by Jeff Long
Chapter Twelve
Leg-weary and powder-burned, with knuckles scraped and fingernails broken and bearing the nicks and slices and bruises of their frenzy, the men straggled back to camp under a three-quarter moon. Houston lay against a live oak and watched them straggle in, his skull propped against the gnarly bark. His ankle throbbed. He didn't move.
Some limped from twisted knees or sprained ankles. Some arrived emptyhanded, too tired or forgetful to carry the weight of a gun. More than a few showed up naked above the waist, their shirts having gotten clawed away. Their eyes were bright red from the acid gunsmoke. To a man they looked dazed and hollowed out.
Those with the strength left threw chunks of timber on the banked fires and blew the embers to flaring. The camp lit up. Men wandered through the trees trying to remember where they'd stashed their possibles that morning. In the space of an afternoon, their whole world had changed. They had left their past forever. The men didn't hurrah or yell their triumph. Seeing the army as it pieced together in the firelight, any stranger would have guessed these soldiers had just lost their battle.
One man circulated through camp with words of cheer. Houston could hear his voice. "Boys," he declared to packs of men, "this was the day. Our children and grandchildren will hail this as the greatest day of the nation. They will say the hand of God reached down and struck our dark-skinned enemy.
They will say that we have brought light to the heathen. Today is the day we have won all Texas." Then he moved on through the trees to find a different group and say it all over again. Houston saw him passing a fire. It was Colonel Forbes.
Incredibly there were prisoners. A Mexican officer had gathered enough of his troops together on a spit of bayou to make a formal surrender. Despite the hours-long slaughter, or possibly because of it, a small contingent under Tom Rusk had accepted the surrender. Quickly, at double time, Rusk had herded the prisoners back to the American camp without being spotted by his own army. Now the prisoners stood in a makeshift corral of tree limbs and bonfires. They were guarded over by a handful of soldiers draped with pistols and shotguns on ropes and holding beeswax tapers in their hands. Between the heat of the bonfires and the soldiers' hands the candles melted fast, dripping wax over the men's fists.
Judging by the guards' menacing glares at the huddled prisoners, none seemed to realize they were guarding the captives from their captors as much as against their escape. But the killing fever had petered out. Houston's men were too exhausted to make a run on the corral. Just as Deaf Smith had predicted, the wild soldiers had returned to their humanity. For tonight, at least, the prisoners were safe.
The men were too fatigued to eat what little there was: some bits of cow, some ears of raw corn. But thirst raged among them, and even those ready to collapse in the dirt managed the extra distance to the river behind camp where they drank and drank and drank. Just as thirsty, the prisoners cried out for water. In their bracelet of bonfires they looked like damned souls begging for relief. Except for an occasional American who took pity and tossed them a gourd of water, their pleas went unanswered. The guards grew angry with the noise and demanded quiet. But the wounded were out of their heads and kept on screaming for water and for their mothers and for Maria.
"Water those men, goddamn it," someone finally demanded. Houston recognized Burleson's voice. When no one responded, Burleson got to his feet. "Some of you, help me."
After a while a figure rose up from the ground and collected gourds and with Burleson began shuttling back and forth from the river to the prisoners. Their path took them close to
where Houston lay. The firelight revealed Burleson's helper, the thin child with a goiter, one of Ben McCulloch's cannon monkeys. Houston wanted to ask what had happened to Tad, but didn't. He wasn't sure he cared anymore. Burleson quit after two or three trips. The boy with the goiter didn't. He labored mechanically for what seemed like hours, his bare feet slapping the dirt. Water spilled from the gourd holes, soaking his clothes. Little by little it washed some of the blood from his pants.
"Can you spare some of that?" Houston begged on one of the boy's passages.
Gradually the battle smoke cleared away on the night breeze. It was a relief to smell fresh air, but with the smoke gone the mosquitoes pounced on them, adding to their misery. A nest of ants had found his leg. The pain overrode the tickle of their creeping, but he could see them coating his pants and boot. Ordinarily the thought of insects crawling in and out of the hole in his ankle would have bothered him. From long ago he remembered the maggots, white and alive, in the meaty gouge of his groin wound.
The stars came out and Houston stared up at them with his mouth open. There was a design up there but he just couldn't seem to find it, not upon the tides of his delirium. He faded back and forth from one battle to the other, from one wound to another. It was strangely conceivable to him that he might still be that young soldier and that he was lying near death at Horseshoe Bend and everything since was just a dream. He reached deep inside, demanding some proof of which Houston he really was, the boy or the general. High overhead, deep in the carved moon, Old Hickory's skull smiled down on him. "I'm your bastard now," Houston murmured.
All over again he saw his mother's gaunt face, practically scarred by the tears she had wept thinking him killed under Jackson. He raced down wilderness traces, through ramshackle settlements, up rivers dotted with squatters turned yellow with disease, across a land of ambitions, into the halls of Congress. He kissed Eliza, held the long, heavy hank of golden hair in one palm, saw her turn away from him. His effigy burned in the streets. His exile turned to water, the Mississippi, a raft, and there was Bowie again, whispering Texas, Texas.
"Texas," Houston hissed at the stars.
Many hours passed and on every side Houston listened to wounded men babbling in English and Spanish. At some point he felt his head lifted off the knotty root and water slid between his lips and down his dry throat. He choked weakly and opened his eyes. Rusk was kneeling over him, gourd in hand. His face was nearly black from gunsmoke, and for an instant Houston was reminded of the Cherokee's Negro clown who had once parodied him.
"Am I dying, Tom?" Houston whispered.
Rusk had run out of tears to weep. "Here," he said. "This is for the pain." He held out a small green bottle with a bit of rag for a cork.
"I found this in Junius's kit," he said. "Laudanum. It's more opium than alcohol, I think."
Houston sipped at the liquid, then took some more. "How far is the dawn?" he asked.
Rusk averted his eyes.
"She'll be a beauty," Houston confided.
"Rest, sir."
"But the dawn . . ."
"Soon," Rusk told him. Then he was gone.
/ have no one to pray to, Houston realized. There is only memory. Covered with insects, he let his eyes close and joined with the voices of his past.
"General."
Houston woke. The sun was coming. Along the eastern horizon the stars were disintegrating in a peach blush. It was going to be a hot day. Strangely the bonfires were still blazing away. Any other morning they would have died down by now. Even exhausted the men had kept the fires stoked large. Houston thought that odd.
"It's me, Labadie." The surgeon turned slightly and the firelight and dawn showed he was painted with blood from his side whiskers and bald spot to his brogans. Houston remembered the wounded. The doctor would have been attending the casualties all night long.
"This boot must come off," Dr. Labadie said.
"Don't go ruin it with a knife," Houston said.
"General, the boot's ruined, and I must see your leg."
"It's the leg I mean. No cutting." The pain he could stand, and the pathos, too. Certainly there were enough one-legged
warriors in the world to keep him company. What Houston could not abide, even drugged and half delirious, was the thought of more mutilation. He'd lost one wife, in part over the wound in his groin. If ever another came along he needed all th
e wholeness he could summon, and that included two legs.
"Now, you know, General," Dr. Labadie tsk'd. "I can't say yet."
"I can," Houston pointedly informed him.
Dr. Labadie pulled a butcher knife from a back sheath and held it up. "I can wrestle your boot, sir. Or you can let me use this."
Houston took a deep breath. It was going to begin now. Once the boot was open the doctors would have him. The suffering could go on for many years. Houston had forgotten the pain, it had grown so constant. But when Dr. Labadie slid his knife inside the boot and began sawing apart the leather, Houston jerked up onto his elbows and tried to back away from it all.
Colonel Forbes joined them. "It was a great victory," he brayed hoarsely. Houston smelled the liquor on him. It took a moment for Colonel Forbes to see what Dr. Labadie was doing. "General," he said, "you're shot."
"How many wounded do we have?" Houston thought to ask.
"Wounded? I don't know." Colonel Forbes spoke up. "Our latest count shows we lost four of our men. Dead."
"Four?" Houston marveled. Could it be? He must have seen a thousand bodies on the field yesterday. And they had lost only four?
"I'm doing my best," Dr. Labadie said to Houston.
"Of course," Houston assured him, very close to vomiting from the pain.
"Courage, sir," Colonel Forbes said. He staggered.
Finally the doctor laid aside his knife and pried open the boot. It wasn't so bad to look at. There was no gruesome twist to the ankle. The foot was not hanging by a few tendons the way Houston had feared. The bullet had entered on the side and torn the skin open. What showed was mostly gristle and bits of white bone. Houston had seen far worse.
Dr. Labadie took the leg in his hands and held the ankle
higher to the light. A month of rain had rotted the bottom of his pantleg. Soaked in blood, the raggedy edge looked eaten by something alive and mean. "This will hurt," Dr. Labadie said.
Houston tried to imagine his leg was a hundred miles away, that it was someone else's. Dr. Labadie gripped the ankle and hoicked it this way and that. He was firm and vigorous in his inspection. Houston roared. He jerked his leg away. He had thought their long march and all the nights spent sleeping in the dirt and mud would have hardened him to pain. His softness mocked him, though. He emptied his stomach onto the dirt.
"Help me," Dr. Labadie told Colonel Forbes. "I need to poke for scraps of metal. It's a mess in there."
The colonel had grown pale. "Courage," he muttered. He didn't move to help.
"For God's sake," the doctor said. Drawn by Houston's shout, other men had gathered to watch. Houston felt awfully far down in the middle of their circle, like a lamed rabbit surrounded by giants. "You," the doctor said to one, "come over here."
Through the nausea and haze of pain, Houston recognized his young cannoneer, Ben McCulloch. "It's me, sir," the boy said to Houston.
Houston summoned his dignity. "I may buck, Sergeant," he said. "You hold tight."
"I will," the boy said, and hugged the leg a little closer.
The knife went in. Houston gasped at it. He tried not to let the men see his pain. He told himself they didn't deserve his agony. After ten minutes he would almost have preferred amputation to Dr. Labadie's meticulous probing. The doctor made physician noises. His knife—McCulloch's scalping knife —scratched against the exposed bone and worked between the gristle. Spotting a piece of shrapnel the doctor picked at it, worrying it up through the hole.
Dawn broke with Dr. Labadie still at work. Houston was drenched in sweat. He watched a shiny black beetle creep through the weeds, a long meandering journey that finally brought it into the light of day.
"Copper," Dr. Labadie pronounced, holding up a bit of shrapnel. "A new development over lead. It goes to poison after a while."
"Inhuman," Colonel Forbes said.
Dr. Labadie quit digging. "I'm tired," he said. "This will take surgery, I'm afraid."
They had him now, Houston thought. One surgery would lead to another. They would whittle and pare at him and when they were finished he would have scars on top of scars and another wound that wouldn't heal.
While Dr. Labadie bound the ankle in rags, Houston asked about the prisoners.
"I'm pleased to inform you, General, six hundred enemy are in our hands," Colonel Forbes reported. "I'm even more pleased to say that by subtracting that number from the Mexican muster list, we seem to have killed nearly six hundred fifty. That figure will climb as their wounded die off."
"Hurrah," Dr. Labadie woodenly stated.
"Not since the invention of gunpowder has modern warfare witnessed such a miracle," Colonel Forbes insisted. "It's a sign from God. We were destined to this."
Houston licked his lips. Destiny? He would have spit, but all the sweating had dried him hollow. "Which group is Santa Anna with?" he asked.
"Sir?"
"Is he a prisoner or is he dead?"
"The devil escaped. Deaf Smith has taken a patrol out tracking."
Houston weakened. He lay back against the tree root.
"Colonel Forbes," he continued, "you will detail a party to take stock of the enemy camp. Get a full inventory of the spoils. Round up their livestock. Collect their weaponry. Bring their goods and supplies to this camp."
"Yes sir."
"One other thing," Houston said. "I want no plundering."
Colonel Forbes looked shocked. "These men are patriots," he protested.
"Goddamn your patriotism," Houston whispered. Overhead the leaves were blending to solid green. He fought the weakness. There was too much that needed doing for him to go slipping away like this. But he lost consciousness anyway. His old dreams flooded through. She appeared. She fled. The seduction and escape went on and on.
Houston woke to a name being roared through camp. The name trailed off across the bayou like old thunder and he was too late to hear anything more than that it wasn't his name. Beyond that nothing was certain. He was disoriented, unsure if this was even an awakening.
It was dark and the bonfires were roaring and snapping and the ants and mosquitoes were everywhere. Out of the corner of one eye Houston saw his lower leg bound in bloody bandages. His seat was wet and he smelled urine, his own. There were more fires than last night and they were bigger, downright huge, and beside them lay quarters of cow or longhorned heads ready to be cooked. Here and there Houston saw canvas tents that had been brought from the Mexican camp and erected among the trees. Dozens of skinny mules and ponies stood hobbled in the shadows.
A good number of Houston's soldiers were wearing pieces of Mexican uniforms with red cuffs and shoulder boards, many with gaping holes and slashes in the blue cotton. Many were draped with beautiful serapes or carrying the more exotic weapons they'd picked up, long, polished lances and straight-bladed sabers. One gentleman had on a helmet with a Grecian crest of horsehair and white trim and a giant hole blown through its rear.
A day had passed, then, obviously a very profitable day. But for all the raucous costume-ball of new acquisitions, the men had a strangeness in their eyes. They didn't look joyous, not even the ones who were drunk, and there were plenty of them. Ordinarily they would have been joking and bragging and bartering at a time like this. But something had happened, Houston could sense it.
"General." It was Moses Bryan, his doe eyes large and bloodshot. He lifted Houston's big head to the gourd and gave him a long drink.
"A little more," Houston rasped. Rivulets poured down his whiskers, streamed across his neck. He held on to Bryan's arm and emptied the gourd onto his head. It was brackish and warm in his mouth but cool on his face and that meant he was feverish. Houston made an effort to get his elbows under him. He gained a few inches, then the strength went out of him and he dropped flat onto his back again.
"You're weak. You've been out of your head, talking all day."
He lay still and let the blood return to his brain. The dizziness passed. "Did Smith find Santa Anna?" Houston ask
ed.
"A group of Mexican dragoons got all the way to the Vinces' bridge. Santa Anna was with them, but he slipped away. They're still looking." Bryan paused, then went on.
"They've been killing everyone they find along the path. Smith thinks you're dying. He said the Mexicans have killed you. Last evening they cornered a Mexican officer who said he was Santa Anna. Smith cut his head off with a saber. But it wasn't Santa Anna. They're still looking."
Houston had meant to lead them through the labyrinth into bounty and sunshine and goodness. Yet here they were, mired deep among the swamps, dressed in dead men's clothes and painted with blood. "Tell Mr. Smith I'm not dying. And tell him stop the killing."
Like a starved man smelling food, Bryan leaned in toward the words. Hope mingled with the disbelief on his face. "Stop the killing?" he repeated.
"Tell him I want the runaways kept alive. No more killing."
"I'll tell him. He'll listen to you."
"I want—I need—Santa Anna alive."
The Mexican caudillo deserved to be confined like a wild animal and displayed the way the Romans used to with their foreign captives. But something more than that appealed to Houston. If they could take alive this monster who had ordered the execution of five hundred unarmed prisoners at Goliad, and if they could sustain him and perhaps even find his humanity, it would be at least a step toward proving their superiority. Houston's men needed some act to distinguish their butchery from Santa Anna's. At least Houston needed it.
Houston turned his eyes back to the men. "What's wrong with the army?" he asked.
Bryan looked over at the fires. "It was a bad day today." His domed forehead wrinkled.
"What happened?"
"We went back through the field." Bryan swallowed. "You told us to go and we went."