Paxton and the Lone Star

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Paxton and the Lone Star

The Paxton Saga

Kerry Newcomb and Frank Schaefer

PROLOGUE

“We might as well be eating in a tomb,” Carl Michaelson said.

It was a solemn, quiet night, the last to be spent in this house in which they had lived for twenty-two years. But that was, to Carl, a source of joy. He glanced at Hester, his wife, who stared at the unappetizing mass on her plate, all that remained of the year's turnip crop, now gone long before winter. For two years drought had dried the garden, left the well shallow and the grass short and brown with no hope of a hay crop. For three years blight had cursed both corn and wheat. The larger farms with better soil and deeper wells were more able to ride out ill fortune; the small ones bore the blunt of the misery. It was a small sop to Carl's pride that he had held out longer than many others.

Hester swallowed with difficulty and put her fork down in disgust. Carl often wondered where the pretty girl he had courted and married had gone. But then, she was a city girl, a doctor's daughter with a decent if not abundant dowry. Somehow, she had never learned. After twenty-two years, she was still unused to the hardships of a farm life.

Carl hadn't minded the first years. The weather had been good then, the soil still strong. His father and mother were alive and helped work the land and care for the two daughters who eventually came. Hester was bright and vivacious and, if she considered working in the sun anathema, she did keep the house clean and good food on the table, and enjoyed raising her daughters.

Something had changed, though. When and how, he wasn't sure. As his mother and father aged, she failed to take up the slack. She laughed less often and openly began to yearn for the city again. By the end of another ten years, she had forgotten how to laugh, had become thin and gaunt and gray. Now her lips were permanently set in a grim line, and trembled before the frequent sighs that drove him nearly to distraction.

Had he laughed once? Of course. Plowing, sowing, reaping, thrashing. Watching his daughters, Lottie and Elizabeth, grow through childhood had been a joy. And if they hadn't married yet … Surreptitiously, he inspected Lottie. Twenty years old, fair-haired and buxom, she had come close to marriage twice within the past two years, only to be left waiting at the altar when the question of other men in her life arose. Her reputation had suffered accordingly, and he had had to keep a close eye on her. The last batch of rumors he'd nipped in the bud with a stout left hook that took the measure of Elisha Rueben down at Meade's Tavern.

And then there was Elizabeth, sitting to his right where his son would have sat had Hester given him one. At least seventeen-year-old Elizabeth didn't consider leaving this godforsaken place to be the end of the world. And for one member of the family to agree with him was better than none, Carl thought, grateful for small favors. Elizabeth was golden-haired, with eyes like the first blush of green in spring. Cursing himself for his lack of self-control, he had watched her more than once down at the creek. The first time, three years ago, had been an accident. She was scrawny then, slow to develop, with a bare hint of breasts poking from her chest. But then she had bloomed and her breasts had grown high and round and firm. Her legs had thickened, and the shadow near their tops …

Carl forced himself to eat, to swallow the pasty mess Hester called supper. He never should have seen his daughter that first time, should have walked away from the temptation the Lord put in his way. Watching her made him think things no man should ever think about a daughter. If Hester had only loved him more … “I said, we might as well be eating in a tomb.”

“You needn't shout,” Hester scolded dully. “If we are lost in our misery, so be it. There is only one remedy, and that you refuse to take.”

“My mind is made up, Hester. We'll be gone by noon tomorrow.”

“But not to Philadelphia or anywhere else civilized.”

He had told her a thousand times that he knew no way to make a living in a city. “The new land is paid for. So are the supplies, and our wagon and passage.”

“You could sell them to someone else. There are others who would be glad to go.”

“Very well, Hester,” he said between clenched teeth. “Have it your way. I don't
want
to sell them to anyone else. Does that satisfy you?”

Hester's smile was maddening. “Not in the least, but that was my point nevertheless.”

“Which you yourself have made until I'm sick of it.” Carl's voice rose in anger he found less and less able to control. “My God, woman, will I have to listen to this all the way to Texas?”

“I did not ask to travel to that godforsaken place. A man reaps what he sows.”

Carl's knuckles were white and the fork bent in his hand. “I sowed neither blight nor drought, but am forced to reap the bile you spout. You twist the meaning of the Lord's Word, wife. Do not let me hear you do so again at my table!”

Hester's face colored and her eyes glinted with righteous indignation. “I don't think the girls need to listen to this,” she said in a tight and trembling voice. “Will you leave the table, please?” she asked, glancing at each in turn.

“Stay seated!” Carl thundered.

“My, how you have changed,” Hester clucked, knowing that her oh so reasonable tone enraged him.

Carl's fist slammed into the table. “Do you think it is easy for me?” he asked, almost choking with frustration and rage. “Do you? I look out my window and see brown corn and black wheat. I see a dead garden and a land of rocks and empty promise. What do you know of the land or what it takes to bring life out of it? You couldn't even make me a son!”

Hester's face turned white and her lips pursed. “It is my duty to accompany you ‘whither thou goest,'” she said in a dry husk of a whisper. “So I shall, for I made that pledge before God on our wedding day. I keep my vow. But you, husband—” The word a curse, the way she said it. “—promised to care for and honor me, and you have broken that vow.” She rose majestically, scarcely aware that her chair tipped over and fell behind her. “You have broken your word to me and to your daughters!” she screamed and, spinning, ran into the pantry and slammed the door behind her.

“Wife!” Carl roared, following her and stopping as he heard the bolt slam closed. “Wife!”

Lottie looked at Elizabeth and rolled her eyes.

“Hester! Open this door!” He struck the door twice with the side of his fist, gave up and staggered back to the table. His forehead was beaded with perspiration, as if every fiber of his strength were required to keep him under control. “I'm sorry, you girls. I mean … Daaamnnn!” he bellowed like a beast in pain, and beat his fist into the table top.

A cup bounced out of a saucer, rolled, and crashed to the floor. The broken pieces crunched under Carl's boots as he stalked across the room. A second later the front door crashed open and he was gone, out into the night.

Lottie looked around the kitchen. “It's not even ours anymore,” she said with a shrug. Dropping her fork, she picked up a piece of gingerbread and began chewing it slowly.

Her appetite destroyed, Elizabeth pushed away from the table.

“Where you going?” Lottie asked, not really caring.

“I don't know. Just out, I guess.”

“Better stay away from him until he calms down.”

“I know.”
Oh, how well, but not for Lottie's reasons.
“I will.”

The old house. It breathed around her as she walked through it. Granddaddy and Mamaw had built it years ago around the turn of the century when Carl was a boy. Sometimes she felt as though they still lived in it, Elizabeth thought, as she walked down the hall past the living room. If she listened, she could hear Mamaw rocking in her downstairs bedroom, could smell Granddaddy's pipe as the smoke wafted in from the front porch. Quietly—needing quiet after yet another dose of rancor—she closed the door behind her and sat on the top step.

The night was clear, hot, and dry, as every night had been for the past month and a half. Not a breath of wind stirred the trees. Leaving. Her last night on the porch, in the house, on the farm where she grew up. Whatever the future brought, there was no turning back, as she had known on that night a month earlier when, his face flushed with excitement, her father had returned from Philadelphia to present Hester with the deed to more than two thousand acres of what he described as prime Texas land. Shocked, her face bloodless, Hester listened as he explained that he had paid for the land with their savings, his and Hester's meager inheritances, and the title to their farm. All their debts were paid, and there was enough money left to secure passage down the Mississippi and buy food for the journey and supplies once they reached their new home. For the first time in months, Elizabeth remembered, he had smiled and joked.

She had found his rare excitement contagious, had quickly shared it. And on that night she had been poignantly reminded of the way her father used to be, even three or four years ago, when Granddaddy and Mamaw were still alive. Father had yet to get religion then, didn't fall into the black rages under whose influence he changed from the warm and loving father she had known and became the frightening stranger who watched and touched her when her mother was out of sight.

Texas, she hoped, was the answer. Somehow, if they started over, things would be the way they were before. The land would be fruitful and her father tender and caring as she remembered him when she was younger. He wanted that, too, she could tell. She could see it in his face during his most anguished moments. No matter how great his rage, how deep his frustration, how tormented his mind, he did not want to be the man he had become, and fought against the demons that seethed inside him. If she could just tell him that, she thought, just tell him that she loved him, then their lives would change. This night of all nights, he needed to hear that he was loved, for as hopeful as he was, the leaving was as hard on him as it was on Hester. A man didn't live all his life on one hundred and sixty acres of land and then, one day, abruptly pick up and move a thousand miles without feeling upset. If she could just tell him.…