Michener, James A. (178 page)

'Meaning?'

'Your prime responsibility, Todd, is to get some cash back in your hand. If I offered you forty thousand dollars today, grab it. Pay off your obligations. Make a little less on the deal, but remain in condition to hold on to the rest of your wraparound.'

'Could you get me forty thousand?'

i'm sure I can do better. Fifty-one thousand, maybe as much as fifty-three.'

'My God! That would get me off the hook.' He grasped Gabe's hand, then asked: 'But why would you do this for me? You know you could take it off my hands at whatever price you set, and make yourself a bundle.'

'Todd, I have sixteen deals cooking. I think you're going to be in this business for the rest of my life. In years to come we'll arrange a hundred deals. I can wait for my big profits. You need your fragile profits right now.' They shook hands formally, and Todd said: 'A man like you is worth a million.'

And then, just as Todd was about to sign the papers Gabe had sent him, Gulf Oil decided that after all, it would experiment with an FM-1960 location, and they heard that Todd had the inside track on a fine corner. With his knees shaking, Todd told them. i think I could put you on the inside track for seventy-one thousand dollars.' The Gulf representative, eager to close a deal once the decision had been made by his head office, agreed, and the sale was closed, with Todd and the Gulf man shaking hands.

Elated but nervous, Todd now had to inform Klinowitz that the deal with the independent had to be canceled, even though a

gentlemen's agreement had been reached: 'Nothing was signed, you know, Gabe, and Gulf was so hungry to get that land, they demanded an answer right away. I tried to call you, but you were out.' And although each man knew that a handshake had sanctified the sale to the independent, Gabe merely said: 'I'll find them something, but, Todd, I hope you inform Detroit that you've been dealing on your own. There are rules to this game, you know,' and Todd said: 'Absolutely!' but the letter he had drafted in his head, aware that it ought to be sent, was never written.

The Morrisons as a family ran into their first serious Texas decision when daughter Beth entered Miss Barlow's junior-high class in Texas history. Each child in the Texas system studied state history at two different levels, first as legend when young, then as simplified glorification at Beth's age. The scholarly could also take it as an elective in high school and as an optional course in college. The goal of this intense concentration was, as one curriculum stated, 'to make children aware of their glorious heritage and to ensure that they become loyal Texas citizens.'

Few teachers, at any of the four levels, taught with the single-minded ferocity exhibited daily by Flora Barlow. She was in her sixties, a cultured, quiet woman whose ancestors had played major roles in the periods she talked about, and while she was not family-proud, as some teachers of her subject tended to be, she was inwardly gratified that her family had helped to shape what she was convinced was the finest single political entity in the world, the semi-nation of Texas.

Standing before a massive map of Texas that showed all the counties in outline only, she said softly: 'Your Texas has two hundred and fifty-four counties, many times more than less fortunate states, and one day when I was just starting to teach, a young fellow teacher, educated in the North, looked at our map with its scatter of counties and said, rather boldly I thought: "Looks as if Texas had freckles." '

When her children laughed, she said: it would be quite silly of me, wouldn't it, if I required you to memorize the names of all the counties?' When the children groaned, she said solemnly: 'But I can name them. With their county seats.'

She called to the front of the room one of her pupils, and it chanced to be Beth Morrison: 'Here is the pointer, Beth. Point as you will at any county on that map, and I shall give you its name and the name of its county seat.'

Stabbing blindly at the center of the map, Beth's pointer struck

a large, oddly shaped county: 'That's Comanche County, named after our raiding Indians; county seat, Comanche.'

When Beth tried the northeast corner, Miss Barlow said promptly: 'You've chosen Upshur County, named after a United States Secretary of State, Abel P. Upshur; county seat, Gilmer.'

Now Beth indicated one of the many squared-off western counties, a score of them almost identical in size and shape, but without hesitation Miss Barlow said: 'You're on Hale County, named for our great hero Lieutenant J. C. Hale, who died gallantly defeating General Santa Anna at San Jacinto; county seat, the important city of Plainview. If you're going to live and prosper in Texas, it's prudent to know where things are.'

When Beth reported this amazing performance to her parents, they at first laughed, for they had undergone an amusing embarrassment over one of the Texas counties, Bexar, which contained the attractive city of San Antonio. 'It's spelled B-e-x-a-r,' Mrs. Morrison said, 'and for the longest time your father and I pronounced it Bex-ar, the way any sensible person would. But then we kept hearing on the radio when we drove to work "Bare County this and Bare County that," and one day we asked: "Where is this Bare County?" and the old-timers laughed: "That's how we say Bexar." So now your father and I know where Bare County is.'

But as the family studied this matter—Beth in school, her parents in their daily life—they discovered that Miss Barlow was not being arbitrary in insisting that her pupils know something about the multiple counties of Texas, because unlike any other state, Texas wrote its history in relationship to its counties. This was partly because the state was so enormous that it had to be broken down into manageable regions, but more because the towns within the regions were often so small and relatively unimportant that few people could locate them. A man or a family did not come from some trivial county seat containing only sixty persons; that man or family came from an entire county, and once the name of that county was voiced, every knowing listener knew what kind of man he was.

The statement 'We moved from Tyler County to Polk' told the entire story of a farmer who had sought better land to the west. 'My grandfather raised cotton in Cherokee County, but when the crop failed three times running, he tried cattle in Palo Pinto.' That summarized three decades of Texas agricultural history.

One either knew the basic counties or remained ignorant of Texas history, and Miss Barlow did not intend that any of her students should have such a handicap. To help them master the

outlines, she had devised an imaginative exercise, and it was in the execution of this that Beth, and indeed the entire Morrison family, fell afoul of the Deaf Smith school system: 'My former students have found it helpful to identify five counties. Choose any five you wish, but they must be in five widely separated parts of the state. After you select your counties, memorize them and their county seats. Then you will always have a kind of framework onto which you can attach the other counties in that district.'

Most of the students, eager to -escape extra work, chose easy picks whose important county seat bore the same name as the county, such as Dallas in the north, El Paso in the far west, Lubbock in the west, and Galveston on the Gulf of Mexico. Boys usually picked popular names like Deaf Smith along the New Mexico border, Maverick on the Rio Grande, or Red River on the boundary stream of that name. And of course, there were always some smart alecks who chose 'Floyd County; county seat, Floydada' or 'Bee County; county seat, Beeville.' Miss Barlow indulged such choices because she had learned that any student who nailed down his five counties, wherever they were, could build upon them the relationships required in Texas history.

Til start with Kenedy,' Beth told her mother that night, 'because even though it's a different spelling, it's practically your maiden name.' This took care of the southeast corner of the state, and she was about to move on to four other regions when she happened to jot down in her notebook the salient facts about Kenedy County, and as soon as she had done so, a naughty idea flashed into her mind, and for about an hour she pored over the data in an old copy of the Texas Almanac, checking this county and that. Somewhat irritated by Miss Barlow's constant hammering on the size of Texas, she was seeking the five most insignificant counties, and in the end she came up with a startling collection, as the extremely neat page in her notebook proved:

The Five Leading Counties of Texas

3,271 1.367

As soon as Beth's parents saw the cynical heading, they realized that if she submitted it in that form, she was going to get into

trouble not only with her teacher but with her xenophobic classmates as well, and her mother asked tentatively: 'Don't you think, Beth, that your heading is . . . well . . . couldn't it be considered inflammatory?'

Tin sick and tired of being teased because I wasn't born in Texas.'

'But don't you think this is rather arrogant? I mean . . . aren't you rubbing their noses in it?'

Beth considered this carefully, and although she refused to alter her choice of counties on the grounds that Miss Barlow had said she could choose any she wished, so long as they were well scattered, she did have to agree that her title was combative, so she changed it to my five favorite counties of texas. And without complaining she redid her chart, making it even more attractive than before.

Unfortunately, on Saturday night several of Beth's classmates dropped by the Morrisons' for an after-the-movies snack, and the matter of county choices came up. Todd, overhearing a discussion in which minor counties were accorded the deference usually reserved for continents, cried: 'Hey! Don't you kids have things slightly out of proportion?' When they asked what he meant, he questioned them: 'Where is Korea? Can you identify Belgium on the map? Where do you think Rumania is? Where's Thailand 7 '

He learned to his astonishment that whereas Beth's friends could identify Borden County—population 907; named after the man who invented condensed milk; county seat, Gail, population 178—few of them could accurately place Argentina—population 22,000,000; name derived from the Latin word for silver; capital city, Buenos Aires, population 3,768,000—and none of them had heard of places like Mongolia, Albania or Paraguay.

In school on Monday these students would remember that Mr. Morrison had laughed at the counties of Texas, remarking that he considered Malaysia, with a population of more than eleven million and occupying a strategic point on the world's trade routes, was at least as important as his daughter's King County, Texas, with its population of 464 and its roads leading nowhere.

Even this ungenerous comparison would have led to nothing had not Miss Barlow, hoping to get this important lesson properly launched, called on Beth to recite her five, and with the sureness of a trained cartographer, Beth rattled off name, population and county seat, jabbing accurately with her pointer at Kenedy to the southeast, King hidden among the central squares, Loving far out west, McMullen, the Irish county due south of San Antonio, and Roberts up in the northwest.

It was, as Miss Barlow had anticipated, a sterling performance, but then the teacher spoiled it by asking: 'What was your principle of selection, Beth?' and the latter replied honestly: i looked for the five with the smallest population.' At this the class began to giggle, and one of the boys who had been present Saturday night reported: 'Mr. Morrison said that Malaysia, or somewhere, with eleven million people was a damned sight more important than King County, Texas, with four hundred and sixty-four.'

'What word did you use?' Miss Barlow said sternly.

'I didn't use it. He did.'

At this, Miss Barlow held out her hand for Beth's notebook and looked at the mocking table. Her face flushed, and after school she telephoned the senior Morrisons, informing them that she must see them.

When she sat, prim and defiant, in their living room, she launched her complaint against a girl who should by every indication have been her prize pupil: 'Your daughter is talented, to be sure, but she lacks a proper respect for subject matter.'

'Where is she deficient?' Mrs. Morrison asked.

'She laughs at Texas history,' Miss Barlow said stiffly.

'I believe she studies very hard,' Mrs. Morrison said defensively.

'Studies, yes. But she does like to make fun of things.'

'Whatever do you mean?'

'Wait a minute,' Mr. Morrison interrupted. 'Was it her list of counties, Miss Barlow?'

'Indeed it was, Mr. Morrison. But that's only part of my complaint.'

'Look, Beth is a bright child, an imaginative one. If you ask me, her choice showed industry, wit, a sense of . . .'

'Mr. Morrison, no child will get far living in Texas if she makes fun of Texas history.'

'Well, you must admit that a county like What's-its-name, with a population of a hundred and sixty plus or minus and a county seat of forty people, by normal standards . . .'

'Texas is not judged by normal standards. Did you know, Mr. Morrison, that when nine-tenths of our counties were first authorized by the legislature, each contained less than fifty white people? We were subduing a wild, empty land, and we did it very cleverly, I believe, by first establishing the counties and hoping that people would come along to fill them. The county you refer to so inaccurately is Loving, I believe. It hasn't received its people yet, but it will be waiting there, and in good order, when the people finally arrive.'

'I'm sure Beth meant no disrespect,' Mrs. Morrison said.

Well, she showed it.'

Miss Barlow, Beth identified five counties with a total population, if I remember correctly, of less than three thousand three hundred persons. Crossroads villages in Michigan have more than . . .'

What an unfortunate comparison! Miss Barlow stiffened and said: Texas is not to be judged by the standards you would use for Vermont or Indiana,' and the scorn she poured into those two names indicated her opinion of the backward states referred to. 'Texas was its own sovereign nation, and it still forms an empire off to itself. Neither you nor your daughter will be happy here if you fail to acknowledge that.'