Texas

by James A. Michener

  This year it looked as if evil would triumph, for its Dallas managers, Kraft and Killeen, had run a masterful campaign focused not on alcohol but on human rights and the advantages of a free society, but at almost the last moment the drys received help from an unexpected quarter. In the oil town of San Angelo, a hundred and seventy miles to the southwest, a Catholic priest named Father Uecker awoke to the fact that during the past twelve months he had been required to conduct burial services for five impetuous young men of his congregation who had been shot and killed during five different drunken brawls on church property. In anguish over such mayhem he had, with considerable publicity, announced that he would no longer rent his parish hall for any dance or entertainment at which liquor was consumed.

  He said that this would cost his church more than three thousand dollars in lost fees, but he felt that this would be a small price to pay if it would halt or even slow down the carnage. Father Uecker ended his announcement with a paragraph which somewhat dampened its effect among the Larkin Baptists, but even so, they clutched at the support his action provided:

  We are fairly certain that Jesus himself enjoyed the wedding feast at Cana, which certainly included wine and dancing. We believe that wine is also a part of God’s creation and, therefore, it is good. We believe that dancing can be very wholesome recreation. We categorically deny that drinking and dancing are evil of themselves, but it seems to be impossible at this time and in this place to conduct public dances with the abuse that alcohol brings.

  This tragic news from San Angelo, that five young men in one small parish had died of gunshot wounds, plus Reverend Craig’s imaginative use of the report, neatly ignoring the priest’s reminder that he was not a prohibitionist, swung just enough votes to the drys to ensure that once again Larkin County had obeyed the voice of its religious leader. When the vote was announced church bells rang and some members of the various congregations, including the pastor’s sixteen-year-old son, rode through the county seat, tooting their horns in celebration of the victory.

  The other three youngsters in the car containing young Craig were so jubilant that when the informal parade in town ended, they rode joyously down Suicide Gulch to the grogshops of Bascomb County, drank immoderately, and then came zigzagging homeward with two bottles of Old Alamo, one for the front seat, one for the back.

  As they approached the intersection of Highway 23 and FM-578 the driver became confused by the lights coming at him from dead ahead and by those angling in from 578. In a moment of supreme confidence he decided to thread his way right through the middle; instead, he smashed broadside into the car coming from the right. The driver, young Craig, the other two passengers and the husband and wife in the other car were killed, not instantly but in the flames which engulfed them.

  The changes which assaulted Texas affected everyone. On the day before the regents’ meeting the new governor called the Quimper ranch: ‘Lorenzo, the new regent I appointed is flying up from the Valley. You’ve been a regent for two terms. Would you please meet him at the airport and more or less explain how things work?’

  The new man was Simón Garza, the thoughtful mayor of Bravo and the first Hispanic to be appointed to the university’s Board of Regents. Quimper, who had always employed Mexican wetbacks on his nine ranches and who had promoted one of them, Cándido Guzmán, to general foreman, found no difficulty in talking with Mayor Garza, brother of the A&M member of the Task Force with whom he had argued so congenially.

  It was a thoughtful conversation because Garza immediately showed his desire to learn, and faced with that sincerity, Il Magnifico realized that he must not clown around with his redneck humor: ‘You do us honor joining the regents, Mayor Garza. You’ve built a fine reputation throughout Texas.’ When Garza looked down at his hands to avoid having to respond to this formal flattery, Quimper said: ‘Being a regent is a privilege. One of the most important assignments in Texas.’

  ‘And I’m honored to be the first Mexican-American. Although I do think it’s about time, seeing how many of our people attend the place.’

  ‘I’m glad to have you aboard,’ Quimper said, and when Garza asked: ‘Wasn’t your father the famous regent?’ Lorenzo was encouraged to speak with him as a serious equal.

  ‘He had the job for years, and people either exalted or despised him, depending on whether or not they could read.’ When Garza smiled at the joke, Lorenzo grew more specific.

  ‘My father did everything practical to promote the university football team, and everything possible to annihilate any influences he felt were not in harmony with the spirit of the gridiron. On the positive side, he created generous scholarships for football players, initiated the plan of having wealthy ranchers contribute steers to feed his athletes at their training table, and organized a fleet of private planes, some of them jets, which the dozen coaches could use when recruiting in the fall and winter months. He also provided, out of his own oil money, two different sets of uniforms for the 334 members of the university’s show band of the Southwest, “biggest and best in the nation and twice as big as anything in Europe or Asia,” he said. On crisp October days when the Texas football team ran onto the field in the enlarged stadium he had helped provide, and the band marched out to greet them, he could sit back in his special box and think: I’m responsible for a hell of a lot of that, and when boys he had recruited swept to national championships, he could say truthfully: “I brought most of that backfield to Texas. What a bargain.” ’

  ‘Why is your father’s name so familiar?’ Garza asked, and Quimper said frankly: ‘Bad publicity,’ and he explained.

  ‘There was a negative side. My father practically destroyed the faculty, disciplining anyone he disliked and firing those he distrusted. At the height of his reign of terror he told me: “Runnin’ a university is like runnin’ a ranch. The man with money owns it, and he hires a manager and assistants. He gives them wide latitude in day-to-day operations, but he never lets them forget who’s really in charge.” He had an interesting theory about professors: “I like to have colorful men on my staff. Fellows who wear old-fashioned clothes, or who go to northern Sweden in their summers, or who wear string ties. Makes the campus distinctive, but I do not want them meddling in the running of the place or speaking out on politics.” Teachers who ignored his rules or openly contested them did not last long on my father’s academic ranch.’

  ‘What was that famous fracas about Frank Dobie?’

  Quimper seemed to ignore the question, for he launched instead into a philosophical discussion about the arts in Texas: ‘Compared to the other Southern states, Texas has not produced its quota of artists, musicians, novelists or philosophers, and my old man was one of the reasons. If we did not have world-class intellectuals, we did have, in my early days, two men who were building a foundation, and my father scorned them. Walter Prescott Webb had a fine, clear vision of the West and wrote about it with skill and passion, but he favored liberal causes, and for my father that was forbidden. Frank Dobie! What a man! Traipsed about the campfires gathering cowboy yarns and tall stories about coyotes, Longhorns and rattlesnakes. I knew him and loved him. He could be as gentle as a hummingbird, as mean as a scorpion. He defined our state in terms of its rural heritage and made us proud of what we had accomplished.’

  ‘Did Dobie ever write anything of national importance?’ Garza asked, and Quimper snapped: ‘He did a damned sight better. Carried the culture of Texas overseas to Cambridge University, where he was a star. But he also had strong feelings about the long-term welfare of the state. And that infuriated my father. I remember him roaring one night: “Until we get rid of that communist sumbitch Frank Dobie we’ll never have a safe university.” As a fellow regent, let me advise you on one thing. The phrase a safe university’s a contradiction, because a real university must question everything, but with my old man ridin’ herd, few professors dared.’

  He laughed and suggested that perhaps Garza might like a fire, so big mesquite logs were dragged
in by two Mexican workers, and soon the unique aroma that made mesquite barbecue so flavorful permeated the room, and talk grew more casual: ‘The things my old man said! At the height of his battle with Dobie he told me: “The faculty should accept the buildings we give them and keep their mouths shut.” And how about the time he told the reporters: “The University of Texas has one overriding obligation. To turn out football teams of which the state can be proud.” ’

  ‘Your father fire Dobie?’

  ‘Yep. And muzzled Webb, two of the most original performers our university ever produced.’ He leaned far back in his chair, studied the mesquite flames, and reflected on a problem which had agitated him of late: ‘If our Southern sisters to the east have produced this outpouring of fine writers—Eudora Welty, William Faulkner, Robert Penn Warren, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Thomas Wolfe, Flannery O’Connor, I can never remember whether she’s a woman or he’s a man—why have we produced only one? Katherine Anne Porter?’

  He knew part of the answer: ‘Texas was a true frontier, right down to 1920. We were far removed from east-west routes of travel, and we offered damn little to the north-south travelers. When a man in 1840 or a woman in 1860 crossed the plains up north, what did they find? Thriving places like California and Oregon. You cross Texas and what do you face? The deserts of New Mexico and Arizona. The empty cactus lands of northern Mexico. Also, the railroads reached us pathetically late. In those years when European artists were crossing Wyoming as a matter of course on powerful continental trains, Texas had a couple of rural stations.’

  Pouring Garza a drink, he asked: ‘You know much about Austin? You’ll love it. Marvelous town. But it’s failed to produce the artists and thinkers it should have. Somehow we were cheated.’ He thought about this for some moments, then growled: ‘But damnit, with your help we can catch up.’

  Mayor Garza took from his pocket a confidential report supplied him by the university, and as he studied it by the light of the mesquite fire, he thought: How strange that Lorenzo Quimper should be telling me about the devastation his father had wrought!

  And it was strange, because the secret report told how Lorenzo, this redneck who played the loudmouth buffoon, had, when he became a regent in 1978, initiated at his own expense a study comparing salaries at Texas with those at first-class state universities like North Carolina, Wisconsin and California, and what he learned disgusted him: ‘We pay twenty thousand dollars, thirty thousand less than they pay their top chairs. What in hell is wrong with Texas?’

  With guidance from a thoughtful administration, he had visited many graduates of the university who had profited from the education it had provided them: ‘Herman, the great power that the state of Texas is accumulatin’, and the wealth our university commands means nothin’ if we don’t use that power constructively.’ All agreed with this, for the clever application of power was a Texas tradition. ‘So what I’m recommendin’, and I’ll need your help, fellows like you who’ve struck it rich. Give us five hundred thousand dollars to endow a chair in your name. The Herman Kallheimer Chair in Jurisprudence. And if you have an associate who can’t handle that amount, he can give us a hundred thousand to provide extra funds for some good professor at the lower levels.’ All across the state he had moved, appealing to what he called ‘The National Pride of Loyal Texans,’ and he succeeded in amassing funds for seventy-six full endowments and for five hundred and twenty lesser supports.

  Garza looked across the top of his paper at the inscrutable man staring into the fire: the big hat beside the chair, the expensive whipcord suit, the wide leather belt with brass buckle in front showing the state of Texas and the bold engraving Garza had seen on the back: IL MAGNIFICO. The man conformed in no way to the data on the paper, and Garza raised the question: ‘This report says that in a relatively short period you provided the administration with an unexpected forty-two million dollars for upgrading teachers’ salaries. With that kind of money, we can have one of the best faculties in America.’

  Quimper downplayed his contribution: ‘In my principal mission I’ve failed.’

  ‘I don’t call a sum like that failure.’

  ‘It’s those damned clowns out on the prairie. They’ll give unlimited endowments for the Law School. Same for the School of Business and Science. Or the geology of oil. But not a thin dime for poetry, or drama, or fine arts, or English, or philosophy, or history. That young professor who came to see me after our last meetin’ was right. We’ve established a university for the trainin’ of technicians. The work of the spirit, to hell with that.’

  And as soon as he said these words he realized that he was condemning himself and, especially, his father: ‘It was us Quimpers who set the style. Frank Dobie asked questions about ultimate values, so kick him to hell out. Walter Webb asked about the sources of Texas power, so move him gently to one side. I bear a heavy burden.’

  As they talked an ember fell from the fire, and since Quimper was at the portable bar pouring a drink, Garza grabbed the poker to push back the flaming mesquite, but as he did so he noticed the curious shape of the poker. It was, to his surprise, a branding iron such as cattlemen used to mark their cattle, and when he brought the business end forward to study it, he found that it consisted of a four-inch letter U, inside of which rested a smaller, neatly forged T.

  He was about to ask what this meant when Quimper reached for the brand, waved it about in his left hand, and said, with impressive emotion: ‘This represents one of the highlights of my life.’

  ‘Your first cattle brand? What do the letters signify?’

  ‘Mayor Garza! That’s the University of Texas.’ And he proceeded to unfold a story so improbable that Garza sat riveted: ‘When my father enrolled at the university, there was a kind of secret society—all the important men on campus, those judged to be winners. There were arcane rites, secret handgrips … all that stuff. Father was a member, of course. One of the proudest achievements of his life.’

  ‘What did the society do?’

  ‘Defended the honor of the university. And they had a unique initiation rite, which the university made them abandon in 1944 when a student’s life was endangered. By the time I entered in 1949 that special deal was long gone.’

  ‘What was it?’

  Quimper ignored the question, laid aside the brand, and gazed intently at Garza: ‘I was a sophomore when they took me in. Paddling … a little drinking … you know, the usual. And I’ll confess I was very proud. But when I’d been a member about six months my father and three big wheels here in Austin, judges, bankers, you know, all graduates of the university, they invited me to a posh dinner, then drove me out to a lonely spot on the shores of Lake Travis, a rather wild spot, where they built quite a large fire.’

  He stopped talking, took a swallow of his drink, and stared once more at Garza: ‘When the fire was extremely hot, they placed this brand, this one here, in it. Then they spread-eagled me on the ground, tied my arms and legs to stakes they’d driven in the earth, ripped off my shirt, and branded me on the chest with that brand over there.’

  Garza gasped: ‘You’re kidding.’

  Slowly, as if he were a priest conducting a ritual, Quimper opened his shirt, revealing a powerful chest on which was a deeply imbedded .

  ‘Is that a tattoo?’ Garza asked, to which Quimper replied forcefully: ‘No! It’s a brand, like you brand cattle. And when it was burned in, my father rubbed it with salt so as to make a real scar, like they do after those duels in Heidelberg, and he told me in awed tones: “Now you’re really one of us. Each of us carries the same brand.” ’ He reached for the brand, placed it against his chest, and allowed Garza to satisfy himself that the conformance was perfect.

  Rebuttoning his shirt, he said: ‘As you move about Texas you’ll come upon many men in their sixties who carry this secret brand under their vested suits. Leaders of the state. We never speak of it. Never reveal who else carries it. But I will tell you this. At the regents’ meeting tomorrow, I
won’t be the only one hiding it.’ He paused: ‘My father told me that night by the lake as he rubbed in the salt: “I’d not want to have a son who didn’t carry over his heart the badge of the university.” He loved the place you’re about to help govern. And so do I.’

  The night grew late, and he told Mayor Garza: ‘We’ve needed you on our board for some years. Talk sense to us. Support the good proposals.’ He sounded like a philosopher.

  But next morning, when he drove Garza onto the campus and saw the poster announcing that next week the university baseball team would play A&M, he reverted to type. Once more he became the florid, beefy, extroverted Texas rancher whom the undergraduates would noisily toast as the fifth inning came to a close: ‘Il Magnifico … the Bottom of the Fifth,’ with the leader finishing off a bottle of whiskey. He hoped they would smother A&M.

  Chuckling, he asked Garza: ‘You ever hear about the time some years back when the state decided to make A&M a full-fledged university? Dreadful mistake. Ambitious A&M alumni wanted to upgrade the name of their town, College Station, to something more exalted. So I offered a hundred-dollar prize for the most appropriate suggestion. The winner? Malfunction Junction. A&M officials were not amused.’

  Then he confided: ‘Actually, I think it’s a fine school. I help it whenever I can. But our board expects me to turn up at every meeting with a new Aggie joke, and this time I have a zinger.’

  So after Mayor Garza had been introduced to warm applause, for the regents were relieved to have the Hispanic barrier broken, Quimper said:

  ‘This Aggie was infuriated by the way people in Texas downgraded him and he consulted a counselor, who advised: “Best way in the world to demonstrate intellectual superiority is to salt and pepper your conversation with French phrases.” So off he goes to Paris to a tutoring school, and on the day of his return he marches boldly into the best store in Austin and says: “Garçon, I would like some pâté de fois gras avec poivre, four croissants, a coq-au-vin, and a bottle of champagne très, très sec.”