“You be nice, Master Sam.” The slave turned the buggy around in the center of the deserted street. “She the only mother-in-law you’s apt to have.”
“Thank the Almighty for that blessing.”
“Master Sam!” Jeff tried to hold a stern look, only to break out laughing.
* * * * *
So there he sat, in a damned rocking chair on the front porch, as Jeff unhitched the mules. Pearl came out, bringing him his dinner, which, for once, made him happy. Few things tasted better than day-old cornbread crumbled into a glass and covered with cold buttermilk. His appetite returned, for at least this afternoon. He relished every bite, then finished the milk, spooned out the soggy remnants to polish off his meal, and set the glass and spoon on the table.
Pearl had also brought him The Iliad, which he opened.
“You need something else, Master Sam?” Jeff had returned.
“No.” Houston changed his mind. “Yes. Take the glass and spoon to the wash basin.”
“Yes, sir.”
The spoon rattled in the glass as Jeff headed back down the steps, bound for the back door, when he stopped. Houston also heard hoofs on the cobblestone street.
“Why, ain’t that Tom Blue?” Jeff called out.
With a grunt, Houston came out of the chair, retrieved his cane leaning against the wall, and moved with remarkable speed to the top of the steps. He stopped, glaring down the path, rage boiling inside. He quickly turned that anger onto Jeff.
“That’s not Tom Blue, you damned fool,” he snapped.
“Yes, sir. I see that now, sir. Sorry, Master Sam.” The young Negro moved toward the black man who slid from the saddle and handed the reins to Jeff. “It be good to see you, T. J.”
T. J. Roland, the black preacher, carpenter, and handyman—as fine a man with a paintbrush as one would find in Independence—walked up the path. Roland was lean, blacker than a raven, but with graying, close-cropped hair. Apparently, this day had found him painting, for his overalls were stained white.
He was not Tom Blue. Be glad you are not, Houston fumed to himself.
* * * * *
Tom Blue had been—still was—one of Houston’s slaves. A strapping mulatto from the West Indies, Tom Blue had served as Houston’s assistant, then as coachman … and then, with no call, back while the Houstons lived in Huntsville, he had run off. But not alone. No, Tom Blue had talked Uncle Strother, one of Colonel Hume’s boys who worked at the blacksmith shop in town, into escaping with him. They had crossed the border into Mexico. Free.
Old Hume wanted to hire someone to fetch those boys back, to give Uncle Strother a sound whipping, and had asked Houston to help pay the slave hunter. Houston had refused. Oh, he felt betrayed by Tom Blue, but he had never whipped any of his slaves the way Old Hume and many others did. He had never separated any families. He had let them attend church services, had taught them trades, even shown many how to read and write. And this was how Tom Blue had paid him back.
* * * * *
He shut out the memory, and lowered the cane as T. J. Roland stopped at the bottom of the doorsteps.
“Mister Houston, sir.” Roland removed his porkpie hat, crushing the brims with his paint-stained hands. “How you doin’, sir?”
“Fair to middling, T. J. What can I do for you?”
“Well …” The man stared at his brogans.
Houston stepped back. “Come out of the sun, T. J.” He pointed to another rocking chair. “Have you had your dinner? Pearl just brought me some cornbread and buttermilk. And I do believe we have a slice or two of pecan pie left.”
The freedman climbed the steps, shaking his head.
“You thank Miss Pearl and Aunt Liza, Mister Houston, but, no sir, my stomach’s full.”
The hat, Houston notice, rotated, and the big hands of the painter kept crushing the brims. Houston frowned. He had started for his own rocking chair, but now he stopped. He moved toward one of the wooden columns, and leaned against it for support.
“Mister Houston … .” T. J. Roland stopped.
Houston looked at the window to the parlor. No movement came from behind the curtains, and no voices could be heard. His wife and mother-in-law had gone to another part of the house. Obviously, for a busybody like Nancy Lea would have been out the front door and standing on the porch to see who had decided to pay Sam Houston a visit.
“Sir.” The freedman’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “You heard from Master Houston, sir? Sam Junior, I mean.”
“No.” Houston inhaled deeply, held the breath, finally let it out. “I mean, Missus Houston received a letter a week or so back.”
“Yes, sir. Well, I was down at Washington-on-the-Brazos. Paintin’ Missus Hatchell’s fence for her. That’s how I’m all painted over, sort of, sir.” He frowned, and at last let the hat fall to his side. “Steamboat docked, Mister Houston. They don’t come down the river so much no more. And the white folks, and even some colored boys workin’ as deck hands, they was talkin’ up a storm. Been a big fight, they’s sayin’, and I means a big, awful battle. Way up north somewheres.”
“Virginia?” Houston asked, pleading for Roland’s affirmation.
“No, sir. Place in Tennessee. Never heard of it my ownself. They calls it Shiloh Meetin’ House.”
Chapter Twenty-One
April 10–May 5, 1862
Inconsolable, sobbing, irritable, Margaret took to bed. Houston tried to assure her that her son, their son, was all right. “God will not allow him to be harmed!” he roared.
She fired back, “You are not God, Sam Houston. I know you think you are, but you are not!”
She lost interest in the chickens and turkeys she had been raising, turning the care over to the children and slaves. Winds blew hot and steamy off the bay, with no clouds, no rain, nothing to relieve the oppressive heat. The crops suffered. Houston doubted if they would have any corn.
Temple and Andrew picked primroses and China blossoms, but those did not make Margaret smile.
Houston felt little better. His appetite again disappeared. Even cornbread and buttermilk no longer appealed to him. He survived on what passed for coffee these days. Coffee … and waiting.
The letter arrived on the sixteenth, addressed to Margaret, but he ripped it open on the porch. Sam Junior had not written this, Houston knew, for he did not recognize the handwriting. He read, frowning at the first words:
Corinth, Mississippi, April 2, 1862
Dear Cousin Margaret,
I am amidst one hundred thousand men. Emmet and Sam are talking outside the tent (God bless and protect the boys). I know full well your anxiety and solicitude about your boy…
The letter came from one of Margaret’s cousins, C. W. Lea, who had likewise joined the Second Texas Infantry. Houston sank into his rocking chair. His chest screamed in agony, and he fought for breath. Houston had found enough maps to determine that a church known as Shiloh—near Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River—lay marching distance from Corinth, Mississippi. His son would have taken part in the big battle T. J. Roland had told Houston about. The rest of the letter seemed trivial, written a few days before the battle.
He ordered Joshua and Lewis to hitch up the team, then made Jeff drive him into Houston City, where he collected every newspaper for sale at Dottie McGee’s Bookstore. The merchant’s husband served as postmaster, but Ike McGee had no letters for Houston.
First newspaper reports of the battle seemed, typically, sketchy. He wondered if his mother had felt as he did now, or as Margaret must have suffered, after hearing of the slaughter at Horseshoe Bend. Yet there had been no newspapers in Maryville, Tennessee, in those times—Houston doubted if you could find a newspaper there today. Word would have come by courier. Or, rather, wagging tongues. Which is what filled most of the newspaper reports.
The first articles assured that Albert
Sidney Johnston had driven Grant’s army into the Tennessee River. Houston did not believe it.
He went home, and returned the next day, returned every day for more newspapers, and to see if any letters came for him, or Margaret. Sam Junior would have been more inclined to write his mother.
By then, the newspaper articles had changed. Somehow, General Grant had held strong on the banks of the river, reinforcements had arrived, and the Union Army had driven the Confederates off the battlefield. General Albert Sidney Johnston was dead, killed in the first day of slaughter. Houston had been right. Johnston was a gentleman, sending his surgeon away to help wounded Union soldiers. The gentleman had bled to death in a ravine. Afterward, a tourniquet had been found in one of Johnston’s coat pockets.
At first, Houston City seemed in shock. Then horrified. Sometimes, Houston could hear men yelling inside the grog shops, blaming the disaster at Shiloh on the generals, others calling the reports nothing more than bald-faced Yankee falsehoods. Church bells pealed. Women wore black armbands to mourn the fallen heroes, whether they had sons or fathers in the war or not. Outside Oliver’s Saloon, the whitewashed board keeping a tally of those killed in Houston, Richmond, and Hempstead was ripped off and smashed to pieces.
Margaret prayed and cried at Ben Lomond. She went to church on Sundays and Wednesdays to pray and cry with others. On Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, she lay in bed, reading the Bible, rereading Sam Junior’s letters, sobbing over his sketches and drawings.
Houston continued to go to town every day. No letters came from Sam. Few letters came at all, and the newspapers—what few arrived now—never answered the most important question Sam Houston had.
He stood in line at Dottie McGee’s store, waiting for some lady to decide between two novels by Dickens.
Finally, Houston snapped. “Read Bleak House, madam.”
She turned, lowering her spectacles. “And why should I, sir?”
“Because it’s shorter than David Copperfield, madam, and if it takes you as long to read a book as it does to choose one, you’ll never finish the latter before you’re called to Glory.” He ripped another book from a table. “Or here. This one …” The title stopped him, and he tossed A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost-Story of Christmas back onto the table.
“No,” he whispered, “not … that one.”
He did not realize the woman had slammed both books onto the counter, and stormed into the muggy afternoon.
“General?”
Blinking, he remembered where he was, and regretted his anger, especially when he saw the expression on Dottie McGee’s face.
“I shall buy both copies, Missus McGee,” he said. “And any new papers that have arrived.”
“I am not upset, General,” the woman said. “The Widow Petty would have left without purchasing either edition. I doubt if she has ever read a book in her life, including the Bible.” She drew a deep breath, let it out, and reached underneath the counter. “Here are the latest papers, sir. The Dallas paper …” Mrs. McGee paused, “it has … some of the first … casualty reports.”
Houston picked up the Herald. The thin paper shook in his hand.
“Casualty … reports …” he whispered.
“Ike calls them ‘the butcher’s bill.’” The owner also brought up a letter. “Ike brought this over during dinner. To give to you, sir.”
Scanning the item in the Herald, he froze as he read: We have reports that Sam Houston Junior, son of the hero of San Jacinto, is among the thousand gallant Texans slain in defense of our homeland.
“Oh, God in heaven, no,” he muttered.
“General …” Dottie McGee held out the letter.
He almost collapsed when he recognized the handwriting of Captain Ashbel Smith.
* * * * *
A mile out of the city, Houston ordered Jeff to steer the buggy to the side of the road. He had yet to open Smith’s letter, and now he passed it over to the young slave.
“Jeff …” he steeled himself, “read this.”
“Your spectacles not workin’, Master Sam?”
“Something’s not working. Read it, Jeff.”
* * * * *
“It starts ‘April 16, 1862.’ He says … ‘My dear Old Chief, Writing is extremely painful—a wound involving the right armpit and weakness from many days fever …’”
Even Ashbel Smith had been a casualty at Shiloh. Newspapers from New Orleans and Dallas had said the number of dead would reach the thousands, and the wounded in the tens of thousands. More, Houston knew, than the casualties during the entire Creek War and the campaign for Texas’ independence combined. Houston had to help Jeff with some of the words: amanuenses, plantation, apprehensions.
“‘I shook hands with Sam on the morning of the seventh,’” Jeff read. Houston feared he would throw up. “‘Sam and some seven or eight others were in no way accounted for … On the ninth, I was sent to the hospital in Memphis … Since leaving, I have not heard a word from camp.’”
He frowned. Silently, he prayed.
“‘I by no means despair of Sam’s safety—indeed I think he may now be in camp …’”
Then Captain Smith shattered Houston’s prayers.
The battle had been fought “gallantly.” Sam Junior “fought like a hero and with the coolness of a veteran.” He had marched in “the first rank.” Tears blurred Houston’s version. “‘I occasionally cautioned him with a friendly threat to tell his mother of his so expressing himself. Sam always replied with a pleasant smile and a cheery word.’”
Jeff read, “‘I trust my dear General that Sam will soon send to yourself news that he is safe and well.”
Houston barely heard the rest.
“And he signs it … ‘Truly Your Dear Friend, Ashbel Smith.’ That’s all it says, Master Sam.”
His eyes opened. “I know he’s all right, Master Sam,” Jeff told him. “It’s like you tol’ Missus Houston, sir, that time. God won’t let young Sam get killed. Remember, Master Sam?”
“And …” Houston fingered the pages of Smith’s letter and stuffed them back inside the envelope, “as Margaret reminded me … I am not God.”
* * * * *
Another letter arrived a week later, but it held no news about Sam Junior. It had been addressed to Margaret, a short, grim note that word had reached Alabama that Margaret’s cousin, William P. Rogers, had been killed at Shiloh.
“Another addition,” Houston whispered to himself, “to the butcher’s bill.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
May 6–June 12, 1862
His mother-in-law arrived that morning, had her servants take her grips to the guest room, and walked past Houston—never making eye contact with the giant—and on into Margaret’s room. He had started to say something like: You didn’t bring your casket. What’ll you do if you up and die, Nancy? He curbed his tongue, though, and prayed silently to the Lord to forgive him for vindictive thoughts. He blamed this on the bitterness, the crushing anxiety of not knowing.
Behind the closed door of Margaret’s room, his wife sobbed. “Oh, Mother, what shall I do? How shall I bear it?”
Houston went to his library. He had stopped going to Houston City for newspapers. The papers all reported the same. The butcher’s bill grew, and Sam Junior’s name appeared in many of them, sometimes as killed, sometimes as wounded, often as missing, twice as captured. No more news had arrived from Captain Ashbel Smith, but for all Houston knew, the good doctor had died in Memphis. Or his arm could have been amputated. Or he could have been captured and sent on some prison ship up north.
Now he knew what the phantom of Andrew Jackson had meant in that dream—or whatever the hell it was—when Old Hickory had warned Houston that his heart would be shattered.
That was the hell of this. Waiting. Not knowing. Governor Lubbock had written him
. The Austin papers must have reported that Sam Junior was missing, and Houston found a pen and wrote a brief, strained reply. He sealed the letter with wax, and pushed himself away from the desk. The Iliad lay within reach, but Homer could not carry him away from his weakness, his troubles. He stared at the corner table and saw the bourbon and rye, and his hands clenched into balled fists.
“No,” he told himself. Beads of sweat popped out on his forehead.
Suddenly, old Lewis stood in the open doorway.
“Master Sam!” the slave called out.
Houston steadied himself. “What is it, Lewis?”
“They’s a lady here to see you, sir. Had her manservant drive her in from Galveston, sir. Name Jones.”
“Jones?”
“Yes, sir. A widow Mary Jones.”
Once, her late husband had been one of Houston’s strongest supporters, and best of friends. And Mary had shared many cups of tea with Margaret. Anson Jones had fought at San Jacinto, had served as Houston’s minister to the United States during that raucous first term as president of the Republic of Texas. Later, he became Houston’s secretary of state. Finally, he had been the last president of the republic, and had fought with vigor and foolishness against annexation.
“He does not want statehood for Texas,” Houston had said. “He wants a throne for himself. He sees himself as King Arthur. He sees himself as God.”
But when Texas became a state, and Jones had not been chosen senator, he grew to hate Senator Sam Houston. In 1857, he had tried for the US Senate again, and received no votes. He blamed Houston. Mary stopped speaking and writing to Margaret. In January of 1858, Anson Jones had killed himself in Houston City.
What would his widow want of me? Houston thought. He found a handkerchief and wiped sweat from his brow, rose, and moved toward the coat rack. It was too damned hot to be wearing a frock coat, but if Mary Jones came from Galveston to see him, he must look dignified. Lewis helped him into the coat, and Houston settled back into his chair.
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