Keeping Secrets (25 page)

At home the spell remained unbroken. In front of a log fire in the bedroom Emory unwrapped the satin shoe straps from around my legs and lifted my feet from the shoes. Gently. He helped me off with the daring dress and tossed the headband aside. I unbuttoned the waistcoat slowly from around him and encircled his body with my arms. I raised my face to his. He pushed me down on the bed then and held me away for a moment, as though what he had been acting out all evening must be emphasized again, now, with words. I pressed my fingers to his lips and pulled him forward, too eager for the feel of his warm hands on my buttocks, drawing himself in, first slowly, then pumping faster and faster, and, please God, never stopping.…

In the morning I awoke before Emory and stood by the window to look out at the cold, bleak February day. The river below meandered along its well-traveled path, silent and calm, remaining the same through all the changes, protected from the world around it by steep banks and insulated even from unwelcome noises by the trees above, which it nurtured into thick, strong webbing.

So much was the same as in the beginning. We had loved again last night with the urgency of the first time. It seemed as though the past three years had never really happened at all … in fact, in a sort of grim, twisted way, the note which had thrown me into limbo was much like the note from Emory's agency … offering a “highly specialized position.…”

I turned and looked toward the bed. He was just awakening. “Come here and lie close to me. I have so much to tell you.

“I'll be here only till about the first of the month, then I've got to get back down to Mexico. I have an awful lot of loose ends to pull together before I go,” he said.

“I expected that.”

“Yes, but the thing is … I probably won't return.”

“For how long?”

“Forever.”

28

I sat straight up in bed and stared at him. “But why—”

“As soon as it's safe down there, I'll be sending for you. There won't be any reason for either of us to have to come back here, once it's all over. It'll be a brand-new life for us.”

“But I don't know whether I—”

“Let me start from the beginning … there's so much you don't know,” he said, then rose to stoke up the fire. He seemed nervous. “I hate this lousy place, and no doubt you do too, after receiving that note last night.

“Most of the money I made before I bought property down in Mexico was in the saloon business here. I owned interests in two, and owned two others outright, down on Matamoros and South Santa Rosa. In fact I'd put some money down on a couple of brothels … they're damned good money-makers.”

It seemed that everything inside me was struck motionless by his words. I couldn't even take a breath.

He was looking away now, into the fire. “But then once I found you and brought you here, everything changed.” He shook his head. “It's funny, but I didn't think it would matter because I expected you to be … harder … more like me. But then, talking to you, seeing that same look of admiration in your eyes … knowing you had never stopped believing in me, it was as though we were kids again and I had to make good—can you understand?” He paused and stared at me intently. “I wanted to go back and start over … to be all those things you thought I could be. For the first time in my life I was ashamed.”

I lay back on the pillows. Soon he was beside me again, and I locked him in my arms, his head on my breast. He was at once the child I never had and the boy full of dreams who never grew up, but just left town and kept journeying farther and farther away.…

In a moment he continued, “I never lied to you about anything I said … but I just couldn't tell you everything. I felt so guilty about what you endured all those years, as if they were my fault, that I ought to have taken you with me in the first place.

“Soon after we married I began getting myself out of that mire. But I was in one hell of a position because I'd used profit from the saloons to develop the land I already owned in Mexico and I had to hold on to them for a while. I got out of the other deals on the brothels, though I lost the money I'd already put down. That's why I couldn't tell you where I was going night after night that first year. I couldn't talk to you because I've have had to lie, and I didn't want to lie to you.

“Then, later I needed big chunks of cash to move down into my mines, so I had to try and sell the saloons … even when I was acting like a bastard a few months ago, it was over those damned saloons. With the threat of prohibition all the time I couldn't make nearly the deals I should have. If not for that, I could have made three times what I finally came out with, and wouldn't have had to borrow any extra money from Tetzel.

“As it happened, I was forced to borrow quite a lot from him, to get my hands on some of the richest mining property down there. No one else would touch it the way things were, and Ralph had tested out a whole slew of properties that promised to be worth millions.

“My God, when Barrista tried to back out I thought I'd go mad. Everything depends upon his success.”

“Does he know this?”

“No. He doesn't know how deeply I'm in, or how much I've borrowed from Tetzel. He doesn't know my copper is going to Germany. He thought he could repay me what I'd lost, and help recoup the money we'd already spent on the revolution He didn't know a fraction of how complicated it was, and I couldn't tell him. I couldn't let him know how I had used him.…”

I kept holding him. I didn't know what to say. After a while his body relaxed a little and he said, “If you got my letters, and kept up with the newspapers lately, you know as much about the Mexican situation as anyone else. Barrista's name will not appear on the ballot. There is talk that people have been warned against writing in names, or showing any signs of protesting Carranza's victory.

“The only thing left now is the call to arms. And Carranza is so strong down there, it isn't going to be an easy fight. Everything will depend upon precise timing and swift movement. One week from election day, March the tenth, the uprising will take place. That'll be on the seventeenth. Except for Carlos Barrista, everything is set.”

“What about him?”

“Even if Barrista trusts him to follow through, I don't. So I haven't shown him the battle plan for his sector yet. It's still up here in my head. I won't lay it out until the last moment. Until then, only I will know what he is to do. Carlos will control the most important area of the uprising, and the one with the largest amount of troops. We can't chance his being a turncoat. I'm going to see him when I return. He'll have just enough time to get his final organization under way.”

“And in the meantime?”

“I figure on leaving here on March first. Before I go, I have to arrange for the safe shipment of currency across the border. It's being printed here in San Antonio. There are a lot of other details I've got to take care of, too. It's going to be a busy week.”

“What about Nathan?”

“I'm leaving him here until you are safely across. Then I'm going to let him go.”

Again, he spoke of Nathan as though the man were enslaved to him. I'd fought down the temptation of insisting on the full story before, but I found I couldn't hold back any longer. “Please, tell me how you two came together.”

“No … I just can't, yet. Maybe someday I will, but not now. It isn't a very pretty story.”

“All right,” I said. I was in no position to press for information. “If … when … I come down to Mexico to join you, shall I put up the house for sale?”

“Tetzel will see to that, and deposit the proceeds,” he said, then asked, “Is there some question in your mind about going to Mexico? I wouldn't have thought so, especially after last night.”

“I want to be wherever you are,” I told him honestly. “It's just that I'd never really thought we'd live in Mexico permanently.” I didn't tell him that I wasn't sure Mexico would be far enough to run, that even there, Mark might one day show up if I didn't square with him before I left.…

“I'm going down to Durango and Flores myself next Wednesday,” he said, looking at the note again.

I nearly leaped from the bed. “No, you mustn't do that,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because … because, you're probably right about its being written by a maniac. He'd take just as much satisfaction out of seeing you go down there as—”

“Not after I blew his ass off.”

“Oh, Emory, no, please,” I begged him. “Just think. Now, when this whole thing in Mexico is about to take place, Barrista depending on you, you can't risk it. It wouldn't be fair. Oh please, promise you won't go.”

He shrugged, but he wouldn't promise me.

I had to convince him. “Emory, what if the revolution fails?” I asked, hoping this would remind him of his own value and make him think twice about next Wednesday.

“I'll be shot, and you won't have to come,” he said with a laugh. Then he raised up and searched my eyes. “Say you will come, Electra. Give me your word. I've got to know.”

It was the closest I've ever known Emory to approach begging.

This morning I awoke as usual to the sound of reveille, and lay there for a while, thinking how I would miss that sound, and this place, especially my little spot above the river. Would someone else occupy the tranquil place, or would they fell the trees as I once considered, and replace the wild beauty with well-behaved grass and uniform gardens?

Early tomorrow we'll be leaving, and there won't be time to savor all the small things that have come to be such an important part of my life. Through all the clouds of uncertainty before us, one fact remains clear: after tonight, neither of us will ever live in San Antonio again.

As Emory predicted, the past ten days have been full. Within a few hours of our talk the morning after the Tetzel party, Emory decided I might be better off away from here while he is involved in the revolution. “I suppose you'll be safe enough, but something could go wrong, and if Carranza has any agents up here, you might be in danger,” he said. “If any United States agents get wind of our activities, they might cause you some trouble. Of course, there's the note, too.…

“I'm going to have Nathan pick up train tickets for both of us. There's a connection to Corpus Christi within the same hour as my train leaves for Laredo, on the first. I'll have Nathan book a room for you at the Nueces Hotel there, and I can contact you when it's time, and let you know what to do. No one else needs to know where you are, except Tetzel. He may need to contact you should anything … go wrong … with the revolution. Of course, I'm confident now. Within a few weeks all this will be behind us, and you'll be on your way to join me.”

He looked at me with a question in his eyes. I still had not committed myself. But I told him the trip to Corpus seemed a good idea, and to go ahead. In the following week, however, Nathan informed me my train on the first of March was already full, so he'd bought me a ticket on the mid-day train February 28. Had Emory been at home I would have told him about it, but he was away, busy with final details. Somehow this unexpected development nagged at me. I'd counted on the last final hours with Emory because, regardless of my decision about Mexico, it would be a long while before I'd be with him again. It seemed a little strange that tickets for the Corpus train would be sold out so early, this time of year. I decided to check at the train station myself. The clerk looked puzzled and said, “Must be some mistake. There are plenty of seats available on that car.”

So I changed my ticket, and made a long-distance call to the hotel, to switch my night of arrival back to its original date, March 1. I didn't mention it to Nathan. Perhaps the ticket salesman had given him the wrong information.

I was grateful to Emory for his foresight in thinking about the trip because, with or without the threat of Mark, I really didn't want to live out the Barrista revolution in the same house with Nathan. When I told Emory about his use of the Overland for several nights back in January, he shrugged off the young man's odd behavior as meaningless and said, “Nathan's the least of our worries. As long as he works for me, you can trust him implicitly.”

Through all the plans we made, the approach of Wednesday was never far from my mind. I kept checking the post office for further letters from Mark, but found none, and this seemed to confirm that my instinct about the note had been correct. Let Emory think what he will; I knew the danger ahead. When on Wednesday morning I checked the box and found it empty, I considered canceling it effective the day we were to leave. But then he'd know I had bolted as soon as the first letter was returned to him, and he would waste no time in hunting me down again. Leaving the postal box open might buy me more time.…

Though I left the house just long enough to tend to that errand, and returned home by nine-thirty, I never heard from Adolph Tetzel. I hadn't really expected to. Somehow I guess I never really fooled myself he would come through. All that day I spent half my time listening for the ring of the telephone, and the other half watching the clock. For a while I considered going down to Durango and Flores myself, to tell Mark he had to give me just a little more time, but then that would have been foolish when I considered the danger and the fact that I may have run squarely into Emory.

As the hour of three neared, I went into the parlor and watched the clock like someone awaiting execution. Was Mark, or someone he had sent, looking for me out the window of an auto? When I didn't come, would he drive away and forget about me, or would he come here and threaten me?

Three o'clock.

I wiped my brow. Unable to sit still any longer, I went to the phone and called Emory's office.