Texas Born (3 page)

Because Zaccheus had dared fight back?

It was a bad omen.

Tex Sexton frightened her. But Jennifer . .
.

Elizabeth-Anne felt a sudden chill as she
pictured Jennifer sitting in the enormous ranch house. Watching and
waiting and scheming. Ever since they had been children together,
Jennifer had idled away her time plotting. But why strike now?
Elizabeth-Anne knew she was in no way offering the Sextons
competition.

Could it simply be because of Jennifer?

She tightened her lips determinedly. Well,
she, for one, wasn't going to sit back and let Tex and Jennifer
walk all over her! Not on her life! She would go to Coyote and see
what she could do. If need be, she would seek out Tex himself and
demand an explanation. Besides, what could he do to her other than
make money from her, hand over fist?

But Jennifer. Well, she thought, Jennifer was
another story entirely. She could talk to Tex, but Jennifer would
refuse even to see her.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth-Anne knew that she had
no choice but to go ahead with the construction. Now, more than
ever, she felt the desperate need for the revenues the Hale Tourist
Court would bring in. It had to be open for business as soon as
possible. No one but her knew the very precarious state her
finances were in. The entire bank loan had already been eaten up.
The Good Eats Café and the rooming house, along with six years of
hard-earned savings, were paying the bills. If she couldn't open
the tourist court within thirteen weeks . . . or earlier . . . and
if she couldn't come to an agreement with the Sextons . . . or if
they dared raise their prices yet
again
. . .

She looked at Carlos Cortez. 'I will see you
tomorrow,' she told him briskly. 'Now I've got to head back to
town.'

He followed her to the buggy and helped her
up to the seat. In the distance she could see the laborers' flatbed
truck arriving. The men were crowded in the back, an
indistinguishable mass of blue denim work clothes and yellow straw
hats.

Carlos followed her gaze. As if sensing what
effects her problem might have on the employment of his people, he
said: 'I will speak to the men about the extra hours. I think I can
get them to agree.' He paused, embarrassed, and added softly:
'Without the time and a half.'

She stared down at him. So he knows, she
thought. Suddenly she reached out and touched his shoulder
gratefully. Then, tightening her lips purposefully, she sat stiffly
erect and snapped the reins. Bessie began to move and Carlos slid
out of sight.

During the ride back to town, her mind was
occupied by what the day still held in store. Hours of grueling
work and, if she could manage the time—and she couldn't afford not
to—going to Coyote and trying to sort things out. Sometimes it
seemed to her that no matter how hard she worked, obstacles always
stood in her way. So far, she'd managed to work her way around
them.
So far
. . .

Beyond these thoughts she could hear the
steady clip-clop of Bessie's hooves on the dirt road. Then abruptly
the smell of burning brush assaulted her senses. Someone was
clearing fields. Her lips tightened, and she held her breath. But
after a while that one overpowering odor engulfed her completely.
Ever since she had been a little girl, fires—even the smell of
smoke—had filled her with nightmares and dread. No matter how she
tried to close her mind to it, the hideous memory was always there
in the background somewhere.

The smell of burning.

The crackle and roar of flames.

The hideous shrieks of agony and the
desperate cries for help. . . .

There was no escaping it. Years passed and
many things changed, but never that.

For with the smell of fire came the memory of
death. The unshakable memory that had stayed with her since she had
been six years old.

It was the worst fire that Quebeck, Texas,
and Elizabeth-Anne were ever to see. Before her horrified eyes, she
watched the conflagration begin in the circus tent.

At first a tiny flame licked lazily across
the sawdust; a moment later there was a sea of flames. From all
around, she could hear the cries of fear and panic, pain and
anguish. She watched in shock as her father's body turned into a
roaring human torch.

For interminably long minutes the beautiful
child with wheat-gold hair stood outside in a field, where she had
been picking sunflowers, and watched with wide, horrified
aquamarine eyes as the fierce fire burned itself out.

When the fire began to die down,
Elizabeth-Anne headed back to the smoldering rubble that was left
of the circus tent to search for her mother and father. They lay
dead, pinned down by a still-burning pole. She grabbed hold of it
with her bare hands to pull it off them, in her shock unaware of
the flames licking her hands, burning her palms and fingers. Then
she smelled the nauseous odor of frying, sizzling fresh, her own
and her family's, and she dropped the pole and threw up.

The townsfolk had succeeded in stampeding to
safety, and miraculously, only three of them suffered burns, two of
them minor. Mrs. Pitcock, the mayor's wife, suffered the most. She
was burned on the forehead and cheeks, but that eventually healed,
blemishing her face slightly. Not one townsperson died.

But the holocaust took its toll on the
traveling circus Elizabeth-Anne's parents owned. All but Hazy, the
dwarf, and Hester, the bearded lady, died before they could be
taken to the nearest hospital. Hester died in agony that same
night.

Elizabeth-Anne would never forget that
terrible sight and the horrible stench of burning flesh for as long
as she lived. She would be unable to bear to look at her hands,
even long after their wrinkled, parchmentlike skin had healed, for
they were a constant reminder of tragedy and loss and death.

Elizabeth-Anne would never forget the
terrible fate which had been so cruelly meted out to her.

Her father, dreamer that he was, had traded a
rundown farm near Naples, Texas, where Elizabeth-Anne had been
born, for an equally dilapidated traveling circus years before.

Now, at six years old, she was without
parents or any family she knew of—the traveling circus had been her
only family.

The remains smoldered for days. There was
little entertainment in Hidalgo County, and the news spread like
wildfire. Even those who had not come to see the circus traveled
from miles around to gawk with morbid fascination at the
destruction firsthand.

Elender Hannah Clowney was not one to thrive
on sensationalism and misery. Neither was she a gossip.

She was far too busy to squander her time
uselessly by prying into other people's affairs—she had enough
headaches and problems of her own, mainly her rooming house on Main
Street—where she lived on the ground floor with Jenny, her niece,
and rented out the upstairs rooms by the week—as well as the Good
Eats Café across the street.

Twenty-six years earlier, Elender Hannah
Clowney had been born in Boston. That legendary streak of New
England frugality, coupled with an implacable calm and a
no-nonsense approach to life, was ingrained in her bones. She
rented out rooms by the week instead of the month because of a
simple matter of arithmetic: she figured that there were fifty-two
weeks in a year. Divided by four, that came to thirteen months.
Renting out rooms by the calendar month, on the other hand, would
have netted her only twelve months. It just made plain old
Bostonian common sense to squeeze an extra month out of every
year—and the money with it.

If she'd known about the fire, she'd have
been the last person to hop into her buggy, drive out to Geron's
Fields, and survey the damage. As it was, she didn't hear about it
because, for the past two days, she'd been in Brownsville.

She'd taken Jenny, who had just turned nine,
along with her. Since Quebeck was not even a pinpoint on a map, she
decided it would be educational for the girl to be exposed to
something bigger, more cosmopolitan. Coming from Boston, Elender
Hannah Clowney knew the world offered much more and was certainly
faster-moving than sleepy little Quebeck, where time stood still.
She considered ignorance dangerous and exposure all-important. And
yet . . . yet
she
had moved to Quebeck a little more than
eight years ago. By choice. It had seemed the perfect place to
settle down and carve out a new life for herself. When she'd
arrived, no one had known her, and she had since become a model
citizen, admired and respected.

She'd paid for her past mistakes. Her slate
had been cleansed.

She had to admit that her new life in Quebeck
hadn't turned out half bad. No, not bad at all, everything
considered, which was why she had gone to Brownsville. Her rooming
house was paid for, the Good Eats Caf6 was making money, and she'd
managed to save five hundred dollars—two hundred of which was going
for new paint, fabric, and furniture. The rooms she was renting out
could do with refurbishing, and she could finally afford it. The
remainder of the money would go toward buying the house the café
occupied. It was much smaller but had a big porch encircling it and
was structurally sound; she'd be able to own it instead of renting,
and equity was something else which just made good old common
sense.

She'd enjoyed Brownsville—the dressing up,
the shopping, the bargaining, and the two nights spent at a real
hotel. She'd almost forgotten how much fun a city could be. Of
course, it wasn't Boston or New York or Philadelphia, but still, it
would have been a perfect trip had it not been for Jenny. The
trouble had started as soon as they'd left Quebeck. Driving past
Geron's Fields, they came across Szabo's Traveling Circus and Freak
Show. The big blue tent was just being pitched, and suddenly Jenny
no longer wanted to go to Brownsville. She wanted to stay and see
the circus instead.

She had bounced up and down on the buggy
seat.

'Look, Auntie!' she squealed. 'A freak show's
come to town!'

Elender frowned disapprovingly at the
brightly painted wagons.

'Can't we stay here, Auntie?' Jenny begged.
'
Please?
I want to see the freaks!'

'We will
not
put off this trip,'
Elender said concisely. She narrowed her eyes. 'You have looked
forward to it for two weeks and so have I. And I still am.' And
with that she determinedly snapped the reins to make the horse trot
even faster.

But it did not move fast enough: Jenny caught
sight of two dwarfs, obviously arguing. Elender, who did not like
to come face-to-face with human misery, quickly averted her eyes.
And in doing so saw the child.

She was at the roadside, pushing through the
weeds, plucking sunflowers. As Elender watched, the little girl
brought the bouquet up to her nose and sniffed it. Then she
wrinkled her nose and looked up.

What a beautiful child she was! So tiny and
delicate, so perfectly . . .
angelic
. For an instant their
eyes met, and the girl smiled disarmingly. There was a happiness in
that smile such as Elender had never seen.

The magical moment was broken by Jenny.
'She's one of the freaks, isn't she?'

Elender did not reply. She could only wonder
how Jenny had turned out the way she had. She is so unlike me,
Elender thought.
How did that happen? I've tried to do
everything for her. Give her everything. Is that the problem? Or is
it because the child has no father?

Everyone in Quebeck knew that Elender Hannah
Clowney was a spinster and that Jenny was her orphaned
niece—because that was what she had told them when they had first
arrived. It was the first and last lie she had ever told.

Spinster. Well, it wasn't far from the truth.
After all, she didn't have a husband. But Jenny wasn't her
niece.

She was her daughter.

Elender had not planned to have a child,
certainly not out of wedlock. She'd just turned sixteen when it had
happened. When Arthur Jason Cromwell's parents had sailed for
Europe. She had been one of Mrs. Cromwell's chambermaids, and the
night of the sailing, she and Arthur had been alone in the big
brick house on Boston's Beacon Hill. He'd given the rest of the
servants a free night out. And told her to stay. She'd never forget
that night as long as she lived.

She was in the kitchen when he rang for her.
She glanced up at the bell register, surprised that the ringing did
not come from the public rooms or his own. It came from his
father's bedroom, which was just next door to the missus'.

She hurried upstairs and knocked on the
door.

'Come in!'

Slowly she opened the door. The room was dark
and warm, and he was sprawled in a tufted armchair in the corner,
his feet up on a hassock. There was half a bottle of brandy on the
marble-topped table beside him.

'You rang, sir?' she asked respectfully.

He nodded. 'Turn down the bed.'

Automatically she walked over to the bedside
table. If he wanted to sleep in his father's bed, that was his
business. She shivered at the impropriety of the idea, but did as
she was told. When she finished, she looked over at him. 'Will
there be anything else, sir?'

He smiled slowly, his eyes traveling over her
body. She was tall for her age, slim but full-breasted. Much more
so than most girls her age.

She could feel her face reddening under his
obvious scrutiny.

'Get undressed,' he said softly.

She stared at him, suddenly feeling helpless
and frightened. Terrified, in fact.

'I told you to undress!'

And slowly she fumbled with the buttons on
the back of her dress. She knew what he wanted to do was wrong, but
with the Cromwells gone, he was master of the house. She dared not
disobey him. He could dismiss her at his whim; and without
references, all jobs would be closed to her.