God Save Texas: A Journey Into the Soul of the Lone Star State (14 page)

In 2004, someone quietly began acquiring ranches in West Texas, near Van Horn, using shell corporations to hide his identity. The fact that anybody was buying up land in Van Horn was a little puzzling, especially at the prices offered. Parched, scalped, remote, the land is certainly not prime real estate. Moreover, the state was in the middle of a punishing drought. The mystery buyer soon became one of the largest landholders in the state. But the question wasn’t so much the who as the why.

Finally, in 2005, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and one of the wealthiest men in the world, admitted to being the purchaser. He needed the land—nearly 300,000 acres by then, with more to come—to build a launching pad for rockets into space. He had become infatuated with space travel when his family moved to Houston in the 1960s, during the NASA glory era, a time when Houston called itself Space City USA. “For me, space is something I’ve been in love with since I was five years old,” Bezos told
The
Washington Post,
after he purchased the paper in 2013. “I watched Neil Armstrong step onto the surface of the moon, and I guess it imprinted me.”

Bezos’s space company, Blue Origin, launched its first rocket from West Texas in 2011. That one crashed, but in September 2015 the company not only sent a rocket into space but managed to retrieve it in a historic vertical landing at the Van Horn facility. Bezos expects to send “test passengers” into space soon. “The vision for Blue is pretty simple. We want to see millions of people living and working in space,” he said after the successful launch. “Do we want to go to Mars? Absolutely, but we want to go everywhere.” Meantime, Elon Musk, the PayPal cofounder and the creator of Tesla, the electric automobile, has a rocket test facility near Waco and is building his own launching site for an astronomical venture, SpaceX, on the Texas Gulf Coast, near Brownsville. The Texas skies will soon be jammed with rockets.

In most of West Texas, there is really nowhere to look except up. In the hills near Fort Davis is the McDonald Observatory, where Roberta and I once got to see the rings of Saturn, and somewhere far back in time, a white dwarf. Amateur astronomers settle out here in ranchettes and build their own backyard observatories with retractable roofs. Living in West Texas is like being close to the ocean, with the sky serving as a natural point of focus for the contemplation of eternity.

On the side of I-40 you come upon Cadillac Ranch—ten vintage, graffiti-covered Caddies buried nose down in the dirt, tail fins to the sky. It is certainly the most famous art installation in the state. Stanley Marsh 3, an arts supporter and prankster, commissioned the work in 1974. He also liked to put up phony traffic signs, such as Road Does Not End and You Will Never Be the Same. Like a lot of rich Texas eccentrics, he kept exotic animals—a lion, a zebra, a camel, etc. When a developer threatened to build a suburb next to Marsh’s property, Stanley erected a billboard on his property line saying:

Evidently, their plight made an impression on Goodnight. He found a few stray buffalo and began breeding his own herd. They were practically the only remaining animals from the millions that once thundered across the plains. In December 1916, Goodnight invited another group of Indians to return to the canyon for what he billed as the Last Buffalo Hunt. For the occasion, he started his own film company. He wanted to chronicle the Old West, as he remembered it, for the first generation that would know it only from the movies.

In the silent film, Goodnight’s herd is seen galloping over the rim of the canyon into a narrow defile, followed by a group of Kiowa braves in feathered headdresses—old men, plump from the idle confinement of the reservation. A single buffalo is cut away from the herd and quickly surrounded by circling braves who lean toward the animal as they discharge their arrows. The buffalo’s knees buckle as he takes a few final steps. Then the film cuts to the Indians dancing around the dead animal, drinking cups of warm blood as its hide is being cut away. It was the last buffalo they would ever kill.

Goodnight’s film also chronicles the end of another era—his own. Like a number of other independent cattlemen, Goodnight had assembled his first herd by rounding up stray longhorns, feral descendants of the animals brought by the Spanish conquistadors. In the economic desperation following the Civil War, longhorn cattle were selling for about two dollars a head in Texas, but they would bring as much as forty dollars in the stockyards of Chicago. The cowboy heyday began in 1867, when a herd of 2,400 steers was driven from San Antonio to the railhead in Abilene, Kansas, along what became known as the Chisholm Trail. Goodnight and his friend Oliver Loving pioneered another trail to Denver. (Their relationship was the model for Larry McMurtry’s classic bromance,
Lonesome Dove
.) The cowboy era essentially came to an end in 1885, when barbed wire fenced off the plains. In that meager span of eighteen years, five million cattle and a million mustangs, along with uncounted numbers of hogs and other livestock, were taken to market; great fortunes sprang up in a state that had, until then, relied upon little more than subsistence farming; but most enduringly, a myth was born that continues to define Texas in the minds of people all over the world, and especially in the state itself.

Style is the most obvious legacy of the cowboy legend: the boots, which kept the cowboy’s legs from chafing; the denim jeans that provided some protection against the constant brush of sharp grasses and thorny mesquite; and the broad-brimmed hat to shield against the sun—modest working clothes that made perfect sense for a man riding the range in 1875, but that continue to be the ensemble of choice for so many Texans whose lives are largely lived indoors. Press the jeans and add a crisp white shirt with pearl snap buttons, and you’ve got an Austin real-estate developer.

The cowboy style is an implicit pledge of allegiance to the mentality the myth embodies, which can be denominated as rugged individualism. The world is full of danger, and the cowboy has to be ready to defend himself and his family. In place of the law, the cowboy lives by a code of fairness and rough justice. He doesn’t impose his will on others, and he bridles at the suggestion that anyone—especially government—has a right to tell him what to do. God and nature are forceful presences in the cowboy’s life, although his stark and unforgiving circumstances, combined with endless spans of boredom, give rise to stoic bouts of existential despair. Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings sang a memorable duet, “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys,” which speaks to the solitary blankness of such a life:

The walls of the Bush house are knotty pine, giving it the feel of a lake cottage. The tiny living room has a built-in seat in the bay window and a television of the era, with a rabbit-ears antenna. There is a fireplace in the dining room. George W.’s room has a foldout desk attached to a bookcase, built to replicate the one that had been there when he was a boy. There is a train set, a Cub Scout uniform draped across the bed, and a picture of little George riding a jackalope. Above the bed is a poster of Roy Rogers, “King of the Cowboys,” atop his gorgeous palomino mount, Trigger. My guide told me that George and his friends carried a copy of “The Roy Rogers Riders Club Rules” in their wallets. “Be neat and clean,” Roy advises. “Protect the weak and help them. Eat all your food and never waste any.” There are ten altogether. Roy was prim and modest, with a smooth tenor voice, the kind of role model parents adore; but there was another force stirring the universe at the same time, darker and sexier, not at all wholesome. For boys our age, Roy Rogers was the anti-Elvis. I’m a year younger than George W., and Roy Rogers was a big figure in my life as well. I had a Roy Rogers cap gun, which I recently saw listed on eBay for a thousand bucks.

There is a single bathroom, with a tub, no shower, and a master bedroom in the corner, with a view of the large fenced backyard and doghouse. The kitchen has a window over the sink, a gas stove, and what would have been an extravagance at the time, a washer and dryer. A small sunroom with clapboard walls became Jeb’s nursery when he was born in 1953.

The third bedroom has no door on it. The Bushes took it off when their daughter, Robin, was diagnosed with leukemia in 1954. It took her seven months to die. “That’s when Mrs. Bush’s hair turned white,” Melissa told me. “She colored it for many years and then finally gave up.” Barbara Bush was twenty-eight years old. She later recounted that the only thing that pulled her out of her prolonged depression was hearing George W. tell a friend that he couldn’t play because “I have to take care of my mother.”

Like many Texans, I harbor a fondness for the Bush family that has nothing to do with their politics. Numberless people in the state can testify to their kindness and decency. Laura Bush was a librarian at a public school in Austin; as first lady of the state, she started the Texas Book Festival, which has been a boon to the state’s libraries. (Later, she also began the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C.) Our daughter, Caroline, went to Austin High School with George and Laura’s twins, Jenna and Barbara, when their father was governor. We used to go to the Christmas party at the Governor’s Mansion each year, and the governor always asked Caroline to dance. He really liked to boogie; his shirt would get so sweaty you could see his body hair. “I don’t drink or do drugs,” he told me, “so I gotta do something to get it out of my system.”

Texas was still in transition from its days of being overwhelmingly Democratic to being solidly Republican—two eras bookended by LBJ and George W. In each case, the metamorphosis of Texas politics would profoundly change the nation.

When Bush was governor, between 1995 and 2000, a cordial détente existed between the parties. The lieutenant governor, Bob Bullock, and Pete Laney, the Speaker of the House, were both Democrats, and they became exhibits in Bush’s argument that he would be a bipartisan president. Bullock was a titanic figure, whose ruinous personal life—alcoholism, cancer, chronic depression, five marriages—only added to his legend. He reminded me of Lyndon Johnson, with the same huge, battered face and an unbridled love of Texas that allowed him to see over the barriers of party loyalties. At Bush’s fiftieth birthday party at the Governor’s Mansion, in July 1996, Bullock offered a toast to the governor as “the next president of the United States.” As far as I know, that was the first time such a statement had been made in public, and it was made by the highest Democratic official in the state.

That same year, Bush launched a new statewide reading initiative at the school where Roberta was teaching, Travis Heights Elementary, and the principal chose to stage the press event in Roberta’s classroom. Roberta taught a mixed kindergarten, first-grade, and second-grade class, and she agreed reluctantly, since the event was scheduled to take place at naptime. She picked out some of her best readers to sit on the governor’s lap, but when the news crews and reporters trooped in, one of her troublemakers, Ricky Hernandez, impish and adorable, crept through the crowd and caught Bush’s eye. “Hey, padnah, hop on up,” Bush said, and Ricky, who couldn’t read a lick, crawled into the governor’s lap. Bush read
There’s a Ghost in the Boys’ Bathroom
, as Ricky beamed, and of course that was the picture on the front pages of the newspapers the next morning. What wasn’t reported was that later that afternoon Roberta had to send Ricky home because he had head lice.

In 1998, I was asked to read at a fundraising event for literacy that the former first lady Barbara Bush puts on in Houston each year. A well-known writer, Stephen Ambrose, had fallen ill, and they needed a substitute—tomorrow! Would I mind flying down with the governor? I wouldn’t mind. I went over to the mansion the next afternoon and found the governor noshing pound cake in the kitchen. He was cheery and familiar. He always seemed a much more natural politician than his father, and totally at ease, like a gifted athlete who didn’t feel the need to train. “Has Dad left yet?” the governor asked his mother on the phone before we left. “I need a hat. Tell him to bring several.”

We flew on George W.’s personal plane, a King Air turboprop that Laura described as “perfect for Texas.” By now, I and everyone else were sizing him up as a future president. He seemed unfazed by the challenge ahead of him. He picked up
The Dallas Morning News
from the pile of newspapers on the seat in front of him, glanced at it, then set it down. We chatted a bit about the Middle East. I had just been in Jerusalem, and I told him about the rift between American Jews and the Orthodox rabbinate in Israel, which had declared that the Reform and Conservative branches of the faith were not true Jews. Bush was unaware of the issue, but observed, “They better be careful they don’t cut off their money base.” I was struck by how little he knew about the region, or anyplace, really, outside of Texas. I often wondered how the son of a former president—who had also been ambassador to the United Nations and envoy to China, as well as director of the CIA—could be so unacquainted with the wider world. I inquired about a recent visit the governor had with a Russian strongman, Alexander Lebed. Bush had been amused by the Russian’s fierce demeanor, which he said quickly melted away. “I always ask them about their families,” which apparently did the trick. George W.’s complacency and his absence of curiosity, traits that would come to define him, and doom him, were already apparent on that airplane ride.

At the fundraiser, I was wedged into the program among writers who were household names, and because I didn’t have a recent book to promote, I read an article I had written about Caroline’s doll, whom she named Nephew. He was a ratty little cloth doll of a type called Monchhichis, made to look like some kind of diabolical lower primate. Nephew came into Caroline’s possession when she was four. She was always telling me stories of his travels, to China or Dallas, and his many wives. I felt like the sultan Shahryar listening to the tales of Scheherazade. But then Caroline would throw Nephew over a balcony and imitate his screams as he fell to the street. When Caroline turned five, Barbie came into her life, and Nephew got sidelined. Finally, she gave the doll to me. “You’re the only one who loves him now,” she said.

A few days after the reading, I got a letter from the former president, which I suspect was typical of the thousands he wrote every year. He had typed it himself with several emendations scribbled in the margins. “Last night Barbara and I…got to talking about Nephew, engaging fellow that he obviously is.

“But did you know that George and Laura’s daughter Barbara has a Nephew-like icon named ‘Spikey’? Once Spikey got lost in the V.P. house—a crisis, much like the tanks rolling through the streets of Budapest, narrowly averted when Spikey was found hidden under a living room couch.

“Just ten days ago Spikey, still in tow, went to Italy with the twins and Barbara. Too bad Nephew couldn’t make it.”

A year later, as the presidential primaries were about to begin, I ran into Laura at Antone’s, the Austin blues club. Marcia Ball was playing. Laura was in the company of friends, drinking and smoking, which you never saw her do. It was a sweet moment, but I immediately thought how this intimate little community we all lived in was about to end. Soon the cameras would roll into town, reporters would be knocking over gravestones, and everything in our culture would be scrutinized and dissected. I had been a part of that process many times. Like it or not, we would be onstage, we would be reviewed, some of us would become famous beyond our circle, and others would be indicted.