Michener, James A.

by Texas

  He was a modest man, as were his seven canvases, but after we had been soaring in the empyrean it was good to come back to earth: 'These are fine works of museum quality and condition. I have wanted you to see what is immediately available.' And he showed us a perfectly splendid painting by a man I had not heard of, Jon Corbino, of athletes posturing on a beach, and then an exhilarating oil by Fletcher Martin titled 'Out at Second.' It presented a baseball ballet, showing the runner coming in from first with a hook slide to the right, the shortstop sweeping down with a tag from the left, and the energetic umpire throwing his arm up in the hooking 'Out' signal.

  When the man completed his presentation, Rusk said: 'Would you please step outside for a moment?' and when he was gone, Ransom asked his advisers: '1 liked them. But were they good enough for a museum?' and the experts agreed they were.

  'Call him in,' Rusk told me, and when the dealer returned, Rusk said: 'We'll take them all.'

  'But we haven't talked price, sir.'

  'Barlow will do that, and I've already warned him to offer no more than half what you ask.'

  'With your permission, I've brought along a European painting I thought you might want to consider. It's certainly not American and the sport it presents isn't the way we play it today. But please take a look.' And he placed on the easel a rather small canvas painted by the Dutch painter Hendrick Avercamp, 1585-1634, showing a frozen canal near Amsterdam with lively little men in ancient costume playing ice hockey.

  It was the epitome of sport—timeless, set in nature, animated, real—and in addition, it was a significant work of art. The curators and experts applauded so noisily that I cried 'Accession Number One.'

  But Rusk forestalled me: 'We want it, surely. That's just the kind of thing we do want. So old. So beautiful. But not as our first acquisition. I've already bought that, and it ought to be in Fort Worth ready for installation when we get back.'

  This man Rusk never ceased to surprise me, for when I returned to Fort Worth two weeks later, I found that he had installed in the rotunda of his emerging museum a splendid antique Italian copy of perhaps the most famous sports-art item in the world, the dazzling Discobolus of Myron, dating back to the original Olympic games.

  'Where'd you get it?' I asked, and he said: 'Old Italian palace. Saw it on our honeymoon and remembered it ever since.'

  An art dealer from New York had come to Dallas with color slides of eight canvases relating to sport, including a Thomas Hart Benton of a rodeo cowboy trying to rope a steer, and I was concluding arrangements for their purchase when Ransom Rusk phoned urgently from Larkin: 'Come right over! Catastrophe!'

  Since Rusk rarely pushed the panic button, I excused myself, hopped in the car Rusk provided when I worked in Dallas, and sped out to the mansion, where in the African Hall, I met Rusk and Mr. Kramer, the armadillo expert, in mournful discussion with a Dr. Philippe L'Heureux of Louisiana, a very thin man with beard and piercing eye. When I looked at his card and fumbled with his

  name, he said: 'Pronounce it Larue. Half my family changed it to that when they reached America.'

  'Tell him the bad news,' Rusk said, slumping into a chair made from the tusks of elephants he and his partners had shot on safari, and L'Heureux, standing straight as if giving a laboratory lecture to a class of pre-meds, revealed a shocking situation.

  'We have solid reason for believing that the armadillo not only serves as a laboratory host for the study of human leprosy but can also infect people with the disease.'

  There was a painful silence as we four stared at one another. L'Heureux stood rigid, prepared to defend his accusation. Mr. Kramer, whose years in retirement had focused on Texas storms and the armadillo, looked mutely from one of us to the other, unable to speak. Rusk, whose walls bespoke his constant interest in animals, was confused, and I, whose only contact with the armadillo had been chuckling at the beer advertisements which featured them, did not know what to think.

  Finally L'Heureux spoke: 'We're recommending that since the threat of leprosy is real, and since we have identified five documented cases in Texas in which persons handling the animals have contracted it, all armadillos that might come into contact with humans be eradicated.'

  'You mean we're to poison them?' Rusk asked.

  'Or shoot them.'

  Mr. Kramer rose, moved about for some moments, then looked out toward the former bowling lawn: 'I could not shoot an armadillo. I suspect your evidence is nothing but rumors.'

  'I wish it were,' L'Heureux said. 'But I assure you, the danger is real.'

  'Actual cases?' Kramer asked, his white hair glowing in the morning sunlight.

  'Yes.'

  'And you're recommending extermination?' Rusk asked.

  'We are. And so are the experts in Florida. And the epidemiologists in Atlanta.' And hearing this verdict delivered with such solemn authority, Rusk said: 'As responsible citizens we must do something, but what?'

  'You have two choices. You can shoot them all . . .'

  'I'd never do that,' Rusk snapped. 'They're my friends.'

  'Or you can trap the lot and ship them to our research station in Carville, Louisiana.' While Rusk considered this, L'Heureux added: 'You'd be doing us a considerable favor. Leprosy is a terrible disease if left unchecked, only minor if treated quickly. Your armadillos could help us to solve some of the mysteries.'

  'We'll let you have them,' Rusk said, and I remained in Larkin with L'Heureux for the remainder of that week while Rusk supervised a team of his illegal Mexican workmen in placing traps about the lawn. When the young armadillos there had been captured and caged for shipment, the Mexicans were loaned to Mr. Kramer, who was busy trapping other animals known to be at various spots around Larkin, and when that task was completed, L'Heureux told us: 'I feel better, and assure you that you are much safer than you were a week ago.' He returned to Louisiana that afternoon, so that only Rusk, Kramer and I were present when the improvised lights came on and we saw the old mother armadillo come out alone, for her eight children were gone, and stand in perplexity in the middle of the bowling green.

  Mr. Kramer said: 'Don't trap her, Mr. Rusk. She knows she belongs here.'

  Years back, when I studied geography, a professor drummed into us the fact that we must never stumble into the pathetic fallacy, and I remember asking him what it was: The sentimental attributing of human motivations to inanimate objects like angry clouds or the vengeful tornado. It's particularly offensive to attri bute to animals such human reactions as the mother buffalo was eager to fight off the wolves or the collie obviously preferred the runt of her litter. Things are things and animals are not humans. Treat them dispassionately.'

  Now, when Mr. Kramer was presuming to explain what the mother armadillo was thinking, I rejected his assumptions. She was not mourning the loss of her children, nor was she recalling the good times she'd had on this lawn. My scientific training forced me to think of her as a dumb animal that might be carrying leprosy, and I felt no other emotion as I watched the workmen close in on her when Rusk signaled: 'Edge her toward the trap.'

  But she had always been a canny creature, and now some instinct warned her that with the disappearance of her children, she also was in peril, so, evading the trap, she scurried toward the entrance to her underground sanctuary. Normally a nimble man can run down an armadillo, and since there were three Mexicans ready to chase her, they should have nabbed her, but she made a dive between their legs and escaped.

  'You'll have to shoot that one,' someone said, 'I've seen old-timers like her fool the best trappers.' So Rusk asked a servant to fetch from the African Hall a high-powered rifle used normally on elephants or Cape buffalo. Handing it to Mr. Kramer, he said: 'Take care of her,' but Kramer refused to do so. Rejecting the gun, he told Rusk: 'She's your responsibility, not mine.'

  I thought it appropriate that Ransom, who had in a sense sponsored the armadillos in Larkin, should eliminate the colony, and when the mother of them all came out of her hole to investigate
the ominous silence, he drew a bead on her.

  But he could not pull the trigger. Looking at me pleadingly, he said: i can't do it,' and I found myself with the rifle ...

  Pinnnggg!

  The armadillos of Larkin were no more.

  The next months were some of the most exciting I have ever spent, because into our temporary offices in Fort Worth came a sequence of cables which caused us to rejoice: the louvre is

  PLEASED TO INFORM YOU THAT WE SHALL BE SENDING THE DEGAS 'HORSE RACE AT anteuil' THE C ZANNE 'wrestlers AT THE beach' AND THE LA TOUR 'DUEL AT MIDNIGHT*

  From Tokyo came word that a museum would ship nine Japanese prints of the most glowing quality depicting the greatest of the ancient sumo wrestlers, Tanikaze, who flourished in the late eighteenth century. When they arrived I decided that they must have a small room of their own, for they were bound to be one of the hits of the opening show: this massive human figure, more than three hundred and fifty pounds, with its sense of controlled power, all shown in high style by four different artists of world class.

  The cable from the Prado in Madrid caused both jubilation and fracas, because we were being sent a precious first printing of Goya's remarkable series of etchings on bullfighting, plus a glowing canvas of same, and our Mexican population showered encomiums upon us for paying this tribute to Hispanic art, but a dedicated women's group opposed to bullfighting warned that they would picket our opening if it included the Goyas, and a wild brouhaha erupted in the press.

  Less provocative was the cable from Scotland promising a rare series of prints depicting the development of golf; Rusk appreciated that. And another cable from London completed our foreign loans: we shall be sending you a notable collection

  OF RARE PRINTS AND CANVASES BIG ENOUGH TO FILL TWO ROOMS, SHOWING THE WORLD'S MOST POPULAR SPORT, IF ATTENDANCE ALONE IS THE CRITERION, HORSE RACING

  I was delighted with the prospect of hanging that part of the show, because I like horses, and so did Rusk.

  It was now apparent that this opening show was going to be not only a spectacular success, with art of the highest quality from unexpected corners of the world, but also the first-ever of its kind, and as I studied photographs of the three hundred items that

  would comprise the exhibition and began to allot each to its probable location in the building which was being rushed to conclusion, I became aware that I was making decisions that ought to be the prerogative of whoever was going to direct the museum over the long run, but we had no director, and I took steps to correct this deficiency.

  'Mr. Rusk, you really must get your top man in position . . . and soon.'

  'I have that in hand, Barlow,' he assured me, and the next day as I sat in his office I overheard two of the strangest phone calls of my life. My close contact with Rusk over the past years had made me appreciate the man; I had watched him grow in courage during the disasters and in wisdom as he reached out to embrace a larger world. Before my eyes he had matured, as I hoped I would mature in my new position; I not only liked him now, I respected him. However, he could at times do the damnedest things, and these two calls ranked high on the roster of Rusk improbables.

  'Get me Tom Landry,' he told his secretary, and shortly he was speaking to the coach of the Dallas Cowboys: 'Tom, this is Ransom. Yes. Tom, I need your confidential advice. Is Wolfgang Macnab what you would call manly?'

  I could hear Landry sputter as he defended his linebacker, after which Rusk said: 'I know all that, Tom, but you must have heard the stones that are surfacing. Defensive tackles kissing each other at the end of the game.' Again Landry sputtered, so Rusk put it to him straight: 'Tom, can you assure me that Wolfgang is manly? You know what I mean . . . not queer?'

  Apparently Landry wanted to know what in hell Rusk was talking about, and he must have given Ransom a dressing down, because Rusk said: 'Of course he's my son-in-law, but a lot's riding on this and I have to be sure. Any man who studies art, you've got to suspect him.' Landry made some comment, and Rusk continued: 'You ought to see some of the so-called experts up in New York who've been spending my money. Yes, for my new museum. If you ever visited Fort Worth, you'd know about it.'

  Assured by Landry that Wolfman Macnab was a macho terror, Rusk now called his trusted friend Joe Robbie of the Miami Dolphins and asked me to listen in:

  rusk: Hiya, Joe. Your old buddy Ranee Rusk.

  robbie: You fellows showing anything this year?

  rusk: Always enough to beat you bums. Joe, I want to ask a very personal question. Most important to me.

  robbie: Shoot. I owe you one for your help on our boy Martinez.

  rusk: In your opinion, is Wolfgang Macnab manly?

  robbie: Hell, Don Shula's been trying to get him for three years. Shula doesn't fool around.

  rusk: I know he's a good player, the One-Man Gang they call him. But is he . . . you know what I mean?

  robbie: How would I know anything like that. All my players are Democrats.

  rusk: You know those rumors about football professionals. That bit about defensive tackles.

  robbie: Forget it. Macnab's the best.

  rusk: Thanks a million, Joe.

  That afternoon Rusk summoned Wolfgang Macnab to his office, and when the All-Pro was seated, Rusk said, out of the blue: 'Son, I want you to be the director of my sports museum. Don't speak. You've got one, two more years of professional ball. Good, stay with it. But at our big press conference Friday, I want to announce you as our director.'

  i love art, Mr. Rusk. I know something about it . . . but director 7 A major museum?'

  'If you can handle those Pittsburgh running backs, you can handle a bunch of paintings.'

  'You know, sir, I take art far more seriously than I do football. I'm not kidding around.'

  'I wouldn't want you if you were.'

  They discussed salary, and Macnab almost fell out of his chair at its proposed size. So did I.

  And then the young man showed his maturity by asking a penetrating question: 'As director, would I have a small budget for acquisition of new works?'

  'You sure would. As of today, assuming you take the job, you have thirty-two million dollars on deposit.'

  When Macnab blanched, no more stunned than I, Rusk rose and put his arm about his shoulders: 'Never forget, son, when you represent Texas, always go first class.'

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JAMES MICHENER was born in 1907. He never knew his real parents and was brought up by a Quaker widow in Pennsylvania. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and made his first trip across the Pacific at that time. His book TALES OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC won the Pulitzer Prize in 1947. Mr. Michener is currently working on his next novel, ALASKA.

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