Texas People, Texas Places: More Musings of the Rambling Boy

13. Two Viejos at a Kitchen Table

✥ 13 ✥ Two Viejos at a Kitchen Table Ispen t a f rid ay morning a couple of weeks ago doing what I enjoy almost more than anything and don’t get to do often enough. I sat at a kitchen table in Marfa with a couple of gentlemen in their eighties drinking coffee and listening to them trade stories. Jack Brunson and Doc Whitman have been friends for more than half a century. They first met in the Border Patrol, which Brunson joined in 1951 and Whitman in 1955. They worked together for nearly twenty-five years, until they both retired on the same day in 1978. They are very different in appearance and manner. Brunson is short and gregarious; Whitman is tall and reserved. Brunson is a seasoned raconteur; Whitman often communicates with a quiet smile. But their common life in the Border Patrol has given them plenty to reminisce about. When Brunson and Whitman joined the Border Patrol, its agents in the Southwest spent most of their time tracking down aliens who were working here illegally and returning them to Mexico. Agents were not popular with ranchers and others who were dependent on those aliens for cheap labor. Brunson told a story to illustrate the double hazards of his job. He and three other agents had gone to Lajitas to check on some Mexicans who were working in a uranium operation there. When they arrived, they saw the men at the mouth of a cave in the side of a mountain above the spot where the mine was being blasted out. Brunson and two other men scrambled up the mountain toward the cave while the fourth agent, Buck Newsome, stayed on horseback below. 52 ✥ Brunson pulled himself up on a boulder that broke loose and rolled down the mountain, leaving him stranded in a precarious spot. He shouted for help, and Newsome rode up the slope and threw two lariats to the agents above Brunson, who tied them together and pulled Brunson to safety. In the meantime, the mine owner appeared in a pickup truck, driving toward Newsome and yelling at him. Just before he reached Newsome there was an explosion that blew the right front wheel off the truck. The mine owner jumped out of the cab and started cussing at Newsome, wanting to know why the agents were shooting at him. Newsome looked down from his horse and said, “They’re not shooting at you; you ran over a dynamite cap.” The man stopped in midsentence, looked at the ground, and said, “I’ve been telling them boys to be more careful with that dynamite.” One of Brunson and Whitman’s former colleagues was Bill Jordan, a six-foot-six Louisianan and former Marine who was famous within the Border Patrol for the speed with which he could draw his pistol. Jordan liked to stand facing another agent with his pistol holstered and ask the agent to clap his hands when he saw Jordan start to move. When the agent brought his palms together Jordan’s pistol would be between them. Brunson once asked Jordan, “What good does all that fast-draw practice do you?” Jordan answered, “Well, when I go to check out a bar, I know I’m not going to come out a dead man.” After Jordan retired from the Border Patrol, he became a field representative for the National Rifle Association, giving fast-draw demonstrations on a number of television programs. He invented a special holster that was used by the Border Patrol as long as they carried revolvers. Brunson and Whitman agreed that in their days, the Border Patrol had a higher standard of marksmanship than other lawenforcement agencies. “We had to qualify as marksmen with our pistols four times a year,” Whitman said. “We carried .38 Specials, most of them Colts.” Brunson said he only fired one shot at a per- ✥ 53 son during his career. “And I didn’t shoot at him,” he emphasized. “I shot near him.” Brunson explained that he and his partner had pulled up to a ranch house near Bakersfield and “the bunk house just exploded. My partner took off after a bunch on foot and I was trying to head one off in the car. He jumped into a canyon and ran up the other side, turned around, and gave me an obscene gesture. I had a tremendous sinus headache and I...