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.