THE DETAILS for the reunion began to dominate my thinking after Herb’s was restored. I knew it wouldn’t be a success unless I made every out-of-towner I wanted to invite sign in blood—or cream gravy—that they would be here.
I started with Billy Clyde Puckett and Barbara Jane Bookman, the restaurant’s best-known graduates. They were essential. Through high school and college they did their homework in the bar at Herb’s—when they weren’t challenging the pinball machine.
It was springtime and our country was sliding deep into the millennium. Big Ed was convinced that this period in our history would be remembered as a time when presumably intelligent parents tolerated the demands of their spoiled, tattooed, body-pierced, chirping-voiced children.
I refer to kids who graduate from college and expect to be offered a starting salary of $200,000 for doing nothing. And when that doesn’t happen, they move back home, demand a new car, ten of the latest Playstations, and apply for welfare.
“One of these days,” Big Ed said, “there won’t be anybody available to sell shirts and ties.”
I scheduled the reunion before football season, when Billy Clyde wouldn’t be busy sharing his wisdom on TV regarding all things NFL.
Barbara Jane was at the house on Long Island when I reached her on her cell. She said the reunion sounded like fun and I could count on them coming. They hadn’t been back for a while. It would be a chance to visit with her folks.
She said, “Daddy’s reached ninety, you know?”
I said, “Your mother is lovely and kind as ever. Big Ed is spry and active. He dresses up to come to the office every day. He likes to talk about things.”
Barbara Jane said, “I know how Daddy will want to take his leave one day.”
“How’s that?’
“He’ll be sitting a well. The blowout preventer will fail. There’ll be an explosion. A big black geyser will shoot into the sky like they did in the old days. He’ll raise his arms, holler ‘Zip-a-dee-do-dah,’ signal a touchdown, do a little dance, and topple over.”
I said, “Nothing would please him more.”
Barbara Jane and Billy Clyde lived in two homes—the Fifth Avenue apartment in Manhattan and the two-story house in the Hamptons. The Hamptons house was well-appointed and comfortable, but it was nowhere near a part of the area where you found a Windsor Castle lurking behind every row of hedges, trees, or tennis courts.
Olivia and I had visited them twice out there. Barbara Jane made the trip easy. A friend of hers who was well-positioned at a Hollywood studio sent a company Citation X for us. The pilots picked us up at Meacham Field, Fort Worth’s first airport, which dated back to 1925. It’s where American Airlines was founded. We were dropped off at Islip on Long Island in what seemed like a jiffy.
Those trips reminded me of a Willie Nelson song: “Life Don’t Owe Me a Living but a Lear and a Limo Ain’t Bad.”
Barbara Jane explained that they were spending less time in the city now.
“I used to love Manhattan,” she said. “We have great memories from our days of living in the city when Billy Clyde was Red Grange. But it’s become filthier and more expensive than ever. Dinner at a popular restaurant that once cost $90 for two now costs $600 for two. How did that happen?
“You have to be nimble today when you stroll out of your apartment. You run the risk of getting pan-handled by an eighth-grade dropout, shot by a gang member, or pissed on by a derelict.
“People still support the theater, God knows why. A hit show on Broadway today is a tenth revival of Hello, Dolly, only this time they’ll be doing it in Arabic.”
As for the Hamptons, I don’t know whether Billy Clyde and Barbara Jane live in a forest or a pasture. It was easy for me to confuse the Sagaponacks with the Amagansetts, the Water Mills with the Lily Ponds. It happened that Barbara Jane and Billy Clyde preferred a country lane to a shopping village, a lawn over a swimming pool, and wood-burning fireplaces over a beach.
I’ve said, “Why don’t you guys live in a town like Bridgehampton? It’s not a problem to find, and I can pronounce it.”
Barbara Jane said, “It would be too easy to track us down.”
“Who, me?”
“No, them.”
“Who’s them?”
“The time bandits,” she said.
OVER THE years Barbara Jane had gone from a recognizable fashion model to a movie actress to an independent filmmaker. She’d been told many times in Hollywood that “every movie is a Western.” Granted, it was difficult to think of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, or Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, as old cowhands, but she made a Western anyway. Wrote it and directed it.
She was in the process of editing Remember Goliad! when I called.
“That’s the title?” I said.
She said, “Everybody remembers the Alamo—John Wayne was there, right? But nobody remembers Goliad, even though it was half of the battle cry at San Jacinto. . . . ‘Remember the Alamo, remember Goliad!’”
“I know that,” I said. “Goliad was the mission where Col. James Fannin and 350 of his men were massacred by orders of Santa Anna, the president of Mexico and general of the army.”
“The massacre is in my movie.”
I said, “Our guys were outnumbered when they fought the Mexicans to a standstill in a battle at some creek. But they ran out of food, water, and ammo and surrendered when they were promised they’d be fed and treated honorably as prisoners of war. But instead they were marched to Goliad, lined up, and shot by a firing squad. Those who survived the rifle fire were stabbed to death. Santa Anna was a fun guy.”
Barbara Jane said, “I’m making a feature, not a documentary. The fictitious hero I’ve created is a young man from Georgia who moves to Texas to be a rancher, a landowner, and he volunteers to fight for Texas independence in General Sam Houston’s army.”
“He becomes a hero, I’ll wager.”
She said, “He’s a fighting devil at the Siege of San Antonio . . . with General Stephen F. Austin, James Fannin, Ben Milam, and ‘Deaf’ Smith, who was Sam Houston’s most reliable scout.”
“San Antonio was our first big win,” I said.
She said, “My guy is with Fannin and the others when they surrender at the Battle of Coleto Creek. It’s a fact that thirty-four of Fannin’s men escaped from the Goliad massacre. My hero is one of them. He slogs his way across the prairie and joins up with General Houston’s army.”
“He’d better, or the movie’s over.”
“Want to hear the rest, wise guy?”
“I know what happens. He marries the Rose of San Antone or the Yellow Rose of Texas. There are choices in life.”
“Not yet,” Barbara Jane said. “He joins Colonel Mirabeau Lamar’s cavalry and kills his share of the enemy at the Battle of San Jacinto. Sam Houston’s army wipes out close to 1,300 soldiers in the Mexican army. The next day my guy’s with two other soldiers when they capture Santa Anna. He was trying to escape. They find him hiding in a ditch.”
“In real life our guys should have carved him up with his own sword.”
“My guy is too noble, like the ones in real life. He stops the others from carving up the general with his own sword, as you put it. He convinces them that Santa Anna ought to be sent back to Mexico to live the rest of his days in disgrace. His people can watch the bastard wind up among history’s great failures. They don’t say ‘loser.’ Nobody said ‘loser’ then.”
I asked, “What’s the actor’s name who plays your hero?”
She said, “I yanked him out of a TV series. You wouldn’t know the name if I told you. This is the millennium, and you’re not fourteen years old.”