Crockett of Tennessee Page 43

  Eventually, one of the drunker and more verbose members of the crowd stood and said, “Colonel Crockett, there’s some of us gentlemen here who’d like you to commentarize on the last election, which so scandal-o-faciously has wrested your esteemed and honorable self from your rightful chair in Congress and given it over to be filled by a peg-leg. When you occupied that chair sir, it was to the good of all men, noble and otherwise, of the great State of Tennessee.”

  “You are saying,” David interrupted, “that when I was in my chair, my chair was an asset?”

  Thunderous laughter went up, though only after the couple of moments it took for David’s subtle play on words to sink in.

  “Indeed it was, Colonel. Indeed it was. Now in this chair sets an ass of a different breed, an ass of the long-eared jack variety. Now, to our sorrow, this chair is filled by a scoundrel who must hop from his bed to his privy, a man who without a whittled prop lacks even the ability to kick a stray cur without crashing bodily to the earth, and whose only skill of merit is the ability to trim the nails of his toes in half the time it takes the average man. Your thoughts on this, Colonel!”

  David stood, lifting his glass. “Gentlemen, I’ll answer this fine request for comment with a toast, addressed to all the former constituents of mine who have so foolishly turned me out to pasture. My toast is this: if you had elected me, good citizens, I would have delighted to serve you to the best of my ability. But since you have chosen to elect a man with a timber toe to succeed me, you may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas!”

  The men cheered in delight, drained their cups, and hammered them on the table. “Crockett! Crockett! Crockett!” someone began chanting, and others picked it up until soon it rang so loud that it rattled the barroom ceiling. David beamed. Truly, this kind of adulation was greater than any victory would have brought him. He never would have thought it before, but there were occasions when to lose brought more satisfying rewards than to win.

  Half an hour later, the celebration still going strong, David slipped out of the barroom and hotel and headed for the nearest private alley. Behind him a shadowed figure moved and followed. He half sensed the presence but thought little about it, his sensibilities numb from drinking. At the end of the alley he relieved his bladder. When he turned around again, he found himself facing a bearded man with a wide-brimmed hat.

  “Hello, David.”

  A pause. David frowned. “Persius … Lord have mercy, Persius, is that you?”

  “Yes.” Persius’s voice sounded weak. He turned his head to the side and coughed.

  “Persius … why, I be shot, drawed, and quartered!” David grinned. “Persius Tarr, right here in Memphis!” He stumbled forward, very drunk, and threw his arms over Persius’s shoulder. But Persius pulled away, turned, and went into a severe fit of more coughing. Every hack seemed to wrench him deeply. Before the fit was done, Persius had sunk to his knees and seemed on the verge of wretching.

  David was so bleary-minded it was hard to force out clear words. “Persius … you sick or … something?”

  His voice was a whisper. “Yes. It’s my lungs. Don’t know what it is that’s wrong with them.” He hacked a couple of more times. “They hurt me a lot, and sometimes I swear I cough up little pinkish pieces of my own insides.”

  “Sounds right … bad.”

  “It is. I figure it’ll kill me.”

  “Why, I’ll haul you back to Washington and let you see … old Doc Ibbotson”—he paused, feeling confused—“except that he’s dead, so he wouldn’t do you much good. Sorry if I don’t make … much sense, Persius. I’m heading for Texas and am drunk as a redskin in a vat of tater beer.”

  Persius stood. He seemed to have regained some of his strength and self-control. “I know about Texas. I been following you since right after you left home, Dave.”

  “Following me? I ain’t seen you.”

  “Maybe you’ve heard me.” Persius had a sack slung over his back, and he swung it around. Reaching inside, he pulled out an oddly shaped something David couldn’t see very well in the darkness.

  “What’s that?”

  “A fiddle. I been trying to teach myself to play it.”

  Something tugged at David’s memory. “Persius, was that you fiddling … up in that hotel—and coughing?”

  “It was. And I had no notion until I looked out the window to cuss you that it was David Crockett who had hollered up from the street. But I took to coughing and couldn’t yell to let you know it was me, not until you were gone. I was sick in that hotel a little spell, and after I got out, I went toward your house, and a neighbor told me you had fresh set out for Texas. And so I followed you, and I been playing my fiddle along the way to amuse myself.” He coughed a little again, but managed to keep it under control. “Talking brings out the coughing sometimes.”

  “I never heard your fiddling, Persius. But an old man we met, he did. He said he was … keen of ear, and I reckon he was.”

  “I want to go to Texas with you, David. I believe maybe in Texas my lungs might heal.”

  “Then come on. We’ll make a play-party of it, Persius. I’m going to start me a new life there. Land. I’ll get … back into politics.”

  “They say there’s trouble brewing there too. Lot of people talking revolution.”

  “I ain’t seen no trouble yet I couldn’t handle.”

  “Except in your last election.”

  “That would have been … a sore spot, if you’d said it right after I lost.”

  “But it ain’t now?”

  “No. No. I’m set on Texas now. It’ll be better … in Texas.” David burped loudly. “Lord, I’m drunk. There’s a bunch of us in yonder … you come too.”

  “No. I hide out from folks some now, because of my coughing. Folks get afraid they’ll catch whatever I got.”

  “You don’t need to hide from me.”

  “I’ll stay out here. It’s the way I want it.”

  “Where will you be? We’ll be leaving for Texas tomorrow.”

  “I’ll meet you at the ferry. Thank you for letting me ride with you, David Crockett.”

  “Glad you want to, Persius Tarr. Now I’m … a-going back in there to get a mite drunker, so I can be … in the best condition I can to travel.” He paused. “Durn if I don’t already need to spray again, Persius.”

  He went back to the far end of the alley for a few moments. When he turned back again, Persius had vanished. He staggered out to the street and looked around, but Persius was nowhere in sight. Shrugging, he headed back to the barroom to rejoin the revelry, and didn’t give Persius another thought for the rest of the night.

  Chapter 54

  They headed to the landing the next morning, heads aching and faces puffy and blanched. For the sake of the townspeople who watched their processional, David did his best to look dignified and stately, toting his rifle and wearing his new fox-skin cap at a cocky tilt, but it was hard to face the morning light. Even with his hangover, however, he still felt excited about going to Texas.

  At the landing he recalled his alleyway encounter and looked around for Persius Tarr. Their meeting last night was a fuzzy, imprecise memory—if it was a memory at all. He wasn’t entirely sure he hadn’t passed out in the alley for a few minutes and dreamed up the entire thing. Now he became even less sure, because there was no Persius to be seen. He hadn’t mentioned the encounter to any of his other companions, and was glad of it. Most likely it had been a particularly vivid combination of alcohol and imagination.

  “You looking for somebody, Davy?” Lindsey Tinkle asked as David made one last sweep of the area.

  “No,” David replied. “Just looking. Let’s get on to Arkansas.”

  They led their horses along a gangplank and onto a lower-level stable area on the steamboat that would carry them downriver. The men boarded the upper deck and leaned across the railing, waving at those who had gathered to see them off. As the boat prepared to pull out into the water, a young man with a fres
h face, big eyes, and a notepad raced feverishly to the edge of the landing and yelled at them across the distance. “Colonel Crockett, sir? A question for the newspaper? Is that a coonskin cap you are wearing?”

  “Fox skin,” David called back, as loudly as his pounding head would allow him, and that wasn’t very loud at all.

  “Beg your pardon, sir?”

  “Fox, I said!”

  “Coonskin, Colonel?”

  David didn’t feel like yelling anymore. Wearily he nodded his head. The young reporter smiled, jotted on his pad; and waved gingerly.

  “Get the mush out of your ears, you citified little scribbler,” David mumbled beneath his breath. “If you don’t know the difference between a coon and fox, devil with you!”

  The boat floated down the river, its hung-over passengers dozing where they sat for the first part of the journey. Time dragged on; the sounds of the river became a pleasant music, punctuated by the shouts of boatmen working on other craft, their voices amplified by the water. There were other sounds: the churning of the big paddlewheel, the shouts and occasional oaths of the boat’s crew as they labored all over the vessel, and from the distant banks, the clang of a church bell, the shouts of boys playing along the water’s edge, the barking of dogs.

  Along the way, the boat pulled into shore at various communities, and at each David Crockett was greeted and applauded. The river eventually carried them to the mouth of the Arkansas River, and they followed that waterway all the way to Little Rock. There a delegation greeted them and led David into a banquet hall, where a fife and drum corps played “Hail, the Conquering Hero Comes.”

  From Little Rock they disembarked with their horses and rode to Fulton, in the Red River country. David was happy to be making real progress now. He was coming into the very country he was most interested in seeing.

  They reached the little town of Lost Prairie, Arkansas, and paused there to spend the night. David was in need of cash, having spent far more than he should have during his Memphis escapades, and traded his gold watch with a resident named Isaac Jones. In return, David had taken Jones’s lower-quality watch, plus thirty dollars in cash.

  They continued along the Red River, which marked the northern Texas line. David was pleased so far with what he saw. This was good land, with lots of timber, rich springs, and abundant wild game, buffalo, and bee trees.

  It was during this stretch of the journey that he began to fancy he could hear a strange, high-pitched musical sound from far behind them … like a fiddle. Many times he stopped and turned to study the landscape behind him, but he never saw anything. Oddly, none of the others seemed to hear the noise at all. David was bothered by this. Was he jittery and spookish without even realizing it? Was his mind beginning to play tricks on him? Or might it really be Persius back there, following at a distance?

  They crossed the water and went into Clarksville, Texas. As they traveled across Becknell’s Prairie some five miles west of town, they were met by two women on horseback, one of them the wife of James Clark, for whose family the town was named. Having heard that the famed Colonel Crockett had come through town and was heading southwest, they had decided to intercept and give warning to him that such a course put them at risk of Comanches, who were at the moment in a very warlike mood.

  Crockett and company took up temporary residence in the home of a local family, the Becknells, diverting themselves in the meantime with a hunting trip under the guidance of a man named Henry Stout. While hunting, they met James Clark on the headwaters of the Trinity River. He concurred with the caution his wife had given them, and even advised them to stop the current hunt because of the Comanche danger. They did.

  When David was back at the Becknell house, he was informed that a rider had come from Clarksville with a message. A man had ridden into town, asking after Colonel Crockett and his company. He was a swarthy fellow, perhaps Indian or Mexican, with a riddle he carried in his sack of provisions. Did the colonel know this man, and wish to see him?

  David nodded. Certainly he did know this fellow, and yes, he would return to Clarksville to see him. He thanked the messenger, who immediately rode back to give word of David’s impending return. David ate a quick meal, borrowed a fresh horse from the Becknells, and rode back toward Clarksville, knowing now that his encounter with Persius had been no drunken fantasy, and worried that Persius had followed, alone, in a poor state of health.

  Persius, now clean-shaven, was ensconced on a porch, passing his time plucking at his fiddle while awaiting David’s arrival. He grinned as David rode onto the street and veered his horse over toward him.

  “Howdy, Dave.”

  “Persius. I be danged! I didn’t really believe you was coming.”

  “I told you I wanted to go to Texas with you.”

  “Yes, but you weren’t at the landing come Sunday morning. I figured you had changed your mind.” David didn’t want to reveal that he actually had doubted the reality of the alcohol-hazed encounter in the alley.

  “No, I hadn’t changed my mind. But I was took worse sick about sunup and wasn’t in no shape to make it to the river. So I let you go on, and later that day I paid my way onto another boat and followed. I been trying to catch up with you ever since.”

  “You paid your way? You have money, huh?”

  “There some reason you think Persius Tarr wouldn’t have money? By the way, I’m Ben Breeding to the world now. Too much law trouble attached to my real name.”

  “I’ll try to get used to it, Per—Ben, I mean. I didn’t mean you no offense about the money. I was just trying to say you must have done some good business somewhere along the way these last months.”

  “Since I left you in Washington I went to work at a hotel in Nashville and made myself a good name with the rich old man who owned it by dragging out some of his family when a fire broke out in their quarters. I saved their lives, ’cording to him. When he died I found out he’d writ me into his will. A thousand dollars and this old fiddle. That was my part of it.”

  “A thousand dollars! That’s a fine piece of wealth.”

  “More than I’ve ever had before or expect to hereafter.”

  “You ain’t coughing no more, glad to see.”

  “I believe this Texas air is already doing me good. Purging out my lungs like that wormweed your ma gave me purged out my bowels—you recollect that? For the last couple of days I’ve hardly coughed at all.”

  “I’m glad to hear it … Ben.” David grinned. “It’s going to take some getting used to, calling you by a new name.”

  Persius said, “A new name seems the right thing to have in a new country. I have to remind myself that this ain’t even the United States. It’s Mexico.”

  “I believe that before it’s done, this will be part of the United States. From what I hear of the rebellion, all they’re seeking is to get back the constitution that has been took away from them, but it’s my private opinion that eventually they’ll be part of the union. That’s what needs to happen, and I might just see what kind of hand I can lend toward helping the process along. The Mexes got a president here name of Santy Anna, and he’s a prime dandified scoundrel from the git-go, from what I hear. They say he has a gold snuff box and squats on a silver chamber pot. He’s already put on some taxes that had been took away under the old president, and they say he’s got a worser bullying and bossing way than old Andy Jackson himself. But he can be dealt with. This here is a fine land, ready to bloom like a flower. It’s the garden spot of the world from what I’ve seen. And I want to see a lot more of it.”

  “Well, where you go, I want to go—if you’ll have me.”

  “You’re welcome to join me, Persius. Ben, I should say. Though I ain’t sure why you want to. I get plenty of attention, but the fact is I’m still a poor man. I’ve found you can’t get much more than a free meal or two with fame, which is about all that’s left to me at the moment. But you have money. You could buy a lot of land here and make a real place for yourself.�
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  “Well, I plan to do that. But when I do, I want you in on it with me.”

  “I don’t see what you mean.”

  “You remember once, back before we went off to fight the Creeks, you talked about fate or destiny or some such as that?”

  “Yes.”

  “And I said I didn’t believe in it. Well, now maybe I do, or at least have a suspicion of it. It’s just a feeling. I got to thinking back on how we’ve come together, gone apart, come together again, and so on, and it just seems to me that if there’s any such thing as fate, mine must be linked up with yours.”

  “That’s all there is to it?”

  “No. There’s more. I don’t want you to take offense at the words I’m about to speak, David.”

  “Offense? Just what are you getting ready to say?”

  “That I want to help you get settled here, if that’s what you want. I can do it, with the money I have now. It’s the first time in my life I’ve been in a position where I can truly help out somebody else.”

  David took a step back. He was no stranger to receiving the help of others, but the idea of Persius Tarr offering him help seemed like such a reversal of roles that he didn’t like the feel of it. He laughed uncomfortably. “What? I’m becoming your Christian charity case?”

  “Now there you go—that’s the kind of thing I figured you’d say. No sir, not by no stretch. You’re no charity case and I’m no Christian. What you are is the best friend this no-count old half-breed ever had from the day he was born. You and yours have always done your best for me, more than anybody else.

  “I think back on your family taking me in for a spell when I was orphaned. I recollect you doing your best to save my neck when Crider Cummings was after me that time I beat up on his brother in Jefferson County. You did your best for me again when you risked your own hide to find a way for me to escape from that army camp, your wife did her best to save my baby’s life, and you got me care of a doctor in Washington City when I was sick. The best times of my life, beyond them that I spent with my wife and daughter, are them I had with you. You’ve done your best for me all my days, David Crockett, and now the time has come when maybe I can do my best for you.”