Centennial

by James A. Michener

  “Yes! What in hell can we do?”

  “We can submit ourselves to the goodness of God.”

  “I don’t believe in God.”

  Father Vigil said quickly, “But you must believe in the compassion of the Lord Jesus Christ. When a powerful man submits himself to the love of that “great soul, he gains power.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Gain control of yourself.”

  Triunfador considered these words for several days. He knew very well what Father Vigil was proposing—that he, Triunfador Marquez, on the day of his release from jail forgive the sore injustice Rudolf Grabhorn had visited upon his family, forgive the persecutions of Sheriff Bogardus and submit himself to the discipline of Jesus Christ.

  “I’ll do it,” he told the priest.

  “I knew you would.”

  He left the jail on Saturday afternoon, and that night he fasted. On Sunday morning he rose early and went to the fields north of Little Mexico, where a large crowd had gathered. There he stripped to the waist and allowed Father Vigil to insert cactus thorns beneath the sinews of his back while his sister Soledad stuck four into the skin about his temples. Bleeding from many places and shuddering with pain, he reached down and lifted a heavy cross, a replica of the one upon which Christ was crucified, and with it upon his bleeding back he started the long walk to his Golgotha.

  He had covered only a short distance when a group of Anglo farmers rushed into town with the frightening news: “Those goddamned Mexicans are at it again. They got some horse’s ass lugging a cross up the hill.”

  Sheriff Bogardus and his men hurried out of town and up State 8 to where the procession was winding up a hill much like the one Jesus had climbed in Jerusalem. With clubs swinging, they smashed their way into the heart of the crowd, where one deputy slugged Triunfador and dropped him to the ground. As he struck the earth, the thorns cut deeply into his forehead, bringing forth much blood, but he did not feel the pain.

  “I am one,” he muttered to himself. He did not know what this meant, nor what its spiritual ramifications might be, but he sensed that from that stricken moment he was going to be a greater man than he had ever been before.

  And he was. He attained that marvelous stability that some men achieve when they find a balance between heaven and earth. He held himself taller, and could look the sheriff in the eye, or the judge, or the Anglo ministers who belatedly were trying to do the right thing, and meet them as an equal.

  People in the district began to say, when a problem arose, “Ask Triunfador. He has a good head on his shoulders.” When his father and mother made their way back from Old Mexico, he had a shack prepared for them, but before he would permit them to take work with any beet farmer, he sought advice. Waiting in the door of the cantina till he saw a new Dodge coupe coming down the road from the Venneford Ranch, he ran onto the highway and flagged it down. “Mr. Garrett,” he apologized to the driver. “I need your advice.”

  “You in trouble again?” the Venneford’s manager asked.

  “Not me, Mr. Garrett,” Triunfador said, “my father.” He reported what had happened last October with Rudolf Grabhorn, and Garrett said, “I can believe it. He’s a mean-hearted son-of-a-bitch.” When Triunfador asked what farmer could be trusted, Garrett said, “Klaus Emig. Honest as they come.” So that year the Marquez family not only worked for Emig, but got paid too.

  One thing worried Triunfador—his sister Soledad. She was sixteen now and very beautiful, with black eyes and long braids. When he was occupied with other things she sometimes supervised the cantina, playing records for the customers, and men were beginning to grab at her, and he wondered what might happen to her. In a place like Little Mexico she could find herself in serious trouble.

  And then, one hot July day while Triunfador was absent picking up some freight at the Centennial railway station, the Venneford Dodge pulled up before the cantina. This time it was not Beeley Garrett but a tall, good-looking younger man who walked into the café and introduced himself. “I’m Henry Garrett. Father wanted to know if the old couple took the job at Emig’s?”

  “They did,” the slim girl behind the counter said suspiciously.

  “It’s hot. I need a cold drink.”

  “We’re not bootleggers,” the girl snapped.

  “I meant a Coke,” Garrett apologized. “Or something.” As he drank he listened to the phonograph. “That’s a saucy tune,” he said. “What is it?”

  “ ‘Serian las Dos,’ ” she replied. “Just a popular song.”

  Two Mexican girls were singing a series of lilting words, and apparently they were nonsense syllables, because when Garrett asked Soledad what they meant, she listened for a while, then shrugged her shoulders. “That stuff? Who can say?”

  Garrett bent down to hear the words more clearly, for he knew a little Spanish, and when he looked up he saw Soledad smiling at him. That part says, ‘Girls today no longer know how to eat tortillas. As soon as they marry a fellow they want white bread and butter.’ ” She laughed at the song, and in that moment Henry Garrett acknowledged how barren his life had been, how devoid of laughter, and he lingered to hear the music, the first Anglo ever to have entered the cantina as a customer.

  In these years the Venneford Ranch continued as one of the best-run cattle operations in the west. Jim Lloyd, who knew as much about Herefords as any man then alive, gave overall supervision, but the day-to-day management was left to Beeley Garrett, who had a solid sense about ranching, and to his son, Henry Garrett, who was learning fast. The ranch didn’t earn as large dividends as the majority stockholders in Bristol might have wanted, but as Garrett assured them in each annual report, “The value of land continues to rise, and by holding on to your acres, you become richer every year. Also,” he added, “the herd is constantly improved and there continues to be a lively demand for Venneford bulls.”

  Charlotte Lloyd spent most of her energy supervising the refurnishing of her plaything, the Venneford castle, and at one time astonished her neighbors by importing from France an enormous organ, which she installed in the circular room where she did her entertaining. Her parties, to which she invited guests from Denver and Cheyenne, recapitulated the grace of the old Cheyenne Club. She remained an Englishwoman, on a temporary visit to the west, likely to return home at any moment, and she followed carefully the education of her many nieces and nephews as they fumbled their way through the better English schools.

  She delighted in having them visit her in Colorado, and nothing pleased her more than those days when she would bundle a flock of children into carts and drive north to Line Camp Four, where she had been so happy with two such different men, Oliver Seccombe and Jim Lloyd. “I first saw this lovely place in 1873,” she told the children. “It looked much as it does today, and I had a cart with two horses, just like the one you have.”

  She was seventy-two years old, but her enthusiasms ran as high as they had been when she first saw these splendid plains and decided to make them her own. Only one irritation marred her supervision of the ranch. She and Jim Lloyd were beginning to argue about the Herefords, each in his own strong-minded way.

  Charlotte saw these noble animals, which had after all been developed not far from her home in the west of England, as the finest exemplars of the animal kingdom, and she was proud of exhibiting them at stock shows around the nation. She therefore wanted them groomed and polished and fattened, in order for them to make the most spectacular appearance. She imported breeders from Herefordshire and instructed them to produce a more compact animal, tighter-boned and more appealing in the head.

  These men did wonders. Taking the original Crown Vee Herefords, a rangy breed, they bred them into more handsome forms which won ribbons across the country. “A Crown Vee” became synonymous with the best, and Charlotte delighted in attending shows dressed in fine tweeds, and having her photograph taken with this great bull or that champion steer. She was sometimes called The Queen of the West,” and w
herever she went, there was lively talk in which the values of the Hereford were defended against lesser breeds like the Angus and Shorthorn.

  Jim Lloyd was not enthusiastic about displaying his Herefords in the hope of winning ribbons. He had begun to suspect that the whole stockshow routine was a presumption, which. if persisted in, would destroy the Hereford breed. He especially doubted the qualifications of the visiting English breeders, who in his opinion were leading the Herefords into every wrong direction.

  “They’re breeding the animals too small,” he complained. “They’re so taken by the beauty of the head, they’re forgetting the strength of the body. I like my range animals big and brawny and tough and able to forage for themselves in bad winters. I don’t want a damn beauty queen, and I’m terrified of these blue ribbons because they encourage ranchers to do all the wrong things.” When he reflected on the matter he had to confess that what really irritated him was a trivial thing; the English breeders, who were doing a great job copping prizes, called their animal Her-ri-fuds in three fancy syllables instead of the honest Texan Hurferd. It galled him when a breeder exulted, “Our Herrifuds won another blue rosette at Kansas City.” What Jim wanted was some big, burly Hurferds tending to the breeding duties on the far reaches of the ranch.

  He lost the argument. In October 1924 one of the English breeders heard from a friend near Bristol that the next in line of great bulls had been born, Emperor IX, and whoever got hold of him would probably dominate the breed for years, the way Anxiety IV and Confidence had done in their generations.

  It seemed unlikely to Jim that a man could look at a bull calf four months old and make such a prediction, but he approved when Charlotte decided to buy the little fellow at the astronomical price of nine thousand dollars. And when Emperor IX came down the ramp after his long trip from England and stared left and right, like a real-life emperor occupying a defeated kingdom, he won the hearts of everyone.

  He was a stunning animal, a pre-potent bull with the precious capacity of stamping only his better qualities on his progeny. He spent half the year servicing cows brought to him from distant ranches, half in the show ring winning more blue ribbons than any other bull of the twentieth century. He became a gold mine for the Venneford Ranch, and as Charlotte pointed out repeatedly, “He’d never have earned a penny for us unless he’d established his credentials in the show ring. Every time he wins another ribbon, his fee goes up.”

  But Jim was noticing something that others had missed. Emperor IX, splendid though he was, kept producing bulls which were slightly smaller than he, and it seemed to Jim that these bulls were in their turn producing wonderful-looking offspring, but just a fraction of an inch shorter than he thought they ought to be.

  He brought this to the attention of the English breeders, but they dismissed him almost with contempt. “What we’re after is a shorter, more compact animal who’ll produce better beef. Emperor IX is exactly what we needed, and his performance excels anything we hoped for.”

  The Emperor and his offspring continued to dominate the shows, continued to glean blue ribbons for their owners, and no one was happier with the results than Charlotte, for they justified her long faith in the ranch. She was certainly the premier stockwoman of America, and if Jim Lloyd had been interested in playing that game, he could have been one of the leading stockmen, but he withstood the lure of the show ring and never had his photograph taken with his winners. He preferred tending the everyday Herefords out on the range. “I’ve never seen anything prettier in my life than a line of white-faces walking over the brow of a hill at dusk as they come in for a drink.” He had hoped for a son who might share his instinct for range cattle, “the real ones that make the beef.” but his only child was a daughter who cared little for the ranch.

  He had looked to Beeley Garrett for support, but Beeley was preoccupied with the financial problem of keeping a large ranch solvent; where the cattle were concerned, he surrendered to Charlotte. Henry Garrett, Beeley’s son, who would take over the ranch one day, was simply a businessman with little sense of cattle, so the protection of the one thing that made ranching viable, the animals, was left to Jim.

  He decided to force a showdown with Charlotte and her English advisors, for he considered it criminal to take a splendid beast like the Hereford and consciously diminish the very characteristics which made him great ... and do this merely to satisfy a few opinionated judges. As they gathered at the corral to look at the bulls, he asked, “Can’t you see we’re ruining the breed?”

  “Emperor IX is the top Hereford in history,” Charlotte snapped.

  “Emperor IX is a runt. The day will come when scrupulous cattlemen will breed out of their herds every strain of that bull.”

  “What nonsense are you talking?” Charlotte demanded. Turning to her breeders, she sought their support.

  “The general judgment is that Emperor’s saving the breed ... bringing it into conformity to modern necessities.”

  Jim took a deep breath, not because he felt any need for courage but because he felt a sudden lack of air. “I despise watching nature altered to suit a passing fad. I don’t like seeing a breed I’ve loved ...” He felt that loved might sound ridiculous in such context, but upon reflection, judged it to be the word he wanted. “I can’t stand by and watch a breed I’ve loved messed up. I think we should leave animals alone ... and the land too ...”

  He paused to take another deep breath, for he was losing his temper. “I do feel most deeply, my dear Charlotte, that for this ranch, to send forth a generation of dwarfs ...” He grabbed at the corral gate, failed to reach it and crumpled in a heap. From the earth he tried one last time to protest, but words did not come, and before they could carry him back to the castle, he was dead.

  After the funeral, Emperor IX won blue ribbons at Denver, Kansas City and Houston, confirming his domination of the field. He came to represent the sleek conformation the judges had decided to sponsor, the compact look that new-type ranchers wanted for their herds. It was acknowledged that he was the bull of the future.

  It seemed that with the death of Jim Lloyd, who had protected the land, luck left the region. The previous year, 1923, had been a disaster for dry-land farmers, for only six inches of rain had fallen, which meant that even the best fields produced only about two bushels of wheat an acre, not enough to pay for the plowing, and land-poor men like Earl Grebe now found they had barely enough money to pay their store bills.

  In 1924 things were no better, for even though nine inches of rain did fall, the drought of the preceding year showed its effects, and the good fields produced slightly under four bushels an acre.

  A sense of defeat spread through the area, for if such conditions continued, many farmers would be driven out of business. They would not produce enough to make interest payments on their mortgages, and banks would foreclose. For the lack of a few dollars of ready cash, a man stood to lose a farm worth many thousands. It was a crazy system, one devised by idiots and administered by bankers, but it was the way America was run, and the individual farmer could do nothing about it.

  Now the dreadful word mortgage struck at the heart of the Grebe family. In the good years, when money was plentiful, they had bought a half-section from Mervin Wendell and had considered themselves clever in talking him into accepting a thousand-dollar mortgage at five percent per annum.

  “It’s like finding money,” Earl had explained enthusiastically. With four hundred acres planted to wheat which sold at two dollars a bushel, the Grebes had a gold mine, and when the cash came in they had built what the brochure called “their mansion.” They had also paid off their mortgage, but as soon as this was done Mervin Wendell came by with the good news that he could sell them an adjoining 320 acres. He also extended them the courtesy of another thousand-dollar mortgage, but when the papers were drawn he did not restrict it to the land he had just sold; he applied the mortgage to the entire farm.

  Now, in the bad years, they owed Mervin Wendell’s son P
hilip one thousand dollars at a time when there were simply no dollars in circulation, and certainly none coming their way. The interest was only fifty dollars a year; if they continued to pay that, nothing bad could happen to them; they did not have to reduce the principal. But pay the interest they must, even though the debt had been contracted when dollars were plentiful and was coming due when they were rare.

  “It’s so unfair,” Alice Grebe told her family as they gathered to discuss the threat which hung over their home. “He switched the mortgage from the land, which we could give back if we had to, onto the house, which is our very life blood. Earl, you must do something about this.”

  He visited Philip Wendell in his offices near the railroad station and explained the error. “Your father must have meant to put the mortgage on the land,” he said, but the new head of Wendell Ranches and Estates proved adamant, polite but adamant.

  “I’m quite sure, Mr. Grebe, that my father never made such a careless mistake. Times being unfavorable, you look back upon the event in a way which best supports your interests. I’m sure rain is coming back to these parts, and all you have to do is pay off the mortgage, and this unpleasantness will be forgotten.”