The Gillespie Country Fair

by Marc Hess

  There was more highway that night, and lots more emptiness to cross before the low mesquite plains gave way to oak stands, undulating hills, and dry river beds. Where the old Mason Highway crested near the Hilltop Café, the first lights of Fredericksburg scraped against the night sky, and Max turned off onto an unmarked farm-to-market road. As he reentered the gravitational pull of his childhood, the bends and turns of these back roads came to him instinctively. He’d learned to drive out here. He’d started drinking and smooching on girls out here. He’d hidden from his father out here.

  It was a Saturday night, and he’d been told that his old gang would be out at the party ranch. His once glorious muscle car scraped bottom as he edged it down the caliche roads that cut across fields of dried-up coastal hay, through the pecan groves, and up toward the ranch house of Aubrey and Adelheid Weshausen.

  “Addy’ll make up a room for you, Max. You’re always welcome here if it gets too hot at your old man’s house,” Aubrey had told him before he left Flagstaff. “Gerdie told me she’s moving her kids out of your old room for your visit. But I know how it can get. They still don’t use an air conditioner.”

  Max nodded. “Might take you up on that.”

  Max and Aubrey were friends from childhood. Max had taken Addy out on her first date. Max and Aubrey played four years of high school football together. And when Max made his escape from Texas, it was in Aubrey’s baby blue Camaro with one gray door.

  Several pickup trucks were spaced haphazardly across the lawn area between the Weshausens’ ranch house and the barn. The house lights shone, and music seeped out of open windows. Between the barn and the creek, a solemn group of shadows stood about the low-burning embers of a bonfire. Max got out of his car and stepped stiffly over to join the silhouettes at the fire.

  They were stoned in their places with long-necked beer bottles in their hands, making conversation out of ambiguities like Yeah, man and Fuck that. With the dying fire reflecting off their faces, Max picked them out one by one as he approached: Heinie Ortner, Rickie Boensch, Buddy Nuweinkraus—guys who had made up the better part of the offensive line on Max’s football team. Bonded for life, they now stood exactly where Max had last seen them ten, fifteen years ago: standing around a campfire, drinking beer.

  Not one of them seemed surprised to see Max just mosey up to the fire. It was as if they had been totally expecting their long-lost wide receiver to appear.

  “Hey, Buddy,” Max greeted his old friend.

  Buddy nodded, keeping his eyes on the diminishing fire as if shifting his gaze would make him fall over.

  “Rickie. You been keeping okay?”

  Rickie Boensch looked at Max a minute, working to put something together in his head. Then he spoke. “Hey. Get yourself a beer, man.”

  Max stuck his hand in a washtub of melted ice and felt around for a bottle. Heinie was squinting at him, his eyes rolling under the brim of that black cowboy hat as though trying to recognize him.

  “Hey, Road Trip,” Heinie said at last, using Max’s old nickname. “Where’d you get that fuckin’ lump on your head?”

  • • •

  After one and a half days of driving, three states, two time zones, and four of America’s geological regions—and after waking up with a hangover for a second day in a row—Max faced the most grueling part of that journey: the last twenty-three miles down old Tivydale Road, to town and his father’s house.

  Tivydale Road rolled indolently through small stands of live oak trees and long pastures beaten yellow by the relentless sun. Peach orchards ebbed and flowed over the swells of land, their meticulous rows tied together with the black hoses of drip irrigation. Recently sheared sheep lay in the dust around water tanks, eking out what shade they could and grazing the shrub lines along the fences. Then the road just came to an end.

  At State Highway 16 the town of Fredericksburg began in earnest with its first traffic signal. At that crossroad the hulking grandstands loomed over the empty show barns and the pari-mutuel racetrack of the Gillespie County Fairgrounds, home of the oldest county fair in the state. The signal light changed to green and Max Ritzi made a left turn, smack into the jaws of his Lutheran childhood.

  Before he could knock, his mother burst through the door, her heart in her voice: “Oh, mein kleiner Max, it’s so good to … Whatever happened to your head?” Then, feigning a scolding tone, she said, “You’ve been out with those roughnecks again.”

  “It’s just a—”

  “You had better let Gerdie take a look at that.”

  “Is Gerdie here?” he asked as his mama pulled him inside the house.

  “Ja. Ja. She’s here with opa.”

  Maximilian Ritzi, the opa himself, stood gaunt and stiff in the far corner of the room, propped up by his daughter on one side and an aluminum cane on the other. He was swallowed up in his loose clothes: his faded canvas shirt buttoned at the neck and a leather belt that could have gone around him twice. When Gerdie stepped out to greet her brother, her smile radiant, the old man teetered a bit and she moved back to shore him up.

  Inside it was a different kind of hot, reminding Max that the old house had but one window air conditioner that they used sparingly.

  “You gonna shut dat door, boy? Let all dem flies come in here?” The old man’s voice had not lost its vigor.

  Max was caught momentarily between a greeting and an answer to his father’s question when Maximilian fired again. “What dat dere you got on yer head, boy?”

  Checking himself against his father’s rancor, Max put on a smile and crossed the room.

  “You come in here and sit a spell.” The old man pointed his cane at the sofa in a gesture that tipped him off balance. Gerdie tightened her grip, but Maximilian fended her off by slapping at her with his free hand.

  Rather than follow his father’s direction, Max stepped up to him and wrapped his arms around the old man’s shoulders. He felt the old man’s clammy skin and protruding bones. This close, Max could smell the chewed-up cigars that stained his teeth, and he took note of the ashtrays where the old man usually sat. His Bible was there too, thick and well worn. Tucked partially behind the well-worn La-Z-Boy chair was an oxygen converter the size of a woodstove, and plastic tubes draped the arm of the chair, softly hissing. His father had made a great effort to be standing on his own feet when he greeted his son.

  The two men broke away and took their respective seats, squaring off across from each other. Evelyn Ritzi, ever the good hausfrau, scurried off to fetch them some iced tea. Gerdie, grinning like a girl on her first date, took a seat on the sofa, close enough to Max to be flirting.

  “So, your wife couldn’t make it here now.” The old man spoke with an effort. “Has she some kind of problem?”

  “No. No problem. And her name is Caroline.”

  “Ja, ja. I know dat. Caroline. My Mexican daughter-in-law.”

  Mexican. Already the old man was throwing insults. Max cheerfully blurted back, “She wanted to come, but she couldn’t get off of work.” Immediately he saw that his father knew he was lying.

  Maximilian cleared his throat and with a slow and deliberate movement laid his big right hand on the Bible as if he were taking an oath.

  Gerdie was showing some concern and started to push herself up. “Opa, I think you need some—”

  “Nay!” Their father barked harshly enough to push Gerdie back into her seat.

  Evelyn rejoined them with a tray of clinking iced-tea glasses. “It’s so wonderful to have you home, Max. This year we’ll have the whole family together at the fair.”

  “Ach, ya never know where dis boy’s been off to,” bawled the old man, drawing all the attention back upon himself. His head was bouncing up and down as if he’d made a joke. “Not a thought to his own family.”

  Max allowed a moment of silence to pass but spoke up before his father could continue. “It’s good to see you again, Papa.”

  His mother intervened with a different subject. “Well
, dear. Your old bedroom is ready for you.”

  “Oh, Mama, Aubrey invited me to stay with him at the ranch. I don’t want to throw the kids out of their room.”

  “Aubrey Weshausen!” The patriarch jumped back into the conversation. “Now dere’s a boy who made a no-good mess wit’ his father’s ranch, dere. One time de finest Dorpers in de county came off dat ranch. But no more, ich sage dir.”

  That statement settled over them like a fog. Max didn’t feel it necessary to answer. So Maximilian drew in a breath—almost a snore—and continued.

  “An’ my boy wanna be doin’ more hard drinkin’ and carousin’ about wit’ de old line out dere at Aubrey Weshausen’s ranch. Would ya not? Rather dan choosing to be wit’ de Christian family dat you were born into?”

  “Hard drinking, Papa? I gave up hard drinking years ago. I’m just a beer man now.” It was his second lie.

  “Ja.” The old man scratched his chin and pretended to think about that. “Now dat musta been when you got hitched up to dat Mexican girl? One we never got to meet.”

  “Her name is Caroline, Papa. And you did meet her when I was out for …” He turned to Gerdie. “Was that when you were moving back in here?”

  “Yes, it was.” Gerdie was wringing her hands and bobbing her head like she was in trouble. “Yes. You and Caroline did come back and help us with that move. I liked her. She was sweet.”

  It hurt Max, seeing his older sister still quaking in the shadow of their father. “I recall that you didn’t take kindly to your Mexican daughter-in-law.” He turned away from his father to engage his mother and sister. “Caroline is the one who had me give up the ‘heavy drinking and carousing,’ as you call it.”

  His mother smiled for him to continue.

  “When Caroline took up yoga, she told me that there was no room for that kind of karma in our home.”

  “I think you have a very smart wife, Max.” His mother beamed even more pleasantly. “I have never known wherever you would put a karma in a home.”

  “In any case,” Gerdie jumped in, “the kids have already moved into my room, and they are eager to spend some time with their Uncle Max. Besides, the TV is in my room, so this will be a treat for them.”

  “Okay, then,” Max agreed, believing he’d done well with his father and feeling unable to deny his mother’s hopeful smile. “I’ll have to pick up a toothbrush and a razor. I left mine at the ranch,” he said, to let them know that he was keeping his options open.

  A snort from Maximilian took their attention. His head had dropped to one side, and a little line of dribble traced his chin. His lips had taken on a blue cast.

  Gerdie wiped his lips in a way that wouldn’t wake him. She pulled the plastic tubing that hissed with oxygen and gently placed it under his nose. “It’s time for a rest. There has been a lot of excitement for him this morning.” She turned to Max with a look that said everything was all right.

  In his view, it wasn’t.

  • • •

  The neighborhood settled in the hush of a torrid August afternoon. The small house’s large yard was shaded by one-hundred-year-old pecan trees bent heavy over a rusted-out mechanical harvester that Maximilian was going to neither repair nor get rid of. With evening, the scrubby hills lost their harsh edges and the long, red-streaked sunset overtook the landscape. Mockingbirds and grackles picked themselves out of the trees and flocked across the sky to their night roosts out west.

  Max sat in the backyard shade, paging through a week-old edition of the Fredericksburg Standard Radio-Post. The scent of honeysuckle mingled with the odd tang of sauerkraut that seeped out of the kitchen, where his mother and sister were sweating over supper. He didn’t know where his father was being kept, and he didn’t plan on looking.

  All at once a great commotion exploded inside the house, as if a hamster cage had been tipped over. Children in a wide range of sizes—all blond-haired, blue-eyed Ritzi kids—scurried throughout the house looking for their Uncle Max. Two of them were Gerdie’s, and four were their cousins, Jock’s kids—the sum total of Max’s nieces and nephews.

  Max’s younger brother, Jock—who, by an odd twist, had never played sports (the nickname was for Jochiem)—came bouncing out of the back door. “Hey, big brother. I saw your, uh, car. What hap-happened …” He stopped mid-stutter when Max stood to greet him. “Wha … what happened to your head?”

  “Brain tumor. Didn’t Mama tell you?” They ruffled each other’s hair, commented on their receding hairlines, traded jabs, and threw their arms around each other.

  “It’s not … not contagious, is it?” Jock joked.

  “Not contagious, little brother. But it’s known to be hereditary.”

  They laughed together as the backyard was suddenly filled with the running, squealing children who had been shooed out of the house. Each, in turn, ran up and bounced a quick hug off the curious Uncle Max. Terri, Jock’s perpetually overwhelmed wife, followed behind the children, guiding and refereeing them like a teacher in a schoolyard.

  The one thing Max always missed about his home were those capacious family suppers set out on that long plank, a makeshift dinner table under the shade of those ancient pecan trees. Christmas, Easter, Fourth of July, Gillespie County Fair … it was always roast pork, Mama’s home-fermented sauerkraut, red potato salad, and beer. In former times it had been homemade beer, but that was one of the things that Maximilian had had to give up and his youngest son wouldn’t take up.

  When everyone was in their place around the plank table, Maximilian, refreshed from an extended, oxygenated nap, gave the blessing. It was a long and serious one—as Lutherans were wont to give—that didn’t leave much out. Then the food was passed. They ate, gabbed, laughed, and basked in the warmth of family.

  After dinner, while the women cleaned up and the nieces and nephews ran off to climb into the corners of the big backyard, the men sat around to talk about livestock prices, farm equipment, and other topics that didn’t require them to engage their emotions.

  Maximilian worked a cigar from its cellophane wrapper with a shaking hand. He didn’t smoke them anymore; rather he sucked on the end and rolled it in his mouth until it was soggy. Jock, who was now running the family business, brought out some photos: glossy color pictures of late-model trucks with brush guards and custom bumper rails.

  “This the kind of work you’ve been turning out at the shop?” Max asked.

  “No. No. It’s been the kind of thing we’ve been thinking about doing. I mean, we’ve been … Well, we done some.” Jock started to explain, in his own hesitant way, how the shop had been fitting brush guards and clearance protection to the designer pickups driven by the weekend ranchers and hunters. “And I think I know where we could get some more. Of this kind of work, I mean.”

  He laid the photos out on the table before his father, one by one, like he was dealing cards.

  “There are, uh, let me see here …” Jock fumbled with some brochures, placing them on top of the photos. He never was too good at making his point. “They have these shows, these big conventions for hunters. That’s where we could go to get more work like this. It’s a … well … more money in it. Those fancy truck people are richer, for one thing. And we’re good at it, and nobody else around here is doing it.”

  Finding it difficult to follow his brother’s line of thought, Max reached toward the table and picked up the brochure that his father refused to touch.

  “These hunter shows … they have them in, uh, Houston and San Antonio and up in F-F-Fort Worth.” Jock struggled against their father’s harsh indifference, but forced himself to continue. “They … they get some, it says in there, some three hundred thousand hunters. Big-city guys who … who come up here to hunt. At their hunting leases. And, well, they have … they’re the ones with these expensive trucks.”

  Max and the old man waited.

  Maximilian rolled his cigar and spoke. “Dis ain’t got nothin’ to do wit’ anything dat is goin’ on in my shop.�
�� Then he shouted, “Does it?”

  Jock readjusted himself in his seat. “Well, we could. At the shop. Your shop, that is.” He avoided his father’s eyes but went on in a more sullen tone. “I was just thinking, if we went to these hunter shows—they call them, what, the Hunters Extravaganza shows? We could get more of this kind of business.”

  With his father’s mouth preoccupied with his slobbery cheroot, Max weighed in. “I think it looks like a great idea, little brother.” He shoved a brochure at the old man in a way that forced Maximilian to take it in his hand.

  They all sat back a moment. Then Maximilian went back to chewing his cigar, and the boys sucked on their beer bottles.

  “Well,” Jock pleaded, “can I do it?”

  Max felt ashamed for his younger brother, asking for permission to run his own business. He glanced at the old man’s lap and saw a wrinkled hand clenched in a fist.

  Maximilian started wagging his head from side to side, his teeth clamped down on the pulp of his soggy cheroot. “Do what? Go to dis … dis Dallas? Dis Houston?” The old man rolled forward in his chair. He slobbered on his chin as his voice grew louder. “You ever bother yourself to ask how much of my money you gonna throw right out on dis?” He took the dirty root of the cigar from his mouth and squashed it into the glossy photos his son had laid out before him, muttering German curses.

  His brother effectively silenced, Max stepped up. “Papa,” he said in a logical, matter-of-fact tone, “my company pays lots more money than this for trade show booths, and we do that because it brings in hundreds of thousands of dollars in new business. Any business—”

  With surprising ferocity, the old man lunged forward in his seat. “Your company? Your company? Ha! Ya don’ have no damn company. Since when you know a good day work, even?” Blood rushed into Maximilian’s cheeks, and he started to cough and heave.