The Bush-men of Western Texas

I am no anthropologist. For years, I thought the word meant someone who was sorry they’d put anthrax in your mail.

But this last week, I’ve been on the trail one of the world’s strangest and remotest civilisations. With a highly professional team of bikini-clad experts to keep me company, I have traced the customs, habits, and cave paintings of one of earth’s most misunderstood peoples: the Bush-men of Western Texas.

For over half a century this strange clan has been renowned for talking in a funny language that more ‘civilised’ cultures (sometimes known as ‘Europeans’) can’t understand. Their rituals appear bizarre: prayer breakfasts, bible study, the worship of oil, an unassailable belief in their own natural ancestral hierarchy.

They have never failed to capture the world’s imagination. ‘I can’t imagine anything worse,’ said one famous French anthropologist, whose name I can’t pronounce. Indeed, endless books and articles, not to mention countless hours of thought and conversation, have gone into trying to imagine how in God’s name the Bush-men function and survive.

My first stop was in Western Texas, where, oversized Stetson on my head, I went in search of this lost tribe.

Bush country, like Bush philosophy, is a barren landscape. Apart from the giant well-oiled erections milking the earth of its natural juices, and the occasional air-conditioned metropolis with glass-fronted skyscrapers, there is nothing to be seen for miles and miles, no sign at all of civilisation.

Even a truckers café that I stopped in offered very little enlightenment, an event no one there had ever heard of. Over jelly, ice cream and grits, I spoke with Hank Driller, a long-time acquaintance of the Bush-men.

‘I’m an honorary Bush-man myself,’ he said. ‘We all feel that way round these parts. We’re mighty protective of the Bush’s – as we call them. Sure, they’re simple folk, but we feel like they’re part of our heritage foundation.’

Driller put me in touch with a guy called J.R. Ewing, who is said to have once spent a whole two weeks with the Bush-men, bathing with them in their Jacuzzis, mixing their cocktails, and partaking in their bizarre mytho-religious rituals.

‘These are good boys,’ he said of them. ‘There’s really nothing to be afraid of. At heart they are very isolationist, couldn’t give a goddamn about anyone but themselves. But if you attack them … you best expect some tough payback. These boys are fighters. I never seen them shirk from sending others into battle to fight for their interests.”

And boy do they have interests. The latest land-claim by the Bush-men, for the ancient territories of Iraq, has proven highly controversial.

* * * *

By all accounts, the Bush-men are heavily evangelical. The one account I read said exactly this: ‘The Bush-men are heavily evangelical.’

But what does this mean? I asked Libby R. Bombing, a born-again woman who, as a man, used to clean the Bush’s pools.

‘Salvation by faith,’ s/he said, reading from a dictionary. ‘Of, according to, the Gospel teaching. I can’t do no better than that.’

‘You’ve been a great help,’ I joked, motoring off to the airport on a Harley Davidson, ‘I’m with Jesus’ tattooed across its belly.

I took the first plane I could find, and flew it quite well for a guy who’d never had pilot lessons before.

‘Have we given up the hunt?’ one of the ‘experts’ asked me, as our flight was escorted by two fighter jets.

‘Not at all, sweetheart,’ I told him, ‘this hunt’s just begun.’

‘You have?’ he said, obviously mishearing me.

See, the Bush-men are a nomadic tribe. They may have their roots in the oil-rich ‘Holy ground’ of Western Texas, but their migrant instincts have led some members to set up camp in the strategic watering hole known as Washington DC. It is from there that the Bush-men exercise much of their power.

I couldn’t wait to get my dentures stuck in, and, as soon as I was bailed out of Guantanamo Bay by a human rights organisation, who kindly provided a volunteer replacement, I headed straight for the home of an old friend, a man who knew anyone who was anybody in Washington DC.

‘The Bush-what?’ he said, not inviting me in. ‘Never heard of them.’

* * * *

Was this tribe to remain elusive? I wondered, as I scuffed around the beltway. Were their strange ways never to be understood by the wider world?

My fortunes changed as I drowned my sorrows in a bar.

‘Another loganberry spritzer?’ came an unexpected voice.

I turned round to see a man hidden in the shadows. It was Horse Larynx, my inside source, a man who never let me down (in fact, he never let me do anything).

I sank my drink and headed to an underground car park, famed for its ability to bring down presidents, and their pants.

‘The Bush-man dynasty has a new top dog,’ he said through the phlegm. ‘A wild young pretender, who’s not pretending anymore. They call him Dubya. In old-Bush-man speak it means “The Wild One”. He was a fast-living, wayward kid. Spoilt son of the chief. He drank. He drank a lot. Avoided the battles in which many of his generation perished. Liked women and the natural poppy-based stimulants. But then he found Jesus and the Bible, as well as the pin number to his daddy’s bank account. He’s risen to the top. No one knows quite how. This tribe has a complex inner logic, we think, and hope, and pray. There’s a scribed archive of records, powerful names. Up at dawn, hunting. Asleep by ten o’clock. Always moving around in what they call “Gas Guzzlers”. Bush-men seeking influence with the big chief would buy off his son with gifts and daughters. Then one day, the son wakes up more powerful than his dad.’

I wiped my face with a handkerchief. ‘So you’re saying the Bush-men are evolving? Modernising?’

‘Not really. If anything, they’re going backward, becoming more stuck in their ways, more parochial, less open to other influence. Dubya uses a primitive form of communication that’s totally indecipherable. They meet with the spirit chiefs – sort of witch doctors, holy men – in the chief’s compounds. And they still have these strange ceremonies. You know, where they go into the woods, and urinate on the trees before they log them? A cultural signifier. Totally mystifying. Nobody knows why, or what they’re doing.’

I knew this wouldn’t be the end of my quest to understand these strange and unique people.

It is the end of this column, though.