Texas Born (14 page)

Nathaniel squinted at him, then turned
sideways and let fly a squirt of tobacco juice. He turned back to
the reverend. 'Rev'end.' He nodded.

'Fine-looking boy you got there.' Reverend
Flatts gestured at Zaccheus.

Nathaniel did not speak.

'He seems to be a bright boy. It's time he
went to school.'

Nathaniel put his hands over his son's
shoulders and drew him close. 'That why you drove out here? To take
my boy away from me?'

'Not to take him away,' Reverend Flatts
assured Nathaniel smoothly. 'The boy needs to learn to read and
write.' The reverend suddenly took on a more country air. 'Time's
are a-changin'.'

'We're farmers,' Nathaniel insisted. 'We
don't need no book-learnin'. Besides, I need 'im on the farm.'

'He'll do you a lot more good knowin' how to
read and write, Nathan. 'Member last week I saw you at the Muddy
Lake General Store?'

Nathaniel looked at him suspiciously. 'What
about it?'

'You were cheated, that's what. 'Cause you
couldn't do 'rithmetic.'

'Cheated!' Nathaniel roared, his eyes
flashing. 'You mean I was gypped?'

The reverend hadn't counted on the fury of
Nathaniel's anger. He took a step backward, swallowed, and managed
to nod. 'You bought dry goods, if I remember rightly,' he said,
suddenly unsure of himself and sweating even more profusely. 'Beans
and flour and tobacco. The tobacco should have cost you nineteen
and a quarter pennies.' 'Course there's no such thing as
quarter-pennies. But you paid twenty-one cents instead of twenty.
Same with the beans and the flour. And since you couldn't pay in
cash, you're being charged interest by the week. One percent a
month. Even there you're overpaying, since you can't figure it out
right yourself.''

Nathaniel shoved Zaccheus away, lunged at the
reverend, grabbed him by the lapels, and half-lifted the fat little
man off his feet. The reverend did a little dance on tiptoe as
Nathaniel shook him fiercely. 'You dirty, double-crossin' swine,'
he snarled. 'Posin' as a man o' God! I got a good mind to put you
outta yer misery! Why didn't you tell me I was bein' cheated at the
store?'

'Because telling you then wouldn't have done
you any good in the long run!' the reverend sputtered. His already
florid face was getting redder by the second. 'Not without learning
to read, write, and do arithmetic. If Zack learns, he can help.
Then you'll never be cheated.'

Nathaniel let the reverend go.

The fat man gulped air and brushed his
crumpled lapels with his fingertips. 'If he learns to read, he'll
have a chance at a future. Nowadays, everybody's got to read and
write to get ahead.'

Nathaniel glowered. 'Zack'll be a farmer jest
like me. There ain't no shame in that. We're honest, hardworking
folk.'

For the first time since she had married
Nathaniel, Sue Ellen stepped forward and spoke up. 'Maybe the
reverend's right, Nathaniel. Maybe Zack should go to school,' she
said quietly.

Both men stared at her. Nathaniel turned to
the reverend. 'It costs money, don't it?' he snapped.

The reverend nodded. 'Fifteen dollars a
year.'

Nathaniel shrugged. 'Well, I ain't got
it.'

'I do,' Sue Ellen said softly.

Nathaniel stared at her openmouthed.

'I got that gold locket my mama left me. It's
worth at least fifteen dollars.'

Nathaniel shook his head. The locket was the
only thing Sue Ellen's mother had left her, and he knew how much
she treasured it.

'I'll sell it,' she offered quietly, avoiding
her husband's eyes. ' 'Sides, I never get a chance to wear it.
'Course, we'll have to switch the chores around, but they'll git
done. Zack can get up at three, do half the chores, go to school,
and finish the rest when he gits home.' She nodded. 'Zack'll go to
school.'

Her voice was so level and firm that
Nathaniel was speechless.

It was the first and last time that Sue Ellen
ever spoke up and came to a decision without conferring with her
husband.

Zaccheus dedicated himself to learning.
Instinctively he knew that the only way to escape the poverty in
which he was entrenched was through education. He saw how those
townsfolk who could read and write lived, and he attributed their
higher standard of living to education. For the first time he
became ashamed of the mean way he and his family lived. He knew how
poor they were, but worse, now he saw that they hadn't tried to
better themselves, but were content as they were. That realization
triggered a hunger for learning he had not known could exist.

Within six months he could read better than
others who had gone to school for three years. Diligently he
practiced his penmanship, always striving for neatness and
legibility, and he constantly tried to decipher that which still
held mysteries for him. He spent hours lying awake at night with a
candle, memorizing words and definitions in the
Webster's
Miz Arabella, Reverend Flatts's wife, had lent him. She was his
teacher, and in the second year, knowing that the Howes couldn't
spend any more money on Zaccheus' education, she took him on in
exchange for chores.

Nathaniel grumbled, but somehow Zaccheus,
working with an almost superhuman energy, managed to do his farm
chores as well. By midterm of that year he was able to read,
memorize, and explain entire passages of the Bible. He had a gift
for the English language—and a gift for getting what he wanted. The
vocabulary he had learned gave him a smooth, glib tongue. He
contrived to become friends with the widow who lived next to the
Flattses because she had an enormous library; she lent Zaccheus her
books.

He devoured every volume she owned. Miz
Arabella's primer initially opened the magic door to knowledge, and
the Bible explained many things and recounted marvelous stories and
heroic deeds, but it was the Widow McCain's books which brought an
ache and excitement into his life—and the realization that his own
life was dull. In the books, he read of faraway places which seemed
more real and exciting than the parochial world of Muddy
Lake—magical places such as China, Japan, Greece, and Russia.

The more this new world opened up to him, the
more Zaccheus hungered to become a part of it. He grew to despise
Muddy Lake. He yearned to visit the lands of pale, delicate women
with almond eyes and tiny lips; he hankered to roam through the
Winter Palace of the czars; he longed to stumble through the ruins
of ancient civilizations. His entire being was consumed with
wanderlust and an insatiable thirst for knowledge. But he carefully
kept these feelings to himself, fearing that if his father
discovered how his imagination swirled, he would put a stop to his
schooling. And slowly, inevitably, Zaccheus felt a distance growing
between his family and himself. It was a gulf that was widening by
the day. He knew why it was happening: because he couldn't share
with them. He couldn't share his thoughts and ambitions and dreams.
They would never understand.

It was nearly five years before he finally
confided in anyone.

It was a breezy Sunday afternoon when his
sister, Letitia, her husband, Theoderick, and their shrieking
children came for a visit. Theoderick was a farmer several miles
away, and Sue Ellen had been very proud of Letitia's marriage to
him. He owned tobacco fields, and that made him a man to be
reckoned with, even though he had little money.

They ate lunch on the porch, on a trestle
table made of rough-hewn planks long weathered silver. In honor of
the occasion, Sue Ellen and Letitia pooled their resources and went
all out. There were fried chicken, mashed potatoes with gravy,
cornbread, and for dessert Sue Ellen made her specialty, an apple
pie.

There was little conversation during the
meal; everyone was too busy eating, the children included. In the
Howe household, this meal amounted to a feast, and it was eaten
with intense concentration, as if it were some sort of solemn
religious ceremony.

The food disappeared quickly, and while Sue
Ellen cleared the plates away, Nathaniel and Theoderick stayed on
the porch chewing tobacco, smoking pipes, and drinking cider. The
children chased each other off into the woods, playing games they'd
made up.

Zaccheus, having seen little of Letitia since
her marriage, walked with her to the far end of the fields, where a
creek divided the Howe farm from the Swaggertys' in a natural,
meandering boundary. For a long while they were both silent.

As they walked, Letitia glanced worriedly at
her younger brother from time to time. She could sense that
something weighed heavily on his mind, but she was a Howe, and
Howes never pried into each other's business.

She waited until he was ready to speak.

Zaccheus picked a dry stalk of weed and
nervously snapped it into little bits and pieces. He threw them,
one by one, into the creek and watched them being carried
downstream by the current. Finally he could no longer bear to keep
his yearnings to himself.

'Letitia?'

His sister raised her freckled face, her
strong chin jutting upward. His eyes darted to the distant house in
which he had been born. A lazy wisp of smoke trailed skyward from
the crooked chimney. All around him, crickets chirped noisily from
the depths of the grass, and a steady trill came from some clumps
of bushes. A frog croaked. 'I can't bear it here any longer,
Letitia!' he blurted in a rush.

Letitia frowned as he spoke. Ever since he
had started school, his language had changed, and she had trouble
following what he said. Gone forever were the 'ain'ts,' 'cain'ts,'
'jests,' and 'fers' that had always inhabited his vocabulary.

'An' what's wrong with this place?' she asked
indignantly.

His eyes glowed with the intensity of
smoldering embers. 'There's a whole world out there, Letitia!' he
cried, no longer trying to contain his excitement. 'It's so big and
sprawling and beautiful! Did you know there are such things as
snow-covered mountains that belch smoke and fire?'

'Oooooh!' she squealed, clapping a hand over
her mouth. Her eyes looked like horror-stricken saucers. 'Lawdy,
but I wouldn't wanna see that. It would scare me to death!' Then
she lowered her hand and smiled.

' 'Course, you're jest tryin' to pull my
leg.'

'No,' he said quietly, 'it's true.'

'How'd you know?' she accused. She leaned
forward. 'You been there?'

'In a way.' He looked defiant.

'When?'

'I . . . I read about it.'

'Oh.'

The way she said it took the wind out of his
sails. He cursed himself for revealing his innermost secrets to
her. She couldn't read, couldn't possibly begin to imagine the
power and magic of words. And therefore she couldn't begin to
believe what was written in books.

He had been a fool to confide in her.

She looked at him sharply. 'You ain't
thinkin' of leavin' here and runnin' after some squirrely
fairy-tale mountains, are you?'

He bit down on his lip and nodded. Then he
clutched her hands so tightly that she let out a squeal of pain.
'I've got to get away,' he said, 'but you've got to promise me you
won't tell Ma and Pa.'

'It's the rev'end.' She tossed her flaxen
head. 'He's been puttin' funny ideas in yer head. Yep, funny ideas.
'Fore long, people here'll say you're funny too, if you don't keep
things like that to yourself.'

He shook his head. 'No, it's not the
reverend. It's the books. They talk to me, Letitia! Really, they
do!'

She looked at him as if he were crazy.

'When you're reading,' he said patiently,
'it's just like there's a storyteller right beside you, telling you
all about the marvels he's seen.'

Letitia looked unconvinced. 'Where you wanna
go?' she asked with incisive practicality.

He shrugged and rocked frontward and backward
on the balls and heels of his bare feet. He looked down and studied
his toes thoughtfully. 'I don't really know,' he said reflectively.
'Everywhere, I guess.' He raised his head and squinted in the sun.
'I think I'd just like to travel for a while. See everything I
can.'

'Don't that take a lotta money?'

He nodded. 'But I'm not going to leave just
yet.'

She frowned. 'How's come?'

'Oh, I still got a lot to learn,' he said
vaguely, avoiding her eyes by looking out across the fields.

What he couldn't tell her was that he was at
odds with himself. On the one hand, he yearned to take off
immediately, walk to St. Louis or anywhere else—the direction
itself didn't matter, only that he begin his journey. On the other
hand, the reverend and Miz Arabella's beautiful niece, Miz Phoebe,
had just come from Natchez to stay with the Flattses. Her parents
had both been killed in a horse-drawn-buggy crash, and the Flattses
had taken her in. Phoebe Flatts was sixteen, two years older than
he, and she mesmerized him. Her face was as cool and white as
porcelain, her long white-blond hair gleamed like satin, and her
eyes were dark and liquid. Whenever she passed by him, she would
lower those eyes and smile demurely with her tiny heart-shaped
lips, and his pulse would race and a blush would rise up from his
neck. He'd never known that a woman could have that kind of effect
on him, and now that she'd come into his orbit—however
peripherally—he couldn't bear to tear himself away from her. Not
even for his travels.

But what he had found even more disturbing
was that he had difficulty putting his feelings for Miz Phoebe into
words or even thought—nothing he could think or say could ever do
her justice. Finally, in desperation, he had gone to the Widow
McCain and borrowed a slim volume of verse again. The first time
through, he'd been unimpressed, but now he understood why poetry
existed—to describe the indescribable. And from that moment on,
each time he thought of Miz Phoebe, one of Shakespeare's sonnets
sprang to his mind: