Giant

by Edna Ferber

  In her halting Spanish Leslie said, “Won’t you say good evening, Angel? Buenas tardes, señoras. Señores.”

  “Señores come first in Spanish, honey,” Bick reminded her.

  Now Angel’s black eyes were strangely sparked with determination, the baby jaw was set with fierce effort. The lips opened, the whole face took on animation and purpose. “Good…even…ing…sirrrs…good…even…ing…madamas.” In a triumph of stumbling English. Then, with a shriek of hysterical laughter he was off. Jordy, too, broke away, the two could be heard down the veranda howling at the splendid joke.

  “Well, if that don’t take the rag off the bush!” Bick exclaimed. “The little muchacho has learned English off of Jordy!”

  “Splendid!” observed Doctor Horace. “It’s beginning to work.”

  It was obvious that Leigh Karfrey was busy taking mental notes on the Habits and Dress of the Mexican Child in Texas. Mrs. Lynnton was quivering with disapproval.

  “Leslie Lynnton, will you tell me the reason for dressing a child like that! Day after day, playing with Jordy!”

  “I suppose it does seem queer,” Leslie agreed. “We’re used to it.”

  “Tell them,” Bick urged her. “It’s quite a story.”

  Leslie took a little fortifying sip of the cool drink in her hand. “Mm, let’s see. Well, that very first day after I arrived in Texas, a bride——”

  “And what a bride!” Bick muttered, ambiguously.

  “—I started out for a morning walk, in my youth and innocence. To see the sights.”

  “Dear me!” said Doctor Horace.

  “Finally I began to feel like a wanderer dying of thirst in the desert and I stumbled into one of the Mexican houses. I’d heard a baby crying there. The woman was in bed, ill. It was her baby, crying. The baby was little Angel there. Not a word of English. But I understood her, sort of, just the same. We’ve become great friends since then. And later I learned about her and her baby. She’d been married almost three years and no baby which for a Mexican girl is practically a disgrace. She was ill a good deal but finally this child was expected. They knew what had caused all the trouble, of course. One night Angel had left his hat on the bed and everyone knows that is bad luck. So Deluvina, the wife, had paid for special masses and she had taken herb medicines and the midwife had massaged her and on the Tree of Petitions she had hung a little cradle made of bits of mesquite wood and in it she had put a tiny doll dressed as a girl baby because she thought they were being punished for wanting only a boy all these years. She prayed morning and night and in between. And she promised God that she would be humbly grateful for girl or boy, and that in either case its hair would be tended and brushed and anointed and when it was a foot long it would be cut off and given as a thank offering to God. You can’t know what that means. Mexican girls don’t cut their hair. It is their glory. The child’s name was to be Angelina. And Angelina was born, and she was a boy. But the promise had been made to God by Deluvina and by Angel Obregon kneeling before the altar. They named him Angel after his father. They let his hair grow and Angel was dressed as a girl and his hair was always tied with a red ribbon as you’ve seen it and washed and brushed and anointed for it belonged to God. Other Mexican children might have piojos in their hair, but not Angel. His grandmother’s chief duty is to keep it brushed and shining. And when it is a foot long there will be a great celebration and Angel’s hair will be cut off by the priest and placed as an offering on the shrine. Then they will put Angel in pants and take away his skirts.”

  “Well I never!” exclaimed the outraged Mrs. Lynnton.

  “Barbaric!” said Lady Karfrey.

  “By that time,” Doctor Horace mused, “he’ll be so confused as to be incoherent. Or such a tough guy, in self-defense, that Reata Ranch can’t hold him.”

  Sir Alfred was casting an eye toward the dining room. “Dinner any second now,” Leslie assured him. “Will anyone have another drink?”

  “Do you think,” Nancy Lynnton demanded, “that this child is a fit playmate for Jordy!”

  “Don’t let those skirts worry you,” Bick assured her. “This kid’s a tough hombre. In fact, I wish Jordy had some of his stuff. His father Angel Obregon used to be my sidekick when I was a kid. And his father’s father taught me roping—he and old Polo. Even today old Angel is the best mangana thrower on Reata. In Texas, for that matter.”

  “This could be wonderful,” Doctor Horace mused aloud. “Maybe someday it will be.”

  But no one consciously heard him or heeded him, except Leslie.

  “Mangana?” inquired Sir Alfred, abandoning hopes for immediate dinner.

  “To throw the mangana you have to be a brush roper. And roping in the brush is trickier than roping in the open. For the mangana the animal is running and the roper is standing still. The loop turns over in the air and it catches the animal high around the front legs so’s not to break the leg between the brisket——”

  But now there was the sputter and cough of an engine in the drive. A grease-spattered Ford with flapping fenders came to a stop with a shrill squeal of old brakes and seared tires.

  Jett Rink sprang out. His face was grotesque with smears of dark grease and his damp bacchanalian locks hung in tendrils over his forehead. He leaped from the car and began to run as he landed, without a pause, and he limped a little as he ran.

  He came on, he opened the door of the screened veranda, he stood before the company in his dirt and grease, his eyes shining wildly. They stared at him in shocked suspense, relaxed as they were against the cushions, glasses in hand. Leslie thought, Now he is really crazy something terrible is going to happen. Jordan. The man stood, his legs wide apart as though braced against the world, the black calloused hands with the fingers curiously widespread as they hung, his teeth white in the grotesquely smeared face. He stared at Bick with those pale blue-white eyes and there was in them the glitter of terrible triumph.

  Bick did not even rise from his chair. Very quietly, sitting there, he said, “Get out.”

  Jett Rink spoke four words only. His voice was low and husky with emotion.

  “My well come in.”

  “Get out of here.”

  Now the words shot geyser-swift out of Jett Rink’s mouth like the earth-pent oil his labors had just released.

  “Everybody said I had a duster. You thought ol’ Spindletop and Burkburnett and Mexia and those, they was all the oil there was. They ain’t, I’m here to tell you. It’s here. It’s right here. I got the laugh on you.”

  Now it was plain the man was drunk, the eyes were bloodshot, you could smell the raw liquor on the heavy hot air of the shadowy veranda.

  Bick leaned forward slightly his muscles tensed; and still the others sat staring at the man.

  “My well come in big and there’s more and bigger. They’s oil under here. They’s oil here on Reata and someday I’m going to pay you a million dollars or five million or ten and you’ll take it because you’ll need the money. I’m going to have more money than you ever saw—you and the rest of the stinkin’ sons of bitches of Benedicts!”

  Now, rather wearily, Bick stood up, he said, “Leslie, honey, you and the girls go along indoors.”

  Leslie stood up, neatly folding the bit of sewing in her hands. But she did not go.

  “Go along home now, Jett,” she said. “It’s nice you’ve struck oil. Go along now.” As she would have spoken to a stray that had run in on the place, man or animal.

  He looked at her, lurching a little with weariness or drink or both, his legs wide apart like one who walks the deck of a ship. Then, with the swiftness with which he always moved, the man came over to her, he reached out and just jerked ever so lightly with a grimed hand one end of the soft little bow that finished the neckline of her silk dress. He tweaked the piece of silk with a gesture that would have been insolent even in an intimate and an equal.

  “My, you look pretty, Leslie,” he said. “You sure look good enough to eat.”

 
Bick’s first blow struck him squarely in the jaw but Jett Rink’s monolithic head scarcely went back with it. Bick hit him again, Jett dodged slightly and the blow landed full on his mouth and a little blood trickled down his chin and he twisted his mouth as though he were eating and she thought he was going to spit out the blood full at Bick, but he laughed only and did not even lift his hand to wipe the blood away.

  “My, you’re techy, Bick,” he said. “You’re techy as a cook.”

  Karfrey came forward, and Horace Lynnton. And now Jett Rink turned as though to go, grinning, and Bick rushed to grapple with him. He had reached the screen door. Bick was on him. Jett Rink’s knee went sharply back and then drove forward like a piston and struck Bick squarely on the groin. Bick grunted. Doubled. Even as they caught Bick and dragged him to a chair Doctor Horace’s hands were moving expertly over him.

  Jett Rink had leaped into the battered car, had spun it like a crazy toy, was off in a cloud of dust.

  23

  “No!” Bick commanded, fuming among his pillows. “Keep Roady away and Bowie, too. Get Bawley on the telephone.”

  Uncle Bawley had come down from Holgado in a swift overnight journey. Now he sat in Bick’s bedroom, and for once it was the Lynntons, not the Benedicts, who held conclave: Doctor Horace, Mrs. Lynnton, Leslie.

  “Soft!” Uncle Bawley declared, his gentle voice soothing the sting of the words. “That’s what’s chousing up this world. Everybody’s turned soft. Pulled your gun and shot him, Bick, you’d saved yourself a heap of trouble. But no, you let him give you the knee and stroll off.”

  “He didn’t stroll. He ran.” Leslie to her husband’s defense. “Jordan hit him twice, hard enough to fell a steer. It was like hitting a stone wall.”

  “Drunk. No use hitting a fella who’s crazy drunk. He don’t feel a thing.”

  Doctor Horace nodded in agreement. “An anesthetic, alcohol.”

  Mildly chiding, Uncle Bawley went on. “Shot him, the whole state would have been beholden to you. A loco umbry like Rink gets hold of oil and money, why, he’s liable to want to be governor of Texas. Or worse. What started you wrassling with a polecat like Jett in the first place?”

  Propped up against his pillows, his eyes flint-grey with fury, Bick’s legs threshed between the sheets. “He came up to Leslie and put his filthy stinking hand on her.”

  “No!” shouted Uncle Bawley.

  “Yes!” Bick yelled.

  “Bick’s first blow was pure reflex,” Doctor Horace observed. “Straight to the jaw.”

  “Bick well knows Rink’s got a jaw like a jackass and besides he don’t fight fair. Belt him in the ba—I mean, hit him below the belt, and first. That’s the only kind of fighting he understands. Now you can’t do a thing. Not a thing.”

  “Why not!” Mrs. Lynnton demanded. “Why not, I’d like to know! We saw it, all of us. You can call Leigh and Alfred. They’ll tell you. And Lacey.”

  “Bring ’em on!” Bick shouted, glaring. “Bring everybody! Call in the house help. Call in the county!”

  Leslie, seated at the bedside, leaned toward him, gently she placed her hand on his waving arm. “Now darling, you know perfectly well no one saw except my own family.”

  “Mexican servants hear everything and see everything and know everything that goes on. They get it through their pores or something. And what about that skunk! I suppose he isn’t talking.”

  “Psychopath,” Doctor Horace murmured. “Actually, of course, this Rink should be confined for treatment. Potentially dangerous.”

  Uncle Bawley rose, a commanding figure in the room now so charged with conflicting emotions. “Look how it sounds. Rink’s fired from the ranch a few years back, he marries the schoolteacher he’s got into trouble—pardon me, Miz Lynnton ma’am—and he don’t seem to hold a grudge he starts wildcatting for oil with no money and no crew and no sense on his own little piece of no-account land Bick gave him long ago, deeded. And by God, what does he do, he hits oil. So he jumps into his junkheap car to tell his old boss Bick about his good luck he’s struck oil on the piece Bick gave him time his father turned up missing.” At a growl from the man in the bed—“Well, now, Bick, I’m just telling it the way it would sound, told. And this young fella spills his good news and his old boss throws him out and wallops him in the jaw in front of everybody. That’d go good in a court of law.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of the law,” Bick said, sullenly.

  “Furthermore,” Uncle Bawley went on, “look what I heard this morning. Just on the way from Viento to here. I heard Rink’s got hold of leases on pieces around. No-account land that’s prolly rotten with oil.”

  With a mighty gesture Bick threw the covers aside. “I’m going to get up. What am I! Du Barry! Vamoose, ladies, as they say in the Westerns, unless you want to see a really fine physique in the raw.”

  Leslie glanced quickly at her father but he only smiled approvingly. “That’s fine, Bick. You’re all right.”

  “Sure Bick’s all right,” Uncle Bawley agreed, but the eyes that searched Bick’s face were doubtful. “He took worse than that many a time when he was Harvard tackle.”

  “That’s right,” Doctor Horace agreed, too genially.

  “Where’s the kids?” Uncle Bawley demanded. “I want to look at something fresh and pretty. No offense, ladies. But this kind of ruckus makes me sick, nothing clean-cut about it. The good old days we’d of——”

  “These are the good new days, Uncle Bawley.”

  “Maybe. Say, Leslie, where at’s Jordy and Luz? Kids kept separate from grownups nowdays, like they were a different kind of animal. Mix ’em up they learn quicker, it’s good for them.”

  “They’re waiting for you, dying to see you, I told them first thing this morning, it was a mistake, they were so-excited they hardly ate a mouthful.”

  “I suppose old Polo’s got Jordy up on a horse roping a steer every morning before breakfast.”

  Leslie tucked her arm through his as they walked toward the veranda. “Jordy doesn’t like riding. He isn’t even interested in horses, much.”

  “No!”

  “I sometimes think perhaps he’s a little like you—when you were a child, Uncle Bawley.”

  “Poor little maverick.”

  “Luz is the rancher and cowboy. Do you know what that baby did! She somehow got hold of Jordy’s riding things—his boots and rope and hat and all—she wriggled into the outfit every which way and there she was wobbling around in high heels and the pants wrong side to, and the Stetson down over her ears. I’ve never heard Jordan laugh like that.”

  “Luz, h’m?” He glanced, a quick sidewise look, at Leslie. “She sounds like she’s taking after—uh, she bossy too?”

  “Well, independent.”

  “And Bick, he’s hell-bent on breaking Jordy in already, I bet.”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s a difference between breaking in and just plain breaking.”

  “Somebody will have to help me. Later.”

  “I’m good for another fifteen eighteen years—maybe twenty. Hard cash and a pretty good brain. Neither of ’em going to go soft on me even time I’m ninety unless the United States and me both are hit to hell.”

  “Uncle Bawley.” She looked up at him. “Thanks Uncle Bawley.”

  “Well, I guess I’ll go hunt up the kids.”

  “I’ll be with you in a minute. I want to talk to Papa.”

  “Yes,” he said, as though in answer to an unspoken question. “I’d do that.”

  Alone with her father in Bick’s office she put it to him squarely. “Why did you put him to bed?”

  “Shock,” Doctor Lynnton said, his manner very easy. “And it was the best place for a man as crazy mad as Bick was. Take away a man’s pants and he can’t go far.”

  “I don’t think that was your real reason.” They stood facing each other, the man benign, controlled; the woman determined to hear what she feared. Between them the resemblance was startling. “I don’t
believe you. If you don’t tell me I’ll send for Doctor Tom.”

  Horace Lynnton seated himself at Bick’s desk, he motioned his daughter to a chair. Suddenly they were no longer merely father and daughter, they were physician and patient. Leslie’s steady eyes did not leave his face.

  “That young savage didn’t do Bick any real physical harm. Uncomfortable, though, a terrific dirty blow like that.” He was looking down at his own square blunt-fingered hands spread out on the desk top. “Later, after we’d brought him round and put him to bed, I thought I’d give him a real going over while I was about it. Of course I didn’t have the proper equipment.”

  “Well?”

  “Did he ever complain—that is, does he ever get short of breath?”

  “No. At least I haven’t noticed it if—”

  Now he looked up and full into his daughter’s eyes. “It’s a thing that has to do with the heart. Now wait a minute. It isn’t the heart itself. That’s a perfectly sound muscle, I’d say. But the big artery that feeds it.”

  She looked down at her own hands gripped tightly in her lap.

  “What do we do now?”

  “Nothing. And don’t look so serious. I don’t believe I’d even say anything to him, just now. Apprehension is sometimes worse than the disease. If you could manage to have him not quite so active, not galloping hundreds of miles on those horses, up before dawn, running his empire singlehanded.”

  “He loves it more than anything or anyone. It’s his life.”

  “It’s his life.”

  “He can’t do things halfway. It’s always extremes. A rage one minute, angelic the next.”

  “Rages are bad for him.”

  “He’s only like that when he’s crossed in something he wants to do.”

  “From what I’ve learned about your Bick these past days, roaming around this enormous place, I’ve gathered that Bick’s father ruled him—and the ranch—like an emperor. Then this sister Luz took his father’s place and his mother’s too. She must have been a real top sergeant. Now I gather the rest of the family are at odds with him. He’s interested in experiment and they’re interested in income.”