Moon Flower (Gone-to-Texas Trilogy) (30 page)

      
Word of the glorious deliverance spread like prairie grassfire across Texas. While the refugees at Groce's Plantation rejoiced and prepared to return to their homes, Obedience and Deborah were thoughtful. Obedience remembered her brother, fallen at the Alamo.

      
“Shore hope thet nice young Lieutenant Slade warn't one o' them kilt at San Jacinto,” she ventured aloud, echoing Deborah's thoughts. The two women packed their belongings and once more headed west toward San Antonio. Now they would make their home in the Republic of Texas.

Chapter Seventeen

      
The trip to San Antonio was made under far more pleasant conditions than the runaway flight east had been. The weather turned warm and sunny; the raw, miserable drizzle ended; and a late, lush spring finally arrived. Deborah welcomed their steady progress along the San Antonio Road.

      
The scenery was as glorious as the dry, clean air. At night, the sky was filled with brilliant stars, each blazing forth as if claiming the right to be the one on the Texas flag. During the day, they rode over gently swelling hills, past burbling, clear springs that magically appeared from underground sources, leaving the land filled with riotous carpets of wildflowers: bluebonnets, buttercups, and Indian paintbrush. Their brilliant colors and pungent perfume were balm to Deborah's weary soul and body.

      
She stretched and rubbed her aching back. Her stomach was noticeably protuberant now and she had taken to wearing high waisted skirts with pleats in front to allow her freedom of movement.

      
“Yew feelin' poorly?” Obedience asked solicitously, noting her young friend's stiff movements as she climbed off the wagon seat.

      
Deborah smiled. “No, just a little tired and sore from all this kicking.” She grinned as she rubbed her belly. “She's going to be a regular Texas hellion.”

      
Obedience harrumphed. “Or
he's
gonna be. Yew settle on names yet?”

      
“I'm still tending toward Katherine, but perhaps Lenore. She is a very dear friend I shall never see again. How does Lenore Obedience sound to you?” She cocked her head, a gamin grin on her lips.

      
Obedience threw up her hands, soup ladle and all, and rocked back on her heels. “Jehoshaphat! What a mouthful! I'd bet me half this wagonload 'o goods that it'll be yer pa's namesake 'n save th' pore critter from bein' cursed with my ugly handle.”

      
Suppressing a chuckle, Deborah replied, “Why only half the wagonload, Obedience?”

      
The older woman looked disgustedly at her greenhorn charge. “I got ta teach yew how ta play poker. Odds is only half thet yew’ll git yore girl, so I'll only bet half I git my boy.”

      
‘‘Well, if he turns out like your sons, I'll not be sorry,” Deborah equivocated, refusing to think about the child turning out like Rafael.

      
Sensing the direction of Deborah's thoughts, Obedience changed the subject. “We should git inta Santone tomorrow. Cain't rightly wait ta see it, after hearin' all Seth's stories.”

      
“Is it really very Spanish-looking? I hope the Mexican townspeople won't resent us.”

      
Obedience gestured dismissively and said, “Yew mean the
Tejano
townsfolk? Why, Jehoshaphat! Ain't yew niver heerd o' Texas's Vice President Lorenzo Zavala er Colonel Juan Seguin in General Sam's army? The
Tejanos
wuz as afeard o' Santy Anny as anyone. Lots o' them folks sent food 'n supplies ta th' men inside th' Alamo, some even fought 'n died with ‘em. Nah, we ain't got nothin' ta fear from
Tejanos
—thet's whut the Mexican Texians is called.”

      
“
Tejanos
,” Deborah rolled the unfamiliar word around on her tongue. “Jim Slade, the young lieutenant who saved my life, is a
Tejano
or sort of. His mother was a Sandoval who married a Virginian. I do hope he's all right.”

      
“So do I. Nice lookin young gent. Say, don't he have a spread hereabouts—outside Santone?” Obedience remembered the blond youth's striking looks and educated manner. A likely suitor for Deborah!

      
Reading her friend's mind, Deborah said,
 
“Yes, his father owns a ranch ‘hereabouts’ and no, I am not interested in him that way. I've already told you my husband is alive back in New Orleans. Anyway, Jim Slade is two years younger than I am—a boy!”

      
Obedience threw back her head and roared. “Jehoshaphat! That don't count fer nothin' in Texas! 'N thet boy as yew call 'em has seen more fightin' 'n done more work 'n most grandpas back east! Yew could do a lot worse.”

      
“I already have. At least I won't repeat my first mistake and fall for a handsome face,” she replied darkly.

      
“I don't 'spect, considerin' how yew look, thet yew'd ever hafta settle fer a plug ugly toadyfrog.”

      
In spite of herself, Deborah laughed, holding her belly.

* * * *

      
When the caravan arrived in San Antonio the next afternoon, Deborah exclaimed, “Oh, Obedience, it's so beautiful!” She could see the spires of an old Spanish cathedral peeking above lush stands of cypress trees. The warm June sun beat down on thick-walled, low buildings. They were whitewashed and many had red tile roofs and iron grillwork balconies. Broad, clean streets lined with oak and cottonwood trees were filled with all manner of traffic as they neared the Main Plaza.

      
Several peasant women dressed in white blouses and bright cotton skirts carried big clay pots of water on their shoulders. A
caballero
in a tight-fitting silver-trimmed jacket and pants rode a magnificently outfitted black horse. A teamster cursed and flogged his long train of mules as they pulled a heavy load of dry goods. Here and there, Anglo women in calico dresses and sunbonnets made their way across the thoroughfare, as did farmers, in rough homespun and hard-looking mountain men dressed in buckskins, weighed down with knives and guns.

      
The city included a motley assortment of humanity, Hispanic and Anglo, rich and poor, desperate and dangerous. Deborah drank it in, as colorful and exotic in its way as New Orleans had been.
Please let this be home for me and my child.

      
Obedience stopped and asked directions at the Main Plaza while Deborah admired the spacious tree-lined square. She heard a mixture of English and Spanish, with occasional dialects unfamiliar to her, perhaps Indian language. But she heard no one speak French. She was grateful and oddly sad at the same time.

      
“Jist up a couple o' blocks thataways,” Obedience instructed Zeb who gave their mules a sharp slap of the reins, “ ‘n we'll be home.”

      
“I can hardly wait to see the house,” Deborah said with a grin.

      
“Now, I warned yew, don't go a gettin' yer hopes up fer a fancy place like back east. My brother, God rest his soul, tended ta put a leetle stretch on th' truth now 'n then.”

      
Even so, Deborah was not prepared for the dilapidated wooden structure at the end of Commerce Street. It had two stories and a wide front porch. Seth had not lied about that, but the bare boards were crudely fitted and the windows innocent of glass. The doors hung crookedly on their hinges and the porch rail was half-finished. Indeed, the whole place looked half-finished.

      
“Why, Obedience, it's—it's got lots of potential,” Deborah managed as they pulled up.

      
“Jehoshaphat! If’n thet means it's a dump, then I reckon yore right,” Obedience said as she jumped down from the wagon and forged across the dusty front yard toward the door.

      
In her condition, Deborah could only follow slowly. Obedience's call at the front door was met by a small, crablike black woman wearing a fierce scowl that matched the tall Tennessean’s.

      
“You be wantin' rooms? Mr. Seth he doan rents ta females.” The black woman spoke in a no-nonsense voice.

      
“I ain't rentin'. I'm ownin'. Obedience Jones is my name 'n I'm Seth Morton's sister. He wuz expectin' me afore th' war. Who are yew?”

      
“I be Sadie 'n I runs this here house fer Mr. Seth since Miz Mathilda die.”

      
“I don't hold with slavery, even if my sister-in-law did. I'll see ta yore bein' freed—”

      
“Yo cain't free me!” Sadie interrupted with a triumphant gleam in her eye, her stooped body still blocking the door. “I already
is
free. Got me papers to prove it. I works fer Mr. Seth!”

      
“Jehoshaphat! Yew cud'a jist said so,” Obedience replied in a huff.

      
“Maybe you never gave her a chance,” Deborah said softly, trying to ease the confrontation. Feeling the black woman's eyes shift to her, Deborah smiled and introduced herself. “I'm Deborah Kensington. Mrs. Jones is the new owner, truly. I know she does appreciate your keeping the boardinghouse operating while we were detained by the war.”

      
Sadie smiled. “Come in and set. It be hot outside.” She ushered them inside with a flourish of her arthritic arm and then scrabbled down the long, wide central hall to a room on the right. “This be th' parlor. I'll bring lemonade. Set yoself.” She indicated a large leather chair to Deborah and made a gesture toward her belly. Pregnant women should rest was the obvious implication.

      
Reddening, Deborah sat down while Obedience made a quick inspection of the large, scantily furnished room. Sadie went after the promised refreshment.

      
“Well, it is big and roomy,” Deborah ventured.

      
“Filthy as a hawg pen. They ain't hardly no furniture!” Obedience responded.

      
There were two crude leather chairs and an ugly horsehair sofa. One small, rickety table sat beside it with a lard wick stuck into a saucer that served as the room's only apparent lamp.

      
“We might see if Zeb and Ira would consider hiring on to do some chores for a while,” Deborah suggested, then added, “I have plenty of money to pay them and I want to do my share, Obedience.”

      
The old woman grinned. “Right stubborn fer sech a skinny leetle thing, aintcha?”

      
By the next day, Obedience had all her questions answered. Seth had built his large house and had made plans to finish it, ordering the furniture from New Orleans and hiring workmen to paint walls and put glass in the windows. However, he had scarcely begun when Mathilda had become gravely ill. She had been the planner, the one responsible for choosing colors, furniture, wallpaper, everything for the interior decoration.

      
After she died, Seth Morton had written to ask his sister to come to San Antonio, but he had lost interest in his wife's dream. He had thrown himself into the revolution with the fervor of a rootless man and had left the house, with six, old male boarders, under the care of Mathilda's servant, Sadie.

* * * *

      
In the months that followed, Deborah joined Obedience in a whirlwind of activity, converting the half-finished boardinghouse into a comfortably furnished home.

As Obedience had predicted, Deborah's lethargy, nausea, and other discomforts of pregnancy abated, leaving her feeling surprising healthy and energetic during the dry sunny days of San Antonio's summer. Her appetite was voracious, but her diligence in working alongside Obedience kept her from gaining much weight. Recalling the odious tales of “confinement” Celine and her friends whispered about, Deborah often laughed as she traveled about the city and worked in the boardinghouse, heedless of her ripening figure.

      
A thin, nervous man of indeterminate years named Chester Granger appeared the second day they had set to work. Hat in hand, Adam's apple bobbing and feet shuffling, he inquired if the new owners wanted a general handyman. He could drive a team, work livestock, prune the orchards, and do anything else they needed.

      
Realizing Zeb and Ira planned to homestead their own land the following spring, Deborah was inclined to hire Chester.

      
“We need someone who can be a jack-of-all-trades for us,” Deborah said to Obedience as she and the older woman talked in the kitchen while the applicant waited nervously on the side porch.

      
“Jehoshaphat! He's too puny 'n too twitchy ta lift a flour sack without spillin' it,” Obedience replied, giving the encrusted pot she was scrubbing a masterful scrape to free a hunk of baked-on food.

      
“He's had experience working in orchards and growing things. I really want to reclaim the fruit trees out back and grow a large garden to supplement our table.” Deborah's voice was beseeching. “I’m sure he'll be helpful.”

      
“Harrumph, like thet crippled ole Sadie's helpful! I declare, we're runnin' a orphanage fer growed-up misfits whut cain't do fer themselves.” Her tone was brusque, but Deborah could see she was coming around.

      
“For all your bluff and bluster, Obedience Jones, you've taken in more than your share of misfits along the way, including one scared, pregnant runaway,” she replied, tiptoeing up to kiss the leathery cheek of the big Tennessean. “I'll tell Chester he can start right away!”

      
While Chester sawed, spliced, and put mud plasters on tree wounds in the orchard, Deborah sweated in the garden, planting sweet potatoes and corn as well as a large assortment of beans, carrots, broccoli, and cabbages. They would have a bountiful harvest of wholesome fresh vegetables this fall. “I can grow anything in this rich warm earth that they can in sticky old Louisiana,” she promised herself as she wiped the sweat from her brow, applying herself to the seeding once more.