This Way Slaughter

by Bruce Olds

  Employing the multi–dimensional approach he used to such stunning effect in his critically-acclaimed fictions Raising Holy Hell, about John Brown, and Bucking the Tiger, about Doc Holliday, in This Way Slaughter Bruce Olds plumbs the character and mind of William Barret “Buck” Travis.

  With his Quixotic heroics and his firebrand rhetoric, Buck Travis was anything but an experienced soldier when he was given command of the Alamo. An almost accidental warrior, he was more interested in words than in weaponry or tactics. Yet it seems as if history itself drafted Travis for his epic role—a part for which even he considered himself singularly ill-suited. Nevertheless, Travis somehow inspired his small garrison to fight to the death against overwhelming numbers, marking forever a small Spanish mission as the site of the American Thermopylae.

  How did this 26-year-old attorney, newspaper editor, schoolteacher and diarist—on the run from a marital scandal and murder charge in Alabama—find himself in the leading role in one of the most mythologized massacres in American history?

  Through a kaleidoscopic, deftly woven tapestry of re-imagined history, invented diary entries, official documents and news accounts, simulated memoir, eyewitness testimony and original poetry, Bruce Olds’s This Way Slaughter gives us an indelible, highly provocative portrait of a conflicted yet duty-bound young man whose violent love affair with an even more violent Texas frontier cost him his life.

  Other Novels by Bruce Olds

  Raising Holy Hell

  (Henry Holt, 1995)

  Bucking the Tiger

  (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001)

  The Moments Lost

  (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007)

  This Way Slaughter

  © 2018 by Bruce Olds

  Cover art: “The Doughboy (man with bayonet” © 1914 by Djuna Barnes Used by permission of the Djuna Barnes papers, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Maryland.

  First Edition

  ISBN: 978-1-60940-569-4 (Hardback/cloth)

  E-books:

  ePub: 978-1-60940-570-0

  Mobipocket/Kindle: 978-1-60940-571-7

  Library PDF: 978-1-60940-572-4

  Wings Press

  627 E. Guenther

  San Antonio, Texas 78210

  Phone/fax: (210) 271-7805

  On-line catalogue and ordering:

  www.wingspress.com

  Wings Press books are distributed to the trade by Independent Publishers Group

  www.ipgbook.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

  Names: Olds, Bruce, author.

  Title: This way slaughter / by Bruce Olds.

  Description: First edition. | San Antonio, Texas : Wings Press, 2018. | Identifiers: LCCN 2017041376 (print) | LCCN 2017045072 (ebook) | ISBN 9781609405700 (ePub Ebook) | ISBN 9781609405717 (Mobipocket/Kindle) | ISBN 9781609405724 (Library PDF) | ISBN 9781609405694 (hardcover : acid-free paper) | ISBN 9781609405700 (epub) | ISBN 9781609405724 (pdf)

  Subjects: LCSH: Travis, William Barret, 1809-1836--Fiction. | Alamo (San Antonio, Tex.)--Siege, 1836--Fiction. | Texas--History--To 1846,--Fiction. | GSAFD: Biographical fiction. | Historical fiction. | War stories.

  Classification:

  LCC PS3565.L336 (ebook)

  LCC PS3565.L336 T48 2018 (print)

  DDC 813/.54--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017041376

  For Mother,

  & in memorium, Ronald Johnson (1935-1998)

  shaman, bricoleur, cosmic thief

  To the reader:

  This novel is set in a time of rampant racism which the text reflects. What better antidote to the romanticization of flawed heroes than to let them hang themselves with their own rope?

  “What,” a cuckhold named Travis wondered shortly after having shot and killed a man in advance of riding hellbent for Tejas, “what possibly could have enticed me to this desolate country, save the wish to stay alive long enough to die here?”

  When on horseback and armed with my Jaeger carbine I crossed from my home state of Alabama into Mississippi, then Mississippi into Louisiana, finally Louisiana into Texas, into Tejas, which is to say from America into Mexico, I did so in deliberate, purposeful violation of recently-passed Mexican anti-immigration laws. As such, at the moment of my having done so—and doing so was surprisingly easy owing to the border being woefully unsecured; unpoliced and unpatrolled, it was preposterously porous—at that moment I became not only what that country considered un vagabundo, a vagrant and vagabond, but an undocumented alien, armed outlaw and foreign undesirable of the first water.

  I was then—as I recall, this would have been May of 1831—all of 21 years old, on my own for the first time in my life and all alone in what I took at the time for a Comanche-infested nowhere both unimaginably hostile and unthinkably savage. And yet, despite the risk of apprehension, arrest, detention, imprisonment, God knew what else (or perhaps the “else” was so unthinkable that even God did not know), I had little choice but to hazard whatever dangers might arise.

  I had little choice because I was running, though whether I was running away or running toward was not a matter that I spared much thought for at the time; that would become clear only later, if never entirely. All I knew then was that I was running for my life, since, as it happened, I not only was an illegal alien in the eyes of the Mexican government, but a fugitive from justice in my home state of Alabama.

  In short, I was a wanted man, much wanted. A wife-deserter and child-abandoner, yes, but also, more to the point, according to state law, recently passed, badly conceived, poorly considered, inconsistently observed and capriciously applied Alabama law—the very Law by which I had been making and continue to make my living—a “willful” murderer, one punishable upon conviction by death. By hanging.

  Obviously, the elements of a story would seem to lurk here. Curious, isn’t it, how often there seems to be one of those reposing just beneath the surface, a story, in this instance the one about how I found myself in the fix in which I found myself and to some extent find myself still. The one that involved and in some sense still involves a woman. Always seems to be one of those too. A woman I mean.

  The problem, of course, is how to tell it, such a story. How to choose which version—there are so many, infinitely many—might best unlock the door, perhaps several doors, leading to the deepest understanding of what in fact occurred. And then, having chosen, having settled upon that version in particular in preference to each of the no less legitimate others, to tell it without resorting to cheapjack melodramatics on the one hand, or the crippling distortions of an excessive, over-scrupulous verisimilitude on the other.

  The story begins, this version of it that I have chosen to spin, with the consequences bred of a failure of character. In this case, my dubious own; what it tickled Rosanna, my wife, ex-wife now, to describe as my “deficiency of integrity.” It is a description with which I am disinclined to quibble. I will not gainsay that as a husband I could not have been a better one. Certainly I could have been more attentive, less inconsiderate, less self-absorbed, have better listened. I could have doted more.

  Still, when a man, a husband, discovers that his teen-age wife, the mother of his child, his only begotten son, is fucking, or what amounts to the same thing, being fucked by someone else, someone not himself, what, that husband might be pardoned for asking, is the proper response to that? What the right requital? What are the rules then? Which conventions of civilized human behavior may in such an uncivil circumstance be said still to obtain?

  Upon discovering that one not only is a cuckold, is being cornuted, but that one’s wife is with child by another man, what, in the name of all that is holy, is the right and honorable, corre
ct and proper, the just course of action to such a life-altering, emasculating trauma?

  Of course there is the law as written. The letter of the law. The one on the so-called books. There always is that. But what recourse when that law and its letter fail to provide for a compensatorily proportionate remedy for the damage inflicted and injury sustained? When it furnishes no adequate means of redress and restitution, no sufficient avenue of which the wronged, utterly devastated party may satisfactorily avail himself?

  It is said that we are a nation of laws, and so we may be, but sometimes—who should know better than myself, someone who makes his living, quite a respectable living, from knowing better—those laws are so much bosh. Sometimes, oft-times, the law has less to do with ensuring justice, than with sustaining a semblance of so-called civil order.

  The irony—for what story, after all, what version of any story might be said to merit its telling that is not steeped in the ironical—is that I did not even love her. Rosanna. I had grown over time not to love her. If indeed I had ever loved her. (I must confess that uxoriousness is one phenomenon that always has bewildered me. As, too, that of wittol-dom.) Whether, on the other hand, she loved me, or once did, who might say? Most likely she was in love with the idea of being in love. Most women are. Most 16-year-old women at any rate.

  Which doubtless accounts for why I never bestirred myself to ask why. To seek an explanation. For why she had done what she had done. Whose fault it was. Who was to blame. If it was me. Something I had done or failed to do. Because I no longer cared. I did not care to know. Because knowing would have changed nothing. Nothing worth changing.

  Not that she didn’t volunteer one, an explanation, after a fashion, in her own way. “If ’n only you’d ever for one second lifted yer long nose outta them damn law books,” she offered. “If ’n only you’d ever of loved me the way you do them. If ’n only you’d ever of paid me and yer boy baby a moment’s mind the way you do them words in them damn books, none of this here…..”

  Coming from her—well, unable to bear another word, I confess that I cut her off with a cuff. Split her lip. Drew blood. I know, I know. Unpardonable. Before, losing control completely, belting her about a bit. Black-and-blue-ing her some. More unpardonable still. In truth, I was thinking that perhaps she would miscarry, hoping that she might miscarry, praying that she would miscarry.

  All considered and re-considered? She got off lightly.

  My killing that man, killing—it profoundly pains me all these years later to so much as utter the name Fosterberg Williams—my killing Fuzzy Williams had nothing to do with Rosanna Cato (or, for that matter, poor Fuzzy himself) and everything to do with me. My being so affronted. Mortified. Scandalized. With my being privately and publicly disgraced. In a word, with my being so humiliated, an humiliation so entire that in order to reconcile myself to it, I had no choice—even now I feel, no choice—but to destroy utterly the source of it.

  I considered it as I consider it still, a mortal offense.

  I could, of course, have killed them both. There was a moment there, perhaps several, more than several, when I wanted to kill them both, contemplated killing them both, was perfectly capable of killing them both. Whether they deserved killing is another matter. Whether they deserved killing by my hand is, perhaps, arguable. But then, at the time, it was my considered judgment that deserved had nothing to do with it.

  There was hash to settle. I was honor-bound to settle it and settle it I did. I killed him, Fuzzy. But I did not murder him. It wasn’t murder. It was a mutually agreed-upon, consented-to, fair and honest face-off. Fair fight all around. Pistols. Classic duel. Code duello. Unlawful, yes. Quite so. Indisputably against the letter of the law as written. But not at all uncommon, not in Alabama, not in those days.

  More’s the pity, I am a crackshot. What some call a dead-eye. (Similar to having perfect pitch, so I’ve been told.) Which is where I shot him, in the eye, right eye. Blasted it to bone crater. Blew it right up and out at the root. Helluva piece of offhand shooting if I do say so myself. About which I feel now as I felt then, no remorse.

  I am not remorseful. Nor do I aspire to remorsefulness. Not that I feel particularly gratified about or indemnified for what happened. Had to happen. Though I do, I reckon, feel avenged. To an extent. Some small, insufficient extent.

  I am aware, of course, of those who since have theorized that I left the States to get out from under what they are fond of characterizing as “an Aetna of debt,” and it is true that at the time I was indeed some $900 in hock, a perfectly grotesque figure. But, no. That wasn’t it. Not at all. In fact, I satisfied that debt later, in toto.

  I am no less aware of those who have hypothesized that I left, as they are wont to describe it, with “his docked tail tucked between his cowering legs” owing to my recently having suffered a defeat in the local courts so “personally humiliating” that it rendered me a neighborhood laughingstock. And, it is true that I latterly had lost a case that left me with considerable egg on my much mortified face. But that wasn’t it either. Every lawyer loses a case now and then, and while some defeats are more difficult to swallow than are others, such losses come with the professional territory.

  No. The truth is that I had in confidence been reliably informed that the order for my arrest was to be issued before the end of that court session on March 31st. And so, I left. Lit out. Told no one that I was going. Why I was going. Where I was going. To Tejas. No-Man’s Land. Nearest despoblado. Nearest nether zone at hand. I just saddled up and slipped away. Slunk off. Skulked if you like. I have no difficulty saying skulked. Middle of the night. Up and unceremoniously disappeared. Injun-style. Cat’s paw. Not a word or note of fare thee well. In farewell.

  Was it difficult leaving him behind, my son, Charles Edward, my Chazzie? It was agonizing. I agonize still. But I could not take him with me. Where I was going—impossible, out of the question.

  I knew like everyone I knew knew—it was then a matter of much-publicized public record, a subject bruited and bandied about in all the newspapers and much discussed in both churchyard and dramhouse—that at the official invitation and with the enthusiastic endorsement of the Mexican government which had commissioned him to cultivate and civilize its Comanch-terrorized, northern frontera, Stephen Austin had for the past decade had an American colony (no native Mexican could be bribed or persuaded at bayonet point to settle there) up and running out Texas way.

  So that what I had vaguely in mind when I left Alabama, to the extent that I had anything in mind save shagtailing it anywhere else muy pronto, was that if I could somehow make it the 700 miles to Austin’s colony, to its capital of San Felipe without being apprehended first, being caught up in some damn Mexican federale dragnet or scalped to death by a Comanche raiding party, that perhaps something like a fresh start might be available to me.

  A place to start over. Turn the page. Begin again. Forget the past. Or bury it. Or, if not bury, then at least put enough distance between myself and it that its violences might eventually fade, fade and decompose of their own accord, gauze over enough to disencumber me of their more bitter memories.

  This young man’s foolish hope: that one might forge a future by forsaking a past.

  People have told me about life in the Far-West

  And my blood has groaned: “If only that were my country!” ….to live without faith or law,

  Desperado! Over there, over there, I will be King!….

  Oh! Over there to scalp myself of my….brain!

  To swagger, to become once again a virgin antelope, Without literature, a boy of prey, citizen

  Of chance….

  —Jule Laforgue, “Albums”

  (Did my body make an objection to traveling across Texas internal conditions in which I abstracted myself … If a being could be the product of a ground one tastes, then I was Texas developing)

  Pivoting the desolate rim of the night world

  the stars a billion diamond concho smithereens h
igh as halos in my head

  not enough sky to nest ’em.

  Nerves dangle off my body spitting sparks

  swelling sound fever swirling hot, naked

  wet as acid winds.

  Weather sealed sudden as sirens

  steering west, always west, furtherwest, westering

  emissary to somewhere.

  Not a solitary soul for a million miles in ten-thousand years

  saluting the night

  like a flute.

  Come morning, hunting evening’s dinner, cross its path, or it, mine. Kill a cougar. Carve it up. Eat off ’n it, puma meat, raw and bloody, for days.

  Dawn paws through the switchgrass where I am bedded down jarred awake by a hook plunged through my neck. Brushing at the damn thing still half-asleep I knock it away with the back of my hand, watch it scuttle off bullwhip tail flicked high as a flag.

  Ow. “Fuh-uck!”

  Its barb sunk in, having snagged there, tugs, drags me in after down my throat chuting through myself sleeving a funnel of flame. Pour of yellow venom python crawls through cutglass across hot coral hissing raw red awake in every carnal coil, cog, singular cell a torch jabbing ka-pow! against the bulge of my neck gnash of branding iron pressed there and held, pressed there held, pressed there held, and held pressed there until my volcano head explodes, every planet in my head vomiting pinwheels, starblooms, flowerbursts, sporeblasts mushrooming blackened out my scalp helmet of seared flesh flayed to fabric bone face sheared off scalpeled away and I braille it with a hand feeling nothing, nothing there, face, brow, cheeks, nose, lips, mouth, fused smooth as slab of sirloin.

  My brain is left. Apparently. Apparently all that is left of my brain is left. All that is left is what is left of my brain stuck on a stem impaled on a spine its mesh net catching every passing minnow of the language of pain. Eyes laboring leap from their sockets swimming for their lives sutured to drawstrings jerking—zig/zag—five directions at once crashing through chop of lunatic wave after wave in oculogyric crisis. Flannel ears stuffed full of every unsilence of a world so muffled life falls cinder-soft feathering towards a distance fetched infinitely far.