The Raven's Honor

by Johnny D. Boggs

  “Show her in, Lewis,” Houston said, and waited.

  * * * * *

  Mary had always been a beautiful woman, probably twenty years younger than her now dead husband. She had not changed, but after four or five years since Anson’s suicide, she still wore black. She had been forced to sell the plantation in Washington-on-the-Brazos—the money going to her husband’s creditors—and if not for Ashbel Smith, the widow and her children would likely have been living in some hard-scrabble hut in the woods. Dr. Smith had managed to buy land for her in Galveston.

  Despite the pain in his leg, Houston pushed himself to his feet without a grimace and bowed. Should I go over to greet her? He could not decide. What is proper? Her eyes were rimmed red, which could have been from the dust from the drive as fierce bay winds had not abated. Or she might have been crying. He gestured toward a chair.

  “Have a seat, Missus Jones.” Missus Jones. Once he could have called her Mary.

  “Thank you, no, General.”

  Once I would have been Sam.

  “Your boy told me,” the widow said, “that your wife is indisposed.”

  Houston nodded. “She has worried herself sick fretting over Sam, our oldest.”

  “Yes. My son was at Shiloh, too.”

  He stiffened, and felt the dread as she opened a purse and withdrew a letter. “Have you word from …?” He could not remember her boy’s name. She had more than one son, and a daughter, if he recalled correctly. But which boy had been closest to Sam’s age? Which had he seen at Camp Bee with the Second Texas?

  “Charles,” she said. “Yes.” The red in her eyes came from tears, not dirt, not dust, for the tears leaked down her cheeks, and she weaved. Houston came to her, limping, but she steadied herself before the envelope fell to the floor. The yellow piece of paper shook in her hands.

  “Lewis!” Houston barked, and the slave reappeared in the doorway. “Pick up …” he fought for control, “the envelope.” He could not bend down himself. “Please.”

  The slave obeyed, but now Mary Jones began speaking.

  “This came from Jim Hageman, a friend.” The tears turned into a torrent, and the widow spun, brushed past Lewis, and disappeared out the door. In his massive right hand, Houston caught the letter the widow had dropped.

  * * * * *

  Houston burst through the door of Margaret’s room. His mother-in-law screamed, and Margaret, pale, face flushed, eyes red, sat bolt upright.

  “He’s alive!” Houston roared. “Thank the Almighty, Sam is alive!”

  He would have trampled Nancy Lea had she not spun out of his way, and he sank onto the bed. His bed. His room. They had shared it until the melancholy took hold of Margaret. Of late, he had slept in Sam Junior’s room—whenever he could actually sleep. Margaret’s eyes widened. He held the letter, slightly crushed.

  “Mary Jones brought it. Just now. She received it.” He spoke in rushes. “Cromwell. No. No. Sam. No.” He laughed. Now he remembered all of the Anson children’s names, even Sallie, the youngest. “Charles. Charles was in the Second with Sam. Her son, Charles. You remember him. A cattail weighed more than he did, and he was just as tall. Mary got this letter.” He thrust it before her. “See. See. It’s from one of the Hageman brood. Charles received a wound in the arm. Just a flesh wound, though. Sam was captured.”

  “Captured?” Margaret blinked away the disbelief.

  “Yes. Yes. He’s a prisoner of war. But he’s alive, my darling. Our boy is alive!”

  He wrapped his massive arms around his fragile wife, and pulled her close. She bawled then, tears of joy. Behind him, Nancy Lea muttered something.

  “I must write Mary,” Margaret was saying. “I must … I … Sam … oh … Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy. Blessed be our God in heaven. Oh … Sam.”

  For the longest while, he hugged his wife.

  * * * * *

  Margaret returned to him. Nancy Lea left for Independence and her steel casket. Houston could eat again, and he delighted in watching Margaret, Andrew, Willie Rogers, and Temple caring for the goslings, poults, and chicks. Margaret quilted. She knitted. They talked again. They even laughed.

  Oh, they still felt the stress, that fear of the unknown, but the last word they had received told them that Sam Junior was alive. A prisoner of war. But alive. At some point, they told themselves, he would write them. So, they waited, no longer fearing the worst.

  He thumbed through Homer and Virgil. He fished. He read newspapers, and what little mail came. And when he needed money, he ordered the slaves to chop cordwood.

  * * * * *

  Weeks later, Ike McGee brought the package.

  “I don’t know what it is, General,” the postmaster said. “Feels like a book. And there wasn’t enough postage on it, so I got to ask you for … well, sir, you know what a Confederate dollar’s worth these days, General.”

  Houston held the package, and handed it off to Joshua. He called for Jeff to find his billfold and paid McGee. After taking the package from Joshua, he saw that it had been mailed from Corinth, Mississippi.

  A few days back, word had reached Cedar Point that the Confederates had withdrawn from Corinth, abandoning the city to the Yankee Army.

  * * * * *

  Senator Samuel Houston, Esquire

  Dear Sir,

  I am certain you do not remember me, but I shall never forget you. Years ago, I met you as among the petitioners fighting against the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and your defense of us was honorable and heroic.

  I wear the blue, sir, and was at Pittsburg Landing. While crossing the battlefield after the carnage, I came across a young Rebel soldier who had been grievously wounded by a rifled minié ball in his thigh. At first, I thought the young, lean lad to be among the dead, but when he moved suddenly and let out a groan, I dropped by his side to give comfort and, I feared, the last rites. Finding his knapsack, I opened it and withdrew the enclosed Bible. When I opened it, I saw the inscription almost at the same time the boy opened his eyes and locked onto me.

  “Are you,” I asked, “related to General Houston of Texas, who served in the United States Senate?”

  The lad wet his lips and said, “My father.”

  Various emotions tore at me, and I had seen enough carnage over the past two days. I had seen a pond in which the water had turned red from the blood of soldiers, in blue and gray, who had bathed their wounds. I had seen the ground covered with dead. Your son said to me … “The surgeon says I am dying.”

  “You,” I told him, “will not die.” I called another surgeon over, told him that this boy, an enemy perhaps but the son of a great man, needed the best care we could provide. The surgeon said that the femoral artery had been severed and there was nothing he could do. I begged him to look again.

  God in His mercy opened the surgeon’s eyes. The artery had been missed. Thanks be to our Lord.

  General Houston, I return the Bible to you now, in hopes that it will reach you in good health. I hope that this will help ease your suffering. Your son is alive. His dreadful wound shows no signs of infection, and the bleeding has been stopped. I can be of no more assistance to him, or you, Senator, other than to tell you that he is to be sent to Camp Douglas near Chicago, Illinois.

  For him, sir, I pray that the war is over. And I pray that this carnage will end for all of us soon, His Will Be Done.

  * * * * *

  He found Margaret on the settee, knitting. Holding the Bible in his hands, he sat beside her. She recognized the book instantly and gasped.

  “Sam’s in a prison camp near Chicago,” Houston told her, then began to sob, burying his head against her shoulder. He felt her arms around him, and he straightened. He told her of their son’s wound, of the surgeon, of the chaplain Houston had met years ago. He handed her the small Bible, the one Houston had handed his son in Houston just b
efore he had left on the train. Margaret opened the Bible, and through blurred vision, they read Margaret’s handwriting.

  Sam Houston, Jr.,

  From his mother,

  March 6, 1862

  She pointed to a hole toward the bindings.

  “A bullet,” Houston said.

  “Not the one that wounded him.”

  He shook his head. “Your gift, my darling, likely saved our oldest son’s life.”

  Her fingers trembled as she turned the pages, stopping at Psalm seventy.

  Make haste, o God, to deliver me; make haste to help me, O Lord.

  Let them be ashamed and confounded that seek after my soul: let them be turned backward, and put to confusion, that desire my hurt.

  Let them be turned back for a reward of their shame that say, Aha, aha.

  Let all those that seek thee rejoice and be glad in thee: and let such as love thy salvation say continually, Let God be magnified.

  But I am poor and needy: make haste unto me, O God: thou art my help and my deliverer; O Lord, make no tarrying.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  September 30, 1862

  He busied himself, protesting martial law—“We are back to the days of the Inquisition,” he told Margaret—but spending more time sending money and letters to friends he had in Chicago. Brokering, he secretly knew, a prisoner exchange. He would do anything to get his son home. Yet Cedar Point began to lose its appeal. Once, Ben Lomond had been a respite, but no more. Oysters lost their flavor. The heat kept its grip, even though the calendar read fall. His neighbors turned into conniving cowards.

  On this Tuesday afternoon, two provost marshals knocked on the door. Sighing, he told Lewis to send them in, and he hurriedly finished a letter to a solicitor in Chicago named John Rose, Sr. He stuffed a few federal banknotes into the envelope and sealed it before the two marshals came to see him. Outside his chambers, he heard the voices. He waited. Then understanding what those visitors were doing, he felt the blood racing to his head and he pushed himself to his feet. He had to use a damned crutch these days, but he did not care. Limping to the door, he stepped into the hallway and roared.

  “Lewis! I told you to send them in to the library. I did not say they were to question my children!”

  He knew one of the marshals, Jimmy Donahoe, and knew of the other, a one-armed, dark-haired scoundrel named Moody. The latter had squatted to talk to Andrew Jackson, all of eight years old.

  “Yes, sir,” the old slave stuttered, “but they says …”

  “I give not a tinker’s damn what they say. This is my house.”

  Marshal Moody slowly rose. “General,” he began, but Houston cut him off.

  “Do you take especial interest in what my children prattle about in my own home, sir?”

  Lewis took the opportunity to grab Andrew’s hand and rush the boy away from an approaching battle.

  “This way.” Houston returned to the library.

  “Did Governor Lubbock send you?” he asked once they were settled. He had skewered the governor with ink and paper over the martial law.

  “General,” Jimmy Donahoe said. “The governor is used to your letters, sir. But others …”

  Houston shook his head. This meant his own neighbors were conspiring against him, accusing him of disloyalty to the Confederacy, or, even worse, to the state of Texas.

  “I claim no more than the humblest man in the community,” he told the lawmen, “and I am always ready to answer to the laws of my country. Or do you plan to arrest me as you have done in Gainesville and Sherman?”

  That news had reached him the other day. North Texas had been divided during the secession movement, and the latest conscription act had caused a protest among those who abhorred the idea of secession, who remained loyal, or as loyal as one could be in these trying times, to the Union. Men who had refused to report to duty had been arrested. If that were not horrifying enough, a few days earlier other citizens had been arrested.

  “General,” Donahoe, ever the peacemaker, began, “what happened up north …”

  “Is abhorrent,” Houston said. “Does anyone believe those poor farmers and merchants actually planned on pulling off some John Brown raid of the arsenals in those towns?”

  “That ain’t our reason for comin’ here,” Moody said. “And that ain’t our jurisdiction nohow, Gainesville, I mean, Sherman. But you ain’t never been one for the Confederacy.”

  “But,” Houston roared, “I have always been for Texas. Say otherwise, Marshal Moody, and we shall meet on the field of honor, sir.”

  “General,” Donahue began. “Governor Lubbock simply wants …”

  That’s when Houston understood. Laughing, he shook his head. “Frank is scared. Scared of an old man like me. By Jehovah, boys, send word to Austin that I have no plans to run for governor. I oppose the conscript law. I oppose martial law. I said it in 1860, I said it in 1861, I repeat it today, and I will continue to say that war will be disastrous for the South. Is that treason? I think not, gentlemen. I think it is factual. I speak my mind. That’s all I have to do these days.” He held out his big hands. “Slap on your manacles, gentlemen. Haul Sam Houston to jail or hang him.”

  When they left, Houston settled back into his chair. He picked up the letter to the Yankee lawyer named Rose, spinning it end over end before dropping it on the desktop and reaching into his pockets. The knife came out, and he unfolded the blade, gliding his thumb across the keen edge. Next a scrap of wood came out—hickory—and he pushed himself away from the desk.

  The blade glided with the grain. He studied the work, and continued to whittle.

  Eventually, he found Margaret standing before him. Dusk had settled over Cedar Point.

  “They did not arrest you, I see,” his wife said softly.

  “Mayhap you would have been better off had they done so.” What was left of the hickory he placed on the top of his desk and closed the blade before dropping the knife into his pocket.

  “I miss Huntsville,” Margaret said.

  He smiled at the memory. Over the past months, he had kept busy touring east Texas, lighting out with Jeff in the buggy, making stops at towns, including Huntsville. “It was a bang-up house we had at Raven Hill.”

  “Yes. I wish …”

  “The owner will not sell.” He realized his mistake.

  “What have you been doing on your buggy rides, Sam Houston?”

  He shrugged. “I have made inquiries, my darling.” Those journeys had left him exhausted, and recently Margaret had asked him to stay home. He had rarely found strength to refuse her.

  “Perhaps I should rethink keeping you about the house.” She smiled, but it did not last. It rarely did.

  The concussion of a shell from the USS South Carolina rattled the house. Sounds of war. So close. And, of late, more and more frequent.

  “Probably just another blockade runner,” he told her. “Those forty-four-pounders are quite loud.”

  “I hate this damned war,” she said.

  His eyebrows raised. Never had he heard Margaret utter an oath. Now, with a sigh, he closed his eyes. “From one nation, we have become two.” His head shook. “That attests how vain were the dreams of those who believed that the Union could last forever.”

  “It might yet,” she said.

  “No.” His eyes opened. “No …” he said again. “I wonder if Adams and Jefferson and Franklin thought it would last as long as we have.” He paused. “Had,” he corrected. “Crockett once told me that he pitied me for living to see everything I fought for crumble into ruin.”

  Her face turned pained. “When did Crockett tell you that, Sam?”

  He blinked. Trying to smile, he waved her off. “It does not matter. You are here to tell me that you have sent Lewis or Jeff umpteen times to call me to supper. Well …”

 
Margaret’s head shook. “No, Sam. Not yet.” She crossed the room, and he saw the newspaper in her hand. “Ike McGee brought this from Houston City, Sam.” She laid the paper on his desk, and pointed at a headline from a New Orleans newspaper. Since spring, New Orleans had been under Union control.

  Houston stared at the paper. He read the item quickly, digesting its meaning.

  “This means nothing.” He glanced at his wife. “It is an act that cannot be enforced.”

  “You know and I know that this does not mean nothing, Sam. It means everything.” She turned away, her skirts rustling as she left his library. “I will send Jeff when it is time for supper. Do not be late. We are having shrimp and grits.”

  He sat for some time before he reread the article. Then read it again. On his next pass, he understood that Margaret had been right.

  Jeff came to the open doorway and knocked on the frame.

  Houston looked at the slave, who said softly, “Aunt Liza and Missus Houston, they say it’s time for you to come eat, Master Sam. You ready?”

  “I’m ready.”

  “Let me get your crutch, Master Sam.”

  “Jeff,” Houston said, stopping the slave from moving. “Come here. I want to show you something.”

  The slave moved uncertainly, and Houston rose from his seat.

  “I’ll clean up them shavin’s, directly, Master Sam,” Jeff said, and Houston saw the remnants of his afternoon of whittling on the floor at his feet. “I can do it right now …”

  “No.” Houston smiled warmly. “The shavings can wait.” He tapped the headline on the Daily Crescent.

  The young man frowned, his head shaking. “Master Sam, I sure ain’t never seen that word before.” He struggled trying to pronounce it.

  “Emancipation,” Houston told him.

  Jeff blinked. He tried saying it. Houston helped him.

  “What do it mean, sir?”

  Houston shook his head. “For the moment, nothing. But in time, it will be a word you and your sons and your son’s sons and their sons will say, will remember, forever.”

  “E-man-ci—”

  “Emancipation.”