by Judith Pella
“Did you love him?”
Was he trying to torture himself and her as well? But he had every right to know. It was only natural that he ask.
“Yes,” she said. The time for lies was over. “But you must not think I could still love him after what he did. He turned away from me and his own daughter. He let me become a slave. Because of him, because he did not love me enough, I ended up with Maurice Thomson, losing my honor, my virtue, nearly my soul.” She lifted her head and made herself look into the icy pool of Benjamin’s eyes. “You gave me my life back, Benjamin, but that’s not why I love you. I love you because you are a man who knows how to love enough.”
For the first time, his stoic façade cracked. He snorted a dry laugh. “You can say that after Rebekah? After Micah? Perhaps you only hope I can love enough. I fear I might be just as weak as this Kendell of yours.” He closed his eyes. “I fear you are asking too much.”
“Benjamin, I only ask—”
“Don’t ask any more of me!” He burst out angrily.
He lurched to his feet and started to walk away. His shoulders were hunched like mountains, and she feared they were unscalable mountains. She could do nothing but let him walk away. Then he paused but did not turn.
“I loved you, Elise.” Then he kept walking.
“Loved . . . ?” she murmured, but he could not have heard her as he strode off.
She let out a strangled sob. She had only herself to blame. Twice she had pushed love to its limits, and twice she had learned just what a fragile thing love is.
CHAPTER
55
THE NEXT DAY JOHN CAME to help with harvesting. Benjamin was ready to throw himself into the task despite the fact that he hadn’t slept all night.
Before they began their labors, John brought news.
“A rider come through Cooksburg,” he told Benjamin and Micah as they were in the barn gathering the implements they would take out to the field. “He was one of many Austin has sent ’round to the settlements to call for mobilization of a militia.”
“Yes, I heard about that,” Benjamin said. “That was nearly two weeks ago.”
“My oldest son joined up. He went down to San Felipe to see what was going on and came back yesterday with news.” John picked up Benjamin’s scythe, noted the handle was loose, and worked on fixing it as he spoke. “It’s a real war now. They had the first skirmish in Gonzales. Seems the Mexicans wanted to repossess a cannon from the Gonzales militia, but the Gonzales men were reluctant to comply. Well, the Texians—must have been a hundred and fifty of them—formed a line with the cannon in the middle of them. Then they put a banner over the cannon that said ‘Come and take it!’ ” John chuckled. “Took guts for them to face down a hundred armed and mounted Mexican dragoons like that.”
“What happened?” This was Micah, who had stopped his work loading one of the horses to listen to John’s account.
“Some shots were exchanged, but they were too far away to do much damage. The Texians advanced but didn’t get far before the Mexicans retreated!”
“Were there any casualties?” asked Benjamin.
“None serious. The Mexican commander claimed he was under orders to prevent casualties. That’s why he retreated.” John loaded the repaired scythe on a horse, and they led the animals out of the barn.
“I’ve been thinking of joining up,” John said suddenly.
Benjamin stared at his friend. Though the man was adept at many tasks, Benjamin would never have thought him a soldier. Of course, if Texas was to mount any army at all, it must consist of men like John— farmers, hunters, storekeepers.
John laughed, perceiving what was in Benjamin’s frank stare. “I know. I’ve never done a stitch of soldiering in my life, but I figure this is my home, and it is my duty to defend it.”
“I used to feel that way myself.” Benjamin sighed thoughtfully. His priorities had shifted considerably since those days when he was such a vocal proponent of revolution against Mexico. “I still do but don’t see how I could join the army now.”
“No one expects it, Benjamin. You can’t leave Elise to care for the farm in her present state of health.”
Benjamin was about to voice his appreciation for these words of encouragement, when Micah piped up. “I’ll go in his place!”
Both men looked at Micah as if noticing him for the first time. And indeed, Benjamin realized afresh that there was so much more to his son than he ever imagined.
“How old are you, boy?” John asked.
“Fourteen!” Micah replied, as if this should seal the issue.
“Too young to go to war,” Benjamin said firmly.
“I can shoot and ride as well as anyone! Why, I’d be worth more in a battle than you any day!” He suddenly reddened as he realized the disrespectful tone of his words. To his merit, he usually reserved his disrespect of Benjamin to when they were alone, refraining from showing it in public.
“That may be true,” Benjamin rejoined, “but you are still a child, so get such outlandish ideas out of your head.” Benjamin had far too much weighing on him now to add worry over his son’s notions.
Micah opened his mouth to fire back a retort when he was stopped by John’s more reasonable voice.
“There’s no way they will take a fourteen-year-old, no matter how good he is.” John looked between father and son as if he were an unwilling mediator. “We best get that crop in.”
“Yes.” Benjamin said.
They trooped out to the field and began to work. John showed Benjamin how to cut the stalks and taught Micah how to bind them together. The work was rather simple, not absorbing enough, Benjamin found, to keep his mind from other matters. He quickly forgot about the talk of revolution, as his mind was pressed with a far more difficult subject.
Elise.
If he had been confused over his growing love for her, this new conundrum was leagues beyond that. What would he do if the marriage that had begun as a business arrangement, grown into love, and was about to blossom into a real marriage turned out to be entirely illegal? Part of him wanted to ignore it all, forget that she might have another husband, forget that she had deceived him. Why not go on as if nothing had happened? He knew she had not meant to deceive him, at least to the extent of hiding a legal marriage. He believed she had truly thought the marriage to have been annulled, and he understood her fear in revealing even that much. The man he had once been would have refused to marry any woman who had been married before, except perhaps in the case of widowhood. He had no idea what the man he had been at the time of their marriage would have done. That man had been willing to accept the fact that she had been with other men, forced though it had been. He had accepted the fact that she had Negro blood, something even the most liberal of whites might not have done.
Yes, he had accepted much. He might even have accepted a former marriage if she had been honest about it from the beginning, if only she had not let him fall in love with her, only to have that love trampled beneath the weight of lies. She’d said she would not have done it had love existed from the beginning. Yet did that really make it all right? At best it only made what they had a sham. At worst it made it a crime. She had thought only of herself, not of what such a thing would do to him. If it got out that he was married illegally, he would be expelled from the church, and rightly so. If his path to ministry was to be closed off, he wanted it to be his choice. He did not wish to be drummed from the ministry in disgrace.
But it went so much deeper than his future occupation. He was not a man to give his love freely or easily. After Rebekah, he thought he would never have the courage to take that step again. But he had. And he had loved Elise so completely that his guilt over betraying Rebekah had dissolved. Now he must face the fact that it had been built on lies. He might never have married Elise had he known about the first marriage, had there been any doubt that it was legally over. Thus, he would not have come to know her and eventually to love her.
She had tri
ed to tell him she had not intended to deceive him to the extent of an illegal marriage. Yet he could see by how tortured she was that she had known all along it had been a possibility.
Even now, remembering her tears of agony during her confession, he wanted to forgive her. He wanted to forget it all and go on as if it had not happened. His love had not come easily. Neither would it depart easily.
He could not erase his love, nor could he erase the fact that she had known of the possibility that her marriage had not legally ended.
His mind struggled over this a dozen times before he and his companions paused for a midmorning break from their work. As they shared water from the jug and snacked on johnnycakes, John and Micah continued the earlier conversation about the revolution. Benjamin barely noticed Micah’s rapt interest. Nor did he pay attention to John’s answers to Micah’s questions and his imparting of the news he’d heard about the politics of it all. Benjamin’s mind continued to be distracted, though he tried to pull away from the tiresome inner debates and focus on talk of war strategy and possible commanders.
“So what do you think of Sam Houston?” John asked, and it took a full moment before Benjamin realized the question had been directed at him.
“I . . . I don’t know the man,” Benjamin said. Then, afraid his mind might burst if he kept agonizing over Elise, he made himself join the conversation. He tried to recall all he knew about Houston. “He was once governor of Tennessee. He lives over in Nacogdoches, doesn’t he? He was elected to represent that town in San Felipe for political meetings.”
“And he’s got the best military experience of any man in Texas,” John added.
“Well, then, it’s good he’s here.” But Benjamin didn’t care about Houston or armies or battles. His life was being shattered once more, and he didn’t know what to do about it.
“ . . . you ever hear that, Benjamin?” John’s voice came as if through a fog.
“What’s that?” Benjamin blinked, then made a feeble attempt to laugh off his distraction. It didn’t work.
“You all right?” John asked, concerned.
“Yes . . . sure . . . fine.” If Micah hadn’t been there, he might have been tempted to tell his troubles to his sage friend. Yet even if he could have surmounted his shame to discuss his problems, what could John say? This was something only he could work out, or so he told himself. “We better get back to work.” He lurched to his feet and headed back to the field.
The previous sleepless night had combined with the day of hard work harvesting to provide a sound night’s sleep for Benjamin. But his first thought on waking at dawn was of Elise. It was ironic that John had been able to spend the night in the cabin, while Benjamin was still exiled to the barn, self-exile though it was. Would he ever be free to have a normal life with the woman he loved? Could his love survive this latest blow?
Going into the cabin for breakfast, he was again struck with the confounding circumstances of his life. The sight of Elise’s lovely person tending a pot of mush over the hearth fire with a lock of her curly dark hair dangling in her achingly beautiful eyes made him long to take her in his arms in a husbandly embrace. The deceptively normal scene pricked his heart. And her skittish gaze, her unsmiling lips, tore at him further. This wasn’t right. They loved each other. Yet he was as helpless to remedy the situation as Oliver was to rise from his cradle and prepare his morning milk.
When they sat down to eat, he first noted Micah’s absence.
“He wasn’t in the barn?” Elise answered his inquiry as to Micah’s whereabouts.
“No. I didn’t see him outside at all.”
Though Micah was for all practical purposes emotionally detached from the family, he seldom missed a meal. But with the rest of the harvesting yet to be completed and John needing to leave by midday to get home by sunset, there was no time to delay breakfast for Micah or to go in search of him.
Benjamin did not become truly concerned until he returned to the barn after breakfast and discovered the bay gelding missing. Had it been gone when he woke that morning? He hadn’t noticed. But after a more thorough investigation, he became certain that it had been missing for some time. In the cabin, Elise discovered that several johnnycakes left over from the day before were gone, along with a good supply of jerky. Micah’s musket and powder horn were nowhere to be found. The final proof that Micah had slipped off during the night came when Isabel told what she had seen.
“I thought it was a dream,” she said. “It was still dark, but Micah was getting down his gun, and I asked, ‘Where’re you going?’ And he said, ‘Nowhere. Now shh and go back to sleep.’ He kissed me on the forehead, and I closed my eyes. I guess I went back to sleep.”
“He kissed you?” Elise said, voicing surprise at this odd behavior from Micah.
“That’s why I thought I was dreaming.”
Benjamin looked at Elise. “He kissed her because he thought he wouldn’t see her again.”
“What do you mean, Papa?” Isabel asked, now worried.
“I think Micah is trying to run away from home,” Benjamin said as lightly as he could to allay her fears. “He’ll be back.” Again he lifted his eyes to Elise. It was not lost on him how natural it was for him to look to her for strength. He will, won’t he? his eyes silently implored.
“I wonder how long he’s been gone?” asked the practical John. “I didn’t hear a thing last night. But my wife always says I could sleep through a hurricane.”
“Well, he got past me in the barn, too, horse and all.” Benjamin shook his head. “The one time I have a good night’s sleep.”
“He’s probably been gone for hours.” John paused in thought, then added, “I’ll bet that rascal took off to join the army. He seemed mighty interested in that yesterday.”
“You may be right.”
“I’ll help you look for him, if you want.”
The thought of going on another frantic search through the woods for a missing family member did not appeal to Benjamin, nor did he want to ask John to join him. His friend had done far too much for him already.
“Thanks, John, but I think I can handle this alone. It certainly isn’t as desperate as the last chase.”
“What about the corn?” John asked.
“That can wait another week or so, can’t it? You head on home this morning, and I’ll finish the crop when I get back.” He wanted to add, “When Micah and I get back,” but he couldn’t muster the confidence. Even if he found Micah, how was he, of all people, going to convince him to come home? Wearily, he raked a hand through his hair. “John, you have been a good friend—the best a man could ever hope for—but you’ve got your own family to tend to. Sometime, we Sinclairs have to fix our problems ourselves.”
“I understand,” John said, gathering up his jacket and belongings. “I’ll go on out and saddle my horse. I’m sure you’ll want time alone with the missus. I’ll see you before I ride off.”
Ah yes. Benjamin needed time alone with the missus. Time to tell her . . . what?
When they were finally alone in the midst of chattering children, they stood silent, like two rocks in the middle of a churning river.
Benjamin spoke first. “Maybe this comes at a good time. I mean, maybe it is good for me to get away from here for a few days.”
“Perhaps so,” she said. Her tone held a quality that did not sound convinced.
“I can use the time to work things out.” He was less convinced.
“I understand. . . .” her voice quavered.
“I am so sorry I can’t just . . . make it all go away,” he blurted in frustration. “I’m sorry I can’t tell you I don’t care, that we can just go on as if Kendell Hearne wasn’t hanging over us like a specter. I wish I could say I could live that way. I wish I could just say, ‘I forgive you’ and that could be the end of it. But . . .” He shook his head.
“I know you can’t. I don’t ask it of you.”
“I cannot share you even with a specter,” he tried
to explain, though she had asked for no explanation.
“I know.” Her eyes filled with moisture, making them look like sable washed in rain.
“I’ll be back.” He forced himself to look into those eyes, though he feared he might be tempted to lose himself and all his problems in them.
“Will you?” Her lower lip trembled, and she bit it as a lone tear dripped down her cheek.
He could not give her the assurances she wanted. Though they both knew he’d be back physically, if for no other reason than for his children, he could not say if he’d return for her.
CHAPTER
56
BENJAMIN ARRIVED IN SAN FELIPE without having sighted Micah on the trail. The boy had covered his tracks amazingly well, though an occasional forgotten sign had indicated that he was heading south. The obvious place for the boy to try to join the army was San Felipe.
Once there, Benjamin spoke with a few men he knew, but none had seen Micah. The town, however, was fairly chaotic these days.
“Many men have taken off for Gonzales,” the storekeeper told Benjamin. “Austin is forming an army there.”
“Still seems pretty busy in town,” Benjamin observed.
“Others have come here to manage the new government.”
“New government!” This was astonishing news, momentarily jogging Benjamin from his personal woes. “When did that happen?”
“It ain’t formal yet, I suppose,” the storekeeper said. “Austin is still claiming that the rebellion is just to uphold the Constitution of 1824, which Santa Anna has been playing pretty fast and loose with lately.”
