Forgetting the Alamo by Emma Perez

Author:Emma Perez [Perez, Emma]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9780292721289
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2009-10-15T05:00:00+00:00

Forgetting the Alamo, Or, Blood Memory 103

“He from around here?”

“Nope. From the Carolinas. Wealthy family. He went and fell in love with a slave girl. Can you beat that? His papa packed him up and sent him to Texas with a bundle of money and told him not to come back ever because he was ashamed of him. Now he just drinks himself to sleep. Lucky for me.” His hands rested on his waist as he looked down at the bald white man. “Help me move him. When he wakes up, he’ll be asking after you.

He may be a drunkard but this ole boy ain’t likely to forget anything. He still talks about that slave girl like it was yesterday.”

I slept for an hour, maybe two, tossing about uneasy and restless. I’d been recognized and I had no idea what this sorry drunkard planned to do but I was not going to give him an opportunity to think up a design against me even though I was too tired to ride out yet. Lucius must have taken pity on me because he hid me in a corner of the stable and said he’d rouse me before his drunkard master awoke to ask after me. I guess Lucius suspected I’d lied about not knowing his wretched boss man but I wasn’t ready to confess my life to someone I’d only just met.

Lucius sat beside me as I lay on a mound of hay with more hay piled on top of me covering me like a blanket with only my head poking out of the heap. In that dark night, he talked about his wife’s slaughter with a voice throaty and cavernous. He soothed me in a rhythm that echoed like an angel or some spirit that rose up to comfort me but I suppose that in the telling of his story, he comforted himself as well.

“Only woman I ever loved was Indian. Comanche. A warrior, she was.”

He smiled but the smile quickly disappeared. “She died like a warrior.

Fearless. Ready for death. I saw her die. Right in front of me. Th ese ole

boys held me down. Wouldn’t even let me shut my eyes to the sight of what they did to her.”

He told how men sat on his legs and yanked on each arm then pinched open his eyelids so the whites of his eyeballs shined as he watched them rape and butcher his wife. Her face remained unchanged, he said. Facing him, she lay on the ground beneath the harsh heaviness of each stinking marauder and she lay peacefully unafraid of death and looked to Lucius to calm him but he was dry-eyed and uncontainable. When her body was limp and he was out cold, the marauders rode away supposing they were dead. Lucius fi nally woke and crawled to his wife, her pink scalp exposed T5084.indb 103

5/20/09 11:40:49 AM

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.