Dark Valley Destiny (15 page)

If the move to Burkett caused no immediate change in Robert Howard's life, it ultimately marked the beginning of a major transition. Both his father and his mother were becoming ill, and their competition for Robert's love and concern began in earnest. Mrs. Howard's tuberculosis became active again—if, indeed, it had ever been arrested—and more and more she took to her bed to recover her strength. Her increasing fatigue made greater demands on her husband's time, just when the doctor himself was showing the first signs of illness.

Isaac Howard's symptoms were not noticeable at first because of the customs of the community. Whenever the preacher or the doctor dropped in, it was common practice to offer him food. When he first settled in Cross Cut, Dr. Howard took advantage of this custom only when necessary, since Hester was a splendid cook, and the doctor enjoyed eating at home. But before the family moved to Burkett, Isaac Howard had begun to eat wherever he went. Norris Chambers remembered: "Always my mother, and later my wife and mother, asked if he had eaten, and usually fixed him a good meal. He was a hearty eater, and nothing seemed to disagree with him."
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If the host was slow in offering a repast, the doctor brought up the subject himself. One of the Newton boys writes: "Anytime Dr. Howard came to our house, he came in the door telling my mother he was hungry, and that he wanted ham or chicken, and always hot biscuits and gravy."
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Late one night in Cross Plains, Isaac Howard cadged the entire half of a yellow-meated watermelon from the Jack Scotts without offering the family a bite. The Scotts were saying good night to friends with whom they had been playing cards when Dr. Howard appeared, went directly into the kitchen—where he discovered the melon—sat down, and ate it all. The Scotts remember the incident with a mixture of humor and exasperation, because they had not even tasted the melon, a gift from a friend.
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Some gossips surmised that Hester did not feed her husband properly; and this view was supported by the doctor's frequent appearances at a patient's door, announcing: "Heck has just kicked me out!" before sitting down to a second supper. But this was unfair to Hester. The doctor's chronic hunger was not a comment on her cooking but rather a symptom of his failing health. Since, despite his colossal intake, Dr. Howard never got fat, we may infer that he suffered from a metabolic dysfunction—either a high metabolism, which burned up his food before his body could store it in the form of fat, or some other condition that limited his absorption of food.

Exaggerated appetite is a typical symptom of diabetes. Since Isaac Howard developed diabetes later in life and since it contributed to his eventual death, a good guess is that this condition began to develop in Burkett, when the stresses of his life began to pile up. His marriage was failing; his wife was ill. His mother had lately died, much to Hester's relief. Not long before, Hester had rather callously remarked about the aged, blind Eliza Henry Howard: "She won't die, and she can't get well. She just
won't
die!"
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Besides his other stresses, Isaac and Hester had entered into open competition for Robert's love and approval. Anxieties like these tend to elevate the blood sugar in those who have a familial disposition toward diabetes, because the body fails to supply the insulin necessary for the utilization of sugars. The patient, in effect, is starving in the midst of plenty. He may suffer from chronic, unappeasable hunger. Excessive thirst may also occur, and weight loss is common.

In Burkett the Howards resumed the long family rides, either in the buggy or in the car. These rides were reminiscent of their Graford days. Here in this isolated capsule of the moving vehicle, the Howards seemed to establish a camaraderie they found nowhere else. For, these highly verbal people, the drives provided a situation in which they could talk with each other. Mrs. Howard probably entertained them by reciting poetry, for which she had a prodigious memory. According to Dr. Howard: "She loved poetry. Written poetry by sheets and reams, almost books of it, were stored in her memory so that from Robert's babyhood he had heard its recital day by day. She was a lover of the beautiful."
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Her presence on these jaunts, incidentally, made sure that Isaac had fewer chances to be alone with Robert.

Dr. Howard no doubt contributed local gossip and tall tales, while Robert embellished the historical episodes of his reading with imaginative elaborations. Indian legends took on new dimensions with his telling-

It was during these rides that Robert began to emerge as a gifted storyteller. Dr. Howard, in yarning with his cronies, sometimes quoted Robert's contributions to the conversation, retelling them half in pride and half in competition with the doctor's own tall tales. Isaac Howard said:

. . . often in our rides I had but to suggest some historical theme, and he looked it up and talked interestingly and revealed a wide knowledge of history of which I had only a smattering. And on and on until he seemed to exhaust every bit of everything about that particular bit of history. Robert had a wonderful memory as well as a vivid imagination.
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Klsie Burns, in a position closely to observe the Howard family, sensed that these long drives were something apart from routine activities. She wrote: "Frequently they stopped on their return at some shady spot near a stream and spread lunch which had been carefully prepared, and the little family seemed to live in a world of their own for a while."
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Robert and his coterie of playmates were joined in Burkett by a pet raccoon, "which Patches seems to understand is one of the family." Mrs. Burns remembered:

... many romps and spills are enjoyed by the trio, Robert ever manifesting kindness and consideration for his pets. After a time the coon becomes so mischievous that the family holds council and agrees reluctantly to return him to his native haunts along the Pecan Bayou.
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Late in 1917, Dr. Howard delivered the Chamberses' new baby, Nor-ri«, and thereafter Dr. Chambers became restless. As he had earlier discovered that the active practice of medicine kept him away from home more than he liked, so now he found his duties at the drugstore too confining. After the Armistice of November 11, 1918, he decided to move his family to Galveston, on the Gulf of Mexico, and take up truck farming.

During the preceding summer, a plague of grasshoppers devastated Burkett. Indeed, this scourge might have prompted Dr. Chambers to leave the hail, floods, drouths, sandstorms, tornadoes, boll weevils, and other ills of West Central Texas, which Robert later called "this hard, drab land."

What was an ill wind to Dr. Chambers and the local farmers was pure joy to the predatory mammals and birds. Coyotes feasted on grasshoppers until their bellies bulged, while Robert's raccoon stuffed himself with the insects until he could hardly waddle. Feeling his oats—or rather his grasshoppers—he made more mischief than ever, which behavior probably hastened his return to the wild. He had never been really tame, and Robert had taken some nasty bites and scratches from him. When released he departed, said Robert later, without a backward glance.
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So passed the years of the First World War, with Robert Howard working his way through the grades of the Cross Cut and Burkett schools; exploring the countryside afoot and on horseback; developing a large, well-muscled preadolescent frame; thinking up tales of derring-do; imagining himself a cowboy, an Indian, a pirate, a Viking, or a highwayman; persuading other boys to act out his playlets; sparring with Austin Newton and Earl Baker; showing off with his knife; reading whatever he could get his hands on; and serving as a bone of contention between his ill-matched parents.

A year after the war ended, the Howards decided to buy a house in Cross Plains, Callahan County, twelve miles northeast of Burkett and six north of Cross Cut. Cross Plains was a good choice for the Howards' permanent home. The doctor could maintain his practice, because under the energetic, if boundlessly corrupt, governor of Texas, "Farmer Jim" Ferguson, the roads were being rapidly improved. Moreover, the high | school at Cross Plains had better facilities than the school in Burkett, and the Howards were ambitious for their son. Dr. Howard expected Robert to study medicine and follow in his footsteps, despite the fact that the boy had shown no aptitude in that direction. Finally, if Mrs. Howard; was to remain at home, the family dwelling would have to b*e modified
j
to give her the best chance of recovery and to protect the rest of the family from her tubercular infection.

So, in September 1919, the doctor bought a house in Cross Plains from Mr. and Mrs. J. M. Coffman. The price was $1,500, of which Isaac Howard paid $500 down and the rest in promissory notes at 10% interest.
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The doctor set about remodeling the house, installing electricity, running water, indoor plumbing, and a glassed-in sleeping porch.

The new house, a white wooden one-story structure, stood on the western edge of town, on State Route 36, the road to Abilene. This house would remain Robert Howard's home for the rest of his life.

From Sonora to Del Rio is a hundred barren miles

Where the sotol weave and shimmer in the sun—

Like a horde of rearing serpents swaying down the bare defiles

When the scarlet, silver webs of dawn are spun.

There are little 'dobe ranchoes brooding far along the sky, On the sullen dreary bosoms of the hills; Not a wolf to break the silence, not a desert bird to fly; Where the silence is so utter that it thrills.
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Before the admission of Alaska to statehood, Texas was the largest state in the union. With 265,896 square miles, it is larger than the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Italy combined. Most of the state is flat, with a slight roll. The few hilly sections, like those west of Austin, are easily overlooked in the immensity of the plains.

In the Southwest, from the Pecos River to El Paso and including the Big Bend region, where the Rio Grande makes a wide detour southward, the land is mountainous. Although its rugged peaks do not achieve the overall height, they compare in bulk with those of the Rockies and the Sierras. The highest point in the state is Guadalupe Peak, just inside the border from New Mexico, with an altitude of 8,751 feet or 2,290 meters.

Walking in seven-league boots, the legendary Pecos Bill could stride across Texas by way of a giant stairway, which rises from southeast to northwest by a series of lifts and plateaus. These western lands step up from the coastal plains, which frame the Gulf of Mexico from Brownsville to the Louisiana border, rising every fifty to one hundred miles by a series of escarpments or faults hundreds of feet high. From below, these escarpments look like mountain walls; but once the top has been gained, the country opens out into broad, flat plateaus, through which rivers like the Brazos, the Pecos, and the Colorado have gouged deep canyons.

If he paused at the threshold of his climb, the mythical traveler would find himself in Fort Worth, which, despite its central position in the state, advertises itself as "where the West begins." There is some truth in this claim. Although the Ninety-eighth Meridian officially demarcates West Texas, the dividing line between the blackland farms of East Texas and the grasslands of the West runs between Fort Worth and its easterly neighbor Dallas.

The first giant step lies just west of Fort Worth, where it separates the watershed of the Brazos from the lands drained by the Trinity River. The step extends south and curves around to the west, becoming the great Balcones Escarpment.
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After four giant steps westward, the traveler finds himself on the Callahan Divide, which separates the waters of the Colorado from those of the Brazos. Here in Callahan County, in the village of Cross Plains, Robert Howard grew to manhood and died. The staircase culminates in the Cap Rock, a broad mesa beginning just beyond Lubbock and rising by gentle slopes to the Continental Divide near Gallup, New Mexico.

These canyons and broad grasslands are scourged by violent weather—high winds, blistering heat and freezing cold, cloudbursts and drouth, tornadoes and floods, sandstorms and blizzards. In the big skies, magnificent clouds cast shadows on the plains and explode each evening into sunsets unimaginably vivid. Night falls dramatically as a curtain of darkness. On a moonless night the Milky Way, wide and clear, tracks across the zenith of a sky that, in the clean Texas air, is smudged with stars. Pennants of flame herald the dawn as the red ball of the sun pauses briefly on the rim of the horizon before leaping into the sky. Violent thunderstorms scour the prairie; hail batters the ground. Then rainbows, often two and sometimes three, arch across the sky from horizon to horizon.

Sunsets, prairie fires, cloudbursts, northers, tornadoes (in Texas called "cyclones"), plagues—everything that happens in that part of Texas happens in a big way. West Texas is always hyperbole, like Howard's passions, which were expressed in the rampages of the seasons.

Dark Valley, Howard's first home, lies on the edge of the first of the escarpments that rise toward Cap Rock. The valley took its name from the deep shadows of its western bluffs, which in late afternoon lie like dark pools over the sunlit terrain below. If this play of shadow and sunshine reflected Howard's moods, the history of the region, and of the whole state for that matter, supplied the suppressed violence of his nature with adequate metaphors. Howard remarked that history dripped with blood, till it seemed miraculous that, despite wars, famines, massacres, and pestilences, enough children lived to grow up to carry on the race.
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But grow up Texas children did, while up and down the giant stairway, sped by ceaseless winds, from time out of mind men passed— violent men presaging violent events.

Before the coming of Europeans, the Indians swept down the steps from the west, driving the buffalo
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before them into the canyons and chasing them over the wide plains. Prior to Columbus, most of the natives in the area that was to become the United States were Neolithic farmers, who supplemented their diet of maize, beans, and other vegetables by hunting and fishing. The indigenes of Texas were in a state of culture that can properly be called "barbarism"—that is, the style of life that follows the discovery of agriculture but precedes the rise of cities and writing. Some tribes were still in the preagricultural, hunting-gathering stage; the primitive Coahuilans, living in the inhospitable lower Rio Grande Valley, stayed alive by means of such unusual foods as spiders and deer droppings.
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