Summer Books Issue THE TEXAS

A JOURNAL OF FREE VOICES JULY 31, 1998 • $2.25

Bob Sherrill on Poppy Bush Don Graham on Cormac's Trilogy Plus an Excerpt of Gary Webb's Dark Alliance

THIS ISSUE FEATURE

Dark Alliance by Gary Webb 10 How a trail of money, politics, and drugs lead one reporter into the CIA and the Reagan White House

DEPARTMENTS Deep-Dish, Hold the Rhyme 21 Dialogue 2 Poetry by Bob Holman

Editorial Latina Lit 22 Contra Contratemps 4 Poetry Review by Dave Oliphant by Louis Dubose VOLUME 90, NO. 14 Elroy Bode's Texas 24 Book Review by Richard Phelan A JOURNAL OF FREE VOICES BOOKS AND THE CULTURE We will serve no group or party but will hew hard to the truth as we find it and the right as we see it. We are Cormac McCarthy's Border 5 Police Story 27 dedicated to the whole truth, to human values above all interests, to the rights of human-kind as the foundation Book Review by Don Graham Book Review by Steven G. Kellman of democracy: we will take orders from none but our own conscience, and never will we overlook or misrep- The Banal Mr. Bush 8 Blue-Collar Conquistador 29 resent the truth to serve the interests of the powerful or cater to the ignoble in the human spirit. Book Review by Robert Sherrill Book Review by Pat LittleDog Writers are responsible for their own work, but not for anything they have not themselves written, and in Afterword 30 publishing them we do not necessarily imply that we The State of Swing 16 agree with them, because this is a journal of free voices. Book Review by Karen Olsson Selected Sketches By Elroy Bode SINCE 1954 The Zeal of Zinn 17 Back Page 32 Founding Editor: Ronnie Dugger Book Review by Char Miller The Heat's On Publisher: Geoff Rips Editors: Louis Dubose, Michael King Maybe, Baby 19 Cover art by Sam Hurt Assistant Editor: Mimi Bardagjy Associate Editor: Karen Olsson Book Review by Jeff Mandell Poetry Editor: Naomi Shihab Nye Production: Harrison Saunders Business Manager: Jeff Mandell Staff Writer: Nate Blakeslee DIALOGUE Development Director: Nancy Williams Web Editor: Mike Smith ANOTHER GALBRAITH? Editorial Interns: Justin Burchard, Billy Magnuson NO JOKE Contributing Writers: Bill Adler, Barbara Belejack, Social Security is in crisis I read, and under I applaud Michael King's fine reporting in Robert Bryce, Brett Campbell, Lars Eighner, James K. the terms by which it now operates, I be- the "The High Cost of Hate Radio" (June Galbraith, Dagoberto Gilb, James Harrington, Jim High- tower, Molly Ivins, Paul Jennings, Steven G. Kellman, lieve the evidence supports the crisis label. 19). Keep up the good work! Jeff Mandell, Bryce Milligan, Char Miller, Debbie But Mr. Galbraith says there is no crisis ("I I think the article speaks to a few impor- Nathan, John Ross, Brad Tyer. Staff Photographer: Alan Pogue Don't Want to Talk About It," by James K. tant things: (1) the quality of civic commu- Contributing Photographers: Vic Hinterlang, Patricia Galbraith, April 24). I cannot find the issue nication has dropped to incredibly low lev- Moore. in which he wrote the bafflingly glib piece, els; (2) more and more, people see Contributing Artists: Eric Avery, Tom Ballenger, Richard Bartholomew, Jeff Danziger, Beth Epstein, so I cannot quote him, but his argument violence as a way to solve problems; (3) Valerie Fowler, Kevin Kreneck, Michael Krone, Ben lacked evidence. I wish to read a well-ar- the people on the jury really dislike the Sargent, Gail Woods. Editorial Advisory Board: David Anderson, Austin; gued contrarian view, not something in the Clintons, Gore, and LBJ Broadcasting Elroy Bode, El Paso; Chandler Davidson, Houston; William Murchison style of "It Is, Because Company. (This is only speculation, but: Dave Denison, Arlington, Mass.; Bob Eckhardt, Austin; Sissy Farenthold, Houston; John Kenneth Galbraith, I Say It Is." And what of the awful finish, do you think the jury would have re- Cambridge, Mass.; Lawrence Goodwyn, Durham, N.C.; urging us all to have another baby? This sort sponded the same if someone had joked Molly Ivins, Austin; Larry L. King, Washington, D.C.; Maury Maverick, Jr., San Antonio; Willie Morris, Jack- of unwarranted pride in his genes amazes about killing Reagan?) son, Miss.; Kaye Northcott, Fort Worth; James Presley, me, and the "another baby" ideal is mining Jim Siekmeier Texarkana; Susan Reid, Austin; A.R. (Babe) Schwartz, Galveston; Fred Schmidt, Fredericksburg. the world, ever more rapidly. Send this guy San Angelo In Memoriam: Cliff Olofson, 1931-1995 back to the library, or, I should say, make RADICAL POETRY? THE TEXAS OBSERVER (ISSN 0040-4519/USPS 541300), entire contents copyrighted. (D 1998, is published biweekly except for a four-week interval him leave the very small corner of the When I used to have something bad to say between issues in January and July (24 issues per year) by the Texas Democracy Foundation, a 50I(c)3 non-profit corporation, 307 West 7th Street. Austin, library in which he has come to rest. about somebody, Tula — the black woman Texas 78701. Telephone: (512) 477-0746. E-mail: [email protected] World Wide Web DownHome page: http://texasObserver.org . Periodicals I recommend to your readers Bill who raised me — used to tell me, "Bobby, Postage Paid at Austin. Texas. McKibben's cover story in Atlantic bite your tongue." Well, my tongue has SUBS: One year $32, two years $59, three years $84. Full-time students $18 per year; add $13/year for foreign subs. Back issues $3 prepaid. Airmail, for- Monthly, May 1998, which argues elo- long been bleeding for having to endure eign. group, and bulk rates on request. Microfilm available from University Microfilms Intl., 300 N. Zetb Road. Ann Arbor, MI 48106. quently against the outdated idea of the the Observer selections of poems. But no INDEXES: The Texas Observer is indexed in Access: The Supplementary Index so Periodicals; Texas Index and, for the years 1954 through 1981. more children the better. As always, more. Naomi Shihab Nye's recent piece The Texas Observer Index. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to THE TEXAS OBSERVER, thanks for the wonderful reporting. ("The President and the Poets / Keeping 307 West 7th Street, Austin, Texas 78701. John Ledbetter the Voices Alive," June 5), has forced me Via interne into words.

2 ■ THE TEXAS OBSERVER JULY 31, 1998 A poet's business, I believe, is to tinker with the language and, therefore, with the way we think and feel. In this way John Bennett or Ezra Pound — I can't remem- ber who — said this "poets become the Chat it Chew With antennae of the culture." It's a radical oc- cupation. Or should be. The poems selected for the Observer Jim Hightower are not meant to challenge the reader or, God forbid, offend her. They are placed Purchase or renew a subscription to the Texas Observer there, instead, as ornament, a sop to mid- dle-class ideas of what culture is, some- and you could win lunch with Jim Hightower, legendary wit, thing to hang on the wall, like my mother raconteur, progressive philosopher, and the first used to hang nice but mediocre watercol- radio talk show host fired by Mickey Mouse! ors on the wall. The paintings made my mother feel better. The winner gets round-trip airfare to Austin and lunch at Which is what Nye's article on her trip to Threadgill's World Headquarters with Jim Hightower, receives Washington also does. She tells us about a signed copy of his most recent book, There,k Nothing in the Mid- seeing so-and-so, talking to the First Lady dle of the Road But Yellow Stripes about Chelsea, and asking the President for his autograph. She thereby loses a perfect and Dead Armadillos, and gets to opportunity to speak about poetry, its pur- watch the live broadcast of Hightower's pose in our society, and, likewise, the ex2 nationally syndicated radio show. pectations that we might have of our poets. So subscribe today! You'll also save Hayden Carruth, in declining his invita- tion to this same Millennium Evening, 56% off the cover price. said in his public letter to the President: ❑ I want to subscribe to the Texas Observer. ...it would seem the greatest hypocrisy Name for an honest American poet to be present on such an occasion at the seat of the Address power which has not only neglected but City/State/Zip abused the interests of poets and their readers continually, to say nothing of ❑ 1 year: $24 ❑ 2 years: $48 ❑ 3 years $72 ❑ New Subscription EIRenewal many other administratively dispensable segments of the population. To be eligible, subscriptions must be received and paid in full by August 15, 1998. The Observer will provide round-trip airfare for one person from any Texas airport served by Southwest Airlines; hotel What does Naomi think about this com- accommodations will not be provided. Valid only for full-priced subscriptions (student-rate subscriptions ment? And why didn't she report on his excluded). One entry per one-year subscription; two entries per two-year subscription; three entries per refusal to go to the White House? three-year subscription; in the case of gift subscriptions, the recipient will be entered in the drawing unless the payor, in writing, requests otherwise. Please address all questions to the Texas Observer, Bobby Byrd 307 W. 7th Street; Austin, TX 78701; (512) 477-0746; [email protected] . El Paso

The Editors respond: No editor's taste can (or should) be so CLEAN BILL OF HEALTH I was aware of Hayden Carruth's rhetori- catholic as to embrace every sort of writ- You're doin' better. cal boycott of the White House event. That ing. But within the admittedly small com- Sincerely, poets, and artists in general, have long pass we grant her — all told, some two Daniel Jackson M.D. been marginalized by "seats of power" is dozen pages a year, Naomi Shihab Nye Houston hardly news in our culture, and to perpet- has assembled a,glittering anthology of uate that marginalizaton by holding one- attentive, articulate, wide-ranging, and self apart, essentially uninteresting. Sorry lyrical poems. Amidst the political and so- Write Dialogue you missed the importance of poetry in my cial clamor that is the Observer, her pages piece: I tried to include them, along with are emotional and intellectual clearings, The Texas Observer some good-humored (in the spirit of the generous of both heart and Mind. We re- 307 W. 7th St. Austin, TX 78701 evening) descriptive details. main proud to call Naomi Shihab Nye the [email protected] —Naomi Shihab Nye Observer's poetry editor. —M.K.

JULY 31, 1998 THE TEXAS OBSERVER ■ 3 EDITORIAL antia Contiatemps ecause it appeared in the New York Times it is now sanctioned as fact: while Ronald Reagan was president the CIA. worked with Nicaraguan drug smugglers who imported B Colombian cocaine into the United States to raise money to support a mercenary army that came to be called the Contras. Here is how the story began under James Riserth byline in the July 17 issue of the Times: The Central Intelligence Agency contin- courtroom testimony of Nicaraguan drug les. Many of those who fled Nicaragua in ued to work with about two dozen dealer Danilo Blandon, who admitted 1979-80 had been involved in illicit busi- Nicaragua rebels and their supporters dur- under oath that he had sold 200 to 300 kilos nesses under (and with) Nicaragua's dictator ing the 1980s, despite allegations that they of cocaine for a Contra connection in Los Anastasio Somoza; so it was not surprising were trafficking in drugs, according to a Angeles and that all the profits had gone to that they would find their way into organized classified study by the C.I.A. the Contras. Yet Suro, citing "unnamed law crime in the United States. According to the Times, the C.I.A. report enforcement officials," reported that Their arrival in this country coincided dismisses the specific claims laid out in an Blandon had sold far less: "$30,000 to with the formation of expatriate groups de- article published in 1996 by the San Jose $60,000 worth of cocaine." termined to overthrow the Sandinistas, who Mercury-News, and furthermore, the "Mer- It was hardly reporting, but it was enough had ousted Somoza. And the drug trade cury-News subsequently admitted that the to start what might be described as a rebut- (along with car-theft rings, some of which series was flawed and reassigned the re- tal frenzy. Within weeks, The Los Angeles had been working in Somoza' s Nicaragua) porter." The reporter who was reassigned in Times and The New York Times followed was a reliable source of the large quantities 1996 is Gary Webb — and Webb has been the Post, quickly turning out stories that of cash required to put a mercenary army in through this routine in the past. In 1996, challenged an investigative series that had the field. All of this coincided with the ad- after he had spent sixteen months working been a year and a half in the making. "Like vent of crack cocaine: a reformulation that on a story based on interviews, government good little boys and girls," Molly Ivins made the drug so cheap that it was no documents, and testimony and other evi- wrote in a 1996 column devoted to Webb's longer exclusively the recreational drug of dence from federal drug prosecutions, he reporting, "the Times, The Washington the rich. Had the C.I.A. been halfway faith- produced a three-part series that linked the Post, et al., toddled off to the C.I.A. and ful to its mandate to gather intelligence that C.I.A. to cocaine dealers working in South- asked the agency if it had ever done such a is vital to national security, it would have ern California. Within weeks, Washington thing. When the C.I.A. said 'no' the papers easily predicted that the fall of Somoza Post reporters Walter Pincus and Roberto solemnly printed it — just as though the would have domestic consequences in the Suro wrote that they had conducted their C.I.A. hadn't previously denied any number United States. The agency, however, was own investigation and that it did not support of illegal operations in which it was later preoccupied with its plans to overthrow the the conclusion that the CIA-backed Contras caught red-handed." The editors of the Mer- Sandinista governmentiof Nicaragua. — or Nicaraguans in general — played a cury-News, however, responded by walking The prologue of Webb's book, major role in the emergence of crack co- away from their story and their reporter. reprinted in this issue, begins in the news- caine as a narcotic in widespread use across room of the Mercury-News. But Webb's the United States. t's getting harder to dismiss Gary Webb. narrative quickly moves on to Nicaragua, Not only was the Post's brief investiga- In his new book, Dark Alliance (Seven Los Angeles, and Washington. Allowed to tion far less ambitious than what Webb had /Stories Press, $24.95), Webb takes full fully develop the material he gathered in undertaken in 1996, there were other prob- advantage of 548 pages to lay out the Con- 1994-95, and the reporting he has done lems with the Post's story. Pincus had pre- tra-C.I.A.-cocaine story. Not only does since he was dismissed from the Mercury- viously published an account of his own Webb name the names and tell the stories of News, Gary Webb has put together a tale work for the C.I.A. in the 1950s and early the Reagan administration's use of drug as compelling as any work of fiction that 1960s. And he had written a review of for- money to finance an illegal war in will turn up at the beach this summer. And mer C.I.A. agent Philip Agee's exposé of Nicaragua, he devotes sixty-eight pages to because the C.I.A. report on which the the agency — in which he suggested that source notes that provide the reader with most recent Times story was based is clas- Agee was working with Cuban intelligence specific attribution for each claim made in sified (James Risen was briefed by the in an attempt to destroy the C.I.A. Nor was the book. Dark Alliance links the agency), Dark Alliance provides the best the Post's rebuttal of Webb's story thor- Nicaraguan diaspora that followed the fall of available account of the C.I.A.'s role in oughly attributed. One of Webb's central Anastasio Somoza in 1979 to the distribution the Contra wars in Nicaragua and the drug claims, for example, rested on the federal of crack cocaine on the streets of Los Ange- trade in the United States. — L.D.

4 • THE TEXAS OBSERVER JULY 31, 1998 BOOKS & THE CULTURE Outlaw Heart Cormac McCarthy:s Border Trilogy

BY DON GRAHAM

CITIES OF THE PLAIN. Stanley Marcus's Minding the Store and which means Faulkner for the long, sinuous By Cormac McCarthy. something called Johnny Texas. It may be sentences and O'Connor for the maxed-out Alfred A. Knopf. time to announce a long moratorium on the Gothic effects, though Faulkner was no 291 pages $24.00 subject of Texas writing. slouch in that regard himself, and he of McCarthy, however, is the only writer in course was Flannery O'Connor' s own pre- ormac McCarthy has all of Texas today whose prose is worth cursor, the "Dixie Limited" she called him, lived in Texas since rereading. One page of McCarthy is worth roaring down the track. In Suttree, a 1976, and in that time the whole shelf of Western titles at Wal- Joycean recreation of Knoxville, McCarthy has published, along Mart, some of which are produced by ad- contributes one of the finest moments in with Suttree, his good- mired and celebrated Texas literary "gi- Southern Gothic when he tells the tale of a bye-to-Knoxville-and- ants." But then McCarthy is an intensely country youth, Gene Harrogate, who has all-that novel of 1979, literary writer. He is the heir of Modernist sex with watermelons. The story of the four novels set in the old prose, and if you take the view that Mod- "melonmounter" who serves prison time ,on and modern West: Blood Meridian, All the ernism — Joyce, say, and in America, a lesser charge than bestiality because he CPretty Horses, The Crossing, and, this year, had a smart lawyer who pointed out that Cities of the Plain . The last three comprise McCARTHY'S STATUS AS A SOUTHERN plant amour wasn't the same as animal the "Border Trilogy," all published in the WRITER IS CERTIFIED BY THE FACT love, is right up there with Faulkner,

nineties, and by any estimation based on THAT IN MUCH OF . HIS EARLY FICTION O'Connor, and Erskine Caldwell. literary merit, the most considerable ac- THERE IS A PLETHORA OF DEAD McCarthy's status as a Southern writer is complishment by a Texas writer — or any MULES, DEAD MULES BEING...THE certified by the fact that in much of his early writer who has even flown over Texas in PRINCIPAL GENRE-SIGNIFIER OF fiction there is a plethora of dead mules, dead these latter years of the Millennium. Mc- SOUTHERN LITERATURE. mules being, as one wag has recently half-se- Carthy's West is parts of Texas, New Mex- riously opined, the principal genre-signifier ico, and Mexico, yet I know plenty of Faulkner, to cite two of McCarthy's obvi- of Southern literature. Following this line of Texas writers who whisper to me, slantwise ous precursors — is an outmoded form of thinking, Jerry Leath Mills in an article in out of the corner of their mouths, he won't literary production, elitist texts for rarefied The Southern Literary Journal last year last, he doesn't really live in Texas, he's special audiences, and on top of that male crowned McCarthy the king of Southern not a Texas writer, and so on. and Eurocentric as hell, then McCarthy is writing, noting fifty-nine dead mules in A. C. Greene won't even admit him to the last practitioner in America of an ossi- Blood Meridian, a number I'm accepting on his puny pantheon, The 50+ Best Books on fied high art form. He is certainly one of the faith. Ah, but that novel is set along the bor- Texas, a new, weird update of Greene's few to treat Western materials with the der of Texas and Mexico, and it should there- original Fifty Best Books on Texas, which highest intensity of prose of which he is ca- fore be seen as the end of the Southern tradi- was published back in the early 1980s and pable, and he is very capable indeed. With tion in McCarthy because in the Border provoked Larry McMurtry to a famous ri- very few exceptions, Western fiction is Trilogy there are no dead mules at all. In the poste in the pages of this journal, the much- mostly a hail of gunfire and lonely men rid- new novel, Cities of the Plain, there is in fact cited "Ever a Bridegroom." In the new ver- ing through Marlboro country. There is an a pointed reference to the signifier's absence, sion Green denies All the Pretty Horses entire professional organization, the West- as Billy Parham, looking at an abandoned admittance into his select company, pro- ern American Literature Association, dedi- adobe shack that John Grady Cole is refur- claiming it primarily a "novel of Mexico." cated to the proposition that what I have bishing for his beloved, says, "The only thing Greene also boots out Katherine Anne just said is not true, but Western writers in you ain't got here is a dead mule in the floor." Porter, declaring that Pale Horse, Pale America have rarely broken through to na- In the trilogy there are, however, dead critters Rider is not a Texas work because the title tional audiences. McCarthy has. of every other stripe and dead Americans and story takes place in Denver (and ignoring What makes McCarthy' s career so re- dead Mexicans and a great deal of dead road the fact that "Noon Wine" is set near Buda, markable is that it has encompassed two of kill, including a macabre massacre of rabbits just down the road from Green's home in the great sites of national myth-making: the by a car speeding through the night in Cities Salado). Greene's own A Personal Country South and the West. His first four novels all of the Plain: "The Oldsmobile had this big remains in. Inexplicably, Greene adds grew out of the Southern literary tradition, ovalshaped grille in the front of it was like a

JULY 31, 1998 THE TEXAS OBSERVER ■ 5 big scoop and when I got around to the front beyond the saying of it, he is an expert theme, though to my knowledge no one has of the car it was just packed completely full chess player, he's a stud, She's capable of thought to compare the great outdoor of jackrabbit heads. I mean there was a hun- enduring enormous physical pain, he's a writer with the great indoor writer. The text dred of em jammed in there and the front of natural-born killer when forced to, as he is to contemplate is James's The American, in the car the bumper and all was just covered in the great Saltillo prison sequence, and which an innocent American, Christopher with blood and rabbit guts and them rabbits I he's a good-looking sumbuck on top of ev- Newman (a combination of Columbus and reckon they'd sort of turned their heads away erything else. He's Brad Pitt if Brad Pitt DeCrevecoer's new man, the American), just at impact cause they was all lookin out, had a clue. (On the audio tape Pitt, reading goes to France, falls in love, but fails to win eyes all crazy lookin. Teeth sideways. Grin- from All the Pretty Horses, repeatedly the hand of his beloved. In the end she can- nin." But no dead mules. mangles "el jefe," pronouncing the "j" in- not go against her family's aristocratic def- inition of itself; in the end her ll the Pretty Horses, set in family simply cannot accept 949, begins the idea of an American, of t the point where Larry someone so innocent and at the M c M u r t r y' s same time so dangerous. John Horseman, Pass By, set in Grady runs into the same 1954, ends. This may be purely haughty opposition in Mexico. coincidental, but in both novels a He falls in love with the beauti- young male still in his teens has ful high-born . daughter of a just witnessed the burial of his wealthy hacendado, sleeps grandfather and faces an uncer- with her, and eventually loses tain future. The middle genera- her because she is unable, un- tion of parents is either missing willing, to defy her father. The in action (McMurtry) or com- novel is filled with eloquent promised (McCarthy). Further, passages on the fundamental the Texas of each novel, Archer differences between Mexico City for McMurtry, San Angelo and America, differences that for McCarthy, is caught up in arise from national identity, re- post-war American ideology in ligious traditions, and concep- which the Old West is giving tions of fate. In this equation way to modernization. Lonnie Mexico is James's Europe to Bannon, McMurtry's youthful John Grady's America: experi- protagonist, walks away from Valerie Fowler ence and history versus inno- the ranch at the end, headed to an cence and newness. uncertain future (actually he will wind up stead of "el [h]]efe.") John Grady wants to All the Pretty Horses ends with loss — majoring in English and writing a sensitive take over the management of his family's and the suggestion that there is some hope first novel about an adolescent leaving the ranch, but his mother, a selfish bitch, won't for the future. By the time the novel reaches ranching tradition, etc.) McMurtry's Lonnie let him, and in one of many great lines in its close John Grady has lost a boy in his is cast in the ironic mode of a realist novel. the novel, a lawyer tells John Grady, keeping, the girl he loved, his father, and He has medium cowboy skills at best and 'Some things in this world cant be Mexico, the land that he also loves. He has sees the passing of his grandfather as the end helped.... And I believe this is probably one also killed a man and suffered much pain of an era. Lonnie has no burning desire to of ern.'" (Women characters are something himself. Yet the novel ends on a heightened reinscribe that era on the body of his own of a problem in McCarthy, but I also know note of promise, as John Grady literally being. Hud, who has the skills, is a shithead: many bright, strong women who love his rides into the sunset: "Passed and paled into hence this novel's credentials as anti-west- work. So there). Denied the ranch that he the darkening land, the world to come." ern. And a very good novel it is, despite its could manage so capably, John Grady, with When the next volume of the Border Tril- author's decades-long denigration of his own his pal Lacy Rawlins, a teenage Quixote and ogy came out, readers expected to take up first born book-length fiction. Sancho Panza, light out for the territory, for the further adventures of John Grady Cole, John Grady Cole (note the formal sound- Mexico, where young "waddies" go when but the "all-american cowboy" (as he is ing name), on the other hand, is the cowboy there's no West left to go to in the U.S. called in Cities of the Plain) does not appear projected on the mythic level. He knows When they cross the border, they are in in The Crossing. More densely textured and perfect Castilian Spanish (but speaks En- an ancient, hierarchical, and mysterious darker than All the Pretty Horses, The glish in a West Texas vernacular of ain' ts world, one both instinctively and philo- Crossing follows Billy Parham and his and he don'ts — McCarthy has a perfect- sophically inimical to American inno- brother Boyd on their repeated journeys into pitch ear for cowboy talk), he knows horses cence. This is McCarthy's great Jamesian Mexico. Theirs is a tale of loss and suffering

6 • THE TEXAS OBSERVER JULY 31, 1998

f r and death as well. The opening sequence, plosion of an atomic bomb. Now in the yard dead if you mess with him. Son, aint some 120 pages or so, which relates the tale third volume Billy says, "Anyway this there no girls on this side of the damn river?" of Billy Parham's escorting a wild she-wolf country aint the same. Nor anything in it. John Grady's response, "Not like her," from New Mexico to Old Mexico, is one of The war changed everything. I don't think determines everything that will follow. the great animal stories in American litera- people even know it yet." When questioned Cities of the Plain performs its necessary ture. The Crossing exhibits once more Mc- as to what he means, he replies, "It just did. work in the structure of the trilogy by enough Carthy's lust for the metaphysical, as one It aint the same no more. It never will be." cross-referencing to reward readers of the wise oldtimer after another steps forward to The "cities of the plain" adumbrates the first two volumes. The duel with knives from explain the meaning of everything to a past, not the present: El Paso and Juarez as All the Pretty Horses is reinscribed in a sometimes uncomprehending Billy Parham Sodom and Gomorrah. The crossings into lengthy and deadly ballet interspersed with (and the reader over his shoulder.) Mexico are not the wilderness adventures of philosophical speculations by the Mexican The Crossing's ending is apocalyptically the first two novels but are instead confined pimp who also is in love with Magdalena. bleak, leaving the reader to ponder what to trips to brothels in Juarez, and in one of John Grady's skill with horses is reprised, as volume three might take up. Billy Parham, these John Grady, who falls in love easily, is are his memories of his mother, the girl he alone and bereft, witnesses from a distance smitten at the sight of a sixteen-year-old lost, and the scar he acquired during his first the inauguration of the atomic age, the prostitute named Magdalena. Incurable ro- trip to Mexico. Billy Parham's memories of Trinity Test conducted in New Mexico on mantic that he is, he sets out to save her and his brother Boyd are fused with the way he 16 July 1945 — as critic Alex Hunt estab- makes ready a little house in the high, remote feels for John Grady. The novel ends with lishes in a recent article published in South- Billy Parham projected into the next century, western American Literature. The "inex- MCCARTHY IS AMONG THE LAST OF an old man wandering in a Southwestern plicable darkness" that follows the blinding AMERICAN NOVELISTS TO BELIEVE IN wasteland of superhighways and concrete light is followed in turn by Billy's weep- THE CONSTRUCTION OF AN ENTIRE bridges. The last scene depicts the end of a ing, then, in the last sentence, a final hope- WORLD BASED ENTIRELY ON RHYTHM, journey of loss, which is the meaning of life. Or as an old man tells John Grady at one ful note: "after a while the right and god- IMAGERY, VOICE, NUANCE, PACE, made sun did rise, once again, for all and point in the novel, when John Grady asks INCANTATION, THE WHOLE PANOPLY what the hardest thing in life is: "Maybe it's without distinction." The advent of the nu- OF LANGUAGE LIFTED BEYOND THE clear age is the most dramatic annunciation just that when things are gone they're gone. DELIVERY OF INFORMATION, of man's separation from nature, a theme They aint comin back." that runs through the trilogy. WHETHER IT'S NETSCAPE DATA OR Reviewers sometimes complain about THRILLER PLOTS. McCarthy' s lack of well-constructed plots. ities of the Plain, the concluding vol- They ought not to. If they want well-con- ume of the trilogy, satisfies the country near the ranch, where he intends to structed plots, let them consult the Best Creader's wish to know what happened live with his new bride. Billy Parham is Seller Lists, which specialize in plots. Mc- to John Grady Cole. The reader is doubly sat- highly skeptical of this plan, but can do noth- Carthy's art is the art of style; he is among isfied because the new novel pairs John ing to stop his headstrong young friend. It is the last of American novelists to believe in Grady and Billy Parham, two extremely lik- just here that one wishes John Grady's fabled the construction of an entire world based able young men who have experienced love, horse sense could be applied to humans, to entirely on rhythm, imagery, voice, nu- loss, and death. The time is 1952, on a ranch the fairer sex as that gender was once parsed. ance, pace, incantation, the whole panoply in New Mexico, not far from El Paso. John Because when somebody tells you that a of language lifted beyond the delivery of Grady and Billy are happy to be cowboys, prostitute has an "illness," this is information information, whether it's netscape data or and if they pursued that ascetic life of ritual, one listens to. Not John Grady. In Mag- thriller plots. To read McCarthy is to in- work, and stoicism, they could continue to be dalena' s case her sickness is epilepsy, which habit a new spatial dimension of language. happy. The novel is laced with memories of betokens, I take it, something grander than If you don't want to "go there," as they say, cowboy lore, stories of "the old west that STD. then don't. If you do, then be prepared to once was," trail drives, horse lore, Mexico John Grady is "in the grip of an irrational enjoy an artist operating at a very high during the Revolution, all gloriously told. But passion," the girl's pimp tells Billy. Billy's level of verbal accomplishment. Page after there is already a sense of doom hanging over own response is to try to reason with the pas- page demands pleasurable rereading and the ranch, as the Army plans to claim the land sionate young cowboy. He ticks off a list of reading aloud. Of what best-seller beach for military purposes. reasons why John Grady should let .her go: book can this be said. ❑ The impact of World War II on the lives "She aint American. She aint a citizen. She of the boys echoes through the trilogy. dont speak english. She works in a whore- Don Graham is J. Frank Dobie Regents John Grady's daddy was on the Bataan house. No, hear me out. And last but not Professor of English at U.T.-Austin. His death march and then imprisoned by the least—he sat holding his thumb—there's a book Giant Country has just been pub- Japanese. He was never the same after- son of a bitch owns her outright that I lished by TCU Press. ward. Billy Parham unwittingly saw the ex- guarangoddamntee you will kill you grave-

■ 7 JULY 31, 1998 THE TEXAS OBSERVER •

BOOKS & THE CULTURE Father Of A Bush Following Poppy from Yale to Panama BY ROBERT SHERRILL

GEORGE BUSH: to buy arms, President Bush signed a top- during the years when Bush was starting The Life of a Lone Star Yankee. secret National Security Decision directive out (for this grasp he is indebted partly to By Herbert Parmet. ordering closer ties with Baghdad and the Observer files, which he cites several Scribner. opening the way for $1 billion in new aid." times with suitable respect). We are re- 576 pages. $32.50. The newspaper went on to trace Bush's minded that Bush was willing to strike up close support of Iraq throughout the 1980s. alliances with anyone or any group that ooking back on George Bush's Referring to these documents, Ross could hoist him politically — from the rat career is like surveying a distant Perot was able to lace his 1992 campaign pack John Birch Society (Ralph Yarbor- desert landscape through gauze. At with such accurate comments as: "If you ough said Bush actually became a member first, it seems exceedingly boring, don't like guys like Saddam Hussein, don't of the J.B.S.) to the great traitor of the plain, ill-defined. But if you keep spend ten years and billions of dollars of Texas Democratic Party, Allan Shivers. looking, some things will American taxpayers' money creating As a Texas oil man himself, he had no come into focus that under- him.... President Bush made Saddam Hus- trouble raising campaign funds, for "he score (to give a twist to sein what he is today." was as attractive to the money men as they Hannah Arendt's famous phrase) the evil of Parmet virtually passes over this miser- were to him." His 1970 race for the Senate banality. Bush is a banal man, and some able affair. of the things he stood for and did were One reason the reading public enjoys BUSH'S 1970 RACE FOR THE SENATE truly evil. Robert Caro's presidential Viagraphies is AGAINST LLOYD BENTSEN TURNED Considering that, I would have wel- that he lets his emotional judgments (right or OUT TO BE "A DRESS REHEARSAL FOR comed more derision, more sarcasm, more wrong) get involved in a big way. Unlike the anger than I find in this biography. What's scholarly Parmet, Caro would have hooted THE CAMPAIGN FINANCE ABUSES OF the use of having the advantage of history's again and again at Bush's hypocritical dou- WATERGATE, AS WELL AS FOR TODAY'S perspective if you don't use it to make ble standards. Bush said the Gulf War was LOOPHOLE-RIDDEN SYSTEM." strong judgments? Herbert Parmet, though justified because "the world must not and an excellent historian of the orthodox sort, cannot reward aggression." But he made no against Lloyd Bentsen turned out to be, as ignored or handled too delicately some of effort to whip up intervention to stop the the Wall Street Journal later put it, "a dress the rottenest apples in Bush's barrel. Serbs from canying out murders on a scale rehearsal for the campaign finance abuses For instance: not seen since the Nazis. And Bush never of Watergate, as well as for today's loop- Previously secret documents that were missed a chance to call Saddam Hussein, hole-ridden system." revealed in 1992 by Congressman Henry with a million-man army, a bully for invad- As C.I.A. director and as Reagan's vice Gonzalez and the Los Angeles Times ing Kuwait, which had only 20,000 troops. president, Bush took the standard Cold clearly show that Bush, as vice president Yet only eight months after making that one War position of hobnobbing with any and and as president, personally went out of his of his excuses for fighting Iraq, Bush all thugs who could be even vaguely con- way — in a back-channel relationship of (backed by 2.3 million soldiers) invaded sidered anti-communist. Manuel Noriega a questionable ethics — to help build Iraq's Panama, which had 4,000 combat troops. drug-runner? Maybe. Manual Noriega a military strength, right up to the moment of And Bush's invasion was every bit as il- double agent? Probably. But one thing is

Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and the start of legal as Saddam Hussein's. The charter of . obvious: Bush had willingly overlooked the Gulf War. The documents show that the Organization of American States, Noriega's sins for years before deciding, Bush (over objections from the Defense which the U.S. signed, forbids the use of out of the blue, that the Western Hemi- Department) approved transferring to Iraq force among member states "on any sphere could only be saved by invading sensitive technology which apparently grounds whatsoever." Panama and kidnapping the little dictator went into the production of the weapons of Regrettably, Parmet seldom uses Caro- (an invasion that resulted in the deaths of mass destruction that U.N. sleuths have ish banderillas. hundreds of innocent Panamanians). spent the last seven years trying to find. Still, there is in these 500-plus intelligent About the Noriega-Bush relationship, The Los Angeles Times reported: "In the pages a well-rounded profile of Bush, and Parmet is nicely sardonic: "Because of his fall of 1989, at a time when Iraq's invasion Parmet leaves us plenty of room behind the quests for elective offices, fewer parts of of Kuwait was only nine months away and lines to make our own judgments. Bush's public career are more sensitive, or Saddam Hussein was desperate for money He has a good grasp of Texas politics as personally distasteful, as the Noriega

8 ■ THE TEXAS OBSERVER JULY 31, 1998

„1.4.,11100.*ffirk01.".‘lowsrti.weppo.....00,asoloome.041% Alan Pogue A George Bush with Texas Governor Bill Clements, 1980

connection. Even many years later, only by els. And Bush's loyalty to the right wing, and said, "You really don't understand me, his body language did he acknowledge that which urged the nomination of Clarence do you?" he and the venal Panamanian ever breathed Thomas to the Supreme Court, gave us "What do you mean by that?" the same air." probably the most fanatically reactionary "None of the clubs that I belong to Considering the effectiveness of the Rea- justice of this generation. Well, maybe An- would accept John Connally," said gan-Bush administration's lies about the tonin Scalia is more reactionary. [Bush]. Iran-Contra scandal, Parmet does a fairly In his subtitle, Parmet calls Bush "a Lone Keene had a working-class background. decent job of sketching Bush's role in it. Bush's response confirmed Keene's no- Bush claimed to have been "out of the BUSH CLAIMED TO HAVE BEEN "OUT tions about the Easterners, the Yalies, the loop" while that illegal arms-for-hostages OF THE LOOP" WHILE THAT ILLEGAL country-club set that helped create the deal with Iran was arranged, but it was plain ARMS-FOR•HOSTAGES DEAL WITH modern Republican Party in Texas to frus- that he had watched its development, "step IRAN WAS ARRANGED, BUT IT WAS trate the likes of Connally, whom they con- by step," as the Washington Post put it. PLAIN THAT HE HAD WATCHED ITS sidered "tacky," and of whom they were If Bush had an impressive side to his po- DEVELOPMENT, "STEP BY STEP." "also scared to death because he was big- litical character, it was his loyalty. Unfor- ger then they were." tunately, it was the loyalty of a party hack. Star Yankee." The best definition of that If you read this book, you'll wonder: He was loyal to Nixon in disgrace, loyal to comes on page 218, where Parmet recounts Will George Bush be remembered at all, Reagan even after it became perfectly clear one of Bush's meetings with the political fifty years from now? Or by then will he that Reagan was probably the most intel- adviser Dave Keene, as they were dis- have been sucked into the black hole where lectually corrupt president in our history, cussing John Connally, whom Bush hated. history has sent such of his predecessors as and he was whiningly loyal to John Su- "You know," Keene told Bush, "the Chester Alan Arthur? ❑ nunu, his oafishly tyrannical chief of staff, problem with you is that you're pissed be- editor though Bush finally had to fire him for cause John got the tennis court and you Robert Sherrill is a former Observer The Nation. spending too much government money want it." and a regular contributor to (half a million bucks) on his personal tray- Bush looked at the political consultant THE TEXAS OBSERVER • 9 JULY 31, 1998 FEATURE Dark Alliance BY GARY WEBB

the I came to work in the sprawling newsroom of the Cleveland Plain Dealer in the early 1980s, I was assigned to share a computer terminal with a tall middle- aged reporter with a long, virtually unpmnounceable Polish name To save time people called him Tom A To me arriving from a small daily in Kentucky, Tom A. was the epitome of the hard-boiled big-city newspaperman. The city officials he wrote about and the editors who mangled his copy were Yuckinjerkg" A question prompting an affirmative re- sponse would elicit "fuckin-a-tweetie" instead of "yeK "

And when his phone rang he would say, "It's the Big One," before "How much more time has he got?" picking up the receiver. No matter how many times I heard that, I "Well, that's just it," she said. "He's never been brought to trial. always laughed. The Big One was the reporter's holy grail — the He's done three years already, and he's never been convicted of tip that led you from the daily morass of press conferences and cop anything." calls on to the trail of the Biggest Story You'd Ever Write, the one "He must have waived his speedy trial rights," I said. that would turn the rest of your career into an anticlimax. I never "No, none -of them have," she said. "There are about five or six knew if it was cynicism or optimism that made him say it, but deep guys who were indicted with him, and most of them are still wait- inside, I thought he was jinxing himself. ing to be tried, too. They want to go to trial because they think it's The Big One, I believed, would be like a bullet with your name a bullshit case. Rafael keeps writing letters to the judge and the on it. prosecutor, saying, you know, try me or let me go." You'd never hear it coming. And almost a decade later, long "Rafael's your boyfriend?" after Tom A., the Plain Dealer, and I had parted company, that's "Yes. Rafael Corfieo." precisely how it happened. "He's Colombian?" I didn't even take the call. It manifested itself as a pink "While "No, Nicaraguan. But he's lived in the Bay Area since he was You Were Out" message slip left on my desk in July 1995, bearing like 2 or something." an unusual and unfamiliar name: Coral Marie Talavera Baca. It's interesting, I thought, but not the kind of story likely to ex- There was no message, just a number, somewhere in the East Bay. cite my editors. Some drug dealers don't like being in jail? Oh. I I called, but there was no answer, so I put the message ,aside. If knew what I would hear if I pitched Coral's story to my editors: I have time, I told myself, I'll try again later. Several days later an We've done that already. And that was what I told her. identical message slip appeared. Its twin was still sitting on a pile She was not dissuaded. of papers at the edge of my desk. This time Coral Marie Talavera "There's something about Rafael's case that I don't think you Baca was home. would have ever done before," she persisted. "One of the govern- "I saw the story you did a couple weeks ago," she began. "The ment's witnesses is a guy who used to work with the CIA selling one about the drug seizure laws. I thought you did a good job." drugs. Tons of it." "Thanks a lot," I said, and I meant it. She was the first reader "What now?" I wasn't sure I'd heard correctly. who'd called about that story, a front-page piece in the San Jose "The CIA. He used to work for them or something. He's a Mercury News about a convicted cocaine trafficker who, without Nicaraguan too. Rafael knows him; he can tell you. He told me the any formal legal training, had beaten the U.S. Justice Department guy had admitted bringing four tons of cocaine into the country." in court three straight times and was on the verge of flushing the I put down my pen. She'd sounded so rational. Where did this government's multibillion-dollar asset forfeiture program right CIA stuff come from? In 18 years of investigative reporting, I had down the toilet. ended up doubting the credibility of every person who ever called "You didn't just give the government's side of it," she continued. me with a tip about the CIA. I flashed on Eddie Johnson, a con- I asked what I could do for her. spiracy theorist who would come bopping into the Kentucky Post's "My boyfriend is in a situation like that," she said, "and I newsroom every so often with amazing tales of intrigue and cor- thought it might make a good follow-up story for you. What the ruption. Interviewing Eddie was one of the rites of passage at the government has done to him is unbelievable." Post. Someone would invariably send him over to the newest re- "Your boyfriend?" porter on the staff to see how long it took the rookie to figure out "He's in prison right now on cocaine trafficking charges. He's he was spinning his wheels. been in jail for three years." Suddenly I remembered who I was talking to — a cocaine

10 ■ THE TEXAS OBSERVER JULY 31, 1998 dealer's moll. indicted for conspiracy to escape. That explained it. That's some boyfriend she's got there, I mused. The newspaper "Oh, the CIA. Well, you're right. I've never done any stories stories make him sound like Al Capone. And he wants to sit down about the CIA. I don't run across them too often here in Sacra- and have a chat? mento. See, I mostly cover state government." hen I pushed open the doors to the vast courtroom in the San Francisco federal courthouse a few weeks later, I Wfound a scene from Miami Vice. To my left, a dark-suited army of federal agents and prosecutors huddled around a long, polished wooden table, looking grim and talking in low voices. On the right, an array of long-haired, expen- sively attired defense attorneys were whispering to a group of long-haired, angry-looking Hispanics — their clients. The judge had not yet arrived. I had no idea what Coral Baca looked like, so I scanned the faces in the courtroom, trying to pick out a woman who could be a drug kingpin's girlfriend. She found me first. "You must be Gary," said a voice behind me. I turned, and for an instant all I saw was cleavage and jewelry. She looked to be in her mid-20s. Dark hair. Bright red lipstick. Long legs. Short skirt. Dressed to accentuate her positive at- Seven Stories Press A Contra leader Adolfo Calero and Ronald Reagan tributes. I could barely speak. "You're Coral?" "You probably think I'm crazy, right?" "No, no," I assured her. She tossed her hair and smiled. "Pleased to meet you." She stuck "You know, could be true, who's to say? When it comes to the out a hand with a giant diamond on it, and I shook it weakly. CIA, stranger things have happened." We sat down in the row of seats behind the prosecutors' table, and There was a short silence, and I could hear her exhale sharply. I glanced at her again. That boyfriend of hers must be going nuts. "How dare you treat me like I'm an idiot," she said evenly. "You She pointed out Corfieo, a short, handsome Latino with a strong don't even know me. I work for a law firm. I've copied every sin- jaw and long, wavy hair parted in the middle. gle piece of paper that's been filed in Rafael's case, and I can doc- "Can we go out in the hall and talk for a minute?" I asked her. ument everything I'm telling you. You can ask Rafael, and he can We sat on a bench just outside the door. I told her I needed to get tell you himself. ... He's got a court date in San Francisco coming case numbers so I could ask for the court files. And, by the way, did up in a couple weeks. Why don't I meet you at the courthouse? she bring those documents she'd mentioned? That way you can sit in on the hearing, and if you're interested we She reached into her briefcase and brought out a stack an inch could get lunch or something and talk." thick. "I've got three bankers' boxes full back at home, and you're That cinched it. Now the worst that could happen was lunch in welcome to see all of it, but this is the stuff I was telling you about San Francisco in mid-July, away from the phones and the editors. concerning the witness." And, who knows, there was an'off chance she was telling the truth. I flipped through the documents. Most of them were federal law Flipping on my computer, I logged into the Dialog database, enforcement reports, DEA-6s and FBI 302s, every page bearing which contains full-text electronic versions of millions of newspa- big black letters that said, "MAY NOT BE REPRODUCED — per and magazine stories, property records, legal filings, you name PROPERTY OF U.S. GOVERNMENT." At the bottom of the it. OK. Let's see if Rafael Corfieo even exists. stack was a transcript of some sort. I pulled it out. A message flashed on the screen: "Your search has retrieved 11 "Grand Jury for the Northern District of California, Grand Jury documents. Display?" So far so good. Number 93-5, Grand Jury Inv. No 9301035. Reporter's Tran- I called up the most recent one, a newspaper story that had ap- script of Proceedings. Testimony of Oscar Danilo Blandon. peared a year before in the San Francisco Chronicle. My eyes February 3, 1994." widened. "4 Indicted in Prison Breakout Plot — Pleasanton In- I whistled. "Federal grand jury transcripts? I'm impressed. mates Planned to Leave in Copter, Prosecutors Say." Where'd you get these?" "The government turned them over under I quickly scanned the story. Son of a bitch. Four inmates were discovery. Dave Hall did. I heard he really got reamed out by the indicted yesterday in connection with a bold plan to escape from DEA when they found out about all the stuff he gave us." the federal lockup in Pleasanton using plastic explosives and a he- I skimmed the 39-page transcript. Whatever else this Blandon licopter that would have taken them to a cargo ship at sea. The fellow may have been, he was pretty much the way Coral had de- group also considered killing a guard if their keepers tried to thwart scribed him. A big-time trafficker who'd dealt dope for many the escape, prosecutors contend. Rafael Corfieo, 39, of Lafayette, years, he started out dealing for the Contras, a right-wing an alleged cocaine kingpin with reputed ties to Nicaraguan drug Nicaraguan guerrilla army, in Los Angeles. He'd used drug money traffickers and Panamanian money launderers, was among those to buy trucks and supplies. At some point after Ronald Reagan got

JULY 31, 1998 THE TEXAS OBSERVER • 11 into power, the CIA had decided his services as a fundraiser were heard," I told him, "he's a pretty significant witness in your case no longer required, and he stayed in the drug business for himself. here. He hasn't disappeared, has he? He is going to testify?" What made the story so compelling was that he was appearing Hall's friendly demeanor changed. "We're not at all certain before the grand jury as a U.S. government witness. He wasn't about that." under investigation. He wasn't trying to beat a rap. He was there as a witness for the prosecution, which meant that the U.S. Justice hen I got back to Sacramento, I called my editor at the Department was vouching for him. main office in San Jose, Dawn Garcia, and filled her in on But who was the grand jury investigating? Every time the testi- Wthe day's events. Dawn was a former investigative re- mony led in that direction, words — mostly names — were porter from the San Francisco Chronicle and had been the Mer- blacked out. cury's state editor for several years. "Who is this family they keep asking him about?" "So, what do you think?" she asked, editorese for, "Is there a "Rafael says it's Meneses. Norwin Meneses and his nephews. story here and how long will it take to get it?" Have you heard of them?" "I don't know. I'd like to spend a little time looking into it at least. "Nope." Hell, if his testimony is true, it could be a pretty good story. The Con- "Norwin is one of the biggest traffickers on the West Coast. tras were selling coke in L.A.? I've never heard that one before." When Rafael got arrested, that's who the FBI and the IRS wanted She mulled it over for a moment before agreeing. "It's not like to talk to him about. Rafael has known [Norwin and his nephews] there's a lot for years. Since the '70s, I think. The government is apparently AFTER RONALD REAGAN GOT INTO going on in using Blandon to get to Meneses." POWER, THE CIA DECIDED BLANDON'S Sacramento right Inside, I heard the bailiff calling the court to order, and we re- SERVICES AS A FUNDRAISER WERE now," she said. turned to the courtroom. During the hearing, I kept trying to recall NO LONGER REQUIRED, AND HE STAYED That was true where I had heard about this Contra-cocaine business before. Had I IN THE DRUG BUSINESS FOR HIMSELF. enough. The sun- read it in a book? Seen it on television? Like most Americans, I baked state capi- knew the Contras had been a creation of the C.I.A., the darlings of tal was entering its summertime siesta, when triple-digit tempera- the Reagan Right, made up largely of the vanquished followers of tures sent solons adjourning happily to mountain or seashore deposed Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza and his brutal locales. With any luck, I was about to join them. army, the National Guard. But drug trafficking? Surely, I thought, if "I need to go down to San Diego for a couple days," I said. there had been some concrete evidence, it would have stuck in my "Blandon testified that he was arrested down there in '92 for con- mind. Maybe I was confusing it with something else. During a spiracy, so there's probably a court file somewhere. He may be liv- break, I went to the restroom and bumped into Assistant U.S. Attor- ing down there, for all I know. Probably the quickest way to find ney Hall. I introduced myself as a reporter. Hall eyed me cautiously. out if what he was saying is true is to find him." "Why would the Mercury News be interested in this case?" Dawn OK'd the trip, and a few days later I was in balmy San he asked. "You should have been here two years ago. This is old Diego, squinting at microfiche in the clerk's office of the U.S. Dis- stuff now." trict Court. "I'm not really doing a story on this case. I'm looking into one I found Blandon's case file within a few minutes. of the witnesses. A man named Blandon. Am I pronouncing the He and six others, including his wife Chepita Blandon, had been name correctly?" secretly indicted May 5, 1992, for conspiring to distribute cocaine. Hall appeared surprised. "What about him?" He'd been buying wholesale quantities from suppliers and re- "About his selling cocaine for the Contras." Hall leaned back selling it to other wholesalers. Way up on the food chain. Accord- slightly, folded his arms and gave me a quizzical smile. "Who have ing to the indictment, he'd been a trafficker for 10 years, had you been talking to?" clients nationwide and had bragged on tape of selling other LA "Actually, I've been reading. And I was curious to know what dealers between two and four tons of cocaine. you made of his testimony about selling drugs for the Contras in He was such a big-timer that the judge had ordered him and his LA. Did you believe him?" wife held in jail without bail because they posed "a threat to the "Well, yeah, but I don't know how you could absolutely confirm health and moral fiber of the community." it. I mean, I don't know what to tell you," he said with a slight The file contained a transcript of a detention hearing, held to de- laugh. "The CIA won't tell me anything." termine if the couple should be released on bail. Blandon's prose- I jotted down his remark. "Oh, you've asked them?" cutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney L.J. O'Neale, brought out his best "Yeah, but I never heard anything back. Not that I expected to. But ammo to persuade the judge to keep the couple locked up until that's all ancient history. You're really doing a story about that?" trial. "Mr. Blandon's family was closely associated with the So- "I don't know if I'm doing a story at all," I said. "At this point, moza government that was overthrown in 1979," O'Neale said. I'm just trying to see if there is one. Do you know where Blandon "He is a large-scale cocaine trafficker and has been for a long is these days?" time," O'Neale argued. Given the amount of cocaine he'd sold, "Not a clue." O'Neale said, Blandon's minimum mandatory punishment was That couldn't be true, I thought. How could he not know? He "off the charts" — life plus a $4 million fine — giving him plenty was one of the witnesses against Rafael Corfieo. "From what I of incentive to flee the country.

12 ■ THE TEXAS OBSERVER JULY 31, 1998 ple did more time for burglary. Even Blandon, the ringleader, only got 48 months, and from the docket sheet it appeared that was later cut almost in half. As I read on, I realized that Blandon was already back on the streets — totally unsupervised. No probation. No parole. Free as a bird. He'd walked out of jail Sept. 19, 1994, on the arm of an INS agent, Robert Tellez. He'd done 28 months for 10 years of cocaine trafficking. The last page of the file told me why. It was a motion filed by U.S. Attorney O'Neale, asking the court to unseal Blandon's plea agreement and a couple of internal Justice Department memorandums. "During the course of this case, de- fendant Oscar Danilo Blandon cooperated with and rendered sub- stantial assistance to the United States," O'Neale wrote. At the government's request, his jail sentence had been secretly cut twice. O'Neale then persuaded the judge to let Blandon out of jail com- pletely, telling the court he was needed as a full-time paid infor- mant for the U.S. Department of Justice. Since he'd be undercover, O'Neale wrote, he couldn't very well have probation agents check- ing up on him. He was released on unsupervised probation. I walked back to my hotel convinced that I was on the right track. Now there were two separate sources saying — in court — that Blandon was involved with the Contras and had been selling large amounts of cocaine in Los Angeles. And when the government fi- nally had a chance to put him away forever, it had opened up the cell doors and let him walk. I needed to find BlandOn. I had a mil- lion questions only he could answer.

ack in Sacramento, I did some checking on the targets of the 1994 grand jury investigation — the Meneses family — and B again Coral's description proved accurate, perhaps even un- derstated. At the California State Library's government publications section, I scoured the indices that catalog congressional hearings by topic and witness name. Meneses wasn't listed, but there had been a series of hearings back in 1987 and 1988, I saw, dealing with the issue of the Contras and cocaine: a subcommittee of the Senate For- eign Relations Committee, chaired by Senator. John Kerry of Mas- sachusetts. A Ricky Ross Courtesy Seven Stories Press For the next six days I sat with rolls of dimes at a microfiche Blandon's lawyer, Brad Brunon, confirmed the couple's close ties printer in the quiet wood-paneled recesses of the library, reading to Somoza and produced a photo of them at a wedding reception with and copying many of the 1,100 pages of transcripts and exhibits of El Presidente and his spouse. That just showed what fine families the Kerry Committee hearings, growing more astounded each day. they were from, he said. The accusations in Nicaragua against The committee's investigators had uncovered direct links between Blandon, Brunon argued, were "politically motivated because of Mr. drug dealers and the Contras. They'd gotten into BCCI (Bank of Blandon's activities with the Contras in the early 1980s." Credit and Commerce International) years before anyone knew Damn, here it is again. His own lawyer says he was working for what that banking scandal even was. They'd found evidence of the Contras. Manuel Noriega's involvement with drugs — four years before the From the docket sheet, I could see that the case had never gone invasion. Many of the Kerry Committee witnesses, I noted, later to trial. Everyone had pleaded out, starting with Blandon. Five became U.S. Justice Department witnesses against Noriega. months after his arrest, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy, and the Kerry and his staff had taken videotaped depositions from Con- charges against his wife were dropped. After that, his fugitive co- tra leaders who acknowledged receiving drug profits, with the ap- defendants were quickly arrested and pleaded guilty. But they all parent knowledge of the CIA. The drug dealers had admitted — received extremely short sentences. One was even put on unsuper- under oath — giving money to the Contras, and had passed poly- vised probation. graph tests. The pilots had admitted flying weapons down and co- I didn't get it. If O'Neale had such a rock-solid case against a caine and marijuana back, landing in at lea§t one instance at Home- major drug-trafficking ring, why were they let off so easily? Peo- stead Air Force Base in Florida. The exhibits included U.S. THE TEXAS OBSERVER • 13 JULY 31, 1998 Customs reports, FBI reports, internal Justice Department memos. There were two reporters, Blum said, who'd pursued the Contra It almost knocked me off my chair. drug story — Robert Parry and Brian Barger of the Associated It was all there in black and white. Blandon's testimony about Press — but they'd run into the same problems. Their stories were selling cocaine for the Contras in LA wasn't some improbable fan- either trashed or ignored. tasy. This could have actually happened. When I called Parry in Virginia, he sounded slightly amused. I called Jack Blum, the Washington, D.C., attorney who'd "How well do you get along with your editors?" Parry finally headed the Kerry investigation, and he confirmed that Meneses had asked. been an early target. But the Justice Department, he said, had "Fine. Why do you ask?" stonewalled the committee's requests for information, and he had "Well, when Brian and I were doing these stories, we got our finally given up trying to obtain the records, moving on to other, brains beat out." Parry sighed. "People from the administration were more productive areas. "There was a lot of weird stuff going on out calling our editors, telling them we were crazy, that our sources were on the West Coast, but after our experiences with Justice ...we no good, that we didn't know what we were writing about. The Jus- mainly concentrated on the cocaine coming into the East." tice Department was putting out false press releases saying there was "Why is it that I can barely remember this?" I asked. "I mean, I nothing to this, that they'd investigated and could find no evidence. read the papers every day." ... We ended up being out there all by ourselves, and eventually our "It wasn't in the papers, for the most part. We laid it all out, and editors backed away completely, and I ended up quitting the AP. It we were trashed," Blum said. "I've got to tell you, there's a real was probably the most difficult time of my career." problem with the press in this town. We were totally hit by the He paused. "Maybe things have changed, I don't know." leadership of the administration and much of the congressional I was nonplussed. Bob Parry wasn't some fringe reporter. He'd leadership. They simply turned around and said, 'These people are won a Polk Award for uncovering the CIA assassination manual crazy. Their witnesses are full of shit. They're a bunch of drug given to the Contras, and was the first reporter to expose Oliver dealers, drug addicts; don't listen to them.' And they dumped all North's illegal activities. But what he'd just described sounded like over us. It came from every direction and every corner. We were something out of a bad dream. even dumped on by the Iran-Contra Committee. They wouldn't A few days later I got a call from Coral. My one chance to hook touch this issue with a 10-foot pole." up with Blandon had just fallen through. "He isn't going to be tes- "There had to have been some reporters who followed this," I tifying at Rafael's trial after all," she told me. "Rafael's attorney protested. "Maybe I'm naive, but this seems like a huge story to me." won his motion to have the DEA and FBI release the uncensored Blum barked a laugh. "Well, it's nice to hear someone finally files, and the U.S. attorney decided to drop him as a witness rather say that, even if it is 10 years later." than do that. Can you believe it? He was one of the witnesses they

■ Adolfo Calero: former manager of a plant in Nicaragua. Selected by then 1983 to lead its political wing Nicaragua. Worked closely with Oliv er A enl North. Political boss of the FDN. Met with Norwin Meneses several times during the years 'geneses was sell- ing drugs for the Contras. anti-communist ma rn n o ked for ■ Oscar Danilo "Chanchin" Blandon: the Contras as a recruiter, at HIS supplier 1992, but Charges were dropped when Head of a major cocaine distribution ring in and benefactor during the entire war. Danilo agreed to become a DEA infor- Los Angeles from 1981 to 1991. The first Worked with DEA from 1985 to 1991. In mant. Was made a naturalized U.S. citi- major trafficker to make inroads into South dicted in the States in 1989 on drug zen as a result of his cooperation. Central Los Angeles in early 1980s, pro- charges, but never arrested. Arrested and ■ "Freeway" Ricky Ross: Leader of viding street gangs with their first direct jailed in Nicaragua in 1991; sentenced to South Central LA's first major crack dis- connection to the Colombian cocaine car- 12 years in prison. tribution ring. In the space of four years, tels. A longtime supplier to Freeway Rick ■ Anastasio Somoza: A Nicaraguan dic- Ross went from selling fractions of an Ross. Worked as part of Meneses' organi- tator most famous for his Guardia, a cor- ounce to shipping multi-million-dollar zation, but struck out on his own in 1985. A rupt and deadly organization that served cocaine shipments across America. Con- close friend of Anastasio Somoza, he as his police, military and intelligence victed of cocaine trafficking in 1996, he is founded an FDN chapter (pro-Contra) in service. Somoza was overthrown by the currently serving life without the possibil- Los Angeles. Arrested and convicted of co- Sandinista revolution in 1979. While still ity of parole.

1. 4 • THE TEXAS OBSERVER JULY 31, 1998 used to get the indictment against Rafael, and now they're refusing talk. I'll have him call you." He hung up abruptly. to put him on the stand." Ross called a few hours later. I asked him what he knew about I hung up the phone in a funk. Blandon. "A lot," he said. "He was almost like a godfather to me. But pretty soon the San Diego attorney who had been out of town He's the one who got me going." when I was looking for Bland& returned my call. Juanita Brooks had "Was he your main source?" represented Blandon's friend and co-defendant, a Mexican million- "He was. Everybody I knew, I knew through him. So really, he aire named Sergio Guerra. Another lawyer in her firm had defended could be considered as my only source. In a sense, he was." Chepita Blandon. She knew quite a bit about the couple. "When was this?" "You don't happen to know where he is these days, do you?" "Eighty-one or '82. Right when I was getting going." "No, but I can tell you where he'll be in a couple of months. Damn, I thought. That was right when Blandon said he started Here in San Diego. Entirely by coincidence, I have a case coming dealing drugs. up where he's the chief prosecution witness against my client." "Would you be willing to sit down and talk to me about this?" I "You're kidding," I said. "What case is this?" asked. "It's a pretty big one. Have you ever heard of someone named "Hell, yeah. I'll tell you anything you want to know." Freeway Ricky Ross?" At the end of September 1995 I spent a week in San Diego, Indeed I had. I'd run across him while researching the asset for- going through the files of the Ross case, interviewing defense feiture series in 1993. "He's one of the biggest crack dealers in attorneys and prose- LA," I said. NOW THERE WERE TWO SEPARATE cutors, listening to "That's what they say," Brooks replied. "He and my client and a SOURCES SAYING THAT BLANDON WAS undercover DEA couple others were arrested in a DEA reverse sting last year and INVOLVED WITH THE CONTRAS AND tapes. I attended a Blandon is the confidential informant in the case." HAD BEEN SELLING LARGE AMOUNTS discovery hearing "How did Blandon get involved with crack dealers?" OF COCAINE IN LOS ANGELES. AND and watched as "I don't have a lot of details because the government has been WHEN THE GOVERNMENT FINALLY Fenster and the other very protective of him. They've refused to give us any discovery so defense lawyers HAD A CHANCE TO PUT HIM AWAY made another futile far," Brooks said. "But from what I understand, Blandon used to be FOREVER, IT HAD OPENED UP THE one of Ricky Ross' sources back in the 1980s, and I suppose he attempt to find out CELL DOORS AND LET HIM WALK. played off that friendship." details about the My mind was racing. Blandon, the Contra fundraiser, had sold government's infor- cocaine to the biggest crack dealer in South Central LA? That was mant, so they could begin preparing their defenses. Assistant U.S. too much. Attorney O'Neale refused to provide a thing. They'd get what they "Are you sure about this?" were entitled to, he promised, ten days before trial. "I wouldn't want you to quote me on it," she said, "but, yes, I'm "See what I mean?" Fenster asked me on his way out. "It's like pretty sure. You can always call Alan Fenster, Ross' attorney, and the trial in Alice in Wonderland." ask him. I'm sure he knows." I spent hours with Ross at the Metropolitan Correctional Center. Fenster was out, so I left a message on his voice mail, telling him He knew nothing of Blandon's past, I discovered. He had no idea I was working on a story about Oscar Danilo Blandon and wanted who the Contras were or whose side they were on. To him, Danilo to interview him. When I got back from lunch, I found a message was just a nice guy with a lot of cheap dope. from Fenster waiting. It said: "Oscar who?" 'What would you say if I were to tell you that he was working My heart sank. I'd suspected it was a bum lead, but I'd been for the Contras, selling cocaine to help them buy weapons and sup- keeping my fingers crossed anyway. I should have known; that plies?" I asked. would have been too perfect. I called Fenster back to thank him for Ross goggled. "And they put me in jail? I'd say that was some his time, and he asked what kind of a story I was working on. I told fucked-up shit there. They say I sold dope all over, but man, I know he him — the Contras and cocaine. done sold ten times more than me. Are you being straight with me?" "I'm curious," he said. "What made you think this Oscar person I told him I had documents to prove it. Ross just shook his head was involved in Ricky's case?" and looked away. "He's been working for the government the

I told him what Brooks had related, and he gasped. whole damn time," he muttered. ❑ "He's the informant? Are you serious? No wonder those bastards won't give me his name!" Fenster began swearing a blue streak. Shortly after Gary Webb published his 1996 investigative series on "Forgive me," he said. "But if you only knew what kind of bull- the C.I.A., Contras, and cocaine, his work was attacked by The shit I've been going through to get that information from those Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Los Angeles sons of bitches, and then some reporter calls me up from San Jose Times. Webb has expanded his investigative series into a recently and he knows all about him, it just makes me ..." published book Reprinted from the new book Dark Alliance by "Your client didn't tell you his name?" Gary Webb, with permission author and Seven Stories Press. "He didn't know it! He only knew him as Danilo, and then he (Dark Alliance, $24.95, 548 pages.) wasn't even sure that was his real name. You and Ricky need to

JULY 31, 1998 THE TEXAS OBSERVER ■ 15 BOOKS & THE CULTURE Swingin Down the Texas Highway One Scotsman Journey to Turkey BY KAREN OLSSON LONE STAR SWING: platefuls of grub: roast beef mashed tat- Regal Rascals, the Light Crust Doughboys, On The Trail of Bob Wills and ties, gravy, green beans boiled grey, fried The Pioneer Playboys, Bill Boyd's . Cowboy His Texas Playboys. mushrooms, buttered squash, eggplant Ramblers... and so on. By Duncan McLean. stew, pinto beans, garlic bread, side salad, McLean's accounts of his often-bewil- Norton. hot sauce. Plus soup and rolls to start, and dered encounters with native Texans are 306 pages. $14.00. peach cobbler and ice cream to finish. And themselves charming in their verbal eclec- beakers of iced tea all round. What was it ticism (the Scotsman beginning his sen- t is not uncommon for college stu- with these folks? Had they not eaten since tences with "Eh," his interlocuters speak- dents and other freewheeling types last Sunday? ing Jesus' own English.) But most to take the traditional Summer incantatory are the song lyrics, which Road Trip, gassing up some worn hough the book is ostensibly about McLean quotes liberally. I just can't be- but serviceable station wagon and western swing, some of its best pas- lieve my old pal would leave me/ Gee, but heading out — somewhere — Tsages, like this one, offer more gen- I'm heartsick and sore. Or: If you like our preferably south or west, where the eral observations on homo Texanus, as seen song, you think it's fine, sit right down and more bizarre and backward ele- by one bemused (but not derisive) visitor. drop a line/ To the Texas Playboys from the ments of our culture are presumed to re- McLean reads the Weekly World News, Lone Star State. Or: Tessie, pull down your Imain, relatively intact, available for ready spends a long night in a cheap motel, eats at dressie/ Cause I was only teasing you/ Just viewing along with the world's largest ball a Bombay Bicycle Club restaurant, finds a because I waved a dollar bill in my hand/ of twine and the most photographed barn in gun, drives through a Border Patrol check- That's no need for you to misunderstand. America. Unfortunately, what many high- point, attends the Presidio Onion Festival Naturally, nostalgia pervades Lone Star way explorers quickly discover is that the — and, in the meantime, pursues his inter- Swing. But it isn't the nostalgia-for-by- American road is much richer in Cracker est in western swing. gone-America of your average Summer Barrel restaurants than picayune mystery, That interest, according to McLean, was Road Trip, that which' keeps crappy old and most road trips don't yield more than kindled five years before the trip, when he roadside diners in business. . Midway thirty minutes worth of good anecdotes, bought an old swing record from an Edin- through the book, McLean explains why he much less a full-length memoir. burgh junk shop. Musically smitten, he so loves the music of fifty years ago: Happily the highway (specifically the began collecting albums and correspond- Music in America is so well niched these Texas highway) is richer territory if you are ing with other aficionados, and at last he days... that once you know what you like, a Scottish fiction writer with a newly- traveled to Texas to "track down the spirit there's little chance of ever stumbling minted drivers' license, a rental car, some of Bob Wills," the great bandleader from across some new recordings.... Music grant money, and a passion for Western the Panhandle town of Turkey. doesn't change people's lives in the USA swing music. In Lone Star Swing, Duncan One of the pleasing things about the book today, it confirms the life you've already McLean's chronicle of a swing-inspired trip is how well McLean conveys his enthusi- chosen, or had chosen for you. The whole across Texas, even the parking lot at Luby's asm for Texas music of the twenties and of American culture seems to me to be becomes something new and strange — thirties and forties, despite the obvious fact tending towards atomisation. Music has something called a "car park" — where that he can't actually play songs for his become something to separate people, to McLean finds himself on a Sunday morn- reader. Clearly, one source of swing's ap- build walls between them. I love the old ing, waiting for the restaurant to open. At peal for McLean is its exuberant fusion of stuff that brought people together, that last, "a lady in a pinnie" unlocks the door: styles, of Dixieland jazz and blues and mari- knocked down the walls. Immediately the doors of every car in the achi and traditional ballads; the text of Lone A nitpicker could quarrel with these lot swung open, and several hundred men, Star Swing is a correspondingly celebratory lines — or at the very least, with their women and children climbed out, straight- verbal collage of description, quoted lyrics, sweeping generality — but ultimately they ened and patted flat their Sunday best, and dialogue and headlines. At times McLean say more about the author than about music marched towards me. Or, to be exact, to- simply launches into catalogues of names — history. McLean's affection for Western wards the door right behind me.... one singer's various aliases, or names of swing drew him on through backwater I found a seat in the gymnasium-sized Texas territory bands — which, taken to- towns, into nursing homes and tiny bars dining area, and sat sipping and watching gether, invoke the era of radio shows and and other people's living rooms, and it's a families, couples, gangs of teenagers, country dancehalls: Dalhart's Texas Pan- pleasure to follow him there. ❑ posses of old folk, all tucking in to vast handlers, Fred Ozark's Jug Blowers, The

16 ■ THE TEXAS OBSERVER JULY 31, 1998 BOOKS & THE CULTURE Holding On From Socrates to Desegregation with Howard Zinn BY CHAR MILLER

THE ZINN READER. with Plato qua Plato, but with the ascen- But such subtleties do not engage Zinn's at- By Howard Zinn. dance in the 1980s of such neo-conserva- tention nearly as much as the potent and co- Seven Stories Press. tives as Allan Bloom, whose embrace of ercive power of the state -- of every state. 668 pages. $19.95 (paper). the philosopher's arguments was tied to a Identifying its existence and combating its denunciation of the radical fervor un- reach — these have been the defining char- t's all Plato's fault. The Athenian leashed during the 1960s, a denunciation acteristics of his remarkable career as an ac- "apostle of civil obedience" that provided an intellectual prop for the tivist and academic, and they are on full dis- staged Socrates' famed death Reaganite backlash. Reading the Greeks play in this new and thick collection of some (think hemlock) so as to under- enables us to get a fix on ourselves, con- of his most compelling writings. score the ultimate sovereignty of cludes Zinn, for "the ideas of people in An- For Zinn, public and private life are con- the state, Howard Zinn argued in a cient Athens are as familiar as those we joined, a narrative assumption that shapes 1988 review of I.F. the disparate biographical Stone's The Trial of sketches included in this reader Socrates. When offered an oppor- (for a more cohesive and devel- 1tunity to escape from prison and oped biographical material, see the death sentence that had been Zinn's 1994 memoir, You Can't imposed on him for his needling, Be Neutral on a Moving Train). disruptive (and very free) speech, Seeking a source for his early and Socrates, in "The Crito," a dia- heightened political conscious- logue Plato crafted, responded ness, for instance, Zinn selects a that he must obey the law, despite moment. when as a gawky the city-state's unjust ruling. "If I teenager he stood beside (actually complained about this injustice, towered over) his father, and Athens would rightly say: 'We wore an ill-fitting tuxedo. The brought you into the world, we two were working as waiters at a raised you, we educated you, we New Year's Eve party in New. gave you and every other citizen York City, and it was while buss- a share of all the good things we ing dirty dishes that Zinn fils could.'" In exchange for these came face-to-face with the mani- benefits, Socrates determined that fold layers of class distinctions he owed Athens his life, and "so I that played out in that Manhattan will go to my death." His compli- ballroom (and beyond). "I hated ance, Zinn retorted, set up a Gre- every moment of it," he remem- Valerie Fowler cian formula for disaster, for bers, "the way the bosses treated every nation-state has since drummed such read in the daily newspaper." the waiters, who were fed chicken wings nonsense into "the heads of its citizens from That this claim is a bit of a stretch is al- just before they marched out to serve roast the time they are old enough to go to most beside the point. True, his argument beef and filet mignon to the guests; every- school." Thanks to Plato, and his literary ignores the dramatically different contexts body in their fancy dress, wearing silly mouthpiece Socrates, those who have in which Athenian and American politics hats, singing 'Auld Lang Syne' ... and me called western civilization home for the played out, and thus denies that cultural dis- standing there in my waiter's costume, past two millennia have acted with "blind tinctions matter — an odd posture for an his- watching my father, his face strained, clear obedience to that disreputable artifice called torian. Curious too is his lack of interest in his tables, feeling no joy at the coming of government." challenging Bloom's appropriation of Plato; the New Year." The protective love he felt This is classic Zinn. Find a particularly many of those unruly radicals whom Bloom for his parent, the familial bond that inten- instructive historic argument, event, or mo- had accused of closing the American mind sified, the politicized anger that came to de- ment, then conflate time to enable that past had cut their eye teeth on that text which fine this memory, make it clear why he has to speak directly to contemporary condi- gives the most unapologetic defense of civil such antipathy for Plato's smug fashioning tions. In this case, his concern is not solely disobedience, Socrates' The Apology." of a paternal, preeminent state; it is no

THE TEXAS OBSERVER ■ 17 JULY 31, 1998 wonder that instead Zinn would champion ship with political engagement. This fusion looked down ... at her hands ... brown, the "admirable obligation one feels to is most stunningly revealed in the continu- strained ... every muscle holding," and one's neighbors, one's family, one's prin- ing intensity of his writings about the civil suddenly the manager "let go and left," as ciples, indeed to other human beings wher- rights movement. "though he knew he could not move that ever they reside on the planet." He and his family had moved to Atlanta girl . — ever." Zinn's choice of anecdote Lending his voice to the cause of those in 1956, where he taught at Spelman Col- says as much about his ,deft literary in- waiters and miners, students and union lege. While there — he would be fired for stincts as it does about the political mes- organizers, civil rights activists and pris- insubordination seven years later, and re- sage he hoped to convey: individuals' ac- oners — those who opposed the bosses turn north to teach at Boston University — tions matter — hold on! and bureaucrats seeking to crush them — he embraced the cause his students em- So he has argued (and modeled) for the became his charge as an historian. It revo- braced, teaching them about the historical last thirty-five years — in books written in lutionized his conception of "history," roots of civil disobedience and social jus- opposition to the Vietnam war and in the too, by forcing him to probe people and tice, helping them think through the strate- social commentaries he published in the subjects little ,studied before the advent in gies that would best shatter the segregation- Boston Globe in the mid-1970s; in his tes- the 1960s of what then was touted as the ist hegemony, marching with them in the timony at the Pentagon Papers trial and in new social history (it since has gotten the legendary and long-running dispute old). As he explored and then breathed FOR ZINN, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE with John Silber, former president of life into a field of study that later would LIFE ARE CONJOINED, A NARRATIVE Boston University. Whatever the format or become the title of his most popular book ASSUMPTION THAT SHAPES THE DIS- environment, he has asked troubling ques- — The People's History of the United PARATE BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES tions about the intersection of political be- States (1980) — he found himself at odds INCLUDED IN THIS READER. liefs and social structures, has disturbed with the historian's attempt to remain per- the often hermetically sealed cultures we sonally disengaged and narratively objec- streets, and right into jail. His passionate inhabit yet rarely analyze, and has rattled tive. As he argued in The Politics of His- support of the movement led him to write our easy assumptions about the benign re- tory (1970), such disengagement and some of the most effective analyses of its lationship between concentrated economic objectivity is frankly impossible to actions and prospects, leading in one re- power and democratic politics. He has achieve, and counterproductive in any markable year —1964 — to the publication been, in short, a pain in the butt. event; only by shucking self-imposed of The Southern Mystique and SNCC: The Wait a second: isn't that a rough transla- constraints, and writing from an honest, New Abolitionists (portions of which are re- tion of what the ancient Athenians had subjective stance, would scholars produce produced in this latest volume). These whined when one of their unrepentant con- works of great insight and consequence. books, and the episodes on which they were temporaries tartly, and uncomfortably, re- Always dominant is the notion of rele- based, reveal his commitment to the con- minded them that "the unexamined life is vance. "It is time we began to earn our cept and reality of an active citizenry. To not worth living"? Howard Zinn is more keep in this world," is how he opens "The this end, he had introduced his students to Socratic than he lets on. Uses of Scholarship," an essay plucked Charles Frankel's The Case for Modern from The Politics of History. "Thanks to a Man, in which Frankel argues that a citizen Contributing Writer Char Miller teaches gullible public, we have been honored, is a "free and mighty agent, who while history at Trinity University. He has com- flattered, even paid, for producing the studying the determinants of social change, pleted a collection of essays on politics and largest number of inconsequential studies can become a chief determinant himself." culture, many of which first appeared in the in the history of civilization." His accusa- The proof of this came as Spelman Observer. tion may seem harsh, Zinn grants, but its rapidly evolved into a "Finishing School justification is manifest when you "read for Pickets": its students helped desegre- the titles of doctoral dissertations ... and gate Atlanta's public library system and its the pages of the leading scholarly journals lunch counters. One episode that Zinn orig- alongside the lists of war dead, the figures inally had inserted in The New Abolition- on per capita income in Latin America, ists, turned on the actions of Lana Taylor, a the autobiography of Malcolm X." Neu- "fair-skinned, rather delicate looking" stu- tral pedantry is abhorrent: "We publish dent in one of his classes. She and some of while others perish." her peers had sat down at the counter in a That is a catchy, if dogmatic phrase: local eatery, when its foul-mouthed man- what constitutes "relevance," as suggested ager grabbed her bodily and yelled: "Get 307 West 5th Street in the examples he cites, is narrowly de- the hell out of here, nigger." She refused to Austin, Texas fined, and can lead to its own orthodoxy. budge, and grasped the counter. "He was (512) 477-1137 Yet grant Zinn this: no one has more effec- rough and strong," a fellow protester re- tively fused words with actions, scholar- called, but Taylor gamely held on. "I

18 ■ THE TEXAS OBSERVER JULY 31, 1998 BOOKS 8L THE CULTURE Maybe, Baby Will the one-child family save the planet? BY JEFF MANDELL MAYBE ONE: was such a discussion of global warming, timony that frequently accompanies envi- A Personal and Environmental acid rain, deforestation, and the depletion ronmental arguments (it's not just you, Argument for Single-Child Families. of irreplaceable resources. Unfortunately, faceless and unenlightened, but I, too, con- By Bill McKibben. Only One is not what it purports to be; tribute to the problems). Simon & Schuster. rather, it is a hollow volume of specious In Only One, however, McKibben fails to 254 pages. $23.00. reasoning and hedged conclusions. resolve his hodgepodge of stories into a co- In choosing to write about population, herent whole. This is most obvious toward ill McKibben is the McKibben admittedly takes on a hornet's the end, where McKibben devotes three renowned environmental- nest of painful issues. The task of balancing whole pages (which is a great deal of space ist you could take home an environmental agenda with topics like in this thin volume, where no topic save this for dinner. He's knowl- immigration quotas, maintaining a stable one gets anything close to as much space as edgeable without being social security system, family planning, re- it deserves) to a detailed description of his academic, he's gravely ligious freedom and doctrine, and foreign own vasectomy, both the rationale and the concerned without being policy is not an enviable one. In taking it on, procedure. Elsewhere, McKibben relies alarmist, he bridges the however, McKibben does a lamentable job. upon vignettes of his daughter Sophie to objective world of the scientist and the In part, McKibben's failure sterns from suffice as the end of a discussion, or, more Bpolemical world of the activist, and he pre- his approach. His use of narrative, both per- often, as a transition into a new one. The sents all of his arguments in easy-to-swallow sonal and historical, has helped make his book's close, an elliptical summation of the narratives. His previous books, The End of day McKibben and Sophie spent together, Nature, The Age of Missing Information, and MCKIBBEN DEFINED OUR ERA AS may be pleasant, but its sentimentality does Hope, Human and Wild each presented a THE FIRST POST-NATURAL ONE - not provide any closure to the argument strong case for conservation, and each rested THE FIRST IN WHICH THE EXTENT OF Only One seeks to make. on McKibben's conviction that we live in a HUMAN INTERFERENCE IN NATURE What exactly that argument might be crucial era. His newest book, Maybe One, HAS PROCEEDED BEYOND NATURE'S never becomes clear. McKibben declares begins with exactly that idea: because "We CAPACITY TO ADAPT. in the introduction that he did the research may live in the strangest, most thoroughly underlying the book "because of Sophie, different moment since humans took up earlier books engaging, in part by provid- my four-year-old daughter. I wanted to farming ten thousand years ago and time ing a readable framework for a largely sci- make sure that growing up without brothers more or less commenced ... [the] next fifty entific argument, but also by allowing and sisters would not damage her spirit or years will be crucial to our planet's future." McKibben to integrate — and thereby im- her mind." This motivation explains why This theory of exceptionalism places a plicate — himself, in his laundry list of the first quarter of the book relates the his- great burden on all of us. In The End of Na- ways in which people have harmed Earth. tory of psychological research on children ture, McKibben defined our era as the first "Our local problem here in the Adiron- in single-child families, never mentioning post-natural one — the first in which the ex- dacks — acid rain — has its cause in Ohio either population or the environment. After tent of human interference in nature has and Kentucky. And now, as the climate a whirlwind, gap-ridden history, Mc- proceeded beyond nature's capacity to warms, our local problem — the death of Kibben concludes that the only child does adapt to our meddling. Bound up with this trees — starts to have its causes every- not differ from children with siblings in idea is the topic of population. We do not where. Everywhere. A factory in Japan is as any measurable way. While this is reassur- face a population crisis just because of in- deadly as a burning rain forest in Brazil, a ing to parents and children in single-child sufficient natural resources, nor do we face Communist coal mine in Rumania, a capi- families, it is not an argument for single- grave environmental problems solely be- talist utility in West Virginia. Or as the blue child families; it is merely a rebuttal of one cause of our burgeoning population, but the 1981 Honda parked in the driveway twenty argument against such families. issues of environment and population are feet from where I sit, or as the wood stove The entire volume proceeds by this semi- inextricably linked. In his earlier books, warming my back." Passages like this one logical process. McKibben eliminates one McKibben deftly side-stepped questions of abound in The End of Nature, and they si- after another possible objection to or nega- population, and Only One purports to be his multaneously localize the problem (it's not tive consequences of lowering the birth rate. considered and reasoned discussion of pop- all the fault of industrial polluters and de- Yet, McKibben relies on faulty reasoning ulation issues, just as The End of Nature veloping nations) and undermine the sanc-, and solitary statistics to carry his arguments.

JULY 31, 1998 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 6119 Take, for example, Social Security. If we harsh. In a world where 2.9 billion people who have read McKibben's earlier work. lower the birth rate significantly (McKibben have no toilet, who are any of us to say 'go In population, McKibben has found yet an- recommends a lowering from just under 2 away' simply because we had the luck to other topic through which to promote his children per woman to 1.5), we will face the be born in an easy place?" Ultimately, idea of the exceptionalism of the present, prospect of a smaller population of workers though, McKibben sways back to the arbi- and he has found a popular subject (popular paying taxes to fund the retirement of a huge trary: "This is a moral question, but it's enough for a cover story in The Atlantic population of retirees. McKibben "solves" also a math problem." Faced with a pro- and a feature in The New York Times Mag- this potential problem by suggesting raising foundly complex and unpleasant issue, azine). Somehow, though, McKibben has the retirement age, increasing the savings McKibben opts out with a soundbite salvo. written an entire book on population with- habits of Americans, and implementing a The repetition of such situations makes out a single mention of economic class, "means test" so that only those retirees who Only One read less like a coherent discus- perhaps the largest determining factor in need Social Security benefits receive them. sion, or even a call for the beginning of a family size. And when he does address re- Each of these ideas may have its ligion, McKibben, a Methodist own merits (and McKibben has a Sunday School teacher, considers statistic to demonstrate the wisdom only Judeo-Christian belief: he re- of each idea), but even collectively flects on what the Bible commands they do not comprise a pragmatic so- us to do (something he was appar- lution to the problem of maintaining ently mulling over while awaiting Social Security given slowed popu- his vasectomy) and mounts a ram- lation growth. There are matters of bling defense of the Pope. health, history, ideology and politics Only One is a muddle. In his in- to contend with: for instance, it's dif- troduction, McKibben frames his ficult to imagine Congress approv- book not in terms of what he set ing a means test. out to do (that gets only a brief Only One proceeds this way paragraph' at the close of the sec- from issue to issue. McKibben's tion), but in terms of what he's not very brief discussion of immigra- trying • to do. The laundry list of tion at least recognizes the many qualifiers, of statements intended complicating factors surrounding to ensure that McKibben does not policy decisions, yet his conclusion offend or insult, ultimately renders (cut immigration levels into the the book moot. McKibben's ad- U.S. to 400,000 annually — just mitted fear of his topic paralyzes under half of our current level) his writing. Only One is neither a dodges those complications. After men- discussion, and more like a college bull personal nor an environmental case for sin- tioning the complications of immigration session. All topics are fair game, but once a gle-child families. It is merely a defense of policy, McKibben justifies his solution his- truly difficult question comes up, the best parents of only children, with a whole

torically: 400,000 is slightly less than the way to deal with it is to skip to another bunch of other stuff thrown in. ❑ annual flow into the U.S. from 1880-1924, topic. McKibben writes fluidly enough that the number recommended by Nelson he can almost pull it off, but the book is just Austin writer Jeff Mandell has written for Rockefeller's 1972 commission on immi- too awkwardly framed. The narrative leg- the Observer on the Edison Project, the gration, and a number corresponding to a erdemain of The Age of Missing Informa- state history museum, and other subjects. time (the early 1970s) when opinion polls tion — which begins with the preposterous indicated Americans felt immigration lev- premise that one can qualitatively compare els were high enough. McKibben also re- a day spent alone in nature with each of one , ti ON minds the reader that Emma Lazarus' hundred and seven days worth of cable TV IN words on the base of the Statue of Liberty programming, and then actually develops 1 la Labor Intensive Radio were placed there after the statue's dedica- into an entertaining and rewarding book — tion, that they are not part of the statue, that is absent in Only One. Disappointingly, Radio of the union, by the union they are neither "a motto, nor a guarantee." McKibben has not replaced it with any and for the union. But then McKibben backs off, aware of his stronger reasoning. (News tips: call Paul Sherr at arbitrary judgment from a place of privi- Instead, he has forced research done for 512-448-1935) lege within the U.S.: "I make no claim that - another reason into a book format with Tuesdays 6:30-7:00 p.m. it's fair — immigrant 400,001 will be just mercilessly recycled material from his ear- KO.OP 91.7 FM as desperate, just as deserving, as immi- lier books, making Only One a dry read grant 399,999. In fact, it's unforgivably with a recurrent tinge of deja vu for those

20 ■ THE TEXAS OBSERVER JULY 31, 1998 BOOKS & THE CULTURE ►

Epithalamium for TV & Poetry Good to Hear From You —to Gregory Kolovakos 2/1/96, 10:30, PBS. A cummerbund-wrapped channel zapper and the screen is white as snow which is upon closer A wise person once said these words examination black-and-white from the heaving overdrama And you expect me to repeat them? Never, of the techno-whore to the most precious fried For in that repetition there is is something abstraction of bliss — rewind and start over. Ahem. Gained in the translation? Always. Never Say no to anything, and in that way it'll take 99.8% of all American homes have a cyclops in the corner, Care of itself. When it is the world, you'll We are gathered here today because we no longer need to gather Understand why it feels better when someone else anywhere outside our individually canned livingrooms, networked, Does it. A brave new noun sits down and gently overworked, worked. Our connection. The broadcast unites states, Whispers, "Never you mind," like the P.E. teacher's sprinkles literature liberally into individual Wife in The Last Picture Show. Your memorial went abodes, as the road outside still flickers a tongue that surrounds us. And when we are swallowed, As well as could be expected, Gregory, without what do we become? Objections need their own distribution system. You there. People are still talking. The violinist Cried, the jackhammer in the street peppered the air. The next morning a child The floral arrangements under the electric fan shook Awakes refreshed in Omaha like a hurricane. Packs a pen in every pocket And walks out into morning

Overheard at the Newsstand Marriage It's a Dirty Little Secret There's No Big Message except hope you've had a good time while reading this Elizabeth and I taxied down to City Hall to get married. While somewhere the Great Novel is being Last year my mother eloped shredded with Howard to Key West. I must stand up and say my piece I hear through the grapevine Or at least a piece of my piece "Shredded my brother Stu is set to marry Piece" Anne whom I've never met. I will never sit in that class again, a stone My sister Amy married Jerry Eating away at the heart of existence at a cult ceremony in Kansas Plenty of homeless people want to read my along with 499 other couples. poems My other brother Lewis and Steve They are lucky I stand at the newsstand had their picture in the paper Cursing the politicians and making faces as they waited in line to be the first gay couple to legally conjoin in NYC. Maybe all I'm saying is it's a real job Being unemployed —BOB HOLMAN

ob Holman's poetry CD, "In with the Out Crowd," has re- Television Award. Known affectionately as King of Performance cently been released by Mouth Almighty Records. He is the Poetry and Daddy-o of the Poetry Slam, Holman lives in New York City and currently teaches "Exploding Text" at Bard College. producer/creator of The United States of Poetry, a five-part B Holman has worked widely and wildly "to set poetry free, to series that aired on PBS. His book, The Collect Call of the Wild, is empower the public language — to make poetry as natural a use for published by Henry Holt, as is Aloud: Voices from the language as ordering a pizza." If you call him on the phone, he Nuyorican Poets Cafe, which Holman co-edited. He has appeared on "Nightline," "The Charlie Rose Show," "Good Morning America," answers "Poetry" instead of "Hello." —Naomi Shihab Nye and MTV, and has won three Emmys and an International Public

THE TEXAS OBSERVER • 21 JULY 31, 1998 BOOKS & THE CULTURE Literary Liberation Latina Poets Break the Sound Barrier BY DAVE OLIPHANT FLORICANTO Si: in San Antonio — the Texas contingent is female natives. A Collection of Latina Poetry. dominated by eleven poets from the Alamo Compulsory only for the males. Edited by Bryce Milligan, Mary Guerrero City. But this apparent imbalance is not the Milligan, and Angela de Hoyos. result of parochial prejudice, since the San ne of the most revealing poems in Penguin. Antonio poets are some of the strongest writ- the collection is by Endenina 303 pp.. $14.95. ers in the collection: Rosemary Catacalos, 0 CaSarez Vasquez, who writes in Enedina Casarez Vasquez, Sandra Cisneros, "Bad Hair" that when she wanted to ring n 1967, Penguin Books issued an Celeste Guzman, Carmen Tafolla, and Evan- the bell at church she learned that girls important volume entitled Latin gelina Vigil-Pition. were not allowed to do so, "Or help with American Writing Today, edited Regardless of the poets' origins, most communion / Or go near the altar ... Or by J.M Cohen. Most of the writers tend to concern themselves with feminist hold the Baby Jesus for all to kiss," and so included in that collection are now themes. This can be characterized by Norma she cut off her hair in protest. A number of well known to readers of world lit- E. Cantu' s "Decolonizing the Mind," with these Latina poets envision a different erature: Jorge Luis Borges, Alejo its urge to "let decolonizing mist into the world order, one ruled by or presided over Carpentier, Julio Cortazar; Carlos brain cells / where blood knows no alle- by the feminine spirit. "In My Country," as Fuentes, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Pablo giance / except its own capillaries," and to Ana Castillo's title has it, she is: 1Neruda, Nicanor Parra, Octavio Paz, Juan "precision-cut the words that oppress, / that not made ashamed Rulfo, and Cesar Vallejo, among others. control, words bad and good / that enslave for being.... In my world Yet only two women were among the writ- and hinder, / manacles of the colonized i am a poet ers included in that 1967 selection: Gabriela mind." Another common motif is the need who can rejoice in the coming of Mistral and Rosario Castellanos. Like. Pen- to contemplate and connect with such fig- Halley's comet, the wonders guin's other volumes in its series of interna- ures as Malintzin (or Dona Marina), the of Machu Picchu, and a sudden kiss. tional writing, the publisher's Latin Ameri- "highly intelligent and gifted linguist ... Likewise, Chilean Marjorie Agosin's can edition was intended to break the who helped Cortes." (The description comes "Titania's Creed" declares that in the world "sound-barrier of inertia, language, culture, from the editors' "Notes on Historical and ruled by Titania, "There would be no bor- and tradition" by introducing what, at the Mythological Characters," which also dis- ders, / only the eyes / of the just." time, was still a little-known literature out- cuss "La Llorona," the legendary weeping More unusual is the work of Cuban poet side its home countries. To Penguin's woman who searches for her lost child and Silvia Curbelo, whose award-winning credit, the firm has once again broken the is the subject of several poems in Floricanto poem, "If You Need a Reason," relies on a sound barrier by issuing Floricanto Si, a Si.) Through her association with the con- greater use of metaphorical association: collection of mostly unheralded Latina quistador, Malintzin was branded a traitor to The way some stories end in the middle writers. Their voices deserve to be heard her Aztec people, and is still referred to, of a word, around the globe. from that perspective, as "La Malinche." As the words themselves, Aside from the fact that this new collection Beverly Sanchez-Padilla expresses it in her galaxies, statuaries, perspectives, is devoted exclusively to women writers, an- poem on Malintzin: the stone over stone that is life, other important difference is that it contains An identity problem is obvious. never mind hunger. both Spanish and English originals — Who was this woman who has been The way things move, road, Cohen's 1967 edition having been limited to blamed mirror, blind luck. The way English translation. Not all the women poets for opening up her Native people's legs nothing moves sometimes, in Floricanto Si write in Spanish, but when for all the Spanish warriors to enter ... a kiss, a glance, they do, a translation accompanies the original 500 years of punishment by some, never mind true north. poem. While a number of the poets are origi- glorification by others. A telling simile is at the center of Alma nally from the Caribbean (Cuba, the Domini- Answering later in the poem, she writes Luz Villanueva's "Warrior in the Sand": can Republic, and Puerto Rico,) and a few that Malintzin was" "fingering my solitude / as a child runs others are from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and a woman of savvy. ahead, singing." In Pat Mora's "La Migra," Mexico, the majority are natives of the United Street, slave savvy. every word works on several levels, to States. Texas is represented by nineteen out of Who never liked the achieve the poem's dual vision of a culture the total of forty-seven Latina writers. Perhaps bloodletting of Montezuma. clash between the Border Patrol and a not surprisingly — since the editors all reside Never liked the lack of education for Mexican woman. Mora imagines the con-

22 ■ THE TEXAS OBSERVER JULY 31, 1998 frontation as a dark, bitter version of chil- are the givens if not that we give roots in the mud dren's games, such as hide-and-seek, doc- everything, tor, or a foot-race: whatever it takes?" I want to keep you, old woman. I can touch you wherever Similarly, in "Morning Geography," Weave your crow's feet I want but don't complain dedicated to Naomi Shihab Nye, Catacalos into my skin, polish too much because I've got writes: the black coins of your eyes — boots and kick — if I have to, I supposed a loud flower could save us, currency of a higher kind. and I have handcuffs. tell us Poetry readers are indebted to the Milli- Oh, and a gun. something about sweetness ... Suppose gans and Angela de Hoyos for bringing to- Get ready, get set, run. we'd figured out, on those immense gether this stimulating and, for the most The response of the Mexican woman and long ago part, previously unavailable selection of ends the poem: lost summer nights how to get at the work by an oustanding group of women I know this desert, sweetness poets. The editors provide helpful notes where to rest, without tearing the proud throat of even about the contributors, translations of where to drink. one blossom. Spanish terms and phrases, and notes on Oh, I am not alone. This same concern — for discovering historical and mythological characters. You hear us singing something essential within the apparently This collection serves as a valuable intro- and laughing with the wind, weak — is found as well in Alicia Gaspar duction to what Bryce Milligan calls "a Agua dulce brota aqui, aqui, aqui, de Alba's "Beggar on the Cordoba new poetic sensibility emerging from a but since you can't speak Spanish, Bridge," where the poet recognizes that still-evolving mestiza consciousness ... an

you do not understand. from this "old woman" she could learn: ancient nebula birthing new stars." ❑ Get ready. how to dream Equally effective is Sandra Cisneros' in an open field David Oliphant is the publisher of Prickly "You Bring Out the Mexican in Me," (cotton or onion) Pear Press, this year celebrating its fif- which celebrates her Mexican heritage, her and let my hair grow long teenth year. almost violent love: You bring out the colonizer in me. The holocaust of desire in me. The Mexico City '85 earthquake in me. The Popocatepetl/Ixtacihuatl in me ... The lust goddess without guilt. The delicious debauchery. You bring out the primordial exquisiteness in me.

bove all, the poets in Floricanto Si are intent on redefining the world in feminine terms, and this is in many ways the most attractive and appealing as- pect of this collection. For the visions of Sarah Ha these poets provide not just an alternative perspective, but a very crucial hope for an improved human consciousness and condi- John Coe of Pensacola, Florida; Cliford D *Mon erY,/Ala134H,;! 6-F e:iijamin tion. Rosemary Catacalos touches on this Smith of New Orleans—three exception44WArs, thige Southern . *-sselitT In the two , most eloquently in her poem, "At Home in decades after World War II, they resisted bOt.!the exceAsiVe'ze-al'Of the ;Communist .,t the World," with its rhythms and senti- right and southern segregation laws to champion civil liberties, enduing personal and ments reminiscent of Wordsworth: professional backlash for their commitment. In'...StandirigAiriiiist , Preigoizsi Sirahs Hart The dream is of something possible Brown examines the careers of the three while describihg the positioni of southern liber- and regular, als and radicals in the broader stream of Americk4 liberalism during the postwar period. the silence of an old man husking pinenuts Available in September• in a whitewashed courtyard at sunset, the fading

light: memory become dream again. LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Raton Rouge - 0803 • 800-861-3 • wW\V.ISII.CdtlIglICSIS/ISIIpPIS The dream is pure necessity. For what

JULY 31, 1998 THE TEXAS OBSERVER ■ 23 BOOKS & THE CULTURE Just Life Elroy Bodes Social History of Texas BY RICHARD PHELAN HOME COUNTRY: ■ "Darkness and the Canal": a region of ment of relatives on a Sunday visit. It is so- An Elroy Bode Reader. nighttime Juarez that tourists would be cial history. Anyone who remembers the By Elroy Bode. scared to visit. It turns out to be serene, im- Hill Country in the late 1930s will say yes, Texas Western Press. poverished, dusty, and kindly, saturated in that's exactly the way it was. And will be 400 pages. $30.00. the kind of urban darkness most of us have tempted to add, "And the way it was sup- never seen: "...small dim bulbs are lit on posed to be." may handsomest book pub- scattered street corners," and children play Certainly ranching then did involve a re- lished in Texas in 1998 under them, "dragging behind them every- lationship with the land less mechanical, may well be Home Country, where their long quivering shadows." less chemical — in effect less brutal — by Elroy Bode. John M. ■ "On The Coast" is his record of a two- than the one farmers and ranchers as a mat- Downey, designing both book day family fishing trip to Port Aransas, ter of course have now. It was a Hill Coun- and jacket for the Texas West- when Bode was about nine. He loved it. try without fire ants, without the deadly ern Press, has produced a big, Headed home, tired, sunburned, sweaty, tick-borne diseases that have been con- elegant, enormously appeal- his clothes full of sand, "I would look at the veyed to human beings by "exotic" game ing object, something that suits very well gas flares of oil wells burning near Ingle- animals from Africa and India. the material inside: Bode's best pieces, se- side, at the huge sunflowers along the high- "The Ranch: An Ending" records the lected from seven earlier books, many mag- way. Then, with the wind like the open aging and weakening of George and Maggie azines and newspapers (including the Ob- door of an oven on my face, I would sleep." Duderstadt, after fifty active years; his death, server), and from a writing span of forty Bode's chief concern is to convey the and her staying on, inactive, perhaps sitting years. (See: "Texas Sketches," page 30.) moment, the time and place, just as it was. on the porch and watching the sheep. Bode's work is like no other contempo- No plots, no suspense, no chases or She looks intently in their direction and rary's. It consists, with a few notable ex- crashes. Just life. He writes about people, then straight on through to where her ceptions, of pieces rarely more than three animals, trees, shadows, weather, in unas- thoughts are. And it is no feat to imagine pages long, often shorter. In them he has suming, immensely readable prose. Finish- what she is thinking to say that she is recorded, with exactness and care, what he ing one sketch, you find it almost impossi- saying to herself as she has often said has seen and felt in a broad stretch of Texas ble not to go on to the next. And after you aloud: I want to see George. that runs from San Antonio to El Paso — have read a whole series — about Kerrville George. The name hangs in front of her with special attention to Kerrville, where he or Juarez or the high country of western all the time now, a veil that prevents her grew up, and to the surrounding Hill Coun- New Mexico — the dots connect them- from noticing things clearly any more; that try, where his maternal grandparents were selves, and you have as complete a world, keeps her saying over and over: I want to ranchers for fifty years. and as many characters, as you might get see him; I want to talk to him again. This What can a writer accomplish in just a from a novel. old place.... page or two? Here are some examples: Loyalty, love, stability, steadfastness do ■ "Melvin Oehler" neglected to live his life. t the heart of Bode's memory, and not figure in people's lives now quite as no- He was a baker in the V.A. hospital of his work, is his grandparents' ticeably as they did then. It is remarkable kitchens; now he's retired. His children Aranch. Ranches today are often tax that the kid having a great kid's life on the gone, his wife dead, he simply exists, "...a shelters, owned in absentia, used for par- ranch could become the man who recorded seventy-year-old man with no hobbies and ties, and operated by paid managers who the lives and ends of his grandparents with no passions, no problems and no con- talk from their pickups by CB radio to their such skill and feeling, and with no senti- cerns.... He is something that holds a shirt wives in the high-tech ranch house kitchen. mentality at all. The first time I read "The together. He is something beneath a hat." The Duderstadt ranch was not like that. Ranch: An Ending," around 1968, I ■ "Eight Boys": a cabin full of nine-year- Home Country contains twenty-three thought, this has been done as well as it's olds at summer camp, stretched on their pages of short pieces about the ranch: the possible to do it, no need for changes here. beds, taking the required afternoon rest and slightly goofy dog Zipper; the bland, con- Reading it again in the present book, I about to fall asleep: "Eight boys with only forming sheep; the ranch hand Enselmo thought the same. their little washboard chests rising and and his sorrows; Bode's grandmother at Of the things that interest Bode and at- falling to give testimony of the tireless mo- work in the house and yard, and his grand- tract his attention as a writer, one is the nat- tors inside." . father in the lots; a three-generation assort- ural world. This is something he has in

24 • THE TEXAS OBSERVER JULY 31, 1998 common with the eighteenth-century En- have if he is to prove satisfactory to the bird , A Farewell to Arms, Of Mice and glishman Gilbert White, whose Natural ranch-world congregation. The list has Men. Seniors read Mother-Tongue stuff: History of Selborne has been through many nothing to do with religion. Above all, he Hamlet, Milton, and (guaranteed to turn a editions and remains in print. Both men must not preach past noon: "...it is not pos- youngster off of reading) Beowulf. have the knack for dealing with a topic en- sible for any preacher — regardless of his How about Coronado's Children (buried tertainingly in a page or two, and moving pretty smiling wife and his white shoes and treasure)? Leaving Cheyenne (cowboys, on to another. (White did so in letters to his years along the Amazon — to retain full etc.)? How about a batch of Elroy Bode other gentlemen-naturalists.) Both pay status among such a group of men if he sketches: school bands, teen-agers, ani- sharp attention to trees, birds, animals, takes lightly their hour's sacrifice and mals, ranch life, livestock shows, family weather, landscapes. (Bode does equally thereby implies that grace, in the long run, reunions, summer camps? Kids might be well by people.) Both make precise records is more important than barbecue." pleased to discover that their own lives, of the natural worlds and the social worlds Reared a Methodist, Bode listened to their own state, are material from which they know. And both draw lively portraits sermons about sin, but did not see much of books have been made. They might even of themselves through their enthusiasms it in the life around him. He likes the idea read those books with an extra measure of and opinions. of God — creator of the world he finds so interest. And — why not? — a few students But Elroy Bode would never dissect a satisfactory — but can do without Jesus. besides the naturally literate might begin to small animal to find out what it eats, or as- He suspects that the music of the spheres is think that reading a book can be more than certain that owls hoot in the key of B-flat. not church music — rather, "...the sound of an assigned hardship. White analyzes and quantifies. Bode cele- galaxies expanding and cells multiplying, brates and ponders. "If there is a morality of the surf crashing and the winds moving n trips between El Paso and the Hill in life, then the land has had it for me. A through pines and caves." Country, often alone, Bode com- tree was as good as any human." He means He seems to take the kindness of a shade O posed prose in his head while driv- it. In some of his sketches, a tree (or a day) tree, the serenity of hills, the exuberance of ing the long, here-to-horizon stretches of is his central character, with people as- a fine day as models, as qualities that Interstate 10 that lie on each side of Fort signed supporting roles. human beings should exhibit substantially Stockton. I doubt that this produced, over He likes underdogs — the poor people of more often than they do. He offers no an- years, more than a few pages, but it does Juarez, the incurably lonely, the misfit kid swers. And in "I Am Mourning Robert In- show how much he likes writing. .It recalls in school. When the trim "Mercedes Man" gersoll Today," he pays his respects to the the nearly blind James Thurber, self-side- (golf shirt, shorts, beeper) is annoyed in a brilliant nineteenth-century atheist whose lined at parties, thinking through his next supermarket by the behavior of "the grace- ethics, family life, and conduct were every- story or comic essay, until urged by his less souls who manage to make such a mess thing a Christian's ought to be, but (if we wife to "stop working." He too liked writ- of their bodies and their lives," Bode's vote believe the newspapers) often aren't. ing well enough to do it in unlikely places. goes to the graceless. He doesn't care much Many of Bode's characters are strangers, Bode has written his books, over forty for the "haughtiness, the sense of aloofness glimpsed on streets, in parks, in stores, years, while teaching. full time and raising from the crowd that is radiated by a person even in moving cars. He does not know two children. Most of this happened in El who Excels and Achieves." He their names. Most of them Paso, where he still lives and, at age sixty- gives "Milady" her due, seeing have no idea that they are in six, still teaches. For years the El Paso her in downtown El Paso — his books. The "Couple In Herald Post gave him a monthly page plus clothes, car, manner, all of the The Park," for example (San jump, and an artist to illustrate his latest best quality. But he thinks of Antonio jazz festival: mono- sketches. Some of these appear in Home what he has just seen in south lithic young husband on the Country. He has said several times, and not El Paso: "women with dark grass, ignoring his pretty happily, that his writing life was over. So rooms full of children, women wife), are two among scores far, he has been wrong every time. bent over washing clothes, of people, perhaps not given Home Country is not all sketches. There women carrying heavy bun- Valerie Fowler to reading, who don't know are six longer pieces — "Anais," a memoir dles," and he wants to ask Mi- that they could open a book, about a remarkable woman, is the longest lady, with "her stunning little rear, 'Who now or years from now, and pop back into (at twenty-eight pages) and won a 1991 are you to be exempt from washboards and existence as they once were — the clothes Spur Award for Short Fiction from the hungry bellies?' they wore, the signals they sent, the rela- Western Writers of America. At greater It is not precisely correct to say that tionships they were in the process of wear- length, Bode becomes a don't-quit inves- Bode makes tolerant fun of conventional ing out. tigative reporter ("The Making of a Leg- religion. He just reports what he sees and Are our school kids assigned anything end"); or a writer of feature articles ("Live- hears, and those who wish to smile (or written by Texans in the twentieth century? stock Show") whose comedy grows entirely snarl) may do so. In "Camp Meeting," he My couldn't-be-sketchier research shows out of the people and events observed: lists the qualities a visiting preacher must they get My Antonia , To Kill a Mocking- "Rural men keep their hats on when they

JULY 31, 1998 THE TEXAS OBSERVER • 25 dance, when they sit together at cafe tables, sion — the soft-focus haze of Spanish gives a momentary pleasure, and is gone. when they drive their pickups and cars to moss, slave-made brick, and Tradition — Its authors fade and blend — with Freder- town, when they tend to business in stores by wondering what the South would be ick Wakeman, Faith Baldwin, Joseph — perhaps even when they sleep or couple without its trees: "...to remove that which Hergesheimer, and James Branch Cabell conjugally in the night. Why?" has provided elegance and beauty, to let the — into nearly perfect oblivion. Bode's "A Trip South" — the South here is not unredeemed flat earth remain, with the peo- work, I think, is more like the plate. Be- Brownsville or Mexico, but the Old South: ple on it, black and white, looking at one cause of its clarity and simplicity, its exact Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama — shows another, shack to Tudor home ... to no rendering of the Texas he knows, it will be how important long familiarity is to Bode. longer have trees that soften the harshness valued, kept, and handed on, for several,

He gets the people on this trip as accurately and camouflage the grimness.... To let the perhaps many, generations. ❑ as ever, but the place-based knowledge of Southland see itself finally in terms of peo- "Livestock Show," "Camp Meeting," ple only and the quality of their lives...." Richard Phelan, author of Texas Wild, first "Out-Of-Town Game" is missing. He does The work of many big-selling writers is wrote about Elroy Bode for the Observer in trim away some of the nostalgia and illu- like the food on a plate. It is consumed, December of 1981.

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26 ■ THE TEXAS OBSERVER JULY 31, 1998 BOOKS & THE CULTURE Don't Expect an Answer On the Borderland Police Beat BY STEVEN G. KELLMAN

ASK A POLICEMAN. cides in the Valley by the deceitful Lisan- even nastier pieces of work who may or By Rolando Hinojosa. dro Gomez Solis, head of law enforcement may not be Felipe's twin sons. Other Arte Public° Press. in the Cuerpo de Policia Estatal, Seccion felonies accrue, but most of the rest of the 256 pages. $12.95 (paper). del Orden Pliblico, just across the border in novel details the methodical efforts by sen- Barrones, Tamaulipas. sible Rafe to get to the bottom of it all. A uring the course of In Ask a Policeman, which is dedicated Korean War veteran who earned a degree thirteen novels that to the author's father Manuel Guzman Hi- in jurisprudence from the University of constitute what he nojosa ("He was the policeman") and his Texas before returning home to enforce in- calls the Klail City mother Carrie Effie Smith ("She was the stead of practice law, he is assisted by fel- Death Trip, Rolando policeman's wife,") Rafe Buenrostro is low detectives Ike Canal, Sam Dorson and Hinojosa has estab- now head of the Belken County Homicide Peter Hauer. lished himself as sole Squad. The new novel begins with a spec- Ask a Policeman is a police procedural, owner and proprietor tacular scheme to spring Lisandro Gomez, and most of its story unfolds as the officers of fictional Belken County, which, like the lawman turned lawbreaker, from custody perform their tasks — making phone calls, author's native Mercedes, is situated in the in the Belken County Courthouse, where, reading lab reports, holding meetings — Lower Rio Grande Valley. If during a steamy Texas August. Belken is the Lone Star Yoknap- Many readers are evidently fond of atawpha, Hinojosa is its Faulkner, this genre, but novels that take us to intent on appropriating the Tex- work with policemen are no more Mex borderlands as site for his inherently dramatic than dental hy- human comedy. The fertile soil of gienist procedurals. Proceeding to Yoknapatawpha sustains several of do his job, Chief Inspector Buen- the lushest works of American lit- rostro interrogates Ramon and erature, and it might have seemed a Gabriel Quevedo, contract killers re- waste of good land and flawed per- spected as la gente dura, tough, stoic sonalities for Faulkner to have set a men who honor actions over words. mere murder mystery in his pre- They are akin to the laconic cops cious Mississippi Delta country. who shadow them; ask a policeman But in 1948, he did. Intruder in the in this novel, and you will not get Dust, a quirky book in which Gavin much of an answer.

Stevens saves Lucas Beauchamp .;,.. s..-_ . Asked why he entered law en- • - from a lynch knot and solves a • forcement, Ike Cantu replies: "A mortal crime, is as far from cop is all I ever wanted to be. Ever Faulkner's finest work as it is from since I can remember." So much Valerie Fowler Raymond Chandler's. for the enigmas of motivation. For the fourteenth leg — a lame one — already convicted of homicide by a Texas Rafe' s wife Sammie Jo exists primarily to of the Klail City Death Trip, Hinojosa of- court, he faces a federal hearing on drug utter terse banalities like "Oh, Rafe, I'm fers up a genre entertainment: "A Rafe charges. The opening chapter, in which so sorry," when she — and we — are in- Buenrostro Mystery," as the cover, illus- GOmez is spirited across the border to the formed of misfortune. Hinojosa himself trated with a pistol, two bullets and a splash family ranch, where he is immediately shot sums up Ernesto Zedillo, without naming of blood, labels it. Ask a Policeman is in dead by his loving brother; Felipe Segundo him, as "the youngest president in Mex- fact the second Rafe Buenrostro mystery, a Gomez, resembles pulp fiction less than ico's interesting history," but if you want tardy sequel to his 1985 Partners in Crime, pithless cinema. to know exactly what makes it "interest- for which Hinojosa recruited characters In what would be the pre-credit se- ing," you might do better to ask a police- from Belken County. In that stolid story of quence, readers are assaulted with copious man, not this author. At some point, un- gore and wits, Rafe Buenrostro, a lieutenant carnage and introduced to a few violent derstatement becomes indistinguishable in the Belken County Homicide Squad, is miscreants, not only Felipe Segundo but from the tactic of a hostile witness. "Just misled in his efforts to solve multiple homi- also Juan Carlos and Jose Antonio Gomez, the facts, ma'am" was Jack Webb's signa-

JULY 31, 1998 THE TEXAS OBSERVER • 27 ture request on Dragnet, but the poetry of With better insight than grammar, Part- facts, like that of words, depends on in- ners in Crime says about Rafe's cousin, spired selection. Jehu Malacara: "And, as most borderers Get DownHome What is most remarkable about Ask a throughout the world, he had little confi- Policeman is its hybrid sensibility, its ease dence in central authority." In Ask a Po- with The Texas in straddling two (nay, three — a couple of liceman, Boyd Hackett, the F.B.I. agent as- killers are imported from French Canada) signed to Klail, is an interloper, less a Observer. cultures. Klail and Barrones each have partner than a pest to the local police. Dis- Now you can read your favorite more in common with the other than with trict Attorney Chip Valencia is a fatuous Observer features on The Texas Ob- many other towns on their own side of the Republican who rinks his political ambi- server DownHome Page: Investiga- national divide. Lisandro Gomez' succes- tions to acquiring federal funding to buy tive Reporting, Molly Ivins, Jim sor as head of law enforcement in Barrones unnecessary tanks and heavy weapons for Hightower, Political Intelligence, is spunky Maria Luisa Cetina, who at- Belken County. "The federal trough is tended high school in Klail and is able to longer than the Rio Grande," notes Sam and all the rest. explain, in fluent English, how, though it Dorson. "Trouble is, the trough doesn't Also on our site is a list of pro- adheres to the Napoleonic Code, Mexican wash out into the Gulf." Nor does every- gressive organizations on the web — law is as attentive as la ley norteamericana thing in the plot of Ask a Policeman wash, folks who share our progressive pol- to the rights of suspects. Spanish words and and this novel about borderers does not al- itics. phrases mingle freely with English ones ways inspire confidence in its author. He — the Editors throughout the novel. However, in marked asks his policemen, in Klail and Barrones, contrast to Hinojosa's practice elsewhere to follow step-by-step the procedures for http://texasobserver.org in the Klail City Death Trip cycle (where closing the files on local felonies, while the use of English or Spanish, by characters larger questions remain a mystery. ❑ and narrators, is dictated entirely by the context, not the presumed limitations of the Steven G. Kellman is the Ashbel Smith reader), we are offered conversations tran- Professor of Comparative Literature at scribed entirely in English, by speakers U.T.—San Antonio. who know only Spanish.

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28 • THE TEXAS OBSERVER BOOKS & THE CULTURE Moon over the Border A conquistador and his maiden look for low-wage jobs BY PAT LITTLEDOG THE MOON WILL FOREVER BE A have. He has stretched out and flattened his of the border, Balboa is ogling one fair Mary DISTANT LOVE/ LA LUNA SIEMPRE characters stereotypically, the woman tor- Ann's lips and legs. And so the dialogue of SERA UN DIFICIL AMOR. tilla-style — Mexican Indian Everywoman love begins all over again. By Luis Humberto Crosthwaite. — and the man in beaten plates of armor, his There is no fairy tale ending to this ro- Translation by Debbie Nathan and heart still in the chivalric age, imagining his mance, and you don't expect one, given the Willivaldo Delgadillo. beloved as a maiden of that era. ironic, satirical, and darkly fanciful notes in Cinco Puntos Press. But while the light of her life is out sal- Crosthwaite's prose. In fact there is no end- 175 pages. $12.95 (paper). lying (working maybe as a waiter or brick- ing, but rather a kind of glyph that mixes layer; she doesn't know because he doesn't type, Aztec symbols, and a long, stylized o initiates the dia- farewell to the story's more obscure char- logue of love? Accord- acters. The author's intent seems to be to ing to Luis Crosthwaite, let us know that one phase follows another, it is the woman, who for lovers as for the moon of his title. The wishes so strongly for book leaves off before any truly dark phase change that one day her occurs, and the resulting analysis of tradi- conquistador falls out of tional male and female stances toward one the sky "like a Spanish another remains a partial one. coin found in a land where mostly cocoa But this is a young poet, and a first novel. beans are used for trade...." From that, the Ti- His threading of a lovers' dialogue back juana poet's romantic fable unfolds. His pro- and forth across the U.S./Mexico border is totypical lovers, Florinda and Balboa (also re- an engaging conceit, and he renders it in ferred to as "F' and "B"), endure a separation rollicking poetry, Cesar Vallejo style. Long of several hundred miles, their plight resonat- strings of metaphor stretch from earth to ing with that of lovers from bygone centuries, Sirius, and from the bottom of the moats

as all the while they silently ask themselves Valerie Fowler surrounding Tenochtitlan — where many whether their love will survive. of Cortez's men sunk with their gold fol- At the border, like his ancestors in their call her) Florinda decides to get out of the lowing the conquistador's first defeat — to galleys before him, Balboa sallies forth into darkening house of his relatives where he's a bus station on the border of New Spain. foreign territory: he is smuggled into the left her, and takes a job at the local Few have expressed the slide of history as "Northernish Empire" in the trunk of a car maquiladora, standing at a conveyer belt well as Crosthwaite, without resorting to driven by his Uncle Decoroso. Florinda moving electronic devices. A mantra pro- more prosaic devices such as ghost tales or stays behind in the border city, waiting like vides the concentration she needs to avoid hallucinations. so many of her female predecessors. As injury and still meet her production quota: The translators, Debbie Nathan and Balboa muses to himself, silent-hero style: "soldering iron melt solder, solder solder Willivaldo Delgadillo, demonstrate a rare That's the way History is: going far circuits... thirty per minute. Maybe more." sensitivity to complicated language away from the people you love, having ad- With her senses dulled by low-wage pro- rhythms, and what might otherwise have ventures, doubting, experiencing tempta- duction, La Television images and El Radio come across as a lightweight take on the tions and returning at the end of the trip to rhythms overwhelm Florinda, reshaping differences between the sexes becomes a praises worthy of heroes. Perhaps it's hard whatever ideals she brought with her from lingustic event. Imagine a reggae group to understand for someone who's not a con- the past, mixing motion picture idols in with getting hold of Marty Robbins' "El Paso," quistador or a Spaniard, but it's part of her Tenochtitlan gods. Then, for a moment, or accordions translating Aztec flute songs life: the series of events arranged by God when she wakes up from her reverie, she in an underground Tijuana bar. I, for one, on the march of Time.... That's the way we sees the eyes of one of her fellow workers, a will be awaiting Crosthwaite's next work conquistadors are, and Florinda will have man amongst the women. (And she is the — maybe because I'm just a sucker for a to accept it the way I accept her dark skin most beautiful! He chooses her, even though baroque border song. ❑ and brown eyes. she is married — but the conquistador has Crosthwaite is a young author, with playful gone and hasn't called or anything....) Si- Pat LittleDog's books include Afoot in A ideas, still, about how men and women be- multaneously, somewhere on the other side Field of Men and Border Healing Woman.

JULY 31, 1998 THE TEXAS OBSERVER • 29 AFTERWORD Notes From Central Texas Three Sketches By Elroy Bode The following selections are excerpted bought lunch meat and cheese and put just barely:. Cain City, Sisterdale, Waring, from Home Country by Elroy Bode, pub- them on the bright metal racks of the Welfare. These are the back roads going by lished this year by Texas Western Press. gleaming ColdS pot. For a while I felt al- settlements left over from the Old Order: most smug: there I was, a college graduate, from the pioneer times when German immi- AIR FORCE BLUES a lieutenant, carrying out my lone, inde- grants saw the shoulder-high grasslands It was peacetime, 1955, and as a second pendent little duties like all the other soli- among the Central Texas hills and decided lieutenant I wandered around Randolph taries of the world. And I could snack to settle along Grape Creek and the Peder- Air Force Base in San Antonio trying to whenever I wanted to. I didn't have to go nales, built their stone houses as they kept keep from doing something wrong. I wore out every night and order the same ham- an eye out for the nearby Comanches, and stiff, starched, awkward khakis, a visored burger-and-coffee at a café. I could be ca- established the farms and ranches that their hat, black tie, blunt-toed black shoes. For sual and sedentary.... Why, I might end up descendants would continue to work for the two years I was obligated, during duty buying a television set to look at while I ate next eighty to a hundred years. hours, to suspend the essential Me. En- — who could tell? I might even buy a pipe. But times changed. Some of the old-time cased in my khaki prison, I looked like, Then if friends knocked on my door, I ranchers and farmers have finally sold off, and felt like, a goon. would look the way a young officer ought moved away — given up the heritage of After work I walked about in the big, to look in his quarters after his day of duty their forebears — and now millionaires nearly bare sitting room of the Bachelor Of- — sitting there in his room smoking his from Houston and Dallas and Minneapolis ficers Quarters, my footsteps echoing as I as well as two-paycheck families (sending paced the smooth wooden floor. I stared at EACH NIGHT I WAS ON THOSE DARK their kids to school in nearby Boerne and the brown woods of the walls and chairs, SAN ANTONIO STREETS, LOOKING, Fredericksburg; seeking the rural good life) the white plaster, and tried to think of what WALKING, LISTENING: AFIRE WITH live along the narrow roads among the ele- to do with myself. I was clearly not meant THE STUNNING NEW IDEA THAT MY gant oaks. to be a military man. LIFE COULD READ LIKE A BOOK.... New money, old way of life.... Small Outside, on the cool second-floor walk- holdings with weathered barns and trailer way, Major Witherspoon would pass by, pipe and reading Saturday Review. houses sit next to large, well-kept spreads. laughing, with a nurse. He was friendly, But I never even came close to pulling it An old rock-wall fence built in the 1880s dark-haired, youthful looking — remarkably off. True, I did have the refrigerator. But still borders a bottomland oat patch; across young, I thought, to have a gold leaf on his the lunch meat curled up at the edges and the road an impressive new limestone wall open khaki collar. He seemed to be all that I the limes shrunk into rocks and the half- entrance announces the acres of an oil-ty- wasn't: a confident bachelor officer accus- cartons of milk grew sour because, as it coon-turned-cattle-baron. tomed to traveling here and there, dating turned out, I seldom fixed myself a meal in Once in December I drove up and over secretaries and nurses and laughing his the room more than once a week — and the cedar-covered hills: into valleys where hearty, young-major's laugh. He was never again thought of smoking a pipe. sheep were scattered like miniature chess friendly with other young officers in rooms Something had happened. During those un- pieces across huge fields of lush, green, nearby and played cards with them late at prepossessing, goon-like days in khaki I winter grass; by the mailboxes of the night in his slippers and maroon robe. He did had made an important discovery: the Rausches, the Doebblers, the Kothmanns not bolt the base each afternoon as I did and world could be written about. Not a vague and the lovely Germanic geometry of their head down the farm-to-market road toward Shangri-La "literary" world but the one neat fields and orchards. San Antonio — to the lure of the streets and right outside Randolph Air Force Base: the I eased down toward a low-water bridge the night, but instead walked casually back world of personal experience. (Madonnas and Michael Jacksons come and from his accounting office to his quarters, So each night I was on those dark San go, but the Guadalupe River, beneath its enjoying the look of the Spanish-style build- Antonio streets, looking, walking, listen- border of cypress trees, flows on forever) ings and the quiet, enclosed quadrangle of ing: afire with the stunning new idea that and I was in Waring, a riverside cluster of grass and roses. my life could read like a book and — in- toy-like buildings. The schoolhouse — I suppose it was the BOQ refrigerator credibly — I could do the writing. white, with green-trimmed windows and a that gave me, for a while, a passing sense of slanting tin roof — had been long closed ex- worldliness. It was my first personal refrig- BACK ROADS cept for occasional community gatherings. erator, so to speak, and on Saturdays, with a Narrow roads wind through the Texas hill A flock of guineas paraded along the school box of soda and a wet rag, I cleaned its in- country — past winter fields and pastures, grounds; a trio of white turkey gobblers sides. Afterwards I went to the PX and past little places that are still on the map but strutted and chuffed across a quiet yard.

30 ■ THE TEXAS OBSERVER JULY 31, 1998 I drove through and out of town — past keep from yawning — graceful little part- the gas station-store, several turn-of-the-cen- ings of her lips half-covered by pats of red- tury, embossed-tin houses, the abandoned nailed fingers. From time to time she would yellow-walled depot sitting on its grassy rail- lean close to her husband, trying to make road right-of-way — and I stopped on the comments that he could hear above the side of the road. I got out and listened to the music. Occasionally she would slowly, great afternoon stillness. It was silence I lovingly rub her nose against the hair of his heard, but it could easily have been called arm. Sometimes she even remembered to Time or History. A breeze came from the move her feet a little with the beat of the south, a hawk circled low overhead.. An ar- music — politely, mechanically. madillo came rattling through dry Spanish Her husband — he with the tan walking oak leaves, then waddled along the fenceline shorts, the meaty legs crossed at the knee; to snuffle in dried cow manure. he with the freckled arms and reddish, We were both content. clipped beard: did he ever turn in his wife's direction to smile a bit or nod at one of her COUPLE IN THE PARK comments? Did he ever break his sphinx- I was wandering through downtown San An- like stare into the legs of the spectators tonio one afternoon and decided to see what standing in front of them? You can bet your "You won't put it in your article, will Jazz in the Park was all about. It was an easy- sweet fajita he did not. He remained there, you?" going Sunday in September and the people thrust back on his arms — angled away "Like you said, it's a non-issue." in Travis Park were milling around near the from his wife for an hour or more. He of- "What about my windfall from the sta- outdoor stage — eating sandwiches, drink- fered her his profile, his crossed legs, his dium at Arlington? You're not going to go ing beer, listening to the music. Local bands impenetrable isolation. Toothpick in mouth into that, are you?" the . Governor asked. had been playing since noon and Dave — in beard — he faced outward like "You know, money really doesn't mean Brubeck was scheduled for eight o'clock. Napoleon gazing across Elba. that much to me: after a certain point it's I got a Coors in a paper cup and watched So there she was: pretty and affectionate only good for giving away." a pair of Frisbee throwers charm a group of and ignored in her peppermint-stripe dress: Lurker shook his head so vigorously that kids. Then, as the Herbie Mann Quartet an upper-middle-class matron linked on a beadlets of sweat splattered across the arm- began setting up on stage, I noticed them: Sunday afternoon outing to her reclining rests of his chair. "I don't want to bore our the couple on the blanket. statue of a husband. What to do? How to readers," he said. "Did I mention I've sold The woman, in her late thirties, was pass the time?... She twitched her cupid- my house? I've been looking into proper- pretty and fair-skinned — with the kind of bow lips in more suppressed yawns. She ties in the D.C. area." soft flesh that bruises easily. She had a crossed and recrossed her sweetly calved, Before the Governor could respond, neatly lip-sticked mouth, carefully made- moisturized legs. She looked about the Gloria burst into the room. "I'm sorry, Sir, up eyes, and I could almost smell the pow- crowd with slightly widened eyes. but the Mexicans — they say they're not der and moisturizer. An expensive red-and- I watched her husband and wondered: hungry. And..." she paused to catch her white striped dress smoothly outlined the Oboist with the San Antonio symphony? breath, "there is absolutely no iced tea left hourglass curves of her body. computer programmer? psychologist? cloth- in Austin!" She was lying back on her elbows beside ing store heir? I could not tell and did not re- The Governor narrowed his eyes and her husband — obviously trying to be a ally care to know. I just wanted to reach up exhaled, then opened the top drawer of his good sport on the blanket-island beneath and break off a tree limb and rap him a cou- desk and removed a manilla folder. He the tall pecan trees. But she just couldn't ple of times across his freckles to get his at- turned to Lurker. "It looks as if I'm going tention. I wanted to yell at him through Her- to have to cut this interview short. I had ANDERSON & COMPANY bie Mann's widely driving solo: You one of my aides prepare an article before- COFFEE jackass, that's no way to run a marriage! hand, though, outlining what I should do if TEA SPICES But I knew it would do no good. I've I decide to run for President. Which I TWO JEFFERSON SQUARE been around such marriages before. She haven't decided, by the way." AUSTIN, TEXAS 78731 would immediately grab his arm and hold "How thoughtful of you!" said Lurker. 512-453-1533 him tight while trying to kick at my shins "Have your photographer come back to- Send me your list. with her glossy-red toes. And even then he morrow. Will I be on the cover?" would not respond — would not bother to Name "Of course, boss," the Journalist replied, look at either of us: would just keep on star- lifting his beret in salute, then letting it settle Street ing ahead, toothpick intact, while his wife back over his pate as he moved toward the

City Zip carefully, solicitously, began to brush the door. Exiting, he could hear the governor's

pecan leaves off his beard. ❑ chieftanly growl: Get me Nestea.... ❑

JULY 31, 1998 THE TEXAS OBSERVER • 31 Tilt BACK PAut ► The Heat is On y late June Texas' hot weather had become so bereft of momentum that it could no longer properly be called a "wave" or "front" or even `spell" : it was, simply, heat A Texas-sized block of three-digit temperature& The Beverage Commissioner issued a statewide alert warn- ing of possible iced tea shortage& and adults everywhere were Bunusually cranky. Which perhaps explains what went on inside the Governon's office one day in June after a coach-load of Mexican officials pulled up outside...

"Excuse me, Governor," said Gloria, the ing a Kleenex from the inside pocket of his from his eyes. "It's to show solidarity with Assistant, stepping into the office. blazer, dusted it off. "Show him in. Show the Lewinsky girl — not that I'm a Demo- "Gloria! Where's that iced tea I asked him right in." crat or anything — but you know, a lot of for?" Moments later, the Journalist shuffled us in the journalistic community feel that "It's the shortage, Sir; we're trying to humbly before the Governor. Lurker was a there's nothing illegal about giving a blow find you some. But in the meantime, Sir, plump man who, in walking the several job to the President. Or," he continued, his there are some officials here from Mexico blocks from his office to the Governor's, voice lowering, "to a possible Presidential who've asked to see you." candidate." "Oh, crap," said the Governor, cracking "I don't know what you're implying, open one of the wooden shutters behind his Lurker, but I'm a happily married man!" desk. "Is it those anti-nuclear folks again?" said the Governor, thrusting forward the "It's the twelve member's of the legisla- newly-dusted portrait of Mrs. Governor. ture who've been trying to set up a meeting "She's a great first lady, just like my Mom about the Sierra Blanca waste dump." was.... Hey, why don't you put that in "Goldarnit! I don't get these guys. What your article?" part of 'No way, Jose' don't they under- "Sure I will, sure," said Lurker. He fetched a sweat-stained notebook from his stand?" said the Governor. "Gloria, did Valerie Fowler you tell them I haven't decided to run for rear pocket and began to write. President?" had developed a complexion as wet as it "You know, I haven't decided yet "Yes, but they weren'i sure what that has was florid, a condition to which certain sar- whether to run for President. I've got plenty to do with—" torial flourishes, as well as his natural dis- on my hands right here in Texas." "It takes a lot of time, not deciding. I'm position, had contributed. Over each pant- "I'll bet you do. I noticed quite a crowd busy. Este jefe estd ocupado. Can't you find leg Lurker wore an eggshell-colored, of Spanish-speaking gentlemen on my way some minor functionary to take them to well-cushioned kneepad; in addition, and in," Lurker said. Giiero's or something?" most curiously on this hottest of days, a "Oh those guys. Sierra blah blah blah "I'll try, Sir," said Gloria. She looked large, wool beret flopped over his brow. blah. I think everyone's pretty tired of that down at her clipboard. "Paul Lurker is here "Lurker!" boomed the Governor. "I did- issue, don't you?" from Oh Texas! Magazine—should I tell n't know you were a volleyball man! But "Definitely. We try never to mention it in him you're busy, too?" what's with the beret?" the magazine." "No, no," said the Governor. He reached "Actually, it goes with the kneepads," for the photograph of his wife and, remov- Lurker replied, nudging the beret away See "Heat," p. 31

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