Texas Born (54 page)

Dorothy-Anne looked solemn and Elizabeth-Anne
laughed with amusement. 'Don't look at them like that, my dear,'
she said briskly. 'They are not here to arrest you.' She smiled and
took a sip of her coffee. Then she looked pointedly at Dorothy-Anne
over the rim of her cup. 'They are merely delivering your birthday
present.'

'Honey?'

The voice seemed to be floating in space
amidst swirling memories and flashes of technicolor pictures.

'Honey. . . '

It was a warm voice, a voice Dorothy-Anne
knew well and loved. She opened her eyes and snapped back to the
present. She shook her head to clear it.

'Are you awake, honey? It sounded like you
were talking in your sleep.'

'No . . . no, I was just daydreaming. I'm
okay now.' She smiled at him reassuringly, but in truth she wasn't
sure if she
was
alright. She had just been in Manhattan,
over a decade in the past; the memory had seemed so real, she
wasn't sure if she was dreaming now, instead. But, no, the
irrigated orchards were still moving past outside the car windows.
And the ache in her heart was still there.

'We're about there, honey.'

She looked over at Freddie and tried to
smile, then turned back to gaze out the windshield. She wondered
how long she had been daydreaming. She didn't feel rested, but knew
it must have been quite a while, as night had almost fallen and
Freddie had already turned off the main highway, the one no one
used anymore.

The sky had darkened some more and on the
horizon, Dorothy-Anne saw thunderheads, low and boiling, a
menacingly dark charcoal gray. But overhead, they were a yellowish
muddy brown, as if the sun were trying to leak through.

'Storm's brewing,' Freddie said. 'It looks
pretty bad.' He lit his cigarette with the dashboard lighter and
then inhaled so that the tip glowed orange in the darkening
light.

Suddenly Dorothy-Anne's attention was drawn
to the old billboard up ahead. It was ancient and peeling, a Pop
Art relic from long before Pop Art came into being. It was big and
rectangular, with a faded coronet jutting out over the top. The
little orbs atop the coronet had long since broken away, and the
flakes of gold paint had gone the way of the wind and the rain. Now
the crown's edge looked like jagged teeth trying to take a bite out
of the sky.

She stared at the billboard as it rushed
toward her, and she mouthed the faded letters which clung
tenaciously to it.

HALE TOURIST COURT

That was what it read, and it had been
standing there long before Hale hotels had sprouted like mushrooms
after a worldwide rainfall. Long before some clever, Madison Avenue
design team had come up with the elegantly intertwined HH logo.
Because long before everything else, there had been the Tourist
Court.

It was just up ahead, on the side of the
road, and it wasn't worth a second glance. There were a hundred
thousand motels like it across the country on roads like this one,
old roads obsolete now that newer highways had been built. The
Tourist Court was just another row of dilapidated little cabins
separated by carports, their only unique feature their roofs of
corrugated iron, high, steep and sloping. They were mansard roofs,
once painted bright orange and shining with newness, now weathered
dull and rusting.

But still, this particular motel was special
in a way no other could ever be. It was the Hale Tourist Court, and
it was here that Elizabeth-Anne's worldwide empire had begun.

Was it possible? Dorothy-Anne asked herself,
gazing at the Tourist Court as Freddie slowed, pulled over and
stopped the car. The idea of it spun dizzily in her foggy,
exhausted mind. Could one ignoble motel have been the springboard
for an empire of international luxury hotels? Could a lone woman
truly have had such vision and incredible drive as to build one of
the world's largest independently controlled fortunes from these
buildings?

As if the answer lay in the Buccellati urn,
Dorothy-Anne weakly pulled it onto her lap, holding it close
against the baby within her. Now the silver no longer seemed cold
or lifeless. She could almost feel a warmth seeping through it.

Freddie helped her out of the car, but she
insisted on carrying the urn herself as they walked off through the
growing darkness into the roadside orchard across the highway from
the Tourist Court. She was. moving as if in a daze, feeling more
light-headed than ever. Once she stumbled, and Freddie took the urn
from her. She felt a strange, cool sweat on her forehead, and so
she let him hold it.

Her vision blurred with tears as Freddie
unscrewed the cover of the urn. Wordlessly, he handed the urn to
her.

She did not speak. Around them, the wind had
risen, and the storm clouds roiled low and angry.

Slowly, she tilted the urn. The wind caught
the spill of ashes, trapped them in sudden whirls of eddies, and
then swiftly dispersed them in a long grey streamer. It was then
that the first fat, heavy raindrops came splattering down, forcing
the ashes groundward.

Now Dorothy-Anne understood why
Elizabeth-Anne had requested that her remains be scattered
here.

Because all things must end as they
begin.

And then she doubled over as the skies broke
open and the first stabbing pain seized her in its grip.

In the kitchen of the manager's cabin of the
Hale Tourist Court, Mrs. Ramirez heard the rumble of thunder.
Lifting her heavy bulk off the kitchen chair, she made her way over
to the window, parted the curtains and peered out.

The sky had become almost blue-black as night
began to fall, and the flashes of lightning were coming closer.
Soon, the downpour would begin, flattening the crops and flooding
the irrigation canals. Storms such as this were extremely rare, but
she had lived here all her life and could predict the weather by
the pain in her swollen ankles - which were much more accurate than
those modern weather charlatans on TV. The afternoon had been the
kind of damp, peculiarly stifling white-hot day that heralded a
terrible storm. The Mexican laborers who had been tending the neat
rows of citrus groves had left early, hurrying home before the sky
burst open. She wondered whether her husband and son would stay in
Mexican Town at her brother's and wait for the storm to pass.

She continued to peer out the window, then
suddenly frowned. Through the gloom she could make out a big car
parked on the shoulder just down the road. Then she saw the man and
the woman. They were slowly coming out of the groves, the woman
walking heavily with her legs spread wide. The man was supporting
her and the woman was bent over, as if in pain.

Just then, there was a tremendous crack of
lightning and the overhead light in the cabin went out. Mrs.
Ramirez muttered a curse. As if the storm were not enough, now
there had to be a power failure, too.

She waited for a moment for her eyes to
adjust to the darkness, then scraped back her chair and went over
to the stove where the iron pot of bubbling beans and fatback were
cooking for dinner. She found the candle and box of matches,
scratched a match against the wall, and lit the candle. As the room
slowly brightened, she heard overhead the sudden heavy drumming of
raindrops on the iron roof. By reflex, she glanced up. From the
sound of them, they were big raindrops, heavy and powerful, the
kind that stung your face if you were caught outside.

Just then, she heard the hammering at the
door. Frowning, she went over and pulled it open. In the flickering
candlelight she could see the tall, handsome man supporting —really
half-carrying — a woman and lugging a heavy-looking silver urn in
his other arm. Their faces were glistening wet, and they were both
soaked through to the skin. Behind them, the rain was coming down
in silver sheets.

'Quickly,' Mrs. Ramirez urged. 'Come in
before everything is soaked.' Her voice was thick with a Mexican
accent.

Once they were inside, Mrs. Ramirez securely
shut the door, then held the candle up. There was no time to waste
on unnecessary words. She looked at Freddie Cantwell. 'Her time has
come?'

'I don't know . . . I think so,' Freddie
said, the fear clear in his voice: 'We were in the orchard and she
cried out and collapsed. She's barely conscious now.'

'Follow me,' Felicia Ramirez said, taking
Dorothy-Anne's other arm and helping Freddie guide her through the
small manager's cabin to the back bedroom. She set the candle down
on the scarred dresser and Freddie gently laid his wife on the bed.
He placed the urn on the dresser, then leaned over Dorothy-Anne and
smoothed the hair from her forehead. Her skin felt hot to the
touch. 'She's feverish,' he said, turning tense eyes on Mrs.
Ramirez.

'How close together come her contractions?'
the heavy woman asked.

'I don't know . . . ' Freddie answered
hesitantly. 'There was just that one, and she passed out.'

'We will wait for the next, then begin to
time them.'

Freddie nodded then picked up the candle and
asked, 'Do you have a telephone?'

'In the other room. Leave the candle here. I
go get more. It is not good to leave a woman whose time is at hand
in the darkness.' Her voice grew quiet. 'If the child enters a
world of darkness, it will be forever blinded.'

Startled by the woman's superstition, Freddie
put the candle down and started to follow her out, but Dorothy-Anne
caught his arm. He turned around and looked down at her. Her eyes
were wide and glazed; and her voice was weak. 'Freddie?' He smiled
down at her, but her fingers dug into his arm with surprising
strength. 'Don't leave me alone, Freddie,' she whispered.
'Please.'

'I'm going to stay right here, honey,' he
promised. 'But first I've got to phone for a doctor.'

She nodded weakly.

He pressed her hand. 'Try to relax and get
some rest. You'll need your strength.'

She nodded again, and shut her eyes. 'I'll
try,' she said softly, giving into the exhaustion that swept over
her. She listened as his footsteps receded. Then everything seemed
suddenly quiet.

The Tropical Court of the Hale Palace had
been anything but quiet. Even as Mr. Bernstein took the documents
out of his briefcase, the parrots and the cockatoos continued their
screeching. Dorothy-Anne remembered Mr. Bernstein flipping through
the stapled papers one last time and then passing them over to Mr.
Morris who also looked them over. Finally both men were satisfied
that everything was indeed in order.

Mr. Bernstein turned to Elizabeth-Anne. He
cupped his hand and coughed delicately. 'You are certain, then,
that you wish to proceed with this transaction?'

'Mr. Bernstein,' she replied dryly, 'as you
can see, I am over eighteen. Since I can drink and I can vote, I
can certainly do with my money and holdings as I please.'

'Of course, of course,' he said soothingly.
He looked over at Dorothy-Anne. 'Miss Hale?'

With a start, Dorothy-Anne realized he was
addressing her. 'Yes, sir?'

'Your great-grandmother has decided to give
you an . . . err . . . well, a rather generous birthday
present.'

Mr. Morris nodded solemnly. 'Yes, a very
generous gift, indeed.'

'In fact,' Mr. Bernstein continued, 'it is so
valuable that although you shall own it the moment these papers are
signed, you will not be able to take possession of it until your
eighteenth birthday. Do you understand what I am trying to
say?'

Dorothy-Anne nodded. 'You mean it's being
held in trust for me.'

Mr. Bernstein seemed a bit surprised, but
quickly recovered his composure. Elizabeth-Anne settled back in her
wheelchair and smiled proudly, but her voice was clipped.

'Mr. Bernstein,' she said briskly. 'Let's
forego the formalities of a lecture, shall we? I may not be of
sound body, but I
am
of sound mind. And my mind is made up.
Now, shall we sign the papers?'

'There, there is the telephone.' Felicia
Ramirez turned from the candles she was lighting and pointed a
thick finger to the kitchen wall.

Freddie nodded, reached for the receiver and
lifted it to his ear. There was no dial tone. Quickly, he jiggled
the cradle up and down with his forefinger. He turned to Felicia.
'It'sdead.'

She waved out the match she was holding, at
the same time moving toward him. 'Here. Let me.' Snatching the
receiver from his hand, she listened, also rattling the cradle up
and down. After a moment she slowly hung up. 'It is the storm,' she
said. 'The lines must be down.'

'What do we do?'

'Your car?' she suggested. 'You drive into
town?'

'It's stuck,' he said grimly. 'I was so upset
when Dorothy-Anne collapsed in the orchard that I rushed her back
to the car and tried to start too quickly. The wheels dug into the
sand, and the harder I tried to get out the deeper they went. It's
hopeless now.' He ran his fingers through his hair miserably, then
asked, 'Don't you have a car?'

'My husband has it,' she answered quietly.
"He has not returned. In a storm such as this, he is sure to stay
in town. It is five miles away and it will soon be night. The trip
is impossible in this weather.'

Freddie's head sagged. 'What do we do?' he
whispered. 'We never thought there would be a storm like this . . .
or that Dorothy-Anne would have the baby now . . . '

Felicia Ramirez drew herself up with calm
dignity. She placed a gentle hand on his arm. 'I am a woman,' she
said. 'I have six children and I have helped deliver others. I know
what to do. Go, stay with your wife. Comfort her and help her rest.
I make hot water and get clean towels. It will be a long
night.'