Johnny loved to hear them talk about the West Coast. Together, they worked several California cheers into the Longhorn list. California was just another ingredient in the vast new world of knowledge and experience that was the university. But to his surprise, Johnny found that for the California boys, none of the world’s great issues were as interesting as Texas. They were fascinated, enthralled with Texas. They wanted boots. They wanted rodeos, horses, range. Barbecues. Deer hunts. They wanted to know all about those things that people opening Time magazine in November 1947 had read under the headline Texas, where a tattooed thug had pumped a sheriff full of lead, had bloodied his white shirt, but did not cause his white hat to fall from his head. The California boys wanted to know about the real Texas. They wanted to know about Vail Ennis.
5
During those first days in the hospital, only his wife, Oncie, and his little daughter, Sarah (two, too small to understand), were allowed to see the wounded sheriff in his hospital room. When Vail regained consciousness, Alfred Allee was allowed to come in. By the following Monday, Vail was ready to talk to Camp Ezell, the newspaper editor. “I proved an old theory, Camp. Even after he’s been shot, a man can kill his enemies.”
“I’d say you did prove that.”
“When the big one emptied those loads in my stomach, I still had that telephone in my hand. And I looked down and the blood was coming out. I had on a fresh starched white shirt. Oncie wife had just ironed it that morning. It was turning red. That just made me mad as hell.”
Most of Vail’s friends were outdoorsmen. Hunters. Lawmen. Oil field people. Camp Ezell didn’t hunt. Camp didn’t own a gun. The newspaper editor, soft-spoken and attentive, took notes.
“I didn’t know whether I would survive, but I was determined that if those bandits killed me, they were not going to live to tell the story. I drew my gun and started shooting from the hip.”
The sheriff spoke deliberately. It seemed the wounds had made him reflective. “There’s some things I want you to put in the paper. I want you to write my thanks, from the bottom of my heart, to the many friends who have sent letters, get-well cards, telegrams, flowers. My Latin American and Negro friends have been very kind to me. I appreciate it. Something else . . . the commissioners. You may not believe it, but I heard from all of them. Jimmy Nichols came by the hospital to see me.”
As to the article in Time, Vail said he objected to the slur against oil field workers and all the factual inaccuracies: “The description of my gun was wrong. He had the wrong hospital. The man didn’t even come down from San Antonio to get the facts.”
A writer in Fort Worth wanted to do a story of Vail’s life. He declined.
“I’ve had enough publicity.”
Vail wore striped pajamas in the newspaper photograph. He lay back on two pillows, hands beneath his head. He looked a little tired and more than a little disgusted. At no time in his life had he spent ten days in a sickbed. Most people had never seen Vail without his hat before.
Get-well cards and letters and telegrams arrived from all across America. (Camp Ezell, always exact, cited thirty-five a day.) The hospital had lost count of the long-distance telephone calls. Sheriffs, highway patrolmen, city policemen, FBI agents in Texas and other states wrote personal letters. The police department in Klamath Falls, Oregon, issued a commendation. So did the Bayou Rifles in Louisiana. W. D. Whalen, governor of the Texas-Oklahoma district of the Kiwanis clubs, issued a citation. And there was a resolution by the Bexar County commissioners:
Whereas the Commissioners of Bexar County, in common with the citizens of Bee County in particular, and of Texas in general, have learned from the daily press of the heroic act of The Honorable Vail Ennis, Sheriff of Bee County, in keeping with the unbroken traditions of the peace officers of this state and an unwavering and unswerving fidelity to the public trust and to law and order . . .
Resolved that when the Commissioners Court shall adjourn today it will stand adjourned as a tribute to and in respect of the Honorable Vail Ennis.
The paper also mentioned that the county commissioners had been moved to pay Vail’s hospital bills. The hospital charge was $730.90. Dr. Edmondson’s fee was $250. The $980.90 was more than three months of the sheriff’s salary.
6
Johnny spent Christmas of 1947 in Beeville and visited with folks downtown, in and out of the doorways on Main. He saw Mr. Schulz, his old boss from his soda jerk days at the pharmacy. He saw Mr. Raymond Brown, sitting in his customary chair outside Bagley’s newsstand. Mr. Brown, blind since age twelve, knew Johnny’s voice at once and asked him for details about law school. Blindness hadn’t prevented Raymond Brown from earning a law degree at the university. Inside the newsstand, he saw Dudley Dougherty, the town’s one legacy millionaire, absentmindedly leafing through the week’s new periodicals, which he would then decline to buy. At the American Café, he had coffee with Monte Hall, now managing the store his dad had founded as Hall’s Emporium fifty years before. Johnny went by the newspaper office to say hello to Camp Ezell, who asked him about his plans after graduation, taking notes.
The town was alive. On the three downtown blocks there were a half dozen cafés, not counting the soda fountain at Schulz’s pharmacy, and four barber shops: Walter Chesshir’s and the Rialto Barbers were across from each other on Main, the Post Office barber shop (run by Sid and Curly Hirst) and Bob Lothringer’s across from each other on St. Mary’s Street. Three banks, all locally owned, were within two blocks of each other. Three drugstores: Schulz’s, Conoly’s, and Ballard’s. Old man Jim Ballard sat out in front of Ballard’s carving small figurines and telling Texas stories. J. Frank Dobie used him as a source. Puss Malott’s was busy all day long: men shooting pool, playing dominos, smoking, standing at the bar and talking, standing outside and talking, where they could watch the traffic, mostly foot traffic, of the town. Down the street, the grand Kohler hotel cooled its spacious lobby with overhead fans. There was another coffee shop at the Kohler. People visited at the post office, at the Lou Anna bakery with its wonderful smells, at Burrough’s hardware, Lack’s, and Perry’s and Ferguson’s dime stores, where kids could walk around and look at tiny toys.
During the years of World War II, American boys mired in foreign mud and chaos dreamed of such order—warm houses, mown yards, clean neighborhoods where people didn’t lock their doors at night—far removed from European ruins and scorched Pacific beaches. Ohhmmm. Hooommme. At Christmas in 1947, the sense of homecoming was still powerful. All over town one heard Christmas songs and the sentimental music of the 1940s:
I’ll be seeing you, in all the old familiar places.
Kiss me once again; it’s been a long, long time.
I’ll be home for Christmas . . . if only in my dreams.
This place, this town, was all those dreams. Forty-five local boys hadn’t made it back alive. But Freddie Hobrecht and Viggo Gruy and Ed Brown had made it home. Freddie was a hero, a P-47 Thunderbolt pilot shot down behind enemy lines who captured a German soldier and brought him back with him. Viggo, commissioned early out of Texas A&M, had won the Silver Star in combat in France. Ed, another Aggie, halfback on the championship Beeville high school football team of 1934, had served on Omar Bradley’s staff. Leonard Kirkpatrick made it home from the navy and married Robatine Calkins, the fairest of the Beeville majorettes. A. W. Mussett came home and won the gorgeous Norma Sapp.
I’ll be home for Christmas . . . if only in my dreams.
Such a town. Such a town. With twelve cents, kids eleven years old could see a movie at the Rialto Theater—a worthy second
