Texas Born

by Gould, Judith

  Zaccheus did not speak.

  Demps shrugged matter-of-factly and stretched out on the bunk, which was far too short for him, put his hands behind his head, and stared up at the ceiling.

  An hour passed, then two. The slop bucket reeked.

  When the dinner trays were slid under the cell door, Zaccheus pushed his away.

  'You should eat,' Demps advised. 'Smells like the shit in the slop bucket, an' taste like it too, but you gotta keep up your strength.'

  Zaccheus pushed the tray toward Demps. The big black man grinned, showing huge pearly teeth. 'I thank you,' he said with a formal dignity, and bowed his head. Then greedily he grabbed the tray and shoveled the grayish stew into his mouth with the tin spoon.

  After it started to get dark. Demps stretched out again. He spoke softly, his voice sure and even. 'The bunk better, boy.'

  Zaccheus was silent.

  'You learn to talk,' Demps said in a sure voice. 'After a few weeks you be a regular chatterbox. After a few months you talk to the walls if you ain't got nobody to talk to. An' after 'bout a year, you even start talkin' in your sleep.' He nodded emphatically.

  Zaccheus looked up defiantly, his blue eyes flashing. 'I'm not going to be here that long,' he said angrily.

  'I knows that. They gonna send you to the state work farm. Next to that, this place paradise. Yes, sireee!'

  'Speak for yourself!' Zaccheus snapped. 'You think you know everything, don't you?'

  'Noooo . . .' Demps said slowly. 'I shore don't.'

  'Well, I'm not a criminal.'

  'Maybe. Maybe not. But you shore gettin' a good start in that direction.'

  'I made a mistake!' Zaccheus insisted forcefully.

  Demps roared with delight. 'We all did, boy!'

  'I have my whole life ahead of me.' Zaccheus' voice grew hopeful. 'Maybe the judge will be lenient.'

  'Lenient! Oh-ho!' Demps gave a short, rich bark of a laugh.

  Zaccheus looked at him hatefully and turned away.

  Demps sighed, swung his legs over the bunk, got to his feet, and stretched. He seemed to fill the small low-ceilinged cell completely: a gleaming mahogany Atlas holding up the roof. For a moment he stood posed like that, staring down at Zaccheus. Finally he pulled in his massive, powerful arms and squatted in front of him. 'What'd you do, boy,' he asked softly, 'to land in this here vacation spot? I hope it worth the trouble it gonna cause you.'

  Zaccheus raised his head defiantly. 'My ma's sick. She's going to die soon if she can't get into an expensive clinic, and my pa's farm's going to be repossessed by the bank. We needed the money, so I robbed a shop.'

  'Use a weapon?'

  Zaccheus nodded. 'A revolver, but I don't think it was loaded. I didn't even check. It was my grandfather's.'

  'Armed robbery,' Demps said. 'That's what they'll call it. First offense?'

  'Do I look like a hardened criminal?'

  'Heyyyy!' Demps held out both hands, pale cordovan palms extended outward as if to ward off a physical blow. 'I ain't you enemy.'

  Zaccheus glared at him, but then the anger seeped out of him. He nodded contritely. 'Sorry. Yeah. First offense.'

  Demps shook his head sympathetically. 'We both in the same boat, boy. Me, they gonna come down on hard. You too. Any place else you done it, maybe you get out soon. Not round here. Not with that Yarby buckin' for sheriff. Election's comin' up, see, an' the deputy, he a big man for law an' order.' His face wore a troubled expression. 'He comin' down hard on ever'body.'

  Zaccheus was visibly shaken. 'What . . . what do you think will happen to me?'

  'For armed robbery? In Missouri?' Demps screwed up his eyes thoughtfully. 'You probably get ten years. If you good, maybe they let you out in five.'

  Zaccheus stared at him. 'I don't want to spend ten years on the state farm. Not five. Not even one. There's got to be some way—'

  'Lissen, boy, an' lissen good. Nobody round here lenient to criminals.'

  'But I'm not—'

  'Shut up an' lissen!' Demps snarled. He thrust his glaring brown face so close to Zaccheus' that their noses almost touched. 'I'm a criminal. The moment you rob that shop, you a criminal. One way or other, the whole world a criminal, only them people out there didn't get caught. You stand in front o' the judge an' that Yarby, he gonna crucify you, you wait an' see! He full o' tricks.'

  Zaccheus hung his head low and stared down into his lap in despair.

  'Lissen—' Demps glanced around cautiously and his voice dropped to a bare whisper. He hunched forward excitedly. 'What you say we get outta here?'

  Slowly Zaccheus lifted his head. 'How?'

  'Ssssh!' Demps clamped a big hand over Zaccheus' mouth and looked suspiciously first over his left shoulder, then over his right. 'Not so loud, boy,' he whispered. 'Case you don't know it, jail walls got ears. You don't advertise gettin' out. But you an' me, boy, we can break outta here. I was waitin' for somebody. Takes two.' He nodded sagely.

  'I don't see any way out!' Zaccheus insisted. 'That cell door's locked.' He pointed with his chin. 'Those bars are iron.'

  'Shore they is, but there's ways out,' Demps whispered. His eyes still had that deceptively casual look, but when Zaccheus looked closely into them, he saw that they burned with a deep, steely fire. 'There's ways out o' ever'where. We just do like the Lawd's sweet birdies in the sky.' Demps leaned sideways and looked up at the ceiling, gesturing so eloquently at imaginary birds flying above him that Zaccheus couldn't help but follow his hand and look up for the birds. 'We sprout wings and fly outta here's what we do. Relatively speakin', 'course.'

  'And once we're out?' Zaccheus asked. 'Then what? I can't even go home. I gave the deputy my address.'

  'We either split up an' you go you way an' I go mine, or you an' me, we go together.'

  Zaccheus stared silently at him.

  'Just lissen to me,' Demps said excitedly. 'I knows the way to get outta here. It work before, it work again. You screams and hollers and howls and clutches you stomach. You pretends to be awful sick tonight after it good an' late an' there only one man around guardin' the place, see? Deputy or whoever come to check on you, he find you lyin' flat, clutchin' at you belly. He bends over an' I knocks him upside the head an' he see stars.'

  'And then?'

  'Then we runs like possums with they butts full o' buckshot.' Demps paused. 'What you say, boy? You in on it?'

  'It won't work,' Zaccheus protested weakly.

  Demps stared at him. 'It work. You do as I says, an' it work!'

  'I don't want to land back in jail, that's for sure.'

  But an escape attempt, however successful, would make the law only want him even more. And if Demps was right, and he was sent to the state farm, escape might prove impossible, or at least more difficult. There they locked big iron cuffs around one of your ankles and kept you perpetually chained to other men.

  Demps seemed to read his conflicting doubts. 'Hank Yarby, he a mean sonbitch. Forget it, boy. You ain't gonna be let off easy. Yarby, he expert at trumpin' up charges. Claim you resist arrest, try to attack him, all that kinda stuff. The more he pile up on you, the longer you the property o' the state o' Missouri.'

  'Is that what you think's going to happen?'

  'How the hell I know, boy?' Demps whispered forcefully. 'I ain't God or no Gypsy woman. I can't read no future. Yarby, he sure don't confide none in me.' He leaned so close into Zaccheus' face that Zaccheus could nearly taste his breath. 'But I tells you one thing. Ever'body knows better'n to fuck up on Yarby's turf. He want that sheriff star real bad.' Demps paused. 'But if you wants to git outta here, you needs me.'

  Zaccheus could feel the conflicts thrashing about within him, bumping, grinding, slowly eroding whatever confidence he had left in either option. 'I have to think it over,' he persisted weakly.

  'Don't think too long,' Demps warned. 'Come mornin', we may be separated. Won't work if you and me locked apart in two different cells. An', closer to mornin' it gets, less time we got to sprout o
ur li'l wings. You know?'

  Zaccheus nodded slowly. 'Okay, Demps,' he finally said softly. 'I'm with you. All the way. But I have to do something first.'

  'What's that?'

  'I got to see somebody back home.'

  'A woman?' Demps asked with a smile.

  Zaccheus nodded.

  'I don't advise it,' Demps said. 'Women's trouble.' He shook his head. 'Big trouble. You mark my words.'

  15

  Zaccheus dragged the ladder around the Flattses' dark house and propped it softly against Phoebe's second- floor window. As if he'd ordered it expressly for the occasion, the full white moon floated silently in the cloudless night. It was past midnight in Muddy Lake, Missouri, and the night was quiet. Even the breeze was a bare whisper in the foliage on the trees.

  He felt something powerful stir within him as he climbed the ladder sure-footedly, his hands flying from one rung up to the next. Demps waited in the dark cover of the bushes below.

  Her window was shut. Zaccheus cursed softly to himself. Then he cupped his hands against the glass and tried to peer inside. At first, all he could make out were the dark hulking forms of furniture, and then the breath caught in his throat. She was lying in bed, her knees tucked up near her chin in a fetal position, her body shrouded in an ethereal, almost phosphorescent nightgown.

  He rapped softly on the glass with a cocked knuckle and waited anxiously for her to wake up. When she didn't, he knocked a few more times, each knock louder than the last, but the sounds did not penetrate the veils of her deep sleep.

  'Come on, boy!' Demps hissed up at him from below. 'We ain't got all night!'

  'Just give me a minute!' Zaccheus hissed back. He put a hand on the casement window and tugged at it.

  It pulled open easily, with barely a squeak. Grabbing the sides of the window frame in each hand, he ducked and swung himself into Phoebe's room.

  Swiftly he crossed the creaking floor on tiptoe, all his senses assaulted in an exquisite agony such as he had never before experienced. This was the first time he had ever set foot in a bedroom which was exclusively the domain of a young lady, a room which was not shared, where the combined smells of toiling bodies, of dirt and sweat, did not exist. Here the tangible femininity of the room's occupant was strong and potent; pervasively, puissantly sweet. He inhaled deeply of the mysteriously tempting fragrances which hovered deliciously around him, which teased his senses and roused him in pleasurable delight—the freshness of laundered linens, the honeyed sweetness of flowers, the enticingly ambrosial enchantment of perfumes and toilet waters, of soaps and powders. He took deep breaths and let the scents linger luxuriantly in his nostrils, wanting nothing more than to burrow into their source, swallowed up by the sweetness of that nectar and myrrh.

  When he reached the side of her bed, he gazed at her with silent longing. Her eyelids quivered as she dreamt sweet lady dreams, and her soft breaths were mellifluous purrs in the night. As he watched, she stirred, her lips whispering something soft and incoherent as she changed position, one arm draping gracefully over the edge of the bed, her mouth curved in the chaste smile of the innocent. He had to suppress the sudden urge to reach out and stroke her, to pepper her face with gentle kisses, to nibble softy of her flesh, her bones, her soul. Then he became aware of something glowing richly around her neck, and his lips widened into a gentle smile. So she wore the pansy charm he had given her even while she slept!

  She looked so at peace that he wished he didn't have to awaken her. He would have been content to stand there and look down upon her for hours, but time was sweet love's enemy. He couldn't dawdle. He had to leave as swiftly and invisibly as he had come. When Hank Yarby had arrested him, he had been truthful and given his correct address; he could very well already be hunted, even here in Muddy Lake.

  He had to be careful. Anyone might turn him in. The Flattses. Even Phoebe.

  He bent over her and shook her gently. 'Wake up!' he urged softy into her ear.

  One moment she moaned softy, and the next she sat bolt upright, her body rigid, her mouth opening to form a scream.

  He clamped a hand over her mouth and her eyes bulged in fear. Instantly her hands flew to his and tugged at them with surprising strength.

  'It's me!' he whispered. 'Zaccheus!'

  She ceased struggling immediately. Her eyes were wide and pale in the moon glow.

  Cautiously he took his hand away from her mouth.

  'Zaccheus?' she said, disbelief in her voice. 'Is that really you?'

  'Ssssh!' he warned.

  The room came alive with the urgent sibilance of whispers.

  'Where've you been?' she demanded. 'It's been nearly a week and no one's heard a word from you!'

  'I can't tell you now. I'll write you all about it in a few days.'

  'You'll write me? What do you mean? Where are you off to? Why can't you just tell me everything?'

  He turned away. 'I'm sorry, Phoebe. I can't ever come back.'

  Her eyes went huge. 'But why?' She knit her brows.

  He tightened his lips. 'I just came to say goodbye,' he said quietly. 'I couldn't leave without doing that. You've been so . . . so wonderful to me, Phoebe.'

  'You're not going back to college?'

  He shook his head.

  'Have you . . . done something?'

  He nodded. 'I tried to rob a store. A jewelry store in St. Louis. I had to, Phoebe! How else could I pay for Ma to go to the clinic?'

  She regarded him in sad silence. 'Oh, Zaccheus. Then you don't know?'

  'Know what?' He frowned at her.

  'You're . . . you're too late, Zaccheus,' she said softly.

  He just stared at her. Cold dread, like blocks of ice, suddenly seemed to push against him from all sides. 'Too late?' He grabbed her by the arms and shook her violently. 'What . . . what do you mean, I'm too late?'

  'Zaccheus! You're hurting me!'

  'I'm sorry.' His hands fell from her arms.

  'Your ma passed away, Zaccheus,' she whispered thickly. 'Three nights ago.'

  'What!' The strangled cry caught in his throat. 'You're joking,' he sobbed. 'Tell me you're joking.'

  She took both his hands in hers and pressed them gently. 'It's true, Zaccheus.'

  He shook his head. 'She . . . she died?'

  Phoebe nodded. 'If it's any consolation, she went very quietly, in her sleep. Doc Fergueson said it was best that way. At least at the end she didn't have to suffer too much.'

  Zaccheus turned away as the tears began to slide down his cheeks.

  'My uncle read the eulogy,' Phoebe continued in a low voice. 'Your pa asked him to. He said since it happened so soon, and you're not an ordained minister yet, it was what she would have wanted. It sort of surprised us all, since none of your family ever came to church. Aunt Arabella played the hymns, and everyone sang your hymn, the one you wrote? I don't think it ever sounded prettier, there was so much feeling put into it. It was a very nice funeral.'

  He sat in stony silence.

  'Zaccheus?' She shook him gently. 'I'm so sorry. Really, I am.'

  He began crying softly, and she opened her arms, held him close, and swayed him back and forth.

  'I'm really so sorry,' she repeated.

  'I robbed the store for her and Pa,' he said between his moans of anguish. 'Just so she could get well and Pa could keep the farm!'

  'He can, Zaccheus. That's already been done. The farm's still his. We took up a special collection in church on Sunday. Everybody was generous, and Mack Collins, the banker, was the most generous of anybody. Widow McCain was sitting right beside him, and she told me he put twenty dollars into the basket. We collected more than two hundred dollars, and the mortgage payments are now up-to-date.'

  He closed his eyes. He sighed deeply, his body shaking with tremors. 'Just when Pa needed me, Phoebe, I wasn't there!' He pounded his fists on his thighs. 'And now that he needs me more than ever to help him run the farm, I'm a fugitive!'

  'You tried your best, Zaccheus.
That's all anybody can do. Your Pa will understand. I know he will.'

  Zaccheus shook his head, sniffled noisily, and wiped his eyes with his fingertips. 'I've shamed him. I've shamed everybody. Ma's memory . . . the reverend and your aunt Arabella.' He stared at Phoebe. 'You.'

  She tried to smile. 'You haven't shamed me, Zaccheus. You did what you thought was best.'

  'I'll never become a minister now,' he said. 'And even if I wasn't wanted by the law, I still couldn't.' His voice was weary, but there was no mistaking the self-loathing in it. 'I couldn't live with myself. I took the bad road.'

  'And you're going to stay on it? Is that it?'

  A long moment passed, then Zaccheus said, 'I don't know. The way I see it, right now I just want to stay free.'

  Phoebe looked at him levelly. 'I don't care what road you took,' she said huskily. 'Or down what road you're headed.'

  He remained silent.

  'Zaccheus, I don't want to live my life as a minister's wife. I never have! I'd hate it. Couldn't you see that?'

  He couldn't help staring. 'But I thought—'

  'Sssssh,' she said soothingly. She cradled his head awhile. Then she licked her lips thoughtfully. 'Zaccheus?'

  'Yes?' His voice was thick.

  'What are you going to do now?'

  'I guess I'll take off.'

  'Where to?'

  'Somewhere where nobody knows me. Out of state, maybe out west.' He shook his head miserably. 'I don't know, Phoebe. I just don't know.' He got to his feet and paced back and forth.

  'You shouldn't go alone, Zaccheus.'

  'I won't,' he answered. 'Demps is coming with me. He and I broke out together. Besides . . .' He stopped pacing to look at her, then shrugged and gave a bitter approximation of a smile. 'He's the only friend I've got.'

  'You've got me,' she said huskily.

  'No!' He shook his head adamantly. 'You have to forget about me! Forget I ever existed!'

  'Zaccheus! What are you saying?' Her pupils dilated wildly as a sudden fear leapt into her eyes. 'You can't leave me here in this godforsaken one-horse hick town!' she whispered. She reached out and grabbed his arm. 'I beg of you! You must take me with you!'