“Our governor suggests that we abandon Galveston,” Smith said. “Put the torch to her and all that cotton.”
“That would be a travesty,” Houston said. “She is a beautiful city.”
“Quite true.” Smith stared at his napkin. “And cotton is selling at nine dollars. But you know better than anyone that Galveston cannot be defended. In time, the Yankees will occupy her. Sam, if I were you, and not a captain in the Confederate army, I would consider moving away from Galveston. Head inland. Huntsville perhaps.”
Houston’s head bobbed with a weary sadness. Similar thoughts often occupied his mind.
“But enough talk of war and Yankees. What’s in that other envelope?” Smith pointed at the letter from Tennessee. “Is that …?”
Houston picked up the envelope. “This is … I do not know. From Nashville.” Sighing, he decided to open it. He found the knife, slit the paper, and withdrew a piece of yellow paper. It came from a Baptist minister named Stan Sullivan that Houston had known years ago. A short note.
The letter fell next to his coffee cup.
“Sam?” Smith leaned forward.
“Eliza,” Houston gasped, “is dead.”
Chapter Nineteen
Eliza
These phantasms have always visited him as he remembers them—or how he wants to picture them: Crockett in all his middle-aged vibrancy; his mother, old, yes, but full of life and wisdom; Jackson as he might have been while entertaining at the hermitage or White House. But Eliza Allen is different. Much different.
Fifty-two years old, looks twenty years older. No longer slim and fit, but haggard, fat, decrepit. The blonde hair is gray, disheveled, and her eyes, once vibrant and daring, are hollow, bloodshot, dead. He recalls her jewels, and gowns of the best fashion, but she dons a dress of coarse black wool and a Spartan wedding band. She smiles at him, revealing yellowed teeth, one rotten, two empty spaces.
“Surprised to see me after all this time?” Her voice is mocking, thick with rage.
Except for Crockett, his first visitor, he has rarely trembled upon seeing such specters, but Eliza Allen Houston Douglas, his first wife, terrifies him.
“Can’t you even look me in the eye, darlin’?” Taunting him, Eliza spits into the bay. She sits on the middle seat, between Houston in the front and Jeff, who continues to guide the skiff toward Cedar Point, oblivious to this permutation of what once had been a beautiful girl from one of Tennessee’s most prominent families. “Sam, you ain’t exactly what my mama would’ve called a catch … not no more, you ain’t … darlin’.” Bitterness fills her laugh.
Which is one thing that has not changed in thirty-three years.
“How is your husband?” he manages to ask. “The doctor?”
“Sicker’n a dog. He’ll be followin’ me directly. Straight to perdition. But the kids, the ones still livin’, they’s old enough to take care of ’emselves now. Mostly, anyhow.”
Once, Eliza would have spoken in proper English. He smells rum on her voice. During their courtship, she never imbibed. Perhaps he is to blame.
“I never loved you,” she tells him.
Bitterness enters his own voice. “As you mentioned many a time … after our wedding.”
She waves him off. “Bad luck. I always had bad luck. And Ma and Pa, well, they loved you enough. At first, I mean. Till I told them all about you.”
“Yes,” he says. “I remember.”
“Do you, Sam?” she rages. “Do you really?”
* * * * *
He can never forget. Seeing her that first time at Allenwood Plantation on the Cumberland River. A young girl of sixteen riding a white Arabian mare, riding with authority and experience, and not a touch of trepidation … even when she made the horse leap over a three-rail fence. Laughing, when she reined up in front of Sam Houston.
“Good evening, Uncle John.” Addressing the Congressman standing next to Houston. But looking directly at Houston, who finds her blue eyes hypnotic.
“Eliza, allow me the honor of introducing you to Sam Houston.”
“The Sam Houston who Mister Jackson goes on and on and on about, Uncle John?”
“Indeed. Although I should say Governor Houston. As you mean President-Elect Jackson.”
He cannot move as she slides off the stallion, curtsies, and offers a hand.
“’Tis my pleasure, Governor. I do declare. I have heard so much of you from my mother and father, from Uncle John, and practically all of my friends in Gallatin.”
* * * * *
That mocking laugh snaps his vision.
“I was pretty, wasn’t I, Sam?”
His head bobs. The boat rocks gently. Jeff expertly maneuvers the skiff through the water.
“Oh, to be young … and in love.” She shifts in the seat. “’Course, I wasn’t in love with you. Poor Will Tyree. If God ever existed, He frowned on me, Sam. He surely did.”
* * * * *
For years, Houston has tried to purge William Tyree, the young attorney claimed by consumption, from his memories. Houston also remembers his own feelings of lust, and of the fact that he was governor of Tennessee, a friend of President Andrew Jackson, and a man who constantly heard that a governor—and, mayhap, one day President of our United States—must be married. To the right woman, of course. To the right family.
Young Elizabeth Allen would be such a woman. Or so Houston had thought. From a wealthy family with political influence. So, he had proposed. And Eliza’s parents had forced their daughter to marry.
* * * * *
“We had us a whirlwind courtship, didn’t we?” she asks.
“A tornado,” he corrects. “A hurricane.”
“Yeah. I’d rile you. You’d anger off. Then we’d kiss and make up, and I’d keep tellin’ myself … make Pa happy … make Ma happy. You wasn’t a bad-lookin’ fellow back then. At least …”
He waits, feeling the anger, the betrayal, that he had tried to forget after all these years.
* * * * *
Oh, the wedding is wonderful. At Allenwood on a Thursday evening, Eliza wears an elaborate white gown, Houston in tails, the fires blazing in the fireplaces, and Reverend William Hume so reverent. The supper lasts forever, but then Houston takes his young bride upstairs.
* * * * *
“Our first night in an upstairs bedchamber in the house of your parents,” Houston recalls. “Perhaps that is what doomed our nuptials.”
“What doomed us, Sam,” she snaps, “was you. You and your …” now she shakes with rage, “ … heathen customs and … your …”
“Yes,” he fires back. “If it pleases you, my wounds still leak, and I earned more wounds after our marriage.” He points to the ankle shattered at San Jacinto.
She jabs him with, “You were never no Will Tyree.”
“I never tried to be.”
“Walkin’ around, naked, no shame at all. Chantin’ some heathen prayer. Talkin’ ’bout Kanati and Selu.”
“First man,” he tells her. “First woman.”
“You and those damned Cherokees.” She snorts out a laugh, and wipes her nose with the back of her black sleeve.
“I was already disgusted by your nakedness, and the …” Now she howls with laughter. “You show me a damned piece of ham you brought up. Hell, I thought you was hungry.”
Meat, he remembers. Cherokees brought no rings to a wedding. The groom would show meat, revealing that he would provide for the family. The bride would bring corn, perhaps bread, to show that she would care for and keep the family fed. And then they would drink from a wedding vase.
“I wasn’t a damned Cherokee, Sam. I’m white.”
He does not speak.
“You never was.”
He looks past her now, at the calm waters, at the gulls flying over a boat where men cast nets.
/> “Did she make you happy?”
He turns back to her, his eyes questioning this grotesque permutation of what had been a beautiful young woman.
“The Cherokee whore you took up with after you left me! Did she make you happy?”
“She was a good woman.”
“Yeah. So I hear. Good at lettin’ you drink yourself half to death. Good at mindin’ a store so you could take her money to buy yourself more rotgut. Good at not raisin’ a stink when you left her, too.”
He does not speak. He has no defense.
“You.” She spits at him. “You was always so … virtuous.”
“What,” he fires back, “did you ever know of virtue?”
Her laugh sounds like that of a witch in Macbeth. “You married me for one reason. So you could get reelected as governor of Tennessee. You figured sweet Eliza Allen Houston would be all you needed to whip Billy Carroll’s arse in the election.”
“Perhaps,” he says softly. Perhaps Houston had just liked the idea of marriage, and he could not deny that few women stirred his blood like Eliza. Until he understood how much he repulsed her.
“What I really enjoyed was watchin’ you squirm. Hell’s fire, Sam, you didn’t even go see Ol’ Hickory inaugurated in Washington City. Because you just couldn’t trust your devoted young wife to be left alone.”
“Not with Will Tyree and who knows else hanging around Nashville,” he snaps.
“No, damn you!” She starts to rise, and Houston fears the boat will capsize, but he feels no movement, and Eliza points a crooked finger at him. “You don’t dare speak of Will like that. Don’t you dare.”
She settles back into her seat, and he sees the tears leaking from her eyes, to be consumed by the wrinkles in her old face. He feels it then, what he had felt when he sent her back to her parents.
Shame.
Only, back in the spring of 1829, when he understood that his marriage, ever so brief, was over—if it had even been a marriage—he had felt shamed by her. Now he understood that the shame was his own making. He was ashamed of himself.
“I remember that night at Martha Martin’s,” she says. “At Locust Grove. You remember Martha?”
He nods. “And her daughters.”
“Yeah. That’s right. Colder than a witch’s teat it was, snowin’, and you go down out into the yard and have yourself a snowball fight with the girls. They’re laughin’ and carryin’ on, peltin’ you with snowballs, and then one even knocks you on your arse. And I’m watchin’ upstairs with Martha, and she’s laughin’ and all, and she tells me … ‘Your husband needs some help.’ Meanin’ that I ought to go out and join the frolic. But I’m in no mood. And I tell her … ‘I wish they would kill him,’ … and when Martha lets out a gasp, I tell her what I really feel. I turn to her and I tell her again … ‘Yes, I wish from the bottom of my heart that they would kill him.’”
He has never heard that confession. His head falls.
“Tell me, Sam. Did the Creeks fight as awful as we did?”
He does not answer.
“Four months. We don’t even live together four full months.” Her head tilts back as she laughs. “It took me just shy of four months to have you see the light, throw my clothes in a grip, and shove me out of the door into the hallway at the Nashville Inn. With a letter to take back to my good, God-fearin’ daddy.” She mocks him. “I was ‘cold’ to you, you tell Father. Oh, ‘I have and I do love’ her so much, but, you had believed me ‘virtuous.’ That’s what you wrote. He read the damned letter to me. In front of my mother! Aloud. God, you shamed me enough.” She bawls now, choking sobs, and he tries to look away, to stare at the water, at his boots, at anything but this woman whose life he ruined, who, for a while, destroyed his own. “Oh, my … you was so damned noble. And you had the gumption to say you forgave me. Hell, do you think I ever forgave you?”
For an eternity, he hears not the snapping of the sail and the rippling of the water, but only Eliza’s sobs.
* * * * *
He remembers writing that bitter note to Mr. Allen, just as he recalls tendering his resignation as governor of Tennessee. Of boarding the Red River and steaming down the Cumberland River. To Arkansas. And then, in an alcoholic haze, making his way to the Indian Territory, to reunite with his Cherokee father. To become the Big Drunk. And to meet Tiana Rogers, who would, along with Oo-loo-te-ka, let him find his dignity again. Until he left them, too, to follow … what? Ambition?
* * * * *
“I am deeply regretful for the pain I caused you and your family,” he tells Eliza.
“I don’t want no sympathy from you, Sam Houston,” she snaps. “You know what I told Preacher Stan?” She does not wait for a response. “I told him … ‘When I’m gone, you can preach whatever you want. Be it Baptist or pagan. You can sing hymns and try to make my widowed man and our young ’uns feel better. I don’t give a tinker’s damn. But the tintypes of me are buried with me. The portrait my daddy had done back in Gallatin, it’s to be burned. No one’s ever to remember what Sam Houston’s first wife looked like. God knows, no one would want to know what she looks like now. And there ain’t ever to be no damned marker on my grave. Ever.’ That’s what I told him. And you know why? Because I don’t want no busybodies hoverin’ over my grave, sayin’ … ‘What on earth caused their separation and divorce?’ That ain’t how I’m spendin’ eternity, darlin’.”
The tears have vanished. The eyes are dead once more. She laughs again.
“You wasn’t always the hero, was you, darlin’?”
“I was never a hero,” he tells her.
“Yeah. You know somethin’ else, Sam?”
He cannot answer, cannot move.
“I waited for you.”
His eyes widen in surprise.
“I thought you’d come back to me. I mean … hell’s fires, I was something to behold back then. When I was young. Maybe I wanted you to come back. I reckon my daddy wanted you back. After all, you was one of Jackson’s Tennessee boys. So I waited. Five years. Six. I don’t know offhand. Finally, it struck me that you was gone, never to return. Well.” She shrugs. “Elmore shows up, he’s a doctor, nothin’ fancy ’bout him or nothin’, maybe not even that good of a pillroller. So I marry him.”
“I hope he made you happy,” he tells her.
She laughs again. “Sam Houston, the last time I was happy was that day Uncle John brung you to Allenwood. And I laid eyes on you for the first time. We ain’t all blessed by the Lord … like there ever was a God … to be happy. That was my curse. I reckon …” the tears begin again, “I reckon … maybe … I guess maybe that … well, at least you found happiness. ’Cause you never would’ve found it had you stuck by me.”
Chapter Twenty
April 10, 1862
The hard part, he finally accepted, was filling each day. Retirement disgusted him. With the war but a year old, the call for him to speak in public rarely came. Everyone had predicted a quick victory for the Confederacy, but now they had resigned themselves to a war with no foreseeable end. Inflation was on the rise in Texas. Sugar became more and more scarce, as did molasses. Coffee? Even Aunt Liza roasted acorns as a substitute.
He had tried to fill his time with other things. Fancy fairs at one of the churches. Tent revivals. Evenings at an opera house to see Catching an Heiress and Charles the Second; or, The Merry Monarch, neither of which he found amusing although Margaret and most of the audience had laughed. The Tri-Weekly Telegraph reported that, fearing a Yankee invasion, more and more Texans were fleeing the coast.
The Houstons traveled, too, to Independence to visit Margaret’s mother, and see their daughters who still attended school. Yet always, Houston and his wife returned to Cedar Point, especially during the summer. Margaret kept mentioning how she wished they could go back to their old home in Huntsville, away from the Gulf and the Yankee blocka
de.
When she spoke to Houston, anyway. With Sam Junior off in Mississippi, closer to the real battlefields, Margaret mostly spent her days fretting, worrying, reading the Bible, praying.
So Houston sat in his library, or on the porch, and did … nothing.
“Write your story,” a friend of his, Russell Witherspoon, said on one visit. “The autobiography of Sam Houston. What a hoot that would be.”
“A pack of lies,” Houston told Witherspoon.
“Even better,” Witherspoon said.
He considered it, but his shoulder ached so much these days he rarely even wrote letters to the newspaper editors. In fact, during their current visit to Independence, he had asked his daughter Maggie to write a letter for him. Now her penmanship far surpassed his, and he did not think he could grip a pen long enough to finish a note, so he had dictated it to Maggie.
That afternoon, he asked Jeff to take him to the post office. To mail the letter. To give him something to do other than listen to his mother-in-law talk about her impending death, or ask if he wanted to see her coffin. Or sit on the porch, bored, and hear Margaret and her mother talking in the parlor, letting Mrs. Lea ask if Margaret has noticed how much her husband’s health is failing, or that he isn’t as sharp as he had been even just last week, or …
It was an uneventful trip to town. He posted the letter, and nodded when the clerk told him, “It might take a week to get it to Nacogdoches, General. It might take a month. It might take till hell freezes over.”
He tried to think of something else he could do, just to while away another ten minutes or thirty. Haircut? No, he had done that two days ago. Dinner? He rarely felt hungry these days, and the last time he had eaten in the café, he had been outraged by what the owner charged for grits and sausage.
“Don’t you have no friends you can visit here, Master Sam?” Jeff asked.
He snorted.
“Marco Pierce?” His head shook. “He’s dead … Roland Hewitt?” He let out a sigh. “He’s dead, too. So’s Pete Oliver … Larry DeFee … Sam Walker …” He did not finish. “Let’s just go back and see what the old biddy’s saying about me now, Jeff.”
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