by Edna Ferber
“Boo!” said Leslie.
Uncle Bawley called across the room. “What do you girls say we have a sunrise breakfast tomorrow, ride up into the hills? And I’ll cook.”
Vashti’s childlike squeal. “Ooh! I’d love it! Let’s.”
“Well, then, you girls better get your beauty sleep,” Pinky said. “Or we won’t be able to rout you out come daybreak.”
Shrewishly Leslie called to him over her shoulder. “Yes, send the idiot children to bed so that you massive brains can talk in peace.”
The men managed a tolerant laugh but Leslie hoped she detected in it a touch of malaise.
Adarene again began to ply her needle, in and out, in and out. She did not look up. “If you think anything you can say will make a dent in the tough hide of Texas.”
“I’d like to crack their skulls together like coconut shells.”
“I’m going to get me a snack before I go to bed,” Vashti said.
Automatically Leslie rejected this. “After all that dinner!”
“I’m eating for two.” Virtuously.
“At least,” Adarene agreed. “Look, Leslie, just pay them no mind. It’s the elections coming up this autumn. With Luz dead and Jett Rink off the place and that Fidel Gomez getting uppity they say, there are lots of important things to straighten out. I heard that Jett Rink was trying to make trouble with the ranch hands.”
“What’s that got to do with elections?”
Adarene took three or four careful stitches, the big needle went through the coarse stiff web of the material, pop pop pop. “You’ve never seen one of our elections, have you?”
“No. What about them?”
“Well, sometimes it gets sort of—uh—dramatic. The Mexican vote is pretty important.”
“Isn’t any vote important?”
“I suppose so. There are about four million whites in Texas. And about a million Mexicans.”
“Whites. Mexicans. I never thought of Mexicans as—but if they vote they’re citizens, aren’t they?”
“Yes. Yes, of course. But——”
Vashti, slapping down the cards with the vehemence of one who is playing a losing game, was still mumbling maddeningly as she played. “…There! There’s the deuce…. Come on now you ace…. Oh, damn!” Scrabbling the unobliging cards together she looked up, defeated. “It’s real exciting at election. Regular old times, guns and all. They lock the gates and guard the fences, nobody can get out.”
“Who can’t?”
“Everybody. The Mexicans. The ranch hands.”
“Vashti. Uh—look, Adarene. You two girls forget sometimes that I’m new to Texas. I love to know about things. Now. They lock the gates so that people can’t get out at election time. Why?”
In a tone of elaborate patience, as one would speak to a backward child, Vashti said, “So they’ll vote right of course, honey. So they won’t go out and get mixed up with somebody’ll tell ’em wrong. This way they vote like they’re told to vote.”
“Told by—who tells them?”
“Depends. Our place it’s Pa and two three behind him. And now Pinky too, of course.”
“Of course. And at Reata, who?”
Adarene rolled up her embroidery, her voice cut this interrogation. “How about a three-handed game of bridge if those mean men won’t talk to us or play?”
But Leslie leaned toward Vashti in utter concentration. “Who at Reata?”
“Oh goodness, I don’t know, I don’t pay much attention to men’s stuff like elections and so on. Luz, she used to be the real boss. She sure was the point when it came to rounding up the Mexicans. Then there was Jett Rink, of course, drunk as a sheep election time but that always made him tougher and they were scared of him. And then Fidel Gomez around Nopal and Benedict, all the Mexicans there.”
Adarene Morey stood up. “Girls, I think I’ll go to bed, get my beauty sleep if we’re going to get up before dawn. How about you, Vashti?”
“I ain’t really sleepy. We slept so late this morning. Pinky never batted an eye till seven. I thought he was dead. It’s this mountain air and all, I guess.”
“Listen a minute, Vashti. What offices do they vote for? Local? State? National?”
“H’m? Oh. I don’t know, rightly. Do you, Adarene? I don’t pay any attention. Commissioners, I guess. Anyway, for around here. Of course everybody is tied up with the ranches, miles and miles around. Why, they wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for us, it’s their living, hauling cattle, working cattle, supplies and stuff and all that goes with it. I don’t know, don’t ask me, Pinky says I’m a nitwit about stuff like that. Whyn’t you ask Bick? Bick’ll explain to you all about it. I’d like a sandwich or something, wouldn’t you, girls? And a glass of milk and maybe some of that pie left over if there is any. Let’s raid the icebox, maybe the boys will too.”
Leslie glanced toward the four men at the far end of the room. Their heads were close together, their voices low, their shoulders hunched.
“No, I think I’ll take Adarene’s advice and go to bed. And read.”
“You can take my movie magazine I bought in San Antonio, I’m through with it.”
Adarene laid a hand lightly on Leslie’s arm. “Stop looking like Lady Macbeth, honey. Take Texas the way Texas takes bourbon. Straight. It goes down easier.”
“All I know is,” Vashti now was prattling on, “Mott says less’n ten years from now about six men’ll be running the whole of Texas. Gabe Target he says, and Ollie Whiteside if he gets Judge, and Lew and a course Bick and Pinky—Mott, I mean.”
At ten o’clock Leslie, reading in bed, smelled the aroma of coffee, the state nightcap. The strong smell of the brew made her slightly queasy, she wished Bick would come in and open another window. She took deep grateful breaths of the cool sweet air. There was no sound. The men must be in the kitchen at the far end of the house. She resumed her reading of the naive volume on Spanish land grants. She must have dozed a bit for suddenly Bick was in the room, he was pulling off his boots with a little grunt.
“Jordan! I must have dropped off like a dozy old lady. It’s this heavenly air.”
Bick Benedict did not reply. He regarded his bride with a hard and hostile eye. She looked very plain. Her habit of reading in bed through long night hours had made spectacles advisable and these were of the owlish horn-rimmed variety. The bare electric light bulb was glaring down on her face. As always, when emotionally disturbed or when reading absorbedly, she had wound and unwound tendrils of her hair so that now she presented a Medusa aspect. There was a small highlight of cold cream on one cheek. Finally, the slight cast that usually made more piquant the beauty of her eyes now was exaggerated under the strain of reading beneath the glaring white light.
Harsh unspoken words formed in Bick Benedict’s mind as he went about the business of preparing for bed. So this was Leslie Lynnton the Virginia belle and beauty that he had split a gut to get. No Texas girl good enough, huh? Oh no!
She now removed her glasses and regarded him thoughtfully, tapping her teeth with her spectacle bows. She had closed her book, one finger inserted to keep her place. He’s angry, she told herself, because I wanted to hear the talk. And I suppose I wasn’t very polite. That cave-man stuff.
“This old book is fascinating, it’s about Spanish land grants. It says in those days they measured by varas. Do you know what a vara is?”
He did not reply.
Mm. So you won’t talk, eh? She went on then, equably. “They cut a switch off a tree—about a yard long, it says—and that’s what they measured the land with. A vara’s length. A switch’s length. And then sometimes they measured by the wagon wheel, it says. They tied a red rag to a wheel spoke and walked behind the wagon and every time the red rag flashed round it was roughly fifteen feet. Isn’t that sweet! No wonder people could have million-acre ranches—I mean——”
In his pajamas he was standing before the wall mirror running an investigating hand over his cheek. He regarded his own image i
ntently. “Why, thanks,” he said. “Can you tell me more about Texas? It’s all so fascinating.”
“Sorry about my cave-man speech, darling. I’ll apologize tomorrow to the others, first thing.”
“That’s big of you.” He came to the foot of the bed and stood glaring at her in anger. His diction was pure Harvard and hard-bitten. “You certainly distinguished yourself this evening.”
“Sh! Jordan! They can hear every word in every room along this veranda.”
“That’s fine. And we heard every word you said in there too, tonight. Dirty politics! And we date back a hundred thousand years! Who the hell do you think you are! Joan of Arc or something!”
She held her breath as the words rang through the little stark white bedroom. They were holding their breath too, she thought, and hearing all this, there in those other little stark white bedrooms along the gallery. “I said I’m sorry about the name-calling. It was impolite. But in principle I was right.”
“You come down here and try to tell us how to run the ranch! And the town! And the state! I swear to God I think you’re crazy! Insulting my friends. I’ve stood it because of your—the way you feel just now. I’m through with that. You’re my wife, you’re Mrs. Jordan Benedict. When the hell are you going to settle down and behave like everybody else!”
She got out of bed then and stood facing him, the book still in her hand, pressed against the laces at her breast. “Never.”
They stood glaring at each other. Automatically his hand came up. He stared down at it. Dropped it to his side.
“I almost hit you.”
“I know. My darling.”
“You’re running around in your bare feet. Cold.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Get back into bed.”
Shivering she crept between the covers. He turned out the light.
Silence in the little room, silence in all the little rooms, silence in the dark fragrant Texas night so full of turmoil and unrest and conflict.
“Oh, Jordan, I wish we could live up here in the mountains. I wish we could stay up here and Uncle Bawley could run Reata. Couldn’t he? Couldn’t he?”
“Get this. If you can understand anything that isn’t Virginia and pink coats and hunt dinners and Washington tea parties. Just get this. I run Reata. I run Holgado. I run the damn wet Humedo Division and Los Gatos too and a lot you’ve never heard of. Everything in them and on them is run by me. I run everything and everyone that has the Reata brand on it.”
“Does that include me?”
“Dramatizing yourself, like a cheap movie.” Silence again. He spoke, his resentment hung almost a palpable thing in the darkness. “Tired. The hardest kind of day’s work doesn’t wear me down like ten minutes of this god-damned wrangling. I’m not used to it.”
“You’re not used to marriage…. Jordan, who was it said that thing about power?”
“Oh, Christ! I don’t know who said anything about power.”
“Papa used to quote it. He said——”
“Papa Papa! Forget Papa, will you!”
She lay very still, concentrating. The cool still fragrant mountain night. Suddenly she sat bolt upright. Her low vibrant voice hung in the darkness. “Power corrupts. That’s it. I can’t remember who said it. An English statesman I think. He said power corrupts. And absolute power corrupts absolutely. Jordan.”
But he did not hear her. He was asleep.
19
It was darker than night when the Mexican maid brought the morning coffee to their room. But all Holgado was astir. Hoofbeats. The deep reverberations of powerful motor vehicles, the sound intensified on the thin mountain air. The hiss and drum of Spanish spoken along the corridors. The tap-tap of men’s boot heels, the clink of spurs. The scampering feet of Mexican servitude—a sound that Leslie found irksome. “They don’t walk. They run. On their heels. I should think it would shatter their gizzards.” But the other Texas morning sounds she loved…. Sí sí señor…Momento señora…Las botas, sí…Hace mucho frío…
Bick emerged from the bathroom fully dressed. Tiptoeing. He peered toward her bed, the bathroom light behind him.
“I’m awake.”
“Vashti’s complaining about the cold.”
“It’s heaven.”
Last night’s quarrel was cast aside like a soiled garment discarded in the fresh new day. “If we’re going to make that fool sunrise breakfast of Bawley’s. Even you girls can’t make the sun wait while you dress.”
She threw aside the covers, sat a moment hugging her shoulders. “I’ll be dressed in fifteen minutes. I must say I’d like sunrises just as well if they could run them later in the morning.”
“I don’t know—is this ride up the trail good for you now? How about you girls taking a car instead? We boys can get a head start riding.”
“The first time I met you you bragged that your mother practically produced you on horseback.”
“She was a Texan.”
“Even for Texans the equipment is, I believe, standard.”
He grinned. “See you later. I’m going down to the corral. I’ll pick a gentled one for you.”
She was still slim and almost boyish in her riding clothes. As she came along the veranda she could hear Uncle Bawley’s voice from the direction of the dining room, there was a sharp edge to his usual tone of almost caressing gentleness. “No, I don’t want any cook along, I’m going to do the cooking myself. How about a couple dozen those Mexican quail, I’ll rig up an asador over the fire, they’ll make good breakfast eating, with bacon.”
Vashti and Adarene were not yet down. It was still dark, the lights shone everywhere about the place. In her hand she carried the book on Spanish land grants, she had finished it and now she would tuck it back into the sparse shelf in the gun room just off the patio. She opened the door, peered into the grim unlighted room, her hand groping for the electric switch. A sound, a little quick startled sound. She hesitated. Waited. Silence. But there was a sense of presence there, of a something that held its breath and waited. Oh, pooh, a mouse. Her fingers found the light, flicked it on.
A boy, dark ragged shaking, was flattened against the whitewashed wall, the palms of his hands were spread against it like one crucified, the emaciated body was trying to press into the wall itself. The black eyes, fixed in a frantic stare, became imploring as the eyelids relaxed a trifle and caught breath lifted the rags on his breast. Before she darted out and shut the door, before she lifted her voice to call, in that split second her inner voice said, That was Fear you just saw that wasn’t flesh and blood that was blind naked Fear in the form of a man. Then she called, a note of hysteria in her voice. “Uncle Bawley! Uncle Bawley! Uncle Bawley!”
He was there with incredible swiftness, speeded by the urgency in her voice, towering above her, his hands on her shoulders. “What’s wrong! Leslie!”
“In there. There’s a—somebody hiding in there.”
He flung open the gun-room door. The boy was on the floor, a heap on the floor like a mop like a rag. Speaking in Spanish Uncle Bawley said, “Get up!” The boy did not move. Uncle Bawley picked him up as you would a wet dog, gingerly, by the neck and shoulders and half carried half dragged him along the floor of the patio.
“No,” Leslie whispered. “No. Don’t——”
“It’s all right. Happens every day.” Uncle Bawley looked enormous above the little heap of rags on the floor. “Nobody’s going to hurt him. He’s just a wetback.”
“A what?”
“Wetback. Swum or waded the river between Mexico and here, must have walked a hundred miles and more.”
Foolishly she stammered, “What river?”
“Now Leslie! Rio Grande of course. They do it all the time.” Now he leaned over the boy, he spoke to him in Spanish, Leslie caught a word here and there. In Uncle Bawley’s voice there was something that caused the bundle of rags to raise its head. Leslie’s Spanish lessons bore fruit now. A familiar Spanish word, the inflection of U
ncle Bawley’s voice, her own instinct combined to give her the sense of what was being said. Come come, boy, stand up! You have waded the Rio Grande you have walked the long miles, that takes the courage of a man. Don’t crouch there like a dog. No one will hurt you. Stand up! You are a man! He stirred the bundle with the toe of his shining boot.
The rags moved, the thing got to its feet, the face was a mask of abject terror and glimmering hope mingled. Seventeen, perhaps. A skeleton.
“How long have you been in there?”
“This morning only. I walked all night and the night before and the night before and before. By day I lay where I could, hiding.”
“Food?”
The shoulders came up, the bony hands spread.
“Have you seen Immigration Officers or Rangers these past nights?”
“Once men passed near me as I lay in a ditch. I prayed I pressed deep into the ground I pushed myself into the desert I was the desert I prayed to the Miraculous Christ and to the Señor de Chalma and to the Virgin of Guadalupe and they heard and my prayers were answered.”
“I bet,” said Uncle Bawley.
The boy was still talking, a stream of words poured out in relief and hysteria and hope.
“Tell me,” Leslie said. “I only catch a word here and there.”
“It’s nothing, Leslie. Happens all the time I tell you. About fifty sixty thousand of these wetbacks slip out of Mexico every year, swim or wade the Rio Grande where it’s shallow, travel by night and hole up by day. The Border Patrol and the Immigration boys and Rangers and all, they can’t keep all of them out. Sometimes they make it, a lot of ’em are caught and thrown back. Sometimes they’re shot by mistake, sometimes they wander around and starve. This skin-and-bones says he’s been eating rats.”
“No!” She was stiff with horror.
“But he ought’ve come in with the regular Mexican labor lot. Thousands of them brought across legally here to Texas. Pick the cotton and the crops, fruit and vegetables in the Valley, and so on. He says he tried to make it, they were full up.”
