No Resting Place

EARLY BIRD BOOKS

FRESH EBOOK DEALS, DELIVERED DAILY

BE THE FIRST TO KNOW ABOUT
FREE AND DISCOUNTED EBOOKS

NEW DEALS HATCH EVERY DAY!

No Resting Place

A Novel

William Humphrey

To the memory of Mr. Jack Boss
,

who shaped my life

Part One

“Victory is certain! Trust in God and fear not! And remember the Alamo! Remember the Alamo!”

The youngster playing the part of Sam Houston was going through the change of voice. Even in so short a speech his broke repeatedly. To the spectators this sounded like uncontrollable fervor and, rather than impairing the illusion, made that familiar exhortation to the troops all the more rousing. They had learned their Texas history in grammar school, had taken part as eighth-graders themselves in the San Jacinto Day pageant, had seen their sons and grandsons stage it like this annually, and had come insensibly to equate the state's childhood with their own and to think of its founders, Sam Houston, Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, as boys—as, indeed, they were: overgrown boys, bad boys, runaway boys, “G.T.T.”—“Gone to Texas”—often just one step ahead of the law. Like the painted lead soldiers we played with as children, these diminutive figures in their small numbers fighting their miniature, make-believe battle seemed the linear equivalent of time long past. Their small size lent perspective into which those distant events, those early people had receded. History is heavily edited for schoolchildren and, for most of us, commencement puts an end to study. Thus we go through life with notions of our past which, for depth, complexity, subtlety of shading, rank with comic books. Texas history particularly lends itself to this: it is so farfetched that only a child could believe it. About to be reenacted now was the most improbable of the world's decisive battles. It had been the kid with nothing but his slingshot and God on his side against the giant Philistine. Nothing was ever more
un
certain than victory on that twenty-first day of April, 1836. And yet it had been won so easily it seemed now like child's play.

“Remember the Alamo!” the Texans shouted, and one among them completed the battle cry, known to every member of the audience so early in life it might have been an ingredient of their mothers' milk: “Remember Goliad!”

They were mustered on the fifty-yard line of the junior high school playing field, in front of the grandstand. No two of them were costumed alike. Among them were buckskin breeches, high boots, woolen vests, coonskin caps, battered old felt hats too big for them, belonging to their fathers. Galluses held up their breeches, belts their bowie knives. Some had trouble keeping false mustaches in place. They brandished a variety of muskets and pistols. They puffed on corncob pipes, spat manfully.

Meanwhile, the uniformed Mexicans, secure in their superior numbers, smug from their recent victories and scorning to believe that their upstart foe would have the audacity to disturb them, were taking their siesta in the western end zone. They lay sprawled on the ground, slumped against the goalpost, seated with their backs supporting each other like bookends without books. They were the Texas stereotype of Mexican sloth, Mexican
mañana
. With such an image as this of our enemy, no wonder we grew up thinking that a handful of Texas boys had won us our independence! The boys' hair was longer now—a touch of authenticity that had been lacking in their grandfathers' time; otherwise it was all just as it had been when I took part in it. 1936, that was: the year of Texas's centennial of independence, and that San Jacinto Day pageant was the town's first. I was an eighth-grader then. Now on this, my first visit home since moving away, upon the death of my father, shortly after that, I found people who still remembered me for my part in that first pageant.

Sam Houston flourished his silvered wooden saber and spurred his Shetland pony. The fife and drum corps struck up that most unmartial of marching songs—the only tune the musicians that earlier day had known how to play together: “Won't you come to the bower I have shaded for you?” The Texas artillery, the two little mortars known as the Twin Sisters, brought up the rear as the Texans went on the attack.

The Alamo and Goliad were recent memories on that twenty-first of April, 1836, and going into battle with them, while meant as an incitement to vengeance, would have made it impossible not to fear. For although it would not be until years afterward that some orator would say, “Thermopylae had its messenger of defeat—the Alamo had none,” it was understood by every member of that ragtag-and-bobtail little band of Texas volunteers at San Jacinto that should they lose the battle their fate at the hands of the heartless Mexican tyrant Santa Anna would be that of the 190 defenders of the Alamo, the 330 who had surrendered at Goliad: death to a man. Outnumbered, inexperienced, ill-equipped, they were also far from united in trust behind their commander—later authors of school textbooks to the contrary notwithstanding. This they never taught us in school, but many of the soldiers had gone home in disgust, the remainder had nearly mutinied against Houston's long Fabian retreat from the enemy, and in their ranks had rearisen all the doubts, all the innuendoes about him. He had proved himself brave in battle, but that was long ago; more recently he had fled from wagging tongues, unwilling or unable to defend his name against slander so gross it would have brought another man to the field of honor. He had resigned his governorship of Tennessee in disgrace, had renounced his American citizenship, and had gone off to the wilderness to sulk—to lead, some said, a life of squalor and debauchery. Which of his two violently contradictory sides to believe in? Was he the great man he had once seemed to be, or was he, as was whispered after the fiasco of his marriage, no man at all? Which was he, the friend and protégé of the President of the United States, once clearly destined for that highest of offices himself, or was he that riverboat gambler and drunken tavern brawler, ashamed of his comedown in the world and traveling under an assumed name? Man of vision and breadth of spirit, champion of the oppressed, or a scheming, ambitious, unscrupulous would-be dictator of a country of outcasts, fugitives and adventurers like himself? Most basic question of all: was he a white man or was he a red savage? On that he himself seemed undecided. Half hero, half ham: that he certainly was, and a boy with an immature voice seemed perfectly cast to play him, an army of a dozen adolescents seemed perfectly to represent the following that such a discredited man would be able to recruit for the foolhardy campaign now coming to its issue.

The field artillery opened fire with satisfactory puffs of smoke and on this signal the infantry fell with vengeful glee upon their drowsy foe. From out of the grove of pecan trees bordering the playing field on the east, the Texas cavalry—seven horsemen strong today, originally just over fifty—came galloping to the fray. In that first, that centennial-year San Jacinto Day pageant, I was to have played the commander of the cavalry. However, I never got to—when the time came I no longer wanted to.

The Mexicans were routed, and comical in their flight, especially one caught with his pants down and trying to heist them as he fled, and another, a cowardly officer trying to disguise his rank and responsibility by pulling on a private's uniform over his own gaudy one with its absurdly broad epaulets. All over the field they were falling in exaggerated poses of well-deserved death. Cries of “Me no Alamo! Me no Goliad!” came from those who, on their knees and with supplicating hands, pleaded with their captors to spare their worthless lives.

Wounded in the leg, General Sam Houston was helped from his horse and propped against a goalpost. From there, oblivious to his pain, he directed the battle to its conclusion. As on that original twenty-first of April, it was all over in little more than a quarter of an hour. The Texans' losses were negligible, their victory decisive. The world had a new nation, wrested from tyranny, and it was a nonesuch: big, brash and boisterous, made of men each worth two of all lesser breeds. The ease with which its birth had been accomplished would fill it with lasting self-wonder—would be the origin of its tiresome self-assertiveness. To their successors its founders would seem men ten feet tall, even when impersonated by boys half that size.

The prisoners were rounded up and marched triumphantly to the post of command. The last straggler was flushed from hiding and brought in at gunpoint. Seeing him, the other prisoners all fell on their knees, removed their hats and exclaimed in awe, “
El Presidente
!” His shirt was torn open and, lo, there was that officer in disguise, none other than the loathsome Santa Anna himself, betrayed by his own imperiousness and by the sheepish simplicity of his subjects. As it did annually, the crowd roared with derision and delight.

That was the part I had finally taken in my hometown's first San Jacinto Day pageant: the part of Santa Anna, the archvillain of my state. The boy who had drawn it by lot positively refused to play it, and the teachers could not force him against his will to play so odious a part. All were grateful to me for solving the problem, and commended my patriotism and my self-sacrifice, when I volunteered for it. My teachers mistook my motive. A piece of intelligence about that old battle had just recently reached me. The way I felt now, I would have reversed its outcome if I could!

“Hang the rascal!” the Texans clamored, and one of them threw a rope with a noose over the goalpost arm. But canny old Sam Houston quieted them. He knew that Santa Anna was worth nothing to them dead. Alive, he would be hostage for the freedom they had just won for themselves.

The dead Mexicans all came to life and dusted themselves off and both armies marched to center field to accept the applause of the crowd. Then all together stood and, to the tune of “I've been working on the railroad,” sang that odd, disquieting, oppressive, even vaguely menacing song that nine out of ten Texans think is their state anthem but is not: