Centennial (147 page)

It was this song that had lured him on his first trip to Mexico, when he had driven those desolate miles to Chihuahua and those flower-strewn miles farther south. Places like Oaxaca had been a revelation to him, and he had come home with two records of “Dos Arbolitos,” one the stringed version which he had just played and another in which two voices, male and female, sang the sentimental words:

“
T
wo
little trees grow in my garden,

Two little trees that seem like twins
.
”

The Buick had dropped to a mere forty while Garrett joined the singers, tilting his head back and barely watching the road. When the song ended, he leaned forward and re versed the tape until he felt it had returned to the starting point of the violin version, then released it to play again. Once more “Dos Arbolitos” sounded, and he sang with the violins.

We had a very late lunch at Pagosa Springs at the western end of Wolf Creek Pass, where he met his first delegation of Spanish-speaking citizens. He told them he wished he could address them in their own language, but whereas he understood Spanish when they spoke it, his attempts to respond were laughable.

“Let us laugh,” one of the Chicano leaders suggested, so he said a few words. “It’s pretty bad,” the Chicano agreed.

He told them that in the forthcoming celebrations there would be an honored place for Chicanos. “We’ve heard that before,” they said with some bitterness.

Montezuma and Archuleta had recently started a mock-serious separatist movement, seeking to join New Mexico, since distant Denver never gave a damn for their interests. “That’s all changed,” Garrett assured them. “The governor himself wanted me to come down here to tell you of our plans.”

“Him, yes,” the Chicanos said. “But what about his successor?”

“Those of us on the front range have learned our lesson. We know you exist.”

He made little impression on the suspicious men of Pagosa Springs, so late in the afternoon we headed for Durango, pausing there briefly before continuing to our final destination, Cortez, not far from that historic spot where four states meet, the only place in America where that happens. In Cortez we had a late dinner with leaders of the Chicano minority and talked with them late into the night.

On November 4, which was a Sunday, we made several extended tours with the Anglos of Cortez, and they showed us their plans for a ceremony at Four Corners, a bleak point in the desert but a place with considerable emotional appeal. “I can imagine lots of Americans wanting to drive this way,” Garrett said, “if we have something to offer them when they get here.”

On November 5 we headed back to Centennial by the northern route, and once more we roared along the spacious highways while Chicano music thundered from the cassettes. Again Garrett slowed down when it came time to sing along with “Dos Arbolitos,” but after a while he turned off the machine, and during the long haul from Grand Junction to Glenwood Springs he discussed the difficult problem he would face the next day.

It was election day and Colorado would be the first state in the nation to face up to the future, for it was electing an officer of a new description. His title was resounding, Commissioner of Resources and Priorities, and his task was to steer the state in making right industrial and ecological choices. It was appropriate that Colorado should be the state to experiment with such a concept, for its citizens had always been pioneer types, willing to sponsor change. Colorado had led the nation in old-age pensions, proper funding of education, liberal labor laws, and it had been the state which turned down the 1976 Winter Olympics as destructive to the environment.

When one looked at the original settlers, men like Lame Beaver of the Arapaho, Levi Zendt of Pennsylvania, Potato Brumbaugh from Russia and Charlotte Buckland from England, it was no wonder that traditions of individualism had been established. Now the state would lead the nation in trying to define an acceptable use of its resources.

The new officer had already been dubbed the Czar, and tomorrow the first man to occupy the crucial office would be elected. Like most Coloradans, Garrett felt that the Republican party represented the time-honored values of American life and could be trusted to place in office men and women of probity who would remain above temptation. Whenever a Republican officeholder turned out to be a crook, as one or another did year after year, he explained away the affair as an accident.

On the other hand, he felt that in time of crisis, when real brains were needed to salvage the nation, it was best to place Democrats in office, since they usually showed more imagination. And when one Democrat after another proved colossally stupid, he termed that failure an accident too.

He was always willing to split his ticket, not wishing to be like the old beet farmer at Centennial who said, “Me! I vote for the man not the party. Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Landon, Willkie, Dewey, Eisenhower, Nixon, Goldwater.” For example, Garrett had voted for both John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, but looking back, suspected that he had made a mistake each time.

The preceding night, while we were watching television in his motel room, he found his politics becoming confused. Julie Nixon Eisenhower was shown defending her father. “Fight, fight, fight. My father will never resign,” the attractive young lady proclaimed, and Garrett judged it to be improper for a father to use his daughter in such an undignified way. “If he wants to defend himself,” he had growled at the television, “let him do it himself ... not hide behind his daughter’s skirts.” He had voted for Nixon, had met him twice in Denver and had liked him, but now he told me, “I’m beginning to wonder if the man can ever extricate himself from the morass he’s fallen into.”

He found himself equally bewildered when he considered his choice on Tuesday. The Democrats had nominated for commissioner a lackluster man from the western slope, and it would be fairly easy to vote against him, except that the Republicans had chosen a man from Centennial, and to Garrett he was simply unacceptable.

The candidate was Morgan Wendell, born the same year as Garrett and a graduate in the same class from the University of Colorado. He was a wealthy man, his father having made a killing in wheat during World War II, and in business relations he was quite reliable. He had done well in college and had served the state in various capacities. It looked as if he would win handily, so that whether Paul Garrett voted for him or against him was of little moment.

But Garrett prized his vote. It seemed to him the noblest ritual of American life, and he had never failed to vote, nor had he voted carelessly.

The Buick slowed perceptibly as he asked himself, What is it about Morgan Wendell I don’t trust? He put aside the secret gossip which had circulated within the Garrett family. Paul Garrett’s grandfather, Beeley Garrett, had told the family, with Paul listening, that a Mr. Gribben, before he died, had confided that Maude and Mervin Wendell had stolen their first house from him by working the badger game.

“What’s the badger game?” Paul had asked.

“It’s when a man gets caught with his pants down in somebody else’s bedroom and is afraid to admit it.” Grandfather Garrett had continued with the part of the story that worried Paul: “We had a Swede come to town about that time, man named Sorenson, and he disappeared. A lot of his money was missing. Something that Sheriff Dumire told me at the time made me think that he suspected the Wendells of having done away with the man. I know for a fact that Dumire was on to something, but before he could settle it he was killed in a street fight.”

That was rumor, and Paul dismissed it as something that had happened more than eighty years ago. What possible difference did it make now? But the next charge was not rumor, and it was a harsh one. Paul’s own father related the details when Paul was twelve years old.

It was on the first day of World War II, back in 1939, and the Garretts were having their usual early breakfast when the phone rang. It was Philip Wendell, the real estate man, and he had called to inform Paul’s father that a deal they agreed upon—Henry Garrett would buy back four thousand acres which had once belonged to Crown Vee—was called off.

“But we shook hands on that deal, Philip,” Henry Garrett said. There was a brief silence, and then he said, “Of course. There’s nothing signed. You never brought me the paper. But doesn’t your word mean anything?” Another silence, followed by Henry Garrett’s shouting, “You miserable son-of-a-bitch!” after which he slammed down the phone.

Returning to the breakfast table, he trembled for some moments, then turned to Paul, saying, “Never in your life have anything to do with a Wendell. He went back on his word.”

“What does that mean?” Paul had asked.

“He shook hands with me, promised to go through with a deal at a price agreed upon. Something’s happened whereby he can make a little more money, so he refuses to honor our agreement.”

“What could it be?” Paul’s mother asked, but her husband ignored the question, and she left the room. Turning to his son, he shook hands formally and said solemnly, “If you shake hands on anything, Paul, and then break your word, I do not care ever to see you again. The association of men is founded on honor, and no Wendell has ever understood that basic truth.”

“Henry,” his wife called. “Listen to what the radio’s saying!” And when the fact of war was known, Philip Wendell’s revoking of his promise was understood. “If he plants all that land in wheat,” Ruth Garrett said, “he’ll be very wealthy ... if the war continues.”

“Let him have it,” her husband said with smoldering fury. “Paul, never earn money that way. It’s not worth it.”

From that time Paul Garrett had watched the Wendells with deepening interest, and he concluded that his father was right. The Wendells, none of them, had any basic sense of responsibility. At the university Morgan Wendell had done everything to ingratiate himself with older men in power—professors, athletic coaches, fraternity leaders, he had toadied to them all—but no one ever knew what principles he stood for, and on this program he prospered.

And in his adult life he had continued to prosper. Now he stood on the threshold of becoming an important official of a great state, and perhaps Paul Garrett was being overly cautious in wondering if he could vote for such a man. As we drove eastward toward the Eisenhower Tunnel he grabbed the tape recorder and started dictating, as if determined that I have an exact account of what he was disclosing:

I don
’t
trust him, Vernor. It
’s
as simple as that. It
’s
not the things his grandparents did
...
and I haven
’t
told you that whole story because it really doesn
’t
concern you. And it
’s
not because his father was a sneaky operator, because I don
’t
believe the sins of the father are visited on the heads of the sons. It
’s
just
t
hat he
’s
a low-grade individual without principle. He
’s
a technician. He can perform. He can keep things from getting tangled. But in a crisis he
’ll
have no base from which to operate. He believes in nothing. At the university he took no classes that made him think. He
’s
never stretched his mind, because he
’s
never faced himself
...
or the facts
...
or the future. And I think democracy can
’t
function unless it
’s
led by men and women who know what kind of people they are. How can you solve an equation if
x
is never known?

When we reached the interstate leading back to Greeley he drove at a hundred and five, telling me, “Tomorrow I’ll get up at dawn and figure this thing out. I’ll saddle Bonnet and ride over to look at the Herefords.”

On Tuesday, November 6, Garrett did not get to the polls till late, because when he returned to the castle following his long ride, he was deeply agitated. For some time he sat alone, his head in his hands, pondering not the election, for on that his mind was fairly made up, but the painful confrontation he faced regarding his beloved Herefords. When he had seen those stalwart beasts in their distant pastures and watched as they moved slowly toward him, white faces shining against red coats, he felt a knife-thrust of pain as he recalled the vicissitudes he and his family had brought upon this noble breed. The Garretts had always acted in good faith where the Herefords were concerned. Great-Grandfather Jim Lloyd had loved them almost as dearly as he had loved his own daughter, and the ranch had always bought the top bulls, but somewhere things had got onto the wrong track, and now they must be corrected.

“I’d rather cut off my right hand,” Garrett said, and he meant it. He was about to make a phone call to Montana when he heard footsteps on the porch, and when he went out he found to his astonishment that Morgan Wendell, the presumptive Czar, was standing there.

“I had to vote early,” Morgan explained. His manager had told him, “Be there at seven. I’ll have photographers on hand, and we’ll make all the afternoon papers.” He had stood by the voting machine with his wife, both of them smiling.

“I trust you’re going to vote, Paul.”

“Never miss.”

“I hope you’ll vote for me.”

“Isn’t this rather late to be campaigning?”