San Antone. V. J. Banis

house. “If you’ll excuse me—Papa John will see to your needs.”

      With unmasked disappointment, he watched her go until she had disappeared up the stairs. Too bad, he thought, a lovely woman like that. That hair, all red and gold; there was a flower those colors that spilled over the arbor of his garden in Charleston; he must make a point of learning its name. And her eyes, green, but not cool as you’d expect; like a green fire, smoldering down deep in its ashes.

      Diablerie, the French called it, that air of barely damped recklessness; she had that, all right.

      And, so obviously unsatisfied. How he’d longed to lick that bead of sweat from the cleft of her breasts. It was the right man that she needed, not all that nonsense with books and learning. Her husband was right to disapprove of that; he ought to have beaten such ideas out of her long before this. He would make her forget such foolishness soon enough....

      “Would the gentleman care for some port?”

      The Negro voice startled him. He glanced at the slave waiting to hold his chair. “Yes,” he said. “And one of your master’s cigars.”

      * * * *

      There was a scurrying noise above her; Joanna glanced up to see three young faces peering at her through the balustrade.

      “What on earth?” she said. “What are you three doing up at this hour?—as if I didn’t know. Listening, where you’ve got no business.”

      They stood up as she finished climbing the stairs. It never failed to astonish her that her daughter, barely sixteen, was now as tall as she was. Gregory, at fourteen, was nearly as tall, but James was small-looking for his nine years, though apparently determined to make up for it in extra mischief.

      “It’s not true, is it?” Melissa demanded in a whisper. “We’re not moving to that—that place, are we?”

      “Will there be Indians?” James asked, looking entirely enthusiastic at the prospect. Gregory surveyed her in expectant silence.

      “We’ll see,” Joanna said, giving each a brief hug. “Come along now, all of you, back to your beds. If your father had seen you, you’d have earned Mammy a good hiding, for no fault of her own. Scoot now, before I give you all one instead.”

      The children allowed themselves to be put back to bed, though James—“Jay Jay” to the family—gave every indication of being a long time awake, and Melissa’s complaints continued unabated.

      “It’s not fair,” she grumbled, barely pausing to return her mother’s kiss. “I haven’t even come out. And you promised me, my next birthday, my first ball....”

      “I’m quite certain, my darling, wherever there are young ladies, there will be parties as well,” Joanna assured her. “It’s one of the verities. And I’m equally certain you’ve got no concept whatever of what Texas is like, no more geography than you’ve been willing to learn.”

      “Father says geography is unladylike.”

      “He’s entirely right, but we needn’t let that sway us. To sleep now, or you’ll be much too haggard-looking to have birthday parties.”

      She looked in one final time at the boys. Gregory was already asleep—he was never any bother. James’s determined pretense, eyes squinted tightly shut, was utterly unconvincing, but she did not challenge it. Little boys could be counted on to fall asleep eventually.

      Her maid, Savannah, was asleep on the floor at the foot of her bed. Joanna did not trouble to waken her. She thought it silly that so many of the women of the South could not undress themselves without a slave’s help. Like so many of the conventions of southern living, it was more stifling than comforting. She had once even gone so far as to insist on some other—to her way of thinking, more suitable—sleeping place for the girl, only to have Savannah come to her in tears, begging to be told what she’d done to provoke her banishment. In the end, she’d found it easier to let Savannah sleep where she was accustomed to sleeping. Savannah was a heavy sleeper; not waking her when she came in was Joanna’s form of compromise.

      Changing into her nightdress and a peignoir, Joanna sat at her dressing table and let down her hair for its nightly brushing. The routine was automatic; it left her thoughts free to turn where they would.

      Texas. San Antonio. The truth was, she knew scarcely any more about them than her daughter did.

      She’d heard of San Antonio, only because there had been that trouble there, a place called the Alamo. A sort of fort, if she remembered correctly, or a mission, maybe—she wasn’t clear. Mexicans and Texans, or perhaps they were already Americans then. The Texans had gotten the worst of it. It had all been years ago, when she had been quite young. “Remember the Alamo” had been a popular battle cry in the war with Mexico, though she suspected many of the men she’d heard mouthing it were not much better supplied with details than she was.

      In the end, the Americans had triumphed, as it seemed they inevitably did. Texas had become a state. A slave state; on that question, at least, southerners were always clear.

      So there was some logic on Lewis’s side: A slave state offered the consistency of their way of life. From his point of view, that was an argument in favor. Rice-growing land. That was, after all, what Lewis did, what he knew, what their sons were being prepared to do. And certainly he was talking of plenty of that land; she could not even imagine how much land a half-million acres represented. The acreage of Eaton Hall seemed large to her, and in comparison it was next to nothing.

      Nor was Lewis the first to think of moving away from South Carolina; the talk of war and emancipation had prompted a number of others to make or consider such a move of late.

      But a wilderness, the “Wild West.” Indians, yes, surely. She had heard the tales of what happened to those westward-journeying pioneers: massacres, scalpings, women and children carted off by savages, used in ways that defied imagining.

      If it were only the two of them; if she had more confidence in her husband’s capabilities.... Lewis, however, couldn’t tame his thirst for whiskey—what could he hope to do with an untamed land?

      Eaton Hall ran itself, or rather its slaves, its managers, its overseers ran it; ran it despite Lewis. Lewis drank and whored; or alternatively, whored and drank.

      And there were the children to think of. Bad enough for the boys, but boys did, notwithstanding their mothers’ fears, take to adventure. James was already agog at the prospect; and Gregory, though he would take longer to decide just how he did feel about it, might very well look forward to the move also.

      Melissa was another matter. She was right to fuss. Years lost from that time of your life were never really regained.

      On the other hand, what could she do? Arguing with Lewis, resisting him, would only make him more contrary, perhaps solidify what was nothing more than a whim into a real decision.

      She thought then of her uncle in Charleston, Horace Hampton. He had been her guardian when she was young, he was godfather to their children. Besides, he was a successful lawyer, and a friend; his advice could be counted on.

      She would go to see him tomorrow; he would know how to dissuade Lewis, or thwart his will if necessary.

      Her mind made up to that, she draped her peignoir over a chair back and, extinguishing the lamps, slipped into her bed. Savannah still snored discreetly from the floor.

      In her mind, Joanna began to rehearse the conversation she would have the following day with her uncle, supplying his lines as well as her own. It was a habit she had, enacting beforehand many of the major occurrences of her life, so that often it seemed when she lived them that she was only repeating something that had happened to her before. She had never been sure whether she possessed some uncanny ability to read the future, or whether she made such a strong impression upon herself that it molded the circumstances to her will; but more often than not, things turned out strikingly as she had envisioned them.

      This time, however, even when she finally fell asleep, still