Front Royal was the end of the month-long cattle drive, and by that time Davy had become an accomplished marksman, learning to load power and bullets fast and with efficiency. He smiled often and nodded with enthusiasm when Cheek instructed him. Davy wished his father had been as kind, wise and tolerant as Cheek, but he found himself growing more silent. Cheek knew his secret that he was a liar. On the day they herded the cattle into large corrals on the edge of town, Davy was exhilarated to find himself surrounded by other boys apprenticed to livestock merchants. They were drawn to his ready laugh and sparkle in his brown eyes.
“You from Tennessee?” one of them asked. “I ain’t never been south of Front Royal.”
“Oh sure,” Davy said, slapping a calf’s flank causing it to scamper to its mother. I’ve been all over Virginia.”
“Really?”
“You seen Natural Bridge?” a blond-headed boy asked.
“I’d give my eye teeth to see Natural Bridge,” a large sweaty-faced boy added.
“It ain’t much,” Davy said with the air of a seasoned traveler. “I mean the first time you see it, it can make the hair on your neck stand on end, but the second time it kinda gits to be old hat, you know.”
A man with an intimidating black beard walked up and growled, “Less talkin’. More workin’.”
Scrambling away, the other boys grabbed bales of hay and buckets of water. Davy continued prodding the cattle through the gates. By noon, he sat under a large oak tree crumbling a hunk of johnnycake into a wooden tankard of buttermilk and sucking it down. The other boys joined him with their lunch pails.
“You seen a lot of stuff, ain’t you?” the blond-haired boy asked as he chewed on a cold baked sweet potato.
“I seen my share,” Davy said, relishing the attention.
“What’d you like best?” the sweaty boy asked.
“I supposed Monticello.”
“Monty who?” The large boy twisted his sweaty face in confusion.
“Monticello,” Davy repeated. “It’s the home of Vice-President Jefferson at Charlottesville.”
“That’s a funny name,” the blond-haired boy said.
“Mr. Jefferson’s a might smart man,” Davy replied, his chin a little elevated. “I’m sure he had a good reason for namin’ his house Monticello. He’s been on boats all the way to Europe. Maybe it’s the name of a place there.”
“I reckon.” The boy hung his head.
Davy drank more buttermilk from his tankard. He did not like empty space in a conversation. He wanted to see their eyes widen again.
“He’s goin’ to run for president, you know.”
“How would you know that?” A dark-haired boy looked up from his cold chicken leg and squinted.
“He told me so himself.”
“You talked to Thomas Jefferson?” the boy said as he bit into his chicken.
“We was waterin’ the cattle down by this creek when Mr. Jefferson rode upon this Appaloosa mare. He stopped and asked where we was from and where we was goin’.” He looked off at the full cattle pen. “I could tell he was upset about somethin’.”
“How could you tell that?” the blond-haired boy asked.
“He bit his lip. Folks always bite their lips when they’re frettin’ about problems and they don’t even know they’re doin’ it. So I said, “It ain’t none of my business, Mr. Vice-President, sir, but I can tell you got somethin’ terrible on your mind. Maybe if you told a poor li’l mountain boy what it is, you can figger it out, and I won’t tell nobody what you say.”
“I’d be too afeared to ask a man anythin’ like that,” the sweaty boy said.
“He makes you feel like a friend. He was kinda easy to talk to.” Davy paused to smile with shrewdness and nod at the others. “That’s what a good politician is supposed to do, make you feel like his friend.”
“What did he say,” the blond-haired boy asked.
“He didn’t know if he should run for president. I told him to make sure of what he was aimin’ at and then go ahead and shoot.”
“Shoot what?” the sweaty boy said.
“Shoot for bein’ president. The worse that could happen is that he’d have to stand up to his lick log.”
“How did he take bein’ told what to do by a wet-behind-the-ears boy?” The dark-haired boy chomped his chicken leg.
“Why, he jest patted me on the back and said, ‘Thank you kindly, young man.’”
“Git back to work!” the man with the wicked beard shouted, causing the boys to scatter again.
“Mind you, watch who runs for president next time,” Davy called after them.
“And who might that be?”
Davy jumped when he heard the mild voice behind him. Looking up, he saw Cheek who smiled with benevolence.
“Oh, I reckon I should git to it, too,” he jumped up and put his tankard away in the wagon.
As they sauntered back to the corral filled with mooing livestock, Cheek planted his sinewy arm around Davy’s slender shoulder and bent over to his ear. “Like I told you, I know your pa.” His voice, low and calm, was nonjudgmental but serious. “I know he drinks too much and has a mean streak. I don’t blame you for runnin’ off, and I don’t blame you for lyin’ about it. Now about that Thomas Jefferson yarn, you’d been in a heap of shame if I’d spoken up there and told those young men we didn’t come anywhere close to Monticello, let alone see the vice-president himself. If I was you I’d stick with the truth.” He paused to smile in sympathy. “But if you feel like you gotta tell a whopper or you’ll bust your gut, make it a big one so folks will git a good laugh out of it.”
Cheek stepped up his pace, leaving Davy standing by himself on the dusty street. He shuddered, his mind stripped naked when Cheek examined his soul and found nothing but deceit dressed with a ready grin and ruddy cheeks.

***
As he stood on his porch a crisp September morning, David decide he had not changed much since he was thirteen. He still did not like having his soul laid bare. As he went about his life in Rutherford Station he saw the people staring at him, recognizing him for what he was, an old man, defeated with nothing left but a jug of whiskey and a passel of tall tales. David could not forget what Sam Houston told him that night under the stars. Texas was his for the taking. He could be a leader again. He could be the hero again. He could be a man again. He wanted to return to Washington as an honorable representative from the new state of Texas. On his way to be sworn in he would stop by Jackson’s house outside of Nashville, stand over his decrepit enemy’s mass of rotting flesh and laugh at him for growing old and useless while David was still a vibrant man of action.
Growing old, he repeated to himself, feeling his midsection, once taut and flat and now fleshy and expanding. He could see gray fleck in his brown hair and beard. Aches wracked his back in the morning air, and his knees buckled from time to time as he tromped through the woods. He was going to be fifty on his next birthday. That was an age many men considered as the beginning of the end. Soon he’d be the one in the rocking chair on the front porch where young men would come to point and laugh at him. No, he thought shaking his head; no one was going to laugh at him, unless he laughed first.
He decided he was going to Texas, just as Sam Houston told him. All that was left for him to do was say good-bye to family, which he had done many times before and would not be hard to do again. He had a heap of family to say good-bye to now. When he moved to West Tennessee his sisters, Betsy, Jane and Sally and their families followed him, and he was glad. His sisters always held a special place in his heart they had cuddled and comforted him when his father beat him. His brother Joseph and his family also moved to Gibson County, but he did not feel as close to him, remembering how Joseph disappeared when David was getting beat. He felt the same way about his other brother Wilson who stayed in the East Tennessee mountains. Less said about him the better.
David’s son John Wesley lived in Gibson County and was already a lawyer, clerk and master of county chancery court and a teacher at a local academy, all by the age of twenty-eight. David was proud of his son and would miss him except for the fact that John Wesley had been swept up in the New Awakening, saved and was determined to save him from his drunken ways.
His drunken ways, David thought as his eyes strayed to a grave not far from the porch. Walking over to the funeral plot he read the name, Rebecca Hawkins Crockett. His mother died that summer and he still mourned for her. She had lived with him the last year since his father died. His parents came west with the rest of the family and moved from the homes of Betsy, to Jane and then Sally. Each sister could only endure their father’s drunken behavior for a few months at a time. David refused to be part of that state of affairs. Even though he wanted to be with his mother, he hated his father and did not cry when he died. The last year did not make up the time he lost with his mother, but he appreciated the evenings they shared on the porch staring at sunsets. They did not talk; his mother never talked much, but the serene silence spoke volumes.
His father was the drunk, David told himself, and he only enjoyed his liquor. He stopped drinking when it was important; his father never stopped. John Wesley was smart, but he was wrong—David was not a drunk. His father was a drunk, and he was nothing like his father. He hated his father and if he were a drunk he would have to hate himself. He felt a catch in his throat because he knew, in the deepest recesses of his dark heart, he did loathe himself.
“David!” Abner called out as he rode up. “Gotta letter for you!”
Turning and walking back to the porch, he ran his fingers over his eyes and forced a smile on his leathered face. He did not like the look in Abner’s eyes as he handed him the envelope.
“I’ve already opened mine,” he said. “We’re bein’ sued by the kinfolk.”

***

Dave drove his new Jaguar out of Waco unhappy with his current state of affairs. He knew Tiffany could look into his dark soul and see all of his lies, just like the lies of David Crockett had been laid bare. He knew his father would look into his soul and see a man who ran away from his small sons just to be with a pretty young woman. His brother Vince would look into his soul and see the same gutless wonder he always disdained.
Most of all, Dave hated going back to his hometown of Gainesville. No small town could have been more beautiful. It lay in a small valley between two tributaries of the Trinity River. Built at the height of the cotton, oil and cattle boom, Gainesville had an imposing courthouse with its high silvery dome. Its tree-lined streets were filled with Victorian mansions. Its people, however, were small-minded and judgmental. Well, he corrected himself, not all of them. Mrs. Dody was always nice to him, and while none of his teachers were inspirational they were not unkind. No, Dave had to admit, it was not the people he dreaded confronting. It was the memories.
As Dave topped a hill, he saw the skyscrapers of Dallas in the distance.
Just drop me off at Frankiebell’s.
Dave’s eyes widened as he looked to the passenger seat to see Allan sitting there, puffing on a cigarette. “What are you doing here?”
I said I wanted to go to Frankiebell’s. Are you going deaf?
Dave looked back to the road, blinking his eyes and shaking his head. Allan was dead. Mrs. Dody said so. The Dallas Morning News, for God’s sake, said he was dead. Then what was he doing in the front seat of Dave’s car? Was Dave finally succumbing to the family illness? Was he finally going insane?
“You always had me drive you into Dallas so you go to that bar,” he mumbled.
Don’t use that tone of voice about Frankiebell’s. It caters to a special clientele.
“You were drawn like a moth to a flame.” In his mind Dave could see the warehouse and Allan falling asleep with is cigarette carelessly lolling out of his nicotine-stained fingers and lighting the mattress.
I was a bartender. Everyone said I was a good bartender.
“A fire,” Dave continued to mumble. “An all-consuming, life-taking fire.”
You’re talking nonsense. Are you going to take me to Frankiebell’s or not?
“I’ve got to get home.”
Well, if you’re so anxious to get home, let’s go fast.
Allan reached over and placed his foot on top of Dave’s on the gas pedal and pressed down.
“Allan! No! What are you doing?”
Throwing back his head Allan laughed like a maniac. Dave tried to knock his foot off, for a moment losing control of the car and swerving over a lane. Car horns blared all around him until he was able to regain control, pull off the side of the road and stop. Panting, Dave looked over at the passenger seat which was now empty. Allan was gone; perhaps he had never been there. Everyone always said Dave had way too much imagination, too much imagination for his own good.
“Jerk!” a motorist yelled out of his window as he whizzed by.
Dave composed himself and returned to the slow lane of traffic. A Seven Eleven convenience store caught his eye, and he pulled off the highway and into the parking lot. Inside he bought a copy of the Dallas Morning News. On the front page was an article about the United States’ decision not to go to the Summer Olympics in Moscow. Dave flipped to the local news section and saw the headline, “Transient dies in warehouse fire.” Thirty-six point type, he noticed. Dave had written many thirty-six point type headlines. An important story for that size of type, he mused, more important than anything Allan Crockett had ever done in his life.
Further up Interstate 35, as he crossed the line into Cooke County, Davy became tenser knowing he was almost home. At one point he held his breath as he spotted a man walking alongside the road. From the back he looked like Allan, the same black hair, frighteningly pale skin, rounded shoulders and walking with that familiar swish, with a cigarette dangling from his fingers. Again Dave swerved off the road to stop and look back at the walker. It was not Allan, but a younger man with a masculine growth of beard. Sighing and shaking his head, he pulled back onto the highway. Dave slowed as he mounted a high knoll which overlooked his hometown of Gainesville, its courthouse dome glistening in the August sun.

John Ross sat in the judge’s chambers at a table across from his aged parents, but he did not know who they were. To him, they were just old people, a broken-down, stooped-shouldered, empty-eyed Cherokee who long ago forfeited his soul to white men, and a fragile, thin woman with streaked gray hair and tears in her eyes.
“Why is she crying?”
The judge cleared his throat and opened a thick folder as the old couple held each other’s hands tightly. He licked his thumb and began flipping through the pages.
“This won’t take long, Mr. and Mrs. Ross.”
He looked familiar, but John could not quite remember where they had met, perhaps in this room, this cold impersonal, wood-paneled room with many books and a poor oil painting of Maggie Valley. The urge for a smoke overcame John. He was about to reach for a cigarette when he noticed a large white man dressed in some sort uniform next to him.
“May I smoke?”
“Yes.” The judge smiled.
John took a cigarette out and placed it between his fingers which were brown from nicotine. First he looked to the guard for a light, but the man just ignored him.
“Here.”
John turned to the other side to see a bald-headed man in a three-piece suit. He smiled kindly at John and offered a lit match, which he took without acknowledgement. This man also looked familiar, but John could not quite place him. This feeling of not owning his past was driving John mad. No, he corrected himself, angry. He was angry, not mad, no matter what anyone else thought.
“Your son’s case history is well documented.” The judge patted a fat file. “In fact, I remember visiting with him a couple times myself.”
Mrs. Ross began to sob. Her husband put his thick old arm around her heaving shoulders, trying to comfort her. Her tears only made John more irritable. Pulling out another cigarette, John lit it from the first and began to rub out the first in a nearby ashtray. The rubbing evolved into a thumping and then into a definite tom-tom beat. Mr. Ross looked up in despair.
“For God’s sake, can’t you make him stop that?”
The guard leaned over and placed a meaty hand on John’s shoulder. John glanced in irritation at him and then at the judge before stopping his beat. Gazing off into space, John felt the drum beat continuing in his head. He disregarded the judge’s questions to the old man.
“Mr. Ross, when did your son receive the head injury?”
“Well, he was twelve, I think. He walked by this boy watching my…”
John began a tom-tom beat in the ashtray.
“There he goes again. Judge, can’t you make him stop?”
John glared at him and bit into his knuckles until blood materialized which he licked from his hand.
“There he goes again, Martha. Can’t you make him stop?”
“Johnny, dear, don’t hurt yourself like that.” She reached across the table. “We don’t want to see you hurt yourself.”
He gazed with indifference at her.
“Then the boy—he couldn’t have been more than eight or so—took this toy tomahawk and hit John with it in the forehead,” Mr. Ross said. “He was just playing. He didn’t mean no harm.”
“It was a real rock,” Mrs. Ross said. “They shouldn’t sell things like that.”
“Like I said, it wasn’t the boy’s fault.”
John winced as the memory came back to him.
“The boy started crying when he saw the blood,” Mr. Ross said.
“It was his fault,” Mrs. Ross blurted. “The stupid…” She caught herself and covered her mouth with her handkerchief. “The dear little boy should have been raised better. His parents should have never given him the tomahawk.”
“It doesn’t make any difference now,” her husband said.
John started thumping the tray once more.
“Johnny was in the hospital for a week.” Mrs. Ross held her handkerchief to her face to catch the tears rolling down her cheeks. “And that boy, his family didn’t pay a thing. They just walked away.”
“The publicity would have been bad for the reservation,” Mr. Ross said. “People wouldn’t come around if they had a notion we were going to take them to court for every little thing.”
“This wasn’t a little thing,” she replied in an intense tone.
“Well, it didn’t seem to bother John none,” his father said.
“Yes, it seems his teen-aged years passed without incident.” The judge nodded and looked through the file.
John’s hand continued to thump until the guard grabbed his arm. Giving the man a withering glare, John retreated to the time which the judge said passed without incident. What did he know? John remembered in a different way. His neck turned red and hot with mortification over the recollection of the Sunday school class where his father ridiculed him in front of the other boys. It was the same crimson warmth he suffered sitting there as these people discussed his life.
“He attacked someone in Knoxville later,” the judge said.
Smoke swirled around John’s head. This was his future they were discussing, so he should have a word to say about it.
“If he hadn’t been hit in the head, that wouldn’t have happened,” Mrs. Ross interjected.
“We don’t know for sure the knock in the head did it, Martha.” He looked at the bald man in the suit. “Ain’t that right, doc?”
“You’re talking about me, aren’t you?”
“Yes, we are, Mr. Ross.” The judge looked at him and smiled. “Do you have something to say?”
“Yes.” He knew his experiences better than anyone, he reasoned. “I was on a crew building an office complex in downtown. It was a good job. I liked that job. Except for the white men.”
“You don’t like white men?” the judge asked.
“Would you like someone who hit you in the head?” Mrs. Ross said.
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“Black men, they’re all right. They understand injustice. They understand oppression. They hope someday their bondage will end.” John paused. “But they didn’t understand I was going to lead them to the Promised Land.”
“Oh no,” Mr. Ross said, rolling his eyes, “not that again.”
“They were too blind to see that I am Moses.”
“So you think you’re Moses?” the judge said.
“I am Moses.”
“What happened next, Mr. Ross?”
“I had been drinking.” John sat back. “People said whiskey would make the pain go away. It didn’t. I decided I needed to accept my heritage and renounce white culture. I sat on my apartment floor, chanting sounds only understood by Yo He Wa.”
“Yo He Wa?” the judge asked.
“That’s the name of the Cherokee god,” Mrs. Ross said.
“I ignored the banging at my door while I contemplated the knife I held in my hand and how it glistened in the candle light. But the cursing and banging continued so I went to the door, with my hand raised for battle.”
“The man at the door sustained minor injuries, I see here,” the judge said.
“I had to protect my heritage.”
Closing the file, the judge turned toward John’s parents.
“I don’t think there’s much doubt that your son needs to be committed to the North Carolina State Mental Hospital in Morganton. We tried out patient counseling and he stopped going. He refused to take the medication prescribed for him. He needs the supervision.”
“It’s not his fault. Some boy hits him and he’s the one that gets locked up. It isn’t fair.” Mrs. Ross began to cry again.
“Now, Martha.” Her husband put his arm around her. “You know it’s for the best.”
“Dr. Harold Lippincott will take him to the state facility at Morganton today,” the judge said.
John looked at the doctor. That was where he remembered seeing him, at the hospital. This white man would not enslave him.
“Don’t worry,” Harold said. “He’ll be well cared for, Mrs. Ross.”
Yes, he remembered the doctor’s voice. They had talked before. John did not think he was very smart. The doctor did not comprehend that John was meant to free all oppressed people.
“Come on.” The guard pulled John up by his arm.
“Don’t hurt him,” Mrs. Ross pleaded through tears.
“The van is waiting,” Harold said.
John concentrated on the old woman’s face as the guard pulled him toward the door. He wondered why this woman was crying for him, or why she would care.
“Good-bye, John,” she said. “Try to be good.”
Yes, he knew who that was. He knew who would cry for him and who would care for him so much.
“Mama.”
***
Jill laughed to the point her voice went up at least an octave as she fumbled with her keys in her purse outside her apartment near the University of Tennessee campus in Knoxville as Bob rubbed her shoulders.
“I tried to warn you about meeting my parents.”
“They weren’t so bad.” He leaned in to kiss her on the neck and breathe in her scent.
Jill unlocked her door and led him in. It had comfortable but not cheap furniture, and its walls were decorated with theater production posters. She glanced at her watch.
“Oh good, we’re in time for my favorite news show.”
They sat on the sofa, and Bob put his arm around Jill as she used the remote control to turn on the television to Channel Forty-three. Bob’s face came on the screen.
“There he is.” Jill snuggled into Bob’s side.
“…after a private hearing in Judge David Johnson’s chambers at the Bryson City courthouse. Ross was in police custody on charges of assault with a lethal weapon.”
“The reporter’s so cute.” Jill put her arms around his waist. “I wonder if he has a girlfriend.”
“Next week Channel Forty-three will examine the effects of childhood head injuries on adults, particularly upon native Americans in modern society. This is Bob Meade.”
As the station went to commercial Bob and Jill kissed, holding each other with enthusiasm. After a few moments they parted.
“It’s hard to believe it’s only been a few short weeks. You’ve completely changed my life.” He looked into her eyes and smiled before kissing her once more. A lock of his dark hair fell across his forehead.
“Do you know who you look like when your hair comes down into your face like that?” Jill giggled. “Rudolph Valentino.”
“How would you know what Rudolph Valentino looked like when he was kissing a girl?”
“I’m educated. I had a class in silent movies.”
The news returned, and now Bob was standing in front of a comfortable two-story colonial style house.
“Boone, North Carolina, police are still investigating the mysterious death of long-time community philanthropist Thelma Scoggins who was found dead at the bottom of the stairs days ago.”
“How sad.” Jill frowned.
“Official cause of death has been cited as heart attack, but police report a large bruise on the side of her face and that her bedroom had been rifled through as though by burglars, but there was no sign of forced entry.”
The picture switched to an elderly man.
“This is Harvey Nunn, Mrs. Scoggins’ neighbor.”
“Thelma was always taking in transients and letting them sleep in the room above the garage for doing yard work. The last time I saw her take someone in was right before they found her body. It was two teen-aged boys.”
“Have you given the authorities a description?”
“They were white, dark hair. Dark eyes. Funny squat noses. One was strong and about six foot. The other was shorter and skinny. They didn’t look very bright.”
“Now you can turn it off.” Bob nuzzled Jill.
She clicked off the television, and they resumed kissing. After several minutes she settled her head on his chest.
“I’m sorry about my mother.”
“Why?” Bob smiled. “Your mom was a very good hostess. She was very bubbly.”
“Bubbly is right.” Sighing, she sat up and looked into his eyes. “Are you being nice or didn’t you notice my mother was drunk?”
“Yes, I am nice, and no, I didn’t notice.”
“I’ve been told my mother never drank before she married dad.”
“He doesn’t seem like the type to drive someone to drink.”
“He isn’t. My grandparents are. My mother’s maiden name was Stone. It wasn’t until after marriage that my grandmother found out her family name was really Stein.”
“Your grandparents are bigots. My dad’s a bigot too. You learn to live with it.”
“That’s the problem. Mom joined the Lutheran church, never mentions her family was from Germany and was Jewish, and smiles a lot at grandma. But Schmidts don’t forget or forgive.”
“Forgive? Forgive what?”
“If mom could figure that one out maybe she wouldn’t drink so much.”
“It must be hard growing up with an alcoholic parent.”
“You had a hard time growing up too, didn’t you?” Jill looked at him with affection.
Bob wondered if this was the time to let Jill know about his parents, about why it was so difficult to return his father’s calls.
“I’ve been at your apartment when you’ve listened to your messages from the answering machine.” Jill glanced away. “And you never seemed anxious to return the ones from your father.”
“A little story.” He held her close. “When I was ten years old, I overheard a conversation between my mom and dad on Christmas eve. She told him to be sure to take off early from work that night. It was an order.”
“And he didn’t take kindly to orders from womenfolk.”
“Right. He said the tobacco warehouse paid time and a half if he worked late on Christmas Eve. She said spending time with his son was more important than a few extra dollars.”
“Nothing’s more important than a few extra dollars,” Jill said with a smile. “I’ve heard that one before.”
“Anyway, mom started complaining about how she didn’t feel good, and Dad said she never felt good, and that it was just her nerves. She wanted to go to a specialist in Knoxville, but dad thought it was a waste of money.”
“I don’t want to interrupt, but did he ever feel guilty later, when she developed cancer?”
“If he did he never told me.” Bob shook his head. “He said she was using feeling bad to get money out of him to buy me a Christmas present. The argument degenerated from there so I left the house.”
“You poor thing. You probably had to leave the house a lot.”
“You know this story, don’t you?”
“Variation Two: leaving the house when mommy’s drunk.” Jill looked up at him and smiled with sympathy. “I’m sorry. I keep interrupting.”
“That’s all right. Anyway, that afternoon mom gave me a few dollars to buy them presents. I don’t remember what I got. After I wrapped them and put them under the tree, mom scurried into the room all in a tizzy, grabbed me by my hand and headed for the door.”
“Don’t tell me,” she said. “Your father didn’t show up.”
“I remember it like it was yesterday. To be a lady who was in early stages of terminal illness she had a grip like a vice. As hard as I tried I couldn’t get away as we marched into the tobacco warehouse and stomped up to dad and the other workers. She demanded he give her money so she could—in her words—buy my Christmas.” Bob looked at Jill with sad, pleading eyes. “You can’t buy Christmas. You buy presents, but you can never buy Christmas.”
“Oh my God,” Jill said with a gasp. “Grandpa used that expression too. I hate it.”
“Dad drawled, ‘Well, Bobby, how much is it going to cost me to buy you Christmas?’ I stammered around, and then mom accused dad of making me cry. I tried to tell her I wasn’t crying, but she wouldn’t be denied. ‘You’ve hurt his feelings,’ she said. ‘You know how easy his feelings get hurt.’”
Jill wrinkled her brow in compassion and touched Bob’s face.
“Dad pulled a bill; I don’t remember how much it was, from his wallet and tossed it at mom. ‘Oh good grief,’ he said, ‘take it and get him out of here.’ The bill landed on the dirt floor between mom and me. She told me to pick it up. I picked it up, trying to ignore the laughter from dad and his friends, and we walked out slowly, with what I’m sure my mother thought was dignity.”
“This December,” Jill said, kissing him on the cheek, “you’re going to have such a Christmas, you won’t ever think of that one again.”
“Maybe that wasn’t the worst thing that ever happened in my family. Maybe it’s what everybody goes through.”
“No, not everybody goes through that.”
“Thank you.” He smiled and hugged her. “I was afraid you’d say, ‘Is that all?’”
“Never.”
They kissed with intensity and for a long time. Finally Bob buried his face in her lightly scented hair.
“We’ve known each other for such a short time, but it seems like I’ve known you forever. I think that’s what people say when they’re…”
“When they’re in love.”

Mike and Randy sat under a large magnolia tree in Widow Scoggins’ backyard in Boone, North Carolina, each finishing the last beers in the six-pack by their sides. They forgot how many they had drunk. Mowing grass and trimming bushes made them thirsty, and the widow told them to spend their money any way they wanted, and they always wanted beer.
“I want some more.” Mike belched at the top of his voice and scratched his hairy, muscular belly.
“You rub yourself too much.” Randy eyed his brother. “It ain’t right to rub on your own body like that.”
“Well, what are you gonna to do about it?” Mike sucked on the can, trying to get out the last drops.
“Nothing.” Randy pulled his legs up into his chest and grabbed them with his sinewy arms. “If I fought you, you’d just beat me up.”
“Aww, I wouldn’t beat you up.” Mike laughed. “You’re my brother.”
“But if you did fight me, you could beat me up.” Randy buried his face between his legs. Mike was about six feet tall, broad-shouldered and thick-chested.
Randy was half a head shorter and much thinner. “That ain’t right. I’m older than you. I should be able to beat you up, not you beat me up.”
“You ain’t gettin’ mad at me again, are you?” Mike whined, twisting his face in simplistic despair. “I hate it when you get mad at me and stop talkin’ for days. Please say you’re not mad at me.”
“I’m not mad at you.” His voice was muffled from between his legs.
“Good.” Mike smiled his big dumb smile again. “What you need is some more beer. Want some more beer?”
“Maybe.” Randy pulled his head up, pursing his thin lips.
“Beer, beer, beer. I love beer.”
“You ain’t supposed to talk like that.” He stood and threw his can into one of the bushes. “The widder don’t like it.”
“Well, the widder ain’t here.”
Thelma Scoggins, widow of a prominent Boone banker, allowed the brothers to sleep in the room over her garage in exchange for doing chores around the house. When they first wandered into town, she tried to locate their parents but to no avail. Then she attempted to enroll them in a local public high school, but they kept getting into fights and being expelled. Finally the school told Mrs. Scoggins they looked older than eighteen so they were too old be in school anyway.
“Besides, we can’t get no more ‘cause we’re out of money,” Randy said.
“Hey,” Mike said, jumping up, “the widder keeps money in her bedroom.”
“What if she catches us? She’ll kick us out. This is the best we ever had.”
“Yeah, the widder is pretty nice,” he said, nodding his full head of tousled hair. “Older than Mama, though.”
“I hate Mama.” Randy hit his brother’s arm. “I told you not to talk about Mama again.”
“That hurt.” Mike rubbed where the fist landed. “I don’t know why you don’t like her. Mama was always nice. She shared her beer.”
“I hate her.” Randy turned away and picked up the shears to head for the garden shed. “She pushed us in the closet when she let those guys get on her.”
“I thought it was funny watching them.”
“Those guys were more important than us.”
“Yeah, but she taught us what people will pay for. That’s helped a lot.”
“We wouldn’t have to know about that if she hadn’t kicked us out.” Randy walked out of the shed. “Just left us on the highway.”
“She couldn’t take care of us no more,” Mike said in defense of their mother. “We were all grown and could take care of ourselves, she said.”
“Other mamas take care of their boys.” He slammed the shed door.
“Don’t get mad.” Mike twisted his face. “I hate it when you get mad.”
“I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at Mama.”
“You need a beer.”
“We ain’t got money.”
“The widder won’t know if we take any money.” Mike grabbed Randy’s arm and dragged him in the back door and up the backstairs to Widow Scoggins’s bedroom.
“I don’t want to do this.” He tried to pull back, but his brother was too strong and forced him up the steps. Randy could feel himself becoming angrier, and he did not like it. He knew beer made his head swirl with resentment, but he still had an uncontrollable urge to drink it. He sensed anger growing inside him just thinking about how beer made him act.
“So what if she kicks us out? We can always get more money from somebody.”
“You brag too much. I hate people who brag too much.”
“You worry too much.” Mike burst through the door and headed for her chest of drawers. “She won’t even care. She’s nice.”
“She’s not that nice.” Randy lingered at the door, looking down the dark hallway. “She treats us like we’re puppy dogs. I ain’t no puppy dog.” Anger moved up from his gut, and he wanted to stop it. He wandered into the room and somehow felt comforted by the faded flowered wall paper and wispy lace curtains blowing at the open windows. He went to the widow’s dressing table, covered with yellowed pictures of old people and tiny bottles of colored water. He picked up one of the bottles and sniffed. Anger continued to go down some. Her perfume relaxed him and caused his mouth to curl up into a tiny smile. “This smells nice.”
“What?” Mike was into another drawer.
“This bottle.” He held it up. “It smells nice.”
Loping over, Mike grabbed the bottle from his brother and stuck it up to his nose, shrugged and mumbled, “Yeah, real pretty.”
“It smells like somebody we met once.” Randy furrowed his tanned brow and looked at his brother. “Do you remember who?”
“I don’t know.” Mike put it down and went back to the chest and opened another drawer. “Maybe she got money down here.”
“Flowers.” Randy picked up the bottle again. “It smells like pretty flowers.”
“Dummy.” Mike sniffed in derision as he concentrated on the contents of the drawer. “All that stuff smells like pretty flowers.”
“No, it smells like special flowers. Not all women smell like these flowers.”
“Hey.” Mike laughed and lifted the widow’s underwear. “Look how big these panties are. She must have a really big butt.”
“It was that woman who picked us up in a big black car.” Randy remembered. “She smelled like that. She bought us lots of beer. Her lips were red, like roses.”
“Damn. I ain’t found no money.”
“And she liked me best.” Randy’s dull brown eyes brightened at the memory, and his anger was almost gone. “Other women wanted you, but she really liked me. She wanted me.” His brow furrowed. “I don’t remember how that night ended.”
“Oh, my goodness!” Widow Scoggins appeared in the doorway and stopped abruptly. “What are you boys doing in here?”
“Hey.” Mike turned and laughed. “We want money for beer.”
“You boys know I don’t approve of drinking.”
“You gonna kick us out, ain’t you?” Randy’s dark eyes narrowed. He could feel anger roar back, stronger than ever, more than he could control.
“I can’t very well let you stay now, can I?”
“Who cares?” Mike continued to push clothes around in the drawer.
“We ain’t goin’ to jail again.” Randy walked toward her, with his wiry shoulders hunched forward.
“Why, no, boys.” The widow’s eyes widened. “I won’t call the police.”
“You better not!” Randy clinched his jaw, grabbed her fragile shoulders and shook.
“Randy! Stop now!” she said. “Please my heart!”
“Shut up!” He slapped her hard.
Widow Scoggins staggered backwards into the hall and out of Randy’s grasp. Her eyes glanced behind her at the staircase and the phone on the landing.
“I’m sorry, Randy,” she said in a whisper. “We can forget this whole thing. I can give you more money. That’s no problem. I can go get it now.”
Mike’s head turned toward her, and he smiled. “More money?”
“Yes, boys, I can get you more money.” She hesitated, smiling to try to hide her fear. “You wait right here and ….”
“She’s lyin’,” Randy said, saliva flying from his lips. “She’s a damn liar, just like all the others.”
“No, boys,” she said, backing toward the stairs. “I wouldn’t lie to you.”
“Liar!” Randy lunged at her, hitting her in the chest.
“No!” Widow Scoggins fell backwards, clutching her boney chest as she tumbled down the stairs, landing like a bundle of old rags.
Randy and Mike walked down the stairs to stand over her.
“She’s dead,” Mike said after kneeling and putting his ear to her chest.
“Good. I’m glad she’s dead.” Randy paused. “She was always talkin’ about that surgery she had, bypassing her heart and everything. I think that really killed her. The cops ain’t gonna blame me for her droppin’ dead.”
“Well, there’s only one thing to do.” Mike grabbed her purse, stuck his hand in and pulled out a wad of bills. He grinned and waved it in his brother’s face. “Let’s go get some beer.”
“Okay.” Randy turned for the door. Maybe beer would make his anger go away. It never had made it disappear before, but he still wanted some.
“Don’t that look funny?” Mike pointed at her and laughed.
A stream of blood trickled down the corner of Widow Scoggins’s mouth mixing with her saliva.
***
A baby blue-colored Mercedes passed through an intersection of downtown Boone as Randy and Mike left a convenience store with several six-packs of beer under their arms. The Mercedes’ passenger side window rolled down, and Dr. Leland Lippincott looked out, shaking his white-haired head in disapproval.
“Those young men should be in school.”
“What?” Dr. Harold Lippincott, his son, a compact, tanned middle-aged man, took his eyes off the road for a moment to look at his father.
“I hope you pay more attention to your patients, Harold.” He grunted.
“My attention should be on the road while I’m driving and not on pedestrians,” he replied.
“Hmm.” Dr. Lippincott was silent a moment. “Why on earth a man like Jeremy Blackstone would want to live in a town like this after a lifetime in Boston I have no idea.”
“Appalachian State University offered him a position of professor emeritus and a generous stipend to retire here and lecture several times a year,” Harold explained in a cool deliberate tone. “He’s well respected in North Carolina.”
“He was respected in Massachusetts, and respect in North Carolina is an oxymoron.”
“That type of arrogance is rather old-fashioned, Father,” Harold said.
“Quality is never out of date.” His father wagged his finger. “Don’t forget that.”
“I hope you enjoyed your visit with Dr. Blackstone.” Harold sighed.
“It was pleasant enough.”
“I hope the drive from Morganton to Boone didn’t exhaust you.”
“Just because I’m eighty years old doesn’t mean I’m an invalid.”
“Of course.” Several minutes passed in silence as Harold took surreptitious glances at his father whose wan complexion and dullness in his ice blue eyes belied his bluster. “You’re quiet. Is everything all right?”
“Everything is fine, thank you,” Dr. Lippincott replied, looking at his son with condescension. “I don’t understand why any man would do anything as immature as shaving his head.”
“We had this conversation twenty years ago, remember?” Harold smiled.
“It was the night of your medical school graduation. We were in my den, toasting.”
“And I said I was going bald anyway. Shaving gave me an air of distinction.”
“Then you made the grand announcement you wanted to specialize in psychiatry.”
“I wouldn’t have been happy in general practice.”
“I understand that. I’d have been bored if I hadn’t gone into neurosurgery.” His father put his finger to his lips as though choosing his words carefully. “I still think gynecology, obstetrics or allergies would have been more suited to your capabilities.”
Harold gripped the steering wheel, remembering holding a crystal wine goblet in his hand that night many years earlier, contemplating how it was formed with perfection, like his father, and how cold it was, also like his father.
“My counselors believed I had excellent qualifications to be a psychiatrist. I wanted to help people.”
“Help people?” His father without much success restrained a guffaw.
“I graduated top third of my class. I am not stupid.”
“And I was first in mine. Don’t try to compete with me, Harold. I’ll win every time. Your grades showed you took tests well. I know how you think.”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t have a grasp of the intangible workings of the human mind. You’d do fine counting birth pains, that’s tangible.”
“Stop it!” Harold slammed his hand into the steering wheel, causing his car to veer somewhat into another lane. He winced as he heard cars honk.
“I remember you had a similar tizzy fit that night in my den.” The old man sniffed. “You knocked one of your mother’s finest goblets from my hand, shattering it. She said it didn’t bother her, but I know it did.” He grunted in contempt. “Imagine a person who cannot control his own emotions thinking he can make other people control their emotions.”
Harold thought back to that evening and how he dropped to his knees, trying to pick up pieces of glass, but pulled his hand back sharply as he cut himself on the stem’s jagged edge. A drop of blood appeared. In the car, he stared at his hand, trying to find the faded scar.
“Do as you wish,” his father said. “You always have. But mind you, one day you’ll make a fatal mistake in a diagnosis, and you’ll remember what I said.”
“In twenty years I’ve had a successful practice in Manhattan and am now chief resident at the state mental hospital in Morganton and no one has died of a misdiagnosis yet.” Harold breathed in, knowing he should not regress into childhood, allowing his father to chide and lecture.
Several miles went by without a word. Neither man was aware of the distant Appalachian Mountains’ lush green foliage. Dr. Lippincott’s visit was a total disaster. He did not approve of the hospital where his son worked nor of his new young wife and was not hesitant to voice his judgment. Harold looked over at his father whose breathing had become labored. Maybe his father was too old to modify his beliefs. Dr. Lippincott was in his forties when he finally became a father and was too preoccupied saving lives to adapt to the art of nurturing one unexceptional child.
“I’m sorry I forced you to visit me here,” Harold said. “We hadn’t seen each other in several years.”
“Since your mother’s funeral.”
“Anyway, I thought it might be pleasant for you to see your old friend Dr. Blackstone and to see how…” Harold paused, almost choking on his words. “…how well I’m doing at the state hospital. I’m sorry.”
“No need to apologize.”
***
Later that night, Mike and Randy staggered along the highway, south of Boone, drinking the last of the beer they bought after leaving Widow Scoggins’ house. Mike giggled, but Randy brooded as usual, hugging the almost empty beer carton.
“Man, you ain’t no fun at all.” Mike laughed as he came up behind his brother, grabbed around his waist and lifted Randy off the ground causing him to drop the box.
“Leave me alone.” He struggled to get free.
“No, I ain’t.” Mike continued his hold. “I ain’t lettin’ go until you grin or laugh or do something funny.”
“I said let go.” Randy twisted with such ferocity that both boys lost their balance and tumbled down the embankment into a small stream.
“Okay, that’s something funny.” Mike laughed and released him. “You can go.”
“You stupid dummy.” Randy stood and shook like a drenched dog. “Now what are we gonna to do?”
“Aw, we’ll dry off in an hour or two.”
They trudged back up to the road.
“Where are we going to sleep?” Randy picked up the beer carton and hunched his shoulders as he walked away from his brother. “We ain’t got no beds now. And no clean clothes. And tomorrow mornin’, how are we gonna eat?”
“Don’t blame me.” Mike ran to catch up with him. “You killed the widder.”
“I didn’t kill her. It was her heart. It ain’t my fault.”
“Maybe we can stay in a motel.” Mike reached for his wallet. “That’ll be fun.”
“Do we have enough money?” Randy glanced at his brother as he pulled bills out of his wallet.
“I don’t know.” Mike held up a fistful of bills and frowned. “There ain’t very many of them. Do you remember how to figure this stuff out? Each man is worth so much, some a lot more than others.”
“I told you we shouldn’t have bought so much beer.” Randy turned and started walking down the highway, still hugging the carton like it was a security blanket.
“Aw, don’t worry about it.” Putting wallet away, Mike followed him. “We always make out, don’t we?” He grabbed at the carton. “Hey, we got any beer left?”
“Just one.” Randy jerked away. “And it’s mine.”
“No,” Mike said with a laugh. “It’s mine.”
“No!” Randy pulled from Mike with violence, causing the carton to fly from his arms. When the beer can hit the pavement it exploding, spewing foam all over the highway. He glared at his brother. “See what you made me do?” He leaped at Mike, knocking him down, pummeling him with his boney fists.
“Stop it! That hurts!”
A car’s headlights appeared up the road, causing the boys to stop, stand and squint. It slowed and stopped. Stepping into the headlights’ glare were two uniformed state highway patrolmen.
“You boys okay?”
“You leave us alone.” Randy eyed them with suspicion.
“Where are you from?”
“I don’t know,” Mike said. “Mama never told us.”
“Shut up!” Randy hit him hard on the arm.
“Oww! That hurt!”
“That’s enough of that.” A patrolman with a bit of a paunch stepped in between them.
“This ain’t none of your business!” Randy took a swing at the officer who grabbed his arm and twisted it up behind back, knocking him to the ground.
“I think you boys better come with us.” The patrolman reached for his handcuffs.
“Go where?” Mike asked.
“For your own safety, we want to put you under custody.”
“You mean, jail,” Randy said.
“Yes, son. You’re going to jail.”
“You’re not gonna put me in jail.” Randy twisted around and bit the officer’s hand. “Get off me! Leave me alone!”
“I’m not going to hurt you, son.”
The other patrolman turned Mike around and placed handcuffs on him and asked him, “Who’s the president?”
“What?”
“What day of the week is it?”
“What?”
“What’s one and one?”
“What?”
“I thought so.” He pushed him toward the patrol car as the other officer pulled Randy to his feet.
“Does your jail have TV?” Mike asked.

“Secretary Stanton is very busy at this time,” Captain Eckert said in a muted tone.
“But this is mein house!”
Stanton stood and walked to the door and opened it In the early morning hours of Saturday, April 15, noise subsided at Peterson’s boarding house across the street from Ford’s Theater. Soldiers sat on the stairs and leaned against the walls, waiting for the inevitable announcement that Abraham Lincoln was dead. Edwin Stanton was deep in thought when a commotion erupted outside the back parlor door.
“I demand to speak to the man in charge!” a voice called out urgently in a thick German accent.
abruptly. “What’s going on here?”
“This is mein house!”
“So you are the proprietor of this boarding house. What’s the problem?” Stanton asked, staring without expression at the disheveled man.
“That boy did not have the right to let you come in here. This is mein house!”
“What boy is he talking about, Eckert?”
“Henry Stafford,” the captain replied. “He’s the one who waved us over from Ford’s Theater.”
“Now there is blood all over mein floors!”
“Exactly what is your name?” Stanton asked gruffly. “You don’t sound like an American, if I may say so.”
“I am Wilhelm Pedersen, I mean, William Petersen, und I am an American citizen. I have owned this house since 1845, und I know the Constitution. You cannot billet a soldier in a private home without permission of the owner!”
“This is not a soldier but the President of the United States.”
“The President is commander-in-chief of all armed forces, und that makes him a soldier!” Petersen insisted.
“The President of the United States is in that bedroom,” Stanton stated, pointing across the hall, “fighting for his life. If you continue to make a commotion, it will further deteriorate his condition. If he dies you could be charged as an accessory to his assassination.”
Petersen’s mouth fell open. “But his blood is on mein floor.”
“And who did you vote for in the last election?” Stanton asked, stepping forward.
Cursing in German, Petersen turned away and stomped upstairs. Stanton heard him go up to the third floor and slam a door.
“Very well handled, Mr. Secretary.”
Stanton turned to see two men, one short and fat and the other tall and thin. He knew they were U.S. senators but at the moment could not recall their names.
“I’ve always admired your way of handling people,” the short, fat man continued. “My friend, Sen. James Lane, and I felt we must pay our condolences as it were. Is the president still among us, to phrase it delicately?” He leaned in and smiled.
“The president is not expected to survive the night, Sen. Lane,” Stanton said, taking a step back to avoid the stench of onions and beer on the rotound senator’s breath.
“Dear me, no. This gentleman is Sen. Lane. I am Sen. Preston King of New York. Surely you remember me. I have been one of the president’s biggest supporters.”
“You’re no bigger a supporter of the president than any other Republican,” Lane replied in a raspy voice. “If you’re a Republican, you support Abraham Lincoln. That’s all there is to it.”
Stanton began to tap his foot, impatiently. “We appreciate your support, gentlemen. I do not want to risk the health of two of our most important senators so I would understand if you wished to return to your quarters–”
“Oh, I am not a senator anymore as of last fall,” King said. “Since then I have been available to serve my country in any capacity. In fact, the president had considered me as collector of customs in New York. I do not know if Mr. Lincoln had mentioned his intentions in this matter…”
“For God’s sake, King, this is not the time to hunt for a job,” Lane interrupted. “Mr. Secretary, do you happen to know if Vice-president Johnson is here?”
“Mr. Johnson visited earlier but returned to the Kirkwood to rest,” Stanton replied. He removed his glasses, rubbed his hand across his face and sighed. “I think it would be best if you two gentlemen did the same…”
“Vice-President Johnson and I are very close friends,” Lane said insistently.
“I’m sure you are.” Stanton put his glasses back on and looked around for Captain Eckert.
“May we see the President?” King asked, taking another step closer to Stanton. “Perhaps if he knew his friends were nearby it would give him strength to rally.”
“The room is too small for visitors. Gentlemen, I must insist…”
The front door opened, and Lincoln’s 20-year-old son Robert entered. Stanton observed his shoulders were stooped and his large brown eyes were red and puffy. King turned and extended his arms.
“My poor young man…” King effused.
“He’s here to see his mother.” Stanton took Robert’s arm and led him to the front parlor door. “She’s in here,” he whispered to him.
Robert tapped on the door and opened it.
“Mother?”
“What is he doing here?” Mrs. Lincoln screeched.
“They said you wanted to see me,” Robert whispered, transfixed in the doorway.
“I want to see my baby boy! I want Taddie!”
Robert backed out and shut the door. Stanton put his arm around the boy’s shoulder and felt his body shaking. He guided him down the hall. “Your father is in the bedroom on the right. I’m sorry about your mother’s outburst. I’m afraid this tragedy has been too much for her.”
After Robert walked away, Stanton covered his mouth with his hand to hide a small smile. Mrs. Lincoln’s erratic behavior would prove to anyone who talked to her that she was insane and her accusations of being held in the White House basement were groundless delusions.
“Oh my dear,” King said, “no one should ever know of Mrs. Lincoln’s madness. How terrible if the public knew…”
“I don’t see how we can keep it a secret,” Lane interrupted. “She’s crazy as a loon.”
“I suppose we should leave,” King said to Stanton. “But remember that if there is anything we can do to help our country at this time of dire tragedy, please remember us.”
“Yes, we are the friends of the new administration—I mean, Mr. Johnson when he becomes president. And you too, of course, Mr. Secretary,” Lane added.
Stanton removed his hand to show his smile. “Yes, gentlemen, I think the two of you will become invaluable in the coming months to save our nation.”

Several hours later the passenger ship docked in England. As the gangplank lowered, tiny Alice Wrenn edged closer to the edge so when the board finally hit the mooring she was positioned to alight first and run to wave down another open carriage. Again she sat in front while Clarence and Boniface bounced into the back seat still fencing.
The driver turned to wag a finger at them. “No fighting! This is a proper Puritan transportation business!”
Alice threw herself into the driver’s arms and kissed him with shameless vulgarity. When she pulled away, the driver had a silly smile on his face.
“Actually, my wife is the Puritan of our family. She insists I run my business the way her father ran his. Personally, I don’t give a bloody damn.”
Pouting her pretty lips, Alice promised, “If you get us to Hampton Court quickly, I’ll kiss you again.”
The driver cracked his whip, and off they flew, knocking Clarence and Boniface on their asses but just for a moment. As the carriage rocketed out of sight, Maria raced down the plank and tried to whistle down another carriage. However, the only form of conveyance available was a donkey cart. Maria climbed into the seat next to a driver that smelled of his own animals. Rodney and Steppingstone climbed into the back and fenced as they tried to keep their balance in the hay pile.
Meantime, in the Hampton Court throne room, Queen Elizabeth sat in her huge, ornate chair holding her bonky sounding scepter. Robin stood deferentially by her side. A small group of courtiers stood in front of her, nervously shifting their balance from foot to foot.
“Gentlemen,” she announced gravely, “we have received no word from our valiant heroes in Spain. Until we hear from them, we can only wait with prudence and eagerness to protect our shores from the impeding Spanish invasion.”
They bow and slowly back out of the room.
“Good.” Robin’s eyes twinkled. “We’re alone.”
The queen extended her arms. “Come to Bessie, baby!”
Robin wriggled onto the throne and hugged Elizabeth with a verve created only by the release of sexual tension. They kissed with appalling slurping and smacking. This display of passion gone awry continued for several minutes until interrupted by the doors being slung open. Alice ran to the throne as Clarence and Boniface continued their fencing, although the elder courtier was showing signs of flagging vitality.
“Your majesty!” Alice announced loudly. “We’ve discovered the identity of the traitor!”
“Not now!” She waved her scepter over her head. “Can’t you see I’m busy!” She returned to attacking Robin’s tonsils with her tongue.
Maria ran in and approached the throne with bold determination, announcing in her most patriotic English accent, “Your Highness! We have the traitor!”
“It’s no use,” Alice confided with a sigh. The Virgin Queen is occupied.”
Robin pulled away for an instant. “Hah!”
After bonking him with her scepter, Elizabeth pulled him back into her clutches. “Oh, shut up and kiss me!”
Rodney and Steppingstone finally arrived, still fencing. They started circling around in the throne room, coming dangerously close to nipping both Clarence and Boniface. Maria scurried over to Steppingstone to smack his bottom with her strong hands.
“Look, your Majesty!” she repeated, “we have the traitor!”
“I said don’t bother me!”
The daring escapade was quickly dissolving into unmanageable madness when Alice screamed and swooned in the middle of the room. Surprisingly, her fit captured everyone’s attention, ending the royal canoodling fest and both fencing matches. Clarence dashed to lift Alice from the cold marble floor.
“My darling!”
In his arms, Alice, eyes aflutter, smiled. “Oh, Clarence.”
“Can’t I get any privacy around here?” the Queen harrumphed.
“But, your Highness,” Rodney pleaded, “there’s a traitor here!”
“Traitor!” Robin echoed in shock as he stood, dumping Elizabeth on the floor. He quickly helped her to her feet.
“All right, all right,” the Queen grumbled. I won’t get anything important done until this traitor business is cleared up. Tell us. Who is the traitor?”
“Lord Boniface!” Clarence declared as he placed Alice in an upright position.
“Lord Steppingstone!” Rodney announced triumphantly.
Clarence and Rodney looked at each other quizzically.
“Steppingstone?”
“Boniface?”
Clarence furrowed his brow. “Who are you?”
“Rodney Broadshoulders. Who are you?”
“Clarence Flippertigibbit.” He smiled and extended his hand. “So nice to meet you.”
“I’m so glad you didn’t go down with the Aquamarine Pigeon.” Rodney pumped Clarence’s hand.
Steppingstone and Boniface traded perplexed glances.
“You mean you were working for Phillip?” Boniface asked.
“Yes.” Steppingstone added in a childish tone, “I was going to get Wales.”
“But he was going to give me Wales!” Boniface stuck out his lip.
“That’s what you get for not being loyal to Queen Elizabeth!” Robin lectured them.
“Yes, for placing your own greed before the well-being of England, you are hereby doomed to ignominy!” The Queen turned to smile at Clarence and Rodney. “But you two valiant young men shall be knighted and glorified for your selfless duty to your Monarch!”
Clarence bowed with extreme drama. “Thank you, your Majesty. Your generosity is unparalleled.”
“No thanks is needed.” Rodney bowed awkwardly. “We did it for England. This other Eden, demi-paradise, this royal throne of king, this sculptured isle—“
“Sceptered! Sceptered!” Clarence interrupted with severe irritation.
“Are you sure?” Rodney shot back.
Alice smiled with embarrassment as she approached Maria. “So your lover was a spy for Elizabeth after all.”
“And your fiancé as well,” she replied with a proper English clip.
“So we weren’t in love with the same man,” Alice said.
“We were both mistaken, it seems.”
Alice laughed. “I don’t understand how we could have been so foolish.”
“When you spoke of a valiant warrior, I only thought of Rodney.” A patronizing smile flickered across her lips. “Clarence is sweet, but he is only a boy.”
“I beg your pardon.” A distinct edge entered her voice. “Clarence is the hero of many naval battles.”
“Do you want to compare biceps?” Maria glanced over at her lover. “Rodney, put up your arms.”
“Ladies! Ladies!” Elizabeth announced in her most queenly manner. “Why the silly bickering? In the eyes of his lover, every man becomes a hero.”
“You are correct, your Majesty.” Maria extended her hand to Alice. “I’m sorry. Clarence is a true hero. And I assure you, he was always a gentleman when he was under my dress.”
“And Rodney was always well behaved as we traveled in cognito as Gypsies.”
“I’m terribly sorry for calling you a twit.”
“And I’m sorry I made those snide comments about your name.”
Maria hugged Alice. “You’re so sweet. I feel so guilty.”
“There, there.” Alice patted her back. “Don’t fret. All is forgiven.”
They pulled apart and held hands.
“I’ve a marvelous idea!” Maria squealed in delight. “Why don’t we have a double wedding!”
The girls jumped up and down and giggled.
“How marvelous!” Alice gasped. “And we could wear matching gowns! I know the most marvelous seamstress!”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said loudly in an attempt to regain all the attention. “Love will conquer all, even the fleet of King Phillip, which will be approaching soon.”
“Yes! The invasion!” Rodney smacked his forehead with his beefy palm. “There’s no time for weddings while the Spanish fleet is at our door!”
Clarence lifted his epee in salute to Rodney. “We’ll joined our swords to repel the evil that threatens our shores!”
“Well said, young men!” Robin boomed.
“Let this Armada come!” Elizabeth joined in the saber-rattling.
“What’s Armada?” Rodney asked.
“I don’t know,” Robin replied. “What’s Armada with you?”
Elizabeth bonked him again with her scepter. “We are ready! With the ardor and passion of our young people, we shall overcome all obstacles and when the foe is vanquished, there will be time for wedded bliss.”
“Yes.” Clarence took Alice in his arms. “It is a bless I long for.”
Rodney followed suit with Maria. “I’ll count the hours until I can say I do, and we do.”
Both couples engage in unhinged ardent smooching.
“Ah, young love,” Elizabeth sighed contentedly.
Robin hugged his Queen. “Old love ain’t so bad either, Bessie.”
They hopped back on the throne and resumed their previous session of lovemaking. Steppingstone and Boniface observed at all the preoccupation with romance, then glanced at each other and shrugged.
“To Spain?” Steppingstone asked in a whisper.
“To Spain!” Boniface agreed sotto voce.
They linked arms and tiptoed out.

Fear choked Davy’s throat as his father grabbed him up under his armpits and jerked him back into the family bedroom where, Davy noticed, his two brothers had vanished. Thrown to the wooden floor Davy looked up at his father who armed himself with the dreaded hickory cudgel.
“I spent good money to send you to school.” He struck the feather mattress with his stick, causing dust to fly into the air.
Davy flinched and inched backwards. “I’ll go back, pa,” he sputtered. “I’ll l’arn good.”
“I’ll l’arn you good now, boy.” He kicked at Davy’s feet as the boy scrambled to the door. “You think ‘cause you’re thirteen you’re too big to git whupped? I’ll whup you anyways! Git up!”
Davy shivered, remembering how the hickory stick stung on his back. He could hardly sleep because of aches and sharp twinges which caused him to spasm. Hot tears ran down his ruddy cheek. He was a strong boy who could hold his own in a fight with anyone his own age, but older men always scared him, especially his father.
“Stop that cryin’!” His father cracked the cudgel against the bed post. “Git up and take your whuppin’ like a man!”
Clambering to his feet, Davy glanced behind him to locate the door and fumbled with the latch until he opened it and ran out.
“Come back here!” his father shouted, following him out the door, but he stumbled over the uneven stone steps and fell flat on his face, splitting his lip.
Davy ran north on the road, spurred by his father’s drunken curses. What started out as an attempt to miss a beating from the school master had escalated into his world collapsing around him. Davy scurried off the road and hid behind some brushy buckeye. When he became aware of the sweet scent of crushed leaves under his foot, Davy calmed. He stopped huffing when he saw his father stagger by, swinging his hickory cudgel and slurring curses. His father finally kicked the dirt and turned back down the road to his tavern. A squawk cut through the night air.
“Teacher! Teacher!”
Davy recognized the call of a heavy-body warbler whose song sounded like a student’s call at a school. Davy did not want to be reminded of teachers, schools and bullies right now, so he ignored the warbler’s cry and remained still until he saw his father disappear around the curve in the lane.
As he composed himself, Davy tried to boost his morale by remembering this was not the first time he had been on his own. Back in the spring his father hired him out to help herd cattle four hundred miles north to Rockbridge County, Virginia. He endured long days of walking over rough paths, up steep hills and through icy cold streams. His boss wanted him to stay on for another cattle drive. Davy said yes because he was afraid to say no, just like he was afraid to say no to his father. One night he slipped from the man’s house, went home, handing over the five dollars he had earned.
That was what he was going to do, Davy decided. He was going to hire himself out on another cattle drive. And when he finally came home he could hand the money to his father. Maybe he would not be beaten. Peering from the bushes, Davy slowly inched his way out, stopped to listen for his father, and then ran north on the road to Abingdon. After a while he slowed to a walk and kicked stones as he went along because he realized he had not eaten supper and was hungry. Nothing was working out right today. After an hour or so he heard the clomping of horse and cattle hooves behind him.
“Young Crockett!” a voice called out. “Is that you?”
Davy recognized the voice of Jesse Cheek. A successful cattle trader who known for his propriety of personal values, chaste respect for women and no taste for alcohol was not much fun. Davy decided long ago that men of moral character tended not to be fun at all. But he did not want fun now anyway. He wanted a job and a feeling of safety.
“Yessir, Mr. Cheek,” he replied in a strong voice.
“What’re you doin’ out on the road this time of night?”
Davy knew that as a good man Cheek would send him home to face his whipping if he told him the truth. He crouched, looked up with wide, innocent brown eyes and asked for a sip of water from Cheek’s leather bladder. After taking a deep swallow, David looked off into the brush and said, “Well, it was like this. The Mullins boys don’t have a lick of sense—everybody knows that—they kept pesterin’ this pretty girl—she’s new in the holler, so she don’t know how to stand up for herself.”
“Who’s her daddy?”
“Can’t recall,” he replied. “From one of the Carolinas. Eastern part, I remember, but North or South, hmm. I guess I fergot ‘cause I got so caught up with how pretty she was—kinda skinny, but still what I’d call quite comely, big eyes the color of pecans, and all her teeth lined up real nice. But her lips seemed to be on the verge of quiverin’ all the time. Made me feel all responsible for her. So after school I jumped them Willises and told ‘em to leave her alone.”
“Thought you said Mullinses.”
“Right. It was both the Mullinses and the Willises. So the old school teacher Kitchens only sees me fightin’ and don’t know I’m defendin’ this li’l girl’s honor. Them boys put up an awful fuss, makin’ out like they hadn’t done nothin’ and I started a fight for the heck of it.”
“So he kicks you out of school, and your pa don’t like it.”
“Oh. No.” Davy shook his head, his eyes wandering up to the left, catching sight of the rising moon. “He said it was jest as well. He don’t need me in school. He needs to hire me out ag’in.”
“Want to work for me?”
“I think that’s what pa would want,” Davy said, his eyes wide and naïve.

***
Nearly forty years after that night on the Abingdon Road when he talked to Mr. Cheek, David’s eyes no longer looked naïve. He knew when he saw bad news coming. “You don’t look good, Abner.”
“You lost, David.” Abner looked him straight in the eyes. “By two hundred fifty- two votes.
David turned to sit on the porch step and stare into the deepening sunset. In his heart he knew he was cheated. Jackson bought the election for Huntsman. The bank handed out twenty-five dollars for each vote. Jackson closed the Bank of the United States so he could use the Treasury to buy elections. David could not prove any of these allegations, but in his heart he knew they were true.
“They robbed you, David.”
Smiling, David waved his hand. “Oh no, I’m sure it was a fair election,” he lied.
From the distance he heard the shrill cry of a raccoon. Poor little fellow. He knew how much pain the critter felt. It was being torn to pieces by a pack of wild dogs, just as he had been ripped apart by Andy Jackson’s dogs. But David could not cry out like the raccoon did. The last amber rays flickered behind the oaks and hickories. A pleasant breeze wafted through the tree limbs and brought a hint of cattle manure.
“I don’t care much for sunsets no more.”
“Why not?
“A bright and glorious day meltin’ away into black nothin’.”
“Let’s git some ale.” Abner patted his shoulder.
David liked it when Abner said it was time to go get drunk. They had been friends since they married the Patton sisters, Elizabeth and Margaret. He also liked Abner’s brother Alleny. They both attended a duel once between two politicians, Samuel Carson and Robert Vance. Alleny was a politician himself, serving in the North Carolina state house. Maybe that was why Abner was such a good friend. He knew what politicians had to go through to get elected. Not a word passed between them as their horses ambled down the narrow road to the tavern at Rutherford Station. Crickets chirped at full volume, and the summer air cooled and smelled sweet. As they rounded a bend in the road they saw lamps flickering through the inn’s windows. David stiffened when he saw several horses hitched outside and heard raucous laughter from inside.
Tying up their horses, they went inside, and Abner nodded toward an empty corner table. “You sit. I’ll get the mugs.”
David sat on a half-log bench, stared out the window at the black nothingness, and his body went numb with fatigue and disappointment.
“The great hunter got beat by a Huntsman!” a young man bellowed, clinking mugs with other fellows to a roar of approval.
David remembered a time when all that yelling was for him. Those days seemed far away now. Abner returned, put a mug down, sat and winked at him in sympathy.
“We’ve killed the blackguard Crockett at last!”
David stood, not knowing what he was going to say or do, but his legs seemed bound and determined to walk to the other side of the room.
“David, no.” Abner put his hand on his arm.
“That’s all right, Abner,” he replied. He looked down, smiled and straightened his shoulders. “I like a good party.” He strode over to the long rough wooden table where the men, by and large in their twenties and with light stubble on their chins, sat guzzling and howling. “You got that wrong, young fellow.”
Silence erupted as the men looked up, and their jaws flew open.
“You didn’t kill me,” he said with a grin, “for here I am, standin’ here alive and full of piss and vinegar.”
They all laughed. David lifted his mug and proclaimed, “Here’s to Adam Huntsman, that mangy one-legged hound dog with Andy Jackson’s collar around his neck!”
Again they laughed and drank with him.
“I done my durnedest to beat him,” David said, beginning to saunter around the table as he took another sip. “Even tried to make him look like an old man with amorous intentions towards the young ladies.”
“How did you do that?” one of them asked.
“Well, as you know, during the campaign we’d travel together, speakin’ where we could git two or three good men to listen. One night a farmer put us up. And he had purty daughter, real purty.” He paused to allow the young men grunt in approval. “After everyone had gone to bed I got a chair, like this…” He took a cane-backed chair, turned it so only one leg touched the floor and put his knee on it. “Then I hobbled across the porch, rapped on the girl’s door and then clickety-clacked back across the porch, so that the farmer thought Huntsman was gittin’ fresh with his daughter.”
“What’d make him think that?” one of the young men asked.
“Jackass.” Another one hit him on the arm. “Huntsman lost a leg in the Injun wars. He has a peg leg.”
“Oh.” His clouded face cleared. “Oh!” He laughed. “That’s a good one!”
The table shook as they pounded their fists and kicked its legs. David smiled and drank his ale.
“So you don’t mind losin’ the election?”
David wiped his mouth with his buckskin sleeve, grinned, opened his eyes wide and looked as naïve as he did on the road to Abingdon when he was thirteen. “Why no. It was the will of the people.”

***
Dave put his hand over the receiver and smiled at his wife with the same naïve look as Davy Crockett when he ran away from home and as David Crocket when he lost the election. “Tiffany, why don’t you go ahead and put some coffee on?”
“Sure.” She leaned over to kiss him, got up, put on her robe and left.
He returned his attention to the telephone. “What happened?”
“It was terrible,” Mrs. Dody said. “I knew they should’ve never let him out of the mental hospital. They killed him as sure as if they’d put a gun to his head. I’ve a good mind to…”
“Mrs. Dody,” Dave interrupted. “What happened?”
“Oh. Well. You know he was in that half-way house. Well, he walked off and went back to that Dallas. You know how he always loved that Dallas.”
Dave was silent as he remembered how as a teen-ager he drove Allan sixty miles south on Interstate 35 to Dallas, under the triple underpass, through Dealey Plaza and stopped at Houston Street, where his brother got out of the car, darted across the street and into the shadows. He never wanted to drive Allan to Dallas—his father always scolded him for wasting his gas money—but he was twelve years younger than his brother. And like his ancestor, Davy Crockett, he was afraid to defy an older person.
“Yes.” His voice went flat.
“Well, somehow he got into this old warehouse and fell asleep on this mattress and his cigarette caught it on fire, and it just burnt him up.”
“Oh.”
“It was in the Dallas Morning News. ‘Transient dies in warehouse fire.’ Didn’t you see it?”
“No.”
“That’s right. You don’t get the Morning News down there in Waco.”
“When’s the funeral?”
“Tomorrow.”
“I’ll see you then. Thanks for…”
“Oh. You didn’t know your dad and me don’t see each other no more?”
Dave remembered after his mother died how a parade of widows showed up at their front door with pies and cakes and how his father always found something to do so he would not have to go to the door. His father sat in his easy chair staring at the television screen, not caring what he watched. Allan and Vince fumed and fussed when he started going to church on Sunday night with Mrs. Dody. What difference did it make, Dave asked them. She was a nice old lady, jabbering away about anything and everything. His father smoked while an amused smile danced across his lips.
“No, I didn’t know,” Dave replied after a moment, shaking away old memories. He was sad but not surprised. She kept pushing Lonnie to marry her, especially since Dave graduated from college. She told him those cigarettes were going to kill him one of these days. She wanted him to buy life insurance, she wanted him to put a lock on the front door, she wanted him to stop cussing and join the church—all the same things Dave’s mother wanted him to do.
“Well, I’ll still be at the funeral,” Mrs. Dody said. “I know I was never family, but I cared for you boys like family anyways.”
“Thanks. See you there.” Dave hung up.
“Who was that?” Tiffany appeared in the door.
“Oh, someone from home,” he replied. “Nothing important.”
Frowning, she turned away. “Coffee will be ready soon.”
Dave pulled his legs from the bed and placed them on plush carpet. Putting his head in his hands, he could not decide how he felt about Allan’s death. Thank God he was finally dead. No longer would Allan wander into his life begging for money and embarrassing him with shrill outbursts in public. God forgive him for wanting that poor, pitiful deranged man dead just because he had been an inconvenience and a nasty reminder of a past he wanted to forget.
What was he going to tell Tiffany? She did not even know he had a brother who had spent most of his adult life in and out of mental hospitals. What if she pulled away in revulsion? Maybe she would understand and comfort him. He did not know and was afraid to find out.
A shower would clear the cobwebs. His mind wandered as he stood beneath the drenching warm water. Eventually it focused on an old photo album and in particular on a faded picture of his father holding Allan’s hands when he was a toddler on their farm. He remembered his mother’s story about how little Allan stomped chicks to death, pointed to his bloodied shoes and said, “’oes did it.” David squeezed the shampoo bottle and lathered his straight, dark brown hair. Rinsing out the suds, Dave’s hands stopped on his cheeks as another memory made him pause to reflect. He was about four, and Allan, a wild-eyed sixteen year old, sucked on the side of his face until a purple welt appeared. His brother pulled away, pointed at the mark and laughed.
Puppy?
Dave turned and was sure he saw a forty-five-year-old Allan, naked standing in the shower with him. “What are you doing here?”
I don’t want to live with that old devil anymore.
“No,” he replied firmly, turning his back on the ugly vision of his brother, hoping it would go away.
Didn’t you know? You were always my favorite.
Looking down, Dave saw Allan’s hairy, skinny arms come around his waist, his nicotine-stained fingers squeezing into his belly. He screamed and bolted out of the shower, tumbling onto the tile floor, but when he looked up and focused on the figure coming out of the shower, he saw Tiffany.
“What on earth is the matter with you, Dave?” she asked, grabbing a towel and holding it in front of her lithe, tanned body.
“Nothing.” He rose, took a towel to wipe his face as he sat on the toilet.
“Dave, you could’ve hurt me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Dave, please get some help.” Tiffany went to him, knelt and caressed his face. “It was the phone call, wasn’t it?”
He knew he had to tell Tiffany the truth sometime, but not today, not right now, when Dave knew he was emotionally fragile. For God’s sake, he thought, he saw his dead brother in the shower with him. When he returned from the funeral he would tell her, but not now. He looked up with plaintive naïve eyes, following the tradition of lying perfected by his great-great-great grandfather David Crockett.
“My father’s sick.”

“It will have blood; they say, blood will have blood. Augurs and understood relations have by maggot-pies and choughs and rooks have brought forth the secret’st man of blood.”
Taking center stage in crisp night air, the actor continued his soliloquy as Bob faced a television camera to one side.
“Shakespeare comes to the Smokies this summer as the University of Tennessee drama department stages ‘Macbeth’ in the amphitheater on the outskirts of Gatlinburg. This is Bob Meade, reporting for WBAT-TV Channel Forty-three, Pride of Knoxville.”
After the play ended, Bob lingered on stage waiting for the director. An attractive brunette in her late twenties, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans and carrying a clipboard, approached him.
“Did you want to see me?”
“I wanted to see the director.”
“That’s me.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. I mean, I’m not sorry you’re the director, but I’m sorry I thought…”
“That’s all right. I get that all the time.” She smiled and extended her hand. “I’m Jill Smith.”
“Bob Meade.”
“I know. I watch your station all the time.”
“Anyway, thanks for letting us come and tape part of the show.”
“No. Thank you for bringing your crew out. We need publicity.”
“I guess most tourists are more interested in country music than Shakespeare.”
“Exactly.”
“So. How long have you been with the drama department?”
“Ever since I graduated.” Jill held her clipboard close to her chest and looked down. “In fact, I’m working on my doctorate now.”
“That’s great.”
An awkward silence followed as Bob gazed at Jill who looked away.
“Well,” Jill said, “I suppose I’ve got to go.”
“Oh.” Bob looked downcast. “Okay.” He turned to leave.
“Unless you have some other questions.” Jill brushed loose strands of hair from her eyes and moistened her lips.
Spinning around and taking a few steps toward Jill, Bob lifted a finger as though he had remembered something.
“As a matter of fact, no.”
He looked at his finger and shook it as though he were trying to throw away a gun.
“You’re so funny.” She touched her lips with her fingertips.
“Oh.”
“Oh no.” Jill reached out to touch Bob’s arm. “I mean that in a nice way. You’re not phony. Whatever you do, it’s because that’s who you are. You’re not putting on an act. Did you know TV news professors use tapes of you in class as examples of good on-screen personality?”
Her face reddening, Jill withdrew her hand and ducked her head.
“Thanks.”
“I’ve got to go.” Jill turned to walk away.
“Um—have you eaten? I know actors don’t like to eat before they go on. I don’t know if directors eat before a show or not. I know I haven’t eaten. But I’m not an actor or a director.”
“No. I haven’t.”
“We could get a bite in town. Something should be open.”
“Sure.”
“Great.” Bob tried not to beam.
“I’d like to drop my car off at my grandparents’ house first.”
The cameraman Ernie, munching on a doughnut, lumbered up.
“Are you ready?”
“Uh?” Bob turned to Ernie who was wiping sugar glaze from his lips, and the smile on his face faded.
“The equipment’s all loaded in the station van,” Ernie said. “Let’s go.”
“Oh, that’s right. I’m here in the van.” He laughed nervously. “How embarrassing.”
“We can go in my car,” Jill said, glancing at Ernie. “That way your friends can go on home.”
“But you’d have to drive me back to Knoxville.”
“Yeah, that’s too much to ask,” Ernie said with an impish grin.
“It’s no trouble,” she replied. “I’ll stay at my apartment there. I’m only staying with my grandparents during performances.”
“If it’s not too much trouble,” Bob said, choosing his words.
“It sounds like too much trouble to me,” Ernie interjected.
“It’s not too much trouble,” Jill insisted.
“I think I need to get back.” Ernie pushed the last bite of doughnut into his mouth and walked away.
“I still feel bad about you driving.”
“Think nothing of it. Things happen.”
They drove a few miles along the dark winding mountain road before turning onto Glades Road.
“It just killed grandma when they had to sell their shop downtown.”
“Were they in the block torn out for Mountain Mall?”
“Yes. Downtown Gatlinburg is all T-shirt and record shops now. Anyone who actually makes anything with their hands now has little shops in the countryside.”
“Maybe it was for the best.”
“Whether it was for the best or not, it’s the way it is. My grandfather accepted it pretty well, but grandma still gripes about it.”
Jill drove around a dark corner and pulled into the parking lot of an old wood carver’s shop with a waterwheel at its side outlined in blinking colored lights.
“The lights are grandma’s idea,” Jill said as they got out of the car. “She said if she had to be stuck out in the country she needed something to draw attention.”
“They look nice.” Bob winced, wishing he could think of something cleverer to say.
The lights went out.
“It must be eleven.” Jill looked at her watch and nodded. “Grandma turns them off exactly at eleven when the shop closes. Everyone else closes at ten, but grandma insists on staying open the extra hour. Something about late customers, she says, and about how the late hours show how hard they work. Only night she forgot was when grandpa had his stroke. Police patrol knew something had to be wrong and stopped. It saved grandpa’s life.”
A middle-aged woman with pepper gray hair came out of the front door, locked it and walked to the parking lot.
“Joan!” Jill called out. “Hello!”
She looked up, smiled and walked over to Jill and Bob.
“Hi. How did MacBeth go tonight?”
“Great. We’re going to be on television. This is Bob Meade from Channel Forty-three.”
“Nice to meet you.” Joan stuck out her hand. “You seem like such a nice young man on television.”
“Yes, television adds ten pounds of niceness.” He laughed. “Sorry, poor joke. I don’t make much money so all I can afford are poor jokes.” He laughed again. “I better shut up now. Honestly, thank you very much.”
“We’re going out for a late bite to eat,” Jill said.
“How nice.” Joan frowned. “Your grandparents know yet?”
“No. Why? Should it be a problem?”
“It shouldn’t be. Probably won’t. I worry about things too much sometimes, that’s all, I guess.” She looked at Bob and smiled. “Yes, you are very funny, and nice. Well, have a good time.”
“Are your grandparents going to be upset?” Bob asked, watching Joan get into her car and drive away.
“If it does, so what?” Jill guided Bob to a dark side entrance. “Grandma—how shall I phrase it—picks on Joan a lot, so naturally Joan expects the worst.” Jill pulled a key from her purse. “You see, grandma and grandpa never had help running the shop before his stroke, just me when I was a teen-ager and dad when he was young. They never had an employee outside of family so sometimes grandma gets paranoid.”
“Strokes can turn people’s lives upside down.” Bob stared at Jill’s small, porcelain hands as she unlocked the door. “Is your grandfather okay?”
“He has his days.” Opening the door, Jill looked back at him and smiled. “Come on in.” She tossed her purse on the sofa. “Make yourself at home while I change into something decent.”
Bob looked around the room and sensed he was home again in Clinton, Tennessee. Furniture old but clean, the heavy, durable overstuffed kind, needed reupholstering though. Jill’s grandmother tried to hide worn places with doilies and small rugs, just like his mother did. He sniffed and found the air clear of dust, unlike his father’s house in recent years. On the walls were cheap reproductions of old European masters.
“Grandma, I’m home,” Jill called out down the hall.
Also hanging were old photographs of people from another time and place. In the background Bob heard an elderly woman speak with a German accent in subdued tones.
“We’re going out for a bite to eat and then I’m driving him back to Knoxville. I’ll sleep at my apartment.” There was some more of the muffled German accent. “Of course he has a car, but he was over here with the station van that had to go back early.” The muffled German accent grew more insistent. “Yes, it’s on the spur of the moment, but there’s nothing wrong with that.” After another pause Jill replied, “Well this isn’t Germany in the old days. This America right now and spur of the moment is what we do.”
Bob’s neck burned in discomfort. Feeling out of place and unacceptable came too easily to him, a trait he picked up in childhood.
“Oh, Grandma, go out and talk to him,” Jill said in controlled exasperation. “Then he won’t be a stranger, okay? So go make nice conversation. Please, just for your one and only grandchild.”
Appearing from the hall was a tall, stout woman with her whitish gray hair pulled back in a bun. She stood erect with her chin high.
“Hello, young man. I am Greta Schmidt, Jill’s grandmother.”
“I’m Bob Meade. I work for Channel Forty-three.”
“I never watch television, except for old movies, sometimes.” Greta took Bob’s hand and shook it. “Old things are better, don’t you think?”
“Yes. I love antiques.” Bob sensed she was not just discussing the quality of motion pictures or furniture, but he determined the conversation would be more agreeable if he did not explore the other inferences of her observation. He looked around the room. “You’ve some lovely antiques here.”
“I saw you looking at my pictures of the old country.”
“Yes.” Bob stepped back to the photographs. “They’re fascinating.”
“Yes. I like them.” Greta lightly touched one of the brown-tinged pictures. “This is my family in Oberbach.”
“Where is that?”
“Bavaria, most beautiful place in the world.”
“Yes. I’ve been told that.”
“Who? Who’s told you about Oberbach?” Urgency entered her voice as her eyes narrowed.
“Oh.” Bob jumped, caught off guard. “I meant I’ve read things about Bavaria. I don’t know anything about Oberbach.”
“Oh.” Greta relaxed and smiled. “This is my papa, mama, sister Helga and her husband Franz in front of our house. Here I am.” She pointed to a tall, brown-haired girl, plain but cheerful.
“And this here,” Bob asked pointing to another picture, “who is that?”
“That is my husband Heinrich, when he was young.” Greta sighed with infatuation. “Handsome, yes?”
The photograph attracted Bob’s attention. Heinrich was short but muscular and stout. He had a strong jaw, blue eyes and almost white blond hair. What occurred to Bob mostly, though, was his expression, a smirk lurking around pursed lips, which brought to mind a wisecrack his father often threw out: “He looked like he’d been suckin’ on a dried dog turd all day.”
“That, on the left, is his papa,” Greta continued, “and his older brother. He’s still in Germany on the family farm. Last we heard he was still working. Germans are hard working.”
Jill came up behind them and put her arms around her grandmother.
“Now, Grandma,” she chided her with affection, “don’t get started on Germany or we won’t ever get anything to eat.”
“I could fix you something here.”
“That’s sweet of you,” she said, kissing Greta’s cheek, “but no.” She took Bob’s hand to drag him toward the front door.
“Young man…”
“His name’s Bob.”
“Bob, where does your mama and papa live?”
“My mother is deceased.” His eye twitched. “And my father lives in Clinton.”
“Ah.” Greta paused. “Your eye twitched, young man. Do you need eye drops?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Then what is it?” she asked bluntly.
“Restaurants will be closing soon,” Jill said in persistence.
“Jill, don’t forget your purse.” Greta picked it up.
“Oh yes.” She took her handbag. “Thank you, Grandma.” Jill gave her another kiss on the cheek.
“You have your pepper spray, don’t you?”
“Grandma.” Jill rolled her eyes.
“You don’t have to worry about me, Mrs. Smith.”
“Schmidt. Jill’s father, our Edward, changed it to Smith.”
“Good night, Grandma.” Jill said in a loud firm voice as she grabbed Bob by his arm and headed for the door again.
“You’ll have to excuse me, Bob, but Jill is our only grandchild.”
“I understand.” Bob put on his best television newsman voice and nodded. The old woman was getting on his nerves.
“Candy?” Greta picked up a cut crystal bowl filled with sour balls and peppermints.
“No.” Jill opened the door. “Good night, Grandma.”
“It was nice meeting you, Mrs. Schmidt.”
“Well, drive carefully.”
“You don’t have to worry.” Bob laughed. “I’m not driving.”
“We will, Grandma.” Jill pulled Bob out of the house and down the sidewalk. “Good night.”
***
Greta stood in the doorway, still holding the candy bowl, her smile melting away.
“Greta.” Heinrich’s voice boomed from his bedroom down the hall. After a pause, he called out again. “Greta.”
“Yes, Heinrich.” She continued to watch Jill’s car as it pulled away and turned the corner.
“Come here.”
“Yes, Heinrich.” Greta sighed and closed the door. She put the candy bowl on the end table, paused to look down the hall, and steeled herself to proceed to Heinrich’s room. She knew he was not going to be pleased. Turning on the light, she tried to smile. “Yes, Heinrich, what do you want?”
“Who was making all that noise? It woke me up.”
“It was just Jill and a gentleman friend.” She walked to the foot of the bed and smiled broadly, hoping to defuse his indignation. Greta tried to imagine how frustrated he must feel from being bed ridden.
Heinrich struggled to sit up. Most of his hair was gone, only a few wisps of white at his temples remained. His once powerful chest now looked like an old woman’s. His eyes protruded almost in madness from his bone-white face marked with little red veins.
“There was a strange man in my house and I wasn’t told?”
“You were asleep, Heinrich.” Greta patted his foot.
“Then you shouldn’t have let him in.” He jerked his foot away.
“I didn’t let him in. Jill did.”
“This is not Jill’s house.” He beat his fist on the bed. “This is my house.”
“This is silly.” Great went to the door. “Go back to sleep.”
Turning off the light, Greta walked to the living room. Behind her she heard Heinrich’s grumbling as he crawled from bed and stomped down the hall. She closed her eyes and said a brief prayer. Once Heinrich was mad enough to get out of bed he was likely to do anything.
“You do not call me silly.” Heinrich grabbed her arm and swung her around. “This is my house.”
“Ever since you had your stroke you get upset over silly things.” Greta tried to wriggle free.
“Don’t call me silly.” His face a bright scarlet, Heinrich slapped her.
“Heinrich!”
“This is my house!” Shoving her down, he began to kick her. His voice rose to a squeal. “I am boss here! You are not boss!”
“Yes, Heinrich. Please stop.”
Blows came slower and finally stopped as Heinrich’s breath became heavier. Greta looked up with dread, wiping tears from her eyes, to see him collapse into an easy chair. His eyes were closed, and his breathing was still very deep. Standing, she went to him, her head bowed.
“I’m sorry, Heinrich.” Waiting for a reply, she looked with concern at his face. “Are you all right?”
“I’m tired.” Taking a long, hard breath, he opened his eyes and glanced up at her. “Carry me to bed.”
Greta hesitated.
“Take me to bed.”
Without a word Greta bent down to lay Heinrich across her shoulder and carried him. Sweat from his body moistened her dress. Across his pouting lips appeared a hint of a smile.
***
Bob and Jill sat in a near-empty restaurant at a table with a red checked cloth and a flickering candle between them as they took last bites of their meal. Even though it was summer, a fire crackled in a circular open hearth centered in the large room, making it too warm They did not seem to care.
“I love Shakespeare.” Bob swallowed hard, hoping Jill was not offended by his speaking with his mouth full. He sometimes forgot his table manners when falling in love, which had not happened often; in fact, probably not at all, at least love that makes someone chatter when his mouth was filled with food. “Hamlet’s my favorite.”
“I did my master’s thesis on Hamlet.”
“I identify with him.”
“Oh, you can’t make up your mind either.”
“By the time I decide whether or not I like a girl and she likes me, she’s gotten fed up waiting for me to do something and left.”
“How sad.”
“But not tragic.”
“Speaking of tragedy,” she said, looking at her plate and pushing around the last of her vegetables, “I’m sorry Grandma asked about your eye twitch.”
“It sometimes happens when my mother’s death comes up in a conversation.” He paused. “I really don’t know why. Maybe I should see a doctor about it.” Making a face, he added, “A head doctor.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh no, that’s all right.” Bob lied. “It was when I was fourteen. Things hurt more when you’re fourteen, I think.” His hand went to the side of his face, hoping to stop any other errant twitches, and his eyes strayed off to the fireplace, hoping to hide stray tears.
“I’m sorry.” Jill reached across and touched his arm lightly. “You must have loved her very much.”
“Very much and she loved me.” Bob’s voice trailed off. He looked up and smiled. “Want to hear my theory about Hamlet? I don’t think he was crazy or intellectually effete or anything like that. I think he was suffering from manic depression.”
“Manic depression?”
“Sure. And a daddy’s boy. That’s an important facet, a daddy’s boy. He had spent his childhood with daddy and his fool.”
“Alas, poor Yorick,” Jill said with dramatic relish.
“Then Hamlet grows up.” Bob pushed his plate aside and leaned forward. “Daddy wants the best for him so he sends him to the best university around.”
“Wittenberg.” Jill’s eyes danced as she supplied missing information.
“Now we don’t know how many years he had been off to college, but I think he might have been in his last year, all excited about getting his degree, coming home and getting first hand training from daddy on how to be king.”
“Then daddy dies.”
“What a bummer.” Bob became more animated. “Melancholia of being separated from daddy during college is magnified because fact he’ll never see his old man again.”
“Or so he thinks.”
“Right. Daddy’s ghost gives him a mission, but lethargy and indecision created by depression keeps him from doing what daddy wants which makes depression worse which increases passivity.”
“Wow, if I’d thought of all that for my thesis I’d gotten an A.”
“It’s nothing.” He sipped his iced tea. “Sometimes I think people underestimate parents’ influence in their children’s lives after they’re no longer really a part of them.”
“That’s true.” Jill looked down and paused. “They can die; they can be alcoholics or just don’t care.”
“I think these folks want to go home.” Bob looked around.
Jill drove Bob to Knoxville, and they talked lightly about many things they found they had in common: movies, politics, and music, among other things.
“Woody Allen is great,” he said.
“I loved ‘Love and Death.’” she said. “It’s so Russian.”
“And so funny.”
“Just like you,” she said glancing over at him.
“I hope Jimmy Carter gets re-elected,” Bob said clearing his throat. “The hostage crisis may do him in.”
“Maybe the Republicans will nominate Reagan,” Jill replied with a laugh. “Who would vote for him?”
“My father, for one.”
“Well, he looks like a president,” she said. “It could be his best role ever.”
“But who will write his material? That’s what scares me.”
“Easy,” she replied. “Richard Nixon.”
They both moaned and then laughed, their voices trailing off into a stilted silence. Bob’s mind raced. He did not know whether to be funny or try to say something profound.
“I find classical music soothing,” he said. “I don’t know who wrote what or anything about symphony numbers but I still like it.”
“I’ll have to educate you on the whos and whats,” Jill replied with a smile. “There’s Beethoven, Bach and my favorite, Mozart. A lot of people like Tchaikovsky. Stravinsky is just noise as far as I’m concerned.”
“Yes, take me to some concerts, and I’ll take you to some ball games.”
“You like baseball?”
“I like to watch baseball,” Bob replied. “I didn’t like playing it. I was always last one chosen. It was mostly the eye-hand coordination thing that did me in.”
“Me too. Being chosen, I mean. I have pretty good coordination. Took dance classes for twelve years. Just never was strong enough to hit the ball far.”
“I like going to a health club. I can work out with a weight level I can handle without some jerk making fun of me. Maybe jocks get more sensitive as they grow up.”
“Jocks don’t grow up. They grow old.”
Bob smiled at Jill as she talked about how she enjoyed walking along mountain trails during all seasons taking in the changing colors of the leaves. He was drawn to her scent, a light citrus-based perfume; her dress, light and frilly yet not too revealing; and, most of all, her smile and laugh. After Jill had listed all her favorite hiking trails in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, she paused, and the silence made Bob uneasy. He reached out to stroke the leather car console.”
“Nice car.”
“By the way, you were joking with grandma about your driving, weren’t you?”
“Sure, why, I haven’t had an accident in two weeks.” He laughed. “No, really, never had an accident. Problem is that I drive like an old woman.”
“Don’t say that. Grandma is a terrible driver.” She laughed.
“I like you,” he said softly. “You get all my jokes.”
After an embarrassing pause, she replied, “Got it from daddy.”
“Your father gets all my jokes too?”
“No, the car. A good deal.”
“So your father’s Big Ed Smith, the car dealer?”
“None other.”
“Don’t tell my father. He’ll want a good deal too.”
“Why, everybody gets a good deal from big Ed Smith.”
“I take it your grandmother raised Cain when he changed his name from Schmidt.”
“He said you can’t sell Chevies with a German name.” She waved her hand and shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“It isn’t.” Jill smiled, pausing to glance quickly at Bob who was staring at her intently. “Do you know how you’re different from other guys I’ve dated?”
“If you say it’s that I’m sweet and like a brother to you, I’ll jump from the car right now.”
“No, no jumping.” She laughed. “It’s that you don’t talk business.”
“I could talk business if you like.”
“I’m all ears.”
“Well,” Bob said, leaning toward her and breathing in her citrus scent, “this guy in Cherokee stripped naked, smeared lipstick on his face and stabbed his father who was dancing in front of one of those trading posts. Then he lifted his knife and let his father’s blood drip into his mouth.”
“Oh no, did he kill him?”
“No. They say he just stopped and kinda went into a trance or something. He’s in custody and expected to be committed to a state hospital. He’s done this before. He had a head injury as a child and from time to time gets violent. His parents have taken care of him all his life. He’s forty.”
“How sad.”
“I’m thinking about doing a feature on it. How something from your childhood can affect your whole life.”
“You got that right,” she replied with a sigh. “Childhood can be a killer, if diseases or accidents don’t do you in, your parents can.”
“We’re almost there,” Bob said.
Jill pulled into the parking lot and stopped in front of his building. She turned off the ignition and turned to smile at Bob.
“So now I know where to find you.”
“You have me at a disadvantage.”
Opening her purse, she took out a business card and handed it to him.
“I’ll be back at the university when MacBeth closes next week. My home number is at the bottom. Give me a call.”
“I will.” He put the card in his pocket and stared into her eyes until he became self-conscious and glanced away. “Well, good night.”
“If you’re agonizing over whether you should or shouldn’t kiss me, the answer is yes.”
Without a word Bob scooted across, took her into his arms and kissed her, his lips almost not touching hers. She pressed closer to him, and the kisses became more passionate.

Alice ran down the Alhambra steps with Clarence and Boniface fencing their way behind her. Putting two petite fingers in her mouth, Alice whistled for a carriage which conveniently pulled up immediately. Evidently courtiers often beat a hasty retreat from events hosted by King Phillip which did not go unnoticed by the carriage trade.
“To the port and the fastest ship headed for England!” she ordered as she hopped in the front, which left room for Clarence and Boniface to continue fencing in the back seat as the carriage sped away.
They had hardly left the confines of the Spanish palace before Rodney and Steppingstone fenced their way down the steps where Maria rode up on a large white stallion. Rodney didn’t miss a swing of the sword as he leapt upon the back of the horse. An efficient guard promptly arrived with a black stallion for Steppingstone to mount. They both rode off, side by side, so the duel could continue.
Within a few minutes the carriage arrived at the port, and Alice jumped from her seat and rushed to the ticket window. A clerk looked up and smiled. Since Clarence and Boniface insisted on fencing no matter what, they lagged behind a few steps.
“Si, senorita. May I help you?”
“Two tickets on the boat to England.”
“First class or tourist?”
“Tourist.”
“Smoking or nonsmoking?”
“Non.”
“That will be one hundred and fifty pesos.”
Alice hurriedly looked through her purse and pulled out the money for the clerk.
“It’s boarding now.” The clerk smiled again. “Have a nice day.”
Taking Clarence’s free hand, Alice dragged him away from his duel, which, by the way, he was winning quite easily. It was just as well there was a break in the action because Boniface had to buy his ticket.
“I want one ticket on the ship they’re taking!”
“That will be seventy-five pesos.”
Boniface grabbed a handful of coins from his pocket and threw them into the clerk’s window.
“Now boarding. Have a nice day.”
Alice ran up the gangplank. Clarence pulled his hand away so he could resume his match with Boniface. In the meantime, Maria and Rodney arrived on their white stallion, dismounted and ran for the clerk’s window, which left the poor horse pawing at the ground in confusion. He had never been mounted like that before and left without so much of a “Had a good time, see you later.”
Maria paused at the window to hunt for coins in her purse. Rodney, seeing Steppingstone leap from his steed and bound toward them, thrust his hand into his pocket and produced more than enough coins to satisfy the ticket requirement.
“Keep the change!” Rodney shouted as he and Maria ran up the gangplank just as it began to pull away.
Steppingstone did not even pause at the ticket window but continued straightway to the gangplank, which irritated the clerk to no end. He had to pay out of his own wages any short falls in the daily financial report. Unfortunately when the clerk sprang forward to catch Steppingstone by the leg, he fell into the water. Steppingstone somehow managed to land on the ship’s deck.
By this time Alice, Clarence and Boniface had scurried down the steps to the tourist section, a rather dank area filled with roughhewn benches on which sat respectable but poor passengers. A sign overhead read, “Smoking.” Clarence and Boniface had to take a respite to catch their breath. Boniface spied a traveler with a large cigar clenched between his teeth. The English lord leaned over and snatched it away.
“Hey!” the man shouted.
But before he could protest too much the young lady and two fencers moved on to the section marked “Non Smoking.” (Author’s note: Now one must consider the wisdom of an older gentleman, such as Boniface, to take on the added activity of smoking when his lungs must have been taxed to the extreme by the fencing. Perhaps the nicotine enhanced his physical stamina.) He took a broad swipe at Clarence who ducked, and Boniface cut the feather off the bonnet of one of the passengers. An older couple shook their heads in disapproval.
“Can you believe that?” the woman said to her husband.
“Some people have no manners,” he replied.
“Puffing on that cigar in a no smoking section,” she exclaimed.
On deck Rodney and Steppingstone fenced as they bumped against the mast. Rodney climbed the pole followed by his adversary. They balanced precariously on a cross mast as they continued swinging their epees. The captain ran up waving his hands and stopped by Maria who stared skyward as she wrung her hands.
“Stop! Stop!” the captain shouted. “I don’t have insurance to cover fencing on the mast!”

FORWARD

I am the great-great-great grandson of David Crockett through his daughter Margaret from his first marriage to Polly Finley. Being a child in the 1950s I was caught up the mania created by Walt Disney with his Davy Crockett movies. However, as I grew up I researched the historical Crockett and sadly found him lacking in many of the qualities attributed to him in movie and song. The older I became and the more I read, I realized David Crockett was the best kind of hero, a man of many flaws who ultimately did the right thing.

Each chapter of my novel has three stories—one about young Davy who runs away from home, the second about 50-year-old David who struggles with his life after a final congressional defeat and the third about a modern descendant Dave who must face his troubled family past when he goes home for his brother’s funeral. Each is faced with the challenge that you can’t run away from yourself.

As a work of fiction, my novel does not represent the historical David Crockett but a replication to illustrate dramatic conflict. Any human flaws, such as alcoholism, that are portrayed by my character are not necessarily true of the historic Crockett. Also, the modern Dave is inspired by my own life but does not represent my life entirely. For instance, I have been happily married for forty-four years while the corresponding character in the novel is divorced.

CHAPTER ONE

Thirteen-year-old Davy Crockett scampered down a wooded hillside not going anywhere in particular, which was the way he liked it. He wanted to get as far away as he could from home. His family owned a log and stone tavern on the busy route between Knoxville and Abingdon. Davy was supposed to be going to school, but his heart was not into his lessons. Suddenly his large, fluid brown eyes caught sight of a royal walnut butterfly. He smiled at the bright yellow, gray, orange and red colors in the delicate wings. Davy noticed it was smaller than most but speedy and energetic. The butterfly flitted with uncertainty among the rhododendron bushes.
Before Davy realized it, he was more than a mile away and now intrigued by a different animal. He swore he detected a whole family of opossum. If he only had a rifle with him he could shoot a passel of possum for his mother to cook up with sweet potatoes. If the possum stew was exceptionally good perhaps no one would notice Davy had not attended Benjamin Kitchen’s class in four days.
The entire hullabaloo at school began when one of the older boys taunted him: you grin too much and agree with the teacher too much. Who do you think you are, the bully said as he pushed Davy around. What he did not know was that Davy had just returned from a cattle drive. His father had indentured him for thirty dollars. He walked four hundred miles to and from Rockbridge, Virginia. His thin arms were hard and his legs were steel.
Four days ago, Davy decided he had had enough. After the school bell rang, he ran out the door and hid behind bushes until the bully walked by. Davy jumped out and pounced on the boy. He pelted him with hard punches to his face and belly, stopping only when the older boy cried for mercy.
Davy felt triumphant on the trail to school the next morning. Then he considered what might be waiting for him. If the bully had brought his mother to tell old man Kitchens how her innocent little boy was beaten up Davy could be in trouble.
How dare you let that hooligan run roughshod over my little baby, Davy imagined the mother scolding Kitchens. He, after all, was the son of a drunken tavern owner who taught him to be far too proud for his own good. The teacher, Davy suspected, also thought he lied too much and could not be trusted. Which boy would the teacher believe? The bully would be believed, Davy decided. He knew Kitchens would beat him mercilessly in front of the class. And then his father would beat him for getting a beating. He did not want two whippings he did not deserve, so Davy skipped away down another path away from the school house.
He attended a school of his own making, studying wildlife of the surrounding forest. Davy recognized large hand-like hind tracks of opossum and its smaller duplicate fore paw. He could tell the size of the animal by the width of its hind paw. Smaller paw tracks behind them meant a whole family. Before he knew it Davy was crawling along limestone sinks and lichen-covered boulders. By the time he closed in on the opossum family, Davy looked up at the sky and figured it was time for school to be out, and he better be on his way home.
Davy stopped short when he entered the tavern’s heavy timber door and saw his father sitting on the edge of a large old trunk, hunched over and swigging corn liquor from an earthen jug and staring into a glowing open hearth fire.
“Hello, Pa.”
His father glared at him and tipped the jug again. Davy, with apprehension, glanced at the cudgel stick leaning against his parents’ large bed in the middle of the drafty room. Two of his brothers, Wilson and Joseph, scraped mud from their boots and kept their tousled heads down. Laughter rang from their kitchen on the other side of the stairwell. One set of steps went to the attic where travelers slept on straw mattresses. The other set of stairs went to the basement where Davy’s father repaired broken wagon parts for his customers.
Davy entered the kitchen where his three sisters were snapping beans. Four dirty men sat on benches at the end of a long roughhewn table, drinking ale, and grumbled impatiently for their dinner. His mother, stoop-shouldered and wide at the hip, pulled a pot from the hearth fire with an iron hook. When his sisters saw Davy, they stopped laughing.
“Oh.” Sally tried to smile. “Hello, Davy.”
Before he could reply, he felt his father’s hand on his shoulder, smelled liquor on his breath and heard him whisper, “Kitchens sent a note, says you ain’t been to school.”

***
Almost a lifetime later, David Crockett remembered the smell of liquor on his father’s breath. He still experienced his urge to wander without direction and purpose as long as it was away from what he really should be doing. He walked through a corn field between Rutherford Fork of the Obion River and his small farmhouse. His eyes, framed by deep tanned creases, focused on a monarch butterfly. Its large wings, silky and graceful, rested on a broad dark green leaf of an alder shrub, which, for some strange reason, made him feel sad, hollow and insignificant. Sharp, loud taps on a large dead elm caused David to glance up at a woodpecker’s digging into a gray tree trunk. Sighing, he decided he was as dead at his core as the elm tree. When he looked back at the alder bush the butterfly was gone, just like his chance to return to Congress.
He did not know for sure if he was going to see Washington again, but he did not sense victory in his bones. Turning, he trudged to his cabin. He had done everything he knew to win a fourth term as West Tennessee’s representative. His former friend President Andrew Jackson did everything in his power to defeat him. David opposed Jackson’s plan to remove Cherokee, Choctaw and Chickasaw from their lands in Tennessee, Alabama and the Carolinas to unknown territory beyond the Mississippi River. He tried to stop Jackson’s abolition of the Bank of the United States. David pushed spending on internal improvements. Foremost, he spent most of his energies during three terms promoting sale of public lands in West Tennessee at low cost to squatters living on them.
Jackson defeated David on every issue and used those failures to label him as a do-nothing congressman. He endorsed Democrat Adam Huntsman, an Indian wars veteran with a peg leg, to challenge David. In addition to labeling him incompetent, Jackson and Huntsman accused him of not responding to letters from people in his district who did not agree with his policies. They accused him of plying voters with whiskey. David’s ultimate sin, Jackson and Huntsman claimed, was his betrayal of the Democratic Party by siding with Whigs on too many issues.
David went from town to town, mounting tree stumps to declare he was proud to defend the rights of common people against King Andrew. If he had not been able to pass his legislation it was because of opposition from the cruel Jackson and not that he had failed to do anything at all. He had no defense to the charge of snubbing people who did not support him. Kicking at clods under his feet, David grumbled at himself for being stubborn about that. He tried to remember when he had become peevish enough to ignore his foes, but at that moment he did not want to think back so far. He laughed out loud about buying votes with liquor, telling folks from the stump that he did not have enough money to sway that many voters. And, yes, he proclaimed before skeptical crowds, he had begun his political career as a stout follower of Jackson. He challenged the voters to question whether his loyalty to West Tennessee was more important than his loyalty to the President and the Democratic Party.
Results of the election, held weeks ago, had not been announced, even by the first week of August. Until the totals came in, David’s hopes and dreams dangled between his personal heaven and hell. Victory would vindicate his record. Another two years in Congress could keep David in the newspapers until the next presidential election. Along with the success of his recently published autobiography and plays written about him, he would surge to the top of the list of potential presidential candidates. President of the United States, David told himself, would be quite an improvement over being the son of a drunken tavern owner. He could take his family to Washington and install his wife Elizabeth as first lady of the land. Perhaps she would even learn to love him again.
But if he lost, David dreaded to consider, his hopes of escaping debt and poverty would end, because no matter how celebrated he was for his hunting prowess, how honored for his bravery during the Indian wars, or how respected he was for his political independence, he never had crawled out of the deep hole of destitution. He could dig a living from his farm here on the Obion River, go with hat in hand back to Lawrenceburg to ask Elizabeth and his three children if he could resume living with them and the Patton clan, or turn his head elsewhere to try once more to make his fortune.
Dusk was falling, and David had to squint to recognize the figure standing on his porch waving at him. He smiled when he saw Abner Burgin, Elizabeth’s brother-in-law who had moved with them when they came to West Tennessee. He had proved to be a good and faithful friend and hunting companion. As David reached the steps he stopped short, his legs incapable of moving. He saw the look on Abner’s usually pleasant round face. He sensed his old friend was pained to tell him news that could ruin his life.

***
Several generations later in 1980 and in another place far away, David Crockett’s descendant Dave Crockett awoke with a start, coming from the same dark nightmare he had suffered for years. He found himself in his large plush carpeted bedroom with a king-sized bed framed by dark cherry wood. It was on the second floor of his brick house with breath-taking views of Lake Waco. Dave lived a life his great-great-great grandfather could have only hoped to live, yet Dave yearned for something else, something that was just out of his grasp.
His slender young wife stirred a little when Dave touched the butterfly tattoo on her right shoulder. Pulling his hand away he smiled before placing his arm over his eyes and tried to rid his mind of images from his nightmares. His sleep disintegrated with memories of his childhood, with his older brother Allan in the foreground. Allen’s sallow face stared at Dave, lips curling up in a sneer and cigarette smoke slipping from his mouth and flowing up his cheeks and around his nostrils that clouded his dark, threatening eyes. Allan was mentally ill, yet their mother still put him in charge of taking care of his baby brother Dave. Most of his early childhood had retreated into his troubled dreams. Dave remembered Allan grabbing him. Was it by his two feet, a hand and a foot and or his two hands? He could feel Allan swinging him around fasting and faster, fearing he was going to smash into something very hard. Off in the distance, he could see his mother. If he could scream out for her she would save him. Dave opened his mouth but a rasping whisper came out, “Mother!” Was it just a dream or had it really happen? He would never know.
Sometimes Dave dreamed about his other brother Vince who was about six years older and an out-of-control alcoholic. In the dream Vince, with a bottle of beer in his hand and slumped in a worn easy chair, glared at him. His eyelids were heavy with intoxication, and his numbed lips hugged each syllable coming from his mouth.
“You tell people I’m a drunk,” Vince said. “Don’t you. Don’t lie to me, you little punk. I know what you been doin’. You think you’re smart, don’t you, tellin’ everybody I’m a drunk. What goes on inside this house is family business, not nobody else’s business. You think you’re goin’ to make those people like you? Those people ain’t your friends. They think you’re a stupid little punk. You don’t have no friends. Well, I don’t know just what I’m goin’ to do, but I’m goin’ to do just fine. You think you’re goin’ to college and make a lot of money. Well, you ain’t goin’ to make nothin’. Allan, he ain’t never goin’ to amount to nothin’, and you ain’t goin’ to amount to nothin’, but I’m going to do all right. And one of these days you’re goin’ to come knockin’ at my door with your hand out, and I’m goin’ to spit in it. That’s what I’m, goin’ to do, why you stick your hand out for money, I’m goin’ to spit in it.”
Sometimes Dave dreamed about his mother. She died in 1962, but he did not mind having a dead person visit him. Laughing she would pull her legs up under her skirt on the sofa and hug them. Everybody seemed to be having a good time. Most people had a good time around his mother because she always had a story to tell and could tell it with the relish of a seasoned professional actress. What a shame, people said, such a vibrant woman dying in her forties with three boys and one of them only—how old was he when she died, oh yes—only twelve.
At some point in the dream Dave would lean over to someone, he did not know who—it did not really matter after all—and whisper, “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“Of course she’s dead,” the person would reply. “But it would be rude to remind her she was dead. Besides, she’s having a good time. It’d be a shame to ruin everything with such a minor inconvenience as death.”
Not often did Dave dream of his father. He was a non-entity of sorts. Dave did not have animosity towards him. How could you hate a man who was never there? Long hours on the road in his Royal Crown Cola truck kept him out of family arguments. After Dave’s mother died, his father seemed to be asleep when Vince launched into one of his drunken tirades, like the time Dave paid a local artist to make an oil painting from a photograph of his mother. The Christmas eve Dave brought it home Vince exploded, saying the last thing their father wanted now that he was dating was to be remind of his dead wife. So Dave just hung it on the wall, not bothering to wake his snoring father in front of the television set to present it to him. His father also slept through the times when Allan—well, he did not want to dwell on what Allan did. His father was just dad. He could not help being who he was or, more particularly, who he was not.
Dave remembered when he came to accept his father. It was on a hot Texas summer day when he worked on the truck with his father, slinging wooden cases of Royal Crown Cola around and sweating through his shirt by eight o’clock in the morning. A butterfly flitted through the window and landed on the windshield. Dave grimaced as his father extended his large scarred hand toward the creature because he knew what was coming. His father would smash the butterfly against the windshield just as he smashed cockroaches on the kitchen counter and wiped the guts on his pants leg. But Dave was wrong. His father’s hand caught the butterfly, careful not to harm it, and let it go out the window. He was a man unavailable to his family, but he was a man who saved a butterfly.
“A butterfly,” Dave mumbled as he looked again at his wife’s shoulder. Glancing around the room at the solid oak furniture, the heavy satin drapes, think pile carpeting and designer-label clothing carelessly thrown on a leather lounge chair, he was satisfied that he had proved Vince wrong about making money. Whether he amounted to anything; well, that prophesy was yet fulfilled.
The telephone rang, shaking him from his thoughts. His wife reached out to pick up the receiver.
“Hello?” She paused. “Puppy? Oh. You mean Dave.” She held the phone out to him. “It’s for you.”
Only someone from Gainesville would call him by his childhood nickname. He stiffened as he took it.
“Yes?”
“Puppy?” an old woman’s voice said.
“Hello, Mrs. Dody.”
“Allen’s dead.”

Like a tiny bird escaping a hungry cat, Alice ran through a heavy wooden door on the lowest level of the Alhambra, only to find herself in the kitchen. Scullery maids mopped the rough stone floor, and frumpy old women were busy chopping vegetables and peeling fruit for the evening royal dinner. She stopped abruptly, not quite sure where to turn next. She did know she had to exit quickly because the aroma of soapy water mixed with freshly sliced orange made her nauseous. At first Alice decided to exit through the same door she entered, but a pair of brutish guards burst into the kitchen. She could have uttered an obscenity involved fecal material but instead scrammed in the opposite direction, not knowing where it would lead. Along the way she knocked a large wooden bowl filled with oranges onto the floor. Phillip’s thugs, trained to be inflict physical pain but lacking grace and agility, tripped on the bruised fruit and sprawled across the floor. One of the cooks walloped them on their heads.
“How can we prepare the King’s supper with you dolts stumbling through the kitchen?”
Although quite aerobically fit, Clarence was running out of breath trying to elude the King’s guards. He slipped in a side chamber in order to catch his second wind. He became aware other huffing and gasping other than his own. It was deeper and faster. Looking around, Clarence found himself face to face with Lord Boniface. Because of his youth and great military training, he recovered quickly and dashed back through the door and down another corridor.
Deciding the quickest way to go from the second floor down to the courtyard would be to slide down the granite staircase bannister, Maria whipped one leg over the railing and let out a whoop as she slid downwards. The speed at which she was moving caused Maria to worry she might crack her hip if she landed too hard on the courtyard. Luckily for her, Senior Vacacabeza happened to be standing in just the right spot to break her fall. Without even a la-ti-da, she stood and ran off who knows where. By the time Vacacabeza could stand, two more guards ran down the steps and knocked him on his ass again.
Rodney found himself cornered in the royal dining room by several guards coming from all directions. Looking up, he spied the chandelier, jumped on one of the tables and leapt onto the chandelier, swinging back and forth until he could fly through a tall window. Unfortunately, by doing so, Rodney landed on King Phillip, still sitting on the edge of the fountain. The impact knocked both him and the King into the fountain. It also put Rodney dangerously close to being captured. He quickly pulled himself out of the fountain pool, shake a bit like a dog retrieving a water fowl on a hunt. Then he ran through the yard, still not knowing how to get the hell out of that damned palace. Phillip struggled out of the pool, only to be knocked back into it by two guards barreling through after Rodney.
Quite by happenstance, Clarence and Alice encounter each other down another one of those confounded hallways. After a quick embrace and kiss, Clarence beamed at her.
“My darling! I’m so glad we’re together again!” He grabbed her hand. “I won’t let go of you ever again. We’ll escape this madhouse together!”
Clarence tried to move, but Alice would not budge. “Clarence, tell me honestly. Is there another woman?”
“No time for chitchat, Alice dear.” He tugged hard on her arm to dislodge her. “We have to return to England!”
As they resumed their sprint, Alice added, “Very well. But when we’re in London, you’re gonna catch hell!
Vacacabeza followed Maria back into the banquet hall. (Author’s note: Yes, I know. They’ve gone back up the stairs somehow. Just remember these young people live in the fifteenth century and did not have the benefit of an education in twenty-first century America.) Maria slid under one of the banquet table. Her guardian tried to follow her but his aching knees gave out and he landed face first on the floor. Rodney ran in from another door. He stopped sharply.
“Oh damn! Why am I back in here?”
Before he could answer himself, Rodney heard guards clanking down the hall and about to enter the hall. He had to hide under one of the long oaken tables. He kept crawling along until he bumped into Maria’s backside. She turned to see him.
“Rodney!”
“Maria!”
The lovers cocked their heads as they heard the guards bang into Vacacabeza. They could tell they all fall down and go boom. While Vacacabeza and the guards grumble loudly, Rodney and Maria shuffle in the opposite direction on their knees.
“Why are you dripping wet?” Shaking her head, she said, “More importantly, I think I should be mad at you.” Her French jealousy was showing again.
“No time for anger, love. We have to get back to England!”
“And why should I go to England with you?”
“Why, to marry me, of course.”
“Oh goody! I accept!” She paused. “Kiss me!”
“Escape first, kissing later!”
And then they vamoosed. Meanwhile in the throne room Phillip sat, slumped over and looking dejected as he pondered if he had the energy to retire to his bedchambers to change out of his wet royal duds. Boniface, still huffing like the old gray mare, ran in and bowed awkwardly.
“Your Majesty! I haven’t been able to catch Flippertigibbit or Broadshoulders!”
The King sighed. “You and my elite guard.”
Clarence and Alice rushed through another door and stopped long enough to gape and moan over their unfortunate turn. Boniface drew his sword.
“Stop, you spy!”
Being especially spry and agile, Clarence rushed Boniface and grabbed the sword out of the old man’s hand.
“You traitor!”
Boniface hopped backwards, trying to place the throne between him and his young opponent. “I prefer opportunist!”
Clarence took a fencing position. “So it comes to this.”
“Not really.” By now Boniface was fully ensconced behind Phillip. “You took my sword!” Sticking his tongue out, he added, “Thief!”
By coincidence, a troop of guards entered from another door.
“Oh!” Alice gasped. “I think I’m going to faint!”
Grabbing her tiny waist, Clarence set her aright and slapped her face gently. “Sorry, darling! We don’t have time for that!”
Phillip held his head in his thin fingers. “Throw your sword to the idiot.”
One of the guards tossed his epee to Clarence.
“Not that idiot. The one standing behind me.” The King was ready for his afternoon nap.
Being an Englishman of the highest moral rectitude, Clarence lobbed back to Boniface his sword. Thus equipped, Elizabeth’s courtier quickly moved in front of the guards, creating a phalanx of sorts.
“En garde!”
“En garde!” Clarence returned to his fencing pose.
Alice ran for the door. “To England!”
Boniface lunged toward Clarence who was quick to counter. The old courtier looked behind him at the guards. “Aren’t you going to help me?”
They looked at the King who shrugged and said, “I say let them kill each other.”
Clarence and Boniface began fencing out the door following Alice’s path. They had barely gone before Lord Steppingstone bounded in from another door. (Author’s note: Steppingstone was a few years younger than Boniface and therefore had a tad more stamina. Steppingstone’s family attributed their enhanced athletic conditioning to a steady diet of goat livers sautéed in ewe’s milk.)
“Your Majesty! I haven’t been able to find them! I’ve looked high and low! Over things! Under things!”
“Obviously not under the right things,” Phillip replied with a sad sigh.
Before Steppingstone could say a word, Rodney and Maria dashed in from yet another direction.
“All these corridors look the same,” Rodney muttered.
Maria stopped and gasped in English tones, “Uh oh! There’s King Phillip!”
“Didn’t you know,” his Majesty said with a smirk, “all corridors lead to me.”
“And Lord Steppingstone!” Rodney pointed at him. “You’re the traitor!”
Phillip looked over at his guards. “You know what I said about the last group that came through here?”
The head guard frowned. “I think so, my Lord.”
“Same principle applies here. Toss them both swords and let them fight it out.”
Before they realized what was going on, Rodney and Steppingstone found epees being thrown at them. However, neither missed a beat and took a fencing stance.
“This farce has gone on long enough.” Steppingstone growled.
“I agree,” Rodney replied grimly.
Maria was unimpressed by the display of gallantry and ran to the nearest door. “We don’t have time for chivalry, darling. To England!”
Rodney retreated, following his beloved, yet he still maintained an outstanding show of fencing repartee. Steppingstone followed them out into the corridor. Entering from the same door, Vacacabeza looked behind him, waving a shaking hand.
“Stop! Halt. It’s …futile…to…run….” He would have said more but he collapsed in a faint on the marble floor.
Phillip shook his head. “On days like this, I seriously consider retiring and leaving the kingdom to my crazy son.”