Texas

by James A. Michener

  The battle lines were drawn, with a good eighty percent of the church members siding with the Klan rather than with their pastor. On the next Sunday the same three characters played the same charade. Floyd Rusk in his bedsheet made the donation; Reverend Hislop rejected it; and the deacon accepted it.

  On the following Tuesday the church elders met with Reverend Hislop, a quiet-mannered man who deplored controversy, and informed him that his services were no longer required in Larkin. ‘You’ve lost the confidence of your people,’ the banker explained. ‘And when that happens, the minister has to go.’

  ‘You’re the elders,’ Hislop said.

  ‘But we want to make it easy for you,’ the man from Indiana said. ‘There’s a Methodist church in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, lovely town among the hills. It needs a pastor, and the bishop in those parts has indicated that he would look kindly upon your removal there.’

  Like the purchase of the newspaper and elimination of its editor, the Larkin Methodist Church was purified without public scandal. Reverend Hislop preached on Sunday; he rejected the Klan offering; the deacons accepted it; and on Thursday he quietly disappeared.

  The Klan now ruled the little town. All blacks were gone; all Jews were gone; no Mexicans were allowed within the town limits; and the lower class of Catholics had been eased out. It was a town of order, limited prosperity, and Christian decency. All voices of protest had been effectively silenced. Of course, as Reverend Hislop had pointed out, the same amount of acceptable crime prevailed as in any American town: some lawyers diverted public moneys into their own pockets; some doctors performed abortions; some politicians contrived election results to suit their purposes; and a good many deacons from all the churches drank moderately and played an occasional game of poker. There was a fair amount of adultery and not a little juggling of account books, but the conspicuous social crimes which offended the middle-class morality of the district, like open cohabitation or lascivious dancing, had been brought under control.

  Then, just as the Ku Kluxers were congratulating themselves, a small, dirty, sharp-eyed man named Dewey Kimbro slipped into town, bringing an irresistible alternative to the Klan, and everything blew apart.

  He first appeared as a man of mystery, under thirty, with sandy red hair and a slight stoop even though he was short. He would often ride his horse far into the countryside and tell nobody anything about it. He spoke little, in fact, and when he did his words fell into two sharply defined patterns, for sometimes he sounded like a college professor, at other times like the roughest cowboy, and what his inherited vocabulary had been, no one could guess.

  He attracted the attention of the Klansmen, who were not happy with strangers moving about their domain, and several extended discussions were held concerning him, with Floyd Rusk leading the attack: ‘I don’t want him prowling my ranchland.’ To Rusk’s surprise, the banker said: ‘When he transferred his funds to us, he asked about you, Floyd.’

  ‘He did? He better lay off.’

  Things remained in this uncertain state, with Kimbro attracting increased attention by his excursions, now here, now there, until the day when Rusk demanded that his Klansmen take action: ‘I say we run him out of town. No place here for a man like him.’ But the others pointed out that he had transferred into the Larkin bank nearly a thousand dollars, and that amount of money commanded respect.

  ‘What do we know about him?’ Rusk asked with that canny rural capacity for identifying trouble.

  ‘He boards with Nora.’

  ‘The woman we tarred-and-feathered?’

  ‘The same.’

  ‘Well,’ announced a third man, ‘he sure as hell ain’t havin’ sex with someone like her.’

  ‘But it don’t look good,’ Rusk said. ‘We got to keep watchin’.’

  Then Kimbro made his big mistake. From Jacksboro he imported on the Reo bus, which ran between the two towns, a twenty-year-old beauty named Esther, with painted cheeks and a flowery outfit she could not have paid for with her clerk’s wages. Kimbro moved her right into Nora’s place, and on her third night of residence the couple was visited by the hooded Klan.

  ‘Are you two married?’

  ‘Whose business?’ Kimbro asked the question, but it could just as well have come from Esther.

  ‘It’s our business. We don’t allow your kind in this town.’

  ‘I’m here. And so is she.’

  ‘And do you think you’ll be allowed to stay here?’

  ‘I sure intend to. Till I get my work done.’

  ‘And what is your work?’ a masked figure asked.

  ‘That’s my business.’

  ‘Enough of this,’ a very fat Klansman broke in. ‘Kimbro, if that’s your real name, you got till Thursday night to get out of town. And, miss, you by God better be goin’ with him.’

  On Tuesday and Wednesday, Dewey Kimbro, named after the Hero of Manila and just as taciturn, rode out of town on his speckled horse. Spies followed him for a while, but could only report that he rode awhile, stopped awhile, dismounted occasionally, then rode on. He met no one, did nothing conspicuous, and toward dusk rode back into town, where Esther and Nora had supper waiting.

  The three had gone to bed—Kimbro and the girl in one room—when four hooded figures bearing whips appeared, banging on the door and calling for Kimbro to come out. Under the hoods were Lew and Les Tumlinson, twin brothers who ran the coal and lumber business, Ed Boatright, who had the Chevrolet agency where the dead Jake had worked, and Floyd Rusk, the big rancher.

  When Kimbro refused to appear, the Tumlinson twins kicked in the door, stormed into Nora’s small house, and rampaged through the rooms till they found Kimbro and his whore in bed. Pulling him from under the covers, they dragged his small body along the hallway and through the front door. On the lawn, in about the same position as when Jake and Nora were tarred, Rusk and Boatright had erected a cross, and were in the process of igniting it when the twins shouted: ‘We got him!’ When the cross lit up the sky, a horde of onlookers ran up, and there was so much calling back and forth among the hooded figures that the crowd knew who the four avengers were: ‘That’s Lew Tumlinson for sure, and if he’s here, so’s his brother. The fat one we know, and I think the other has got to be Ed Boatright.’

  Dewey Kimbro, who never missed anything, even when he was about to be thrashed, heard the names. He also heard the fat man say: ‘Strip him!’ and when the nightshirt was torn away and he stood naked, he heard the same man shout: ‘Lay it on. Good.’

  He refused to faint. He refused to cry out. In the glare of the flaming cross, he bore the first twenty-odd slashes of the three whips, but then he lost count, and finally he did faint.

  At nine o’clock next morning he barged into Floyd Rusk’s kitchen, and the fat man, who was an expert with revolvers from an early age, anticipated trouble and whipped out one of his big six-shooters, but before he could get it into position, he glared into the barrel of a small yet deadly German pistol pointed straight at a spot between his eyes.

  For a long, tense moment the two men retained their positions, Rusk almost ready to fire his huge revolver, Kimbro prepared to fire first with his smaller gun. Finally Rusk dropped his, at which Kimbro said: ‘Place it right here where I can watch it,’ and Floyd did, sweating heavily.

  ‘Now let’s sit down here, Mr. Rusk, and talk sense.’ When the big man took his place at the kitchen table, with his gun in reach not of himself but of Kimbro, a conversation began which modified the history of Larkin County.

  ‘Mr. Rusk, you whipped me last night—’

  ‘Now wait!’

  ‘You’re right. You never laid a rawhide on me. But you ordered the Tumlinson twins and Ed Boatright …’ Rusk’s glistening of sweat became a small torrent. ‘I ought to kill you for that, and maybe later on I will. But right now you and I need each other, and you’re far more valuable to me alive than dead.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I have a secret, Mr. Rusk. I’ve had it since
I was eleven years old. Do you remember Mrs. Jackson who ran the little store?’

  ‘Yes, I believe I do.’

  ‘You wouldn’t remember a boy from East Texas who spent one summer with her?’

  ‘Are you that boy?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘And what secret did you discover?’

  ‘On your land … out by the tank …’

  ‘That’s not my land. My father gave it to the Yeagers.’

  ‘I know. Your father promised it in the 1870s. You formalized it in 1909.’

  ‘So it’s not my land.’

  Kimbro shifted in his chair, for the pain from his whipping was intense. He had a most important statement to make, and he wanted to be in complete control when he made it, but just as he was prepared to disclose the purpose of his visit, Molly Rusk came into the kitchen, a big blowzy woman who, against all the rules of nature, was pregnant. She had a round, happy face made even more placid by the miracle of her condition, and with the simplicity that marked most of her actions, she took one look at Kimbro and asked: ‘Aren’t you the man they whipped last night?’ and he said: ‘I am.’

  She was about to ask why he was sitting in her kitchen this morning, when Rusk said respectfully: ‘You better leave us alone, Molly,’ and she retired with apologies, but she had barely closed the door when she returned: ‘There’s coffee on the stove.’ Then she added: ‘Floyd, don’t do anything brutal with that gun.’

  ‘True, the land is no longer yours, Mr. Rusk,’ Kimbro said quietly. ‘Your daddy promised it to Yeager, but when you transferred it legally, you were clever enough to retain the mineral rights.’

  Rusk leaned far back in his chair. Then he placed his pudgy hands on the edge of the table, and from this position he sat staring at the little stranger. Finally, in an awed voice he asked: ‘You mean …’

  Kimbro nodded, and after readjusting his painful back, he said: ‘When I stayed here that summer I did a lot of tramping about. Always have.’

  ‘And what did you find at the tank?’

  ‘A small rise that everyone else had overlooked. When I kicked rocks aside, I came upon … guess what?’

  ‘Gold?’

  ‘Much better. Coal.’

  ‘Coal?’

  ‘Yep. Sneaked some home and it burned a glowing red. Kept on burning. So I kept on exploring …’

  ‘And you located a coal mine?’

  ‘Nope. The strain was trivial, played out fast. But I covered the spot, piled rocks over it, and if you and I go out there this morning, we’ll find a slight trace of coal hiding where it’s always been.’

  ‘And what does this mean?’

  ‘You don’t know? I knew when I was ten. Read it in a book.’ He shifted again. ‘I read a lot, Mr. Rusk.’

  ‘And what did you read, at ten?’

  Kimbro hesitated, then changed the subject entirely: ‘Mr. Rusk, I want you to enter into a deal with me, right now. Word of a gentleman. We’re partners, seventy-five to you, twenty-five to me.’

  ‘What the hell kind of offer is that? I don’t even know what we’re talkin’ about.’

  ‘You will. In two minutes, if you make the deal.’

  ‘You’d trust me, after last night?’

  ‘I have to.’ Kimbro banged the table. ‘And by God, you have to trust me, too.’

  ‘Is it worth my while? I have a lot of cattle, you know.’

  ‘And you’re losing your ass on them, aren’t you?’

  ‘Well, the market …’

  ‘Seventy-five, twenty-five for my secret and the know-how to develop it.’

  Again Rusk leaned back: ‘What do you know about me, personally I mean?’

  ‘That you’re a bastard, through and through. But once you give your word, you stick to it.’

  ‘I do. You know, Kimbro, when I was fourteen or thereabouts I rode to Dodge City with a—’

  ‘You went to Dodge City?’

  ‘I did, with the greatest trail driver Texas ever produced, R. J. Poteet. He tried to make a man of me, but I wouldn’t allow it. At Dodge, I killed two men, yep, age fifteen I think I was. Poteet’s two point men spirited me out of town. Just ahead of the sheriff. But on the ride back to Texas he and his men held a kangaroo court because they knew damned well I hadn’t shot in self-defense. Found me guilty and strung me up. I thought sure as hell …’ He was sweating so profusely that he asked: ‘Can I get that towel?’

  ‘Stay away from the gun.’

  ‘They slapped the horse I was sitting on, I fell, I felt the rope bite into my neck. And then Poteet caught me. He lectured me about my wrong ways, and I spat in his face.’ He laughed nervously. ‘I was scared to death, really petrified, but I wouldn’t show it. Poteet went for his gun, then brushed me aside.’

  He rocked back and forth on the kitchen chair, an immensely fat man of forty-seven. Replacing his hands on the table, he said: ‘That hanging was the making of me, Kimbro. Taught me two things. You’ve uncovered one of them. I am a man of my word, hell or high water. And I have never since then been afraid to use my gun when it had to be used. If you’re partners with me, be damned careful.’

  ‘That’s why I brought this,’ Kimbro said, indicating the gun which he had kept trained on the fat man during their discussion.

  ‘So what did you learn?’ Rusk asked.

  ‘Partners?’ Kimbro asked, and the two shook hands, after which the little fellow delivered his momentous information: ‘At ten I knew that coal and petroleum are the same substance, in different form.’

  Rusk gasped: ‘You mean oil?’ The word echoed through the quiet kitchen as if a bomb had exploded, for the wild discoveries in East Texas had alerted the entire state to the possibilities of this fantastic substance which made farmers multimillionaires.

  ‘At fourteen,’ Kimbro continued, ‘I studied all the chemistry and physics our little school allowed, and at seventeen I enrolled at Texas A&M.’

  ‘You a college graduate?’

  ‘Three years only. By that time I knew more about petroleum than the professors. Got a job with Humble, then Gulf. Field man. Sort of an informal geologist. Worked the rigs too, so I know what drilling is. Mr. Rusk, I’m a complete oilman, but what I really am is maybe the world’s greatest creekologist.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A contemptuous name the professors give practical men like me. We study the way creeks run, the rise and fall of land forms, and we guess like hell.’ He slammed the table. ‘But by God, we find oil. It’s downright infuriating to the college people how we find oil.’

  ‘And you think you’ve found some on my land?’

  ‘From the run of the creeks and the rise in your field, I’m satisfied that we’re sitting near the middle of a substantial field.’

  ‘You mean real oil?’

  ‘I do. Not a bunch of spectacular gushers like Spindletop. But good, dependable oil trapped in the rocks below us.’

  ‘If you’re right, could we make some real money?’

  ‘A fortune, if we handle it right.’

  ‘And what would right be?’

  ‘How much of this land around here do you own?’

  ‘I’m sure you’ve checked at the courthouse. Well over seven thousand acres.’

  ‘Where does it lie, relation to the tank?’

  ‘South and some across Bear Creek to the west.’

  ‘I’m glad you can tell the truth. But if I’m right, the field runs north and east of the tank. Could you buy any of that land?’

  ‘Look, I don’t have much ready cash.’

  ‘Could you lease the mineral rights? I mean right now. Not tomorrow, now.’

  ‘Is speed so necessary?’

  ‘The minute anyone suspects what we’re up to … if they even guess that I’m a creekologist … Then it’s too late.’

  ‘How does an oil lease work?’

  Kimbro had to rise, adjust his scarred back, and sit gingerly on the edge of the chair: ‘There can be three conditions of
ownership. First, you own your seven thousand acres and all mineral rights under them. Second, Yeager owns the good land we want, the surface, that is, but he owns nothing underneath. Tough on him, good for us.’

  ‘Yes, but do we have the right to invade his property in order to sink our well?’

  ‘We do, if we don’t ruin his surface. And if we do ruin it, we pay him damages, and he can’t do a damned thing about it.’

  ‘He won’t like it.’

  ‘They never do, but that’s the law. Now, the third situation is the one that operates mostly. Farmer Kline owns a big chunk of land, say three thousand acres. He also owns the mineral rights. So we go to him and say: “Mr. Kline, we want to lease the mineral rights to your land. For ten years. And we’ll give you fifty cents an acre year after year for ten years. A lot of money.” ’

  ‘What rights do we get?’

  ‘The right to drill, any place on the farm, as many holes as we want, for ten years.’

  ‘And what does he get?’

  ‘Fifteen hundred dollars a year, hard cash, year after year, even if we do nothing.’

  ‘And if we strike oil?’

  ‘He gets a solid one-eighth of everything we make, for as long as that well produces. To eternity, if he and it last that long.’

  ‘Who gets the other seven-eighths?’

  ‘We do.’

  ‘Is it a good deal … for all of us, I mean?’

  ‘For Farmer Kline, it’s a very fair deal. He gets an oil well without taking any risk. For you and me, the deal with Kline is about the best we can do, fair to both sides. It’s his oil but we take all the risks.’

  ‘And between you and me—seventy-five, twenty-five?’

  ‘Tell you the truth, Rusk, with some men like me you could get an eighty, twenty deal, but nine out of ten such men would never find a bucket of oil. I know where the oil is. For you, it’s a very good deal. As for me, if I had the land or the money, I wouldn’t say hello to you. But I don’t have either.’

  ‘So what should we do?’ Rusk asked permission to pour some coffee, whereupon Kimbro pushed the big revolver across the table to him.