That Night at the Palace (21 page)

Every night for the next two weeks Jay and Juanita had dinner at the Menger and would then take a walk to the river. Some evenings they ate with the officers, and others they dined alone. On those occasions when they joined the officers, she found herself becoming a de facto mother of the group. Most of the officers, unlike Jay and the Colonel, were not so well-educated and refined. Accordingly, she took on the job of correcting behavior and manners. Of course, she did so with great charm and somewhat in jest, thus all of the senior officers, and especially Colonel Roosevelt, were wholly entertained, endearing her even more to the group.

Nevertheless, no matter what the young man did, Eduardo Carrillo was not becoming endeared to Captain Jamison Burney. In fact, as the second week of their courtship was coming to a close, Eduardo decided that it was time to put an end to this romance before his little girl became too infatuated. For Eduardo it was a simple matter of reasoning with the girl. He would sit down and explain that this romance needed to end. Captain Burney was a nice young man, but he had no future, and at best she would end up as nothing more than a camp follower. No daughter of Eduardo Carrillo would become the wife of a soldier, and his grandchildren would not grow up in military housing. The decision was made, and she would have to live with it.

There was considerable commotion in the Carrillo house the night Juanita came home from her evening with the officers of the First Volunteer Cavalry and her father issued his directive. All four of Juanita’s brothers hid in their rooms, and her mother, though somewhat sympathetic to Juanita’s cause, stayed out of sight. Juanita, with a hard-headed determination comparable only to that of her father, did her best to stand her ground and, sobbing, only agreed after Eduardo promised to allow her to spend one more evening with her soldier.

That next night would have been the worst of her life had it not been for the fact that she had spent all of the previous one crying. Fortunately, Jay did not take her to dinner with the other officers. Instead they ate alone at a café on the river. All the while she was trying to think of a way to explain what her father had said the night before. But while she was trying to think of a way to tell him, he had even worse news for her. The Rough Riders had received their orders, and early the next morning they would catch a train for Tampa, Florida and then, most likely, to Cuba.

Then he did what she had not imagined. Captain Burney got down on one knee beside her chair, took small a black box from his pocket and asked Juanita Carrillo to marry him. He admitted that he should ask her father first and she should come to New York to meet his family, but there just was no time. In fact, the officers had already moved out of The Menger and into tents with the men, and he would join them soon.

She knew that it was impossible and her father would never approve, but smiling broadly with tears streaming Juanita said, “Yes.”

When they got home, Captain Burney officially asked Eduardo Carrillo for Juanita’s hand. Carrillo, of course, was furious with both of them and refused, ordering the Captain out of his house and his daughter to her room. Tearfully, Juanita watched Burney go.

Early the next morning, long before anyone awoke, Juanita Carrillo slipped out the back door of the house on King William Street and walked downtown to the railroad station. The troop train, actually two trains, had already departed, but she caught the nine o’clock for New Orleans. As it turned out she was not the only “camp follower” going to Tampa. There were at least a dozen other women like herself on the train.

Once in Tampa she had no trouble finding Jay. Everyone in the little town knew where the Rough Riders were
bivouacked, and that night Jay and Juanita were married. She wouldn’t have minded waiting until he returned. She actually tried to insist that they go to meet his parents before marrying because she knew full well that they could not return to San Antonio. After the war they would need help getting started, and eloping was no way to win his family’s approval. He argued though that they needn’t worry about “getting started,” he had plenty of money, and it was more important to him that she had his name. That way, heaven forbid, if something happened in Cuba, she would be cared for.

Juanita had no idea what he meant by that. She knew that Captains didn’t make much money, but she accepted it because, well, she was in love.

They had one night together in Tampa before the Rough Riders boarded a ship for
Cuba. The fact was that a quarter of the Rough Riders didn’t make the trip, and none of their horses went along because there was no room.

Juanita stood tearfully waving as hundreds of blue shirted cavalry solders, one being Captain Jamison Ernest Burney, waved back as a tug pushed the ship out to sea. That was the last time she saw her beloved Rough Rider.

She and five other war wives rented a small house in Tampa and worked as waitresses in a nearby café while they waited for their heroes to return. Like everyone else in the country, they anxiously and proudly read the newspaper reports of how the war was going and about the Rough Rider victories at Kettle and San Juan Hills. Finally, in mid-August, they got word that the unit had returned to Camp Wikoff on Montauk Point, Long Island New York. Juanita and the other wives booked seats on the first train north.

After a week she finally got to Camp Wikoff where she and the other wives were escorted to a waiting area at a makeshift tent/office to reveive for word from their soldier. One by one each of her companions either saw her beloved or was informed that he was in the hospital - or in one case had been killed. Finally, after nightfall, Juanita began to get upset that no one seemed to know the whereabouts or condition of Captain Burney. After screaming to see Colonel Roosevelt, who was apparently in New York, she was finally escorted to the tent of a Major Pevoto who, fortunately, had been one of the officers with whom she had shared so many dinners back in San Antonio. The major explained to her that the Captain had been taken ill with yellow fever in Cuba, and upon their arrival at Camp Wikoff he was met by his family who had a letter from the Secretary of War requesting that he be released to the care of his private physician.

Before being allowed to take Burney, his parents had had to sign a release with an address where he could be contacted. Major Pevoto reluctantly gave Juanita the address, which, coincidentally, was only a few miles away at a place called Southampton. Though the hour was already late, she refused to wait and rushed to be by her husband’s side.

It was near midnight when she arrived at the house, though the word house could hardly describe the place. Her home, rather her parents’ home, in San Antonio was easily, and by no accident, one of the largest in the city; this house was at least four times its size. The house was set back from the road by at least two hundred yards and had a long lane up to the door from the gatehouse by the main road. The road was fronted by a stone wall that would have kept the house from being visible had it been any smaller. A night guard at the gate refused to even consider letting Juanita in until, after almost an hour of pleading, she convinced him to look at the marriage license. Upon seeing the document he made a call on a telephone to the main house. Then after she waited almost another hour, an automobile arrived at the gate and a large man dressed in a dark suit escorted her to the home.

The front door opened to a large three-story atrium where she was introduced to a kind but stern looking older gentleman who claimed to be Jay’s father. Juanita, exhausted and in tears, pleaded for the opportunity to see Jay. The man explained that his son was quite ill and not in shape for visitors. In fact, he said, Jay was possibly near death, and a physician was with him. Juanita was now near frantic, demanding to see him. The gentleman asked her to calm down and took her by the arm into a library off to the side of the main atrium. He then asked to see the marriage license. Juanita was hesitant but agreed to show it to him in hope that he would realize that she was, in fact, Jay’s wife and had every right to be with him at this time.

Upon reading the document the man looked at her and asked, “How much do you want?”

Juanita was stunned and simply stared at the man.

“Will a thousand dollars take care of this?” He asked as he reached into a desk drawer and removed some cash.

Juanita began to cry, when suddenly the doors leading out to the atrium opened and a woman burst in. The woman ran to the man, sobbing, and said, “Hamel, Jay’s gone.”

Juanita was stunned as she realized that her husband was dead, and she never even got to tell him that he was going to be a father.

While holding his wife the man looked at Juanita with fire in his eyes and ordered, “Get out of my house, now!”

Juanita just stood there with tears streaming when he said again, “Someone get this Mexican whore out of my house!”

Suddenly the man who drove her to the house grabbed her from behind and carried her out to the automobile and drove her back out of the gate and into the little town where he shoved her out and ordered her never to return.

Two weeks later, broke and desperate, Juanita arrived at the door of her parents’ house. The commotion that took place the night before she ran away had been quite calm compared to her welcome home. After thirty minutes being yelled at, Juanita was finally told that she no longer had a home. She never got to explain that her soldier was dead or that she carried his baby. She was told that she had made her decision when she ran away and that she was not ever to return.

Sarah Burney was born in Houston, where Juanita found a sympathetic cousin who gave her a place to live. That refuge only lasted a few weeks. For the next year Juanita and baby Sarah bounced from relative to relative, and finally she found a room at a boarding house and a job as a waitress in the small town of Crockett. By the time Sarah was three, Juanita was no longer the bright happy young girl she had been when she met her Captain in the Alamo Laundry and Cleaning Service. She had become hardened and bitter.

She shared a room in the boarding house with another waitress named Elaina who worked some evenings at a brothel on First Street. Elaina tried for months to get Juanita to join her there, but Juanita had no interest in such thing. Then one evening they were told that the café was closing. This was the worst possible news. Juanita had run out of relatives and had no place left to go. Finally, realizing that there were no options, she went to the house on First Street. At the beginning the work disgusted her, but when the money began to add up, her perspective changed. She and Elaina started alternating nights, one working and the other staying with Sarah. Soon Juanita, only working three nights a week, was making far more than she had made working six days a week at the café.

Not long after she began her new profession, a lumber mill owner by the name of
Horace McCracken Hamilton came to town. Mr. Hamilton lived way up in Henderson but came all the way down to Crockett because, as he put it, “it was wiser to find one’s ‘pleasure’ away from home.” Mr. Hamilton became one of Juanita’s favorite customers, partly because he was pleasant and kind but mostly because he gave her a healthy tip. Men who left tips were always treated better because tips were not shared with the house.

One evening while sitting in the parlor downstairs at the house on First Street Juanita and Mr. Hamilton began to talk about investments. Juanita, of course, had no education in the stock market, but she had overheard a lot from her father all those years. Hamilton was quite impressed with her knowledge, realizing that Delilah, the name she used while inside house on First Street, was not just pretty, but she was also smart.

One evening after “business” was finished, Mr. Hamilton made a job proposal to Delilah. Naturally, of course, she thought he was just full of wind, but as he persisted she realized that he was quite serious. He explained that he had come in possession of an old tomato farm in the southern corner of Cherokee county. The house, he said, was quite large, looking a lot like an old South plantation home with a huge porch and Roman columns across the front. He could have a crew fix it up and in no time they would be in business. She would run it, of course, and he would serve as a silent partner.

She agreed to think about the deal, and one week later they made a “formal” agreement. It was a handshake deal because one could hardly expect a lawyer to draw up a contract for an illegal business.

Juanita and Sarah, along with Elaina, packed what things they had and moved to the tomato farm. Immediately upon arriving at the farm Juanita saw the small house out back and decided it was the perfect place to raise Sarah. It had once been a hen house, but with some work and a new floor it made a nice little home. With the money she made, Juanita was able to hire Marie as a housekeeper to look after Sarah while Juanita worked.

As she grew, Sarah was strictly forbidden from entering the main house. In fact, she was never even told what kind of work her mother did, but naturally by the time she reached her teen years she learned about these things, as kids that age will tend to do. Though her mother tried to keep her separate, Sarah knew all the girls who lived in the house and talked with them frequently - but always in the yard behind the house because even as she reached her late teens she never actually went inside.

Sarah attended school in Maydelle, walking the three miles each way every day. On Sundays she and Marie attended the little church there. Unfortunately there were no Catholic churches in town, so the two had to become Baptists. Juanita never attended church with them. None of the local men ever came into the Farm, but she knew from visits to the Bradford’s General Merchandise Store that everyone knew who and what she was. Because she was known, she went to great pains to keep from being seen with Sarah.

Of course, people knew that a little girl lived in the house behind The Farm but there were several people who worked on the farm who were not part of the “business that took place there.” Juanita had gone to great lengths to make the business an actual working farm. Out on the highway, three miles from the farm, she had a “tomato stand” where they sold not only tomatoes but all sorts of produce, including black-eyed-peas, butter beans, corn, and even turnips, all grown on “The Maydelle Tomato Farm.” Of course, those seeking the other services the farm provided knew it as “Miss Delilah’s Tomato Farm,” or “Miss Delilah’s Tomato Farm and House of Pleasure,” or, more often than not, it was just “Miss Delilah’s.”