Texas

by James A. Michener

  ‘Ransom, are you turning me down?’

  ‘No. But I am turning down Houston. Now is not the time to start new building in that town.’

  She gasped, then said defensively: ‘I love Houston. It gave me life … maturity … even happiness of a sort.’

  ‘Time to be realistic. New buildings are standing empty.’

  ‘But, Ransom, I’ve been mailing brochures assuring real estate customers that Houston is not finished.’ She hesitated, looked pleadingly, saw the obdurate scowl, and asked softly: ‘Are you suggesting Dallas?’

  ‘I haven’t mentioned Dallas. It’s overbuilt too.’

  ‘What do you have in mind?’

  ‘Austin.’

  She had never contemplated shifting her operations from a city with more than two million to one about one-fifth that size, but Rusk was adamant: ‘Houston twenty years ago is Austin today.’

  ‘Can it absorb something like Futura?’

  He avoided a direct answer: ‘That’s a dreadful name. Sounds like a bath soap.’

  ‘What would you propose?’

  ‘Something classy. English. Like The Bristol or Warwick Towers. But they’ve been overdone.’ Then he snapped his fingers: ‘I have it. The Nottingham. Our logo? Robin Hood in outline wearing that crazy peaked hat. We’ll make it the most fashionable address in Texas.’

  Maggie, trying not to smile at the picture of Ransom Rusk offering himself as a Robin Hood stealing from the poor to aid the rich, kept her mind on the main problem: ‘Where do we get the two hundred million?’

  Without hesitation he replied: ‘West Germany or the Arabs. They’re itching to invest in Texas.’ And while she waited, he called his bankers in Frankfurt and asked: ‘Karl Philip, do your boys still have those funds you talked about last month? Good. I’m putting you down for two hundred and ten million.’ There was a pause which Maggie interpreted as shock on the other end, but it was not: ‘No, not Houston, it’s marking time at present. And not Dallas, either, it’s overbuilt. Austin.’ Another pause: ‘State capital, America’s new Silicon Valley, our fastest-growing city. Hotter than an oil-boom town.’

  When he hung up he gave Maggie a simple directive: ‘Fly right down to Austin, locate the perfect spot, and get someone to buy the real estate in secret.’

  With the design for her two luxury towers firmly in mind, she rode to the airport in Rusk’s car, which delivered her to the door of the Rusk plane. In less than forty minutes she was landing at the Austin airport, and the next four days were hectic.

  In a rented car she explored the unfamiliar beauties of this lovely little city, and by noon she had counted a dozen giant cranes busy at the job of erecting very tall buildings. ‘My God,’ she cried. ‘This really is the new Houston,’ and that afternoon she chanced on a young man, Paul Sampson, recently down from Indianapolis, who could have been Todd Morrison in 1969. He had the same brash approach, the same nervous eagerness, the same indication that he was going to be adroit in arranging deals. He worked for a large real estate firm but gave every promise of owning the outfit within two years, and by nightfall he had shown Maggie sixteen sites which could accommodate new buildings.

  That night she called Rusk: ‘Ransom, real estate is so hot down here that the place simply has to go bust.’

  Very quietly he assured her: ‘Of course it’ll go bust. Everything does sooner or later. Our job is to get in fast and out first.’

  ‘Then you want me to go ahead?’

  ‘With German money, how can we go wrong?’

  So early next morning she was at Paul Sampson’s office with the kind of proposition cagey operators had brought her husband in the early 1970s: ‘Could you quietly assemble about six city blocks for me? Standard commission?’

  ‘I can do anything you require, madam,’ he said, and she could see that his palms were sweating. ‘Where do you want them? In the heart of the city?’

  ‘Show me the possibilities,’ and when he kept stressing an area which she distrusted, she said: ‘You own a parcel in there, don’t you?’ and he protested: ‘Look, madam, if you don’t trust me, we can’t do business,’ and she said: ‘If you try to sell me that junk you’re stuck with, we’ll never do business.’

  Startled by her shrewd understanding, he stopped trying to peddle his third-rate property and started driving her to the eligible areas, and by the end of the fourth day she had found something farther out than he had expected her to go. It was a grand area west of Route 360 and atop a rise which gave a splendid view of both Lake Travis and the famed hill country.

  ‘Will people buy this far out?’ Sampson asked, and she said: ‘When they see what we’re going to build,’ and with that, she gave him a commission to acquire four parcels of about ten acres each, and when the agreement was signed, in great secrecy, he said: ‘Can I ask what you’re going to build out there?’ and she said: ‘A hunting range for Robin Hood.’

  When she saw the excitement in his eyes and his eagerness to get started, she thought of her former husband, and she wished the young man good luck. She hoped he would handle himself better than Todd had done, but she had a strong premonition that he was going to go the same way, because three weeks later, after he had delivered the forty acres to her at a price that was gratifying, she learned that he had mortgaged himself to the hilt in order to buy for his own account two small choice plots that would dominate any roads into or out of Nottingham.

  ‘You’ll do well, Sampson,’ she said as she ended negotiations. ‘Stay clean,’ and he startled her by saying with great assurance: ‘Mrs. Morrison, you’ll bless the day you met me. That land will be worth millions, because this Austin thing can go on forever.’

  That night she flew back to Larkin, and when she informed Rusk of her proposed land purchase in Austin, he congratulated her. Then, ignoring the two-hundred-million-dollar deal as if it were an ordinary day’s work, he took his seat before two television sets as the first Reagan-Mondale debate started.

  The next ninety minutes were a nightmare for Ransom, because he had to watch the man who was supposed to save the Republic fumble and stumble and show himself to be uninformed on basic problems. At one point Rusk growled: ‘Maggie, how in hell did he ever allow himself to get tangled in a debate? He looks ninety years old.’

  But soon his anger was directed at the three newspeople asking the questions: ‘They shouldn’t speak to him like that! He’s President!’ And then, as Maggie had anticipated, his ire fell on Mondale: ‘Reagan ought to walk over and belt him in the mouth.’ Toward the end, when Reagan confessed ‘I’m confused,’ Rusk shouted at the television: ‘They didn’t ask that question fair. They’re trying to mix him up.’

  The next weeks were agonizing, for the press, very unjustly Rusk thought, kept bringing up the question of Reagan’s age and his capacity to govern. ‘He doesn’t have to govern like other people,’ Rusk told Maggie. ‘He has good men around him who look after details. What he does is inspire the nation.’ Calling his friends in the administration, he advised: ‘Keep him on the big picture. Patriotism … the Olympics … standing tall in the saddle.’ And when Reagan did just this, smothering Mondale in the final debate, Rusk said: ‘The incumbent must never allow upstarts to get on the same platform with him.’

  On Election Day, Rusk would drive out to Larkin to vote while Maggie would have to remain in Houston to cast hers, but it was agreed that then Rusk’s jet would ferry her to his place, where they would watch the returns together. As she approached the polling place she was still undecided as to how she would vote: I can’t turn my back on eighty years of family history. I don’t think a Svenholm has voted Republican since Teddy Roosevelt ran in 1904. But then she recalled the persuasive logic with which Rusk had defended his thesis that those who own a nation ought to be allowed to govern it, and she suspected that the time had come when dependable Americans like him should be handed the reins, since they had the most to win or lose. Also, like many women, she had some misgivings about Geraldine Ferr
aro.

  Realizing that what she was about to do would have pained her hard-working parents, whose lives had been rescued by Democratic legislation in the 1930s, she willingly took the step that transformed her from a Michigan liberal into a Texas conservative. Stepping boldly into the voting booth, she looked toward heaven, crossed herself, and said with a chuckle: ‘Pop, forgive me for what I’m about to do.’ Then, closing the curtain behind her, she did what hundreds of thousands of other Democratic refugees from wintry states like Ohio, Michigan and Minnesota were doing that day: she voted the straight Republican ticket.

  That night as she sat with Rusk, watching as the early victories rolled in, she agreed when he cried: ‘Maggie, we’re going to put some iron in this nation’s backbone.’ Toward nine o’clock, when the magnitude of the swing was obvious, he said with fierce determination: ‘We have the White House, the Supreme Court, the Senate and enough right-thinking Democrats on our side to control the House. Maggie, we’ve captured the nation! For as long as you and I live, things are going to be handled our way.’

  At a point when it was clear in the returns that all areas reporting so far, except the nation’s capital, had chosen Reagan, Rusk growled: ‘If that city full of niggers is so out of tune with national thinking, it shouldn’t have the vote,’ and Maggie said sharply: ‘Ransom! You’re never to use that word again,’ and he grumbled: ‘I’ll watch myself when I’m in your hearing,’ but she said: ‘Never! And I mean it! A man in your position cheapens himself with such a word.’ He turned from the television, stared at her as if he had never seen her before—or had not appreciated her if he had seen her—and then returned to his victorious watching.

  When it was certain that all states except Minnesota had cast their votes for Reagan and proper American values, he said: ‘That entire state should be sent to a psychiatrist. To be offered a choice between Reagan and Mondale and to choose Phinicky Phfritz … the whole place must be sick.’

  In triumph, a man who had helped save a nation, he drove her primly to one of the Larkin motels, promising as he left her: ‘Tomorrow I’ll close the financing,’ and she realized that all his life he had been able to throw his full attention into something like the election of a President, then start afresh the next morning on a new assignment that bore no relationship to the preceding one. In this regard he was a lot like Texas: the first settlers lived off cattle, the next off cotton and slaves, then came the big empty ranches, then oil, then computers, and what would come next, only God knew. She hoped she and Rusk would be able to unload their share of The Nottingham before Austin went bust.

  … TASK FORCE

  During the two-year existence of our Task Force we had often suffered snide attacks that were launched upon Texas, and always they seemed to focus on its wealth. Outsiders either envied our possession of it or resented the way we spent it. As our deliberations drew to a close in December 1984, I had the opportunity to witness and even participate in three typical explosions of Texas wealth, and I report them without venturing a judgment.

  When it came time to draft our report, we encountered little difficulty, although Ransom Rusk did insist upon a minority statement, signed only by him, decrying emphasis on multicultural aspects of Texas history and calling for a return to the simple Anglo-Saxon Protestant virtues which had made the state great; Professor Garza submitted his own nonhysterical minority report defending Señorita Múzquiz’s interpretation of bilingual education and recommending that it continue through at least the sixth grade.

  When none of us would co-sign either document, Garza taunted us amiably for what he called our ‘ostrichlike capacity for hiding from reality.’ When Miss Cobb asked: ‘What do you mean, Efraín?’ he said: ‘I want each of you to answer honestly, “How many illegal Mexican immigrants do you employ?” ’ Rusk said: ‘That’s a fair question. Various projects, maybe forty.’ Quimper said: ‘I have about six each on my nine ranches. Four extra at the home ranch.’ Miss Cobb said she employed two maids and two men, and I surprised them by saying: ‘Lucky for me, I have a maid who comes in three days.’

  But it was Garza who startled us: ‘I have a husband and wife. Invaluable.’ Then he smiled: ‘And this committee, which depends upon Mexicans, thinks that the problem is going to fade away? So be it.’

  On all other content we agreed easily; we recommended more careful structuring of the two levels of teaching in Texas history: ‘The primary level, where the child first encounters the glories of Texas history, should depend less on fable and more on historical reality, which is miraculous enough to ignite young minds. And in the junior-high obligatory course, educators must remember that because of heavy immigration from the North, classrooms will be filled with young people who have never before studied the glories of Texas history and who will not be familiar with its unique and heroic nature. A most careful effort must be made to inform them properly before it is too late.’

  Philosophically I supported Miss Cobb in a statement she proposed: ‘We recommend strongly that in both primary and junior-high, Texas history be taught only by teachers trained in the subject.’ But to our surprise, Rusk, Quimper and Garza refused to vote in favor, for, as Quimper pointed out: ‘We have to have somewhere to stack our football coaches in the off season.’ Miss Cobb wanted me to join her in signing a minority report, but I told her I would not, since I felt that it would be improper for the chairman to reveal that he could not hold his horses together. My real reason was that I did not want to stir up the football fanatics, for if I did, there was little chance that our report would be accepted. Texas history might be revered, but Texas football was sacred.

  I was involved in the first money explosion. On the December day our report was to be signed, I announced that my temporary duty in Texas had proved so congenial that I was surrendering my job at Boulder in order to accept an appointment to the Department of Texas Studies at the university. My colleagues and our staff applauded my action, and when I was asked why I had made what must have been a difficult decision, I said: ‘It was easy. Consider the things that have happened here since I took this chairmanship. The Mexican peso has collapsed, turning the Rio Grande Valley into a disaster area. Then Hurricane Alicia struck, threatening to wreck Houston, which had already been suffering from forty-three million square feet of unrented business space. Next the Great Freeze of 1983 destroyed the citrus crop, completing the wreckage of the Valley. The west didn’t escape, either, what with that Midland bank going under for a billion and a quarter and the Ogallala Aquifer dropping precipitously, so that farmers out there are beginning to cry panic. The Dallas area got its share, with Braniff going bankrupt and TexTek dropping a billion dollars in one day. Farmers everywhere were hit with a drought. And to top it all, the Dallas Cowboys folded three straight years. Hell, the blows this state has had to absorb in one brief spell would collapse the ordinary nation.’

  ‘What’s your point?’ asked Rusk, who had been rocked by many of the disasters.

  ‘Point is, I respect a state that can spring back, pull up its socks, and forge ahead as if nothing had happened. And I like the way Lorena’s nephew out in Lubbock is fighting for sensible water legislation.’

  But Miss Cobb had a much simpler statement, and one that came closer to the truth: ‘Texas seduced him to come back home, as it has a way of doing.’ And I agreed.

  But then Rusk released his bombshell: ‘Barlow, even though you are a liberal and a near-communist, the three of us, Miss Lorena, Lorenzo and I, have put together a little kitty to endow your chair in Texas Studies at the university.’

  ‘One million clams,’ Quimper said as the research staff gasped.

  Miss Cobb explained: ‘Under the terms of grant, Barlow can’t spend a penny on himself, but he can apply the yearly interest to the purchase of books for the library and fellowships for his graduate students—not generous, but enough to live on. So why don’t you assistants enroll with him for your Ph.D.s?’

  This unexpected bonanza had an interes
ting effect on our staff. I had been aware, as our work drew to a close, that they were growing apprehensive about their futures, and to have this sudden manna descend upon them was a boon. The young woman from SMU, seeing herself reprieved from a life of writing publicity releases, showed tears. The young man from El Paso sat stunned. But the young fellow from Texas Tech acted sensibly: he kissed Miss Cobb. What did I do? I remained gratefully silent, thinking of the tenured years ahead and of the endless chain of young scholars who would work with me and of the good we would accomplish together.

  After mutual congratulations, we attacked the final agenda, and Garza, Miss Cobb and I suggested that we conclude our report with two vital paragraphs. Knowing that they would occasion sharp comment from the public, we wanted them to say exactly what we intended, and no more:

  Any state which acquires great power is obligated to provide outstanding moral and intellectual leadership. Although we believe that Texas has the capacity for such leadership, we cannot identify in what significant fields it will be exerted. When Massachusetts led the nation, its power was manifested in its religious and intellectual leadership. When Virginia gained preeminence, it was because of the learning, the philosophy and the style of her citizens. When New York undertook the burden, it excelled in publishing, theater and art. When California led, it was through Hollywood, television and attractive life styles.

  In what fields is Texas qualified to lead? It has no major publishing house, no art except cowboy illustration, no philosophical preeminence. Obviously, it has other valuable assets, but not ones that society prizes highly. It leads the nation in consuming popular music; it has bravado, and is wildly devoted to football. It runs the risk of becoming America’s Sparta rather than its Athens. And history does not deal kindly with its Spartas.

  When Rusk saw our draft he exploded: ‘You sound like a bunch of commies, and frankly, Lorena, I’m amazed you would put your signature to such a document.’