Captain Elmer Stasney slid his split tongue between his dark thick lips as he talked to Goodell. Shivers ran through Davy’s body. He ducked back to avoid being seen. After the captain walked away from the general store Davy crossed the dusty street to talk to Goodell.
“That was an odd lookin’ man, warn’t he?” Davy said, keeping his eyes down.
“He shouldn’t be too odd looking to you,” Goodell replied. “You were bound to him.”
“No, I warn’t.” His eyes widened as he looked up. “Honest. We talked about me being a cabin boy, but I changed my mind.”
“That’s not what he said.” Goodell’s voice was harsh.
“He’s lyin’.”
“Why would he come all this way to hunt you down if it didn’t come down to money?”
“Money?”
“Money he paid your parents for your indenture.”
“He never met my parents.”
“Master Davy,” he said with exasperation, “they drove you up in a wagon from Tennessee because all you could talk about was how you wanted to be a sailor.” Goodell paused to look into the boy’s fluttering brown eyes. “Did you want to be sailor?”
“Yes—I mean, I always liked ships, I gotta admit, but my ma and pa ain’t never been further away from home than North Carolina. Honest.”
“How did you get there, all the way from the mountains?”
“I ran away from home,” Davy admitted. “Pa was goin’ to beat me for skippin’ school.”
“I could almost believe that.” Goodell smiled with irony.
“I worked for one teamster then another until I got to Baltimore. Ships drew me, I guess. I met the captain and he offered me a job as a cabin boy.”
“Then you just changed your mind and ran off.”
“Yes, sir.” He gulped and looked away. “He scared me.”
“How did he do that?”
“I’d rather not say.”
“Master Davy, sounds like you haven’t had time to come up with a good story yet.”
He sputtered a moment, became flustered and then spat out, “Did he tell you how he got that tongue?”
“No,” Goodell replied. “I figured it was none of my business.”
“Well, I did it. I had to cut ‘im to git away.”
Goodell turned to go back into the store. Davy scampered after him.
“He was lickin’ the knife to scare me, and I grabbed it and cut ‘im.”
“Why would he be licking the knife?”
“I don’t know. To scare me.”
“So he tracked you down after all this time just to get even?”
“Yes.” He felt as though he were about to cry. “I don’t think he’s normal. Couldn’t you tell he was a li’l tetched in the head?”
“He said the main reason he was looking for you was because he went to your folks’ place in Tennessee and your ma cried when she found out you’d broken your bond. You shamed your family by doing that, Master Davy. Anyway, Captain Stasney said he didn’t mind losing the money, but he hated to see a woman crying because she didn’t know where her child was.”
“He saw ma?” Davy caught a mistake in the captain’s story. “He’s lyin’. I never told ‘im where I lived. How could he go see ma and pa when he didn’t know where to go? All he knew was that I was from the mountains.”
“Master Davy, he didn’t sound crazy to me.”
“But he didn’t say where in the mountains he went, did he?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Mister Goodell, that man is crazy,” he insisted. “I’m afraid he wants to kill me.”
“Like Mister Jefferson took your advice on running for president and how you killed a bear when you were just a little boy?” The storekeeper shook his head. “I can’t remember all the wild adventures you’ve told me about.”
“I know I tell stories, but this ain’t—“
“Master Davy, there ain’t a friendlier boy I ever met than you. If I had to pick a fellow to go fishing with, I’d pick you.” He paused to look him straight in the eye but added in a whisper, “But I don’t believe you.”
Davy looked around, trying to figure out how to convince Goodell to help him. “Please don’t tell ‘im anythin’ until I git to tell Mister Griffith I have to leave.”
“With Captain Stasney, or are you going to run away?”
So this was what his life had become, Davy told himself. He was a winsome lad everyone liked but nobody trusted. Lying had created a cold, empty life for him, but starting to tell the truth at this point was not particularly helpful. Davy had to learn to be more honest, but today was not the day to do it.
“Of course. I’m going back with Captain Stasney. I’ve learned my lesson.”

***

Sissy was wrong. Somebody else did want David Crockett. William Patton and Abner Burgin and other good men wanted him to lead them to Texas. Sam Houston wanted him, and the good people of Texas would want him when he got there. Not if, he thought as he walked away from his daughter dressed in black, but when. His great commitment to his family failed in less than twenty-four hours. He decided it was not his fault. Inside their cabin Elizabeth bent over a large pot she had pulled away from the fireplace on a spit. David heard her humming a vague tune he had heard at some church meeting he had attended with her years ago. She was happy for the first time in a long time. It grieved him he was going to ruin that, but he had his own happiness to consider.
“Elizabeth, the children are dreadful sore at me.”
“Tell me somethin’ I don’t know.” She chuckled to herself. “Give ‘em time.”
“Robert thinks I don’t have it in me to stick around even a month.” He paused. “I don’t think he wants me to stick around.”
“Prove ‘im wrong. After a few months, a few years, and he’ll know.”
David sat on a bench by the table, watching her smiling, serene face. “I hit Matilda. I never thought I’d do that.”
“I know. She told me.” Elizabeth swung the pot back over the fire and then sat across the table from him. “I’ve felt like smackin’ ‘er a few times myself.” She reached across for his hands. “You know, you can’t blame ‘er. What’s jest a good story to you can be a lie to a li’l girl.”
“And jest now,” he continued, pulling away from her, “Sissy told me not to touch her, that nobody wanted me.”
“Your ma’s death dealt a real hard blow to ‘er . Rebecca had a gentle way with her, touched her heart in ways that even I couldn’t do.” She explained. “And when you went off like you did—“
“But I had to campaign—“
“I know you had to campaign, but you also had a daughter that thought you didn’t care.”
“How can you prove a thing like that?” David crossed his arms across his chest. “How do you prove you care?”
“Jest bein’ under the same roof for a spell is a good start,” she replied with a smile. “It takes time.”
“You know William, Abner and the others are showin’ up any day now expectin’ me to go Texas with ‘em.”
“They’re grown men. They can take disappointment.”
“It’d be like breakin’ my word to ‘em.”
“So?” she asked, her voice turning cold.
“If a man ain’t true to his word, then what good is he?”
“What are you sayin’, Mister Crockett?” Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed.
“I have to go,” he whispered.
Standing, she went to a side cupboard, opened a bin and grabbed carrots, potatoes and onions. She came back to the table, dumping the vegetables. Trembling, she picked up a large knife and stabbed the potatoes. David reached across to stay her hand.
“I don’t think you should be doin’ that.”
“You always have to go.” Her voice became raspy with anger. “That Christmas, snow on the ground, larder full and you had to go huntin’. We had plenty of food, but you said we needed meat. We always needed meat.” She said the word as though it were an obscenity. “We didn’t need meat. We needed you.”
“Give me the knife, Elizabeth.”
“You was gone for weeks, and then they came with your horse. They said you was dead. I’d already lost one husband to war, and now I’d lost another jest ‘cause he said we needed meat.”
“Elizabeth, you better sit down.” David took the knife from her hand.
“They said I’d better go collect the body. Collect the body. Do you know what that means?” She turned away. “But I found you alive, half dead of cold, but alive, so I bundled you up and brought you home. And when you was well, you left again. We had to have meat, you said.”
He stood and walked around the table, not knowing what to do or say. Elizabeth had never revealed raw emotion like this before. She was pleasant or extremely stoic, perhaps sometimes derisive. David had come to think of her as a sturdy workhorse, ever plodding, never feeling anything.
“And then came the politics and long weeks of talkin’ and buyin’ whiskey. That’s how you win votes, makin’ jokes and gittin’ drunk. That’s not how a farm is run. I git up every mornin’ and milk cows and feed chickens and plow fields, whether I feel good or not. You had politics. You went off to Murfreesboro and the legislature, run off to Washington and Congress, run off to New York for God knows what reason and I had to stay here and work the farm!” She swung around to glare at him, her eyes red with hot tears.
“Elizabeth, you didn’t say nothin’,” he relied.
“Poor John Wesley! He didn’t git to be a normal boy! He lost his mama and he lost his childhood. He hoed the field right next to me while you got drunk!”
“Elizabeth, I was an elected representative of the people,” he said as self-righteously as he could. “The people, the poor people, had to have one of their own to stand up for them.”
“Who was goin’ to stand up for us? John Wesley had to stand up for us! William had to work for us. Margaret had to be mother to our children. I had to work the land and run the mills you bought and left behind!” She pointed to herself. “I was the one knee deep in river water as the floods swept the mill away! And where was you? In Murfreesboro, standin’ up for the poor man! Who stood up for me?”
“I know what you did,” he said. “Thank you. I’m sorry if I never said that.”
“All the old folks I tended to until they died, all the babies I succored, what was that for, Mister Crockett?”
“It’s what folks do, Elizabeth.”
“No, some folks hunt for meat, git drunk, laugh with strangers and say aye or nay in Congress and call it work!”
“I’m sorry.”
“And that’s what I git for years of aches and pains and tears and blood and loneliness? After all these years of keepin’ on keepin’ on, farmin’ and tendin’ to everybody else, that’s what I git? I’m sorry?” Her large frame shook in spasm with holy anger. “No well done, thou good and faithful servant? No rest and comfort in my old age? Never! Not in this lifetime! Not from David Crockett!” Her hands flew up to her face and slowly wiped the tears from her broad tanned worn cheeks. She breathed in deeply several times and blew her nose on her apron. “I’ve supper to finish. The children must be fed.” She turned her back to him. “I won’t never speak of this again.”

***

As Dave’s plane lifted off from Dallas-Fort Worth Airport he put his head back and closed his eyes, thinking of what Tiffany said on the telephone.
“You didn’t have to hide all that stuff from me.”
She did not know, he thought. She just did not know. How could he tell her how he had to grow up in the house on Rice Avenue where his mother died, his father did not care and his brothers were not normal? He always relied on his mother’s laughter to make life bearable. Dave knew the exact time he decided he could not trust his father anymore. It was when Lonnie refused to bail Vince out of jail for drunk driving. It was not the money that bothered him; it was the fear that if he ever made a foolish mistake and wound up in jail his father would not bail him out either.
A tremble spurted through his shoulders, causing a plane passenger next to him to look askance before returning to her book. Dave remembered when he was five and Allan would jump from behind a door to scare him. Because Dave screamed, Allan laughed hysterically and repeated the sneak attack so often that Dave trembled when he walked through a dark room alone. He did not enjoy carnival rides because Allan liked to pretend he was going to push him out of the car. Allan also thought it was funny to chase little Dave around the house with a hot iron. Not only did Dave not trust Allan, he also thanked God his brother was dead.
He could not trust Vince either. Dave never got through a complete sentence without Vince interrupting him and calling him stupid or a liar. Dave’s shoulders shook again, causing the passenger next to him to shift in discomfort.
No wonder he did not want to tell Tiffany all this stuff, he told himself, but he had to tell her if their marriage were to survive.
The plane landed, Dave rented a car and followed Sarah Beth’s directions to her house. Now he had to convince this woman to give back the family Bible. He pulled up in front of the house and took a deep breath.
“Hello, you must be Dave,” Sarah Beth said as she opened the door. She was not as old as he expected, in her early fifties, perhaps. Her face was pleasant, and she was dressed in a blouse and pants that were flattering but not overtly stylish. “I hope you don’t mind,” she said, leading him into her living room. “I invited my aunt Myrtle Goodell and cousin Mary Jenkins over to meet you.”
The cousin was maybe Dave’s age and quite attractive and seemed too dignified a person to be interested in the descendants of Davy Crockett. Her mother Myrtle, on the other hand, absolutely glowed, her grayish silver hair recently permed and her dress pressed with efficiency.
“Imagine,” the old woman gushed as she went to Dave, her hand extended, “an actual grandson of Davy Crockett!” She shook his hand with vigor. “How many greats?”
“Pardon?” He leaned forward, not quite understanding what she meant.
“Are you a great grandson or a great great grandson?”
“Oh.” He smiled sheepishly. “Three greats.”
“I’m the great great granddaughter of Davy Crockett’s first true love,” Myrtle announced proudly.