Texas Born (50 page)

At last—at long, long last, she thought—if
is finished. And it will be a success. I can feel that in my bones
as surely as I can tell that this fiesta, celebrating its grand
opening, is a huge success.

Nothing succeeds like success.

She glanced toward the individual units
stretching out from either side of the central manager's cabin. A
long red ribbon stretched from the farthest unit on the extreme
left all the way to the farthest one on the extreme right. Behind
her, on the asphalt driveway which curved in from the blue-black
twin lanes of the new highway, long trestle tables had been set up
and were draped with white cloths. On them, platters were piled
high with local delicacies. Beer and wine flowed freely for the
adults, and for the young ones there were sweetened fruit juices
and pinwheels and balloons. She smiled, watching children shriek
and squeal as they dashed around holding aloft their twirling
pinwheels, while the adults roamed between clusters of friends and
neighbors. She was gratified to note that most of Quebeck and
Mexican Town had turned out for the occasion. The only people who
were conspicuous by their absence were the Sextons, and she was
gratified to see that too. Now that she had succeeded despite
Jenny's attempts at sabotage, she was certain that Jenny was out at
the ranch, seething. Which was just as well.

'Hold it, Mrs. Hale!' a voice called from
beside her.

She turned. Hugh McElwee from the
Quebeck
Weekly Gazette
set down his tripod, ducked under the black
cloth which draped the camera, and held up the flash. After it
popped and a shower of sparks rained down to the ground, he ducked
back out. 'Thank you, Mrs. Hale. And congratulations.'

'Thank
you
, Mr. McElwee,' she said,
and joined the reverend, who was standing off to one side having an
earnest conversation with the young Catholic priest from Mexican
Town.

'This is one of our town's finest hours,' the
priest told her warmly. 'You've done more to lift the morale of
Mexican Town than anyone, Mrs. Hale.'

Elizabeth-Anne smiled. 'What can I say,
Father? My workers were good workers. Without them, I hate to think
where I would be.'

And she thought:
I know where I would be.
I would have failed. The Sextons would have triumphed again. Thank
God I had the sense to use the Mexican laborers instead of the
Sexton construction firm's.

The Sousa march came to a crescendo and Mayor
Pitcock leapt up onto the podium clutching the sheet of paper on
which he had written his speech. He held up his hands to silence
the crowd.

Slowly everyone stopped talking and turned to
face him. He smiled, adjusted his tie importantly, and twisted his
neck as if his shirt collar were too tight. 'Ladies and gentlemen.
Senoras and senores . . .' His voice was loud and uneven. 'I am
proud to be here today, as I am sure all of you are too.' He
consulted the prepared speech he was holding. 'Nothing is as vital
to a town as commerce, and with this new highway, this
artery
, if you will . . .'He rambled on awhile, and people
soon began to get restless. Finally he looked up from the paper.
'We have one person to thank for this, and I wish you would all
join me in giving her a long, loud ovation. Ladies and gentlemen,
senoras and senores. I give you . . . Mrs. Elizabeth-Anne
Hale!'

There was a thunderous roar of applause as
Elizabeth-Anne strode as quickly through the crowd as her pregnancy
would allow. She stepped up on the podium, tears sparkling in her
eyes, and nodded several times. Finally she held up her hands.
'Senoras and senores,' she began in a clear, distinct voice,
pointedly addressing the Spanish-speaking population first. She
smiled and sought out the eyes of her workmen. 'Fellow amigos.
Ladies and gentlemen. I feel at a loss for words to describe the
way I feel today— the gratitude that I owe your overwhelming work
and devotion on this project, and the belief you had in it to
sustain it. It would never have been possible without the many,
many long and arduous hours you have given—along with your blood,
sweat, and tears—to see it through to completion. There were many
times when we all thought that it would never happen, that the odds
were too overwhelming. But because we all believed, because we all
gave it our very best, a dream has become a reality. And I think
we've proved something else too. That we
can
work together,
all of us, regardless of which side of town we come from. I think
it's time, since I've come to know so many of you, to stop having a
Mexican Town and a Quebeck. It's
my
town.
Your
town.
It's
our
town.'

Elizabeth-Anne's voice broke, and tears began
to slide down her cheeks. 'I don't know what else to say except . .
. I'll never forget what we've accomplished here. Never.
Gracias
,' she whispered. 'Thank you.'

She stepped heavily down off the podium to
thunderous applause.

'Goddammit, Harvey!' the mayor hissed to
someone. 'If that wasn't a campaign speech, I don't know what it
was. Next thing we know, she's going to be running for mayor—'

Suddenly Carlos Cortez was at
Elizabeth-Anne's side. 'Senora, we have two little problems.'

She turned to him and wiped her eyes. 'What's
wrong?'

'First of all, you forgot to cut the ribbon.'
He held out the scissors.

She laughed. 'So I'll cut it. And the second
problem?'

'Two carloads of travelers . . . well, they
just pulled in looking for a room. And we're not even set up
yet!'

Her eyes flashed. 'Like hell we aren't! Get
them into units three and four right this minute!' she said
crisply. Then they both threw back their heads and laughed
uproariously. Finally she looked down at the scissors she was
holding and thrust them back at him. 'Run and cut the ribbon so
that they can check in. I've got to go find Rosa and see where she
had them put all the sheets and blankets!'

It was evening. Carlos Cortez drove them back
into town in a borrowed Ford and dropped them off in front of the
café. Elizabeth-Anne smiled across the seat at him. 'Thank you for
the ride, Senor Cortez,' she said. 'It was very kind of you to
bring us back.'

He shrugged.
'De nada
. It is nothing.
I'm glad, Mrs. Hale . . .' He stopped suddenly, then smiled. 'This
is the first time in years that anyone has taken on the Sextons and
beat them in building any kind of business around here. And it is
the first time I have ever had the opportunity to prove what I can
do—besides yard work. I'm glad.'

'And so am I.' Elizabeth-Anne twisted around
in her seat. 'Come on, girls.' She watched as Regina,
Charlotte-Anne, and Rebecca piled out of the back of the car.

'Senora?' Carlos said softly.

Her legs half out of the car, Elizabeth-Anne
turned around to face him. 'Yes?'

'There is one mystery I still have not
solved. I know you ran out of money long ago. Where did you get the
rest you needed in order to complete the tourist court?'

'I seem to have a guardian angel,' she said
softly.

'It seems, senora, that you do indeed.'

She smiled. 'Well, the girls are waiting.' On
an impulse she leaned over and kissed his cheek. '
Buenos
noches
, Carlos,' she said, using his first name for the first
time. 'And thank you.'

'Buenas noches
, senora,' he said
politely.

She shook her head. 'Elizabeth-Anne.'

He grinned suddenly, showing strong white
teeth. 'Good night, Elizabeth-Anne.'

She stood outside on Main Street watching him
drive off. She took a deep breath and smiled. She felt good for the
first time since Zaccheus had left. She felt totally alive. And
tired. Absolutely dead tired.

'Off to bed,' she told the girls.

They groaned, but they came up to her one by
one and kissed her goodnight. Then they dragged themselves
reluctantly upstairs.

For a while Elizabeth-Anne stood outside on
the porch. She tilted her head back. The night was cool and clear,
exactly the same kind of night as that last one she had spent with
him. Even the moon was the same.

'I did all right, Zaccheus, wouldn't you
say?' she whispered into the night. 'Wherever you are, I think
you'd be proud of me today.'

Then slowly, wearily, she trudged upstairs.
She was tired. She didn't remember ever having been this tired in
all her life. It was as if all the sleep she had missed during the
past several months was cumulatively catching up with her.

She looked in on the girls. They must have
been worn out too. They were already fast asleep.

She went to her room and lowered herself down
on the stool in front of her dressing table. She took the pins out
of her hair, one by one. Then she moved over to the bed and sat
down on the edge of it. For once, she didn't even bother to get
undressed. She didn't even take off her sturdy boots. Her eyelids
closed even as she was sitting down, and by the time her head
touched the pillow, she was already sound asleep.

That night she dreamed the nightmare again.
The same nightmare she had dreamed ever since she was six years
old. It never varied. Always, it was the same.

Once again she was leaping from trapeze to
trapeze, leaping nimbly through the surprisingly smokeless
air—
but this time she was being chased through the burning
circus tent—by Jenny
. Jenny with skin hideously charred and
blistered, like blackened, wrinkled paper partially smoothed back
out. Where Jenny's skin had been burned through, she could see the
baked, festering flesh beneath, rotting and crawling with
maggots.

Music seemed to come at her from all
sides—the madly racing, insistent chimelike tune of a calliope,
ever speeding up faster and faster until the tune was no longer
recognizable.

As Elizabeth-Anne dived from one trapeze to
another, swinging out over the flames, she caught sight of what lay
below her, and she sucked in her breath. A forest of charred tent
poles plunged down, down, down—down to blazing infinity, to eternal
roaring hell itself, and slowly swinging trapezes stretched for
mile after endless mile. Sliding slowly and silently under some
smooth, mysterious locomotion, one-dimensional cutouts of everyone
she had ever known—Zaccheus, Szabo, Marikka, the Grubbs, and
Auntie—glided untouched through the flames. Overhead, from horizon
to horizon, the sky was an inverted bowl of fire, oppressively low
and red and blazing. The calliope seemed to fuel the flames. As the
music gained speed, so too the flames gained power, crackling ever
higher and faster.

She glanced behind her and opened her mouth
to form a scream, but no sound was forthcoming. Jenny had been
chasing her for an eternity, and was gaining on her.

'You stole Zaccheus and Auntie from me,
'Lizbeth- Anne!' Jenny shrieked over and over, her hideous
high-pitched voice echoing back and forth with resonant hollowness.
'You stole from me, and now I'll burn you, you freak!'

Elizabeth-Anne glanced back over her shoulder
again. Jenny was gaining even more quickly on her now. Her legs
were spread apart, each bare charred foot balanced on a different
trapeze, and the flaming torch she brandished in each hand sent
chimeras of windblown orange flames across her shriveled skin. Her
blackened, wrinkled face was contorted into an evil mask, and bits
of her nose and cheeks crumbled away, showing the decomposing skull
underneath. ' 'Lizbeth-Anneeee . . .' Jenny's lips were curved in a
wide satanic grin, but it was her eyes which were the most terrible
thing of all to behold. They bulged and leered and burned deeply
with a thousand ferocious fires and seemed to pierce right through
Elizabeth-Anne's own.

Jenny arched her body and swung faster,
leaping effortlessly ever closer. The crackling torches flared,
sending showers of red sparks into the gusting wind. The stench of
the ferocious fire was overbearing, and Elizabeth-Anne's throat
felt raw and scratchy.

Suddenly she could no longer breathe. Her
lungs felt as though they were going to burst, and she fought for
air, but there was none to be had. The fire was sucking up all the
available oxygen, fueling itself into an even greater fury, and she
knew that if she did not fall from the trapeze down, down, down
into burning, everlasting death, then she would surely suffocate at
any moment.

She tried to breathe more deeply. More
quickly. More desperately.

Air!
Air!
AIR!

Her body was screaming for air . . .

The nightmare seemed so real that she writhed
and coughed in her sleep. Her head was throbbing violently, and she
was racked with convulsions, her arms flailing, her head whipping
from side to side on the pillow. She screamed and gasped in agony,
her mouth moving furiously but emitting no more sound than pitiful
little sobs.

Then suddenly she sat bolt upright, at once
wide-awake.

It was like awakening in a blast furnace. Her
bedroom seemed brighter than a thousand blinding suns, and was
filled with a crackling roar. The walls pulsated and flickered with
blue, orange, white, and yellow, and the floor was a lively sea of
flames. Greedy tongues of fire were lapping the walls, tasting the
pink- cabbage-rose wallpaper, and devouring it hungrily.

I'm still dreaming!
she thought as she
looked around in puzzled confusion.
Why am I not waking
up?

And then she smelled the faint, unmistakable
odor of kerosene on top of the stench of burning, and suddenly the
terrible realization hit her.

'Oh, my God!' she mouthed in panic. 'I'm no
longer dreaming! My bedroom really is on fire!'

She sat huddled there on the bed in
bewildered fear. She knew she had to try to jump out of bed and
make a run for the door, but she couldn't move.
She couldn't
move!
She let out a high-pitched keening sound. What was it?
Why couldn't she make a run for it through the flames? Why was she
frozen?