“That’d be fine an’ dandy.”
So that’s what took the place of an Indian battle when the play debuted in mid-May. As the crowd cheered Nimrod/Crockett/Newman after he’d saved a fair damsel in distress, the onstage embodiment of heroism caught his breath. Out of the corner of his eye, he sized up the audience. Immediately, he noticed a familiar face in row three: Angus McCracken, the lovable crackpot who’d brought him here.
For a moment, Crockett worried that the little fellow, theater lights dancing off glasses perched on his nose, might stand up, shout something, give him away. Not a chance. As they briefly made eye contact, Crockett could tell that McCracken appeared happy for him. Clearly, the scientist understood the positive impact this show could have, particularly after they concluded the Philadelphia run and took the play on the road all over America.
Davy sensed McCracken hoped he’d found the purpose to his being here. But the tall man sensed his unwitting mentor in the reserved seating knew him well enough to grasp how he felt now: This was something, at least. Something good. But would the show be enough to satisfy Davy Crockett’s hope of striking the kind of blow for freedom he’d been all ready to offer just before being swept through time and space? No.
However nice this might be, whatever good they might achieve, Crockett had grown to believe if this was all there was, it wouldn’t satisfy him. He’d still spend his life wishing he’d died defending the Alamo. He must find a way to do more.
The theater company received a royal welcome when they reached Washington, D.C., three months later. President Polk himself was in attendance on the first evening and clapped harder and longer than anyone else at the end. The company performed Wildfire for three full weeks before they headed on to the next city. Rarely was there an empty seat to be found. David Crockett—or Newman, as he billed himself when he played Nimrod—took satisfaction in their impact. As Anne had predicted, a new wave of patriotism swept the land.
But it went beyond that. In each city where the show was performed, parents brought their children to see it. And then bought them souvenir coonskin caps before heading home, as well as little flags the kids waved. This happened none too soon, for U.S. and Mexican troops eyed one another ever more warily across the Rio Grande. Their play was no longer another of many road shows crisscrossing provincial America, but the centerpiece of a “From Sea to Shining Sea” movement, as well as a virtual Davy Crockett craze.
“Mr. Newman!” Anne ecstatically told her star as they met for lunch at the elegant hotel where top members of the company stayed while in D.C. “We’ve received an invitation to visit the White House. The president and his wife want to meet us in person!” To Anne’s surprise, the tall man seated before her did not look any too thrilled.
Whew! That don’t sound so good, Crockett mused. Met Polk many a time. While that was almost ten years ago, fer him if not fer me, likely he’d recognize me. Seein’ me up thar’ onstage was one thing, what with the lights an’ commotion. But standin’ face to face? Ooooh! That never occurred to me . . .
“Sure sounds like an honor,” he replied.
A family just then stopped by the table, the children anxious to meet the person they referred to not as the actor D.C. Newman or even the character Jeremiah Nimrod, but as the spirit of the man they adored. “Hi ya, Davy!” One little tyke hopped right up on his lap and hugged him, causing the big man to smile.
“You’re less excited than I thought you’d be,” Anne said after the fans had left, speaking of the invitation.
“No, no. That’d be swell.”
Nonetheless, when the appointment came around, the star could not attend due to illness. Though two fine doctors came by and found nothing wrong, he insisted his attendance might ruin the event for the others and that he’d best stay in bed. But he asked that they please send the president his best regards.
In fact, President Polk looked downtrodden that the man he most wanted to meet did not show. Still, he and Mrs. Polk graciously showed their guests the White House. Polk was particularly proud to display the only known painting of the actual Congressman Crockett completed in his lifetime. In 1824, more than eleven years earlier, Crockett had agreed to pose, not like most politicians in a fine suit, but wearing authentic buckskins, his rifle Old Betsey cradled in one arm, happily waving his hat with the other.
“I thought you’d enjoy seeing this,” Polk told Anne. “Here is the real man, the great man, himself.” While President Polk waited for her reaction, Anne could only gasp. Her face turned white, then red. “Miss Semple, is anything wrong?”
“No, Mr. President,” she coughed. “It is a wonderful likeness. So real I feel I could almost reach out and—”
“I know! Such a shame Mr. Newman isn’t standing beside you at this moment. He’s convinced the entire country that he is Crockett. Wouldn’t it have been fascinating to compare him with the real thing?”
“You’re him. I know that’s impossible, yet . . . you are. And please don’t tell me I’m crazy.”
“Annie Semple,” the big man standing on the balcony of his suite, overlooking the lights of the capitol, said as he turned, “you’re ‘bout the least crazy person I ever met.”
After returning from the White House, Anne had marched directly to the rooms where Newman had lived since their arrival in Washington and rapped on the door. No answer. Anne knocked more fiercely and, from the far distant side of the suite, he had called out: “Come on in, Annie,” as if there was no doubt in his mind who’d arrived.
“How can this be?” Anne asked, staring up into his eyes as she traversed the room. “You clearly aren’t a day over fifty. Yet you—he—would be sixty by now.”
“Ain’t so easy to explain.”
“Try me.”
For the next two hours, under the cover of darkness, the two strolled the D.C. streets together. David Crockett told Anne precisely what had occurred, starting from the moment Angus employed his time machine to pluck the last Texas fighting man left inside the Alamo out of smoke and darkness, in so doing bringing him almost a decade forward in time.
“If it was anyone but you telling me this, I’d say that you were mad. Or the greatest tall-tale teller this side of . . .” She laughed.
This side of who?”
“This side of Davy Crockett. From what I’ve garnered in my research, he loved to tell whoppers on the stump.”
“And there are those who’ve always held that I’m crazy. Andy Jackson for one, when I turned down his offer to run as his vice-presidential candidate.”
“Why in heaven did you do that?”
Crockett grew glum. “ ’Cause I woulda had t’ back down on my Indians’ rights crusade. I had no intention of—”
“That’s what I love about you.” She eyeballed Crockett. “You do realize, David, that I’m in love with you?”
“Oh, come on, now, Annie. I’m at least twenty years older than—”
“Thirty, counting the decade you slipped by. Then again, I’ve always been attracted to older men.”
Crockett firmly but gently took Anne’s hands. “You ain’t in love with me. You’re in love with an idea.”
“You are an idea. The living embodiment of everything that’s best about America.”
“Don’t go to overpraisin’ me. I got m’ faults, too.”
“Thank goodness. Otherwise I might think you were God, returned for a Second Coming.”
Crockett howled at that. “Not even close.”
They paused under one of the modern lamplights. “Close enough for me. David, do you believe Mr. McCracken will ever be able to fix that machine of his?”
Crockett thought about that for a moment. “Nah. He was out there in the audience that first night. So he knows how t’ locate me. I have no doubt he’s been workin’ away t’ the best of his ability. Had he come up with something, he’d a-been in touch long ago.”
“So you’re stuck here.”
“Seems that way.”
An
nie leaned up on her tiptoes, kissing him gently. “Won’t you allow me to help you make the best of it?”
“I’m jest afeard t’ do anything that might hurt you.”
Anne laughed joyously. “Oh, David! Every woman dreams of holding her ideal man from the past in her arms. But I actually get to do that! It’s . . . I don’t know—”
“Perfect?”
“Yes. Precisely.”
“Yeah, well . . . That’s what worries me. ’Cause I’m a realist. An’ as such, I don’t believe that perfection can long exist in this world.”
All the same, Crockett and Anne Semple became loving friends for the remainder of the tour as it continued on and on, and of course she kept his secret. New Year’s Eve came and went as the troupe swept into the northwest, then on over to California where Col. John Fremont had been headquartered in case the coming war spread all the way up the western coast. Finally the company drifted down into the southwest.
All along, Anne had planned on staging Wildfire in San Antonio on March 6, 1846, on the tenth anniversary of the Alamo’s fall. When they arrived, Crockett was fascinated to note the little village of three hundred had transformed into a city of three thousand. Its shopping and financial districts now stretched closer to the old mission on the river’s far side. Though a thin stretch of open plain still remained between the center of commerce and the shrine, Crockett assumed that in the next few years, the concept of progress would see the bustling town overcome this silent temple. He hoped and prayed its sanctity would remain rock-solid.
The reaction their play elicited in the grand theater that night suggested the Alamo likely would survive. If he’d played a small hand in assuring that, then McCracken had indeed done the right thing bringing him here. However, Crockett still had some misgivings. The show’s successful run was over. Did that mean his final chore was completed? If so, why didn’t he feel satisfied, content, justified?
“What’s wrong?” Anne wanted to know. They sat across from one another at a café one night after the show, sipping coffee.
“Ain’t sure I know myself.” Melancholy now, Crockett cast his gaze out the window.
“You need to go there, don’t you?”
He nodded. “Seems all wrong, comin’ this close to the spot where I’m supposed to have met my Maker and not pay a visit. Disrespectful, almost.”
“Go ahead!” Anne responded, using his favorite phrase.
“I’d ask you to walk with me—”
“David, I know this is something you must do alone.”
Crockett smiled his appreciation. “Sure ’preciate the way you understand me without m’ havin’ to put it in words.”
“It’s just,” Anne gulped, “I have this strange feeling that I’ll never see you again.”
“Why, Annie! I’m only goin’ a mile away, and I’ll be there fer maybe half an hour. What could happen?”
Captain Jesus Ramirez motioned to his six volunteers, men who had been with him twelve years now. During that period, the group had become so close they barely needed to speak, able to communicate through eye contact and body language. Thank goodness for that, as they were on the most dangerous mission of their lives.
A short while ago, Santa Anna, banished after losing all of Texas to the rebels a decade earlier, had been called back to retake command of the army. The Napoleon of the West, as he called himself, had assembled his favorite officers, Ramirez—a young lieutenant when he led a lancer squadron at the Alamo—among them.
In his raspy voice, Santa Anna explained that war with the United States would begin in a month. First, though, he needed to strike hard and fast with a symbolic gesture. The anniversary of the Alamo’s fall was approaching. Santa Anna asked for an officer willing to take a bold risk. He would slip into San Antonio in white peon’s linens with a small group of saboteurs, then blow up the mission on that night. This would set the pace for the upcoming conflict while also uniting all of Mexico behind him.
“Please, sir! Let it be me,” Ramirez had called out. This pleased Santa Anna, who prized loyalty and courage. So he assigned the task to Ramirez, free to pick six men to travel north with him. Santa Anna could have no idea how important this was to Ramirez, or those lancers he took into his confidence. Never once, during all the time that had passed, did any of them dispel from their minds the strange event they witnessed: Crockett, apparently dissolving into the morning mist before their very eyes. The image haunted their dreams; they met regularly to speak about it, try and guess what might have happened over wine and beer. Eventually all had admitted that they hoped to return someday to the Alamo, perhaps to learn if it had been real or a living nightmare.
Now, they were there. As darkness descended, they had slipped their barrel of gunpowder inside the crumbling walls and were readying to set the fuse. However spooky the place, none had yet experienced anything out of the ordinary. Once they’d blown the Alamo sky-high, they could return to their base not only to receive their commander’s grateful thanks, but would be able to put this out of their minds once and for all.
“Who’d that be?” a voice called out from over by the chapel.
The Mexicans gasped. What they saw was not some night watchman, arrived to check on things. Standing in the starlight they perceived the tall man they’d encountered once before. Though a bold man, Ramirez had to restrain himself from calling out in horror: “Cwocky! Cwocky!” This must be a ghost, for he appeared the same age as when they faced off with him ten years earlier. As they summed up their courage and stepped closer, he now clearly saw them in a stream of moonlight and at once knew precisely who they were.
“Wall, hello, boys! Looks like we got us a date with destiny.”
The loud explosion caused Anne Semple, waiting for the great love of her life to return, to spill her coffee and leap up out of her seat. She darted into the street where other citizens were swiftly congregating. The town marshal, his six-gun by his side, hurried up. Some people pointed across the way to the Alamo, witnesses who’d seen the explosion explaining it happened just outside the old walls. The marshal nodded for the men to follow him.
Anne hurried along, already guessing what had more or less happened. When they arrived at the site, they found three dead Mexicans, dressed in civilian garb, blown to smithereens; alongside them was the tall fellow who had played the part of Crockett in the play everyone had so enjoyed. The marshal sent deputies running off in all directions to see if there might be any more Mexicans trying to escape. He himself set about figuring out what had happened.
The lady who had brought the show here, a proud native Texan herself, was the one who figured it out. Mr. Newman had wanted to see the Alamo firsthand. Stepping into the structure, he must have discovered a group of saboteurs about to blow up the place. Maybe he’d played David Crockett so many times onstage he had begun to believe that’s who he really was, and so attacked them before any damage could be done. Unable to dislocate the fuse, he’d carried the powder-barrel out on his large shoulders, three Mexicans trying to slow him down. All were killed by the explosion.
“How strange,” said the marshal, certain that Anne Semple must be right. “I mean, most actors would have changed clothing after the show. But he was still wearing his buckskin costume.”
“To the saboteurs,” Anne added, “he must have looked like Crockett come back from the grave to stop them.”
The following morning, Angus McCracken of Philadelphia worked on his time machine, hoping to yet fix it and contact the star of that show to tell him now it could be done. As had happened many days before, he was frustrated to realize he’d made no progress. Exhausted, he fixed himself a cup of tea, then slipped on his spectacles and sat down to read the paper. Halfway through the front-page story—which told of the strange coincidence of an actor who’d just played David Crockett stopping an act of sabotage on the Alamo precisely one decade after the famed battle—Angus began to shake so furiously he had to set his cup down.
“No coinc
idence,” he sighed. “Fate!”
So, Davy, this was, after all, your purpose. What you were born for. I didn’t rob you of your birthright. Instead I provided you with a greater destiny. Thanks to you—and, I might add, me—the shrine was preserved. We did it, Davy. Each in his own way. Together.
With that, Angus McCracken broke into tears. Yet he was not sad. Rather, in a strange way, he felt happy. This, he thought to himself, must be what people mean by “an up-cry.”
And as for the colonel? He had won his last battle, after all.
As a famous ballad once put it, “history books tell they was all cut low.” Every one of the Alamo’s 186 defenders, including David Crockett himself. But did the colonel’s death occur, as the hard cold facts insist, on March 6, 1836? Or could there exist an alternative truth in which that event transpired a decade later? Newspapers of the time record Crockett sightings all across America for ten years following that fabled battle. Were people merely seeing what they wanted, perhaps needed, to see . . . or did their eyes witness a reality that the brain had trouble accepting? Not an easy issue to deal with, then or now. Yet a question that must be raised, if not necessarily answered, in . . . the Twilight Zone.
THE
BLOODTHIRSTINESS
OF GREAT BEAUTY
M. Tara Crowl
In a far corner of the Twilight Zone, a vicious battle rages. Day after day, year after year, warriors strap on their armor, wield their swords, and march into combat. Savage as hell and dressed to kill, they tirelessly pursue the elusive, ephemeral battle prize: fame. Livia Mendelssohn joined the battle six years ago. She may look sweet and innocent, but don’t be fooled; this once-delicate flower has hardened into the most ruthless of warriors. She has stars in her eyes, blood under her fingernails, and desperation so deep she’d claw, bite, or crawl over corpses to reach that glittering beacon of celebrity. Some might call that madness. Here, it’s just survival. The quest for fame demands nothing less in this dark corner of the Twilight Zone called Hollywood.
More Stories from the Twilight Zone Page 26