When my first book was being published, I had an important name to include in the acknowledgements—Peter Decker.
In my thanks I called him “Colorado’s most literate and literary rancher.” I think that still fits. This was about forty years ago. Peter was then not far removed from his stint teaching history at Duke University, and he had done me the great service of reading my manuscript and commenting on it. In doing so, he helped me navigate multiple historical quagmires, saving me from considerable grief. But there was also the more delicate matter of attitude. I wrote most of the book in my late twenties and made the usual young-male, cocky mistakes. Peter spotted a particular area that needed improvement. “Pay more attention to women,” he wrote me, “and be careful how you treat them.” He meant this as writing advice, at least on the surface, but the invitation was there to think more broadly. If I ever got better advice, I don’t know what it was.
I have thought a lot about Peter’s special charisma. He was always a “go-to” guy. The Army went to him when it needed somebody to jump out of an airplane over Laos on a lunatic mission. The Federal Reserve went to him for economic advice about the Mountain West. The same kind of reliance applied when Peter chaired the Fort Lewis board of trustees, or served as Colorado’s commissioner of agriculture. Or lent a hand to a young nobody writer. People depended on him. And they didn’t regret it later. He was a mensch.
But here’s the tricky part: he was a trickster too, a kind of Coyote Man, his inner imp alive and well. The mystery of Peter was to encounter this second quality paired with the first. When you look at his pictures, when you went for a walk with him or sat down for a drink, the smile he smiled belonged to The Cat in the Hat. His eyes twinkled with an invitation to mischief, with the spirit of a prankster. The charisma of a go-to guy doubling as Huck Finn drew you in. You were ready to sign the contract before you knew what it said. I have never met anyone else with exactly that combination of solidity and playfulness. I don’t think I ever will.