Paxton and the Lone Star (9 page)

“Dressing like a boy,” Hester whispered loud enough for all to hear. “Oh, Beth what am I ever … And where's your sister?”

“Back at the wagon,” Elizabeth lied, feeling herself blush.

“Ahem,” Kania said, pointedly clearing his throat. “If we are ready?” He spread his arms again. “Almighty Father, under whose protection we—”

“I
got
to go, Ma,” little Tommy Matlan blurted, unable to help himself. “If I don't get to the bushes real quick, I'll wet my britches.”

“Godda!—” The Reverend caught himself, checked his temper, and hurried on. “Almighty Father, bless this food and those who partake of it. Amen!” he said, running the words together as he rushed through the prayer.

Nels Matlan waved to his son and Tommy darted toward the riverbank. “Sorry, Reverend,” the teacher said.

An exasperated Kania sat and helped himself to a bowl of stew. Mila, his wife, looked away so he wouldn't see her smile. “Nothing to be sorry about, Nels,” the preacher said, spearing a chunk of meat with one hand and reaching for the cornbread with the other. His good humor restored, he grinned around a mouthful of beef. “Nature will have its way.”

“Isn't Lottie coming down to eat with us?” asked Dennis, the eldest of Scott Campbell's sons.

“No,” Elizabeth said, taking a wedge of cornbread from the platter as it was passed. Lottie had flirted outrageously with Dennis and Mackenzie on the riverboat. Both of the young men were nice enough, Elizabeth supposed, but if they expected the same coquettishness from her, they were sadly mistaken. “She's not feeling well,” she added, averting her eyes from them.

Young Mildred Thatche's face mirrored her own worries for herself. She placed a protective hand across her swollen abdomen. “I hope it isn't serious,” she said, smiling wanly at her husband as he ladled food into her bowl, took some for himself, and passed the pot.

“Can't be too sick,” Little Ruthie Campbell spoke up before being nudged into silence by her sister, Dianne.

“What is that supposed to mean, young lady?” Carl Michaelson asked, frowning.

Everyone was looking at her. Ruthie, concentrating on her stew, pushed a piece of carrot around. “Nothing, Mr. Michaelson,” she finally said.

“Ruthie.” Scott Campbell's voice was a rumbling warning. “If you know something, best speak it out or I'll be having to take a strap to you for carrying on so.”

Ruthie's face went beet red. “I didn't mean no harm, Pa. It's just that me and Dianne heard Lottie talking today about seeing the sights. I mean,” she added, stammering, “those down by the river.”

“You mean Natchez Under the Hill?” Carl asked, staring at Elizabeth, who kept her head lowered.

“Tsk, tsk.” Helen Kemper clucked her disapproval loud enough for all to hear.

“Oh, dear God!” Hester whispered.

“I think that's what she said,” Ruthie replied, wishing she hadn't been so anxious to join the conversation.

Thaddeus Jones came to his feet and leaned across the table toward her. “Think won't do, little girl,” he growled. “Now you remember straight and fast.”

Tears were running down Ruthie's face. “She said them words,” she sobbed. “Na … Na … Nachez Under the Hill.”

“Damn!” Jones cursed, stepping over the bench and jamming his hat on his head. “The rest of you stay here. I don't want any more trouble than we got already.”

Hester's eyes widened, and one hand fluttered to her mouth. Carl rose slowly, a figure of wrath, and faced the company. “You'll excuse us, Reverend Kania.” He turned to his daughter. “I should like to speak to you alone, Elizabeth,” he said, stepping over the bench and walking away from the table.

A frightened Hester followed Elizabeth toward the wagons. Jack Hemper stood and called after them, “Be glad to help any way I can, Carl,” but Carl did not answer. Kemper looked around at the others and when his wife placed a restraining hand on his wrist, sat again. Reverend Kania glanced at Mila, who shook her head no. The meal resumed in uncomfortable silence, broken only by Ruthie's sniffles.

Elizabeth counted the steps to their wagon. The exercise, mindless as it was, kept the fear at bay, at least until she rounded the wagon and found her father waiting for her. “Have you lied to me, daughter?” he asked, his cheeks red and his scalp flushed beneath the thinning gray hair.

“Now, Carl. I'm sure the girl …” A look from her husband, and Hester's voice faltered, and failed.

His hands moved to his waist and began to remove the thick leather belt he wore. “Daughter?”

“Yes, sir,” Elizabeth admitted, unable to keep her eyes from that terrible instrument that now swung free in her father's hands.

“She did go to Natchez Under the Hill against my instructions?”

“Yes, sir,” Elizabeth whispered.

“And you condoned her transgression!” came the thundering accusation.

“No! I told her—”

“Silence! You share her guilt, and to it have added your own!” His face contorted with rage. “Woe to the rebellious children that add sin to sin, saith the Lord.” His voice lowered menacingly. “Prepare yourself, daughter.”

Her fingers fumbling at the fastenings, Elizabeth unbuttoned her shirt as her father walked around her and stopped behind her. She knew what was coming, what was expected of her. She had been punished before. Her shirt dropped and caught at her waist. Hester's lower lip was trembling. Elizabeth looked away from her.

“You have no place here, wife,” Carl rumbled.

Hester stumbled around the wagon and weeping, collapsed on a barrel.

“I have brought this family with my sweat and blood to the promise of a new land.”

Elizabeth caught up her shirt and covered her breasts as she saw her father step to one side and plant his feet.

“I will not be disobeyed.”

Doubled, the leather snapped as it swung back, and then hissed through the air like a snake and struck her naked back. The shock rocked her forward. Searing pain ripped across her back. Elizabeth bit her lip to keep from crying out, and stood her ground.

“I will not be lied to!”

Again, the sharp snap, this hiss, the strike, and excruciating agony.

“I will not be made mock of!”

Snap … strike. Angry welts now rose on creamy white flesh.

“Nor be shamed by Jezebels!”

Snap … strike. Strike. Strike. Strike …

The pain was overpowering, she could not bear it any longer. Her shirt, forgotten, fluttered to the ground. Half naked, gasping for breath, Elizabeth staggered to the wagon and braced herself against the wooden frame with both hands. Suddenly, her father was close behind her. “It's wrong to lie, Beth. Wrong, wrong! We have come too far to be divided by deceit.” His hands touched her waist, slid around her and up to cup her breasts. “I'm sorry,” he whispered softly, his voice husky. “I'm sorry, Beth. Sweet Beth.” His weight pressed her against the wagon and his fingers kneaded her breasts. “You didn't mean to lie, but a lie must be punished. You understand, don't you?”

“No!” Elizabeth gasped, struggling against his touch.

“You have to say you understand. I love you, Beth!”

Choking with horror, Elizabeth found the strength to push him from her, then twisted and tripped, sprawling, into the dirt. “No!” she hissed, crawling away from him. “No!”

Carl stood slumped, his hands hanging lifelessly at his sides. As if stunned by a blow, he stared dully at her. Slowly, sense returned and reason replaced passion. At last, awakening fully from what he thought must have been a dream, he shook his head and squared his shoulders. “Get thee covered, Jezebel,” he snapped, turning his back on her. “It is a sin to be naked in thy father's sight!”

Her back was a sheet of flame. “Oh, God!” Elizabeth moaned, shamed. “Oh, God, God … Why, Father?”

“We will speak no more of this,” Carl answered in a hollow voice. He replaced the belt, slid the lid off the barrel fastened to the side of the wagon, and poured a dipperful of water over his head. “See that you do not tempt me further,” he ordered by way of a final admonition, and stalked off toward the road to Natchez Under the Hill.

Elizabeth lay without moving for long moments, then at last struggled to her feet and climbed inside the wagon. There, exhausted by pain, she collapsed again on a pallet Hester had spread for herself.

“I have some oil. It will take away the sting,” Hester said, climbing into the wagon. “Move over. It's in that trunk.”

“You saw!” Elizabeth said bitterly. “You saw what happened and said nothing.”

Hester took her daughter's arm and helped her to a sitting position. “It's right here somewhere,” she said, rummaging through the trunk. “It was the last batch your grandmother made.”

Elizabeth pounded her fist on the pallet. “You saw!” she shouted. “Why didn't you stop him?”

“I have no control,” Hester said in a tight, strained voice. “The Lord made the husband the head of the household. As a dutiful wife I have no right to question his judgment.”

“You questioned plenty before we left.” Elizabeth couldn't stop the hateful words. “You questioned and nagged and made life miserable for all of us every foot of the way here, but when it comes to a beating, and worse, you—”

“I never wanted to leave.” Hester looked far older than her forty-five years. Her hands trembled and she gazed into the jar as if the murky depths therein held the past she so mourned. “I was frightened. We had such a lovely home. Your father worked hard and our farm was flourishing. My flowers … Oh, my lovely flowers. All gone …”

“We were dying there,” Elizabeth said, cutting off her mother's wistful monologue. “The land was dead from drought and the crops had failed for the past two years, ever since Mamaw and Granddaddy died.”

A mad light glimmered in Hester's eyes. “Our home was lovely, I say! We were respected. I told him this would end badly. I told I would not be his wife if he took me away from my home!”

“You call that being dutiful?” Elizabeth asked in a voice heavy with sarcasm.

Hester poured some of the oil into her hand before she answered. “He meant no harm,” she said at last, moving behind Elizabeth and gently applying the balm. “You're his daughter. It was for your own good.”

Anger gave way to despair in the face of such warped logic. “He tried to have me, Mother, don't you see?” she said, wincing as Hester's hands touched the welts on her back. Twisting, she showed her mother the growing dark spots on her breasts where Carl had mauled her. “This wasn't punishment!”

“No,” Hester agreed. She blinked, refused to look at Elizabeth's breasts. “He was trying to comfort you, dear. Now turn around again like a good girl.”

Elizabeth obeyed, crossed her arms on her knees and rested her forehead on her wrists. Her breasts ached, her back was on fire, and pain stabbed at her head behind her eyes. “Comfort?” she said sarcastically. “Well, just so you'll know, it wasn't the first time he's tried to ‘comfort' me.”

“That's a terrible thing to say!”

“It's true. He's touched me before. Too often to be innocent. But this was the worst. And so help me Almighty Creator, its the last time. I swear to you, I will not be touched by him again!”

Hester's hand shook so badly she had to replace the cover on the bottle. “I won't hear such talk,” she said. “You are his daughter, and … I …” She gasped for air, tried to go on. “… won't …”

“I'm telling the truth, Mother,” Elizabeth said, frightened by the look on Hester's face.

“Truth? Truth?” Hester rocked back and forth on her heels and her eyes blazed madly. “The truth is you tempted him!”

“That's not so,” Elizabeth whispered.

“And that is how you repay him for all the years he has cared for you! He never meant you harm. He loves you!” Her voice rising, she stood and, back bent under the canvas roof, hovered like some dark bird of prey over her daughter. “Why are you so terrible to him? Do you hate him that much?”

Elizabeth stared in horror. She had known her mother was distraught, but these were the signs of madness, and the thought terrified her. Fighting to remain calm, she reached with one hand for her shirt and at the same time got to her knees and retreated toward the front of the wagon. “Now, Mother,” she said, the voice of reason in the face of distress. “I love him. He's my father and I love him.” Desperate, she sought the words to soothe her mother's troubled spirits. “I love you too, Mother. Here.” She smiled and patted the blankets. “Why don't you lie down. I'll rub your temples. You know how much you like to have your temples rubbed.”

Instead, Hester whirled, climbed down from the wagon, and disappeared. Elizabeth hurriedly buttoned her shirt and started to follow, only to find that her mother had stopped a few paces away. Small and lonely, she stood and stared at the broad, sluggish ribbon of muddy water that divided the continent for hundreds of undulating miles. “Mississippi!” Elizabeth heard her say. “Louisiana!” She spat the words as if they were a poison she was ridding from her system. And last, hands clenched into fists and held raised: “Texas!”

Overhead, storm clouds gathered in quarreling numbers. Lightning cursed the lowering western sky. Hester's hands dropped to her sides and her shoulders slumped. “We were so happy,” she said in a tiny little voice so filled with sadness that Elizabeth almost wept to hear it. “We were so happy once.”

Chapter VI

Rain drove the settlers from the supper table and sent them streaming up from the river toward the shelter of their tents and canvas-covered wagons. A blanket wrapped around her shoulders, Elizabeth huddled in the Michaelson wagon. Behind her, stretched out on the pallet, an exhausted Hester lay without moving. Rain dripped from the trees, plop plopped in heavy droplets onto the canvas top, slid down the sloping sides to puddle underneath the wagonbed. Drip drip drip. Counting, counting, trying to sleep, to forget the aches and pains and fears.
One thousand and twenty-one, one thousand and twenty-two, one thousand and twenty-three.
Like counting the stars in hopeless, numbing, tiring, sleepless tedium.