Bad Apple

They started late in February—that Santa Anna was on the move, that he was laying waste to everything in his way, and that he was coming to San Antonio. God or the Devil, I’m not sure which, must’ve had a laugh when Travis decided to send an observer up to the bell tower of the church—the same one where the Peacock had been holed up—to watch the plains for any sign of an army.

A lot of the locals wasn’t taking any chances. They left with whatever they could tote by mule, horse, or sledge. Travis, as a precaution, sent us out to look through their abandoned homes for food, drink, and any jugs or containers that could be used to hold water. When, on that first day, our lookout spotted Mexican soldiers, more men were sent out to round up whatever livestock was left—cattle, goats, chickens, everything. I grabbed a canvas sack and sifted through compost for pits and seeds to plant, in case we were laid siege to.

The first of the Mexicans, about fifteen hundred in number—an easy computation since they walked in neat rows—did not camp outside of town but walked boldly in. Those boys up front of their lines couldn’t’ve been too pleased: that was Santa Anna’s way of seeing where we had hid troops. He figured they would pick off the leading men and then retreat. As it happened, we didn’t have men on the outside. Fearing a full assault—from an enemy that already outnumbered us ten-to-one—Travis had gotten everyone including the lookout inside the Alamo. So there was no shooting, then. Just an occupying army on one side, and some mighty resolved Texians and guests on the other.

The only engagement we had came when the Mexicans raised a red flag, high for us to see. That signaled their intention to do what they had done since crossing the Rio Grande: to give no quarter to combatants. Travis, who did not care for threats whether they was written on paper or on flags, fired a cannon in the general direction of the rag. He blew up a lot of dirt, no Mexicans; but at least the first shot had been ours.

The next dozen or so were not.

The Mexicans set up batteries of cannon about a thousand feet from the east wall and the south wall. They fired pretty consistent for a couple of days, landing short of the structure but hitting the plaza in front. We returned fire now and then, especially when they started moving the big guns up farther and farther. As often as possible we sent their own cannonballs whistling back at them. But we did that less and less because we knew we would need those when an attack came.

We still didn’t know that would happen; there was still a thought that they would try to starve us out. But then everybody’s plans got waylaid when the temperature fell to freezing. Men on both sides got sick, Bowie included. I went out on one of the nighttime excursions to get firewood, but the Mexicans were waiting for us wherever we went—woods, gullies, homes, stables. I came back with my left hand full of sticks. They certainly weren’t worth the life of Harry Russell, a kid who became our first casualty. Didn’t matter that we killed nine of the invaders. We lost a brother, and frankly, we could not afford to trade the enemy even one-for-nine . . . or one for ninety, for that matter.

We were cold, and spirits sunk as Bowie’s health deteriorated. Crockett suggested using our manpower to push out of the Alamo, take up guerrilla positions in the surrounding territory. But with Bowie down, Travis was the sole commander, and he not only spurned that idea—he told Crockett to take his Tennesseans and go, but he and his command were staying.

“I will die like a soldier,” he said. “At my command, not in retreat.”

I don’t know if that was a decent thing Travis did, no doubt about it shaming the man into staying. But Crockett stayed and Crockett died.

I mentioned before that weather and a lack of supplies caused Santa Anna’s main army to straggle. It was still possible for us to send couriers to Sam Houston and others, requesting supplies and reinforcements—until, after that first week, more Mexican soldiers arrived and Santa Anna was able to cut off the road to Gonzales. Conveying our needs was now more dangerous, and took longer, and was something we could no longer afford.

I was one of the few who managed to get out almost every night. My job was to go out with a big empty grain sack and find edibles growing wild, which was mostly cactus and nuts, some roots. I would mud up and leave the compound at night. The mud not only gave me concealment but helped keep me warm, as did the guts of animals I caught and killed on my sojourns. All I had to do was get a nail in ’em and reel the critters in.

While I was out, I spied on the enemy. It was almost inevitable; they was everywhere. It would’ve helped if I knew Spanish, but it was useful for me to know exactly where soldiers were stationed, who faced in what direction, and when their replacements arrived so I could travel a little safer the next night. What I found went first to the few wives and children who had come into the mission with their husbands. These were families who had been garrisoned in the town itself, which was no longer possible. Once the ladies and young ones departed—a kindness offered by the Mexican when a final attack was near—it was not as easy for me to get out. That was because an ocean of Mexican soldiers finally arrived, kept arriving, and then were reinforced with even more infantry. It livened up the drab landscape with their blues and reds and yellows, but it did not do the same for our spirits.

There was one last opportunity for those who wanted to go to do so. It was just after all five thousand Mexicans reached San Antonio. We watched from the walls as the last of the army arrived, the generalissimo among them, all puffed and proud and covered with braid on top of his stallion. Mexican soldiers filled every street we could see, every window and doorway; they were on the rooftops—out of range of our best shooters—they were every damn where. There were cheers, thrown flowers, and from that late morning parade until the late evening, there was celebration. Part of that, I’m sure, was relief at having finished a long, unpleasant journey and of brothers-in-arms reunited. Part of it, I reckon, was in expectation of an easy victory. Had to be, looking at us behind stone walls that could barely hold theirselves up, let alone soldiers. And part of that joy was probably news reaching them—as it did us, in our last outside dispatches—that General José de Urrea had been victorious over Colonel Frank W. Johnson at San Patricio. Someone with a horn started playing their death song, el Degüello, its bold notes cutting through the night and through the soul of every Texian who heard it. It was like having a funeral before there was anyone to bury.

Spirits were low and worry was high. Every man who spoke, spoke of not being sure that staying was the wisest thing to do. If they was afraid to die, no one showed it. But to die like a swatted fly . . . that didn’t sit well. Some men argued that every wound inflicted on Santa Anna’s men, every minute they were delayed, bought our fellow Texians time to strengthen at La Bahía.

That was a pretty will-o’-the-wisp idea for the men to grasp. For one thing, it was a guess. No one knew how many men had been added, if any, to the five hundred Fannin had there—and, looking at the army spread before us, we wondered if even twice that would be enough. Even some of Travis’s 150 were starting to openly question the idea of staying put.

Travis heard the noise and called everyone, save the still-ailing Bowie, to the plaza outside the mission and told everyone that an assault was clearly coming . . . and reinforcements weren’t. The last communication, the one that told us about San Patricio, included a private communication from Sam Houston to Travis. The colonel said that his orders were to hold the Alamo if it was humanly possible. Travis told us that he planned to do so, for as long as it was humanly possible.

There was a lot of quiet after he spoke. Even Crockett had nothing to say, which was pretty surprising.

The colonel broke the silence by drawing his saber and cutting a line in the dirt. He asked those who were willing to stay—what he said was, “Those who are willing to die for Texas”—to stand on his side of the mark. Only one man, fella named Moses Rose, declined to do so. He left that night, promising to continue the fight elsewhere. With him went another man, one of our couriers by the name of James Allen. He didn’t want to go but he had in his pouch newly writ letters from Travis and others.

“It is more important that our words live out there than you die in here,” the colonel told him.

To a well-bred man like Travis, that was a good and noble sentiment. To most of us, we’d’ve rather burned the papers and joined Colonel Fannin. But Travis would not leave his command and the men would not leave Travis.

Because of my familiarity with the nighttime terrain, it fell upon me to get the men out of the Alamo and into the open. Before I left, the fort medic, Amos Pollard, came to me with a gift.

“From Jim,” he said.

The man handed me Bowie’s own knife. I was humbled . . . and suddenly very afraid for my friend.

“He’ll need it,” I said.

“It is important to him that this not fall into the hands of the enemy.”

“But I’m coming back,” I said.

“I’m only repeating what my patient told me,” Pollard replied.

The doctor turned to go but I halted him with a hand on his shoulder. I drew my machete-knife and gave it to him. “I will honor Bowie’s request but I will not leave him without a blade. You tell him—you tell my friend that we will exchange them in the morning.”

The doctor accepted the knife without comment. His expression, though, concerned me. It seemed strangely whimsical, as though the idea of seeing morning was somehow comical.

I left with the others and, while I was outside the compound, I planned to do my usual foraging. That was when the world seemed to catch fire.

I was just on the lip of my favorite long, deep gulley when the ground was lighted beneath me—a sharp, clear moment of light. It was followed by another and then another. I froze like a mouse when the cannons discharged and guns started firing, lighting the night with white and red flashes and balls of gray smoke. I couldn’t see the Alamo from where I was—in a copse, with a wide gully running through, one we’d used for a trail. But I saw the road and the Mexicans shooting their way forward— stopping only when Davy Crockett and three other Tennesseans opened fire at them from behind bales of hay sitting innocently in the street.

Crockett’s aim was deadly, and when his bullets ran out he leapt over his bale, scooped up the rifle of a dead Mexican, one he had killed, and began swinging it at the others like he was some Viking warrior with an ax. He fell in a volley that near tore his chest in half. The Tennesseans had stood to follow him but they got cut down first. I saw men run from the mission to take their places but they got drove back by fire. One of them managed to toss a torch into the hay, creating a wall of fire that sent the Mexicans back—right into a volley fired where the Tennesseans knew they would be retreating. To men just coming to the top of the wall to replace fallen comrades, it had to look like a massacre—by Crockett. I counted thirteen dead Mexicans with one man in their midst.

But that was just an opening skirmish, an attempt by Santa Anna to take the plaza and drive everyone from positions in the streets. It quickly became clear that the Texians were going to concentrate their fire in a way to keep the Mexican army on the east from linking up with the army on the south. Travis must’ve figured if he could break the one on the east they could concentrate all their defenses on the main force.

But Santa Anna and his generals would’ve figured that, too. Instead of attacking the Alamo, they attacked the barracks where men was still getting ready to join the fight. The fight came to them as—at a great loss of blood on the Mexican side—the invaders shot and stabbed and shouldered their bully way into that long structure. At the same time, Mexicans turned the back door into a graveyard by discharging bullets so fast and deep that the howl of gunpowder was near-continuous. I couldn’t see that side of things, but I could hear the cries of those who fell. Funny how, among the dying, I couldn’t tell who was friend and who was enemy. In the wild, you know an eagle from a mouse, a coyote from a hare. When I thought of men killing men, the concept suddenly became sinful.

Yet, I was a practitioner and I would continue to be. I figured it would have to be up to God to sort it all out. After all, He was the one who made us.

It had only been, I guessed, a few minutes and yet already the smell of blood was mixed with the powerful odor of gunpowder from cannon and rifle and the mixed stink of burning hay, burning clothes, and flaming bodies. I realized the roar was growing more and more like faraway thunder—my ears were getting clogged with sound, plugged-up. The only things that came through clear were different sounds: now the cackling laugh of fire, now the throaty collapse of stone, now the cries—different cries from the dying—of men who I could dimly see throwing up ladders to try and scale the walls of the Alamo, only to have them thrown back by powerful, Texian hands or pushed back by rifle stocks rammed against the top rung or the body of a Mexican. Santa Anna’s men was so thick on each ladder that, in the firelight and cannon glow, it looked like a centipede falling backward, wriggling and writhing as it dropped. Then the naked skeleton of the ladder went right back up, pushed by a new supply of Mexicans, who then climbed back up. Before very long, the ladders stopped falling. . . but the Mexicans didn’t stop climbing.

The fighting was hand to hand, then. I say that not having actually seen much of it. The war had shifted from the barracks to the walls of the Alamo itself and I saw shapes on the top there, moving against the dawning sky, struggling, shifting, reaching, pulling, slashing, clubbing . . . if there was a way to fight, the Texians was doing it. I heard shouts, not cries, of a bearlike quality. Men roaring at those trying to get into their den, bellowing . . . snarling . . . then falling silent.

There were fires lighting everything now. Angry orange and red in front, on the wall, and delicate rose from behind. The churning smoke had been grayish-white in the darkness; now it was grayish-black, an ugly reflection of the dead below. And below it, the now visible colors of the Mexican troops as they moved forward like they was demons emerging from hell. Now and then there was gunfire into a Texian body that was still moving on the ground. The remains of Davy Crockett got trampled on by the unawares mob . . . and maybe that was a good thing, I thought, so his corpse could not be identified for certain and toted round in a coffin for all to see.

Thinking of Crockett made me realize, just at that moment, when the battle was starting to quiet, that Jim Bowie was probably also dead. Even in his bed, he would not have let himself be taken, nor would he have stopped trying to kill the enemy. I pictured the infirmary, the cot where he lay. There was only room enough for one man at a time through the narrow door. I could see Mexicans falling till he ran out of bullets, then pausing to take aim and shoot him dead. They would have had to. I have no doubt, running out of ammunition at last, he would have gone for his knife and doubtless perished with it in his hand.

I folded my hands where I lay and prayed to God it was thus. Then I put my cold, wet palms over my ears. I did not do this to block out the muffled sounds but to let myself consider what personal strategy I should pursue. Belly-down in muck, I felt the suction holding me in place . . . but I knew I could not remain there. Come full-daylight, Mexican troops would be looking for people like me, friends of the conquered or escapees from the mission who might still willingly pose a threat.

You may ask why I did not contribute my own fire to the fray. I would have, not from a particular desire to die but from duty and brotherhood, qualities that had grown strong in the time I had spent in Texas. I suddenly missed Bowie hard after it was over and felt shame not having been at his side. I even then thought of going back to see what had become of him and Travis and the others I had gotten to know.

But I would have been gathered up and probably shot, for I did hear a volley against a wall and remembered that red flag: no quarter. Those who surrendered expecting mercy would not and did not receive it.

Still, what stayed me, what got me to moving north before the sun reached my gully, was the thought of those guns and whoever put them in Mexican hands.

I belly-walked like a snake over rocks and through mud and across twigs still wet from the rains. My brain was still working as if I was on a scavenging mission: too wet for a campfire, too small to bother picking up.

You don’t need supplies any more, my innards shrieked as I clawed in the direction Moses Rose and the courier had took. I saw the hoofprints and welcomed the smell of the mud that clogged my nostrils because it cleaned out the smell of battle and blocked the stench of horseshit and other man-traps I crawled through. I felt wet fur, the remains of animals that got drowned in their warrens and rose up on the water. There were dead birds that had been dashed against trees and dropped. I didn’t realize I was crying till I heard myself gasping for breath. Dead behind me, dead below me, dead, dead, dead. And for what use? Here, life had drowned . . . not for food—

“So why, God?” I found myself demanding aloud.

The men I left behind, the Texians: Did they die for a reason? My brain went into a calculating mode. Two, three weeks for Santa Anna to turn to San Antonio. Another two weeks for his army to arrive in full. Add a night, just one bloody night for the battle, but cleaning up and rearming and reorganizing and burial would take three, four days, maybe more.

The retaking of San Antonio de Bexar, and the siege of the Alamo, would have added six weeks to the time Fannin and Sam Houston and the rest had to organize.

I later learned I was a little wrong in my thinking. The timing was right: the full Texian army met Santa Anna exactly six weeks later. There were other skirmishes between the Alamo and the fateful encounter at San Jacinto, all of it resulting in Texian retreats. But that emboldened the gay and cocky Santa Anna to move forward with less than his full force. The wave had become a tidal pool. By the time the armies clashed—and you probably heard this; everyone has—there was seven hundred Mexicans with their Monkey Ward leader . . . and nine hundred Texians under Houston.

I have been told . . . I wish to God I had heard . . . the chant that greeted the Mexican invaders when the armies met.

“Remember the Alamo!” the Texians cried.

Even now, my throat gets choked just saying those words. “Remember the Alamo!” As God is my witness, I would die happy knowing that cry would outlive us, would survive for generations. The strange paths that brought very different people together also united them for a single purpose. When I think of the animal-like combat, what sets the Texians apart is that bond of brotherhood that allowed them to face certain death.

Is that, I asked God—is that the reason you did this terrible thing? To reveal a more wonderful thing behind it?

Well, Santa Anna lost the first run-in with Houston’s forces. He retreated, then lost the battle with the earth itself. His troops ended up waist-deep in cold mud, got sick from dysentery and influenza or froze to death, lost their weapons, had no food or potable water, their clothes were in tatters—

Santa Anna sued for peace and got it, so long as he retreated with his army to below the Rio Grande, taking all his sympathizers with him. Texians went along with the defeated soldiers to make sure that blessed San Antonio, San Patricio, and other fallen towns were cleansed. Houston’s people stayed along the border, fully expecting that Mexican generals who had not been part of the campaign would also not accept this defeat. In particular, I heard that General José de Urrea, the taker of San Patricio, had not been inclined to honor any agreements signed by a leader who remains in Texas as a prisoner of war—not forced to surrender but forced to sign a treaty of peace to prevent the massacre or imprisonment of his sickly troops.

I don’t know how any of that will turn out. But I know how that will end. The men of Texas will remember the Alamo and any Mexican who tries to set foot in the new republic will die in the effort.