by Drew McGunn
As the memory played in his head, Will felt the soldier’s sense of shame as he replied, “Yes, sir. Governor Smith. It’s just that I’ve only managed to collect twenty-nine men. I thought for certain I would collect a couple of hundred to join the regular cavalry.” The older man waved the complement away, and the soldier continued, “I hope that between these and Colonel Neill’s we’ll have enough to get the job done.”
As that memory coalesced with the myriad of others swirling around in Will’s very crowded head, an icy wind twirled across his skin, and chills ran down his spine. The words he had spoken to Sergeant Smith replayed in his mind, “what I wouldn’t give to see Texas decide to go its own way and never join the US.” Was he in a coma and dreaming a vivid dream? Was the universe playing tricks on him, and this simply a cosmic joke? Or had God, in an act of perfect schadenfreude, decided to strand him in the worst of possible times? Even if this body wasn’t his own, he knew to whom it belonged, and understood all too well what it meant to inhabit the body of William Barret Travis. He grasped at Travis’ most recent memories and knew it was the 1st of February 1836. With a cascading sense of finality, everything in his mind fell into place at that point. In 2008 the Mission San Antonio de Valero had another name that is known throughout the world. The Alamo.
Will closed his eyes, resisting the temptation to curl into a fetal position on the blanket, wondering at whether it was fate or God that would throw his mind back in history. He hoped with every fiber in his body all this was nothing more than a dream. “Yes,” he thought, “That’s it. My body is in a coma from the explosion.” And if that were so, he would eventually wake up. He pinched himself, and nothing happened. He pinched a lot harder. “Damn!” he muttered, “That hurt.” Nothing changed. He was still sitting on an itchy, woolen blanket on a freezing February morning in 1836. Even though his mind accepted he was dreaming, he couldn’t help but work out the details of what would happen if this were real. He quickly calculated, February 1 to March 6. Thirty-four days. No, it’s a leap year. Thirty-five days until the Alamo falls. He stood again, shakily, as his legs seemed determined to drop him back down. He couldn’t decide if this was all a dream but until he woke up, he would go through the motions as if this was real. He was uncertain about so many things he knew he would need to figure out. But on one issue he was determined. Forget the Alamo! He wouldn’t be waiting there on March 6, 1836.
Chapter 2
Will pulled on a blue, waist length jacket. He fingered the gold cloth stars sewn on each collar, giving the jacket a distinct military flair. Chilled, he flapped his arms, trying to get his blood flowing in the frigid air. He saw a half-dozen men crowded around the warmth of a campfire. From there, he looked around the large campsite and saw the rest of the men, either packing gear or huddled around one of several fires. With more than a little awe at the innumerable memories competing for space in his pounding, hurting head, he plucked one from the previous day and ‘recalled’, if ‘recall’ was the correct word, that he and the thirty others were only forty miles from San Antonio.
Will sensed William B. Travis expected to arrive at the Alamo on the 3rd of February, two days hence. With no idea how he was ‘recalling’ these memories from Travis, Will did the only thing that made sense, he set aside wondering how it was happening and hoped that the pounding in his head would subside if he just didn’t let the paradox get to him, if all this wasn’t just a dream. The thought that Travis intended to take two more days to arrive at the Alamo bemused Will, as he considered the training he had received as an infantryman. He could march forty miles in two days without a problem, he thought. With horses, it seemed likely that he could get there no later than midafternoon on the 2nd of February, rather than the 3rd. “Still, though,” Will thought, “If this is no dream, I’d be a fool not to consider these men that are trusting Travis to get them there safely. It’s no empty refrain to say it’s not what we don’t know that gets us into trouble, but what we know that ain’t so.” Unsure if there was any comfort to be found in that thought, Will walked toward the nearest campfire.
As he approached, one of the men, the only black man among the entire company, as best as Will could tell, approached him, and said, “Marse William, sir, here’s your coffee.” The ebony skinned man’s name came unbidden into Will’s mind as he accepted the steaming brew. “Thanks, Joe.” Joe’s eyes arched up in surprise at Will’s comment. “Damn. First few words I’ve spoken, and already I’ve put my foot in it.” As he watched Joe return to the campfire, Will played the interaction in his mind repeatedly, until it dawned on him his mistake was the gentle word of thanks he had spoken to Joe. Will discovered no memory of Travis being a cruel master, but neither did Travis ask or thank Joe for any services provided. It simply never crossed his mind to ask, thank, or praise a slave.
Will watched Joe assist in the cooking around the campfire. He felt his stomach sharply contract as he wrestled with the invading memories of William B. Travis, as they contested with Will’s own values and beliefs. If, as he feared, God inflicted a cosmic curse on him, and he was truly stranded in the body of this long dead martyr of the Texas Revolution, he couldn’t wrap his mind around owning another human being. As a product of the twenty-first century, he was too far removed from the antebellum worldview of men like Travis and other Southerners of the mid-nineteenth century. As a student of history, the words from an even earlier era seeped into his consciousness. It was self-evident that all men were created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. He bit his lip, remembering that those words were penned by Thomas Jefferson, who was himself a slave owner. For a moment, it was like being back in the Humvee with Smitty, recalling that, for too many, the good old days were worse than for others. Allowing that to sink in, it was startling clear that the 6th of March was just around the corner and if he was at the Alamo on that day, the good old days would be far worse for one Will Travers.
As a Texas history buff, Will considered himself knowledgeable about the Revolutionary period in Texas and he knew that there were still more than three weeks until the siege of the Alamo began, so even if he stayed the course and continued to the Alamo, as William B. Travis had intended, there was still plenty of time to gather up the cannon and get back to east Texas, like Travis and Governor Smith had discussed a few weeks prior. He nodded his head imperceptibly, and felt a little better about things, until his eyes fell back on the slave, Joe. He closed his eyes briefly, thinking, “Please God, let this be a dream.”
Never in his life had Will felt as conflicted as he did at that moment. Even though he couldn’t acknowledge this was really happening to him, and thought this all still likely to be a dream, he could never have imagined that if this were really happening to him he would be cast into the winds of history, transforming his mind into the body of a nineteenth century lawyer, soldier, and worse yet, as far as Will was concerned, martyr. Nor could he reconcile himself to the nearly alien worldview whirling around in his head, thanks to the fusing going on between the memories of William B. Travis and his own.
Even since his days at Galveston College, nearly a decade previous, when he took History 101, he considered himself a historian, if for no other reason, than his passion for the subject. In many of his previous conversations with professors, other students, or his buddies in the National Guard, he had argued that judging people in the past solely on twenty-first century values held by reasonably enlightened people was wrong. Rather, he had argued, they should be judged based upon their actions when compared to the prevailing beliefs of their own time. This was the primary reason Will could look at Thomas Jefferson and feel only a slight chagrin that he could pen such an incredible and inspiring defense of liberty as was found in the Declaration of Independence while simultaneously owning another human soul. Yet, there Will Travers stood on that windswept Texas prairie in the body of William B. Travis, chilled to the bone, and found he had no option
but to acknowledge that he could not, in his heart, bow to that one peculiar view held by William B. Travis, as well as by countless others that one could own as a chattel another human being.
Mentally, he pushed against the memories of Travis and he clawed toward his own, and found the one for which he searched. He was a young teenager, sitting in a Sunday school classroom. A quote had been written across a chalkboard. “You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.” The quote, he recalled, was from William Wilberforce. The class had read a modern adaptation of Wilberforce’s book Real Christianity, which had resonated in his adolescent heart. During college, his interest in church waned; although Wilberforce’s passionate faith had always struck a chord in Will’s heart. If memory served him correctly, Wilberforce fought against the slave trade twenty or thirty years earlier than the time Will considered the ‘here and now’. This was the frame of reference Will was looking for. Relief settled on Will, like a blanket covering a newborn, and he knew if this were not just a dream but his new reality, he would oppose the evil he knew slavery to be, not by applying any twenty-first century anachronistic view, but by embracing the views of men like William Wilberforce. There was something else that dawned on him, as he reveled in this comforting thought. He knew something that millions of other Southerners didn’t in 1836. Slavery was on its way out. Will didn’t know how or when but he vowed to do whatever was within his power to hasten its demise.
There was only one minuscule problem to overcome, Will realized as he went to check on Travis’ horse. Somehow or another he had to survive the Alamo.
***
Will had thought riding in a dusty Humvee was one of the less pleasant ways of traveling, but after spending more than fifteen hours over the last day and a half watching from his saddle the ears of his horse twitch, he changed his mind. He tried adjusting his position in the saddle, but no matter how he sat, his backside was intensely sore. He wondered how much worse he would feel about it, if the body he inhabited was not accustomed to the intense rigors of nineteenth century frontier life. “Chalk up one positive thing.” Will thought as he added to this list in his head the good and bad of his present predicament.
Nearly two days in the saddle gave Will time to put to rest the idea he was just dreaming. While he couldn’t disprove it, the fact he had yet to awaken from this surreal situation, argued he should behave as though what he experienced was real. As he accepted this new reality, the realization he would never see his parents, friends or fellow National Guardsmen again hit hard. As he swayed in the saddle, guiding the horse along the wagon road, the hardest thing to accept was he would never see his parents again.
The highlight of each week in Iraq had been the short Skype calls where he would catch up with his parents, telling them about the funny things that would happen in camp while glossing over the inherent risks. There would be no more Skype calls. No hope that when this war was over he would return to them. There was something heartbreakingly final as he accepted the loss, as he rode along in silence, mourning it.
The time on the trail also allowed him time to start compartmentalizing William B. Travis’ memories from his own and to think about his future. His first inclination was to tell Joe he was a free man then tell the men with whom he was riding that to continue to the Alamo was a death sentence. If they were smart, like him, they would turn their horses around and ride like hell to the east. His lips twitched up in a ghost of a smile as he allowed that first impulse to replay across his mind. Somewhere along the way, it crossed his mind that in a way, this was like a disagreement that he had with a professor when he was finishing up his degree. He recalled receiving a grade he thought was unfair and in a fit of pique he pounded out exactly what he had thought about the grade and his professor, in no uncertain terms. When he read the email back to himself there was immense satisfaction. When he placed the cursor over the send button, he relished the catharsis of getting his ire out of his system. But rather than sending his screed to the professor, he moved the cursor to the delete button and clicked on it. He had learned some thoughts were at their best when they remained locked in his mind.
He ruminated that the time on the trail was akin to that cathartic email exercise. At first, he railed against God, for nature would never be so cruel. If this were no dream, then his entire world had been upended. His mind had been cast adrift in a sea of time, washing ashore at a point in history far more dangerous than the time from which he came.
That thought had barely coalesced before a couple of men riding near him turned, looking inquisitively at their commander. “Colonel, you all right?” one rider asked.
Will realized these men heard him laugh. How could he think that this was more dangerous, when he had nearly been killed by an IED in Iraq? He waved to the riders, saying, “It was nothing, Smithers. Just thinking.”
Danger was relative, he realized. Being stranded in Travis’ body may not be the healthiest of situations, but apart from waking up from this nightmare, it was where he now found himself. Dreaming of turning tail and telling fate to go take a hike was his ‘send button.’ “Come on, snowflake,” Will thought, “you know that any comfort zone is nothing but an illusion. If God, in his infinite mysteriousness, saw fit to do this to me, I doubt that turning tail and running for the hills is what I should do. If it was nothing more than fate and randomness that did this, then fate is a fickle mistress, and the best revenge is living the life of William B. Travis as well and as long as possible.”
He decided running away was the wrong course of action. This left Will in a quandary. “What do I do next?” An amusing thought came to mind, and he bit his tongue to keep from laughing out loud. He could have been stranded at any point in history. He could have found himself in Louis the XVI’s body. He knew little French history and spoke the language not at all. Or worse, trapped in the body of Joseph Stalin. As unsavory as some of William B. Travis’ memories were, there was no trace of insanity in them. As a matter of fact, Will mused, as a self-professed Texas history nut, he knew more than most about the battles of the Texas Revolution. One thing he knew for certain was that trying to defend the old mission was about as close as you could come in the nineteenth century to suicide by cop. He took stock of what else he knew and recalled that on the 2nd of February Colonel Neill was holding the Alamo and San Antonio with less than a hundred men. Jim Bowie should have already arrived with another fifty and Crockett perhaps a week from now with another dozen or so. Will calculated that would give the Texian force only about 150 men, give or take a few. Against that, Santa Anna would arrive with nearly two thousand soldiers far earlier than anyone had anticipated, on the 23rd of February. “Only now,” thought Will, “I know it, so it is anticipated.”
There was another piece of the puzzle which tickled the back of Will’s mind. He couldn’t remember if it was from the old John Wayne Alamo movie or the newer one with Billy Bob Thornton, but it was mentioned that the old mission had the most artillery in one location west of the Mississippi. Will wasn’t sure how many guns were mounted on the walls, but it must have been upward of twenty. Those guns could prove useful. He wondered if there were any men at the Alamo with the necessary skills to use them effectively.
His thoughts were interrupted as Will’s small troop of mounted soldiers crested a low rise. Several miles in the distance, he could see the walls of the old mission standing defiantly against a terrain that seemed unable to make up its mind whether it was prairie or desert. As they continued along the road, he could see that the walls of the Alamo were low; they appeared to be no more than eight or ten feet in height. He shook his head slightly as he examined the walls in greater detail. “Heaven help us,” he thought, “even a midget pole-vaulter could clear those walls.”
Wearing his best expression, Will turned around, facing the men who were following him and said, “It was started as a mission, but it doesn’t look much like a church. Those walls, they don’t much make it look
like a fort, either. But damned if sitting out there on the prairie, it isn’t just a little bit impressive!”
The men smiled and laughed in agreement. They had been confused by their leader’s uncharacteristic silence over the past couple of days, and they were encouraged to hear something that sounded like the old Travis who had led them over the past few weeks.
Approaching the old mission, Will observed the Alamo’s gate had been reinforced with a lunette, with two artillery pieces entrenched, in a manner similar to what he recalled in the most recent Alamo movie. Eyeballing the lunette, it appeared to Will it was intended to provide fire support to the low walls to both sides of the gatehouse. But further to the right of the gate, where he recalled there being a short wooden palisade, the ground was open. There was no wall between the sally port and the iconic mission. It was then that he recalled the wooden palisade was erected after Travis had arrived. Will and his men threaded their way through the lunette and passed through the sally port into the Alamo’s large plaza.
Will slowly dismounted from the horse with relief. The hours spent in the saddle had not been kind to his backside. There were no men standing on parade, nor was there any band to welcome their arrival. Several men looked up from their work as he and his men filed into the plaza. A few waved at Will and his men before returning to their work, where they were reinforcing a section of the wall with heavy wooden posts. From a two-story building Will recalled as the hospital, a tall, heavyset man wearing a long, blue frock coat came down the stairs, followed by a heavy scent of pipe tobacco clinging to his clothes. His wavy, light brown hair and thick sideburns stood in stark contrast to his ruddy complexion.
