by Edna Ferber
“Vashti! And Pinky! Well! This is mighty nice!” He clasped Pinky’s little hand of steel, he took Vashti’s plump fingers in his hand that was tough as rawhide. Vashti’s color, normally pink, now became enriched by a maroon overlay. She had blushed in this way, painfully, at sight or touch of him ever since the day, over twenty years ago, when he had surprised Nueces County and the whole of Texas by bringing this Leslie, this Virginia girl unknown to them all, to Reata Ranch as his wife. Jilted they said. At least the same as jilted Vashti Hake. Even his sister Luz had as much as admitted they’d be married someday and you know how she glared if any woman so much as looked at him.
“Nearly winded Pronto getting here. Anything wrong, Leslie?” He poured a cup of coffee, drank it black and hot with the eagerness of need. People frequently were annoyed by the fact that as they talked to him he appeared not to be listening. He listened to nothing that did not vitally interest him; and nothing held his interest that was not vitally connected with this vast this fantastic kingdom over which he and his father and his grandfather had reigned for a hundred years. His was the detachment, the aloofness, the politely absentminded isolation of royalty.
“They’re late too,” Leslie now said. “The cars went to the Big House half an hour ago.”
He tensed to a distant sound. “There they are now. I’ll change and be back before they’re out of the cars.”
“Pinky and Vashti are going with us. I thought we could drive down now, and all these people needn’t get out of the cars——”
Over his shoulder as he strode indoors. “Better not do that. But I’ll only be five minutes. Shave on the plane.” He vanished into the shaded recesses of the house whose dim rooms seen from the veranda seemed to have a pale green quality like a scene glimpsed under water.
The gaze of the two older women followed him. In Vashti’s eyes were bafflement and adoration and poignant hurt; in Leslie’s wisdom and tenderness and the steady glowing warmth of a wife who, after many years of marriage and disillusionment, is still deeply in love with her husband.
A covey of long sleek grey cars; talk, over-hearty laughter. Two people only occupied the passenger space of the roomy first car though each following car held six or seven.
Leslie stood up. It was not merely the act of rising to her feet; there was about the simple act something that communicated itself to Vashti, relaxed and bountifully disposed in the depths of her chair, and to Pinky, squatting on his haunches as he tousled and played with the frisking dog, and to the two young people so silent and politely aloof.
A tall thin man in a black Homburg scrambled hastily down from the front seat which he had occupied with the Mexican driver and opened the door of the lead car. The urban incongruity of the black Homburg in that scene and climate gave the wearer the comic aspect of a masquerader. The King and Queen of Sargovia stepped out of the car. A thin somewhat horse-faced sad girl in a not very new French dress and a long double string of large genuine pearls which dangled drearily and looked dated because all the women were wearing two-strand chokers of cultured pearls that looked smarter and more genuine. The man was shorter than she with a long neck as though he had stretched it in an attempt to appear taller; and his Habsburg blood showed in his prognathous jaw which should have looked strong but didn’t. He wore one of those suits carefully made by a Central European tailor who long ago had served an apprenticeship in London’s Savile Row. But he had apparently lost the knack of line for the suit was tight where it should have been easy.
Leslie went forward to meet them as Vashti scrambled for the slipper at the side of her chair.
“I hope you slept, Sir. And you, Ma’am. Everyone was warned to be very quiet on pain of death, but you know…ranch noises are so…Sir, may I present Mrs. Mott Snyth. Mr. Mott Snyth…Ma’am, may I present…”
3
“It isn’t far,” Bick Benedict assured them. “Four hundred miles. We’re early. We can cruise around. I’d like to show you something of the Pecos section of Reata—from the air, of course. And you could have a look at historic old Beaumont later. That’s the site of old Spindletop, you know.”
“Spindletop?” said Miss Lona Lane, the movie girl. “Is that a mountain or something? I don’t like flying over mountains very much.”
The Texans present looked very serious which meant that they were bursting inside with laughter. The Dallas Moreys and Congressman Bale Clinch and Gabe Target of Houston and Judge Whiteside did not glance at each other. It was as though a tourist in Paris had asked if Notre Dame was a football team.
“Uh—no,” Bick Benedict said, turning on all his charm which was considerable. Miss Lona Lane was extremely photogenic. “Spindletop was the first big oil gusher in Texas. It dates back to 1901.”
The Texans relaxed.
“What’s this San Antone?” inquired Joe Glotch, the former heavyweight champion turned sportsman and New Jersey restaurateur. “I heard that’s quite a spot.”
“Nothing there but Randolph Field,” the Congressman assured him.
Bick Benedict addressed himself to the King.
“Perhaps tomorrow we can fly up to Deaf Smith County in the Panhandle. There are some Herefords up there I’d like to show you——”
“That would be interesting. What is the distance?”
“About eight hundred miles.”
The young man smiled nervously, he fingered his neat dark necktie. “To tell you the truth, I am not as accustomed to this flying as you Texans. You see, my little country could be hidden in one corner of your Texas. At home I rarely flew. It was considered too great a risk. Of course, that was when kings were…Our pilots were always falling into the Aegean Sea. Or somewhere. Perhaps it is because we are not the natural mechanics that you here in the great industrial United States——”
His English was precise and correct as was his wife’s, clearly the triumph of the Oxford tutor and English governess system over the mid-European consonant.
“That’s right,” said Congressman Bale Clinch. “Here every kid’s got a car or anyway a motorbike. And a tractor or a jeep is child’s play. Flying comes natural, like walking, to these kids.”
The group had been whisked to the ranch airfield where the vast winged ship stood awaiting them. A miniature airport, complete, set down like an extravagant toy in the midst of the endless plain. The airport station itself in the Spanish style, brilliantly white in the sunlight with its control tower and its sky deck and its neat pocket-handkerchief square of coarse grass and specimen cactus and the wind-sock bellying in the tireless Texas wind. A flock of small planes, two medium large Company planes, and the mammoth private plane of Jordan Benedict. Down the runway Luz was warming up for her flight, you could see the trembling of the little bright yellow bug, its wings glinting in the sun, gay as a clip in a Fifth Avenue jeweler’s window.
They all climbed the metal steps, jauntily, into the hot shade of the plane’s interior.
“It’ll be cooler as soon as we get up,” Bick Benedict called out. “We’re pressurized.” Seats upholstered in brilliant blue and yellow and rose and green, very modern and capacious. It was startling to see that they did not stand in orderly rows like the seats in a commercial plane, but were firmly fixed near the windows as casually as you would place chairs in a living room. The safety belts were in bright colors to match and the metal clasps bore the Reata brand. In the tail was a cozy section with banquettes upholstered in crimson leather and a circular table in the center for cards or for dining.
And there at the door as they entered was a slim dark-haired young steward in a smart French-blue uniform and beside him stood the blonde young stewardess in her slick skirted version of the same, and in the inner distance an assistant steward busy with wraps and little jewel cases and magazines.
A vibration, a humming, a buzzing a roaring; they lifted they soared, the strained expression left the faces of the King, the Queen, the Motion Picture Star, the Congressman, the South American—all the passengers
who did not feel secure in life, whether up in the air or down on the ground.
“Bourbon!” boomed a big male voice. It was Judge Whiteside in reply to a question from the steward standing before him with tray and glasses.
The royal pair jumped perceptibly. The steward turned to them. “Bourbon? Scotch? Old-fashioned? Martini?”
“Oh, it’s a—it’s something to drink!” It was the first time the Queen had spoken since leaving the house.
“Well, sure,” said Bale Clinch, “bourbon whiskey, what else would it be?”
“I have some relatives whose family name this is, in a way of speaking. May I know how the name of Bourbon came to be used for a whiskey?” the girl asked shyly.
“Well, ma’am,” the Congressman began to explain, quite unconsciously addressing her correctly as he used the Texas colloquialism, “it’s the best old whiskey there is, and it’s made of mash that’s better than fifty percent corn. It’s named because they say it was first made in Bourbon County, Kentucky. My opinion, it was originally made in Texas.”
Vashti Snyth’s shrill voice came through with the piercing quality of a calliope whistle. “He’ll tell you everything was originally made in Texas. Texas brag. Worse than the Russians.”
Leslie made herself heard above the roar of the motors. “Here in the United States the word has still another meaning. Anyone who is extremely conservative—well, reactionary you know. We say he is a Bourbon. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all,” said the girl with an effort at gaiety. “But to have a good whiskey named after one is more flattering.”
Fascinated, the two watched the male Texans tossing down straight bourbon. Bent on pleasing though they were, they refused it themselves knowing that this was no refreshment for a royal stomach, sedentary by habit and weak by inheritance. On the wagon, said the heavyweight ex-champion. Not before six P.M., said the cowboy movie star.
For Leslie Benedict there was about this vast and improbable vehicle and its motley company a dreamlike quality. Her sister Lady Karfrey was being studiedly rude to royalty, she had no time for the deposed or unsuccessful. They’re behaving like refugees, Leslie thought. Worried and uncertain and insecure and over-anxious to please. Kings and queens deposed once were called exiles—splendid romantic exiles. Now they’re only refugees, I suppose.
They alone stared out of the plane windows, in their eyes fright and unbelief mingled. Seen from the sky the arid landscape lay, a lovely thing. The plains were gold and purple, the clouds cast great blue-black shadows, there were toy boxes in a dark green patch that marked the oasis of an occasional ranch house, and near by the jade-green circlets that meant water holes. So, in the almost unbearably brilliant blue sky, they soared and roared aloft in a giant iridescent bubble. The ship was steady as a bathtub, the stewards were preparing lunch, there was a tantalizing scent of coffee. Everybody said everything was wonderful.
The casual arrangement of the seats and the roar of the engines made conversation difficult. So the company sat for the most part in a splendor of aerial isolation, earthly mortals helplessly caught up in a godlike environment.
The canny and taciturn Gabe Target, who was said to hold the mortgage on every skyscraper in Texas and to own at least half of all the oil leases, now turned conversationally to the royal pair. His face was benign and mild, his abundant white hair parted very precisely in the middle, he resembled a good old baby until he lifted the hooded eyelids and you saw the twin cold grey phlegms through which his ophidian soul regarded the world. His voice was low and somewhat drawling. Understand you’re fixing to buy a ranch, you and the—uh—your good lady here. Takes a powerful sight of work, ranching. What you aiming to stock? Herefords?
Frantically the King snatched at the one familiar word which had emerged audibly from the rest.
“Ah yes, work! Everyone in your country works that is one of the wonderful things.” In a panic lest Gabe Target should make further inaudible offerings he turned to encounter the fascinated stare of Lona Lane’s husband seated just across the way. His royal training, drilled into him from the age of six, had taught him to file diplomatically in his memory names faces careers. At a loss now he regarded the tall moonfaced man smelling faintly of antiseptic. The eyes were myopically enlarged behind thick octagonal lenses, his maroon necktie matched his socks, his socks matched the faint stripe of his shirt. His beautifully manicured fingernails bore little white flecks under their glistening surface.
The King’s voice was high and plangent, it had the effect of a hoot in a cave. “I know of your charming wife’s career of course who does not but tell me what is your work your profession. Everyone works in this marvelous country of yours. And your name—I did not quite——”
The man, caught off guard, took a too hasty sip from the glass in his hand, coughed, managed to bow apologetically though seated. Recovering, “Lamax!” he roared. “G. Irwin Lamax. Oral specialist.”
An expression of absolute incomprehension glazed his listener’s face. Noting this, G. Irwin Lamax smiled and nodded understandingly. “Say, pardon me. I clean forgot you were a foreigner. I didn’t go for to get you buffaloed with American talk.” Smiling still more broadly he tapped his large even front teeth with a polished fingernail. “Oral specialist. Extractions. Teeth. Dentist.”
The King stared, stiffened, remembered, smiled a frosty smile, he was trying hard to say democracy democracy in his mind. He glanced at the lovely Lona Lane, he looked out of the window at the seemingly endless reaches of Bick Benedict’s empire, he closed his world-weary eyes a moment and wished himself quietly dead.
Bick Benedict, in response to a summoning glance from Leslie, came swiftly up the broad aisle between the seats. “Feeling all right, Sir? Well, I just thought…We’re flying over the south section now, we always buzz them a little when we go over.” He turned to face the assembled company, he stood an easy handsome figure in his very good tropical suit and his high-heeled polished tan boots; that boyish rather shy smile. He raised his voice. “Hold your hats, boys and girls! Hang on to your drinks. We’re going to give the south section a little buzz. Here we go!”
For perhaps thirty seconds then the huge ship did a series of banks, swoops and dives. It was an utterly idiotic and wantonly frightening performance, Leslie thought. Unadult and cruel. Some of the women visitors from outside Texas screamed. The Texas men grinned, they said, “Now nothing to be scared of, honey. This ship’s just feeling frisky as a cutting horse.” The Texas-bred women looked unruffled and resigned like mothers who are accustomed to the antics of high-spirited children.
From her aloof place near the tail of the big room the aquiline Lady Karfrey barked, “Why don’t you Texans grow up!”
Bick Benedict’s brother Bowie and Bick’s sister Maudie Placer from Buffalo turned upon her the gaze which native Texans usually reserve for rattlesnakes.
The ship righted itself, Leslie’s lovely voice projected itself miraculously above the roar and the chatter. She pointed toward the windows and the plains below. “They’re using the stinger on the mesquite. You might like to see it—those of you who aren’t Texans.”
“Stinger? What is a stinger?” the South American asked. Obedient faces were pressed against the windows, they surveyed a toy world.
“It’s that yellow speck. Now we’re a bit lower, you can see. The black patch is brush. The little thing moving along is the stinger, it’s a kind of tank with great knives and arms and head like a steel monster. It’s called a tree dozer too. It’s rather fascinating to watch.”
Up there, high in the sky, they could see the green patch of brushland that was a wilderness of mesquite. The trees were large and the thickness was dense and the yellow monster snorted and clanked and backed and attacked but they could not hear the snorts or sense the power. There was the green patch and then a path no longer green as the trees fell right and left like ninepins.
The King turned a shocked face away from the window. “But why do you
cut down a forest like that!”
“That’s no forest,” Bick Benedict said. “That’s mesquite.”
“But these are trees. Trees.”
Leslie turned from the window, she began to explain, brightly. “You see, the whole country’s overrun with mesquite.”
“Really! The whole of the United States!”
Oh dear! Leslie thought. Now I’m talking that way too. “No, I meant only Texas. All this once was open prairie. Grazing country. Then the mesquite came in a little, it wasn’t bad because there were no trees to speak of, you know. Then they brought cattle in from Mexico where the mesquite was growing. Some say that the cattle droppings carried the seed. Others say that when they built all these thousands of miles of automobile roads they stopped the prairie fires that used to sweep the earth clean of everything but grass——”
The voice of Maudie Placer, Bick’s perpetually angry sister, broke in with a sneering quality of almost comic dimensions. “Really, Leslie, you’re getting to be quite a rancher, aren’t you! You must have been reading books again.” But no one heeded this or even heard it except the three women who knew—Leslie herself, and her good friend Adarene Morey and the outspoken amiable Vashti Snyth.
“But your serfs,” said the King. “The peons I see everywhere here. Could they not have removed this mesquite with hand labor before it grew to such——”
“Serfs!” roared Bale Clinch. “Why, we got no serfs here in this country! Everybody here is a free American.”
“Yes, of course,” agreed the King hastily. “Certainly. I see. I see.”
He does see, Leslie thought. He’s only a frightened little king without a kingdom but he sees.
“Lunch!” cried Vashti happily as the steward and the stewardess and the assistant steward appeared, quite a little procession, with trays. “Mm! Leslie, you do have the loveliest food! Nobody in Texas has food like Leslie’s. Avocados stuffed with crab meat to begin with! My!”
