by Edna Ferber
“It’s too hot, anyway. Why can’t we wait and get it all in New York next month?”
“I like the idea of shopping for ski pants in Texas when the temperature’s one hundred.”
Gulick’s opulent windows reflected the firm’s disdain for such whims as temperature time or place. Hot or cold, autumn was just around the corner. Gulick’s window displays were aimed at those Texans who early armed themselves for a holiday in New York in California in Florida Europe Chicago or even that Yankeetown Dallas. The lure of one window was too much even for shoppers like Leslie and Luz, bent on sterner stuffs. Wordlessly they stopped to gaze at it. Luxurious though every article was, each had a chaste quality of utter perfection.
The window held a woman’s complete evening toilette. Nothing more. A fabulous fur wrap. A satin-and-tulle gown. Diamond necklace. A bracelet of clumped jewels. Long soft gloves flung carelessly on the floor like thick cream spilled on carpet. Cobwebs of lingerie. Wisps of chiffon hosiery. Fragile slippers. Jewel-encrusted handbag.
“Mm,” said Luz.
“Nice,” Leslie said.
As they stood there a hand slid through the arm of each, separating the two women. “Like it?” said a man’s voice. “I’ll buy the whole window for you, Leslie.”
Leslie stared into Jett Rink’s face.
Instinctively she jerked her arm to free it. His hand held it inescapably. He was scarcely taller than she, his eyes were level with hers, his face was close, the eyes intent, bloodshot. He was smiling. Now, still holding the arms of the two women locked beneath his arms, an iron hand pressed tightly against each hand on his shoulder, he turned his head slowly on that short thick neck to stare at the girl.
“You’re Luz. I’m Jett Rink, Luz.”
“Yes. I’ve seen pictures of you. Look, do you mind, you’re just a little too hearty, you’re hurting me.”
“Luz. A hell of a thing to do to a pretty girl like you, name her after that old bitch.”
The arms of both women jerked to be free. He held them. He turned again to Leslie. “Am I hurting you too, Leslie?”
She thought, clearly. On Sonoro Street in Hermoso in front of Gulick’s. Nothing must happen. Nothing to disgrace Jordan and the children. She spoke quietly as she always had spoken in the past to the violent boy, now a more violent man.
“I’m not going to wrestle with you on the street. Take your hand away.”
He swung them around as if in a dance, one on each side. “Would you wrestle in the car?” At the curb was an incredibly long bright blue car. A man sat at the wheel, another stood at the rear door. “Come on, girls. Let’s take a ride.”
It was unbelievable it was monstrous. For the first time she knew fear. He propelled them across the sidewalk.
“No!” Leslie cried. Faces of passers-by turned toward them, uncertainly.
Luz’s free hand was a fist. Now she actually twisted round to aim at his face but he jerked his head back, and he laughed a great roaring laugh and the passers-by, reassured, went on their way grinning at the little playful scuffle. “I’m not going to hurt you. Don’t make such a fuss.” He and the man standing at the car door half lifted half pulled them into the deep roomy rear seat, Jett between them. The door slammed, the man whirled into the front seat with the driver, the car shot into traffic.
Her voice rather high, like a little girl’s, Luz said, “What is this, anyway! Let’s get out, Mama.”
Leslie looked at the monolithic faces of the two men in the front seat. “If you hurt Luz,” Leslie said, her voice low and even, “you know perfectly well that no bodyguards can keep him from killing you.” At the absurdity of this melodramatic statement she began to laugh somewhat hysterically.
“There you!” Jett turned triumphantly to Luz. “Your ma knows I was just fooling, I saw in the paper where you girls were in town and I been wanting to have a little talk with your ma. I been stuck on your ma for years. Did you know that?”
“I think you’re a goon,” Luz shouted.
Jett’s voice took on an aggrieved tone. “There you go. Comes to a Benedict, no matter what I do, it’s wrong. I was just kidding around. I watched for you to come out of the Tejas. And then over to Gulick’s and standing there looking in the window like a couple of little stenographers or something. Say, you don’t have to tell me,” he went on, easily, conversationally. “I know Bick’s pinched for money all the time, that big damn fool place he thinks he runs. I’d buy you the whole Gulick setup, Leslie, the whole ten floors and everything in it, if you say the word. I’m sick of buying stuff for myself. At first I got a bang out of it, but not any more. Look at this coat! I got a topcoat like it, too. Vicuña. Feel! Soft as a baby’s bottom. Looka this watch.” He thrust out his great hairy wrist. “It does everything but bake a cake. This Caddy’s a special body and armored, thirty thousand dollars.”
“What are we going to do, Mama?” Luz said. Her voice now was as quiet as her mother’s had been, but its undernote was tremulous.
“It’s all right, dearest,” Leslie said. “It’s his idea of a joke.”
“I ain’t joking, Leslie. I got to talk to you. Like I said.”
The man seated at the right, in front, picked up a sort of telephone receiver that was one of a battery of contrivances attached to the dashboard. He spoke into it with mechanical clarity and conciseness. “Passing corner of Viña and Caballero…. Three minutes…. Past corner Viña and Caballero. Two and three quarter minutes.”
Their speed never slowed, a huge building like a warehouse loomed ahead, a ten-foot metal fence enclosed it. The car approached this at terrific pace, in that instant before what seemed an inevitable crash the gates swung sharply open, the car tore through without diminishing speed, the gates swung shut, the huge car stopped with a shriek of brakes. The man in front got out. He stood at the car door. Jett Rink was scribbling a note, holding the pad up close to his chest as he wrote. He tore it off, the man at the door took it. “You call them yourself. And tell them it’s got to be there within a half an hour or no dice…. Now then, girlies, I want to talk to your ma, Luz. Do you want to sit here in the car while we go and sit on the bench there in the shade? Or do you want to sit there and we’ll stay in the car.”
Curiously, it was Luz who now took over. “We’ll both get out or we’ll both stay in. Or I’ll begin to scream and while it probably won’t do any good in this place I’ll scream and scream and scream until——”
“Oh, all right.” Wearily, as though agreeing to the whim of an unreasonable child. “It’s hot, no matter where you sit. You go on over there, other side of the entrance. Your ma and I’ll sit on that bench here, have our little talk. Either you girls want a Coke or something cold to drink?”
Leslie looked up at the blank windows of the building. “What is this place?”
“It’s nothing only a warehouse where I keep stuff, valuable stuff. I got places like this all around. First I was going to drive you out to the ranch, I got a place about an hour out. But a lot of folks out there all the time, visiting and all, I figured you wouldn’t like that. I wouldn’t want to do anything you wouldn’t like—you and the kid.”
She glanced at him but his face was serious. “I thought you were drunk. But you’re not, are you?”
“I ain’t had a drop for two days. Minute I knew you was in town I quit, I knew I wanted a clear head and sometimes I get fuzzy when I take a couple. I’m stone cold sober.”
Slim, almost boyish seated there beside her in his neat expensive clothes, a blue shirt, a polka-dotted tie.
“Such silly behavior. You’ve scared Luz to death, she didn’t know you when you were a greasy kid on Reata. What is it? You want me to help you make friends again with Bick, or something like that, I suppose?”
“You suppose. You suppose I don’t know you’re smarter than that! You’re the only really smart girl I ever knew. And that ain’t all. Not. Quite. All.” He had been smoking a cigarette. Now he tossed it away. “Look. I been crazy about you all these years. Yo
u know that well and good.” He was talking carefully and reasonably as one would present a business argument or a political credo. “I tried everything to get shut of it. I had all the kinds there is. I even been married three four times. Did you know that?”
“I’ve never thought about it at all.”
“Why do you suppose I done that—did that?”
“Some men do. It’s an unadult trait. It means they’ve never really grown up.”
He dropped his tone of calm reasoning. The little twin dots of red flicked into the close-set hooded eyes. He leaned toward her. “I got to get shut of it. It’s making me sick. Look at this.” He held out his hand. “Look at that! Shakes like that all the time.”
“That’s alcohol and shot nerves and fear.”
“Leslie. Leslie. Come with me. Leslie.”
Equably, and quite conversationally as though exchanging chitchat with a friend. “I’m really quite an old lady now, you know. You just think you’re still talking to that rather attractive girl who came, a bride, to Reata…. It’s very hot here, Jett.”
“Anything you’d want. Anything in the world. He wouldn’t care. He don’t care about anything only Reata.”
She stood up. “All right, Luz!” she called. “We’re going now.”
He grasped her arm. “I’ll go after Bick and you and your two kids. I swear to God I will. I’ll never let up on all of you.”
“You’ve been seeing too many Western movies.”
She moved toward the car. The man sat up at the wheel. The second man came down the steps and toward the car.
“I ain’t going,” Jett said. “Luz, you sit up front there with him. Leslie, you get in the back here. You too, Dent. You call back here for me in ten minutes.”
He stood there a moment in the brilliant sun.
“I’ll do like I said,” Jett called softly to Leslie, through the window.
“Where to?” asked the driver.
“Gulick’s,” Leslie said airily. “We have a great deal of shopping to do.”
“No. Please.” Luz did not look round. “I’d like to go to the hotel first. For a minute. I forgot something.”
“Tejas,” Leslie said then.
The gates opened.
Down the street. In traffic against traffic in and out in sickening suicidal zigzags. He has told them to kill us this way, Leslie thought. Then, reasonably, No, they’d be killed too, so probably not. They stopped at the Tejas entrance. They were in the lobby, they were in the elevator, they were in their rooms.
“I’m going to call up Papa.”
“I wouldn’t,” Leslie said. “Not until we’ve talked a little first.”
Luz was crying, quietly, her eyes wide open and the tears sliding unwiped down her face. “I was scared. I kept thinking I’d do something terrific and brave, but I was scared.”
“So was I, dear.”
Luz wiped her face now, she stood staring at her mother as at some new arresting object. “I think it’s the most romantic thing I ever heard of! And I think he’s kind of cute.”
“Don’t say that.”
“But I do. I’ve heard a lot about him and I never believed it, but it’s true. He’s a kind of modern version of the old buccaneer type like Grampa and Great-grampa Benedict. They were tough, too, in a different way, of course, land swiping and probably a lot of hanky-panky with the Mexican girls. I must say Jett Rink’s windup was an anticlimax, though. I expected rape at the very least——”
“You’re being silly, Luz. This man is a twisted——”
“The Snyth twins say he’s the fashion now, he’s so tough he’s considered chic. I must say I’m impressed with you, Mama, being the secret passion of that hard-boiled…” She had gone into her bedroom, her voice trailed off, then came up sharply: “…what in the world is all this! Mom! Come here!”
Boxes. Boxes and boxes and boxes. Stacked on beds and chairs. The smart distinctive blue-and-white striped Gulick boxes.
Miss Luz Benedict, the address slip read. Miss Luz Benedict. Miss Luz Benedict. Miss Luz Benedict.
She yanked at the cords. She opened a box. Another. Another. The fabulous fur wrap. The satin and tulle evening dress. The necklace. The slippers…The window.
“…Gulick?” Leslie at the telephone. “I want to talk to Mrs. Bakefield. Mrs. Bakefield’s office…. This is Mrs. Jordan Benedict…. Mrs. Bakefield? Yes. Mrs. Jordan Benedict. There has been a mistake. We just came in—the Tejas—and there are a million packages that don’t belong to us. It is just some terrible mistake…. Oh, Mrs. Bakefield! He must have seen some sort of mention in the newspaper…. No…Oh no, she doesn’t even know him…I hear he is very—well—eccentric now and then…. Just send for them…yes…now…”
26
A Benedict family meeting—a Benedict Big Business Powwow—was in progress. But this was not the regular annual Benedict family business assemblage. This was an unscheduled meeting called by the outraged members of the clan. For the first time in a quarter of a century the Big House was cleared of all outside guests. Only the family occupied the bedrooms, clattered down the halls, ate at the long table in the dining room. But the house was well filled for they had come, down to the last and least voting member. The thick walls seemed bursting with the strain of temper and fury within.
They sat in the vast main living room that had been planned to accommodate formal occasions such as this—funerals, weddings, family conclaves. A handsome lot they were, too; tall, fit, their eyes clear their skins fresh with carefully planned exercise and expensive proteins and vitamins.
Uncle Bawley, oldest member of the clan, was presiding but no one paid the slightest attention to him. In appearance he was extraordinarily unchanged with the years except for the white shock of hair above the mahogany face. These meetings were ordinarily conducted with parliamentary exactitude, everyone polite and gruesomely patient in spite of the emotions always seething beneath the ceremonial behavior. But now the great chamber vibrated with heat and hate and contention. Parliamentary procedure was thrown to the Gulf winds. Uncle Bawley’s gavel (mesquite, and too soft a wood for the quelling of Benedict brawls) rapped in vain for order.
Bick Benedict stood facing them all, and Bick Benedict shouted. “I won’t have it. We’re doing all right without oil. I won’t have it stinking up my ranch.”
“Your ranch!” yelled a dozen Benedicts. Then, variously, “That’s good! Did you hear that! You’re managing this place and getting your extra cut for it. Your ranch!” New York Chicago Buffalo California Florida Massachusetts Benedicts.
Leslie, sitting by, an outsider, thought, Oh dear this is so bad for him I wish they’d go home or why don’t they stay here and try running it for a change, the Horrors.
One of the more arrogant of the Benedicts, who dwelt on the East Coast, now dropped all pretense of courtesy.
“Just come down off it, will you, Bick? And face it. You’ve got delusions of grandeur. You’re big stuff, I know, among the local Texas boys. But we happen to have an interest in this concern. And we’ve got the right to say by vote whether we want or don’t want a little matter of five or ten million a year—and probably a lot more—a whole lot more later—divided up amongst us. I don’t know about the rest of you boys and girls, but me, I could use a little extra pin money like that.”
Stubbornly facing the lot of them, his face white beneath the tan, and set in new deep lines, Bick repeated stubbornly the words he had used over and over again as though they presented a truth that made all argument useless.
“Reata is a cattle ranch. It’s been a cattle ranch for a hundred years.”
“That’s just fine,” drawled an unsentimental Benedict. “And there used to be thirteen states in the Union and the covered wagon was considered hot stuff.”
The laugh that now went up encouraged Maudie Placer to sink a deft dart. “And please don’t quote that story about old Pappy Waggoner when he was drilling for water and they brought in all that oil on his North
Texas place. Quote. ‘Damn it, cattle can’t drink that stuff.’ Unquote.”
Now Leslie saw with a sinking heart that the grey-white in Bick’s face was changing to scarlet. “Do you people know who wants the lease? Do you know who wants the rights?”
“Yes, Teacher, we do. It’s the Azabache Oil Company and a mighty pretty little outfit it is, too. I’m real petted on it.”
“I’ll bet you are. You’ve been away from. Texas so long you’ve forgotten your Spanish. D’you know what Azabache means! It’s Spanish for jet, if you want to know. And it doesn’t mean just jet for black oil. It’s jet for Jett Rink. Jett—Azabache. He controls most of it. Well, by God, I won’t have Jett Rink owning any piece of my country here on Reata——”
“Hold on there! Just—a—minute. You’ve got a pick on Jett Rink, you’ve had it for years. Some little personal feud. Who cares!”
“I tell you you’ll all care if he gets a toe in here.”
“All right all right. He’s a mean umbry. Everybody knows that. We don’t want to love him. We just want a nice thick slice of that billion he’s got stashed away.”
“He’s got nothing but a lot of paper. He’s in over his head. Everybody knows that Gabe Target could sell him down the river tomorrow if he wanted to.”
Now Uncle Bawley forsook Rules of Order. “That’s right, Jurden!” he bellowed—he who never had called his nephew anything but Bick. “Don’t you let ’em ride you!”
“The law!” shouted a Benedict.
“How about Pa’s will!” Bick countered. “And Grampa’s! You going to fight those too?”
“You bet we are. We’re going to fight them for years if we have to. We don’t care what the will says. There wasn’t any oil on Reata or anywhere near it when Pa’s will was made. We’ll get every lawyer in New York and Chicago and Houston and Hermoso and Corpus Christi and Austin and Vientecito——”
Uncle Bawley threw his mesquite gavel across the room and brought his massive fist down on the table with a crash and a succession of crashes that silenced even the shouting Benedicts.
