The Perk (4 page)

Beck Hardin had never figured on coming back to Texas.

He crossed over the Colorado River and exited
the interstate at Highway 290 in south Austin and turned right. Home lay seventy
miles due west, in the Texas Hill Country.

The movie
Giant
gave the world
the image of Texas that persists to this day: flat, dusty, and desolate, a
land best left to longhorns, rattlesnakes, and armadillos, a place where oil
rigs and barbed wire were distinct improvements on Mother Nature. And that
would be true for much of Texas.

But not the Hill Country.

Mother Nature got it
right here, in the land west of Austin, a landscape formed by a great tectonic
event twenty million years ago. It happened after the last dinosaurs had died
off and the great sea that once covered most of Texas had receded and the North
and South American continents had split apart. The earth's crust fractured along
a fault zone extending three hundred fifty miles in a sweeping arc from Del Rio
on the Mexican border east to San Antonio and then northeast to Austin and
beyond, bisecting the state. The land mass to the south and east of the
fracture dropped— geologists call it a "downwarping"—and the land to
the north and west rose—an "uplift"—creating a
three-hundred-foot-tall escarpment, a white limestone wall rising from the
plains in terraces that appeared to the first Spanish explorers as balconies. They
named the escarpment
Los Balcones
.

The Balcones Escarpment divides Texas to this day.

East of the
escarpment lies the Blackland Prairies where rain running off the escarpment
made the land fertile and cotton king. West of the escarpment lies the parched
High Plains of West Texas, the cattle baron land of
Giant
. But between
the two lies the Balcones Canyonlands, the rugged terrain above the escarpment
that long served as the narrow DMZ of the great Texas range wars: sodbusters stayed
east of the escarpment, open-range cowboys west.

That land is known today as the Texas Hill
Country.

As Texas goes, it's a
small area, only about ten thousand square miles, bigger than New Jersey and Delaware combined, but not
big
in a state of 268,000 square miles. But it's the
best land in Texas. The Hill Country has artesian springs where crystal-clear
waters escape from underground aquifers, rivers called the Blanco and
Pedernales and Guadalupe, and lakes called Travis and Buchanan and, of course,
LBJ. It has hills and ravines and valleys with bald cypress trees shading lazy
creeks. It has thick forests of oak and pecan and hackberry trees in the lowlands
and stands of dark green cedar on the canyon slopes that give off a deep
purplish tint in the sunlight. And it has wildflowers. In the spring the
fields become carpets of bluebonnets so unbelievably blue you'd think the sky
has settled down on the land.

Mother Nature got it right here.

And Texans hadn't messed it up, not much anyway,
probably because neither oil nor gas had ever been discovered in the Hill
Country; so industry, interstates, and people had never been lured to this
land. Now, as Beck drove west on Highway 290 and the last outlying
subdivisions of Austin receded in the rearview and the Navigator carried the
Hardin family up and over the Balcones Escarpment, his thoughts were of this
land, the land of his youth.

Beck Hardin was home.

This land had always maintained a strange hold
over him, like a first love a man never completely gets over; sitting in his
Chicago office and staring out at the adjacent skyscrapers, his thoughts had
often returned to this land even though he never had. Now, for the first time
in twenty-four years, his eyes beheld the Texas Hill Country. It took his
breath away, like the first time he had laid eyes on Annie, and brought a sense
of regret to his thoughts: she had asked to see the land he had once called home.
It was the only time he had ever said no to Annie Parker.

He had tried to run from this land and the life
he had lived here, but he might as well have tried to run from his own shadow.

An hour later Beck said, "That's the LBJ Ranch."

They had driven fifty-five miles due west of Austin and were now driving past the vast ranch in Stonewall that had been the Texas White
House when Lyndon Baines Johnson had been president. It was now a state park.
He glanced back in the rearview: Luke's eyes remained fixed on the Gameboy and
Meggie's on the doll; she was brushing its hair and talking softly to it.

"A president lived there."

That got Meggie's attention. She looked out the
window.

"George W. Bush lives there?"

She had learned about the president in her pre-K
class. At the last open house, her teacher had questioned the kids in front of
their proud parents: "Does anyone know the president's name?"

"George W. Bush," the children had recited
in unison.

"And what's his wife's name?"

That had stumped them. The kids had glanced
around at each other with confused expressions until Meggie had finally said,
"Mrs. Bush." Which had seemed like a perfectly reasonable answer to Beck,
the only father at her open house.

"No, honey," he said, "another
president from Texas. Lyndon Johnson. He was born and raised right there."

"Are all the presidents from Texas?"

"No, thank God."

Beck chuckled at his own words, downright treasonous
in Texas. He had been away a very long time.

"Was he a good president?"

"Well, some people would say yes, some would say no."

"What do you say?"

Beck had been born in 1965, so what he knew
about LBJ he had learned in history classes and from the old-timers in town.
His father had talked of seeing LBJ—after his presidency had ended and he was back
living at the ranch—driving around town in his Lincoln convertible with his long
white hair and much younger girlfriend. And Beck the boy had asked, "I
thought Lady Bird was his wife?"

"She was," his father had said.

"Did he bring her along?"

"Nope. He left her back at the ranch."

Beck had studied on
that for a while, then had asked, "How does that work, a man having a wife
and
a girlfriend?"

His father had chuckled. "Well, for most
men it wouldn't work so good. It'd damn sure complicate things. But if you're
an ex-president who happens to be one mean son of a bitch, I guess it works
okay, particularly if you happen to be married to a saint."

"Was he?"

"Yep, LBJ was about the meanest SOB to come
down the pike."

"No. Married to a saint?"

"Oh. Yeah, matter of fact, he was."
His father had paused, Beck recalled, and then had said, "Never realized I
had something in common with LBJ."

As had Beck.

"No, baby, I don't think he was a good
president."

They drove on westward. The sleek
foreign cars of Austin with bumper stickers that read
Who Would Jesus Bomb
and
Impeachbush.org
had been replaced by bulky diesel pickups with grill
guards to protect against unexpected encounters with deer and bumper stickers that
read
Luv Ya Dubya
and
Support Our Troops;
and the dense subdivisions
had given way to open pastures where horses, cows, sheep, and goats grazed
peacefully under the July sun as if they were the happiest creatures on earth
even though the Navigator's outside temperature gauge registered 98 degrees. Weathered
homesteads with windmills sat back off the highway, and a series of cell towers
ran parallel to the highway. A sign affixed to a fencepost offered
"Hay-4-Sale."

"What are those big round things?" Meggie
asked.

Beck glanced out her side at a field of hay being
cut by a farmer driving a tractor and holding a cell phone to his ear.

"Hay bales."

A mile later, she said, "Mommy says those are big moo-cows."

She was holding the doll up so it could see out
the left side of the car. Beck glanced that way.

"Tell her … No, honey, those are buffalo."

"Are
those
cows?"

She was now looking out the right side.

"No, those are horses. Says 'Eureka Thoroughbred Farm'." Beck pointed out the other side. "Now those are
cows."

A small herd was grazing in a field. It wasn't
a real cattle ranch; those were out west. This little ranchette was just a tax
deduction for a Houston lawyer or a Dallas doctor.

"And what's that?"

Back to the right side.

"Well, that's a one-hump camel. I'm not
sure what it's doing here."

Meggie asked and Beck answered as they drove
past two ostriches, three wineries, and four turkey farms … the Hummingbird
Farm, the Lavender Farm, and the Wildseed Farm … Engel's Peaches, Turner's
Tractors, and Vogel's Peaches & Tractors … the steel-blue Lutheran
Church with its tall white steeple … and longhorn cattle. They passed bare
peach orchards and shuttered peach stands, vacant deer blinds waiting for hunting
season, and the same abandoned houses and roadside stores that Beck had seen
when he had last driven this highway twenty-four years before. They drove past
Upper Albert Road and Lower Albert Road, Gellermann and Goehmann Lanes, Old San Antonio Road and the road to Luckenbach. They crossed over Flat Creek, Tow Head
Creek, Rocky Creek, Three Mile Creek, South Grape Creek, Baron's Creek where it
turned south, and the Pedernales River where it turned north; all had run dry.

"Plus three," he said.

"Plus three what?" Meggie said.

Beck pointed at the city limits sign: FREDERICKSBURG, TEXAS, POP. 8,911.

"Plus three. Us."

"Why's that white cross stuck in the
ground?"

Under the sign was a short cross with a vase of flowers.

"Someone must've … there must have been
a car accident right here."

"Did someone die?"

"Maybe."

"They'll be back. Like Mommy."

Beck sighed. How do you explain death to a
five-year-old?

They drove past a new Wal-Mart on the left, Fort
Martin Scott with a teepee on the right, and horses grazing around a new sewage
treatment plant. Highway 290 became Main Street, and Beck slowed as they entered
town; he stopped at a red light fronting the old Nimitz Hotel, now the National
Museum of the Pacific War, but once a hotel, brewery, and frontier landmark
with its upper stories shaped like the bow of a Mississippi steamboat complete
with a hurricane deck, pilot house, and a crow's nest. The original German owner
had been a sailor, as had his grandson, Admiral Chester Nimitz, the commander
of the Pacific Fleet during World War Two. Back in the late 1800s, the
ten-room hotel had been a traveler's last chance for a cold beer, a hot bath, and
a clean bed until El Paso five hundred miles farther west. The Nimitz marked
the eastern boundary of downtown Fredericksburg.

Main Street was blocked off west of the Nimitz.
American, Texas, and German flags flew from standards on every building on both
sides of the street. Stretched over the street was a banner that read
FREDERICKSBURG SALUTES OUR ARMED FORCES AND THEIR FAMILIES. And Beck remembered
what day it was.

"Hey, guys, it's the Fourth of July. I
think we're in time for the parade."

Beck pulled around the corner and parked a block
north of Main Street. Meggie jumped out, but Luke had to be coaxed.

"Come on, son, this'll be fun."

Luke sighed and climbed out. They walked back to Main Street and crossed over to the south side—the shady side in the summer. Spectators crowded
the sidewalks and stood on the second-story balconies that overlooked Main Street and sat on the tailgates of pickup trucks and SUVs that lined the street. Some wore
flags—hats, caps, shirts, and shorts; others waved flags. The sun was blazing
hot, the sky was clear blue, and the flags were flying: it was the Fourth of
July in Fredericksburg, Texas.

They settled into a shady spot out front of what had been
the Fredericksburg Auto Parts; it was now a brew pub. They stood among white-haired
folks sitting in folding chairs, wholesome looking country kids hunkered down
on the curb holding red, white, and blue balloons, and their sturdy parents
standing behind them holding video cameras and dogs on leashes. Customers carried
German lager out of the pub and took up viewing positions; drinking on the
sidewalks had been legal in Fredericksburg since the days when thirteen saloons
lined Main Street, and apparently it still was. Beck had given up alcohol when
he had left this town, so he bought three bottles of cold water from two girls
about Luke's age who were selling it out of a red wagon and passing out little
flags; Beck handed a bottle and a flag to each of his children, then pointed
down at an iron ring embedded in the concrete sidewalk.

"Luke, cowboys used to tie their horses to these
rings."

Luke glanced down but only grunted in response.

The four asphalt lanes of Main Street were unoccupied except
for two cops on bikes and a long-legged blonde girl wearing cowboy boots and
stars-and-stripes short-shorts and making a show of sashaying back and forth across
the empty street. Texas girls liked attention; pretty Texas girls demanded it.

Cowboys hats, gimme caps, and umbrellas served as sunblocks
for the spectators, all of whom, young and old, now abruptly stood and placed
their right hands and hats over their hearts. The parade was upon them, led by
a lone bagpiper wearing a kilt and followed by a military color guard, five
uniformed soldiers and sailors carrying the U.S. flag and the Army, Navy,
Marine, and Air Force colors flanked by Army and Marine riflemen. The high
school ROTC marched behind the color guard and were followed by World War Two veterans
manning a .60-caliber machine gun mounted on a half-track pulling a flat-bed
trailer with national guard soldiers just back from Iraq. The crowd applauded
and cheered as if they were the Chicago Bears just back from the Super Bowl. A
sign listed the names of soldiers in their company killed in action. There
were a lot of names. Another sign read FREEDOM IS NOT FREE.