From Some Can Whistle

The drive to Houston did little to awaken the nascent travel writer that I hoped was slumbering within me. The Decatur courthouse was the last sight on the whole trip that could fairly be described as picturesque.

Once the Fort Worth courthouse had also been picturesque, but the thing that rendered it picturesque—a neon American flag with forty-eight neon stars—had been removed. Both Fort Worth and America had outgrown the flag. America had summarily added Alaska and Hawaii, and Forth Worth had added a veneer of big-cityness. Now the old courthouse, shorn of its wonderful, bright flag, was just an ugly pile of granite on the Trinity bluffs.

I had once like Fort Worth. I never loved it as I loved Houston, but I did enjoy its hicky vigor, of which the neon flag had been a perfect symbol. Dallas would never be original enough to stick a neon flag on a public building; Dallas remained what it had long been: a mediocre big city, growing larger, but never growing interesting.

I passed through Fort Worth like an arrow and then deflected the arrow slightly eastward until it pierced I-45, the interstate connecting Houston and Dallas. Once on that interstate it was smooth but boring sailing. The black land south of Dallas receded, the horizon began to thicken with trees, but change was undramatic; the next real sight was the huge prison at Huntsville, two hours south.

I was glad I had bought the Cadillac; it passed scores of Datsuns and Toyotas as easily as a powerboat passes canoes. Just driving it made me feel almost stable, a feeling I rarely enjoyed.

But even a brand spanking new Cadillac couldn’t make me feel stable for long. Soon I was in the pine trees, which meant that Houston couldn’t be far. Even if I crept along at the legal speed limit, instead of doubling it as was my habit, I was sure to be on the banks of Buffalo Bayou within an hour or so.

Then what?

Although I had traveled much in the twenty-two years since my daughter’s birth, I had never been back to Houston. Many times, the city had tried to entice me back; in the years of my success, when I was the reigning genius of American television, Houston had attempted to claim me? I was offered banquets, honorary degrees, a Danny Deck day, the keys to the city, etc., all of which I sadly declined.

Sadly because Houston had been, among cities, my first love. In my failed second novel, the one I had wisely drowned, the only parts that might have deserved to survive were paeans to Houston, to the city’s misty beauty and sweaty power, to its funkiness and its energy. I had come to it at the right time, as a young man sometimes comes to his ideal city. In Houston I began to write, formed my first young sentences. Its energies awakened mine; the ramshackle laziness of some of its forgotten neighborhoods delighted me. I walked happily in it for years, smelling its lowland smells. It was my Paris, my Rome, my Alexandria-a generous city, perfect home for a young talent.

But that time ended. Disorder and early sorrow, of a very average kind, thrust me out and propelled me westward where for many years I failed at everything. All that time I missed Houston and missed it keenly. When I would happen on an article about the city in a newspaper I would hastily turn the page; just seeing the name Houston in a newspaper made me miss the place so much that I ached.

I missed it as much as I’ve missed certain women—and there are women I’ve missed so much that I’ve become afraid to see them again: it becomes too big a risk, because if you miss them that much and then see them and they turn out not to like you anymoreor, worse, you turn out not to like them anymore—then something important to you is forever lost.

Once I got...