by Mark Gimenez
"He sure is."
"Where are they going?"
Beck figured a five-year-old didn't need to know about slaughterhouses, so he said, "Well, they're—"
"Hamburgers, little lady. You can eat 'em at McDonald's next week."
Beck turned. An old coot in a cowboy hat was standing there with his thumbs in his pockets and a grin on his face.
"Hamburgers?" Meggie's face was stricken. "The moo-cows?"
The old coot realized his error. "Uh, sorry about that."
Beck pulled Meggie away from the cows and walked the children west down Main Street. They passed sun-hardened locals wearing Wrangler jeans, cowboy boots, plaid shirts, and caps with John Deere and Caterpillar on the front. Twenty-four years later, Beck could still recognize the goat ranchers, turkey farmers, and peach growers; they carried the smell of their trades with them.
But he didn't recognize the other people walking down Main Street, sleek women sporting tattoos, low-rise designer jeans, and high heels, holding leashes connected to puffy French poodles and hairless Chihuahuas, and carrying stuffed shopping bags … teenage girls wearing short-shorts with their lace thongs showing in the back and tank tops stretched across their precocious chests up front and texting on cell phones … long-haired boys wearing baggy shorts, tee shirts, and headphones wrapped around their skulls … and pale-skinned, soft-bellied men looking as if they longed for the office.
Who are these people?
They walked on and something began bothering Beck in the back of his brain. Something wasn't right. Something was missing. And then he realized: the people were missing. The other people. He had become so accustomed to the diversity of downtown Chicago—Latinos, African-Americans, Asians, Arabs in burkas, Indians in turbans, Orthodox Jews, homeless people pushing grocery carts, and cops, trash, and graffiti—and to hearing loud Tejano and rap music pounding out from boom boxes carried by kids who dressed like gangsters and spouted profanity like rappers, that it had all just become part of the landscape that he no longer noticed, like elevator music.
But when all of that is suddenly not there, you notice.
He noticed. None of that was here in Fredericksburg, Texas. The people were white, the streets and sidewalks were clean and quiet, and the cops were two guys in shorts riding bikes. This was not downtown Chicago. But it wasn't his old hometown either.
Fredericksburg had changed.
The sounds had changed. "Guten Morgen" and "Danke schön" had been as common on Main Street back then as "howdy" and "hello." But not now. Not a German word was heard that day.
And the sights had changed. The same historic buildings still lined Main Street—Hauptstrasse to the locals—but all the vacant, dilapidated buildings that had lined the street when Beck had left town had been restored and were now occupied, and the names on the buildings were all different. Gone were the old German businesses like the Weidenfeller Gas Station, Otto Kolmeier Hardware, Dorer Jewelers, Haas Custom Handweaving, Langerhans Mower & Saw, Engel's Deli, Freda's Gifts, and Opa's Haus. In their places were fancy boutiques called Haberdashery, Lauren Bade, Root, In-Step, and Slick Rock and shops called Cowboy Eclectic, Divinely Designed, Bath Junkie, Rather Sweet, and Phil Jackson's Amazing World of Things.
Doc Keidel's two-story limestone home still stood on Main Street, but Keidel's Drug Store was now a "vintage western boutique" called Rawhide and the Keidel Memorial Hospital was a kitchen emporium called Der Küchen Laden. In the basement was a restaurant called Rathskeller. The White Elephant Saloon was now the Lucky Star Boutique, and the Domino Parlor where the old-timers had gathered to play dominoes and drink beer all day was now a store called Grandma Daisy's. Lee-Ed's FolkArt & Decoys was a wine cellar. And the Western Auto was a store just for dogs called Dogologie.
The Stout Shop still served the sturdier women of Gillespie County, but the newspaper had been replaced by Spunky Monkey Toys and a store called Zertz that sold $250 hand-painted jeans for girls. Hill Country Outfitters sold kayaks. And the Pioneer National Bank had been replaced by a Chase branch.
Ausländer Biergarten, the old Herbert Schmidt Electric shop, Dooley's 5-10-25¢ store, and Dietz Bakery still occupied their same spots on Main Street, but the Jenschke Furniture Store was now a live music theater called the Rockbox, and the Nut Haus and the Wilke Barbershop where Beck had gotten his hair cut had been combined for a store called Grasshopper & Wild Honey. And the old Palace Theater where Beck had watched John Wayne in Rooster Cogburn was now a store called Parts Unknown, A Fashion Adventure. They sold expensive English loafers and Tommy Bahama shirts.
Beck shook his head. Who would have the balls to wear a Tommy Bahama shirt in Fredericksburg, Texas?
Beck turned and came face to face with a white-haired man wearing a bright maroon shirt printed with multicolored parrots perched on floral patterns of yellow and white flowers sprouting amid long green leaves—a Tommy Bahama shirt.
"Nice shirt," Beck said.
"It's called 'Parrots of the Caribbean,' " the old man said.
"You look like the bird exhibit at the zoo."
"I was in a rut."
"Well, you're out of it now."
The two men sized each other up like gunfighters looking to draw. The old man's thick white hair was cut short and contrasted sharply against his weathered face. He was wearing the parrot shirt over Wrangler jeans and brown work boots. His bare arms were tanned and sinewy, and his hands were gnarly. His blue eyes were as clear as the sky and were looking Beck over, from his Nike sneakers to his shorts and knit golf shirt to the gray streaks in his hair. The old man finally nodded as if in approval.
"Beck."
"J.B."
"Just get in?"
Beck nodded. "Saw the peach stands out 290 are closed."
"Nothing to sell. We're in drought, going on seven years."
"It is hot."
"It's Texas."
"Who are all these people?"
"Tourists. They say we're the next Santa Fe."
"Shopping on the Fourth of July?"
"Every day but Christmas."
The two men fell silent on Main Street. After a long moment, Beck said, "You get married again?"
The old man snorted. "That'll be the day."
After another moment of silence, Meggie's voice rose from below: "Who are you, mister?"
The old man looked down at her, then back up at Beck as if waiting for him to respond. Finally, the old man patted her head and said, "Why, little gal, I'm your grandpa."
John Beck Hardin, Sr., known to all, even his son, as J.B., was sixty-six years old. He stood six feet tall, he weighed one hundred ninety pounds, and he had a handshake that could still bring tears to a grown man's eyes. He was born here and he would die here, as his parents and wife had. He had married Peggy Dechert when he was twenty-four and buried her when he was thirty-seven, left to raise a thirteen-year-old boy alone.
When Beck's mother died, the world had lost all color. Life became black-and-white, J.B. became hard, and Beck became angry—at God, at the world, at his father. By his senior year, the anger was as much a part of Beck Hardin as the color of his eyes or the speed of his legs. He took the anger with him onto the football field; he played with a fury that even he did not understand, a fury that often frightened him. He knew the anger would eventually kill him or he would kill someone—and he almost had; so he left this land and these people and his father. He ran away, as far as his athletic ability would take him. Notre Dame, Indiana, was thirteen hundred miles from Fredericksburg, Texas.
Beck had not spoken to his father in twenty-four years.
"Why didn't you call ahead?" J.B. said.
"Wasn't sure I wouldn't turn around."
Across Main Street from the courthouse was a park where Beck had often played baseball; they were now sitting at a picnic table where second base had been. The baseball diamond was gone, replaced by a covered open-air arena called Adelsverein Halle. Meggie was eating a corn dog, Luke a sausage-on-a-sti
ck, and Beck barbecue. J.B. was sipping a soda.
Playing where home plate had been was the "Sentimental Journey Orchestra," a big band made up of old guys wearing World War Two khaki uniforms. A trio of middle-aged women called the "Memphis Belles" was singing "Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy from Company B." They were good. Old white-haired folks were dancing, young blond kids wearing bead necklaces and red, white, and blue tiaras were bopping around as if dancing, and their sunburned parents were drinking Weissbier and Bitburger. Germans here were raised on beer and bratwurst, like the French were on wine and cheese. The soldiers from the parade mingled with the locals and were greeted like celebrities; no soldier had ever been spit on in Fredericksburg, Texas. An old-timer in a plaid shirt walked by, slapped J.B. on the shoulder, and said, "Hell of a shirt, J.B."
After the man had walked out of earshot, J.B. said, "Ned don't got the sense of adventure God gave a turtle."
Beck stood and stretched and smelled beef being barbecued and cotton candy being spun. The rural park with a baseball field had been transformed into a manicured Marktplatz, a European-style town square. The white octagonal Vereins Kirche museum stood in the center of the square. Behind it was the Pioneer Memorial Garden with bronze statues of Baron von Meusebach, the town founder, and a Comanche war chief smoking a peace pipe. A Maibaum depicting the town's history stood tall over the square. World War Two-era music, ranchers, farmers, and soldiers in uniform, old folks and young kids, everyone happy and alive on the Fourth of July in small-town America. It all seemed so perfect.
"She was a special woman," J.B. said. "Annie."
Except that. Beck looked down at his father.
"How would you know?"
His words had come out harsh, and Beck saw the hurt on his father's face. J.B. gathered himself.
"Annie and me, we've been emailing for the better part of two years. About every day her last six months."
"Annie emailed you?"
J.B. nodded, and Beck sat back down. Another secret.
Beck said, "You've got a computer?"
J.B. nodded again. "Down at the winery."
"You've got a winery?"
"That's how Annie found me, buying wine on the website."
"You've got a website?"
"Yep."
"Why?"
"For online sales. We ship wine all across the country—"
"No. Why did Annie email you?"
"Oh. To get me ready."
"For what?"
"For today—when you and the kids came home."
THREE
Home was eight hundred acres of land on the Pedernales River three miles south of town.
Beck drove through a black iron gate with a hand-painted sign that read: I SIC THE PIT BULLS ON ALL REAL ESTATE BROKERS DAMN FOOL ENOUGH TO TRESPASS ON THIS LAND. He accelerated up the white caliche road that meandered through oak trees fifty feet tall and two hundred years old, leaving a cloud of white dust in his wake. He steered hard right then left then right. When his father had built this road, he had not removed a single oak tree; so the road zigzagged like a snake crawling across hot ground.
The house sat on the highest point of the land; you could see the sun rise over the distant hills to the east and set beyond the distant hills to the west. And every day the sun had fed this land that had fed the goats that had fed the Hardins for more than a hundred years. The Hardins were goat ranchers.
But where were the goats?
The herd had numbered five thousand head. A sea of woolly Angora goats should be grazing in the fields that sloped gently down to the river. But the fields were empty and the goats were gone. The barn, pens, and shearing shed, the pine wood weathered to a steel gray, sat vacant. Beck felt as if he had come home for Christmas only to find that everyone had moved away.
He glanced out both sides of the car, being careful not to drive into an oak tree. He didn't see goats, but he saw horses, a few cows (J.B. Hardin had always raised his own beef), Axis deer, antelope, a peacock, two wild turkeys flapping their wings at a pot-bellied pig lying in the shade of a tree, and standing along the fence line as if planning an escape a … llama?
Before Beck Hardin had jumped the fence and fled this land, he had lived his life by the seasons—sports and nature's. Summers meant swimming in the river and shearing goats with J.B. in the shed. Falls were filled with football and deer hunting. Winters were basketball and another round of goat shearing. And each spring—his mother's favorite time of the year when the color returned to the land—he had run track, played baseball, and walked with Peggy Hardin through knee-high wildflowers—bluebonnets, Indian paintbrush, and Mexican hat—wildflowers that turned the land into a canvas of blue, red, orange, and yellow. His mother had picked roses but never wildflowers.
Beck braked at a fork in the road. The south fork continued up to the house; a new west fork led over to a two-story structure that hadn't been there when Beck had left home. He trailed his father's black Ford pickup to the house. J.B. got out, followed by a white lab named Butch. Beck parked in the shade of an oak tree and opened the back door for the kids. Luke didn't budge, but Meggie jumped out and held the doll up as if to see.
"Look, Mommy. This is where Daddy grew up."
The home was a one-story structure, simple and sturdy. The main house was constructed of white limestone two feet thick; it faced east. On the north and south sides were rock-and-cedar additions; the one on the north side was new. The house had a porch across the front, a metal standing-seam roof, and a river-rock fireplace. A windmill stood twenty yards away.
J.B.'s great-grandfather had moved to Fredericksburg after the Civil War; he hadn't been German but he had married a German girl—as had every Hardin male until Beck had married a Chicago girl—and had learned from her father everything there was to know about homebuilding and goat ranching. The Hardin males had handed down what they knew, father to son, until J.B.'s son had gone to Notre Dame to play football. The Hardins were goat ranchers by trade, but they could plumb, wire, roof, and build with the best of men. J.B. was no exception.
"Added on again," Beck said to his father.
J.B. regarded the addition on the north side of the house as if he'd just now noticed it there.
"Bedrooms, for you and the kids."
"J.B., we'll find a place in town."
His father gazed off into the distance. "Eagle's been making a nest, down by the river." Then, without looking at Beck, he said, "You didn't come home to live in town."
Beck sighed. J.B. was right.
"Beck, my father told me this land was mine from the day I was born. I reckon it's been yours since the day you were born. It's just been waiting for you to come home. Land's patient."
J.B. Hardin had always believed that a house was a place to sleep, but land was a place to live.
"You really got pit bulls?" Beck said.
"Nah. But those real-estate brokers don't know it."
"They bothering you?"
"Before I put that sign up, three, four of 'em would come knocking on the door every day, wanting to sell this land. Big real-estate play out here these days, Beck, everyone hoping to get rich selling their land to city folk."
"Who's buying?"
"Californians. They come here for a weekend and think thirty thousand an acre is cheap so they buy a hundred acres like they're buying lunch."
"Thirty thousand an acre? That's the going price? It was under a thousand when I left."
"Yep. Land-poor locals barely making ends meet, all of a sudden they're rich. I was watching TV the other night—"
"You've got a TV?"
"Yep. Anyway, I was watching The Beverly Hillbillies. This ol' boy name of Jed Clampett, he goes out hunting one day, shoots at a critter but strikes oil. Well, Jed gets rich and moves the family to California. Struck me, what's going on here is The Beverly Hillbillies in reverse: folks are hoping a Californian moves here and makes them rich."
J.B. started walking toward the house.
"T
hat's what I figure, anyway."
"Where are the goats?"
"Gone. Sold the herd off ten years back. Kept a few to eat the cedar shoots. Industry tanked when they killed the mohair incentive—not that I ever took a dime from those bastards."
Mean philandering Democratic SOB that he was, LBJ had long been beloved in these parts because he had given the goat ranchers of Gillespie County something more valued than good character; he had given them the "mohair incentive." Government money. Every year for forty years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture had mailed checks to Gillespie County goat ranchers totaling tens of millions of dollars. And unlike other farm subsidies, the mohair incentive didn't phase out at a ceiling price; it kept going up. The more mohair a rancher produced and the higher the market price, the bigger his incentive check; at the program's peak, the government paid four dollars for every dollar a rancher earned. The big goat ranchers got annual checks for a million dollars. But Bill Clinton killed the mohair incentive in 1996. He was not beloved in these parts.
"I knew it wouldn't hurt you."
"Ain't but maybe a hundred thousand goats left in the Hill Country," J.B. said.
The mohair incentive had encouraged ranchers to build goat empires; at the peak, over five million Angora goats had grazed on Hill Country land and accounted for fifty percent of the world's mohair production. One legendary goat rancher had even dubbed himself the "Goat King of the World." J.B. Hardin was one of the few goat ranchers in the county who didn't take the money.
"Hell, I was ready to try something different. Something that don't stink."
"Well, the wine business would qualify on both counts."
"Reckon it does."
"And you can wear that shirt without risking a stampede."
"That's a fact." J.B. nodded toward the building down the west fork. "That's my winery, Beck. Vineyards are on the back side."
"Grapes do okay in a drought?"
"This rocky land and thin soil ain't worth a damn for cattle or cotton, but it's just about perfect for goats, peaches, turkeys, and grapevines. Government and drought killed off goat ranching and peaches."
"That leaves turkeys and grapevines."
