Elmer Kelton – The Pull Of The Land

Charlie’s Lament and Chironjas

January 18, 2022January 18, 2022 Richard Barnes

“I knew I wasn’t young any more, but it never came to me I’d gone so far down the hill. Long as a man’s young he can take trouble in stride. Time is with him no matter how bad a jam he’s in. Then one day it slaps him in the face. It’s not with him any more, it’s workin’ against him. His friends fall away . . . scattered, or dead, or just changed. His kids are grown up and gone from him. All the old principles that he anchored to, they’ve come a-loose; nobody’s payin’ attention to them any more. He’ an old grayheaded man livin’ in a young man’s world, and all his benchmarks are gone.” — Charlie Flagg in Elmer Kelton’s The Time It Never Rained

My youngest son and I had finally decided that the best way to reach and pick the chironjas (orangelos) was to extend the ladder as high as it would go, place it beneath the clusters of citrus, and reach up with the fully extended pruner pole. This required us to locate the ladder’s footing as best we could on the steep shoulder on the edge of the jungle precipice. The tree is one we had obviously neglected to have pruned over the years. Not only is it impossibly tall, but it grew on the edge of a steep bluff.

The chironja, a cross between an orange and a grapefruit, is thought to have originated in Puerto Rico. It is very juicy, can be eaten in sections, like grapefruit, or squeezed for drink, like oranges. It is popular in our household, especially at breakfast.

I climbed the ladder, intending to step onto the second to last step as I had done so many times heretofore. However, this time, especially as I raised the extended pole, I felt myself swaying just a bit, but “up there” that little bit was magnified into more than prudence would allow. So, I stepped down one level and harvested what I could, regretting that I could not do what I used to do.

Nevertheless, we figured it out and, between my sons and I, the chironjas will have been harvested in the next few days. Plus, the tree will be pruned, we now being in waning moon.

As I descended the ladder, I remembered having read in The Time It Never Rained, “Then one day it slaps him in the face”. The fact that time is not on your side can become very clear by means of an everyday action such as climbing a ladder. Those more wise among us know that time is really never on our side: we are encouraged from early age to “number our days”, and although most do not, yet in the lives of many, they do come to that point when reality becomes impossible to ignore.

A friend tells of the time he was “slapped in the face” as to his encroaching years. He was about to do something that he had “always done”. One day, he could not. He says it was an almost one-day-to-the-next thing. After the initial, momentary shock, he recognized that those particular days were over. And now it was up to him to make the remaining days — which can be many still! — count.

Beyond the physical activities that are naturally curtailed, there remain what Charlie Flagg called “the benchmarks”.

By God’s grace, those will remain, because the principles and ethics that are moored on Eternal Truth will outlive us all. My prayer is that they will endure in the lives of our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and on to a thousand generations. Our offspring will do the right thing in the end, “if they’ve been brought up in the proper way”.

After Charlie uttered his lament, Manuel, the boy, now a man, who came to respect and love Charlie, replied, “The good benchmarks are still there, Mister Charlie.”

Yes, the good benchmarks are still there, and they will be there till the end of time.

Grapefruit, left, Chironja (Orangelo), right

The Time It Never Rained

January 6, 2022January 6, 2022 Richard Barnes

“Charlie blinked and looked off toward the barn, toward Manuel. “I never thought it would wind up like this. I thought we was all fixed here for life.”

Lupe shrugged. “God has His reasons. He knows that when we have our bellies full, we don’t bother much with Him. He knows that we stop and listen to Him only when the trouble comes, so once in a while He sends trouble. Maybe He says to Himself, those people down there they think they are too big to need God any more…. Someday when all the people learn to pray again He will make it rain.” Lupe looked down. “I will pray, Mister Charlie.”

The Time It Never Rained, Elmer Kelton

Texas has produced fine literature over the years. Her earliest works were in Spanish, with English taking over in the 19th century. As with all fine literature, Texas works apply universally — across other states and countries and generations.

(Of course, this post does not at all deny that the above also applies to good literature from other states. In fact, I would encourage readers and friends to investigate the literature of your particular state or of a state you might be interested in. You are likely to find some real treasures.)

Although I am in Puerto Rico as I write this, reading Elmer Kelton transports me to West Texas in such a way that, even as I sit midst bright, deep, tropical green jungles, I can feel the dry, hot wind blowing from the west and see the swirling dust boiling from behind my vehicle as I take a short cut across an unpaved road southwest of Midland, Texas, in a dry spell.

As for universal themes, Kelton’s novels deal abundantly, lyrically, beautifully, and poignantly with them, most prominently, that of men or women, however imperfect or scarred, who seek, sometimes desperately, to remain true to their roots and principles in the face of rapidly changing times and values.

There are other Texas authors who also do this well — Tom Lea’s The Wonderful Country comes to mind. Not to mention fine works of non-fiction, such as Walter Prescott Webb’s The Texas Rangers: A Century of Frontier Defense. But I’ll restrict my comments to Kelton’s novel quoted above, as that is what I am currently reading.

Charlie Flagg is a decent man, a rancher determined to do whatever it takes to salvage his ranch during the terrible west Texas drought of the 50s. With a slow, elegiac, spare pace and narrative, Kelton draws you in to the life of the ranchers and cowboys as they toil with hands and brain, ideating creative solutions to lack of grass and then lack of funds to buy feed, as the drought wears on, relentlessly, year after year. Lupe and his wife, Rosa, have lived and worked on Charlie’s ranch for many years and by the time of the quote above, their three children had been born there.

Kelton manages to show that Charlie loves his son, Tom, but the reader sees that Lupe and his family are more valuable to Charlie than his own son, who lives for rodeo and whose wild, irresponsible ways eventually catch up with him. By the time of the above-quoted scene, Tom has sobered up and looks on with quiet, dawning understanding.

And Mary, Charlie’s wife, is a constant: sometimes as irritant, sometimes as encourager, but always a support and comfort whom Charlie loves and respects.

So we are confronted with a man, Charlie Flagg, who is fighting for his life, the only life he has ever known, as a killer drought consumes all before it and kills the dreams and life investments of neighbors and friends who have to fold and move away, never to return. As if that is not trouble enough, Charlie has also to deal with his stern banker, his devil-may-care son, relationships with Anglos and Mexicans, overbearing government agencies who insist that he take aid he has never taken before and refuses to do so now, and much more.

In other words, the novel presents us with the realities of life and how men and women deal with them.

For Texans who lived during that time, this has to be a very hard novel to read, as the images it evokes are powerful and wrenching, although, ultimately, deeply moving.

For all, especially the young, regardless of state or country you come from, it will grant an appreciation of your grandparents and great-grandparents’ determination to work and live for the future that they knew God had prepared but which they, perhaps, would never see. But you and I have.

And, it was all worth it.

“Time and memories — so many good things and so many bad — but strange how the bad things seemed to fade so that you remembered mostly the good. Maybe that was one of life’s main compensations, having those memories with the rough edges blunted down and the bright parts polished to a diamond gleam….”

The drought extended from about 1949 to 1957, with several of the years being the driest in 600 years.

That’s For Somebody Else To Do (or, That’s Not My Job)

October 9, 2021October 9, 2021 Richard Barnes

Professionals are taught never to use such phrases. At least I was trained thusly in my halcyon Arthur Andersen years when an oft-used expression was, “You can take the man out of Arthur Andersen but you cannot take Arthur Andersen out of the man.” As one progressed in the firm, one took on tasks easily characterized as “not my job” but one did not think in those terms. One tackled the assignment as best he or she could. And we learned along the way.

The late Elmer Kelton’s The Good Old Boys (1978), utters that phrase in a humble context which resonates with many of us. The novel is set in West Texas at the turn of the 20th century, 1906 to be precise. On the surface, it is a novel about a cowboy, Hewey Calloway, who appreciates people and places more than new contraptions and who struggles to understand the, to him, monomaniac interest of younger people in things like automobiles and big cities. Hewey is facing a rapidly dimming way of life and unwilling to step onto the newer way of doing things that was breaking on the horizon. Below the surface, the novel tells us that there is a Hewey in many of us.

Along the way, Kelton uses his novel to reflect upon some things that ought to never change. The phrase shows up in one of those scenes:

Cotton incredulously demanded, “Uncle Hewey, you mean all he asked you to do was to go over and ride on another street?”

“He didn’t ask me to. He told me I had to. There’s a difference.”

“If he’d asked you to, would you have done it?”

“Sure, I always try to get along with people.”

Cotton shook his head. “I don’t understand that at all.”

Hewey wasn’t sure how to explain it; it seemed so natural that no explanation ought to be necessary. “I’m a free-born American. I even been to war. I’d be a taxpayer, and proud to say it, if I owned anything to pay taxes on. I’ve got a right to ride down any street anywhere in this country that anybody else can. Somebody tells me I got to get off, and I do it, pretty soon I won’t have that right anymore.”

Cotton wasn’t satisfied. Hewey didn’t know how to satisfy him.

Wes Wheeler saw Hewey’s chagrin. He looked at Cotton. “Son, I’m a peace officer. It’s my job to enforce the law. I’m not allowed to make the law; that’s for somebody else to do. If I go to makin’ it, I can make it anything I want it to be. First thing you know I’ll use it to help me and my friends. I’ll use it to hurt people I don’t like. If that ever happens, I’m dangerous. That marshall up yonder, he was goin’ beyond his rightful authority. That makes him dangerous. You let people like that get away with it, pretty soon they’ll take you over.”

I last visited Venezuela in 2005. Upon arrival I was informed that my paperwork was such that I would not be permitted to leave the country. Incredulously, I spoke to a fiery US embassy official who confirmed to me that another midnight decree had been recently issued by El Comandante and that I had been entangled by such. However, she was adamant that she would move heaven and earth to get me out. The details are for another day, but the point is that living under decrees or mandates is dangerous and tyrannical.

I have not been back to the country of my birth since, but it is not for a lack of desire.

And now, for over 20 months, has anyone noticed that we Americans have also been living under decrees and mandates? Are we not allowed to say so? I have written a major airline asking them why their employees keep telling us we must submit to “federal law” when no such law has been enacted, having been passed by both houses of congress and signed by the president. That would make it a “law”. What we have now, is a mandate. Or an order. Call it what you will, but it is not law.

Wes Wheeler’s comments are worth remembering as we ponder our situation: “It’s my job to enforce the law. I’m not allowed to make the law; that’s for somebody else to do. If I go to makin’ it, I can make it anything I want it to be. First thing you know I’ll use it to help me and my friends. I’ll use it to hurt people I don’t like. If that ever happens, I’m dangerous. … You let people like that get away with it, pretty soon they’ll take you over.”

Mandates and liberty are not compatible.

Whether in Venezuela or here.