The Alamo Read online

  TO THE NEWTON FAMILY:

  Annie, Callan, Jill and Nick

  In whose happy home much of this book was written

  Acknowledgments

  My deepest thanks go to the many people who have helped me along the way on the road to The Alamo.

  First, thanks to the screenwriters for giving me so much wonderful material to work with: Les Bohem, Stephen Gaghan, and John Lee Hancock. Everything good about this book came from them. Then to the wonderful folks on the set of the film who always made me feel so welcome and who were helpful and generous in so many ways: Philip Steuer, Mark Johnson, Katie R. Kelly, Ernie Malik, Michael Corenblith and again, and most especially, John Lee Hancock.

  My gratitude also goes to the good people at Hyperion, particularly Natalie Kaire and Robert S. Miller.

  Special thanks to Stephen L. Hardin and Alan C. Huffines, who are good friends and better historians.

  And finally, my most heartfelt thanks go to my beautiful wife, Claire McCulloch Thompson.

  The superiority of the Mexican soldier over the mountaineers of Kentucky and the hunters of Missouri is well known. Veterans seasoned by twenty years of wars cannot be intimidated by the presence of an army ignorant of the art of war, incapable of discipline, and renowned for insubordination.

  —MEXICAN MINISTER OF WAR JOSÉ MARÍA TORNEL Y MENDIVIL

  * * *

  In 1821 Mexico won independence from Spain and with it the vast land holdings that included the northernmost states of Coahuila y Tejas.

  In an attempt to further colonize this territory and help stave off marauding Indians, settlers were granted land and tax advantages to move to the state, which the Anglos called Texas. And they came—from every state in the union and from many countries in Europe. So many settlers arrived in Mexico, in fact, that Antonio López de Santa Anna Pérez de Lebron, Mexico’s elected president-turned-dictator, closed the borders and sent occupational troops into the state.

  In an effort to enforce their rights as citizens of Mexico and to form their own republic, the citizens of Texas—Anglo and Tejano—began to organize a provisional government.

  And to prepare for war.

  PROLOGUE

  March 6, 1836

  Smoke.

  Stench.

  Silence.

  An eerie silence, stranger still in contrast to the nightmare of sounds that filled this place only a few hours earlier.

  His fellow foot soldiers—soldados—go about their work silently, wordlessly, but fifteen-year-old Jesús Montoya wonders if this is really true or if he has lost the ability to hear, just as he apparently has lost the ability to move and to feel. He crouches in a corner, near the large wooden fence that connects the compound’s main gate to the ruins of the old church building, and watches numbly as the soldiers of General Antonio López de Santa Anna drag the bodies of the Texians toward the place where they are being stacked, where they will be burned like cordwood.

  Jesús has heard this place referred to as Mission San Antonio de Valero, but most people call it by its curious nickname, the “Alamo.” Jesús doesn’t know why, but it makes sense to him that the name no longer carries any religious significance. If this ghastly site ever was a place of peace and of worship, no trace of those days remains. Now, in the bright sunlight of this Sunday morning, it looks more like a slaughterhouse than a church. Hundreds of stiffening corpses litter the ground, their eyes staring unblinkingly at the sky, their gnarled hands gripping now useless weapons, or still locked like vises around the necks of their enemies. The ground is so drenched with blood that each footstep brings bubbles to the surface, like a newly plowed field soaked by a horrible rain.

  Jesús has seen some bad things in his life, but nothing like this. Only a few feet away, in a ditch by the fence, a skinny, scruffy dog sits on the chest of a dead Texian, whimpering and licking his face, urging his master to come back to life. Through the door of the church, on the ramp that leads up to the cannon platform in the rear, a Mexican soldier clutches the body of a Texian and weeps. “Gregorio!” he cries. “My God, Gregorio, it cannot be . . . Do not die. . . .” The two men look very much alike. Jesús knows instinctively that they are brothers, men who somehow found themselves on opposite sides of this terrible fight.

  Gradually, his shock begins to fade; feeling creeps back into his limbs. It is as if he is awakening from a trance, the scene before him gradually changing from silent nightmare to awful reality. Sounds and smells become more vivid, and Jesús wishes that he could go back to his numb state, to escape the horror spread before him.

  Jesús hears the sound of plaintive weeping. Across the gory courtyard, two Tejano women from town cover their noses with cloths and cross themselves. They seem to be looking for someone in particular, and when one of them gasps and drops to her knees, Jesús knows that they have found him. The other woman’s voice rises to a terrible wail, like that of a wild animal. All around her, Mexican soldiers continue working, dragging bodies, gathering weapons, seeing to the wounded. They do not react to the women’s grief. It seems to Jesús that the soldados have reached a point where emotion—neither terror, nor grief, nor happiness—is no longer an option. Their bodies remain animated but their hearts and souls have ceased to function. It is as if they have been completely emptied. It is, perhaps, the only thing that keeps them all from going mad.

  Leaning against the low stone wall of the Alamo’s well, a Mexican soldier mumbles a prayer. His hands clasp tightly at his stomach, cradling his intestines, trying to keep them from dropping onto the ground. Another stumbles about aimlessly, his nose nearly severed from his face by a bayonet or bowie knife. He is calling in a hoarse whisper for a doctor or a priest. But there are no doctors, no priests. There is no comfort for the wounded, no last rites for the dying. The passage from this life to the next will have to be accomplished alone, just as the pain of living must be endured alone. Ailments, both physical and spiritual, will either heal themselves or they will destroy. Jesús knows that a wound in a battle such as this—even a fairly minor injury—is a death sentence. He has not been hurt himself—his body, at least, is unscathed. But he wonders if the things he is seeing, the things he has seen since before dawn, will slash an unhealable wound through his very soul, if his spirit will bleed and wither and die from the agony of it.

  Jesús slowly stands up and walks toward the compound’s north wall, the point at which he first entered the fort three or four hours—or what seems like three or four lifetimes—ago. To his left, he sees a lone hand clutching a pair of broken glasses. Glancing up to the second floor of the barrack building beside the church, he recognizes the body of Colonel José Torres lying beside a flagpole. The Texians’ flag is draped over him like a sheet. Torres would look like a man sleeping peacefully, except for the ragged musket-ball wounds in his cheek and forehead.

  Just before Jesús, in a space directly in front of the old church, the mutilated corpse of a distinctive-looking man is being hoisted by four soldiers and carried toward the funeral pyre. Jesús watched this man die and heard what the president called him: Crockett. Davy Crockett. It was a name they all knew. When they heard the soft, raucous sounds of fiddle playing wafting toward them from the Alamo’s walls over the long days and nights of the thirteen-day siege, the soldados would smile at each other and say “Croque.” But today he learned what the Americano’s true name was. His music somehow conveyed hope and defiance throughout the siege of the Alamo—it brought an odd note of beauty and fun into a place otherwise devoid of either. This Crockett was a famous man—a bear hunter, a great fighter. Jesús was told that he could charm a wild animal out of a tree simply by smiling at it and that he could shoot the wings off a firefly at one hundred paces. Before he saw him in person, Jesús had assumed he was a
giant, as big as the stories told about him. But in death Crockett looked like any man here; an empty husk, drained of blood and life and whatever magic he had wielded in his many picturesque adventures.

  Jesús hears a cry and turns around. “It is Bowie,” cries a soldado in a tone that mixes contempt with awe. Another man is dragging Bowie’s corpse from a room on the south wall, near where Jesús has just been crouching. Another soldado calls out, “He died in bed, hiding under blankets like a woman!” Jesús has heard of Bowie, too. He was rich, richer even than the president. Some said that he was actually a member of the Mexican aristocracy, even though he was clearly a gringo. Others told of the knife he had invented, a knife of fearsome size and power, which he named after himself. Jesús thinks about going into Bowie’s room, to see if the famous knife is still there. He would like to see it, hold it for just a moment. That would be a moment to remember. But he doubts that such a weapon is real. Probably it is just another tall tale. Jesús knows that if it indeed exists, and if it really had lain in that room, another enterprising soldado has already made off with it. This Bowie was well known for his adventures, like Crockett. But, like Crockett’s, all of his adventures have come to nothing, leading only to a terrible death in this awful mission ruin.

  Most of the soldados are taking whatever they can find; the spoils of war. They are going through the pockets of the dead Texians, removing boots and shoes, taking top hats and watches, pistols and knives. Fancy handkerchiefs, pipes, silver whiskey flasks are laconically shoved into Mexican backpacks. It would, after all, be a shame to relegate all of these valuable items to the flames that will shortly consume the bodies of these pirates and rebels. Jesús considers taking a souvenir. But why would he want something to remind him of this day? The sooner he forgets the Alamo, Jesús thinks, the happier his life will be.

  Jesús sees two officers nearby and immediately wraps his hands around the collar of a Texian and begins dragging him toward the pyre. He doesn’t want to be reprimanded for being lazy—especially since he knows so well how harshly Santa Anna and his officers can reprimand when they put their minds to it. Although Jesús has had little contact with the two officers, he recognizes them both. General Almonte is rather short and intense; his lips curled in a perpetual sneer. General Castrillón is tall and straight, with the dignified bearing of an aristocrat and the deep, sad eyes of a man who has seen too much horror and death in his life. As Jesús passes them, he hears Almonte say with a note of pride, “A great victory, no?”

  Castrillón looks around the hellish compound with revulsion. “Another such victory,” he says quietly, “and we will all go to the devil.”

  Jesús continues to drag the body, taking care to look anywhere but into the dead man’s face. But his gaze is drawn to the hooded eyes of the corpse; it is almost as if the Texian is trying to communicate a message from the other side of death. But Jesús knows that there is no message, no supernatural wisdom to be gleaned from any of this—only emptiness.

  The words of Almonte have made him wonder. How can an event like this be considered a victory of any kind? The blood, the stink, the horror—none of it seems like winning. Even those who are still standing have lost something that can never be reclaimed. Jesús cannot imagine how anything good could come of such a “victory.”

  Suddenly wracked with nausea, Jesús braces himself against a cool adobe wall and vomits. He retches again and again as if, in emptying his stomach, he can also expel every horrible image and thought that has entered his consciousness this morning. When his retching becomes empty, dry heaves, he crouches once again in a corner and weeps. He has survived. But at the moment, that does not seem like much of an accomplishment. It does not even seem desirable.

  Hours later, as the sun begins to set, casting a golden glow upon the sad face of the Alamo church, the funeral pyres are lit. There are two in the compound itself and another outside, toward the Alameda. That pyre is some distance from the Alamo—too far to drag bodies from the fort. Jesús thinks there must have been many Texian bodies out there in the field for a pyre to be necessary so far away.

  The corpses of the Texians are stacked in alternate layers with wood gathered from a nearby forest. Most of the bodies are naked. Almost every usable piece of clothing, hats and shoes have been removed by victorious soldiers, who now feel themselves a bit richer with their gringo possessions. One at a time, the gruesome constructions are doused with lantern oil. Then, at the signal from a sergeant, torches are lighted and tossed onto the pyres.

  The fire, dark orange and oily, shoots upward in the first explosion of flame. Moments later, they settle down and produce thick, black billows of smoke. The smell is nauseating. Jesús, like many others, ties a cloth around his face like a mask, leaving only his eyes visible. He watches sadly as the bodies of the Texians are consumed by the fire. Their ashes, borne by the noxious smoke, float languidly into the sky of the March evening. Eventually they come to rest, falling like a gentle black snow on the fertile Texas ground.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Washington City

  “I’m a screamer.”

  James Hackett squinted into the dingy backstage mirror. A disgusted—and elaborately made-up—face peered back at him. Even here, in one of the top theaters in Washington City, the dressing rooms were small, filthy and dimly lit. How in God’s name could anyone expect an actor to step directly from this squalor onto a stage before a discriminating audience of senators, congressmen and masters of industry—and to give a good performance as well? Paris—now there’s a city that knows how to treat an artiste. Or London—ah, London. What marvelous sophistication. But even though this smelly marsh town was the capital of the United States, it still seemed to be populated primarily by yahoos and buffoons who barely knew how to attend a theater, much less maintain one for the comfort of its performers.

  Hackett sighed as he daubed makeup onto his nose and cheeks, being careful not to smear any of the paste into his long wig or onto his buckskin hunting frock. ’Twas ever thus, he thought, then murmured, “ . . . a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

  Shakespeare.

  Well, the play he was performing tonight surely was not Shakespeare. Far from it. Lion of the West was a raucous comedy about a rough-hewn, ill-mannered frontiersman named Nimrod Wildfire. It was crude, loud, obvious and totally lacking in poetry or greater meaning . . . and audiences loved it.

  Hackett carefully placed the fur cap onto his head and felt Nimrod Wildfire stir to life within him. It was more than a cap made of fox fur—it was made of a fox . . . in its entirety. The angry face of the creature growled at the front, its jaws open as though ready to pounce upon its unlucky prey. At the back, the long tail hung over Hackett’s neck. It was truly eye-catching. And Hackett had to admit that it was true—the headpiece was the most important part of the getup. Without it, he was just an ordinary man, not very tall, with a weak chin and tiny eyes set too closely together. But with it, he was colorful, bigger than life, outrageous—a genuine rip-roaring frontier hero.

  He tried the line again.

  “I’m a screamer.”

  James Hackett smiled a little to himself. This speech always brought down the house. He spoke louder, relentlessly rehearsing the lines that he had performed hundreds of times before.

  “I got the roughest racin’ horse, the prettiest sister, the surest rifle and the ugliest dog in the district. I am about the savagest critter you ever did see. My old man can lick anybody in Tennessee and I can lick my old man.”

  Carefully checking both sides of his profile, Hackett raised his voice to full stage-level volume.

  “I can run faster, dive deeper, stay longer under and come out drier than any chap this side of the big swamp. I can outgrin a panther and ride a lightnin’ bolt, tote a steamboat on my back and whip my weight in wildcats. I am half horse and half alligator, with a whiff o
f harricane throwed into the bargain!”

  Even alone at his dressing table, it seemed to Hackett that he could hear the screams of laughter and the deafening applause that always greeted this scene. But he knew that it was not entirely the writing—or his own performance—that made Lion of the West spring to life night after night, month after month. It was because of him—the bumpkin congressman, the dim-witted bear hunter who had somehow parlayed his laughable character, his ignorance, his outsized eccentricities into national fame.

  Hackett continued, gesturing to himself melodramatically, “I will kill a black b’ar for breakfast every mornin’, pick my teeth with a tent spike and go through hostile redskins like a dose of salts. I could tell you folks more, but then I’d be braggin’!”

  Hackett paused, smiling, holding for imaginary applause. He always had to stop at this point to take a modest bow.

  The character in the play was named Nimrod Wildfire. But audiences everywhere knew who it really was: Davy Crockett.

  Of course, Hackett and the play’s author, James Kirke Paulding, had always denied it—in public, at least. But they both knew that the public’s association of the congressman with the theatrical figure was no mistake. Indeed, it was the original intention of the piece.

  A few years earlier, in 1830, Hackett had offered a prize to the playwright who could come up with a special kind of character. He wanted someone who represented the raw new American spirit, a high-spirited pioneer figure whose fractured English was hilarious and absurd but whose spirit was large. Paulding won the prize by suggesting that he base a play on the wildwood exploits of David Crockett from Tennessee.

  The idea struck Hackett as a splendid one. The very backwoods characteristics that had already begun turning Crockett into a legend also made him something of a joke among the movers and shakers of Washington City. Placing this illiterate brute in the midst of high society, like the proverbial bull in the china shop, seemed to offer the perfect formula for crude comedy. Paulding even wrote to a friend to get some specific examples of “Kentucky or Tennessee manners, and especially some of their peculiar phrases and comparisons. If you can add, or invent, a few ludicrous scenes of Col. Crockett at Washington, you will have my everlasting gratitude.”