Queen (50 page)

    in excitement and embarrassment while Wesley took her.

    He wondered why he was so reluctant to do it himself. There were endless

    opportunities in Wesley's company, and part of him wanted to take that

    step, to cross that threshold of experience, but a greater part of him said

    not yet. And try as he might, he couldn't keep his mind off Easter.

    He chuckled once more at an image of Wesley as Emperor of Texas, surrounded

    by a harem of Indian and black women who were dressing him for battle, and

    then the image changed and altered, and Wesley was on his horse now,

    galloping off to battle some thousands of the enemy, and single-handedly

    gaining bloody victory over them all.

He chuckled again, out of sheer, disbelieving astonishment when, the

following August, Wesley came to him and said good-bye.

    He was not going to New Jersey, to the College at Princeton Village, as his

    family and friends believed.

    "It's not for me, old man," he said. "Too bloody boring. Will you tell my

    family in a couple of weeks, when I'm safely away?"

    He had money in his pocket, given him by his father, and a gun, and he rode

    a fine horse,

He was going west, to Texas.

    36

That summer was bittersweet for James. The departure to the west of

Doublehead and the Chickasaw had closed a large and unpleasant chapter in

the book of his life, and he found himself less and less interested in the

affairs of his state and his nation, more and more devoted to his personal

affairs and his family. Sassy's marriage to her beau, Bob Andrews, gave

him joy, but then his darling daughter Jane had died of diphtheria, and

Mary's newborn child had not survived birth. Mary herself never recovered

from the ordeal and the loss, and passed away in March. It had hit James

hard-he loved his firstborn daughter-bui it was not the acid grief he had

felt for the loss of his firstborn son. He found comfort in the living,

and took particular pleasure in Sam Kirkman, Elizabeth and Tom's grave and

serious son, who, at five, was discovering the joy of a doting

grandfather.

    Spring eased his sense of loss with its promise of the renewal of life,

    and summer, with its abundant stream of visiting friends and relations,

    healed his pain and gave him a new purpose and vigor. He was alive and

    master of a fine estate, and that was what mattered most to him.

    And then there was Jass. James thoroughly approved of his son's

    friendship with Wesley, who seemed to have kindled bright new flames of

    confidence in Jass, if not adventure. Perhaps they were always there,

    James thought, and it was I who wanted too bright a fire too soon. He

    encouraged the friendship, for he saw in the increasingly wayward Wesley

    something of the larrikin he missed in his son, and through that

    friendship he saw his son becoming more like the boisterous Wesley.

    He was not prepared for the news Jass gave him on a hot day in August.

    He had not seen Wesley at the house for a few

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days, nor had Jass gone to visit him. One night after dinner, when Sally

had withdrawn to leave them to talk, James asked if they had quarreled.

    Jass was silent for a moment, and it was clear some serious problem was

    vexing him.

"Wesley's gone to Texas," he said.

    James was surprised, but no more than that, for the moment. "I thought

    he was going to Princeton."

    Jass shook his head. "He's taken the money his father gave him for

    college and he's gone to Texas. He's sure there's going to be a war with

    the Mexicans, and he wants to be part of it. "

    James laughed lightly, but it was double-edged. For just a moment, he

    dreamed that Jass might have gone off on such an adventure, but as

    immediately dismissed the thought. Jass's proper place was here, and his

    son had behaved properly. But, oh-

    , , Well, he's right. There will be a war." James wasn't quite sure what

    to say. Some battle for the future status of Texas seemed inevitable. Men

    from all over the country were headed there, to resist the colonial

    bondage of Mexico. But Wesley seemed very young.

"He's very young," James said.

Jass was more concerned with something else.

    "The thing is--he blurted it out-"I am to tell his father.

James laughed again. He began to see the problem.

    "And he'll know I've known for two weeks, and he'll be furious I haven't

    told him before, and there'll be the dickens of a row."

    James was amused, but adopted a serious manner, knowing that was what

    Jass wanted. "I assume you gave your word to Wesley?"

Jass nodded, but it was no great comfort.

    "Then you must keep your word. We all have to face rows at some time in

    our lives," he said. "And I'll go with you."

He went with Jass, as moral support, but let Jass do all the talking.

James saw it as a small rite of passage for his son, for Wesley's father,

he knew, was a stem old martinet, who

    MERGING 303

would not be pleased by his son's disobedience.

    To the surprise of both of them, Wesley's father took the news well.

    "The boy's a troublemaker, destined for a scoundrel, I fear," he said

    calmly. "If he wants to go and kill a few Indians, sow his oats, get it

    out of his system, it could be the making of him."

    Jass was surprised. "I think it's Mexicans he's planning to kill, sir,"

    he said.

    Wesley's father looked at him as if he were a fool. "Mexicans? They are

    not our enemy in Texas."

"But, sir, it is a Mexican colony," Jass insisted.

    "And we will take it from them," Wesley's father said. "We will take it

    or buy it or annex it, depending on the whim of the president. It will

    be a slave state, as it is now and properly should be, and help diminish

    the undue influence of those wretched New Englanders."

    It made sense, except for one thing. The thesis had to be completed: "But

    then what will we do with all those Indians?"

    James stared at the man, hating him, hating his clarity of vision, for

    as soon as it was said, James saw an awful result.

    "What will the native Comanche and Apache feel about all those Creek and

    Choctaw and Chickasaw that we have sent there?" Wesley's father chuckled.

    "There will be bloody war, and we will have to sort it out, and the

    Indian problem will be resolved in this land finally, and for all time."

    James could not bear to believe it, and knew it was true. He had known

    it all along, and had denied it to himself for so long. The Indian

    question was not resolved by the removal. We would take Texas, and then

    California, and the wars against the Indians would go on, until the

    remaining few would stand with their backs to the great ocean, and then

    where would they go? It was an old nightmare for James.

    Wesley's father chuckled again. "Even those damned Cherokee, for they

    will go west and will meet their destruction."

    The Cherokee in Georgia were resisting every considerable effort to

    persuade them to go west. But they would go, James knew, if not by

    treaty, then by force. Andrew would make them go. Apart from the

    Cherokee, only some Seminole in

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Florida were violently resisting removal, under their chief, Osceola.

    Some new thought had disturbed Wesley's father, but it had nothing to do

    with white dominion. "Whatever shall I tell his mother?" he wondered aloud.

    "She dotes on him so."

    Jass was volubly relieved that the interview had gone so well, but James

    was silent as they rode home, possessed by dark foreboding. Why did the

    Indians haunt him so? Would this nightmare never end?

It got worse in October when James received an unwelcome visitor. Dr. David

Evans was a missionary to the Indians who had traveled west with some of the

Creek and was now returning to Georgia to plead for an end to the removal.

He was trying to enlist whatever political support he could find, and had

letters of introduction to James from Henry Clay.

    "You are an old friend of the president, I believe." The minister wasted no

    time. "I beg you, sir, to do everything in your power to persuade him to

    end this merciless extinction of a people."

    He knows about the letters, James thought immediately. "Andrew will not be

    president for much longer."

    "He is president now." Dr. Evans was relentless. "And architect of this

    most foul thing."

    James wanted to scream at him to go away, but he listened politely. The

    good minister's description of the journey west was horrifying.

    "They have no real understanding of what is happening to them, and no will

    to make it succeed. They are uprooted from their natural home, and are on

    a journey that has no point or meaning to them, for where they arrive will

    mean nothing to them. Since they are not afraid of death, and because they

    see no real point in living, they die. There is not sufficient food to

    nourish them, or blankets to keep them warm. What food is provided is

    usually rotten, and their hunting grounds are lost to them. And so they

    die. There is cholera amongst them, and because they do not have hope, they

    have no will to fight it, and so they die."

    He told his tale just as it was, without elaboration, and the factual

    simplicity of it made it more shocking to James.

    MERGING 305

    If it is summer they perish from heat; if it is winter they die from

    cold. Of the four hundred that I journeyed with, one hundred and twenty

    reached the great river.

    "Only pitiful provision has been made for them, and so they spend the

    money they were given for their comfort on arrival to survive the journey

    there. Some of their Army escort rob them. Many merchants along the way

    deceive them. All of us destroy them.

    "A few federal officers who travel with them are often so distressed by

    what they see that they dig deep into their own pockets to try to buy

    some few creature comforts, but it is a task that would defeat Hercules.

    "And when they reach the so-called promised land, what is there for them

    there? They stand like Ruth on alien soil and know not which way to turn.

    They cannot hunt, for they do not know what to hunt. Or where. They

    cannot read this land for they have no voices of the old ones to guide

    them. The whites who are there do not want them. The Mexicans do not want

    them. The Indians who are there do not want them. And so they are

    destroyed in this New Jerusalem."

"Not all of them, surely," James said.

    "Not all of them, no," the minister replied. "But too many of them. And

    after the coming war with Mexico-for there will be a war-what will happen

    to them then? Will the socalled Republic of Texas tolerate these savages?

    I think not. They can hardly tolerate the Indians already there."

    "It is over. There is nothing I can do," James said. "Nothing we can do."

    "No, for them it is over," the minister agreed. "But I am come to save

    those who have not gone. The Cherokee, in Georgia.

    He understood that it was probably a waste of time to try to persuade the

    government of Georgia to alter its policy toward the Cherokee, but did

    not understand it was a waste of time to try to persuade the federal

    government-Andrew-to change its mind. He begged for James's assistance.

    "There is a story told," he said, "of rose trees that the first Indians

    planted along the way to guide those who came after them. And as more

    came, they took cuttings from those bushes and planted them farther

    along, until the way from here to Texas was a path of roses."

306 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

    He stopped for a moment, for his emotions were getting the better of him.

    "It is only a story, a sweet, romantic one, told to ease our guilt. There

    is no path of roses. Only a trail of heartrending tears. "

    Alone at night, James wept. He knew that young Doublehead was dead, for he

    had seen that lack of hope in the chief's eyes that evening in his study,

    and without hope, what point was there in life? He prayed, fervently, that

    Doublehead's son was alive, but then wondered why? If his future was death,

    what point was there in life?

    "I will do what I can," he had told the minister. "But it is not much. "

    It could not be much, he knew. Even if he published the letters, they would

    make almost no difference to the plight of the Indians; the removal would

    continue, the destruction of them would go on. Only one person could ease

    the pain.

Colonel Elliot was in Lexington making arrangements with Tom Flintoff to