Davy walked slowly back to the cabin, his mind racing about what to do about Captain Stasney, Inside he saw Harriet was back, busy in the kitchen chopping vegetables for a stew, and Griffith laboring over the crown of a woman’s hat. He watched her look up, smile at him but then frown.
“What’s wrong, Davy?’ she asked.
He opened his mouth but no words came out. Davy first thought to lie and say there was nothing wrong, but decided even he was not a good enough liar to fool them.
“I’m in real bad trouble,” he whispered.
“Father, please stop and listen,” she said with urgency.
“Huh?” He looked up and scrunched his brow.
“Davy says he’s in trouble.”
“There’s this man in town,” he began tentatively. “He’s the sea captain I almost went to work for. In Baltimore. He’s telling Mr. Goodell I broke my bond and ran away. But I didn’t. My parents didn’t apprentice me to him. Honest. I know I lie but I’m not lyin’ about this.”
“I don’t understand,” Harriet said, her voice cracking. “Why would he track you down all the way here from Baltimore just because you owe him money?”
“Master Davy?” Griffith asked seriously.
“I cut him,” he said in an even voice. “I cut ‘im bad. I had to to git outta there.”
“Was he trying to hurt you?’ Harriet dried her eyes.
“Yes.”
“Where did you cut him?” Griffith asked.
“He was lickin’ his knife and I grabbed it and cut his tongue. I cut it real bad. It’s forked, like a snake’s tongue now.”
“Why was he licking the knife?” Harriet wrinkled her brow.
“Hush, Harriet,” Griffith instructed her. He looked at Davy, his brow knitted. “Did that man do anything to you, boy?”
“No, sir. But I know he meant to.” He glanced at Harriet and dropped his head. “Mister Griffith, sir, he showed me a book. It was a book I wouldn’t want nobody to look at.”
“You don’t have to say anymore,” he said.
“I don’t understand, Father.”
“You don’t have to understand, dear. Just know this is a very sick, very evil man who is after our Master Davy. I’ve seen men like this before. Children aren’t safe around them.”
“Father, you’re scaring me,” she said, her voice trembling.
“Harriet, darling,” he whispered, hugging her, “go to Miss Dorcas’s house. Ask her if you may spend the night. If she asks why, tell her I’m having one of my fits. She’ll believe you. Whatever you do, don’t leave Miss Dorcas’s side until I call for you tomorrow morning.”

***

Stung by Elizabeth’s outburst, David kept quiet during the evening meal, sat out by the barn until all the lamps had gone out. The next morning, after a quiet breakfast with the family, he followed Robert to the barn. His son walked to the shelf where the farm tools lay. He paused when his gaze caught the glint of a new rifle’s metal barrel reflecting in the morning light. Picking it up Robert also saw the saddlebag, bedroll and other items for living on the trail. He looked at David.
“Who’s this for?”
“William,” he replied softly. “It’s part of his inheritance from his grandpa. He needed these things now instead of waitin’ for the will to be settled.”
“Oh.” Robert pinched his lips shut as he put the rifle down and grabbed an axe from the shelf.
“I need to talk to you about somethin’.”
Robert brushed past him, carrying the axe toward the barn door. “I’m too busy to talk to an old drunk.”
“What do you mean by that?” David grabbed him by the arm.
“I got firewood to chop.”
“What did you mean about an old drunk?”
“You’re an old drunk.”
“I’m gittin’ sick and tired of that chip on your shoulder. So you think you had it bad? Well, you don’t know what bad is. You should have been on your own as a boy in the big city. You’d know what bad was.” His eyes fluttered, and his feet shuffled. “If I ain’t been here it’s ‘cause I worked to—to provide for you and the family. That Congress salary came in purty handy, didn’t it?”
“I ain’t never seen any of it.”
“I know, boy.” David stepped back and looked down.
“Don’t call me boy.”
“I know you ain’t no boy no more. I mean, you’ll always be my boy.”
“You never acted like I was your boy.” Robert pinched his lips as his hands tightened around the axe.
“You know that ain’t so.”
“What did you want to tell me?”
“Well, your ma and I had a talk and we decided it might be better for everybody if I went ahead to Texas.”
“I don’t think ma had any part of that decision.”
“You callin’ me a liar?”
“Yes, I am.”
That made it just about unanimous, David thought. All members of his family thought he was a liar. They did not understand the intricacies of political expedience.
“Anyway, your cousin and uncle will be here in a few days. I promised to lead ‘em to Texas.”
“I always thought us young fellows got to go out West. William gits to go, but I don’t.” He exhaled with bitterness. “But you go ahead. I’ll stay here and do your job, tend to your wife and daughters.”
“You don’t have to tend to nothin’,” David replied in a huff. “I’ve always tended to my own.”
“The way a lie floats off your tongue, it’s like you actually believe it.”
“Don’t call me a liar!” David pushed Robert.
“Don’t touch me,” he replied in a soft sinister tone as he dropped the axe.
“I’ll do what I want!” David pushed him again.
Robert punched his father in the gut, knocking him to the ground. “Why don’t you go crawl into a whiskey bottle and stay there?”
“Stop it!” Elizabeth commanded in a loud impatient voice as she appeared in the barn door. “I won’t abide fightin’ on my farm!”
“He makes me so mad.” Robert stepped back, his face a bright red.
“I know he does, but I said no fightin’.” She looked down at David. “Well, don’t jest sit there, Mr. Crockett. Git up.”
“He called me a liar.” David realized he sounded like a child making excuses to his mother after being pulled up by the ear.
“It’s not like nobody never called you that before,” she said. “Now git up.”
As he stood David grumbled, “Polly’s children never talked to me like that.”
“Yes, they did,” she replied. “You don’t remember.” Elizabeth turned to Robert. “And you, young man, you have to git hold of yourself.”
“Why don’t you tell ‘im he can’t go?”
“You think it’d make any difference if I did?”
“No,” Robert said sourly.
“Remember what I said the other night?”
“No.”
“I said be good to your father.”
David remembered her telling him that when he slid into bed the night he decided not to stay. She also told him to be good to them. Both of them failed.
“He ain’t never been good to me.” Robert pointed to the new rifle and gear on the ground near the tool shelf. “He got William a gun and saddlebag and stuff. He ain’t never given me nothin’ like that.”
“There’s too much pain in the world without hurtin’ your own blood.” She paused to soften her voice. “Now you don’t begrudge your cousin a few nice things, do you? He’s had so much grief in his life.”
“I guess not.” Robert looked down. “William’s all right. He’s always done right by me. I guess he can have those things.” He looked up with anger at his father. “But why can I git ‘em too? I’ve had grief. I worked hard. I deserve somethin’.”
“You deserve everythin’, and one day you’ll git it,” Elizabeth replied in quiet assurance.
“So he gits to do anythin’ he wants,” Robert said.
“Somebody has to do the right thing first.” Elizabeth stared at David. “Most times it’s the parent, but sometimes not.”

***

“This must look familiar,” Sarah Beth said, holding up the worn leather-bound Bible.
“Yes,” Dave replied. “This is it.” He remembered when he was a child his mother would carefully remove the Bible from a bottom drawer of the bedroom dresser, as though she were handling a holy relic. His father, even though the Bible was from his side of the family, never seemed to care about it much. The pages were yellowed and very thin, seeming to fall apart if someone breathed too harshly on them.
Dave turned a few pages, the large elaborate initial letters of chapters stirring pleasant memories. Allan and Vince seemed to be nicer when their mother brought the old book out so they could admire the pretty pictures of Moses, David, Jesus, Paul and all the other characters in between. In the middle of the Bible his finger touched David Crockett’s signature. A few pages over he saw his grandmother’s handwriting which inscribed the birth of Lonnie Crockett. He tapped it.
“This is what I need,” he said. “Dad needs to present this to Social Security so he can get into a nursing home.”
“You may borrow it, of course,” Sarah Beth said.
“Your father is so fortunate to have such a loving son to go to all this trouble for him,” Myrtle gushed.
“I was visiting my sister in Dallas in July,” Sarah Beth explained as she motioned for all of them to sit. “We decided to go antiquing one afternoon. In this one bookstore I was getting bored. My sister wanted a first edition Dickens, I think, which didn’t interest me. My eyes caught the dark leather of that book on a table of old Bibles. When I first picked it up I could see it must be over a hundred years old. Then I opened it to the title page and saw the date eighteen thirty-five.”
“Oh, let me tell the story about Harriet,” Myrtle interrupted.
“She’s not to that part of the story yet, Mother,” Mary said with a bit of amusement.
“I could not believe my eyes when I turned to the family pages in the middle,” Sarah Beth continued, smiling at her aunt. “When I saw Davy Crockett’s signature I had to buy it. Even my sister forgot all about Dickens when I showed it to her.” She looked back at Dave. “I could tell the woman in the shop was a bit pained when I brought it to the counter, but I had to have it. The price was reasonable.”
Dave could not help but like the women. Sarah Beth was gracious, Myrtle vivacious and Mary patient. They seemed sincere in their interest in his family, but he did not understand why.
“Aunt Myrtle,” Sarah Beth said, “You may now explain why we are so enamored with Davy Crockett.”
Myrtle’s face brightened. “Our great great grandmother Harriet Goodell loved her husband very much, but she always said her first love was Davy Crockett.
“Her maiden name was Griffith, and her father Elijah was a prominent hat maker in Christiansburg, Virginia, in early eighteen hundred. Harriet’s mother died when she was twelve, leaving her to be mistress of the house. Apprentices came and went. All that changed one day when this handsome boy with beautiful red cheeks wandered into town. Harriet convinced her father to take him on as an apprentice.” She paused for emphasis. “And that young man was Davy Crockett. Smart as a tack, he picked up on learning the trade quickly, but he could not read, write or do his numbers. Harriet took it upon herself to teach him everything a child should learn in school, for, evidently, Davy had not gone to a real school a day in his life. That boy, as you probably know, came from a family in the depths of poverty.
“He lived and worked with Harriet and her father for almost two years, and during that time he learned to read, write and do arithmetic as good as anyone. Harriet said she thought he was a genius to have overcome all those obstacles to do what he did. Of course, during that time Harriet and Davy fell in love. By all accounts she was beautiful with golden ringlets, and, of course, he was extremely handsome. There was talk of marriage and Davy’s taking over the family business, but history had to run its course. Davy Crockett could not stay in a small Virginia town married to a hatter’s daughter. He was destined for greatness, and Harriet married Charles Goodell, who owned the local general store.” Myrtle’s face saddened. “They did not live happily ever after, but very few of us do.”