by Lyn Cote
“You called me ‘Pa.’”
Everyone turned to him. He blinked. “Ma and I got this far and decided to rest here. She was expecting Erin then and was real tired. She lay down, and I went to gather firewood and see if I could catch one of the chickens left behind to cook for supper. I heard Ma yell, and I ran in here. Sugar, you were crouched over there,” he said, pointing toward the corner farthest from him. “When I picked you up, you said, ‘Pa,’ just once, and then you didn’t speak again till weeks later. Do you remember?”
Sugar faced him, looking stunned. “Yes, I remember. I thought you were my pa, then I realized you weren’t.” She paused to swallow. “And when I couldn’t hear what you were saying to me, I just froze up. I thought something had happened to my ears…because I was bad.”
“You were bad?” Dorritt repeated.
Sugar’s face contorted. “That’s what I remember. I had been bad. She…” Sugar looked away. “She said I’d been bad.”
Like Carson, no one pressed Sugar about who “she” was. Sugar’s agitation and fear were plain to all.
“And I saw,” Sugar continued haltingly, “that Carson wasn’t pa, and the buzzing in my ears came. I couldn’t hear.” She shivered. “Please, can I leave this place? I don’t like it here.” Her voice became fretful. “I can’t see anything that has been left behind here that might tell us about me.”
Quinn and Dorritt nodded. But Sugar waited until Emilio nodded. Then he led her out. Their parents looked around some more. Finally, shaking their heads, they walked out. Carson stood alone in the musty wreck of a cabin. As he turned to go, out of the corner of his eye, something made him stop.
Something wasn’t right. He stared at the crumbling hearth. It looked like someone had taken away some of the smooth round river stones. And around one corner of the fireplace, just barely visible where the mortar had cracked, was something that looked like it might be a piece of paper. Carson walked over and began chipping out the rest of the mortar with the butt of his knife.
Then he lifted out one river rock, and there was a packet of letters tied together with a faded pink ribbon. He held the slender bundle in one hand. It was light, but it might hold the power to heal or wound his dear younger sister. He debated.
On the one hand, he couldn’t withhold something like this—even if it caused Sugar pain. The truth must always be faced. He had faced the truth about Blanche—at last.
On the other hand, that had wounded him deeply. He didn’t want what might be in these letters to injure, to scar, Sugar.
Undecided, he scanned the hearth and the remaining walls with deliberation to make sure that he had not overlooked anything else the original dwellers might have left behind, any clue that might be of significance to Sugar.
At a call from his father, Carson walked swiftly to the door. Shoving the packet inside his buckskin jacket, he hurried out into the warm, fresh sunlight.
“Find anything else?” his father asked.
To avoid lying, Carson shrugged. “Let’s go.” The packet rubbed against his chest and against his conscience. He’d deal with this soon, after some thought.
Quinn nodded and helped Dorritt back up onto the buckboard bench. Carson swung Erin into the back, then turned to find Mariel standing there. He lifted her into the wagon just as he had Erin, then he strode toward his horse. He could walk away from her, but he couldn’t shake the feel of her small, soft waist within his palms.
Carson swung into his saddle and headed down the rutted trail to the main road. He didn’t look back. He decided it would be best to show the letters to his parents privately and let them decide what must be done. Emilio and Sugar were happy now, in love. Ready to start their lives together. But for how long would they remain untouched by the world?
Carson kept thinking of Zachary Taylor’s U.S. troops camped along the Rio Grande. The Mexicans had never recognized that river as the boundary between Texas and Mexico. They had always insisted that the Nueces River farther north was the boundary.
An American army on the Rio Grande could be there for only two reasons: either to provoke an attack or to prevent one. Which motive had prompted President Polk to send troops? Whichever it had been, fresh hostilities were ahead. Waiting for them to begin was like watching someone set a match to a firecracker with a long, but concealed, fuse.
Asleep in the wikiup, Mariel opened her eyes. It was deep night, too dark to see anything clearly. She lay beside Erin. What had awakened her? Then she heard low voices just outside the tent. Carson was speaking. All that evening near the fire, Carson had been agitated—restless and hard-jawed—about something. Now he muttered, “I didn’t want to keep anything from Sugar, but I didn’t want to upset her more.”
“We can understand that,” Mrs. Quinn replied.
Mariel turned her face toward the voices. The low campfire still glowed enough to cast four standing shadows—Carson, his parents, and Emilio. Did this discussion have anything to do with their visit to that deserted cabin?
“You found these letters tucked into the stones of the fireplace?” Quinn asked. He was holding something out in front of him—probably the letters he was talking about, letters from the cabin.
“Did you read them?” Mrs. Quinn asked.
“No.” Carson’s answer was sharp and short. “They are not my letters. You are our parents. I wanted you to decide whether and when to give these to Sugar.”
“They might have nothing to do with her,” Emilio said, his tone brisk, his hands settling on his waist.
“That’s true,” Mrs. Quinn said, but so low Mariel barely heard her. “I will read one letter and see if they are connected with the McLaughlins or that Ida Rose or Violet that woman in Montezuma mentioned.” Mrs. Quinn moved toward the fire. Again, Mariel marveled at this family’s love for one another, as well as the fact that they did not treat people differently because of their station or skin color.
After reading for a few moments, Mrs. Quinn rose. “This letter is addressed to Ida Rose, and it’s from her sister Violet. It was written in April 1834. That was two years before the Revolution.”
“So these do concern Sugar’s familia,” Emilio said, sounding aggrieved. Their loving acceptance of this man was more evidence of how they differed from the common way. In Germany, no parents would have agreed to such a mixed marriage.
“I will pack these away,” Mrs. Quinn said, her voice stronger. “I will then give them to Sugar when she wants to read them. I think we’ve forced her to go as far as she can right now. Some memories are so painful that people block them out as if they didn’t happen.”
The men nodded. The four of them turned back toward the wikiup. Hastily Mariel turned her head the other way, not wishing to be caught eavesdropping. And just before she closed her eyes, she saw that Sugar’s eyes were open, shining in the darkness. Had she heard, or was she only half awake? Mariel waited, but Sugar closed her eyes without speaking.
The other four entered the tent and, with little noise, slipped back into their bedding. Mariel pretended to be asleep. Would what the letters contained hurt or heal Sugar?
Sugar made Mariel feel both sympathy and envy. Mariel had known her parents, but she had never felt close to them. Sugar had a loving family and a man who loved her. Mariel drew in a deep breath. She had no right to feel envy. The Quinns had saved her from a very nasty situation. She was so grateful not to have been forced into a second loveless marriage. Yet what could she do to help them in this difficulty? Nothing.
Here she lay on the unrelenting earth beside the little girl, knowing that she could do nothing for Sugar, nothing for Carson. He avoided being alone with her. He must regret kissing her. That was the worst of all. Tears slid from her eyes, and she let them flow. Her mother’s voice came to mind: “Life is what it is, Mariel.” But her grandmother’s words took the sting from those words with, “The humble shall inherit the land…and an abundance of peace.”
At the end of the next, even warmer, day, Mariel
glimpsed San Antonio ahead. Weeks had passed since she had been in Galveston. Now the sight of a town bigger than one lone street made her uncomfortably aware of her tenderness from days spent bouncing over a rough trail in the back of the wagon. It also made her aware of her bedraggled appearance. Her shoes were nearly worn through, top and sole. Her clothing was wrinkled and shabby. Fearing her cheeks might be smudged with dirt, she wiped her face in vain with a soiled handkerchief.
Telling them that he would meet them soon at the posada, Carson turned away from his parents’ buckboard, then went down a side street. What was a posada? Mariel forced herself not to watch Carson ride away. Or wonder why and where he was going. Instead, she looked down at the little girl beside her, trying to focus on her.
Erin began to point out the sights. “That’s the Alamo, where the Mexicans killed Jim Bowie, Davy Crockett, and Colonel Travis. That was before I was born. That’s where the Spanish, then the Mexican, governor used to live. And that’s St. Fernando’s church. And this is the shop where we buy…”
Once again, Mariel glanced at Sugar riding with Emilio. She looked the same today as she had yesterday—very subdued, seeking support from Emilio. Last night’s overheard conversation had repeated and repeated itself in Mariel’s mind. Mariel wished she hadn’t woken and heard it. All day she’d tried to decide whether Sugar had overheard what had been said or not. This question had kept Mariel somber all day. Yet her stomach had not settled down since she’d left New Braunfels. Was there peace anywhere?
The buckboard turned into a street that was especially pretty with many pink, white, and blue flowers hanging in baskets and growing in window boxes. How soon flowers blossomed full and lush here! It was only the first week of May. Already the plants looked the way flowers did in summer in Germany. Mr. Quinn pulled up in front of a building that looked like it must be an inn. It was covered in something she had never seen, which looked rather like dried mud painted a dark yellow. Mr. Quinn went inside while Mrs. Quinn stood under the overhanging roof of the inn, out of the sun. Was posada an inn then?
“Mama, are we going to go shopping tomorrow?” Erin asked.
“No, we probably should, but all I want to do is go home tomorrow.” Mrs. Quinn sounded weary.
“You said we would shop in San Antonio on our way home from the wedding,” the little girl complained as she climbed down from the wagon and went to her mother.
Following the little girl, Mariel could see that Mrs. Quinn was very tired. At last, a chance for her to do something for the lady. Helping her new mistress was difficult, because the lady behaved as if Mariel was just another member of the family. “Erin,” Mariel said, bending and cupping Erin’s chin, “your mother said this before she knew you would be…so long away. She did not know that Germans would come and take so much time. You see?”
Erin looked glum but nodded.
“And you want to get home? You say your pony misses you, ja?” Even as she spoke, she wondered how long her time with this kind family would last. This thread of uncertainty kept Mariel tied to the miserable past.
Erin brightened at the mention of her pony and nodded. “I miss Sundown. You’ll like him. We will get you a horse, and we’ll go riding every day.”
A horse for Mariel? No, there would be no horse for a servant. “Oh, Erin, I never ride horse.”
“Never?” Erin looked shocked.
Mariel shook her head. “Never. My family did not own horse.”
“Then how did you get around?”
“We walk and sometime ride boat.” Facing the inn with her back to the street, Mariel sensed Carson returning to them. She recognized the sound of his spurs and the gait of his horse. This was a dangerous realization. I must not think of him so much. Still, her disobedient heart skipped and hopped.
He dismounted and tied his horse to the hitching post just as Quinn came out and waved them all inside. “I have gotten us all rooms, requested baths, and have secured a private dining room for our supper.”
Each word was instantly welcome to Mariel. And she wasn’t disappointed. This must have been the best inn—posada—in San Antonio. It was surprisingly clean. Plus it was open and airy, not at all like the snug inns of Germany. Quinn had obtained a room for her, Erin, and Sugar across from theirs. The bathtub was brought in and filled almost immediately by servants chattering in Spanish, all sounding excited to see the Quinns again.
Mariel was a bit shy, but the maid was helpful, and soon all three of them took a turn in the tub. Mariel and Sugar scrubbed Erin’s back and made sure that her hair was well washed and rinsed with water that smelled of rare lemons. But perhaps lemons weren’t rare in this place.
Mariel felt gloriously clean and alive. Behind a screen, she slipped out of the large linen towel and donned her last clean set of underclothing. Before she could bear to put on her horribly wrinkled and shabby dress, a knock came and then a woman burst into the room. She spoke rapid Spanish. Mariel peeked around the painted wooden screen.
On one of the beds, the woman was laying out brightly colored embroidered dresses—a small one in red and two larger ones, a turquoise blue and a deep pink. Sugar and Erin were chatting in Spanish, touching the cotton dresses and exclaiming over them.
Erin turned to Mariel. “Look! From her shop across the street, Señora Ortiz saw us come to the posada, and she brought us new dresses.”
Sugar smiled, suddenly looking happier than she had for days. “We always go to her dress shop. She is the best Tejano dressmaker in San Antonio. See how the dresses are in the Mexican style, loose and cool. Here.” Sugar looked at the dresses and chose the turquoise blue one. “Try this on. It should fit you.”
Señora Ortiz eyed Mariel and asked questions in rapid Spanish. Sugar replied for Mariel, who stood with the new cotton dress in her hands. She didn’t know what the dress would cost, and she didn’t need a new dress; she just needed to wash her old one. “I cannot afford—”
“This is our gift to you,” Mrs. Quinn said, entering. She was already wearing a new dress, one in ivory with pink and blue embroidering around the neck and yoke. “Come.” She clapped her hands. “Everyone put on the new dresses and come down. Dinner is waiting. We are nearly home, and we will not be camping on the trail again this year!”
Before Mariel’s eyes, Erin and Sugar slipped new dresses over their cotton chemises and petticoats. The red dress looked beautiful next to Erin’s dark hair and lightly tanned complexion. Sugar’s waiflike charm made the pink dress even more striking.
Hesitantly, Mariel slipped into the turquoise dress, pulling together the gathered yoke and tying it high. The dress was very light, very cool. The feeling of being clean, wearing a new dress, one more vividly colorful than she’d ever worn, triggered unaccustomed self-confidence and joy. And the freedom she felt from not wearing a corset almost made her giddy. She couldn’t help smiling. Or help thinking that she was happy that Carson would see her in this dress. A sad thought—that Carson was not for the likes of her—tried to snatch this joy away, but she refused, pushing it away.
In the private dining room, Quinn, Carson, and Emilio waited by the table. The master seated his lady; Emilio seated Sugar; Carson seated his sister. Mariel waited to be told where she should go to eat, her joy evaporating.
“Mariel,” Carson said, “come here so I can seat you.”
Mariel looked up. Everyone was looking toward her and waiting. Uncertain, she moved toward Carson, feeling jerky, like a puppet in the hands of an amateur puppeteer. Sitting around a campfire eating with this family was different from being invited to a table where she would be served as a member of the family. She let Carson seat her, and when his hands brushed her shoulders, her heart pounded.
The master said grace, then the inn’s servants, who must have been of Mexican descent like Emilio, brought out large bowls of food the like of which Mariel had never seen. A bowl of beans in a thick sauce, sliced oranges sweetened with some liqueur, shredded beef and chicken in savory sauce
s, and curious flat cakes that everyone used to fold the beans and meat together. Mariel tried a bite of everything and found the food tasty but much spicier than any she had ever eaten. And such new flavors. Who knew that such food existed?
All through the meal, her eyes strayed to Carson, who sat at the foot of the table. Mariel did not speak except to reply to questions. Sitting here in the midst of this loving family made her suffer her loneliness more than ever. She glanced around the table and realized that Carson was as quiet as she was. Then she made the mistake of looking into his eyes. He was looking at her with an intensity that was at once both thrilling and overwhelming.
A man entered. “Señor Carson!” He carried a newspaper. “The newspaper you requested was just delivered. The courier from Austin was later than usual.”
Mariel surmised that when Carson had left them earlier, he must have gone to buy a newspaper. Mariel chewed a bite of chicken, glancing around at the sudden change on each face. Evidently no one expected the newspaper to bring good news. She swallowed and put her fork down.
Carson scanned it. Then he looked up. “There’s been fighting between the U.S. Army and Mexicans on the Rio Grande.”
Emilio, Quinn, and Dorritt began discussing whether this would start a war. Carson, his face buried in the paper, made no comment unless asked a direct question. Mariel hazarded another glance at him. He looked deeply troubled, and her heart quailed. Would Emilio and Carson have to go off to fight? Would the peace of this loving family be destroyed by war?
These good people didn’t deserve that. And she knew something of government’s taking action: one was never the same. At home, there had been not a fighting war but a political one over freedom, of democracy. Her husband had been arrested for sedition and taken away. She had never seen him again; he had died in prison.