Crockett of Tennessee Page 38

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Well, sir, not really, not for you, at least. There’s a man we’ve arrested, sir, for cutting a man in a tavern brawl a couple of nights ago, and he’s been calling for you to come. He declares he’s your friend, odd though that sounds.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “He gives the name of John Canaday, sir. He’s about your age, maybe a bit older, with dark hair and a long beard, and very swarthy skin.”

  Persius! It had to be.

  “What does he want from me?”

  “I don’t rightly know. He just asks for you to come. Maybe he believes that you, being a congressman, can help him out in some way. There’s no bail for him; he’s a rover, you see, and the judge figures he’ll simply run out before his trial if he’s let free.”

  David yawned and brushed back his hair with his fingers. “Why’d you come calling at three in the morning? Couldn’t this have waited until tomorrow? And hang it, you’ve had him two days or so already, ain’t you?”

  “Yes sir. I’m sorry about this, and I’ll take the blame personally. The fact is, sir, we’ve ignored his calls for you until now, but the prisoner has took very sick, and is liable to die. I made the decision myself to come fetch you up, Colonel. It came to me that maybe he really was a friend of yours, unlikely as it seemed, and I thought how bad it would be if he died without us ever letting you know. I’m sorry about the disturbance, sir. Like I said, I’ll take the blame personally.”

  David sighed. The policeman was young and very sincere. He didn’t fault him. But his message was most unwelcome. He had hoped Persius would just fade away and no longer be a part of his life, particularly not the public life he lived here.

  On the other hand, if Persius was not going to conveniently fade away, perhaps this way was best. In a jail-house there would be privacy, secrecy. No one need know.

  “Don’t fret, young man. You done the right thing coming to me.”

  “You know him?”

  “Suffice it to say I’ve been associated with a John Canaday in the past.”

  “Well, this makes me feel better, sir. This may in fact be the same man.”

  David knew it wasn’t, of course, but there was nothing gained in letting the policeman in on that. “Let me finish dressing,” he said. “I’ll come with you and meet your prisoner.”

  David wondered what Persius would ask of him. Maybe he wanted money. Maybe he simply wanted to talk to a past friend. Whatever, he would settle this unwelcome affair quickly, thoroughly, and discreetly. David had no intention of any further involvement with Persius Tarr. Crockett of Tennessee was a man of ambition, a man with a future, and by no stretch did he intend, to see that future ruined by an old, bad memory after all these long years … if Persius even lived through whatever illness had him down.

  He dressed quickly and headed out into the streets of the sleeping city with the policeman at his side.

  Chapter 48

  Wiping sleep from his eyes, Campbell Ibbotson rose, white hair mussed into a tangle, his pale, thin legs extending from beneath the hem of his long blue nightshirt. He peered at the clock on his wall. It was five-thirty in the morning. Whoever was jangling his bell must have come on a medical emergency. Never conveniently timed, those things. Throwing a robe around himself, he shuffled to the door.

  “David!” he exclaimed after swinging the door open. The word was slightly mutilated by the lingering effects of his apoplectic attack many months before. “Are you sick again?”

  “No, Campbell, not me. But there’s a man being brought here for a bleeding. He’s a man I knew years ago, the one I told you about. Persius Tarr.”

  “Tarr … my Lord! The Persius Tarr?”

  “Indeed. He’s been in the jail here for stabbing a man in a tavern, but I’ve worked it out for him to go free. The fellow he had stabbed was locked up there too, just a common type, and I paid him off to drop the charge against Persius. It’s a story I can tell you fuller later on. The point of it all is that Persius is sick, nigh to death, and he needs a bleeding or some such in the worst way. Campbell, I’m sorry, but I’ve took it on myself to bring him here. I hope you don’t mind it.”

  “Of course I don’t. I’m a physician, am I not? And for you, David, I’ll do anything I can, as you should well know. Where is he?”

  “Being brought here by a couple of trusty prisoners from the city jail. They had to lay him out on a door to cart him, him being so sick.”

  Ibbotson tugged David inside and closed the door. He went to the basin in his bedroom and splashed water on his face and hair. He combed his hair back and dressed himself while David Crockett paced in the outer room. Ibbotson sent his mind back to the conversations he and David had held in the past concerning Persius Tarr. Since his sickness, it was harder to remember the details of such things, but after a few moments he had sorted it out. By the time Ibbotson was fully dressed and the trusties were knocking at his door, Ibbotson had entirely refreshed his memory on the Persius Tarr matter. Clearly a new chapter in the story was developing. He was curious to find out what it would yield.

  David was already hustling the trusties into the room when Ibbotson emerged. The door upon which they had carried the ill man was too wide to fit through Ibbotson’s doorway, so they were carrying the fellow bodily, his arms dangling, bearded head lolling to the side, his rump nearly dragging the floor. David directed them into Ibbotson’s spare bedroom and had them place Persius Tarr on the bed.

  “Why did you bring him up here?” the old doctor asked David irritably. “You know my clinic is downstairs.”

  “This one has to be hidden,” David replied. He flicked his eyes toward the trusties. “I’ll tell you more in a minute.” He handed the trusties a coin apiece, which surprised and pleased them tremendously. They left in a cheerful mood, treading back toward the jail.

  Ibbotson turned to David. “He must be hidden, you say? Why?”

  “Because I don’t want it known that Congressman David Crockett has anything to do with this man,” David replied. “That ain’t no deacon of the Baptist Church you’ve got lying in yonder. I don’t need his reputation ruining mine. I’ll be fortunate if word don’t get out through the police or the other prisoners.”

  Ibbotson went to the bedside and lit the lamp. He began examining his unexpected patient. The smell of Persius’s unwashed body filled the room. His beard was filled with grit and burrs and dried, crusted rheum, and the abundant wrinkles lining his dark face were filled with dirt, sweat, and general grime. Persius’s hair and beard were both overlong; all in all he looked like a man who had lived in the poorest of conditions for a very long time.

  Ibbotson examined Persius at length, lifting his eyelids, looking in his throat, ears, nose, feeling along his neck and groin and midsection, where he lingered longest, probing his hand deep to feel the size and shape of the internal organs. Finally he said, “I believe this man has something in common with you other than past association. He’s suffering the same affliction I’ve bled you for—that or something very similar.”

  “I’ll be shot! Is that right?”

  “Yes. Now if you’ll pardon me, I’ll go downstairs and get my bleeding equipment.”

  While the physician was gone, David stood looking down at Persius and marveling at himself for what he was now doing. What could be more ironic? The last thing he had wanted was any further involvement with Persius Tarr—and yet here he was, springing him from jail, paying off his victim to drop the charge, and now bringing him for medical care. It was a fool thing most assuredly, but what else could he have done? When he looked into that cell and saw the pallid form of a man who once had been a close friend, he couldn’t simply walk away. David Crockett might not be a saint, but neither was he a devil. It was his duty to help Persius.

  But it was a risk to do so, and that concerned him. While giving his life’s story to Mathew St. Claire Clarke and more recently to Thomas Chilton, David had carefully avoided any men
tion at all of Persius Tarr. No reader could even guess such a man existed, based on what information David had preserved. Who could have supposed that Persius himself would suddenly reappear after … how long had it been? David counted back the years to that night he had talked to Persius in the prison tent. Good Lord, that had been right about twenty years ago! Where had the years gone?

  Ibbotson came back in with his gear and set about bleeding Persius. David watched the operation, noting how slow and feeble Ibbotson was now. And old, doting man. It was sad to see. Ibbotson’s condition, combined with the awareness of the past that Persius roused, made David melancholy. How quickly a man’s life sped by, to be gone before he even noticed its passing! And he could never know how much time he had remaining. It was enough to sober anyone who pondered on it.

  Persius certainly didn’t look any better for his bleeding. He was more pallid than before, his tightly closed eyes more sunken. He looks dead as a beached shad, David thought. He stood over Persius, wondering if he would die. The calculating, political side of him couldn’t help but consider the convenience of it if Persius did die; the human side of him felt appropriately shocked at such a thought. Of course he didn’t want Persius to die. They weren’t friends now, but they had been friends before. As a child he had looked up to Persius even more than he had his own older brothers.

  Ibbotson sat down on a chair at the far side of Persius’s bed. The sun was rising now, spilling light through a window behind him. “I certainly don’t see much of you anymore,” Ibbotson said. “I fear I’ve run you off with my warnings about the Whigs.”

  David saw little point in trying to deny the obvious. “I suppose that’s the straight-out truth of the matter. After a while I got weary of hearing how gullible old Davy Crockett was, and how the Whigs were going to chew him up only to spit him out like a husky quid when they’d drained the juice from him.”

  “Forgive me, my friend. I was only trying to be forthright. I had no intention of driving you away.”

  David grinned. “Well, I’ve sure come running back, now that I have need of you. I hope you won’t think ill of me for that.”

  Ibbotson waved off the suggestion. “Glad to be of service to you, even if only by helping Mr. Tarr here. But I must ask you: What do you want me to do with him? Keep him here until he is well?”

  David was glad Ibbotson had been the one to actually bring up that idea, which was precisely what he did have in mind. He told the doctor as much.

  “Very well,” Ibbotson said without a falter. “If that’s what you wish, you’ll have it.”

  “I’ll pay the costs, of course.”

  “Fine. My fee is a revival of your visits to me, just as it was before. I pledge to you I’ll offer no more unsolicited advice.”

  David grinned and leaned over the bed, putting out his hand. Ibbotson shook it. “Consider it a bargain,” David said.

  David remained by Persius’s bedside the rest of the day. By midday Persius had come around some, but was in no better shape to communicate. He was delirious and fevered, thrashing in the bed and babbling. David felt a chill of recognition when he picked out the words “Matilda” and “Matty” from Persius’s jabber. Matty … the very name inscribed inside the bracelet that Betsy had taken from the corpse found on their property. Together with Uncle Jimmy’s silver piece found in the baby’s wrap, that provided strong evidence in favor of David’s suspicion that the woman had been Persius’s wife or companion, and the baby had been his as well. It gave David a pang when he realized that Persius might not yet know what had happened to his child.…

  And with that thought, David realized why Persius Tarr must have gone to the trouble of venturing all the way to Washington City to find him. He had wanted to learn what happened to his baby girl.

  David began to dread the moment that Persius came out of his sickness. He could not predict what it would do to his ailing old companion when he found out that the child he had given over to the Crocketts had not survived.

  Persius remained in substantially unchanged condition for three more days. David had to come and go because of his congressional obligations, but at every opportunity he slipped to Ibbotson’s rooms to be at Persius’s side. He didn’t bother to notice the change that was taking place in him simply because Persius was nearby. He was spending much less time dwelling on himself and his political destiny. He had twice excused himself from book-writing sessions with Chilton, giving feeble and undetailed explanations that obviously left Chilton confused. David could understand the confusion; it was he who had been so preoccupied with making progress on the autobiography before.

  On the morning of the fourth day, David was roused from his bed by a street boy sent by Ibbotson to fetch him. “The doctor says to tell you he’s awake,” the boy said, obviously not understanding the message he was bearing. But David understood, and dressed in a hurry, rushing straightaway to Ibbotson’s.

  Persius was sitting up, sipping on a cup of hot broth. When David entered the room, he smiled feebly. For several moments the two men stared at each other. Looking Persius in the eye swept the years away from David; he felt like a boy again in his presence.

  “Howdy, Colonel Crockett.”

  “No colonel to you, Persius. Just David.”

  “I hear I come near to dying.”

  “You did. I could tell it. I was at your bedside through a lot of it.”

  “That’s what the old man told me. I do appreciate it—and you fetching me out of that jail. I would have died there, sure as the world.”

  “It wasn’t nothing. You’d have done the same for me.”

  “No. I wouldn’t have been allowed to. A congressman has what they call ‘influence.’” Persius took a trembling sip of broth, downing it with smacking lips. “I’m proud of you, David. I was proud of you when I first heard you’d gotten in the state legislature. When I heard about you turning congressman, it was right hard not to brag on you outright. But I didn’t. It wouldn’t do no good for your reputation for folks to know you had been a friend of mine.”

  Hearing his own frequent thought returned to him from Persius himself embarrassed David. “Pshaw!” he said. “I don’t reckon you could hurt me.”

  Persius smiled. “Don’t try to spare my feelings, Davy. I read your storybook, and noticed I wasn’t in it.”

  “That wasn’t really my storybook. Another fellow wrote that. I’m writing my own right now.”

  “Will I be in that one?”

  David reddened, lowered his head. “No.”

  “There! You see it just like I do. Don’t go hangdogging on me about it, Dave. I don’t mind it, really I don’t. I had dropped the last of my pride before I sprouted my first whisker.” He lay back and closed his eyes. “Wears me out, talking so much.”

  “You need your rest.”

  Persius looked at David again. “Not until I find out one thing. There was a sickly baby left on your Tennessee door a few years back, left by a man whose wife had just died, and who was running hard from folk who would kill him if they caught him. David … did that baby live?”

  David’s throat was dry and tight. “No, Persius. I’m sorry. My Betsy did her best, but it just … I’m sorry.”

  Persius closed his eyes again and clamped his mouth tightly shut. For several moments there was, no sound but the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner and the sound of Ibbotson’s muffled voice filtering up from the office below as he talked to a patient. A tear slipped out from beneath Persius’s right eyelid, and he wiped it away with a callused finger.

  “I’m mighty sorry,” David said. “I had already figured it was your child. Because of the silver piece.”

  “I hoped you’d find it. There was no time for me to do anything else to make you understand. They were close upon me; I had to run.”

  “She was buried like a Christian, Persius.”

  “I’m glad. You reckon babies go to heaven, David? I heard there’s some say they don’t, unless they’ve bee
n water-sprinkled.”

  “I figure they all go to heaven, Persius.”

  “So do I. So she’s all right now. She’s happy.”

  “I’m sure she is. What was her name, Persius?”

  “Rebecca. After your mother, who was so kind to me.”

  That news caught David by surprise, and touched him too. “I’ll be sure to tell her,” he said. “She’ll be pleased.”

  “So your mother is still living?”

  “Yes, and my father too, though they’re both well up in their years.”

  “Still at the tavern?”

  “No. They’re West Tennesseans now, just like me. The Crockett family always seems to move west.”

  “I’m glad they’re still alive.”

  “I want to hear about your wife and child, Persius, if you’ve got the strength to talk.”

  “Not now,” Persius said. “I’m feeling weak and right sad. Later I’ll tell you everything.”

  “That’s fine. You sleep now. I’ll be back this afternoon.”

  David left and went down to inform Ibbotson that Persius was resting. He left the office and took a long walk. Glad as he was that Persius was regaining strength, he felt very depressed, mostly out of sympathy with Persius’s grief over his lost child. And also he was beginning to worry again. Now that Persius was recovering, would he want to remain here with his old friend? That was out of the question. The situation had the potential to become very delicate indeed. David began to feel wrought-up over the possibility, until he remembered that Persius himself had expressed his own understanding of the need to keep their association secret. Surely that meant he didn’t intend to remain around. David hoped so—and then felt guilty for it.

  Near evening David returned and found Persius awake again and looking stronger. Before, his pallor, combined with the swarthiness of his skin, had given him a sickly, almost olive color. Now he had a ruddier look, and was sitting up taller in the bed. He greeted David pleasantly. David noted that age and weathering had accented Persius’s swarthiness. From some angles he looked Indian, from others almost Mexican.