?”

  David guffawed. “Yes sir. He had to make him up a replacement right on the spot. I won that race right handy, I can tell you.” He sloshed his drink, and a splash of liquor spilled onto his shirt, soaking through and touching alcohol to one of the many abrasions he had suffered while being pulled from the sinking boat. The sting brought an abrupt end to laughter and talk.

  Winchester stood, pacing the room and rubbing his chin thoughtfully. At length he turned and faced David. “Colonel Crockett, I must say I am deeply impressed with you,” he said. “And I have a proposal to put forth to you, one that comes with my pledge of support, and which I hope you will take with the utmost seriousness.”

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “Colonel Crockett, the hand of destiny is upon you. I see it clearly. There are higher things in store for you than what you have yet achieved.”

  “Higher things?”

  “Indeed. I’m talking of the Congress of the United States of America. You, Colonel Crockett, would make a most excellent congressional candidate, the kind of candidate who could most certainly win.”

  David smiled rather sadly. “But you know I’ve already tried my hand at that … unsuccessfully.” The unpleasant memory of a failed effort to enter national politics the prior year made David shift in his chair, suddenly restless.

  But Winchester waved his hand as if to brush off the subject. “A first race means nothing. Most first efforts for major office fail. You must not give in. Next year’s race can be yours, Colonel. I’m convinced of it.”

  David mulled it. Had he thought of this himself, he wouldn’t have given it much credence, but coming from Winchester, it had a believable sound.

  “There is one thing I must ask you, however,” Winchester went on. “Is there any event from your past, any scandal, or indiscretion, or unseemly past associate, who could scuttle your reputation in the heat of a national race, or once you are elected?”

  David paused, eyes lowered; his mind flashed back to a military camp, the body of a guard choked to death by a prisoner’s chains, desperate lies told in haste and fear.… He had made no mention of Persius Tarr to Winchester. In fact, he had put Persius so far from his mind over the past several years that he had nearly forgotten his existence. And maybe Persius didn’t exist anymore; for all David knew, he was dead. Even if not, he was as good as dead to David Crockett.

  He looked up. “No sir,” he said. “There are none.”

  “Excellent. Excellent. A pure reputation is a boon, virtually an essential, for a successful candidate. Colonel Crockett, you will take my suggestion seriously, I hope?”

  David tried to picture it in his mind. David Crockett, member of Congress … a man fulfilling his destiny in the very center of national power. Try as he would, he couldn’t quite see it. The memory of his prior defeat was still too fresh.

  And yet …

  He smiled tightly at Winchester, and lifted his glass in salute. “I’ll think on it, sir. I reckon it can’t hurt to think on it, can it?”

  Winchester smiled. “No sir. It can’t.”

  Glass touched glass, and they drank.

  That night in his bed, David thought on it until he fell asleep. When the morning sun through the window pried open his eyes, it was the first thing that came to his mind—thought of even before he remembered the great economic loss the river had brought him, even before the first wave of a terrible hangover washed sickeningly over him.

  He was still thinking about it—and talking about it with Winchester—when the sun set that evening.

  Chapter 39

  Many times before the thought had come to her, and now it came again: He makes it easier for me to smile.

  For Elizabeth Patton Crockett, that counted for a lot, because life had not always given her much to smile about. Certainly the Carolina girlhood of increasingly distant memory had been a happy time, as had been the day she wed James Patton, the husband who had brought her to Tennessee. But much sadness had come her way as well, the greatest being James Patton’s death in the Creek War. It was in the dark time afterward that she had discovered the ability of David Crockett, no stranger to bereavement himself, to bring light into the gloom. He had a way about him, a kind of inner sparkle shining through his dark eyes, that gave her a sense of hope … and made it easier to smile. That was the main reason she had married him and borne him children even though she had thought her married life was over and her childbearing years were past: he could always make her smile; and she loved him for it.

  She had managed to smile even when the Shoal Creek flood washed away their mills and distillery—businesses that she couldn’t help secretly regarding more as hers than his, considering that much of the money behind them had come from her pocket. She had smiled when David had gone down in defeat in his first race for Congress, and now she was managing to smile again, despite her sense of shock over the two pieces of news David had delivered to her.

  The first concerned the loss of the boats and staves. They were fully gone; after leaving Memphis, David and a companion had traveled as far as Natchez, hoping to retrie
ve the vessels, which had broken free of the log jam and headed downriver as expected. The effort was for naught. After months of planning, labor, and investment, all designed to lift them from the financial pit into which the Shoal Creek disaster had thrown them, they were again wiped out, and every day new lawsuits were being filed against them in connection with their prior loss.

  That was jolt enough—but David had delivered another in its wake. He had just announced to her that he intended to run for Congress a second time. And this time, he declared, he could win—would win.

  “The first time around all was against me,” David said. “Colonel Alexander”—his opponent in that prior race—“had the advantage of high cotton prices at the time, which he could claim was because of his old tariff bill. And he had the benefit of being already in office, of course. But that will work against him this time, I’m convinced, and he surely can’t claim that cotton prices are good now! Best you can get is eight dollars per hundredweight. It was about twenty-five a hundred in the last campaign.

  “And this time, Betsy, I’ve got money backing me, out of Memphis. Major Marcus Winchester is going to give upward of two hundred dollars for me to use as I need it. And I’m a little older and wiser, and my name is known better than before. It will be different this time than the first. I’ve made you no fortune, Betsy, but in Congress I can make you proud, and maybe find a way to better our situation. I want to do it, Betsy. What do you think of it?”

  She had never seen him show such eagerness in his expression. He was a man who had been dealt harsh personal blows in the mill and river disasters—but the possibility of political success obviously gave him hope. How could she do anything but support him?

  “Davy,” she said, “if it’s Congress you want, then go and get it. You’ll have me standing behind you all the way, win or lose.”