Triumph and Tragedy in Mudville (21 page)

Although a small group of thirty men did arrive to reinforce the Alamo, their heroic presence as cannon and bayonet fodder could not alter the course of events, while a genuine force that could have made a difference, several hundred men stationed at nearby Goliad, never came to Travis’s aid, for complex reasons still under intense historical debate. Every Texian fighter died in Santa Anna’s attack on March 6. According to the usual legend, all the men fell in action. But substantial, if inconclusive, evidence indicates that six men may have surrendered at the hopeless end, only to be summarily executed by Santa Anna’s direct order. The probable presence of Davy Crockett among this group accounts for the disturbing effect and emotional weight of this persistent tale.

As something of an Alamo buff, and a frequent visitor to the site in San Antonio, I have long been bothered and intrigued by a crucial document, a letter by the Alamo’s other leader, Jim Bowie, that seems to provide quite a different perspective upon the siege, but doesn’t fit within the canonical legend and hardly receives a mention in any official account at the shrine itself. Bowie’s letter thus remains “hidden in plain sight”—sitting in its own prominent glass case, right in the main hall of the on-site exhibition. This curious feature of “prominently displayed but utterly passed over” has fascinated me for twenty years. I have, in three visits to the Alamo, bought every popular account of the battle for sale at the extensive gift shop. I have read these obsessively and can assert that Bowie’s letter, while usually acknowledged, receives short shrift in most conventional descriptions.

Let us return to a phrase in Travis’s celebrated letter and fill in some surrounding events: “the enemy has demanded a surrender…I have answered the demand with a cannon shot.” The basic outline has not been disputed: When Santa Anna entered San Antonio with his army and began his siege on February 23, he unfurled a blood-red flag—the traditional demand for immediate surrender, with extermination as the consequence of refusal—from the tower of the Church of San Fernando. Travis, without consulting his co-commander, fired the Alamo’s largest cannon, an eighteen-pounder, in defiant response—just as he boasted in his famous letter, written the next day.

The complexities that threaten the canonical story now intrude. Although Santa Anna had issued his uncompromising and blustering demand in a public display, many accounts, filled with different details but all pointing in the same credible direction, indicate that he also proposed a parley for negotiation with the Alamo defenders. (Even if Santa Anna didn’t issue this call, the canonical story takes its strong hit just from the undisputed fact that Bowie, for whatever reason, thought the Mexicans had suggested a parley. Among the various versions, Santa Anna’s forces also raised a white flag—the equally traditional signal for a parley—either accidentally or purposefully, and either before or after Travis’s cannon shot; or else that a Mexican soldier sounded the standard bugle call for an official invitation to negotiations.)

In any case, Bowie, who by most accounts was furious at Travis for the impetuous bravado and clearly counterproductive nature of his purely symbolic cannon shot, grabbed a piece of paper and wrote, in Spanish signed with a faltering hand (for Bowie was already ill, but not yet prostrate and still capable of leadership), the “invisible” letter that just won’t mesh with the canonical story, and therefore remains hidden on prominent display at the Alamo (I cite the full text of Bowie’s letter, in the translation given in C. Hopewell’s biography,
James Bowie
[Eakin Press, 1994]):

I don’t want to exaggerate the meaning of this letter. I cannot assert a high probability for a different outcome if Bowie had remained strong enough to lead, and if Santa Anna had agreed to negotiations. Some facts dim the force of any speculation about a happier outcome that would have avoided a strategically senseless slaughter with an inevitable military result, and would thus have spared the lives of 180 Texians (and probably twice as many Mexicans). For example, Bowie did not display optimal diplomacy in his note, if only because he had originally written “God and the Mexican Federation” in his signatory phrase (indicating his support for the constitution of 1824, and his continued loyalty to this earlier Mexican government), but, in a gesture that can only be termed defiant, crossed out “The Mexican Federation” and wrote “Texas” above.

More important, Santa Anna officially refused the offer of Bowie’s courier, and sent back a formal response promising extermination without mercy unless the Texians surrendered unconditionally. Moreover, we cannot be confident that Texian lives would have been spared even if the Alamo’s defenders had surrendered without a fight. After all, less than a month after the fall of the Alamo, Santa Anna executed several hundred prisoners—the very men who might have come to Travis’s aid—after their surrender at Goliad.

In the confusion and recrimination between the two commands, Travis then sent out his own courier and received the same response, but, according to some sources, with the crucial addition of an “informal” statement that, if the Texians laid down their arms within an hour, their lives and property would be spared, even though the surrender must be technically and officially “unconditional.” Such, after all, has always been the way of war, as good officers balance the need for inspirational manifestos with their even more important moral and strategic responsibility to avoid a “glory trap” of certain death. Competent leaders have always understood the crucial difference between public proclamations and private bargains.

Thus, I strongly suspect that if Bowie had not become too ill to lead, some honorable solution would eventually have emerged through private negotiations, if only because Santa Anna and Bowie, as seasoned veterans, maintained high mutual regard beneath their strong personal dislike—whereas I can only imagine what Santa Anna thought of the upstart and self-aggrandizing Travis. In this alternate and unrealized scenario, most of the brothers would have remained both valiant and alive. What resolution fits best with our common sensibilities of morality and human decency: more than four hundred men slaughtered in a battle with an inevitable result, thus providing an American prototype for a claptrap canonical story about empty valor over honorable living; or an utterly nonheroic, tough-minded, and practical solution that would have erased a great story from our books, but restored hundreds of young men to the possibilities of a full life, complete with war stories told directly to grandchildren?

Finally, one prominent Alamo fact, though rarely mentioned in this context, provides strong support for the supposition that wise military leaders usually reach private agreements to avoid senseless slaughter. Just three months earlier, in December 1835, General Cos had made his last stand against Texian forces at exactly the same site—within the Alamo! But Cos, as a professional soldier, raised a white flag and agreed to terms with the Texian conquerors: he would surrender, disarm, withdraw his men, retreat southwestward over the Rio Grande, and not fight again. Cos obeyed the terms of his bargain, but when he had crossed the Rio Grande to safety, Santa Anna demanded his return to active duty. Thus, the same General Cos—alive, kicking, and fighting—led one of the companies that recaptured the Alamo on March 6. Travis would have cut such a dashing figure at San Jacinto!

Any fan of the Boston Red Sox can recite chapter and verse of a woeful tale, a canonical story in the land of the bean and the cod, called “the curse of the Bambino.” The Sox established one of major league baseball’s most successful franchises of the early twentieth century. But the Sox won their last World Series way back in 1918. A particular feature of all subsequent losses has convinced Boston fans that their team labors under an infamous curse, initiated in January 1920, when Boston owner Harry Frazee simply and cynically sold the team’s greatest player—the best left-handed pitcher in baseball, but soon to make his truly indelible mark on the opposite path of power hitting—for straight cash needed to finance a flutter on a Broadway show, and not for any advantages or compensation in traded players. Moreover, Frazee sold Boston’s hero to the hated enemy, the New York Yankees. This man, of course, soon acquired the title of Sultan of Swat, the Bambino, George Herman “Babe” Ruth.

The Red Sox have played in four World Series (1946, 1967, 1975, and 1986) and several playoff series since then, and they have always lost in the most heartbreaking manner—by coming within an inch of the finish line and then self-destructing. Enos Slaughter of the rival St. Louis Cardinals scored from first on a single in the decisive game of the 1946 World Series. In 1975, the Sox lost game seven after a miraculous victory in game six, capped by Bernie Carbo’s three-run homer to tie the score and won, in extra innings, by Carlton Fisk, when he managed to overcome the laws of physics by body English, and cause a ball that he had clearly hit out of bounds to curve into the left-field foul pole for a home run.

And so the litany goes. But all fans will tell you that the worst moment of utter incredibility—the defeat that defies all belief in natural causality, and must therefore record the operation of a true curse—terminated game six in the 1986 World Series. (Look, I’m not even a Sox fan, but I still don’t allow anyone to mention this event in my presence; the pain remains too great!) The Sox, leading the Series three games to two and requiring only this victory for their first Ring since 1918, entered the last inning with a comfortable two-run lead. Their pitcher quickly got the first two outs. The Sox staff had peeled the foil off the champagne bottles (but, remembering the curse, had not yet popped the corks). The Mets management had already, and graciously, flashed “congratulations Red Sox” in neon on their scoreboard. But the faithful multitude of fans, known as “Red Sox Nation,” remained glued to their television sets in exquisite fear and trembling.

And the curse unfolded, with an intensity and cruelty heretofore not even imagined. In a series of scratch hits, bad pitches, and terrible judgments, the Mets managed to score a run. (I mean, even a batting-practice pitcher, even you or I, could have gotten someone out for the final victory!) Reliever Bob Stanley, a good man dogged by bad luck, came in and threw a wild pitch to bring the tying run home. (Some, including yours truly, would have scored the pitch as a passed ball, but let’s leave such contentious irrelevancies aside for the moment.) And now, with two outs, a man on second and the score tied, Mookie Wilson steps to the plate.

Bill Buckner, the Sox’s gallant first baseman, and a veteran with a long and truly distinguished career, should not even have been playing in the field. For weeks, manager John McNamara had been benching Buckner for defensive purposes during the last few innings of games with substantial Red Sox leads—for, after a long and hard season, Buckner’s legs were shot, and his stride gimpy. In fact, he could hardly bend down. But the sentimental McNamara wanted his regular players on the field when the great, and seemingly inevitable, moment arrived—so Buckner stood at first base.

I shudder as I describe the outcome that every baseball fan knows so well. Stanley, a great sinkerball pitcher, did exactly what he had been brought in to accomplish. He threw a wicked sinker that Wilson could only tap on the ground toward first base for an easy out to cap the damage and end the inning with the score still tied, thus granting the Sox hitters an opportunity to achieve a comeback and victory. But the ball bounced right through Buckner’s legs into the outfield as Ray Knight hurried home with the winning run. Not to the side of his legs, and not under his lunging glove as he dived to the right or left for a difficult chance—but right through his legs! The seventh and concluding game hardly mattered. Despite brave rhetoric, no fan expected the Sox to win (hopes against hope to be sure, but no real thoughts of victory). They lost.

Mookie Wilson’s ground ball bounces between Bill Buckner’s legs.
Credit: Republished with permission of Globe Newspaper Company, Inc.

This narration may drip with my feelings, but I have presented the straight facts. The narrative may be good and poignant enough in this accurate version, but this factual tale cannot satisfy the lust of the relevant canonical story for an evident reason. The canonical story of Buckner’s travail must follow a scenario that might be called “but for this.” In numerous versions of “but for this,” a large and hugely desired result fails to materialize—and the absolutely opposite resolution, both factually and morally, unfolds instead—because one tiny and apparently inconsequential piece of the story fails to fall into place, usually by human error or malfeasance. “But for this” can brook no nuancing, no complexity, no departure from the central meaning and poignant tragedy that an entire baleful outcome flows absolutely and entirely from one tiny accident of history.