The Raven's Honor

by Johnny D. Boggs

  She slaps her thigh, almost spilling the tobacco juice onto the rug, and laughs.

  He smiles, too.

  “Well, I’ll give ’em red devils credit for one thing. They taught you somethin’. On account, one day you come home, and I should tell myself that you ain’t no little boy no more, that you’s a man. Those Cherokees, they taught you responsibility. You says you’re gonna pay off your debts, even get that job teachin’ school.”

  “It didn’t last,” he tells her. He never could hold onto a dollar for very long.

  “You remember that day, don’t you?” she asks, and he shivers. He cannot forget.

  * * * * *

  March of 1813. He’s just twenty years old, no longer teaching school and in debt once again, and walking into Maryville with his friend, Bobby McEwen, when those soldiers of the Seventh Infantry Regiment came marching—to the music of fife and drum—to the courthouse.

  “His Majesty is stirring up the Indians and assaulting our citizens on the oceans,” a fine-looking officer announces, “and we are at war with England again.” He slaps a handful of coins on the top of an oaken keg. “A dollar bounty for new recruits.” Then the soldier goes on to talk about all the foul things England is doing to these new United States, but it’s the dollar that brings Bobby McEwen closer. It’s the thrill that makes Sam Houston follow.

  When Houston picks up a silver coin and starts to sign his name, Mr. Worth Lewallen snaps at Houston, “Has living with the Cherokees dulled your memory, boy?” Houston stops and stares at the big, balding man who lowers his corncob pipe. “Your father was Major Houston, and you’re named after him. I served with honor under him in Morgan’s Rifle Brigade.”

  Luther Chapman chimes in. “You’re Major Houston’s son, boy. You can’t be no common soldier in the ranks.”

  Houston fires back, “And what have your craven souls to say about the ranks?” They blink. Mr. Lewallen drops his pipe. Mr. Chapman opens his mouth, but finds no words. “Go to, with your stuff. I would much sooner honor the ranks than disgrace an appointment.”

  “Who is that uppity lad?” Roscoe Fountain whispers just loud enough for Houston to hear.

  “You don’t know me now,” Houston says as he dips his quill in the inkwell, “but you shall hear of me.”

  He signs his name with a flourish, and the captain of the Seventh Infantry says, “And how old are you …” he stops to read the name, “Samuel Houston?”

  “Twenty,” he answers, and the captain sighs.

  Which is what brings him to his mother.

  * * * * *

  When he looks at the ghost sitting on the inn’s bed, Elizabeth Houston picks up the story.

  “You got tears in your eyes when you come ups to me that afternoon, sayin’ that you can’t fi’t no British redcoats nor no Red Stick Injuns lessen I sign this paper that says I grants you permission to run off and fi’t for your country and maybe get yourself killed. That’s a hard thing to ask a mama to do, Sam. A hard, hard thing.”

  His heart is almost breaking as it did that March afternoon so many, many years ago.

  “You didn’t show it,” he says.

  She stares into the spit jar as though it’s the form of consent she had signed all those decades ago.

  “Wasn’t no holdin’ you back, Son,” she says. “Never was. Twenty years old … no matter what the law, what the army had to say, you was a growed man. Reckon you’d always been growed up. And, well, I was proud of you. But then, well, I was always proud of all my boys.”

  “Robert enlisted, too,” he reminds her, remembering his older brother, who had fought against the British, too, though not in Sam’s regiment. The Robert Houston who returned from war, however, would never be the same man. In 1820, Robert had put a pistol ball in his brain. The church in New Providence had denied a request to bury him in the cemetery, so poor Robert had been laid to rest along the road.

  “I was proud of you both,” Elizabeth says. “I reckon it was meant to be. Your pa fi’t ag’in’ the English. You was a lot like that man, and I loved him dearly. So when you come with that paper in your hand and ’em tears in your big eyes, that wasn’t nothin’ for me to do. Nothin’ I could do.”

  She leans forward to say, “So I point to that Lancaster rifle that was over the door, and I tells you, I says … ‘You take that musket, and don’t you never disgrace it.’ I says … ‘You jus’ remember that I had rather all my sons should fill one honorable grave than that one of ’em should turn his back to save his life.’ And you gets up offen your knees and you goes to that door and you fetches that rifle. And so I tells you, I says … ‘Go, and you remembers that while the door of my cottage is open to brave men, it be eternally shut against cowards.’” Her head bobs, and she dribbles more juice from the snuff into the jar. “I was puttin’ up a strong wall, Sam.”

  Again, she dabs her eyes with the sleeves of her dress.

  He stares at the slim band of gold on his pinky.

  “That,” he says in an unsteady voice, “is not all you gave me that day.”

  “No,” Elizabeth says, “it ain’t. An ol’ long gun. It ain’t important at all. You ain’t got that musket no longer has you?”

  His head shakes sadly. “No,” he tries to say, but can only mouth the word.

  “Don’t matter. I tol’ y’all that it was your Pa’s musket, but that ain’t altogether honest. I mean, I didn’t tell no falsehood or nothin’. It was your Pa’s, but it ain’t like he carted that off ag’in’ the redcoats. Your pa won that rifle from Ray Allen Howard. They’d bet on some horse race. Least, that’s how your pa said he gots it.” She raises a bony, ancient finger at her son’s hand that grips the arm of the rocking chair.

  “That ring yonder,” she says. “That be the most important thing.”

  “It is,” he whispers.

  “Don’t you never forget what it means,” she tells him, as she had told him on that blustery March afternoon back in Tennessee.

  “I won’t,” he tells her. “I haven’t.”

  She straightens. “I’d say you up and tried to forgets it a time or two or thirty.”

  He only partly succeeds at smiling. “I reckon so,” he tells her.

  “It’s all right, Son. You remembered, for the most part. I’m still proud of you. You done good. And you’ve brung up a slew of good children. You just remember, Sam. God has his hand on you. God’s always had his hand on you.”

  He lifts his head, sniffles, and releases the tight grip on the rocking chair’s arms.

  “You know what that day was?” Elizabeth asks.

  Uncomprehending, he merely stares at his mother.

  “That day? Back when you come to me with that paper I had to sign to let you go off and fi’t and win all that glory and fame and honor and make a name for yourself?”

  He can only guess. “The Ides of March?”

  Her laugh sounds, as it always did, like a braying donkey, and she again almost topples the spit jar’s contents, this time on the quilt.

  “You and all ’em books you was always readin’. No, this ain’t about Julius Caesar. It’s about you. It’s about me.” She reflects, and, as tears fill her eyes again, she looks at her brogans. “ ’Bout ever mama and papa that ever lived, I reckon.”

  A long while passes.

  “It was the hardest day of my life,” she tells him.

  He lets this sink in, and another eternity passes before he can find the words to speak.

  “You did not show it,” he tells her.

  “Like as not, you won’t show it, neither, when it’s your turn.” She looks over her shoulder and stares at the sleeping Margaret. “Or hers. But it’s somethin’ ever’ parent gots to do. You and her won’t like it none. No one ever does. I sure didn’t. But there comes a time when you just gots to … let go. You gots to tell yourself that your you
ng ’uns, well, they’ve all growed up on you. They’ve become a man, their own man, or a woman, full-growed. Gots their own thoughts, their own ideas, their own roads to travel. And you gots to lets ’em go. Live their own lives. Hope and pray that they turn out better’n you. And you gots to tells yourself that you done your best.”

  The rockers squeak as he leans forward and studies his mother.

  “Sam’ll be a good boy,” she tells him. “No, that ain’t right. He was a good boy. He’s a good man now. But you gots to let him be his own man.”

  * * * * *

  His eyes close, and he sees his son drawing stick figures on the foyer wall, and hears his own voice as he explodes and threatens to tear the hide off the boy’s buttocks until Aunt Liza and Margaret rescue the boy and Lewis begins a desperate attempt to clean the wall. And then he sees the image of Sam Junior, maybe five years old, finding a cigar left burning in his father’s ash tray and puffing away, his face turning green but refusing to remove the cigar. And again Houston is roaring, demanding that he will make the boy finish the damned cigar no matter how sick he gets. Until Margaret is telling him, “It’s your own fault, Sam. He sees you smoking and he wants to be just like you.” That staggers him, and he calmly takes the cigar from Sam Junior’s trembling hands, and lets Margaret take the now gagging boy into her arms.

  “Well,” he tells his wife, and their son, “he will never see me smoke another.”

  And Sam Junior did not.

  * * * * *

  When his eyes open, Elizabeth Paxton Houston no longer sits on the bed. He bolts out of the chair, turning to the door, still closed, back to the bed, where Margaret remains asleep. He races to the window, as though this ghost, this dream, this hallucination has taken off toward the street and that he might catch one final glimpse of his mother, dead nigh thirty years.

  She has vanished, and Houston chokes out a sob.

  He gathers himself, and moves to the bed, setting The Iliad on the nightstand, and pulls back the quilt, blanket, and sheet. After blowing out the lantern, he crawls under the covers.

  This night, he slides closer to Margaret, and puts his left arm over her shoulder. Then, as his wife had done earlier in the evening, Sam Houston cries himself to sleep.

  Chapter Ten

  April 3, 1861

  As the train of wagons crawled through the woods road—moving slowly to keep the dust to a minimum and protect Margaret from an asthma attack—Houston asked suddenly, “Jeff, do you know what dreams mean?”

  The slave, holding the lines expertly, shot his master a confused glance. “How’s that, Master Sam?”

  “You people,” Houston answered irritably, “know about such things better than we do.”

  “You people, Master?” The young black man looked troubled.

  “Negroes,” Houston explained. His mood had been foul all day, and as they approached the town of Brenham, that feeling turned even sourer. He knew what awaited him in Brenham. Last night, he had burned the note left for him at the inn.

  Talk yer treaSon in Brenham, huston,

  & youll nevR talk nomore

  “I dream, Master Sam,” Jeff said. “Don’t know what they all mean sometimes. Sometimes, I’m happy with ’em. Sometimes, they scares me somethin’ awful. Sometimes I don’t dream nothin’. You havin’ bad dreams, sir?”

  “I know of dreams,” Houston said. “I know of visions. I saw the plains at San Jacinto clearly, long before I ever led my troops there into battle.”

  Yet seeing San Jacinto was one thing. Having dead-of-night conversations with Crockett and his mother? That could land a man in an asylum. “But lately …” He had not told Margaret about these visits from the past. He wasn’t certain he desired Jeff to know.

  “You must not run off and tell my wife what I am to tell you,” Houston barked. “You tell her or Aunt Liza or Aunt Martha … you even let on to Lewis or Joshua or anybody … and I’ll lay welts on your back that will take a month of Sundays to heal.”

  “Yes, sir, Master Sam.” Jeff trembled.

  Houston sucked in a deep breath, and slowly exhaled. Turning away from Jeff, he stared at the passing trees.

  “I did not mean that, Jeff,” he said at last. “It’s just …” The wagon hit a hole, forcing Houston to grab a tight hold to keep from tumbling about. He shifted to a spot in the seat slightly more comfortable and let out another heavy sigh. “The dead have visited me,” he said.

  “That don’t seem like no good dream, Master Sam. Sounds more like a nightmare.”

  “No,” Houston said. “Not a nightmare. Not a bad dream. Maybe not even a dream at all.”

  “How that, sir?”

  “A visit.” He stared into Jeff’s face, trying to read it, but the slave revealed little.

  “A visit?”

  “David Crockett, some weeks back,” Houston said. “Last night … my long-departed mother.”

  “You mean like a haint?” Jeff asked.

  Houston shrugged. “Hobgoblin. Specter. Ghost. Apparition. Spirit.” He managed a smile. “Or maybe the visions of a raving madman.”

  Jeff kept his eyes on the team pulling the carriage. “My mammie once told me how she saw this wraith right after my baby sister died of the fever. Said it was that little girl, and she was smilin’, but that was a good thing. Not scaresome or nothin’. That Mister Crockett or your mama. Was they somethin’ like one of ’em wraiths?”

  “I don’t know, Jeff.” Irritable again. “Forget I mentioned it.”

  “You might go an’ asks Aunt Liza. She knows more ’bout such things than me.”

  “Forget it,” he barked again. They reached the outskirts of Brenham, and he had more important matters to consider than wraiths and lunacy.

  * * * * *

  As the slaves carried the luggage into the hotel, Houston crossed Alamo Street and stepped onto the town square. A crowd had gathered around the new depot to marvel at the 440 locomotive—the Washington County Railroad’s lone engine, black smoke puffing out of that upside-down-bell-shaped stack. The Washington County Railroad—all twenty-plus miles of track—had finally reached Brenham. Yet Houston had seen his share of trains in Washington City. What he stared at now was the flagpole.

  Someone had chopped it down.

  Sighing, he looked up at the courthouse and saw a blue flag hanging down from the rafters. Another flag flew from a pole nailed to the facade of Jack Gibbs’ Grocery.

  “You gonna speak today, Gov’nor, ain’t you?”

  Houston turned to find old Chic Gaddy standing with a string of seven or eight catfish in his left hand. Grinning at a familiar face, Houston shifted his cane to his left hand and held out his right.

  “Fish fry, Chic?”

  The old man shrugged, shaking Houston’s hand.

  “Where are they biting?” Houston asked.

  “Got these at Hog Branch.”

  Houston admired the catch. “That’s a nice one there. Must weigh eight, nine pounds.”

  Gaddy shrugged. “Would’ve weighed even more,” he said, “’cept she laid her eggs, my guess, a couple days back.”

  Houston grinned, but Gaddy persisted, “You got to talk today, Gov’nor, let ’em all know where you stand, what you done.”

  “I’m retired, Chic,” Houston said. “Perhaps I can drown a worm with you sometime soon.”

  After shaking hands with the old fisherman again, Houston returned to the hotel, using his cane, stopping at the edge of the square. Men had gathered on the boardwalk in front of the hotel. Houston brought the cane up, holding it as one might for defensive purposes, waited for a buckboard to pass, and crossed Alamo Street, prepared to do battle. He stopped just a few feet from the wall of men.

  “You ain’t speakin’ here, you damned traitor,” one of the men said.

  “Yes,” he said, “I am.” Still stubbo
rn, or foolish enough to let a bunch of b’hoys force him to make a stand. “I shall make my position clear from atop the stump that once was a flagpole.” He fished the watch from his pocket. “In an hour and ten minutes.” Sliding the watch back into his coat, he plowed ahead. The sea of men parted, and Houston entered the hotel.

  * * * * *

  He did not tell Margaret what had happened, and she knew better than to ask. Instead, he sat at the desk in the room and wrote a letter to his son.

  I enjoyed the chance to visit with you and trust you are well. Your card for Mary Willie I keep to present to her on the eighth, and I know she will be delighted and will praise you in her own words, in her own hand.

  You will have a veritable list of chores when you return to Cedar Point, and I know you shall do a wonderful job as overseer. Be industrious, Sam. Keep the hoes in the corn, and keep them down. See to the goats and our other stock. If it becomes too wet to work the corn, then put up a new pen for our cows … and one for the goats. Keep the hands busy.

  He stopped, frowned, and dipped the pen in the well.

  Or better yet, my beloved first child and oldest son: Do what you think best. I intend to be satisfied with whatever you may do.

  Your devoted father,

  Sam Houston

  After sealing the envelope with wax, he told his wife that he had a meeting to attend, and moved to the trunk. He donned his leopard skin vest, and found a rakish hat to wear.

  “What do you think, Margaret?”

  She looked, smiled a forced smile, and said, “You will knock spots off them.”

  He grinned, walked up to her, and kissed her firmly on the lips. “Your reassurance will do me good, Missus Houston.” He stepped out of the room, closed the door, withdrew the Navy Colt from his coat pocket, checked the caps, and slipped the revolver into his waistband at the small of his back. Readjusting his coat, he began the descent.