by Bruce Olds
At last, this fucking, beknighted Alamo was nothing but three acres of compression and claustrophobia, a site of great hate and little room, room within which one sensed oneself sealed up and shut in, in danger at any moment of being deglutitioned—or buried alive. Encrypted-in-vivo.
And should the enemy appear, and there was every reason to believe that, so long as we continued to make noises about defiantly holding onto the place, the enemy eventually must appear, we clearly were going to find ourselves cooped up, boxed in and pinned down inside the very ass-end of the misbegotten, prolapsed world.
Travis Diary, Feb. 8, 1836:
David Crockett is here. The celebrated, the inimitable Davy. Bowie fetched him in late last night from the Campo Santo, the papist cemetery west of town where he and his party consisting of four others had gotten hopelessly lost and were waiting abashedly in the rain. We, Bowie and myself, immediately invited him to join in command of this place to which offer he replied, declining, that he is here only to “assist” and wishes to be considered no more than a “High Private.” Not that it matters in light of the uneasy particulars of our immediate situation—any pig in a poke, after all, and the men, at least for the moment, do seem rather buoyed by his presence (or its persona)—but, god forgive me my skepticism, I know better than to believe that this self-inebriated if seldom-less-than-shrewd Davy-come-lately is here merely to lend a hand on our behalf. He is here because having latterly been famously defeated in his bid to be re-elected to a fourth term as a U. S. Congressman from Tennessee, he recognizes the opportunity Tejas affords him to re-habilitate both his public reputation and financial and political fortunes. David Crockett. The celebrated Davy. The inimitable Davy. And a party of four. Four! Damn! I cannot even count that low.
Fandango
I was out on the dancefloor zapateado-ing with the comeliest señorita in all of Bejar, comely in that peculiarly subtropical, humidly Latin or Castilian way, when I heard Bowie—his rafter-resonant, ophicleide-loud voice was unmistakable—roaring my name.
I was not in the mood for Bowie. Not tonight. And it was one helluva night, a regular making-merry rowdydow. Eating too much, drinking too much, singing and dancing and jawing and chawing and laughing far too much. Breasts grabbed, asses pinched, thighs furtively stroked.
Over there, a convivial bout or two of good-natured arm-wrestling at a carved-up corner table. Over there, a tobaccy spitting contest for both accuracy and distance. Back over there, companionable cockfights to the death. And right here, leashed scorpion races.
Also to be noted were:
colored lantern lights strung as if by clothesline low overhead; they sagged and swagged
aromas of corn foods cooking over mesquite fires; they wended and wafted, emanating
the occasional distant firework; they arc’d and evanesced
the more occasional blackpowder burst of gunfire; they signified war and revelry alike
the incessant barkings and beaglings of pariah packdogs and intermittent yip-yipping of rogue coyote; they resounded, echoing wild and resonantly against the shatterproof night
the thk-thking of maracas, clikket-snicking of castañetas, scritching-and-brazzing of guiros; they were percussively, if no less infernally insistent
I liked dancing. I not only was good at it, I knew I was good at it. But I did not like parties. I loathed parties. I found parties enervating. I was at this one only because Bowie had talked me into going, persuaded me that my absence would be conspicuous and misconstrued, that the men would interpret it as my thinking myself, “too high and mighty to rub shoulders,” as he put it, “with the hoi polloi.”
The truth was, I had damn little use for the hoi polloi, but I went anyway, put in an appearance, made the out-of-character gesture. So here I was where I wished I wasn’t, dancing up a contrary storm in celebration of the sudden, entirely suspicious arrival of America’s foremost folk hero-ofthe-moment, who at the moment was over there in the corner with the rest of the music-makers, fiddle to chin trying to keep up with their shifting duple and triple metric rhythms, wide grinning the while. The man always was grinning. Irritated the hell out of me.
“You need to hear this, Colonel,” said Bowie, tugging me from the dancefloor while flicking the scrap of paper held in his hand with the cracked, noticeably jagged nail of his index finger. “Just in from one of Seguin’s boys. Blas Herrara.”
Taking it from him, I read. Tried to. Hard squint. A larger load on than I realized. Damn words refused to stay put on the damn paper. Swam like runny yolks on a plate awriggle with worms. I was having real trouble trying to make cara o cruz, of what was scrawled there.
“By the way,” added Bowie, “Herrara was all beside himself. Seemed spooked.”
“You know this Blas?” I asked, aware that I was slightly slurring.
“Herrara? I do,” said Bowie. “Seguin’s cousin.”
“Reliable?”
“As rain. I’ll vouch. If he’s spooked, likely a good reason.”
“So”—this was fucking hopeless; I was at a loss, lost to the lubricant; I handed the paper back to him—“what does it say?”
“Says,” he said, not missing a syncopated beat, “that Santana’s four days march out of Presidio de Rio Grande with 13,000 men. 10,000 foot infantry, 3,000 horse cavalry. Says he’s designs on taking Bejar. Says,” now he was quoting, “he’ll be neither delayed nor swayed in single-minded pursuit of his object.”
I knew the Presidio de Rio Grande. Some called it Villa de Guerrero. 150 miles southwest. Which meant—I was calculating it, ciphering, trying to, let’s see, a single man on a single horse could, going at a half decent clip, comfortably cover that kind of ground in four days?—with that many men, God knows how many siege cannon, it should take him—what?—at least a fortnight or two to reach us?
“So?” Bowie remarked. Always hyperventilating, Bowie. Always impetuously up and fight-ready aching for action. “What plans then? We should council, Buck, pow-wow, make preparations. Not a moment to waste. We should….”
“Mañana, Jim,” I heard myself saying. “We can do nothing tonight, nothing worth doing, nothing but a lot of headlesschickening around in the damn dark. Tomorrow’s another day. Soon enough. We’ll put our cabezas together, call a council of the officers, mañana. Time enough to do what needs doing when we get around to it.”
Rolling his cheroot east to west, west to east between his lips before bringing it to a halt with a sudden tooth-clench mid-mouth, Bowie replied, “Piquet guards, Buck. We should at least deploy piquet guards. Out of town. Roads in. I’ll sleep a helluva lot better tonight if we….”
“Fine,” I said. “Good. Brilliant. See to it. But right now? Right now I’m dancing with Peach Melba over there and…”
“It always is wisdom, Buck,” he said, not yet livid, if half-fuming, “to do that which is necessary before it becomes necessary to do it. Cunctation, Colonel”—he pronounced it kunk-shin—“ever hear of it?”
“Relax, Colonel. Hold your water. You fret too much, don’t mind me saying. I’m all for prudence and precaution, but Jesus Christ on his rosy red cross, what conceivable difference can a few hours make? You know”—I knew I shouldn’t say what I knew I was about to say, but the tequila had me saying it anyway—“there are times when you….”
“What?” he interrupted, his glower on. “When what? When I what, Colonel?”
“When you are just so damn….formulaic.”
Bowie growled something I failed to catch, coughed blood into his kerchief, snarled and stomped off. I was not surprised. Lately, the man had convinced himself that he was the fucking King of Improvisation, the Prince Elect of Impromptu, Señor Guerrillero Ultimo, when in fact he was nothing if not predictably predictable. Predictably the Bayou Boy. Predictably Jimbo. Predictably Bowie.
So tiresome. So tedious. So…all of himself, every active inch.
Besides, I did not believe it. This so-called intelligence, this scuttlebutt, Herrara’s r
eport. Not all of it anyway. I had little doubt that Santa Anna might be on the move, but that he was already at Guerrero with 13,000 and heavy cannon in the dead of winter? No, that I could not credit.
Now, I knew that Herrara was Seguin’s man, and I knew that Seguin could be trusted. Johnny Seguin was one mighty fine hombre. Stand-up as they come. Loyal to a fault and an exemplar of his kind, one whose hatred of Santa Anna, although of a different quality, I knew exceeded even my own. But we had had our false alarms before, oodles of them. Before the night was out, it would not have surprised me had there been reports that S.A. himself had slipped in and out of the damn shindig disguised as a damn priest. Lately, the paranoia in Bejar was rampant. Everyone was seeing ghosts, fantasmas, monsters under every cama.
In any event, even should the information, unlikely as it was—for the weather had turned, the distance was far, the topography both unfriendly (being bereft of forage, virtually so of water, all but impassable with rutty bad roads) and Comanch-ridden—even should the report prove accurate, I estimated that we had, realistically, at least another three to four weeks, likely many more, before we needed to be overly concerned.
I headed back out onto the dancefloor thinking, mañana. Mañana’s soon enough. For the moment all I wanted, all I wished, all I intended, was to disappear inside the rhythms of the huapango. Fandango the noche away, lost, oblivious, until the very risen sun.
Travis Diary, Feb. 11, 1836, 4 a.m.:
Stupid party! Frivolous I can be, am capable of being, when frivolity is called for, when it is fitting, but frivolous I decidedly choose not to be when cultivating the distance required to wait for dreams that seldom come true not to come true, reckoning, widdershins, whether dreams are for a reason and why it is that the dreamer cannot wash this night from his eyes weep wonderstruck as I may. Borracho. Muy borracho. I’ll pay this day. There are moments, latterly more moments, when I feel like Job himself. As if my soul is weary of my life, the weariness of having lived it. Sampling it as I sleepwalk, before spitting it out in disgust. These moments when my life feels like nothing so much as preparation for its imminent end. Twenty-six years old and superfluous! As superfluous to myself as I suspect I always have been to others. Better go slaughter one’s own kind in the name of peace….there’s small dancing left for us any way you look at it. Ach! Drunken thoughts. Enough. To bed.
Travis Diary, Feb. 16, 1836:
55 degrees. As a result of the meeting of our officer corps here, I have dispatched Lieutenant Bonham with appeals to all quarters. Much hinges on his success in rousing the settlements to send on to us men and arms in the most timely fashion possible. All pray that he may meet with a serious, immediate, active, and, most importantly, massive response. Bonham is a favorite here. I much favor him myself. 6’2”, 29 years old, ox-strong and handsome as Apollo, a fellow South Carolinian and silver-tongued lawyer of the highest character. Bowie and I agree that he is the one man head-and-shoulders best suited to succeed in carrying out this most sacred mission. If the dauntless James Butler Bonham, whose steadiness of nerve is exceeded only by his staunchness of spirit, cannot persuade our brethren to march at once to our succor, no man can.
May God goddamn anyone who ever prayed for peace, or preached a word of compassion!
(William B. Travis, from the Alamo, to Stephen F. Austin, in Nashville, 2/20/36)*
*(As “Texas Commissioner to the United States,” Austin had left for Washington D.C. before the end of the year charged with negotiating a $1 million federal loan, soliciting contributions from well-heeled private donors, and wooing public support for the coming war for Texas independence. Arriving in Nashville the second week in February, he was in Washington by the last week in March, and, after stops in Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York City, was back in Texas on June 27th. Six months later to the day, having in the meanwhile lost the election to become the first popularly elected president of the new independent Republic of Texas to Sam Houston, Stephen Fuller Austin, age 43, died of pneumonia. Houston lived another 27 years, leaving at his death an estate worth upwards of $90,000, including a dozen slaves.)
February 23rd
Notice from afar this call to slaughter…
Harken to the brazen skirls
that rebuke the latecomers
unequipped for battle…
By the time the enemy, or as I then conceived of him, “The Unholy Beast,” entered Bejar to the church bell chime issuing from the San Fernando Cathedral, most of the town’s Tejano inhabitants had in advance wisely fled or prudently gone to ground, while we in something resembling organized chaos had withdrawn catch-as-catch-can inside the walls of the Alamo, or as I then conceived of the ruined structure, “The Burrow.”
From my vantage post atop the West Wall, I gnawed absently on a piloncillo oscura, a conical thimble of hardened brown sugar, while observing through my field glass the commotive, colorfully martial goings-on.
Through my head, thoughts stampeded like herds of headless horses, one of them being, “Well now, appears likely we’ve overstayed our welcome”:
I leap upon the wall trying to grasp all the possible consequences that this turn of events must bring with it. I feel as if we never really organized The Burrow adequately for defense against attack. I had intended to do so, but the danger of an attack, and, consequently, the need to organize the place for defense always seemed so remote. Many things in this direction might have been done, should have been done, but, incomprehensibly, have not been done.
The thing to do now is to go carefully over The Burrow and consider every possible means of defending it. Devise a plan of defense and corresponding plan of construction, then begin the work at once with all the vigor of youth. That is the work that is really needed, the work for which I fear it is now far too late in the day.
I let everything slide. I have been negligent. Derelict in my duty. But no. Stop. That is not helpful. Self-recrimination is not helpful. I need calm the conflict roiling within me. I must not surrender to it, but hurry on. I do not know what I want. Probably simply to put off the hour.
Inconceivable to me is the size and capacity of The Beast, its freshness and vigor, its unceasing single-minded focus on overcoming its object, us, which it has the ability to achieve with ease. I could not have foreseen such an opponent. What is happening now is something I should have feared all along, something I should have prepared for, been constantly preparing for, the fact of The Beast’s coming. Could I have done something to divert it from its path, forced it to make a wide detour around The Burrow? No. Stop. Too late, too late for that. Why have I been spared so long only to be delivered to such terrors now? Compared to this, what do all the petty dangers I have brooded over in my life amount to?
It is precisely this that I should have foreseen. I should have thought of the defense of The Burrow. Above all, I should have arranged to cut off inner sections of The Burrow, partition them, as many as possible, from the more endangered exposed sections which, when attacked, must inevitably be breached. Not the slightest attempt have I made to carry out such a plan. Nothing at all has been done in that direction. I have not lifted a finger. I have been as thoughtless as a child. I have passed my manhood’s years in childish games. I have done nothing but play with the thought of danger. I have shirked my responsibilities, failed to take seriously the real actual danger. It is not as if there has been a lack of warning.
On my side, everything is worse prepared for now than ever. The Burrow stands defenseless, and the powers I still have must only fail me when the decisive hour comes. I cannot endure this place. All my surroundings seem filled with agitation, to be looking at me, through me. The eyes of the walls are angry with accusation and rebuke. They reproach me for a fool. I shake my head. I have not yet found any solution.
I try to unriddle The Beast’s plans. Perhaps an understanding with it might be possible, though that cannot, of course, be brought about by negotiation, only by The Beast itself, or some compulsion exercised fro
m my side. In both cases, the decisive factor will be what The Beast knows about me, about us.
Lying in my heap of earth, my Burrow, I can naturally dream all sorts of things, even of an understanding with The Beast, though I know well enough that no such thing can happen, and that at the instant when we see each other—more, at the moment when we sense each other’s presence—we shall blindly bare our claws and teeth, neither of us a second before or after the other, both of us raging with a new and different hunger.
Now the noise is growing louder, and this growing-louder is like a seismic coming-nearer. I give the order. The ground judders with thunder; cannon-roar.
Some noise can be seen.
(As a rule, it does little good to run from one’s enemy. In my experience, all that one accomplishes in doing so is to fly into the jaws of another. Certainly there are exits. Exits exist. Escape routes. Points of egress. Ways out. Each of which lead to precisely the same place: nowhere. Better to batten down, then. Better, deep, to burrow in. “Burrow, burrow, burrow! There’s a sky that way too if the pit’s deep enough so the stars tell us.”)
Travis Diary, evening, Feb. 23, 1836:
52 degrees. Damp. Enemy here in force. His clear design, to take us by surprise, catching us napping while still indolently billeted throughout Bejar, was sorely disappointed owing to our Tejano piquets, Seguin’s boys, who duly alerted us to his presence when still five miles south of town, time enough by several hours to organize and withdraw behind the walls here. I have sent on Mr. Sam Maverick to alert the settlements eastward of our need for immediate reinforcement. At evening’s tarnish, the enemy raised his red flag of “no quarter” from the belfry of the San Fernando church in town. I immediately ordered the gesture met with a shot from our 18-pounder mounted at the southwest corner of the compound. Having had time to ruminate and reassess, I now deeply regret having done so. A hasty, impulsive, impetuous and ill-advised, wholly childish response not worthy of me or of the men. What could have possessed me? What was I thinking? Am I really possessed of so much hubris? How often we astonish ourselves when put to the test! How often we fail! This gulf between who we are and who we aspire to be. My godforsaken obsession with honor at a time and in a place incompatible with it. Yesterday there was not much wrong. The day before there was not much wrong. Last night there still was not much wrong. Even this morning, not much wrong. But now, now is now, and now everything is wrong, and will remain wrong henceforth. I surmise.