Essays

Moseying: Living La Vida Llanero

The soul of the Llano Estacado -- the best two novels of the region
February 8, 2004

This is the first in an occasional series about books about west Texas. The Sibley Nature Center recently began work on a website entitled "The Llanero Encyclopedia." The website will feature the flora, fauna, geographical sites, and historical stories that uniquely signify the southern Llano Estacado, the headwaters of the Concho, Colorado, and Brazos Rivers, the Mescalero Sanddunes and the Pecos River Valley. As we research for the website, we discover many good books.

The project is based upon our belief that knowledge of one's surroundings is a major factor in developing a sense of patriotism -- and to deeply love one's home region, one must be intimate with it. Common knowledge is what binds people together. The United States is home to people of every culture and every religion in the world. A country where everybody is of the same race and of the same religion has a built-in common knowledge that creates a unified culture. We diverse Americans have to reinvent the unifying structures and themes of a common knowledge that binds us. Bioregional knowledge, long ignored by educational theorists and practitioners, seems to us to be a way to inculcate a common knowledge that people of all races and religions within a region can share.

I love "this brown and ugly land." I love the stories of the struggles of the early Hispanic and Anglo settlers and explorers, and the stories of the oil-boom times. I love the call of sandhill cranes, the song of Cassin's sparrows, the rhythmic beat of the johnny-one down gasoline pumpjacks, the tremulous wavering yelping of coyotes, and the glorious sunsets, the humongous frightening thunderheads. I love west Texas ranching lingo like "chousing," "ganted up," "tank-dump gardens," and "howdying." I love the folktales of our region from Pecos Bill to El Cibolo to the boogerman of the booger Y. "Yo soy un Llanero! I am a Llanero!"

We will start off this series by discussing the two best books of the two major novelists of the region -- Rudolfo Anaya's "Bless Me, Ultima" and Elmer Kelton's "The Time It Never Rained." There is a dualistic nature to our regional culture -- Anglo Protestant and Hispanic Catholic mestizo. Hispanic culture has been involved in the history of the region for almost 500 years, beginning with Cabeza de Vaca and Coronado, through the involvement with the Jumanos of the 1600s, to the annual visitation by Ciboleros and Comancheros through the 1870s, and on to the present. This region was part of Spanish colonial territories much longer than it has been part of the United States. Only beginning with the 1840s has there been interpretation of the regional landscape by Anglo Protestants.

"The beauty of the llano unfolded before my eye… and the pulse of the living earth pressed its mystery into my living blood." "Bless Me, Ultima" contains these phrases in its opening paragraph. Ultima is a curandera; "my work was to do good, to heal the sick and show them the path of goodness." She comes to live with the family of Antonio, the narrator, in her old age. "She is a woman of learning, old and wise," Antonio's mother informs the children as she arrives.

"I felt the power of a whirlwind sweep around me, and as I took her hand, I saw for the first time the wild beauty of the llano. The four directions of the llano met in me, and the white sun shone on my soul." Antonio learned the emotional power of being connected to his birthplace by Ultima's presence and stories.

Elmer Kelton's "The Time It Never Rained" contains the following passage: "It was a comforting sight, this country. It was an ageless land where the past was still a living thing and old voices whispered, where the freshness of the pioneer time had not yet faded, where a few of the old dreams were not yet dark with tarnish."

Both books are set in the years after World War II. Rural folkways had once been the norm, but outside forces had begun changing life on the Llano Estacado. Antonio's father ceased being a vaquero and became a highway construction worker. Charlie Flagg, the protagonist of Kelton's novel, sees his fellow ranchers becoming regulated by the federal government as the drought of the period worsened into misery. Anaya's description of the vaquero fits Charlie Flagg, too. "Only in that wide expanse of land and sky could they feel the freedom their spirits needed."

Both Flagg and Ultima know "knowledge comes slowly -- if a person wants to know, then he will listen and see and be patient." Both are beset with the actions of people that make quick assumptions of ultimate truth -- Ultima is accused of being a bruja, a witch, while Flagg is pressured by his neighbors to take advantage of government relief programs. Both endure, solid in the faith that comes from being part of the land and aware of its ever changing yet ever lasting gifts.

As times got rough for Charlie Flagg, Kelton delves into his interior contemplation of the struggle. "If he abandoned this land, he abandoned hope. This land was no longer something apart from him, it was a part of him like his arms and legs. His sweat and his blood were soaked into it. Like an old tree, his roots went too deeply into this ground for him ever to be transplanted. Pull him up from here now, and he could only die."

Put together, both books "do a bang-up job" of emotionally connecting a reader with Hispanic experience of the Llano Estacado. Kelton's book introduces Hispanic issues in a most sympathetic way. When Flagg's banker suggests firing his segundo and booting him and his family off the ranch, Flagg reacts angrily. As the pony of the son of the segundo struggles horribly to death from a poisonous plant, and Charlie and the boy do all they can to try to save it, tears come to the reader, and then the reader cheers with pride as the boy declares he will become a vet. (This was at a time when segregated schools were the norm.)

Anaya's book introduces other complex philosophical issues. I see it as a storyteller's response to Octavio Paz's "Labyrinth of Solitude." Antonio is the youngest son, and expected to become a priest. Antonio's dreams that occur as the family endures the results of the actions of those that fear Ultima impart mythological images of both Christian and Indian origin. His emotional responses to conflict are influenced by stories common within his local Genizaro culture. Genizaros, the offspring of early Spanish settlers and members of the many Indian groups that came to trade with them, settled the Pecos River valley north of Fort Sumner.

A good storyteller, like a good musician, affects the emotions of the audience. Everyone's life possesses tragedies, conflict, resolution of moral issues and other hard lessons. Both Kelton and Anaya grab the reader and "shake 'em hard." Both books will "return to mind" and lead the reader to self-examination and personal growth. The books inspire the reader with an important message; "meet your troubles face-on and then act with honor, with full expression of who you are."