The Fires of Spring (68 page)

‘Have you identified the community?’ I asked. Much would depend upon whether I had competence in the selected area.

‘We have,’ Ringold said. ‘Tell him, Harry.’

‘Because the arteries of America have always been so crucial,’ Leeds said, ‘we determined from the start to focus on a river … the ebb and flow of traffic … the journeymen up and down … the influence of time sweeping past…’ As he spoke he closed his eyes, and it was apparent that he had chosen the river, and no doubt the specific settlement on it. He opened his eyes and said, ‘So, Professor Vernor, I’m afraid we’ve stuck you with a river.’

‘I worked with rivers in Virginia,’ I said.

‘I know. That’s what attracted me to you.’

I was eager to land this job, because it was the kind of work I ought to do before going to Oregon, but I did not want to appear too eager. I sat staring at the floor, trying to collect my thoughts. DeVoto had already done a masterful job on the Missouri River, but he had left some topics undeveloped. I might be able to write a strong report on St. Joseph, or one of the Mandan villages, or even something farther west, say Great Falls. ‘I’d not want to compete with DeVoto,’ I said tentatively, ‘but there’s a chance I could do something original on the Missouri.’

‘It wasn’t the Missouri we had in mind,’ Leeds said.

Well, I thought, that’s that. Of course, there was still the Arkansas. I could select some settlement like La Junta … include Bent’s Fort and the massacre at Sand Island. But I insisted upon being honest with these editors, so I told them, ‘If your river is the Arkansas, you’d do better choosing someone more fluent in Spanish. To deal with the Mexican land grants, and subjects like that.’

‘We weren’t interested in the Arkansas,’ Leeds said.

‘What did you have in mind?’

‘The Platte.’

‘The Platte!’ I gasped.

‘None other,’ Leeds said.

‘That’s the sorriest river in America. You’ve heard all the jokes about the Platte. “Too thick to drink, too thin to plow.” That’s a nothing river.’

‘That’s why we chose it,’ Leeds said.

Miss Endermann broke in. ‘We specifically wanted to avoid notorious places like St. Joseph, one of my favorite cities on earth, because it would be too easy to do. A great deal of American history was drab, just as you said now—a nothing river, “a mile wide and an inch deep.” ‘

‘We reasoned, and properly so I’m convinced,’ Ringold said, ‘that if we can make the Platte comprehensible to Americans, we can inspire them with the meaning of this continent. And goddamnit, that’s what we’re going to do. We’ll leave the drums and bugles and flying eagles to others. We are going to dive into the heart of that lousy river …’ He stopped in embarrassment. Obviously, the editors of
US
had made a major commitment to the Platte, and I respected their enthusiasm.

‘I understand your approach,’ I said. ‘Now you have to understand that I can’t be expected to be a world authority on the Platte. I know about its settlement, its Indians, its irrigation—the general things. But I must not pose as an expert.’

‘We know that,’ Miss Endermann said eagerly. ‘We want you for what you have been, not for what you are. You can immerse yourself in this subject within a week.’

‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘I’ve already reconnoitered the North Platte twice in connection with the Oregon Trail. I know most of the sites along the North Platte, know them well.’

Harry Leeds broke in: ‘What we had in mind was the South Platte.’

‘Good God!’ I couldn’t help myself. The South Platte was the most miserable river in the west, a trickle in summer when its water was needed, a raging torrent in spring. It was muddy, often more island than river, and prior to the introduction of irrigation, it had never served a single useful purpose in its halting career. I couldn’t think of even one town situated on the South Platte. Yes, there was Julesburg—most evil town along the railroad—burnt by Indians in 1866 or thereabouts.

Then I remembered. ‘There is Denver,’ I said lamely, ‘but if you didn’t want a major river, I’m sure you don’t want a major city. It isn’t Denver, is it?’

Miss Endermann answered my rhetorical question: ‘Have you ever heard of Centennial, Colorado?’

For some moments I racked my brain, and from somewhere a tag-end piece of information such as scholars earmark for possible future use surfaced. ‘Centennial. Am I wrong in thinking that it had another name? Didn’t they change it in 1876 … to honor Colorado’s entrance into the Union? What was the old name? Rather well known in early chronicles, seems to me. Was it Zendt’s Farm?’

‘It was,’ Miss Endermann said.

‘You know, I can’t recall a single fact about Zendt’s Farm. Gentlemen, I am not well versed in your chosen subject. Sorry.’

I assumed that this was the end of the interview, but I assumed wrong. ‘It’s for that reason we want you,’ Ringold said. ‘Listening to your non-faked reactions to a town you never heard of and a river you despise convinces me that you’re precisely the man we want. The job’s yours if you want it, and we’re damned lucky to find you.’

With that he ushered us from his office, instructing Harry Leeds to go over details with me and bring the crowd to Toots Shor’s for lunch at twelve sharp. ‘We’ll discuss money then,’ he said, ‘but so far as I’m concerned, you’re hired, unless your fee is unspeakable.’

Four of us went to Harry Leeds’ office, where gigantic photographic blowups of George Catlin’s paintings of Indians adorned the walls. ‘My tipi,’ he said.

We discussed how I would work. I would drive to Centennial as soon as my classes ended, establish contacts with the Denver Public Library, which was some fifty miles away, introduce myself to the faculties at Greeley, Fort Collins and Boulder, and prepare research reports on what had actually happened at Centennial during its history, which had started only in 1844 with the arrival of Zendt and one of the mountain men.

‘I might want to go further back,’ I suggested.

‘The Spanish never settled that far north,’ Wright said, ‘and the French never settled that far south. Lewis and Clark ignored the Platte altogether. We can start safely with Zendt in 1844.’

I was not to bother about literary style. I was writing neither a doctoral thesis nor a novel. I was simply submitting arbitrarily selected insights as to the character and background of Centennial and its settlers, and I could depend upon the home office to polish whatever segments they might want to publish.

‘And regardless of what fee you and Ringold agree upon,’ Wright assured me, ‘we want you to purchase whatever maps, agricultural studies, reports you need—you name it.’

‘We would want you to send them back at the end of the study,’ Leeds said.

‘How much do you expect me to write?’ I asked, still not clear as to the creative relationships.

‘By Christmas, a fairly complete reaction to the site.’

‘Usually I spend that much time on a chapter,’ I said. ‘There’s a hell of a lot of first-class work been done on the west by some very good men, and I’m not going to presume …’

‘Vernor,’ young Wright explained patiently, ‘we are not hiring you to do a research study on the sugar-beet industry of the South Platte. We are hiring you as a sensitive, intelligent man, and all we want from you are some letters which share with us your understanding of what transpired at Centennial, Colorado, between the years 1844 and 1974. Just write us some letters, as if we were your friends … your interested friends.’

The other two agreed that that was exactly what they wanted, and we went off to lunch fairly satisfied that the project would work, but at Toots Shor’s, a restaurant I had not visited before, I was to receive a series of shocks which altered the whole prospect.

As we entered the restaurant the proprietor, a large man, ambled over to Harry Leeds and shouted, ‘Hello, you miserable son-of-a-bitch, haven’t they fired you yet?’

Leeds took this in stride, and Shor turned to me, grabbing me by the collar. ‘Don’t let this crumbum talk you into doing his dirty work. He’s known as the literary pimp of Sixth Avenue.’ With that he showed us to our table, where James Ringold was waiting.

‘He’s dead drunk already,’ Shor warned me. ‘How this stumblebum keeps that magazine goin’, I’ll never know.’

With that he departed, and Ringold asked Leeds, ‘All settled?’

‘All settled,’ Leeds said. ‘We couldn’t be happier, right?’ He addressed this question to Wright and Endermann, and they nodded.

‘Then it’s simply a matter of money. Use your car and we’ll pay twelve cents a mile. We’ll pay your hotel bills, but we do not expect you to take a suite at the Brown Palace. Don’t be alarmed if board and keep run a hundred and seventy dollars a week. You can travel as required but you cannot rent airplanes, road graders or dog sleds. Under no circumstances are you ever to be out a penny of your own money, except for whorehouses. We do, however, expect itemized expense sheets, and we pay out money only when they are verified.’ I was accustomed to asking Dean Rivers if I might have thirty dollars for a new atlas. This hit me so fast that I simply could not digest the details, but I noticed that young Wright was taking note of everything. ‘He’ll send you a copy,’ Ringold assured me.

‘Now as to fee,’ he said, ‘you’re a top professor in Georgia. You’re worth a lot of money, and I’m sure they don’t pay you according to your worth. I’m not going to haggle. We’re asking two quarters of your time, half a year’s salary. We’ll give you eighteen thousand dollars.’

I could have fainted. After I had sipped a little consommé I said something which led to my next shock. I said, ‘Mr. Ringold, that’s generous pay and you know it. But if you’re gambling so much on this special issue, what if I get sick? Can’t provide the manuscript?’

He looked at me in amazement. ‘Haven’t you told him?’ he asked Leeds.

‘Never occurred to me,’ Leeds said, and the other two shrugged their shoulders as if it had slipped their minds too.

‘Vernor,’ Ringold said expansively, ‘we have the article already written—every word of it. Illustrations and maps are well started. We could go to press next week. All we want from you is assurance that we’re on the right track.’

This information staggered me. I was being hired to write not a polished article which would appear under my name, but merely a house report to back up something already completed, a report which might never be published and might not even be used. When the article appeared, a sleazy job at best, there would be this byline: ‘Prepared with the assistance of Professor Lewis Vernor, Department of History, Georgia Baptist.’ I was being bought, for a good price … but I was being bought.

The food went sour and my disappointment must have shown, for Ringold said, reassuringly, ‘We always work this way, Vernor. We work like demons month after month on a project … best writers in America … but at the end we always want someone with real brains to vet the damned thing. That’s why we stay in business—facts are important to us, but understandings are vital. We inject a very high percentage of understandings in our rag and we’re asking you to help us on our next big project.’

My vanity was destroyed and my intellectual integrity humiliated. ‘I think this lunch is over, gentlemen,’ I said. I tried to rephrase the sentence so as to include Miss Endermann, and loused things up.

It was young Wright who faced up to the debacle. ‘I’m going to make a suggestion. Professor Vernor, as you must know, Mr. Ringold’s offer was most generous. I handle these things all the time and I can assure you we would not hesitate to offer Arthur Schlesinger such a deal. We made such a generous offer because we respect you. You thought you were writing an article for us. I understand your confusion. Let me suggest this. Go out to Centennial. Carol’s already cased the joint. She’ll go with you to see if you respond the way she did. We’ll pay someone to take your classes. You can leave tomorrow. Better still, leave tonight. And if you decide to join us, when your report is finished, you’ll be free to publish it under your own name—maybe as a book. Six months after our publication the property becomes yours.’

‘That’s a damned good idea, Wright,’ Ringold said. ‘That’s exactly what we’ll do. Vernor, can you fly out to Centennial this afternoon? There’s a United plane at three.’

‘I’d have to ask President Rexford.’

‘Get him on the phone. Toots! You got a phone there?’

For the first time in my life a waiter brought a phone to my table, curling the long black wire across my chair. In a moment I was speaking with President Rexford, but I had barely introduced myself when Ringold took the phone. ‘Rexford? Sure I remember you. The Baptist Committee, that’s right. We want to borrow your bright boy for one week. We’ll pay three hundred dollars for some graduate student to cover for him. Is that a deal?’ There was some conversation, after which Ringold handed me the phone. ‘He wants to talk with you.’

‘Hello, Vernor? Is the project germane to Oregon?’

‘Totally. But it’s not what we thought at all. I’d just be doing legwork for background stuff.’

‘Could it lead to anything substantial?’

‘Yes. It’s work I would have to do later.’

‘Do they pay well?’

‘Very.’

‘Take it. Fly out to Colorado tonight. Professor Hisken could use the three hundred dollars and we’ll forget the graduate student.’

So that afternoon at three Miss Endermann and I boarded the jet for Denver, and because of the time difference we arrived there at four. She hired a car, and while it was still light we drove north. To the west rose the noble Rockies, to the east stretched the prairies, mile upon mile of treeless land. At the end of an hour I saw the sight which had been familiar to all travelers westward, a line of scrawny, limb-broken cottonwoods.

‘There’s the Platte,’ I said, and we entered upon a small north-south road which took us down to the river, one of the strangest in the world. It was quite wide, several hundred yards perhaps, but most of the width was taken up with islands, sand bars, rocks and stumps of trees. Where was the water? There was a little here, some over there, but the spring floods had not yet broken loose, and it was all a stagnant muddy brown. Its principal product seemed to be gravel, endless supplies of gravel waiting to be hauled away by trucks which lined the bank.