Michener, James A. (179 page)

Mrs. Morrison said mildly: 'I'm sure that if Beth has offended either you or your class, she will apologize.'

'Your daughter has not misbehaved in any overt way, but her attitude has been almost frivolous. One must take Texas history seriously, and sometimes children unlucky enough to have been born in other. . .' She dropped that sentence, for although she used it often inside her classroom, she realized that outside, it did sound rather chauvinistic. She was emotionally and morally sorry for those children who had not been born in Texas, but she realized that blazoning her condescension was not always fruitful.

'Beth is a bright child,' she conceded. 'And if she acquires the right attitudes she can go far . . . perhaps even the university at Austin.'

'We're thinking of Michigan,' Mr. Morrison said coldly.

'I'm sure it's respectable,' she said, and then, with that honest warmth which made her a successful teacher, she added: 'No one in our grade writes more beautifully than your Beth. In her mature use of words she's exceptional. Don't encourage her to waste such marked talent by being what the children call "a smart ass."

No more was said about the counties, either in class or out, until one blustery day at the end of February, when Miss Barlow said quietly: 'Beth, in your list of counties, if I remember, you had King County. Could you locate it now if I hand you the ruler?' And it was remarkable, but almost every child in that class could now go to the big outline map and point unerringly to his or her five counties; Miss Barlow's exercise had imprinted these locations forever, and as she predicted, her students were now beginning to relate the other two hundred and forty-nine counties to those already learned.

Without hesitation Beth pointed to four-square King, almost identical in shape to another twenty clustered about it. 'Now, Beth, do you remember whom that county was named after?'

'William P. King of the Immortal Thirty-two from Gonzales.'

'And do you know who the Immortal Thirty-two were?'

Frantically Beth scoured her mind, and only the vaguest data

came forth, so that finally she was forced to confess: 'I don't know,

Miss Barlow, but somehow I think they had to do with the Alamo.'

'You are right, and you may sit down.'

Then, in a low voice which none of the children who heard it

that day would ever forget, Miss Barlow began a quiet recitation

of the facts surrounding one of the overwhelming incidents of

Texas history, and as she spoke, time shifted backward and her

listeners were in the small town of Gonzales, east of San Antonio:

'It was on this very day, one hundred and thirty-three years ago, that a messenger galloped into Gonzales with the dreadful news that the Alamo was surrounded by General Santa Anna's troops and that the brave defenders inside were doomed to death, all of them, unless they received help. "They must have reinforcements'* was all the messenger said. As he uttered these words the men of Gonzales knew that even if they did march to the rescue, the Alamo was doomed. There was no way that so few Texans, however brave, could hold off so many Mexicans, however cowardly. Whoever entered the Alamo was certain to die.

'So what did they do? Thirty-two of the bravest men Texas would ever produce shouldered their muskets, kissed their women goodbye, and marched resolutely into the sunset. And I want you to remember this, young people. The men of Gonzales didn't just go up to the gates of the Alamo and cry "Let us in!" No, they had to fight their way in, cutting a path through the Mexican army. At any point they'd have been justified in turning back, but none did. They fought to enter, and in doing so, found death and immortality.

'As sure as the sun rises, every one of you in this classroom, boys and girls alike, will some day find yourself in the town of Gonzales, listening to your messenger cry "Help us or we perish!" It may happen to you in El Paso or Lubbock or Galveston.' (Miss Barlow was incapable of visualizing her graduates as living outside Texas.) 'And each of you will be called upon to make a decision of the most vital importance: right or wrong . . . life or death. And the manner in which you respond will determine whether you will be known as immortal or craven.

'If 1 tell you about the glories of Texas history with pride and deep feelings it's because one of the thirty-two Immortals was my greatgrandfather Moses Barlow, and the woman he kissed goodbye as he marched off to the Alamo was my grandmother Rachel, who was four years old at the time but who remembered that day until she died in 1930 in Milam County at the age of ninety-eight. So I heard of Gonzales personally from a woman who was there that day, and when

von are an did person in San Antonio or Port Worth, you can tell your grandchildren in the year 2036 that you yourself heard me speak of a woman who was present when the heroes of Gonzales marched voluntarily to death and immortality.'

On no student did the impact of that lesson fall more heavily than on Beth Morrison. For two days she went directly to her room after supper, preferring to speak to no one and refusing even to answer her telephone when it rang. On the third day she asked wanly: 'What parts of Texas did we like best when we saw those slides 7 ' and she joined her family in analyzing the virtues of the forested northeast, the blazing sands of the Rio Grande and the mountains of the west. Her brother said he liked best the sign in the park which said beware rattlesnakes. She ignored this, and on the fourth morning she appeared at breakfast with a single sheet of paper, which she hesitantly showed her mother, who cried: 'Beth, this is really good. This is much better than I could have done.' When her father asked to see it, Beth grabbed it nervously and said: 'Later.'

She went to school early, slipped into her classroom and deposited on Miss Barlow's desk a brown envelope that showed no indication of its source, and when class began Miss Barlow coughed and said: 'Today we have a most wonderful surprise. One of our members has written a beautiful poem, which I want to share with you. It's called "A Song of Texas."

'Bluebonnets, paintbrush on trails through the pine, Sweep of the meadow that climbs to the hill, My hungry heart makes this loveliness mine. Sleep or awake I shall cherish you still— O Texas, your beauty enchants me forever.

Cactus and mesquite, the bold Rio Grande Cuts a deep swath through your perilous waste, Marks me a path through the treacherous sand. Leads me to wonders that I have embraced— O Texas, your harshness invites me forever.

Blue mountains, brush on wild plains of the west. Challenging eagles to soar to new heights, Offering refuge to only the best. You dazzle us all with your wondrous delights— O Texas, your greatness rewards me forever.'

The room was very quiet as Miss Barlow folded the paper and returned it to its brown envelope: 'I think we can guess who wrote

this lovely poem, can't we?' and with no exception, all in the class turned to look at Beth, for only she ever used such words or framed them into such images.

That evening Miss Barlow telephoned the Morrisons to reassure them: 1 think your little Beth is coming around. She's developing a proper attitude toward things that matter.' And next morning at breakfast Beth startled her parents, almost to the point of making them choke on their coffee, by saying with great fervor: 'Gosh, wouldn't it be awful to marry a man who wasn't from Texas?'

In the Rio Grande Valley things were not going well for Hector Garza. Seventy-eight years old and far less agile than he had been in the days when he helped Horace Vigil run the Valley, he had been forced to watch his Mexican community fall into sad disarray, for the dictatorship had been taken over by Horace's nephew, an austere, grasping man named Norman Vigil, who considered the area to be his fiefdom but did not accord peasants like Hector the courtesies due them.

'He derives his power from us,' Hector complained to younger men, 'but he shows us no thanks. Worst of all, he shows us no

respect.'

Hector could have made his protest much stronger, for Norman Vigil, displaying none of that classic grandeur of the typical Mexican patron who robbed and ruled with style, was a mean-spirited man who grabbed everything and shared nothing. 'He sends his beer trucks over three counties but never gives the Little League a dime.' He also never gave hospitals or schools a dime, either, and Hector sometimes thought that the slim strand of inheritance that had once kept Horace Vigil so strong a member of the Hispanic community had vanished in the case of Norman.

'He's not Mexican at all,' Hector said. 'He's pure gringo, and in this Vallev that's a bad thing to be.'

To explain how Vigil managed to keep his power was rather difficult, for the anglos with whom he associated exclusively represented only twelve percent of the population, while the Hispanics made up eighty-eight. Yet Vigil saw to it that the anglos controlled the school board, the police department, all the banks and most of the retail establishments. He did this by dominating the politics and determining who should run for what office; obviously, he could not himself cast all the ballots for his candidates, but because of his economic power he could terrorize the local Mexicans, forcing them to vote for his men, and he did still control that vital Precinct 37, and from it, late on election night, he extracted

whatever number of votes he required to keep his preferred Democrat in power. He was also protected by state officials, who appreciated his votes, and in the wild Senate primary of 1948, when the upstart Democrat Lyndon Johnson defeated the established Democrat, ex-Governor Coke Stevenson, by eighty-seven votes out of nearly a million cast, Norman Vigil had provided from Precinct 37 a vote of Stevenson 13, Johnson 344, and such a reliable man was not going to be treated roughly by state investigators so long as the Democratic party stayed in power.

But the principal reason why Vigil continued his dictatorship was one which would have applied in no other state, even though its police could be as rough as those in Texas: for several decades the captain of the Texas Rangers along the border had been Oscar Macnab, now sixty-nine years old and retired from active duty, but still a dominant figure in Saldana County politics and one of Norman Vigil's chief supporters.

_ iMacnab had made his reputation as a young Ranger in the oil fields of Larkin County when he tamed its boom-town frenzy almost single-handedly. Cool in temperament, determined when he got started, and severely just according to his own definitions he had transferred about 1940 to the Rio Grande, where, during the years of World War II, he ran the territory prettv much as he wished. Since he had acquired the Ranger's traditional distrust of Indians, blacks and what he called 'Meskins,' and the traditional respect for anyone who had acquired an unusual amount of money he had found it easy to fit into Rio Grande life; white American men of importance, like Norman Vigil, were to be protected-brown Hispanics, like Hector Garza, were to be kept in their place;' and outright Mexicans, like those who swam across the river to vote for Norman Vigil in elections, were to be eliminated li thev stepped out of line.

In his nearly thirty years of control in Saldana Countv, Macnab had served as the right arm of Norman Vigil, arresting those Vigil wanted arrested, frightening those Vigil wanted to chase out of his county. At election time he policed the polls, keeping awav troublemakers and suspected liberals. After the votes were counted, he saw to it that any complaints were muffled, and if the protester pursued his objections, Macnab helped muscle him out of the area The captain never thought of himself as the colleague and protector of the local dictator, but that's what he was. Nor would he admit that he was prejudiced against Mexicans or Hispanics-I don't like Meskins. Don't trust them. And I expect to give them an order only once. But I am certainly not prejudiced against them. I have solved many murders involving only Meskins and will do

so again if called upon. But you cannot force me to like them

He had had in his company from time to time Rangers who had blazed away at Mexicans with almost no provocation, and there were he would admit privately, 'a few scoundrels on my team that could have been tried for murder, but this is a frontier area and I must insist that by and large, justice was done. I saw to that

Justice for Macnab consisted of identifying the interests or those in command, Norman Vigil, for example, or the big landowners, and then seeing that those interests were protected and if necessary furthered; in an orderly society that was the only thing to do For example, when field workers on the big citrus plantations now the principal source of wealth in the Valley, sought to form' a labor union, an un-Texas thing to do, Captain Macnab found every excuse for hampering their efforts, including arresting them threatening them, and keeping them from holding public meetings He never opposed them as union agitators, which they were but only as people threatening the peace of an otherwise quiet and pleasant valley, if their hearts are set on a union, let them move to New Jersey, where anything goes.' He was equally stern when teachers agitated for higher wages in the baldana school system: To strike or even talk about striking is un-American and will not be tolerated in my district.'

It was still customary, in the Spanish-speaking communities, to refer to Rangers as Rinches, and Captain Macnab was the premier Rinche of his district. It was he who enforced the laws on the Hispanics, who kept their children in line the way the anglos preferred and who dictated the terms of general behavior. It a Hispanic behaved himself and made no move to strike the citrus growers for higher wages, he encountered no trouble from Captain

During his first twenty years of duty along the Rio Grande he arrested two white men. One had holed himself up in a shack with his estranged wife, threatening to kill her if anyone moved toward the place Macnab never hesitated. Gun at the ready, he walked in and saved the distraught woman, who then refused to bring charges against her man. The other was a persistent drunk who tried to deliver the Sunday sermon at the Baptist church, he was easily removed. . ,