Bad Apple

The war began with the cannon, and it continued with the cannon.

Come morning, after the Mexican departure, I rose with the birds, just before sunup. I left the dead to their eternal sleep and rode east, toward the dawn of a new day—and, I was sure, a new spirit in Texas.

That spirit turned out to be more war-minded than I had anticipated. The camp had largely broken up but not entirely. There were about thirty men remaining, but in two camps—one pocketed in the north, about twenty in number, the other to the south, only ten. The cannon sat in the middle, the banner wrapped round the barrel.

Jim Bowie and James Fannin were in opposite camps, Bowie in the smaller of the two. A few men on both sides were lying down, but most were huddled in small pockets of discussion. Smoke rose from matching campfires, the odor of meat drifting toward me. I approached Bowie’s side; seeing me, he waved me over.

“Any sign of the enemy?” he asked as I dismounted.

It seemed odd to hear him call men who were so recently his countrymen “the enemy.” I wondered if he felt the same or if this had been so long simmering it was natural, maybe even a relief.

“I saw no one,” I replied. “No one alive.”

Bowie nodded, respectful of the dead and my apparent attitude toward them as a former if homegrown preacher. We had talked about that on the ride south. Bowie did not appear to have any particular faith other than land and freedom, but neither did he disdain those who had. One could not live among the deeply practicing Catholics of Mexico and hold their beliefs in contempt.

I accepted a drink of water from his skin—mine was empty—then walked my horse toward a tree. The corral that had been used before was on the other side of the clearing. Bowie met me as I returned to the group.

“Fannin and his people want to bury our gun so the enemy will never be able to take it back,” Bowie said. “We want to keep it with us as a symbol. Like Christ on His Cross,” he added, oblivious to his irreverence.

I immediately grasped and embraced both points of view. But only one could be chosen, of course.

“Mightn’t the banner suffice?” I asked.

Bowie’s frozen face announced that I had uttered something akin to treason.

“Most Texians can’t read, and the others will believe ‘Come and Take It’ is a call to supper. There’s no disputing an actual cannon. ‘That’s what started the war!’ is all they’d need be told.”

“Slows you down,” I pointed out.

“Only if you run,” he said, still somewhat aghast at my attitude. “Maybe you should be with Fannin and his people.”

“I’m with a man I respect, James,” I said. “Doesn’t mean I have to agree with every thought he has.”

Bowie relaxed a little as he considered that. “You speak from the heart, and what you say is fair. Join me for spit-roast hare?”

We walked to a spot just within the trees. I sat on a rock; Bowie crouched on the other side of the fire, facing his new enemies. A trio of picked-on rabbits were on sticks. I selected the one that had the most meat left and began pulling on the greasy white breakfast.

“It took all of a day to find something to fight about,” Bowie lamented. “It was Fannin. He’s got a leader whose legend he can build because the man ain’t here to muddy it. He thinks he can do the same with the cannon.”

“In the telling, it becomes bigger than that little thing,” I said.

Bowie seemed to consider that. “You think built-up talk of a gun will move people more than the thing what was there, that was fought over?”

“I would say that a unified army is more important than the form of the symbol they unify behind,” I told him. “Do you picture a hill or a field when I mention ‘Lexington’ or ‘Concord’? I think of men—men whose faces I don’t know, whose names I can’t remember—taking a stand against the British.”

Bowie considered harder. “Aw, shit. Shit.”

He got up from the rock and walked toward the clearing with his long-legged stride. I returned the rabbit to the forks that held the spit and hurried after him. I wasn’t sure exactly what he was thinking, but I knew him to be a man with a temper and a knife. There was also home brew on his breath, and he did not appear to have slept much, if at all.

The other side saw him approaching and Fannin went out. They met at the cannon.

“John,” Bowie said, “tell him what you just told me.”

I repeated what I thought was my reasonable point of view. Fannin listened, then addressed me, not Bowie.

“Do you have a compromise to offer?” he asked.

That was a big, big step for a stiff-necked man like James Fannin. Apparently, he wanted Texas more than he wanted a cannon.

I hadn’t thought of a solution, other than cutting the cannon in half like Solomon’s baby. And then something occurred to me.

“Deeds,” I said. “Let men be known by what they do. When I preached, I only had to speak of the Prophets and the Messiah. I did not, in my little barn, need images. Some people owned crosses, others made signs of crosses, others folded their hands in prayer.”

“I’m not moved,” Bowie said. “I seen friars out here whip Indians to get them to mass, starve them to leave behind their old religions.”

“I can’t answer for them any more than you can answer for Mingo,” I replied. “What I’m saying is, let the folks decide for themselves how they want to worship.”

“John, what you just told us was to bury the damn thing,” Bowie said with some annoyance. “That’s not a compromise!”

“What I told you was that the day James Bowie needs a cannon is the day that Texas is lost,” I replied.

That was an open play for his vanity, but it worked. It was as though a second dawning had occurred.

The frontiersman looked at Fannin. “Do whatever the hell you want with it,” he said. “I need a smoke.”

Bowie stalked away, reaching for a cigar in his vest pocket. Fannin turned to me.

“Well done,” he said. “May I ask what your preference might be?”

I answered, “From the numbers I saw, if not the resolve, you’re gonna need all the help you can get. It’s a weapon. Use it.”

I do not know if that is what they did. Over the months I heard all kinds of stories. I left Fannin to rejoin my friend Bowie, who announced to me that he was going to leave this group.

“To go where?” I asked.

“Back north,” he replied. “I got land I want to sell and others got land I want to buy.”

“What of the fight?” I asked.

He drew long on his cigar and blew smoke straight up. “It’ll find me,” he answered. “I am confident of that.”

Bowie did not expressly ask me to go, but I decided to go back with him. My idea to go to the Gulf had been pretty general; with Bowie, I stood to learn more about this new land and its ways. Besides, wherever we ended up, I was certain I could secure at least a little plot of land to do what I liked best: grow things.

My plan for the future got remapped real quick.

We were headed north about the same way we headed south. Coming toward us, late on that first afternoon from a heat-rippled plain, was a Mexican driving a buckboard. Its contents were covered with a canvas that was tied down on two sides.

“They’re transporting guns and a man inside, probably armed,” Bowie said.

“How do you know that?”

“Tenting on the right side of the canvas, see it?”

I had to look hard, but he was right.

“Ventilation for someone inside,” Bowie said. “Guns because the front spring is crying. Hear it?”

I did not, though I continued to listen.

“Nothing else weighs a cart like crates full of rifles,” Bowie said. “Question is, bound for who?”

“Don’t the Mexicans have enough guns?” I asked innocently.

“Not modern guns,” he said. “Ours come from the U.S. Theirs are castoffs from Spain. I’m guessing this man and his partner got themselves what they should not have. Arms that we can use.”

Bowie had finished his cigar and took another, struck a match on his saddle. He stopped to light it. I stopped beside him.

“I’m gonna ride past on the right, stopping by the passenger,” Bowie said. “You pull up right in front and ask to see what they got.”

“The man’s wearing a holster,” I pointed out.

“I’ll cover ’em both,” Bowie said. “You just palaver with the man.”

“What if he doesn’t speak English?”

“Tell him you want guns,” Bowie said. “That’s a universal lingo here. Anyway, I’ll understand him.”

It was a dangerously vague plan, I felt, but I had already won one debate with Bowie this day. I was not likely to win another, especially where arms-to-Mexicans was concerned.

We parted a little ways side to side, me halting in front of the wagon and raising a friendly hand, Bowie easing around to the side. The Mexican watched Bowie warily; perhaps he recognized the man or, more likely, his knife

“Buenos dias,” I said in perhaps the worst-accented Spanish ever uttered.

The man repeated my greeting. His off-white, wide-brimmed straw hat covered his eyes. It also caused him to sweat, streams running down both cheeks and tracking through the stubble of a beard.

“¿Quién es usted?” the man asked thickly.

“He wants to know who you are,” Bowie called over.

“I see,” I said. “I’m Señor John Apple—”

“Aw, hell,” Bowie said, impatiently drawing his knife and gun, leaning to his left, and cutting the line that held the canvas in place. He used the tip of the knife to flick the edge back, exposing a man who held what he was probably selling: the new Springfield .69 caliber flintlock musket. Unfortunately for him, lying on his back with the stock on his chest, the gun was pointed at his toes.

Bowie had his own revolver on the man before he could move. I drew the one I had been given to fight the Battle of Gonzales and aimed it at the driver.

“Venga aquí,” Bowie ordered in an accent that wasn’t much better than mine, but Mexican that was. The man put the gun aside and stood with his hands up. Bowie motioned for him to ease down. Gun barrel, I saw, was also a universal language.

I was stupidly watching what was going on and took my eyes off the driver. That was when the man in the buckboard whipped his reins and charged me. I pulled my horse out of the way and the buckboard went wide. My gun simultaneously discharged into the ground, causing my horse to jump a second time.

The man in the back of the cart fell, scrambled for his rifle, and Bowie shot him. He fell on the canvas as Bowie wheeled his horse around to give chase. I felt as helpless as a babe, sitting there as Bowie easily rode the buckboard down. He pulled alongside the rider, fired a shot into the air, and the man stopped. I kicked my horse forward.

As I rode past, I could see that the man in the back was bad-hurt. There was a hole in his neck and blood was shooting up. He was holding it tight, trying to rise, failing. His heels were knocking weakly against the side of the wagon; he would not live much longer. The man in the front had his arms raised.

“Obtenga su amigo,” Bowie told him.

The man climbed from the buckboard, went around back, and recoiled when he saw the condition of his amigo.

“¿Por qué tienes que hacer esto?” the man wailed. “Él es mi hermano.”

“Why? Because you run guns, you pay the price,” Bowie said.

Speaking in English, Bowie had let the man known he wasn’t interested in having a conversation.

The driver climbed up, shouldered the man, and climbed back down. He lay him carefully on the ground, though the bleeding had mostly stopped. The man was dead.

“Give him your horse,” Bowie told me. “We’ll take his, and the wagon.”

It was a decent thing to do, since we could have just left the man there. Though I did not then think that Bowie or I had endeared myself, and it turned out I was right.