The Perk (11 page)

Beck's office in Chicago had been on the
forty-second floor, four hundred twenty feet above street level. He could stand
at the floor-to-ceiling window and see nothing but man—his buildings, his cars,
and his pollution. Now he looked out and saw the land before man. Only the
narrow ribbon of black asphalt that was Ranch Road 965 snaking through the
terrain evidenced man's presence. The land was as it had been.

He saw what the Comanche had seen; he inhaled the
same untainted air, and he felt the same sun on his face and the same hot wind
against his body. And he felt the same about the Rock: it was a sacred place.
He felt his mother's spirit, and he thought of his wife: Annie would have
loved this place.

Vernal pools, small pits in the granite where
rain water collected and a few hardy plants like cacti and yucca survived,
dotted the summit; the pits were bone dry and the patches of plants smoldered.
A lone dead oak tree that had grown in one vernal pool stood guard over the
summit. The wind had sanded its bark smooth, and the weather had given it a
silver sheen. Shallow furrows wound their way down the dome, cut into the
granite by rainwater running off the Rock over millions of years. They sat
down, and Beck saw the life fade from Luke's eyes; he knew his son's thoughts
had also returned to Annie.

"It sucks," Luke said.

Beck reached over and put his arm around his son,
a man in a boy's body. A mother's death will age a boy.

"Luke, after my mother died, I came out
here and ran the Rock to burn up the anger inside me. I'd run all the way up here
and I'd stand all alone and I'd scream and cuss—"

Beck stood.

"Stand up, Luke."

Luke stood.

"Now scream."

Luke shook his head.

"Go ahead, son, scream. We're the only
people here."

Luke shook his head again, so Beck spread his
arms and screamed: "Ahhhhhhh!"

Luke was looking at Beck like he'd lost his
mind. Maybe he had. He screamed again. It felt good, just as good as it had
felt back then.

"Scream, son. Get it out."

But Luke refused, so they sat again. Beck said,
"I'd sit right here for hours … trying to figure things out. To
understand why life isn't fair. But I know now there's no figuring it out.
All you can hope is that your mother's life had meaning to your life, otherwise
her life was wasted. I look at you and Meggie, and I see her. Up here, I feel
my mother's spirit. She lives on in me. Luke, your mother's spirit lives on
in you. You just have to let yourself feel it.

"But if you keep up like this, you'll drive
her spirit out of you. Don't do that, son. Keep her inside you. Remember her
in the good days, before she was sick, at your games cheering like a crazy woman
when you got a hit or scored a goal or nailed a jump shot. She loved to watch
you play. Because that's who you are, Luke. You're an athlete. And she's
still watching you. Make her cheer for you again, son."

Luke leaned his head into Beck's chest and cried;
his son's tears wet his shirt. Beck had tried and failed to find his peace on
this Rock; he hoped his son could find his here. When they stood to head down,
Luke surprised Beck. He screamed.

"I hate you, God!"

"Luke, hating God won't make it any better.
I know that for a fact."

In April of 1842, the great Comanche war chief Buffalo Hump
stood atop the Holy Rock on a fine spring day and surveyed the glorious land laid
out before him. Buffalo Hump and his brave warriors had first killed the Lipan
Apaches, and then the men, women, and children at the
Misión Santa Cruz de
San Saba
, and finally those Spanish morons who had wandered about the land
searching for the legendary lost silver mines of
Cerro del Almagre
that
had so captured the white man's greedy imagination.

Then the Texans had come also with dreams of
silver, and he had killed them. Even Jim Bowie of the long knife had come to
search for the silver; Buffalo Hump had admired Bowie and so did not kill him.
But the Mexicans did, at the Alamo.

Buffalo Hump's bravery had earned him the
right to stand atop the Holy Rock nearer his father, the sun, and to bask in
his father's glow. Buffalo Hump felt proud, for this had been his vision and
it had come true: all that his eyes could behold now belonged to the Comanche.
He knew it would always be so.

But he couldn't know that an ocean away, Prince
Frederick of Prussia and twenty other German noblemen meeting in a castle at
Biebrich on the Rhine were at that moment organizing the "Society,"
officially known as the "German Emigration Company," with the intent
of establishing a new German state in the Republic of Texas through mass
emigration. It would be called "Germania."

The Prince had read about Texas—the vast unsettled
land, the natural resources, the Enchanted Rock, and, of course, the lost
silver mines—and, like so many men before and after him, Texas had captured his
imagination. The Prince and his noblemen soon became the first out-of-towners
to be duped by a Texas real-estate speculator. The Germans paid $9,000 to Henry
Francis Fisher for a half-interest in the 3.4 million-acre Fisher-Miller Land
Grant located north of the Rock between the Llano and Colorado Rivers—sight
unseen. They relied solely on Fisher's word.

That was a mistake.

Fisher had promoted the land as paradise on
earth—water, timber, wildlife, fertile soil, silver mines—but failed to mention
one minor drawback: the land sat right in the middle of Comanche territory. And,
truth be known, Fisher didn't even own the land; the Republic of Texas was
giving it away for free to anyone with the guts and guns to settle the hostile land.

But the Germans paid their money and came to Texas. They established settlements at New Berlin, Solms, Nockenut, and New Braunfels on
the Comal River east of San Antonio. But they never got all the way to the
Fisher-Miller grant. So in 1846, the prince sent Baron Ottfried Hans Freiherr von
Meusebach to Texas with strict orders to settle the land he had bought. The
Baron arrived in Galveston and traveled to New Braunfels; from there he
departed with one hundred twenty German settlers for the Fisher-Miller grant.
Sixteen days and sixty miles later, they arrived in the Pedernales River Valley, halfway to their destination. His people were sick with cholera, so the Baron decided
to settle there on ten thousand acres where two creeks joined the Pedernales.
He named his new town Fredericksburg.

Buffalo Hump became
angry at the sight of white men on Comanche land; so, in accordance with his
strict anti-immigration policy, he promptly raided and killed many of the
settlers (cholera and Comanche being the two most common causes of death among
the Germans). After enduring a year of Comanche raids, the Baron led an expedition
to meet with Buffalo Hump and the other Comanche chiefs; normally, the Comanche
would have killed and scalped the Baron, but his red hair and beard captivated
them. They called him
El Sol Colorado
—the Red Sun. The Baron proposed
a peace treaty: in return for an immediate cessation of war parties, the
Germans would give the Comanche $3,000 worth of presents in Fredericksburg. Buffalo
Hump might have been a savage but he wasn't stupid; he signed the treaty and
took the gifts.

The Comanche became Fredericksburg's first tourists.

Seven thousand Germans immigrated to the Hill
Country of Texas; over half died in the first year. They never settled the
Fisher-Miller Grant land. The Society went bankrupt. Prince Frederick's dream
of a German state in Texas was never realized. And to add insult to injury, the
Texas legislature refused the Germans' request to name their new county Germania; instead, it was named Gillespie, after a soldier who had died in the
Mexican-American War. But through it all, the Town of Fredericksburg survived as
a close-knit community of Germans isolated in the middle of Texas.

It wasn't the same town today.

Twenty-four years before, Beck Hardin had left a
rural Main Street lined with pickup trucks and German businesses. Today, Main Street was about as rural and German as the Lexuses lining the curbs and the city
slickers strolling the sidewalks. If Austin was the high school buddy who had
packed on the weight, Fredericksburg was the ugly duckling who had undergone an
extreme makeover—from a down-home goat ranching town to a high-falutin' tourist
trap.

They had stopped in
town on their way back from the Rock for lunch and were now caught in buckle-to-butt
sidewalk traffic. The tourists had apparently come for the parade and stayed for
the long holiday weekend. Now, walking again among the tattoos and thongs on Main Street, Beck's greatest fear as a single father rose in his thoughts like a recurring
nightmare: Was he mother enough to raise Meggie alone? He didn't fear raising
a son alone: Luke was a male; he was a male;
ergo
, he could raise
Luke. (Or so he hoped.) But Aubrey was right: he didn't have a clue about
girls.

Before Annie had gotten sick, they had gone to
several football games at the high school in Winnetka. He had been shocked to
see affluent teenage girls dressed like high-class call girls—breasts and
butts, thighs, torsos, and thongs, all bared to the world; but he had been completely
unconcerned about Meggie dressing like that when she was a teenager—because it
wasn't his problem. It was Annie's problem. Raising a girl was a mother's
job.

But now Annie was gone, and it was his job. Now
it was his problem. So Beck Hardin would do what he had done for the last twenty-four
years whenever he needed an answer: he would hit the books. He would read
about raising children. He would learn about girls.

Just past the brew pub, they turned down a
narrow stone path between two buildings. Twenty paces in, the path opened onto
a grassy courtyard with a fountain and chairs and a two-person metal bench under
shade trees where several people sat reading beside an old rock water well that
was now a wishing well. The noise of Main Street seemed distant.

On the south side of the courtyard stood a restored
two-story limestone house with beveled-glass doors and a sign that read: BOOKED-UP
& ARTFUL and COFFEE BAR. Tables and chairs sat on porches up and down; an
outside staircase led to the second-story porch. Books were visible through
the first-floor windows. They went inside. Luke walked over to the sports
section of the magazine rack, and Beck to the checkout counter/coffee bar. On
the counter were three "Death Notices," single-page obituaries of locals
who had died the preceding week. Death Notices had been hand-delivered to Main Street businesses back when Beck was a boy.

Behind the counter stood an attractive woman
wearing narrow black-framed glasses, a black tee shirt, snug Lee Rider jeans, and
red cowboy boots with black toecaps; she had long legs, lots of red hair, and silver-and-turquoise
jewelry. She was sticking price tags on a stack of books.

"I need help, please."

Without looking up the woman said,
"Spiritual, mental, or physical?"

"Parental."

She now turned to Beck and gave him a quick
once-over. He nodded at the espresso machine.

"And I need caffeine."

She stuck her hand out. "Judge Hardin, I
presume."

"You know J.B.?"

"Everyone knows J.B."

"Well, I'm just Beck."

"Jodie Lee." She had a strong grip. "What's
your pleasure?" She quickly added, "In regards to caffeine."

"Small nonfat latte."

She turned to the espresso machine. "So you're
the prodigal son." She grimaced and glanced at him. "Sorry. J.B.
and I, we've talked a bit, probably too much. He started the winery right after
we opened, came in and bought every book I had or could order about winemaking
and growing grapes."

"And he doesn't even like wine."

"Hector does."

Beck tried not to stare when she bent over to
get milk out of a small refrigerator. When she came back up, she answered his
unasked question.

"We go out every year for J.B.'s last
harvest party."

"You and your family?"

She pointed at the ceiling. "Janelle Jones.
My partner, the artist upstairs. And our kids."

"When I was here, there wasn't a bookstore
or an art gallery in town."

"One bookstore, six galleries now. Western,
European, American, contemporary, Southwestern … we had an African art
gallery for a while, but that was pushing the envelope."

"Maybe just a little."

"But we've got
writers, artists, movie stars living here now … Tommy Lee Jones lives out north.
Madeleine Stowe, she was in
Last of the Mohicans
—she lives on a big
ranch south of town. Lynda Obst, the movie producer—she did
Sleepless in
Seattle
—she lives out west. G. Harvey, the western artist, he lives in
town. Robert James Waller, he wrote
Bridges of Madison County
—"

"I saw the movie, with Clint
Eastwood."

"He lives here."

"Eastwood?"

"Waller. He comes in and signs his books."

"Dale Evans was born south of here."

"Who's Dale Evans?"

"Roy Rogers' wife."

"Who's Roy Rogers?"

"How old are you?"

"Sorry, we don't know each other well enough." She handed
the coffee to him across the counter. "First one's on the house."

"Thanks. Twenty-four years, the town has
changed."

"Ten years and it's changed. When we first
got here, only food was Dairy Queen or Wiener schnitzel. Now we've got
cuisine—Navajo Grill, Herb Farm, Lester's on Llano, three or four other high-dollar
places. And you can get aromatherapy, lypossage, salt rubs, Aqua-Chi foot
baths, Reiki, Chakra balancing …"

"In Fredericksburg, Texas?"