24
Mitch got back into Big Spring early in the afternoon. After checking with Zearsdale, he shucked out of his borrowed duds, took a long, hot bath and re-dressed in some he had brought with him. Then he called Red, asking her to meet him when he arrived in Houston.
She sounded a little cool and strained. But that, he thought, was natural enough. He had left town without giving her a chance to object-and she would have objected to a trip as perilous as this one. Now that he was out of danger, she meant to punish him for the scare he had given her.
He would have some pretty tall explaining to do, he decided. Or maybe, since this had been such a foolishly dangerous thing to do, it was best not to try to explain. Just to say that he'd lost his temper when the checks bounced, so off he'd gone into the wild blue yonder, knowing it was crazy but doing it anyway.
Red could understand a loss of temper. Who could understand better than Red?
The fact was he was just feeling too damned good to be worried about anything.
He had dinner on the plane. The stewardess was a Dallas girl, immediately stamped as such by her smartness, her glossy sophistication. She bantered with the man seated next to Mitch, a resident of Fort Worth; no yokel by any means, but a little on the drawly side, hearty and easygoing of manner. Mitch listened to them… the voices, the attitudes, of east and west… and behind him he heard a South Texas cotton grower disputing with a North Texas wheat farmer. And he was struck as he always was (when he had time to think of such things) by the amazing amalgam, the populous paradox that was this, his native state.
Between areas, there were not only differences in accent but in language itself. A pond, for example, became a tank, biscuits were bread, cookies were cakes, afternoon was evening, carry meant escort (to carry a girl to a dance), dirty was nasty (a nasty shirt), and meat was automatically construed to mean pork, unless qualified as red meat.
There were differences in dress, too many to be noted, yet intermingling with one another in these days of rapid transportation. There were differences in outlook, from one area to another, and these positively did not intermingle. In Houston, no Negro was admitted to a white restaurant-not even if he was a foreign potentate. In Austin, there were Negroes on the faculty of the University of Texas. In one city, a minority group had absolutely no voice in municipal government. In another (El Paso, for example), the minority spoke loud, clear and effectively.
That was Texas. That was not Texas. Because it was a generalization, and you could seldom if ever generalize about Texas. In so doing, you were apt to be guilty of the very narrowness you deplored. You were in a boat not-too-distant from that of the foreign viewers of popular American films, people who knew us to be a nation of sexpots and gunslingers, stopping only long enough to get sloppy drunk as we went about the business of shooting and screwing one another.
You could still find Texans who made a brag of ignorance. They hadn't never read no book but the Bible. They hadn't never been out of the state in their lives. ("An' I ain't goin' to neither.") The fault was probably rooted far back in the history of the state, in an official attitude- -promulgated by backwoodsy legislators-which saw little reason to keep a child in school if his folks didn't, and who believed that eleven grades of school (instead of twelve) were quite enough for any youngster.
Texas had raised its educational standards a great deal in recent years. But some of the old ideas still lingered, and they were by no means all bad, although some people might dispute this. Newcomers often objected to the schools' seeming intrusion into the province of the parent. Their emphasis on manners and decorum. But their objections went unheeded, and after a time they were usually withdrawn.
Before he was ever taught his ABC's, the Texas schoolchild learned respect for his elders. He learned that men (gentlemen) were always addressed and replied to with sirs, and that ladies (all women were ladies) were always spoken to with ma'ams. Similarly he was taught to say please and thank you and excuse me-the rule being that you could never say them too often. He was taught courtesy and gallantry, and concern for the weak and elderly. And if he was slow in learning and remembering these teachings (no matter how brilliant he was academically) he would find himself in serious trouble very quickly.
So, after all, then, there was one generalization you could make about Texas. You could say flatly and positively that the wanton and open flouting of every principle of decency and fair play which was becoming commonplace in other states was wholly foreign to Texas. There had never been anything like that. There never would be. Hypocrisy?-Yes, you would find that. You would find approval for it. But if a man was a bum, he had better not demonstrate the fact in public.
In some cities of America, the streets were roamed by gangs of rowdies: overgrown louts who had been slobbered over far too long by professional do-gooders and who needed nothing quite so much as a goddamned good beating; sadistic thugs who were as whimperingly sensitive about their privileges as they were blind to their obligations, who showed no interest at all in the common privileges of soap, water and hard work; human offal who demanded everything of their nation, and who contributed nothing to it but their plethoric progeny which a responsible citizenry was forced to provide for.
And this scum, these outrageous brutes, prowled the streets of those American cities, knocking down wholly inoffensive citizens, publicly committing robbery, mayhem and murder. Doing it because they knew they could get away with it, that a hundred people might look on but not a one would interfere.
Well, so be it. But such shameful spectacles were not seen in Texas.
No Texan would have stood idly by while a dozen slobs stomped a decent man to death.
No Texan, regardless of whether he was nine, nineteen or ninety, whether he was rich or poor, whether he was bigot or liberal, whether he was outnumbered a hundred-to-one- no Texan, you could be sure, would look on unconcerned while a woman was being raped.
At Dallas, Mitch had a half-hour layover between planes. He entered a phone booth and placed a call to Red, intending to tell her that he was running a little late. But the apartment didn't answer, and the clerk cut in after a moment or two, advising him that Red had left for the airport a few minutes before.
That was reasonable enough, of course, traffic being what it was. Mitch started to leave the booth, then turned and put in a call to Downing.
It was a courtesy owing the gambler, he felt. He had taken his hard luck story to Downing. Downing was now entitled to hear the happy ending.
"Just off for Ghent," he said, as the gambler's voice came over the wire. "Thought I'd tell you the news from Aix is strictly copasetic."
There was a heavy silence. Then a very feeble chuckle from Downing.
"Poetry yet, huh? I think they had it the decade I missed class. Didn't the guy get a bottle of wine poured down his throat for bringing the good news?"