Where you headed for, sir?” Davy asked, catching up with the pious-looking man on the other bank of the Rappahannock River.
“Gerardstown, young man.” He kept his chin high and his eyes straight ahead.
Davy glanced back into the Conestoga wagon and saw large wooden-staved barrels bound with rusty metal, several of them, tied together with rope.
“What do you have in those barrels, sir?”
“Bolts of cloth,” he replied with a serene smile. “Sturdy flannel.”
“Yes sir, nothin’ like it. My ma uses it all the time.” Davy did not know flannel was but still was sure his mother had used in sometime, so that really was not a lie. He stuck out his hand and grinned. “I’m Davy Crockett from Morristown, Tennessee, sir.”
“Adam Meyers,” he said, shaking Davy’s hand. “I’m from Tennessee, too.” Meyers paused. “What are you doing so far away from home?”
“Earnin’ money for my family, sir.” For the next hour he spun a wonderful tale of devotion to a family wracked by disaster and illness. He told of his personal sacrifices to keep a roof over their heads and vittles on the table.
“Very good,” Meyers interjected from time to time, nodding in agreement. “Honor thy father and thy mother.”
Davy had never known a man who quoted the Bible so much. His family did not have much time for God, not that they did not believe in God; they just had other things to do. He decided to keep that information to himself.
“Goin’ to Tennessee anytime soon?”
“After I unload the flannel in Gerardstown I’ll get a new load, God willing, to carry back to Tennessee. I don’t see why you can’t travel with me back to your family.”
Several days passed as they walked north along side of the oxen pulling the Conestoga wagon, with a few moments of silence. Davy told him how he encouraged Thomas Jefferson to run for president. Then he explained in vivid detail how he shot a big mean brown bear. When Davy ran out of stories, Meyers intoned with solemnity on the spiritual vacuum of the nation.
“These are perilous times, Master Crockett. No country has ever survived without faith, and our people, young man, have abandoned God. Churches have empty pews. Jesus is coming again soon, and America will be destroyed for its sinful ways.”
Davy nodded, not knowing what to make of his new boss. Adam Meyers seemed of another world, a better world. Perhaps he could teach Davy to tell the truth. Late one night lit by a full moon, they rounded a hill of tall pine trees and Gerardstown appeared. Davy became aware no one had spoken in some time, and silence made him uncomfortable. He looked up at the stars and sighed deeply.
“God, ain’t they purty?”
A sharp blow crashed into his temple, leaving him with a profound pain encircling his skull. He shook his head and looked in bewilderment at Meyers whose eyes stared straight ahead on the road.
“Thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain.”
“Yes sir,” Davy said, mumbling, his eyes down.
In the distance, a raccoon’s trill broke through the cool air, and Davy’s heart went out to the frightened creature because he knew how it felt.

***

Elizabeth, tall and broad shouldered, walked to David and kissed him on the cheek. He put his hands on her ample hips and returned her kiss by pressing his lips to hers, only to feel no response. David felt awed by his second wife’s presence, her thick, solid arms, large bosom, stocky legs and piercing, soul-searching eyes. She always smelled of soap.
“I’m sorry my sisters have raised such a fuss,” she said with a proper precision.
“Ain’t your fault.” His eyes turned to his children. “Robert, you’ve grown since spring. Why, you’re almost as tall as me.”
His nineteen-year-old son, built sturdy like his moher’s side of the family, nodded with brusqueness. When David realized he was not going to get any more of a response from Robert, he turned to his older daughter.
“Sissy, why are you decked out in black? A gal your age should look pretty,” he said with a smile.
“I’m still mournin’ grandma.” She was slender and frail like most Crockett women. In many ways she looked more like Polly, his first wife who died at age twenty-seven.
“Oh. That’s right.” David’s eyes looked away, ashamed he had already forgotten how hard his sensitive daughter had taken his mother’s death. She cried for days, sitting by the freshly dug grave of her grandmother. Elizabeth did not have the words to console her. The only time Sissy seemed to calm down was when David put his arm around her slender shoulders and told her stories about her grandmother. Then he had to leave for the congressional campaign and he promptly left behind all thoughts about Sissy’s grief.
Before he could say anything else to her, his fifteen-year-old daughter Matilda grabbed him around the waist and hugged with force.
“Oh, pa, it’s so good to see you,” she said, her voice overflowing with flirtatious energy. “And I jest cried for days when I heard you lost the election. Why, how any could any man vote for anybody but David Crockett, I can’t imagine.”
“That’s quite enough, Matilda,” Sissy said. “It ain’t proper for a young woman to be so loud in a public place, let alone talkin’ about a topic best left to the menfolk.”
“I’m David Crockett’s daughter,” she replied with a chirp. “Of course I’m goin’ to be loud. What else would people expect?”
“You’re also Rebecca Crockett’s granddaughter,” Sissy said.
“Now hush, girls,” Elizabeth intervened. She returned her solemn attention to David. “I supposed you’ve been huntin’.”
“Yes, me and Abner went out to the ‘canes with Sam Houston. We didn’t kill much of nothin’. Sam’s only here for a while before goin’ back to Texas. He thinks there’s a chance for a fight.”
“I reckon you’ll be goin’ to Texas too,” Robert said.
David raised his eyebrows with false surprise. ‘Why, I ain’t given it much thought either way.”
“I think that’d be jest wonderful,” Matilda said, her face beaming. “David Crockett always needs some new battle to fight.”
“Battle?” Sissy’s eyes widened.
“I didn’t mean a real battle,” Matilda said with a giggle. “I mean, everythin’ is battle in a way.”
“But there’s hard feelin’s out in Texas,” Robert added.
“We’d like for you to come to the farm if you have time’” Elizabeth said. Her voice intensified, which made Robert take a step back and look down. “We miss you very much, you know.”
David had no fears when he faced wild animals and hostile politicians but none of them made him as uneasy as his own family. He never had the courage to ask Elizabeth why she chose not to move to Rutherford fork with him. Elizabeth broke the silence after looking across the chancery courtroom.
“I had hoped John Wesley would come over to say hello.” She sighed. “I haven’t seen him all week.”
“Why, ma, he’s a busy lawyer now. He can’t be visitin’ family all the time,” Matilda said with a laugh.
“I know that,” Elizabeth replied. “But he’s my window on the world. He’s the one who told us about the election. We wouldn’t know nothin’ about you at all if it wasn’t for John Wesley.”
“He won’t come out of this office,” Davy said. “He don’t want the kin to think he’s partial to our side.”
“He’s a good man.” Elizabeth nodded. “No one can accuse him of not bein’ fair.”
“Always been that way.” David paused to grin. “’Course he’s worse now that he’s found religion. He thinks he’s goin’ to Paradise on a streak of lightnin’.”
Matilda laughed, but stopped when she saw the frown on her mother’s face.
“I don’t think it’s proper to make fun of folks and the Lord,” Elizabeth said.
“Yes, ma’am, you’re right about that, Elizabeth. I jest opened my mouth and let the quick and easy joke float out.” Suddenly David felt an urge to go raccoon hunting, even tonight. He wanted to hear the raccoon’s pathetic cry.

***

Taking a deep breath Dave opened the torn screen door and stepped inside. He felt like a raccoon trapped in a cage. He stopped short. If his mother were alive, the sight of her living room, covered with years of dust and its furniture neglected to the point of deterioration, would kill her. A small portable black and white television sat on top of a broken console set and flared out a Texas Rangers baseball game. His father Lonnie laid prone in a worn recliner with its foot rest stuck out. His mouth was wide open as he snored. Dave shook his head when he fingered tattered curtains on windows whose panes were blurred with grime and tobacco smoke. Smell of cigarettes curled up his nostrils.
Next his eyes wandered to the far wall which contained a kitchen alcove framed by formerly white molding, now dirty brown. The natural gas stove was smeared with grease, and the chipped porcelain sink was filled with dirty dishes. He remembered how Vince was convinced Allan had become a homosexual because their mother made him wash dishes.
Dave grimaced when he noticed a mottled spot on one of the kitchen cabinet doors. He remembered the day his mother had painted them and left them open to dry. Dave ran into the alcove after school waving a test paper with “one hundred” on it and smacked into wet paint. She twirled him around and swatted his bottom. He remembered blubbering apologies and offering to repaint the door.
“No, it’s too late,” she replied curtly. “It’s ruined. I guess I’m not meant to have anything nice.”
Dave forgave his mother for her outburst. Cancer cells were already spreading through her body beginning to cause indeterminable aches and pains which shortened her temper and eroded her sense of humor.
Next to the alcove was a dark hallway leading to two bedrooms and a bath. He shuddered and forced himself not to dwell on what happened in the small bedroom with his brothers at night. Their parents were just across the hall, but they might as well have been half a country away because once his father went to sleep no one dared open his bedroom door.
What a dump.
Dave jumped, and his stomach knotted. He recognized that voice, Allan’s flawed imitation of Bette Davis. Turning with dread he saw the image of his older brother as he looked before Dave moved to Waco.
Don’t you just love Bette Davis? No matter what part she plays you can always tell it’s her by the way she darts her eyes up to the left and then up to the right.
“Not anymore. She’s kind of retired. Doesn’t make very many movies anymore.” Allan was dead; and like his mother in his dreams, Allan was still here. It would be rude to tell him he was dead.
How triste. How tres, tres treste.
Dave expected him to say some common phrase in Spanish next. Allan first majored in English because that was what their father told him to do. Someone informed Lonnie if a person had a degree in English he could always get a job teaching. Allan had other ideas. He showed a minor talent for Spanish and French in high school, so when he flunked English courses he switched to Spanish and when he flunked the advanced grammar courses in that language he switched to French, which Allan also failed to comprehend on a complex level. Perhaps if Dave made himself think of something else, Allan would go away, so he looked around the room again, this time his eyes catching a light bulb in its ceramic base dangling from wire to the ceiling.
“This place is a mess,” Dave said muttering.
He tried to get me to clean it up, the old devil.
“Mother must be spinning in her grave,” Dave said, shaking his head, still hoping Allan would leave.
He killed her, you know. Sex, sex, sex, all the time sex.
Wake up dad, Dave told himself, wake up dad, and Allan will evaporate. He touched his father’s shoulder and leaned over to whisper, “Dad?”