Texas Born

by Gould, Judith

  Nathaniel was only ten years her senior but looked like her father. He was a taciturn man, not given to displays of affection. His family had once owned a large, flourishing farm and several slaves, but the War Between the States had ravaged the farm, decimated the family, and freed the slaves. Nathaniel and the twenty-odd acres of soil from which he, his wife, and his daughter eked out a meager living were all that remained of any glory the Howe family had ever aspired to. Now the arrival of Zaccheus meant an extra mouth to feed, but Nathaniel consoled himself with the fact that, before the boy turned eight, he would be able to put in a full day's work.

  Zaccheus was six when he first learned how poor he was. The specter of hunger always hovered nearby, as there was seldom enough food to go around, and he learned to accept the gnawing emptiness in his stomach. Accept it, but not like it. Once when the crops failed to yield even what it took for survival, his father loaded his shotgun with buckshot and headed across the fields to shoot blackbirds. They were tough and stringy and virtually meatless, but sucking on the crunchy, brittle bones seemed to make the hunger go away for a while.

  He was seven when he received his first present. His parents had taken him to the county fair, and he'd found a big black man selling baby chickens for a dime each. Zaccheus gazed into the cardboard boxes and immediately fell in love with a fuzzy yellow chick. It seemed to single him out, staring up at him, begging him to take it home.

  He pointed at it. 'His name's Zack too,' he told his father.

  'It ain't a he, Zack. It's a hen, so it's a her,' his father said tersely.

  'Can I buy her, Pa? Fer my very own?'

  His father thought about it. 'We'll see,' he said vaguely, wondering what on earth a child would want with a chicken. They were filthy and served no purpose as pets.

  'Please, Pa?' Zaccheus begged desperately, awarding his father with a toothy grin.

  Sue Ellen smiled at her husband. 'C'mon, N'thaniel. Havin' one chick of his own ain't gonna hurt. 'Sides, it's only a dime.'

  Nathaniel frowned. 'Reckon it won't,' he said at last. He dug into his pocket and produced a much- coveted dime. He held it up. 'All right, son, go buy yer chick. It's yers. But you gotta feed it and take care of it.'

  'Sure, Pa! Thanks!' Zaccheus raced up to the black man and puffed out his chest proudly. His heart hammered inside his rib cage. 'I want to buy a chick!' he squeaked.

  The dime changed hands quickly, and Zaccheus reached into the box and lifted out his chick. It chirped protestingly, but when he held it close, it quieted down. It felt soft and warm and cuddly, and he didn't even mind the needlelike pecks of its beak.

  'Petey,' he said softly, pressing his chick against his cheek. 'That's yer name, li'l chick. Petey.'

  Nathaniel found a cardboard box and punched some holes in it. He handed it to Zaccheus. 'Put the chick in here so you won't lose it, son.'

  Zaccheus shook his head. 'I wanna hold her,' he said. 'Ain't no way she's gonna git away from me.'

  Nathaniel shrugged and tossed the box away.

  It was dusk by the time the Howes headed home. In the back of the mule-drawn wagon, Zaccheus held the chick tightly. He cooed softly and petted it, then yawned noisily. A beatific smile was on his face as his lashes slowly fell down against his cheeks.

  Sleep came easily, despite the shaking and rattling of the wagon, and his fingers slowly went slack.

  The chick squirmed and slid out of his loosening grip, hopped lightly across his chest, and explored the wagon. It hopped onto the tailboard and perched there, looking back at the receding moonlit road.

  A deep rut came up and the wagon wheels crashed down into it. The sudden jolt didn't awaken Zaccheus, but the chick was thrown off the wagon and into the night.

  Half an hour later, Nathaniel unhitched the mule and led it into the barn while Sue Ellen climbed up into the back of the wagon. She shook Zaccheus gently. 'C'mon, son,' she said softly. 'We're home.'

  Zaccheus sat up blearily, rubbing his eyes. Then he looked around groggily and drew a deep breath. 'Petey!' he cried, realizing he wasn't holding his chick any longer. He scampered desperately around the back of the wagon, looked under a pile of blankets, and moved some crates, but Petey was nowhere to be seen. Shattered, he retreated into a corner, pulled up his legs, and wrapped his arms around them, his chin resting on his knees. 'Petey's gone!'

  'C'mon in the house, Zack,' Sue Ellen said calmly. 'We'll find yer chick in the mornin'.'

  He shook his head defiantly and stared up at her. 'No. I gotta find her now. She's my pet, Ma. She's probably cold 'n scared 'n hungry.'

  Sue Ellen grasped his wrists firmly and pulled him toward her. 'It's way past yer bedtime, young man. I said we'll look fer it tomorrow.' There was no mistaking the authority in her voice.

  'But she might be gone by then!' he cried.

  'Don't cry, son,' Sue Ellen said firmly. 'You know yer pappy don't like a boy who cries.'

  Zaccheus shook his head adamantly. 'I ain't cryin'!' he said forcefully as a single huge tear, highlighted by the moonlight, glistened and slid slowly down one cheek.

  'Ain't no use to look fer it till daylight anyways,' She Ellen said. 'You 'n me, we'll set out after breakfast.'

  He looked at her hopefully. 'Promise, Ma?'

  'I promise, son.'

  The next day, despite Nathaniel's grumbling, Sue Ellen and Zaccheus went back the way they had come the night before, until they reached the field where the county fair had been held. Then they turned around and went slowly home, all the while on the lookout for the chick. They never came across it.

  That night, after they returned, Sue Ellen whispered something to Nathaniel. For a moment he stared at his wife. Finally he nodded and cleared his throat. 'All right,' he said, raising his voice so that Zaccheus would be sure to hear. 'Since you 'n him couldn't find it, I'll see what I can do. If anybody can find that chick, it'll be me.'

  The following morning, Nathaniel set out to find the chick. Zaccheus waited at home with bated breath. His father was gone all day, but in the evening, when he returned, sure enough, he had a yellow chick in a perforated box.

  'You found her!' Zaccheus whooped delightedly. 'You found Petey, Pa! Jest like you said you would!'

  Nathaniel exchanged glances with his wife. Then Sue Ellen smiled tenderly and squeezed her husband's hand affectionately.

  In later years, Zaccheus would wonder whether Nathaniel had really found Petey, or if he had set out to buy another chick. It was a mystery he would never solve.

  Hunger won out.

  For a week Zaccheus followed his chick around and played with it between chores. Eight days later, when the family didn't have much to eat, he approached his mother. 'Can't we eat Petey?' he asked.

  Sue Ellen eyed him sadly. 'No, son,' she said slowly, 'she ain't near big enough yet.'

  As month after month went by, Zaccheus began to eye his pet hungrily. Petey was getting bigger and plumper all the time. He could just imagine how juicy she would be cooked. Every time he looked at her, he couldn't help smacking his lips.

  Finally Petey had grown enough and Sue Ellen nodded her head. 'We'll have yer hen for supper tonight, Zack,' she announced. And that afternoon she went after the nearly grown hen and wrung its neck. Like all the chickens killed on the Howe farm, this one, too, managed to flip-flop its way under the thorny rose hedge to die. Zaccheus crawled in after it and pulled it out. He brought it to Nathaniel and watched his father behead it. He felt swollen with pride. Because of him and his pet hen, the family would eat well.

  When Sue Ellen brought the succulent roast chicken to the table, Zaccheus ate ravenously without compunction.

  Pet or no, it never occurred to him that the hen was anything other than something to eat.

  It was the threshold of the twentieth century, and like many fathers, Nathaniel planned for Zaccheus to someday take over the farm. But Zaccheus was destined to leave the farm and the nineteenth century behind him. He was a dreamer, and possessed a quick,
lively intelligence and a natural inquisitiveness. He was a very handsome boy, tall, fair-haired, and blue-eyed. Despite the starchy foods which were the Howes' dietary staple, he was as lean as his mother and father. The farmwork was exhausting and burned off every ounce of excess fat.

  When Zaccheus turned nine his life took on an unexpected turn.

  Reverend Flatts of the Muddy Lake Methodist Church paid the Howes a visit.

  Visitors to the Howe farm were rare. When Zaccheus cried out that a horse and buggy were headed their way, the entire family put down their work and gathered on the roadside, watching the approaching visitor with curiosity. As the buggy drew closer and Nathaniel recognized the reverend, he scowled. He harbored an inbred suspicion of politicians, churches, and anyone who did not work the soil with his hands. So it was with less than a modicum of friendliness that he watched the short, rubicund man with the huge paunch struggle down from the buggy.

  The reverend mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. 'Morning, Mr. Howe,' he wheezed formally.

  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.

  2

  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.