Michener, James A. (47 page)

'A town on the Mississippi?'

'It's a state. Like Coahuila-y-Tejas.'

'But it is on the Mississippi?' When Quimper nodded, the ebullient young man slapped himself on the knee and cried: 'Then you must come with us! Save time, save money. Catch a steamboat up the river!' And he worked his arms like the pistons of a riverboat, spouting imaginary steam with his mouth and sounding a whistle. Mattie was enthusiastic about such a plan and tried to persuade her son, now sixteen, to go along: 'You can help manage the mules, and you'll see the steamboat,' but he still refused to go, not wishing to take such risks.

The two men left in October and wandered up the Goliad Road with some fifty mules, adding to them at the Trinity and then keeping to the southernmost route along the Gulf till they crossed the Sabine into Louisiana. There they found tolerable roads leading to New Orleans, where Jubal stayed in Mexican lodgings with his two companions. He told Garza as the latter dickered with the American authorities over the prices of his mules: 'Benito, I'd enjoy travelin' with you some time again. You know how to move about.' And Garza said: 'You'd be welcome. I need to practice English if so many of you are coming to Tejas.'

'You must. Because I'm tellin' you . . . I'm warnin' you, really, Texas won't be Mexican forever.'

i think it will be,' Garza said, and when they were back in their mean quarters he asked Quimper: 'How long, senor, have you been in Tejas?' and Quimper thought a moment, then said: 'Six years,' and Garza laughed: 'Sefior! And you're telling me who is to run Tejas! My people explored Tejas three hundred years ago.'

Quimper considered this, then said with no rancor: 'Amigo, that may have ensured you a foothold in what you call Tejas. But in the Texas that's comin' you better speak like an American and think like one, or you're goin' to be homeless,' and the young man snapped: 'Garzas will be living here when you've run back to Tennessee.'

The only thing about Garza that Quimper did not like was this quickness at resenting whatever the young man interpreted as an

insult to his Hispanic heritage: 'If you're goin' to live in a white man's state, Benito, you mustn't be so touchy.'

'But I am a white man, and Tejas is my state.' Quimper let the matter drop, for he no longer tried to understand how the Hispanic mind worked.

When Quimper left the Mississippi riverboat at Memphis and started overland to Nashville, he experienced several moments of solemn discovery: Tennessee is so cramped compared to Texas ... A man can hardly breathe, hemmed in by all these trees. He did enjoy the snug little towns and the orderly plantations manned by slaves, but repeatedly he caught himself longing for the Brazos and the great, open freedom of Texas: I'll sell the land and get back home.

He spent his first two weeks in Nashville listening to talk about those events which had occurred since his hasty departure in 1822: 'We got ourself a great new governor, Sam Houston, him as fought with Andy Jackson against the Indians at Horseshoe Bend. Strong man, strong ideas, outstandin' patriot. Goin' to be President of the United States one of these days.'

Wherever he moved he heard good reports of Houston: 'Big man, you know. Brave, too. Lived among the Indians. Speaks their language, I'm told. Taller than that post, I'd judge.'

'How did he become governor?'

'Oh, he was a military hero! General Jackson thought very highly of him, and that helped him get elected to the Congress, in Washington. How many terms did he serve, Jake? Three?'

'Two,' Jake said. 'Could of been elected permanent, or senator, either. But we wanted him for governor, and with Andy Jackson's help, we got him.'

Quimper had no opportunity to see Houston in Nashville, for men explained that the governor had business to the east: 'You know, he's standin' for reelection this year. Foolish for anyone to run against him, most popular man in the state.'

By the time Quimper left Nashville for the short trip to Gallatin he had heard so much about Houston that he said, on his last night in town: 'He's the kind of man we could use in Texas,' but his fellow diners dismissed the idea: 'His home's in Tennessee. Hell, he is Tennessee.'

When Quimper arrived in his old hometown of Gallatin he heard only one topic of conversation: 'Little Eliza Allen of our town! She's goin' to marry the governor! Tomorrow!' Since the Aliens were among the leading citizens in Gallatin, Jubal did not

know them socially, but he was pleased to think that if the wedding was public, he would have a chance to see and perhaps even meet Sam Houston.

The celebrations took place in January 1829, and they were a sumptuous affair, for not often did a small town like Gallatin find one of its daughters marrying the governor of a state, a man certain to be reelected, and after a term or two in the federal Senate, perhaps be elected to the presidency. Several score of guests rode out from Nashville and others came long distances from the eastern part of the state, where Houston had once lived. He was a rising star with whom politicians of all stripes wished to be associated, and when Quimper saw him, a giant of a man, and holding on to his arm a delicate little woman dressed in white with just a touch of pink in her ribbons, he was awed: He looks like a governor! He looks like a Texican! I was right when I said we could use him. „

When the wedding was solemnized in high form, Quimper found himself thinking: Not much like the mass unions that Father Clooney celebrates, and he felt a longing for that simpler life: I know what Mattie meant. I couldn't live here in Gallatin after that free life on the rivers.

But such thoughts were expelled that night when, at about ten, the men of town were nicely inebriated and someone shouted: 'Let's give the governor and his lady a real shivaree!' Nearly a hundred drunks assembled outside the tavern with horns and drums and washboards and bugles and tin pots. Led by one of Eliza's cousins, the crowd surged along the streets, gathering recruits, until it reached the small house in which the governor and Eliza were spending their first night together.

There a noise was generated which had not been matched since the explosion of a powder depot some years before. Horns blared, men bellowed, drums were banged, and the night was made raucous with a serenade whose tradition dated back two thousand years. A marriage was being launched, and the community wished to mark this mystical occasion not only with prayers but also with riotous celebration, and when two men came up with a barrel of whiskey on wheels, the noise really began.

It was a shivaree honoring a great and much-loved man, a man of dignity and power, and all who shattered the night did so in hopes that somehow their destiny would be matched to his. But it was also a serenade to a gentlewoman whom the town loved, and after a while the men started a chant:

'Eliza! Eliza! The world's fairest flower Eliza! Eliza! Pray come to my bower.'

It was well after two in the morning before the barrel was empty and the tin pots beaten beyond recognition. Then off to their beds straggled the celebrants, except those who returned to the taverns, banging on the doors and demanding admittance. Quimper, remaining in the streets through the night, judged that he had never participated in a better shivaree and he doubted that anyone else had, either.

A few days later, Jubal found an opportunity to talk with Houston: 'Governor, I've cast my lot with Texas, and I can see that you're the kind of man we need down there. To pull things together before we join the Union.'

Houston, afraid that this might be a trap seducing him into some impropriety, said easily: 'Now, sir, I can tell you that I've always thought well of that part of Mexico. In 18 and 22 I applied for a land grant down there. Can't remember whether I ever received the papers or not, but I know it's a splendid territory.'

Tou have a dazzlin' future, Governor, Texas or wherever.'

The big man appreciated such flattery and accepted it gracefully: 'My future's twofold. To build a proper house for my wife and to get reelected governor of this great state. That's enough to keep me busy.'

The next day Quimper was startled to see Governor Houston striding through town in his favorite costume: Indian garb, sandals, buckskin britches, with a bright red shawl draped about his shoulders. 'What's he doin'?' Jubal asked a bystander, and the man snorted: 'Keep watchin'. You'll see wonders.' And on subsequent days Houston appeared in three radicallv different costumes, none appropriate to his high office. Finally Jubal had to comment: 'Governor, you seem to like unusual dress,' to which Houston replied: T dress like the land, different seasons, different colors.'

And then, on the sixteenth of April in that first year of marriage, Gallatin and all of Tennessee were stunned by the news that the delicate and lovely Eliza Allen Houston had for some mysterious reason never to be revealed left the governor's bed and board, telling her family that she could never return.

'Impossible!' the men in the taverns cried, while their wives at home met secretly to explore in hushed conversation the devastating possibilities. That Eliza's abrupt behavior must have had some dark, sexual cause, there could be no doubt, and since specifically what it had been would never be disclosed, speculation was not only invited but also inventive.

The scandal was intensified when the governor announced that he must, out of respect to his constituency, refuse to stand for reelection, and when his friends implored him not to take such drastic action, he shocked them completely by resigning the balance of the term to which he was already entitled. While they fumed, he boarded a steamer and sailed into lonely exile among the Indians he had known previously. Rarely in American history had a man who had risen so high fallen so low.

His precipitate departure raised far more questions than it answered, for in the silence surrounding the case his partisans launched an explanation, totally unauthorized, which cleared his name. But this could be circulated only at the expense of Eliza Allen, whose irate family had no intention of allowing her to shoulder the blame for this destruction of Houston's career, so in self-defense the male members of the Allen family engineered a solution unique in American political life.

They nominated a panel of twelve sober citizens of impeccable repute to hold a series of public meetings, the more salacious details kept private, to apportion blame in this affair. At the conclusion a vote would be taken and a determination made as to whether Eliza Allen, of Gallatin, was or was not guilty in even the slightest degree in the scandalous affair of Governor Sam Houston.

When eleven solons had been selected—military heroes, lawyers, clergymen, bankers—one Leonidas Allen, a relative of the abused wife, suggested: Tm glad to see this fellow Quimper back among us. He's become a man of sober judgment, reputation restored by the courts. I'd like to see him stay here. Let's signify our acceptance by inviting him to serve on our jury.' No member of the committee listened to the evidence with closer attention than Quimper, and when the time came for the first crucial vote, he experienced no uncertainty. The question was clearly stated: 'Was Eliza Allen, at the time of her marriage to Governor Houston, a virgin?' The vote was eleven-to-one affirmative, and as soon as the man who voted nay was known, one of the colonels challenged him to a duel on the grounds that he had impugned the reputation of a gentlewoman, but the voter justified himself by-explaining that he was a lawyer from Virginia who felt that the question as stated could not be answered, since substantive evidence had not been provided. The colonel accepted the apology; the challenge was withdrawn; and the ashen-faced Virginian, aware of how close he had come to being shot, begged permission to alter his vote to affirmative, and when the balloting was announced, Eliza was unanimously found to have been a virgin.

Each of the other possible charges against her was analyzed

similarly, and in vote after vote the correctness of her behavior was sustained. When the final tally was made, it was clear that Eliza's reputation had been not only cleared but also burnished; by the twelve ablest men in Gallatin she was found to have been immaculate in both behavior and spirit.

At the conclusion of the investigation two members of the panel composed a stirring document in which Eliza's purity was extolled and the governor's lack of it deplored; it covered all the debatable points and indicated the jury's vote on each, and it ended with an exhortation to the journals of Tennessee and surrounding states that they give the fullest possible coverage to the voting. But the Virginia lawyer, already frightened by what might have happened as a consequence of that first vote, now advised the committee that whereas the report accurately summarized their debate, and while its decisions were irrefutable, it might be wise to delay publication until the jury could be sure that Sam Houston had left the state.

After prudent delay the report was circulated, and interested newspapers did publish it, but by then Houston was lost in the wilds of Arkansas, living among his beloved Indians and remaining drunk most of the time. A traveler told Quimper: 'Shortly after Houston arrived in Arkansas, I saw him drunk in a saloon, where a local braggart challenged him to a duel. I was standin' with Houston when he accepted. Asked me to be his second, so in the mornin' haze, lengths were stepped off. The two duelists, obviously unsteady, marched, turned, aimed and fired. Nobody got hit for the good reason that me and the other man's second, realizin' that our men were drunk and without any sensible basis for a duel, had loaded the pistols with blanks!*

While Jubal was still chuckling over this portrait of the former governor, he was confronted by a great temptation. Leonidas Allen, the man who had sponsored his membership on the Houston jury, invited him twice to dinner in the Aliens' spacious mansion, and only the most attractive Southern hospitality prevailed, but on a third visit Leonidas took Jubal aside and said in a low voice: 'Surely you've noticed that my older sister, Clara, is quite taken with you.'

jubal had not noticed, but when he returned to the company of the ladies he could not avoid Clara's ardent glances. As he left the mansion, Leonidas whispered: 'We would be most honored, Clara and me, that is, if you'd dine with us tomorrow.'

'Sir, I'm married. I have a wife in Texas.'

'Things can always be arranged.'

He spent a feverish night, for with the funds he had received from the settlement, plus those which would accrue to him if he

married Miss Clara, who was not at all repulsive, he could own one of the Gallatin mansions. Also, he could hear Mattie saying: i'll give you your freedom.' But as he tossed on his straw mattress he thought of the Brazos, and Stephen Austin trying to build a state, and of Texas reaching empty to the horizon, and of Mattie poling her ferry.

Early next morning he went to a bank, arranged for his new wealth to be posted to a New Orleans agent against whom he could draw when he returned home, and headed for the Mississippi without bidding either Leonidas or Clara farewell.

When his boat put in to an Arkansas levee, one of the hands cried: There comes Sam Houston. Meets us every trip.' And up the gangway came the former governor, already drunk but looking to the steamboat's bar for replenishment. Jubal, fearing that Houston might have learned about the jury report, hid among the passengers but stayed close enough to hear Houston haranguing the travelers: 'Let's all get off the boat and head cross country to Oregon. I'm goin' there as soon as practical.' When Houston was safely off the boat and lying immobile beside some cotton bales, Jubal said to a passenger: 'Look at him! Governor of a state! We don't need his kind in Texas.'

New Orleans, Nachitoches in Louisiana, Nacogdoches in Texas, El Camino Real and south along the banks of the Trinity to the Goliad Road, this was the pathway of empire, except that other things besides immigrants traveled it. This autumn, cholera made the journey too, meeting up with Jubal Quimper just before he reached the village on the Trinity in which Reverend Harrison hid and from which he conducted his forbidden prayer meetings.

The two men were glad to see each other, and Harrison sat fascinated as Jubal reported upon the doings in Tennessee; it was Harrison's opinion, delivered from afar, that Governor Houston, a giant of a man, as Quimper reported, must have outraged his gentle wife in some grotesque sexual manner: 'Your jury rendered the judgment he deserved. You did the work of the Lord.'

On the second day of the visit, Quimper fell into a fit of such violent shaking that the preacher cried: 'Dear God, Jubal, you must have the plague!' And as soon as these dire words were spoken they were flashed throughout the small community, and the minister's house was quarantined.

It was a useless gesture, because by that night four other cases of extreme ague had been identified, and by morning it was clear that the Trinity River had received from some mysterious source, perhaps from Jubal Quimper himself via New Orleans, its latest

attack of this dread disease. Called alternately the plague, or cholera, or the vomiting shakes, or simply the fever, it assaulted the human body so furiously and with such total destruction that the victim rarely survived three full days, and that was the case with Quimper.

Reverend Harrison, ignoring the pleas of his secret parishioners that he dissociate himself from the stricken man, said: 'If Jesus Christ could medicine the lepers, I can medicine Quimper,' and he remained with Jubal, cooling his fevered face with damp towels until convulsive seizures showed that death was imminent.

'Beloved brother in Christ, Jesus awaits thee in heaven. May the merciful God stay this plague and may the earth be made whole again.' In the last minutes he bathed the dying man's face once more, praying frantically, as if to finish his beseeching before his friend died: 'Dear God, take into Your bosom this traveler. On earth he tried to do Your bidding. In heaven he will grace Your throne.'

When Quimper died, Harrison closed the eyelids and arranged the sweat-drenched bedclothes. Then he left his house, but others in the village were afraid to move near him.

Quimper's clothes had to be burned, of course, but a few durable possessions like coins remained, and these the minister gathered, proposing to carry them the sixty miles to Quimper's Ferry, for he felt that it would be improper for Mattie to learn of her husband's sudden death from strangers. He was delayed, however, by the necessity of burying four others who had fallen to the plague, and when this was finished he wondered whether it was proper for him to move into another community, lest he carry the cholera with him.

Waiting six days, he concluded that he was not going to be stricken, so down the Goliad Road he went on his mission of compassion. As he neared the ferry he wondered how he should speak to Mattie, for her husband had been far too young to die, but even when he stood at the pole that carried the flag travelers were instructed by a signboard to raise if they wanted the ferry to fetch them, he was undecided. He heard young Yancey shouting: 'Mom! The ferry!' and he wondered why this growing boy did not himself come across to get him, but since Yancey did not, Mattie appeared, wiping her hands on her apron and heading for the heavy pole.

With the skill acquired from many crossings, she brought the raft to its landing and shouted: 'Welcome, Pastor! Jubal will be coming home any time now.'

When he climbed into the ferry he sat silent for so long that Mattie asked abruptly: 'What is it, Reverend? Bad news?' and he said simply. 'Jubal died. Cholera.'

She did not interrupt her poling. Pushing the heavy post into the bottom mud, she walked along the edge of her craft, shoving the ferry forward, then dragging the pole in the water as she strode forward to push once more. Working and keeping her eyes upon the swirling water, she said nothing till she brought her craft home safely to its resting place. Then, helping the minister to negotiate the steep bank, she said: 'Father Clooney's here. Six weddings set for this afternoon.'

They walked to the dog-run, where the priest was sitting in the shade at the far end of the porch. 'Hello, Reverend,' he said, and Harrison replied: 'I bring heavy news. Jubal . . . the plague.'

Father Clooney had helped bury many plague victims, but never could he adjust to the incredible swiftness with which this terrible malady struck, and to have it take a man to whom he, Clooney, was so much indebted was a burden trebly heavy.

'Let us not tell the others,' he suggested, it's their wedding.' So the three agreed that not even Yancey would be told until after the ceremony.

Til move along,' Harrison said. 'I couldn't attend the wedding.'

'You could if you wished,' Father Clooney said. He wanted to add, so that Harrison would join, that such weddings were formalities demanded by the Mexican government, but he could not frame the words. No wedding was a formality, not any, not under any conceivable circumstances.

Harrison, unwilling to participate in or bear witness to such an improper mixture of politics and faith, moved sullenly away, but Clooney, on the other hand, became more excited and devout as the holy moments approached. Taking a nip now and then to encourage himself, he was feeling at the height of his power by the time the six couples had gathered, and he surprised them by saying with deep solemnity: 'Let us gather at the river,' and he led them to a plateau adorned by oak trees where the couples could look down forty feet to the Brazos as it carried mud to the sea. He had not chosen this spot by accident, for when the farmers stood with their brides and their children, he cried in a kind of chant:

'When storms strike far inland, that little stream down there can rise in fury and sweep across this land which seems so safe up here. Forty feet of sudden turbulence, and who can believe that 7 It will be the same with your marriages, an unexpected storm can overwhelm you, and who would believe that?

'Wise men and women, when they enter into marriage, do so with some religious blessing, with God's most precious sanction, for they know they need that extra help. If the families of the Brazos did not protect their homes up here, the stormy river would sweep them away. And if you do not call upon God to consecrate your marriages, they too can be swept away

'In this solemn moment when you start your new lives I give you the balm of God's love. I anoint you. I bless you. I give you the gentle kiss of Jesus. Above all, I give you protection against the great storms of life. In life and in death . .

Here he chanced to look across the fields to the house so recently struck by untimely death, and his throat began to close up and his ?yes to fill with tears. He lost track of what he was saying and ilmost began to blubber, so great was his anguish over the fate of Mattie Quimper, and he became so incoherent that the wiser men imong the grooms winked at one another: 'The old man's drunk again.'

He wasn't, not then, but when he returned to sit with Mattie jn the porch, endeavoring to console her, he did start to drink heavily, so that when Reverend Harrison returned, eligible to rejoin them now that the Romish ceremony was ended, Clooney was ready to embrace him as a brother: 'Harrison, we must both give consolation to this good Christian woman.'

As evening approached he became quite drunk, and at one point he said to Harrison, as if he had never seen him before: 'Me name's Father Clooney, of Ballyclooney on Clooney Bay, in County Clare,' but when the stiff Protestant ignored him, he realized his foolishness and said hastily: 'You're Reverend Harrison! You and I must look after Yancey now. He'll need a father,' and he began calling: 'Yancey, Yancey!' When there was no answer, he looked hazily at Harrison, lay down upon the porch, and passed easily into a deep sleep that would last through the night.

'God blessed me in one thing,' Mattie said as darkness fell. 'He allowed me to know four good men. You. That one down there. Stephen Austin. And Jubal. Many women never know none.'

Harrison said boldly: 'You must take a new husband, Mattie. You'll need help to run the inn and the ferry.'

At this moment, on the far shore, a late traveler hallooed: 'Can you fetch me? I have no food, no blankets.'

She left the porch, went down to the Brazos, and poled sturdily across the narrow river to where the pilgrim waited. When the boat was loaded she shoved off, and in the moonlight brought him to the warmth of her inn.

We experienced the first open break in our Task Force when we met in October 1983 to plan our impending meeting in Tyler, where the topic was to be 'Religion in Texas.' We found it difficult to agree upon an appropriate speaker, for although none of us had strong convictions regarding specific theologies, and certainly we did not want to intrude on clerical matters, we were aware that sectarianism had played a recurrent role in forming Texas attitudes. But we did not know whom to invite, and because there were differences among us we postponed our meeting till November.

The blowup involved not religion but the successful American invasion of the little Caribbean island of Grenada. Rusk and Quimper, as gung-ho Texans, applauded the action. 'We should of done it years ago,' Quimper said. 'And since we have a running start, let's move on to Nicaragua and Cuba.'

Miss Cobb, descendant of Democratic senators, voiced a much different view: 'President Reagan, having seen how much the invasion of the Falklands helped Maggie Thatcher win reelection in Great Britain, is pulling the same trick in the United States.'

'And succeeding,' Rusk snapped, and she agreed: 'He is. Brilliantly. If the election were held tomorrow, he'd win in a landslide. America does love its successful little wars, but tires quickly of its big unsuccessful ones.'

That's communist talk,' Rusk said, and Quimper agreed: 'If you got strength, you got to show it, or they don't believe you have it.'

Dr. Garza tried to slow down the animosities by advancing a more sober theory: 'America must proceed very carefully. In every Latin country there's latent memory of Marines invading at will. If we run rampant in the Caribbean, we'll engender a profound revulsion. We must go slow.'