Lone Star

by Mathilde Walter Clark

  the people in buda have done what they can to take the wilderness out of Texas, especially Celia’s grandfather, Cecil Ruby, who’d helped connect north and south by part of the construction of Interstate 35, the 500-mile-long artery that begins near the Red River on the Oklahoma border and runs down to Laredo on the Mexican border.

  But the itch to build continued into the next generation. Cecil Ruby married the prettiest of my grandmother’s sisters, who was called E, and together they had two children, a boy and a girl, of which the girl, Gay, was the smartest (my dad always had a sense for who was the smartest in a given family). When Gay was in second grade, Jack Dahlstrom joined the class, a newcomer and the son of a rancher. He was a suntanned boy with chalk-white teeth, but some time passed before Gay noticed him. He, however, instantly fell in love with this clever, redheaded, and cheerful girl. When they were of age, they married. Like Gay’s dad, Jack was a bit of an industrialist; money didn’t interest him, only projects. He would put everything on the line, go bankrupt, and get back on his feet. Gay’s father loaned him a few of his machines, and with Gay’s brother, he began clearing ground and conducting site preparation work for local farmers. Soon, Cecil Ruby himself joined the firm, and together they constructed large sections of the airports in Dallas–Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio. They built a canal in Houston and Interstate 635, which loops around Dallas, and three triple-deck interchanges that wind unnaturally in the air, the kind of thing we Danes normally only see in movies. They weren’t satisfied just with Texas, either, but built dams, highways, and airports in Mississippi, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and New Mexico, and they were involved in large construction projects in Honduras, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua, chomping up wilderness and foreign civilizations in ways that would have doubtless thrilled Stephen F. Austin.

  At one point, Jack Dahlstrom bought out his father-in-law. The firm had grown to become the third-largest contractor in the USA, with more than two thousand employees in nine states. Jack owned twenty-two airplanes and two helicopters, and smoked cigars with President Johnson.

  Celia has told me that the construction projects forced the entire family, Gay, Jack, and eventually their four children, to constantly be on the move. They lived in forty places in ten years, forty new schools, forty times new friends. There were always lawsuits underway; either they were suing someone, or someone was suing them. When you have construction projects of that size, it’s inevitable, Celia said. Gay was the one who handled the lawsuits; she spent many hours of her life in a courtroom, always waiting to find out whether the family was ruined or not.

  After many years of constant moving, the family returned to Buda. Their father had converted the money he’d earned into land; each time he built, he acquired a little more land. Cement and civilize one place, buy wilderness in another. Gay and her husband and children settled near the family ranch where Gay and her brother had grown up—and where my mother once refused to drink Cecil Ruby’s whiskey. His lands were enormous, at least by Danish standards. My mom once told me that it was a ten-minute drive from the gate to the ranch itself.

  Gay’s mother was the first to die. It was never clear to my grandmother or my dad how E died. She did not die of natural causes, in any case. When Cecil Ruby died, Gay and her brother each inherited one half of the family’s land, 6,000 acres in all, which was to be divided into two equal portions. Gay was in the midst of a drawn-out court case that had been ongoing for several years, and she was afraid they would end up losing the family ranch. So, she and her brother arranged that he’d inherit the western plot including Ruby Ranch, and she’d inherit the undeveloped eastern plot that, except for a few fences and watering holes for the animals, remained as untouched as when Austin once gazed across the land.

  ◊

  People here seem to have an instinctual sense of a property’s acreage. My upbringing in various cities has made it easier for me to comprehend vertical spaces. How long does it take to reach the twentieth floor on an elevator, for example, or, if the space is horizontal, where X is located in relation to the nearest train station. In the motel room, I google 6,000 acres. It corresponds to 2,428 hectares. That’s twenty-four square kilometers or 4,537 soccer fields. Cecil Ruby’s land is the size of a medium-sized Danish city. Like Gladsaxe. Sixty-six thousand six hundred and ninety-three people live in Gladsaxe. Gladsaxe has ten schools, eight churches, and two sports halls …

  mel selects a wide-brimmed canvas hat off the rack with a tattered leather string that hangs loosely under the chin. Celia and I climb into his car, and we drive down the hill, cross the road, and pass onto Gay’s land. At the entrance, a sign indicates Dahlstrom Ranch, a broad gate requires Celia to get out of the car and open it, Mel drives through, and Celia closes the gate again. We rumble across rough grass with bushes and windblown trees. A blackbuck that’s been lying concealed in the grass leaps up and draws an elegant arch along the horizon.

  See that? Mel points at the spot where the antelope had been. That’s his spot. Blackbucks are extremely territorial, he says. After we’re gone, he’ll return to the exact same spot.

  He stops at a cabin with three wings. Apparently that’s where Celia’s brother, Jack Jr., lives. Roused form his afternoon nap, he emerges in shorts and a creased shirt like a bear from its winter hibernation or a Christmas elf outside of season, his face red and sleepy and his white hair poking up in every direction. An animal skull with dark antlers hangs on the cabin, and beside it, a yellow sign: danger: men cooking. As part of the family business, Jack Jr. organizes tours of the Dahlstrom Ranch for hunting groups or others interested in wildlife. A group of ornithologists has just passed through, Celia says. In three hours, they spotted one hundred and thirty-six bird varieties.

  Celia’s brother lets us use his off-roader. Celia has brought a supply of canvas hats with the ranch’s logo embroidered on the band, one yellow, one red, and one blue. I choose the red one and follow Celia up to the high-rack seats, where everything is covered in a fine layer of brown dust. Jack Jr. disappears into the cabin and back to bed, and we rumble away.

  The sky is the color of skim milk. The baking sun makes us gleam. They’ve thinned out the mesquite so the grass can grow for animals, Mel says, pointing at a few immense piles of branches. Celia indicates with her hand, and Mel says there, and there. The landscape shifts, constantly in motion as white antelope rumps zigzag across the grass, between the trees, hypnotic. Blackbucks, spotted deer, bighorn sheep.

  Every once in a while Mel shouts: Watch your heads, and we dive below a low-hanging branch.

  Off in the distance, a deep-green river meanders through the landscape. Mel stops the car and points at it, saying: That’s Onion Creek. From here it looks cool, clear, and densely thronged by trees. White deposits on the tree trunks indicate how much the river rises when it rains. Leaves shimmer strangely on some of the trees, rustling and winking whitely in the breeze. Those are cottonwood, Mel says. He says that tree is a common sight along the rivers of the Texas prairie. You can always tell when there is water close by when you see a tree with white leaves.

  Onion Creek is what I cross when I drive out to Celia and Mel’s place. It runs through their land. My dad has told me how the men in the family caught catfish in season, and how the fish were eager to bite. I picture him, barefoot, with his wavy hair and the slightly amazed expression I’ve seen in his school pictures, happy and surprised to find a big fish dangling on his hook. He caught a giant on his first cast, without using bait on his empty hook.

  Two black shadows with fan-shaped tails and serrated wings circle above us. I squint. I rarely see eagles in Copenhagen, I say with confidence. No, those are buzzards, Mel says. There must be a carcass nearby.

  Lush grass stretches in every direction, bent trees, rock formations, and boulders. Every now and then he parks the off-roader, climbs out, and opens and closes a gate to new sections of the ranch.

  What do you call this kind of landscape?

  Mel considers. Me
l in his wide-brimmed, dusty hat. He knows every square inch of the property, but not necessarily its geological designations.

  Ranch land. A little later he says: Central Texas ranch land. Central Texas implies that it is flat with rocky stuff. The rocky stuff consists of porous limestone. Below the ground is an enormous system of underground rivers and waterways. When it rains, the water finds the cracks and fissures in the ground just as quickly as it finds the drain in a sink, and gradually the rainwater erodes the limestone and runs into the underground reservoirs.

  Mel stops to show me an especially deep sinkhole. The rain has eroded so much of the limestone that the ceiling of the underground hollow has collapsed. A funnel-shaped spiral winds deep into the earth. Mel crawls into it, and when he can go no farther, he pauses to look up at us with shiny eyes, as if he’s just returned to life following a deep dive. He offers his hand to help me down into the hole, I try, but I’m forced to give up halfway down. It’s the leg. Each time I put all of my weight on it, it feels as though I’m staking everything on a matchstick. I can’t feel the details in my joint, it’s like balancing on a spinning top.

  It’s hard to believe that the ground below is full of rivers, I say, and Celia tells me that her mother’s land is one of the most important aquifers in the county. The land comprises just one percent of the county but contributes ten percent of the drinking water. Famous Texas rivers like Guadalupe, Llano, San Marcos, Frio, and Comal wouldn’t even exist if the underground reservoirs weren’t filled with the kind of sinkholes that typically dot the Hill Country, and Gay’s land is apparently a decisive factor in the dynamic.

  I don’t think I’m the only one to associate Texas with Stephen F. Austin’s vast expanses. The wide horizons, the long, unbroken stretches before the eye. But in an article about Gay in Texas Monthly, “Lands That I Love,” the writers are concerned with the continual fragmentation of family-owned lands; every time someone inherits land, it is divided into smaller plots. Texas’ rural landscape is disintegrating, they write. Less than five percent of the state is publicly accessible, and that includes highways and state parks, the rest is in private hands. It’s up to them, the private landowners, to determine how the landscape in Texas should look.

  When Mom inherited the land, it almost ruined her, Celia says, laughing, and I can tell this sentence is part of the family’s oral history, that it’s been uttered repeatedly, safeguarded and displayed like my grandmother’s rock collection. Inheriting land is a messy business, but above all, it’s expensive. When Gay and her brother took over the land, they had almost no liquid assets, so in order to pay the inheritance tax, Gay’s brother needed to develop the land, which is what they call it when you build on it. He constructed an entire residential area in the farthest corner of his plot, Ruby Ranch Neighborhood, and sold off ranches piece by piece. Only with tremendous effort was Gay able to pay for her portion of the land without selling so much as one square foot. At one point, the gigantic construction firm filed for bankruptcy. Gay and Jack lived in a trailer on the property, raised sheep, and kept a tab at the grocery in Buda. She could have just sold away a portion of the land, Celia says, but she wouldn’t do it.

  But what if she had? I ask. Or what if she sells some now? I think of the rainwater dynamic underground.

  That’s exactly it. “Developing” the land, Celia says, holding the word at arm’s length. It would be like jamming a cork in a bottle. Like choking the earth, Mel adds. In fact, it is exactly what people have done most everywhere. The water can’t flow properly. There’s drought in one place and flooding in another. All the problems come from overdevelopment.

  Celia says that her mother has been very worried about what will happen to the land when she dies. Four children will inherit it. Will the property be carved into four sections? And how are Celia and her siblings going to pay the inheritance tax? Go into debt? Sell off parts of the land? Gay does not want to put her kids in that situation. Her priority has been to keep her children debt-free and the property intact. Along with Celia’s brother in the cabin, their mother spent several years seeking a conservation order with the county. Celia and her siblings will inherit the land, but they won’t be able build on the property or sell off any part of it, except to each other. The land will stay in one piece. There are even plans, Celia says, to make some of it publicly accessible.

  Incredible, I say, almost relieved.

  I know, Celia says. I mean, what are we gonna do? Roll everything over with concrete?

  We’ve reached the quarry that has supplied materials for highways, airports, and shipyards. We get out of the car, walk to the fence, and look into the enormous crater. The quarry is still active. Celia figures there’s enough stone there to last another thirty years, but today is Easter Saturday, and the machines that are normally in use sit idle at the bottom of the cavity, as blind and unmoving as prehistorical creatures.

  my dad’s three cousins, Gay, Ginger, and Gloria, sound like characters in a children’s book, like Hattie, Matty, and Patty. They’re not sisters. They make me feel a little out of breath. I don’t know any of them.

  On Friday, when I parked by the courthouse, my cell phone rang. Apparently the telephone company considers the square in Lockhart a real place. A voice on the other end of the line let me know it belonged to my cousin. This is your cou-sin, it said, and my ears swallowed the drawling rhythm like honey. Like a lullaby. I didn’t realize they were so thirsty for my grandmother’s accent.

  It wasn’t actually my cousin, it was one of my dad’s three cousins, but in Texas, I’m about to discover, people aren’t exacting about that kind of thing. Ginger lives with her husband, Ben, on a ranch northwest of Austin. She got my number from my dad. She calls me Hon and asks if I’d like to join the family for lunch on Easter Sunday.

  I’d love to. When should I arrive?

  We’ll expect you any time after church, she says.

  When is church?

  Oh, just come any time you want after eleven. Someone will be here.

  The intersections in Lockhart use no other regulation than drivers’ temperaments. People are so friendly they don’t get anywhere. At each intersection, drivers engage in a duel of politeness. Who will go first? I wait for someone, who in turn waits for me. Smiles and gesticulations are exchanged. After you, no after you, no after you …

  Ever since I arrived, the same Mexican family has stood near the intersection of 183 selling cheap Easter products to drivers caught at the stoplight. As soon as the light changes, their kids flutter between the vehicles, a seven- or eight-year-old girl in a dirty pink crinoline skirt taps on every single car window with an inflatable Easter bunny, methodically, as if she already knows there’s no point, that no one will roll their window down and purchase a balloon, that the entire charade is only for her mom and dad, who stand on the sidewalk with their bulging merchandise dispersed into checkered plastic nets, already scanning for the next group of waiting vehicles …

  On the highway I discover that the Wild West still exists. I am the last person in the world. Only the prairie exists with the blue flowers they call bluebonnets, asphalt, asphalt, and me zooming over it.

  Other vehicles appear. From where? Out of the blue, forming a pack, I cannot read their movements. They want to get past me. Inside lane, outside lane, it doesn’t matter, they just want to get past. Snorting, stamping, thundering like a herd of buffalos, then suddenly separating from the herd and darting ahead.

  As I approach Austin, the roads multiply. Unpredictable curves and loops bend out of sight and then reappear. Suddenly the asphalt arches upward; I’m in the air, the lines of the road disappearing beneath me. I wonder whether the people of Buda designed this insane, upward-tilting helix? Exit, northward, westward. The man behind me loses his patience and races past me on the shoulder, stamping, thundering, my heart, racing. The 85-mph speed limit seems to be only a hint. It’s like playing a video game with no rules. No matter where I hide, I’m in the way of a faster, w
ilder, and more aggressive animal.

  •

  By the time I exit my knuckles are white and my palms are sweaty. Alone again. The lush green prairie that was covered in blue, red, and yellow native flowers has disappeared, and a dark-green, rocky landscape with somber, straight pines has thrust its way up through the earth’s crust. Cliffs and pale, sandy soil with ash juniper, lacy oak, bigtooth maple, Mexican plum, Texas madrone. I didn’t notice, but somehow I’ve driven up on the southern edge of Edward’s Plateau.

  The road I’m driving on becomes a gravel road. For a long time, I drive between the dusty bushes and trees. Every few hundred yards I spot a ranch set far back off the road, behind a gate. Then the gps lady with the Stephen Hawking voice informs me that I’ve reached my destination. I’m in the middle of nowhere. Is this really where my dad’s second cousin lives? I climb out into the pale, already-warm morning sun. The nearest ranch, lying in a hollow of surreal green grass, stares blindly at me from behind its tobacco-brown boulders.

  Last year, when I was at a writing retreat in the house in the forest in upstate New York, I discovered how difficult it can be to knock on a stranger’s door in the United States. I had nearly perished in the night frost. It was early in the afternoon when I got lost in the forest, the sun was still warm, and I hadn’t worn a jacket. Without realizing it, I walked in the opposite direction when I was on the way back and found myself far from the house. But where? Inside the few houses I passed, I could see people snug and warm in front of their tvs, but each time I knocked at one of the houses, I felt the fear behind the door. It scared me. I should mention that I had a friend with me, an Indian translator, a small, slim, brown-skinned man with a thick black beard. I told him we should step back all the way onto the lawn, but even that didn’t help. People still didn’t dare open their door. There we stood, a petite Danish writer and an even smaller Indian translator with a dangerous beard. The forest grew so dark that we couldn’t see our own feet. It was 10:00 pm before the cook’s car’s headlights swept over us.