Oil (filmed as There Will Be Blood) (36 page)

tunately, you're rich, so it was just a joke. But don't forget—if you'd been a poor Russian Jew in the slums, you'd be in jail now, with ten thousand dollars bail, and ten or twenty years in state's prison for your destiny. If you had happened to live in Poland or Finland or Roumania, you and all your little bunch would have been buried in one muddy trench a week ago!"

CHAPTER XII

THE SIREN 1

Springtime had come again, and Bunny was finishing his second year at Southern Pacific. But the bloom was now worn off the peach; he no longer took the great institution at its own valuation. He knew that the courses were dull, and that they taught you masses of facts of little importance, and were afraid of new and original thinking. The one thing he had got was a clue to some worthwhile books; he wanted to read them—but you could do that better at home. He was debating whether he would come back next year. Things were freer at Paradise, it seemed. Paul had gone back to work as a boss carpenter for the company; he had recovered a part of his strength, and was making good money—building labor was scarce, because the country was making up for the lost construction of war-time. Ruth was happy again; at least three of the oil workers were in love with her, but she would think of no one but her wonderful brother. Paul was studying again; but not the biology books, all his money now went for magazines and pamphlets and books that dealt with the labor struggle. There were a good many returned soldiers with the company, some of whom had come to think about the war just as Paul did; twice a week they had regular classes, reading aloud a chapter from a book and discussing it. So the Rascum cabin became what the Angel City newspapers were accustomed to describe as a "Bolshevik nest." Much as these workingmen might differ about tactics, they were a unit on the proposition that capital and labor had nothing in common but a fight. And they made no bones about saying it; they would start an argument on the job, or while a bunch of the men were eating their lunch; the echoes would spread all over the place. There were "wobblies" in the field also, you would find their literature in the bunk-houses. Dad must have known about it, but he did nothing; his men had always been free to say what they pleased, and he would take his chances. Indeed, he could hardly do anything else, while every man on the place knew that the discoverer and heir-apparent of the field was one of the "reddest" of the bunch! Ever since the war, the union of the oil workers had been recognized and dealt with, as the government had decreed. But now the hand of Uncle Sam was beginning to relax; the idealistic President was a semi-invalid in Washington, and in Angel City the "open shop" crowd were getting ready to bring back the good old days. At least that was the rumor among the union officials, and how were they going to meet the employers' move? The wage agreements expired towards the end of the year, and this was the issue to which all the arguments of the oil workers led, whether among the "reds" in Paul's cabin, or among the rank and file. Over Bunny's head the prospect of another strike hung like a black shadow of doom. Dad never gave up longing to have his son take an interest in the company and its growing activities. And Bunny, always aware of this loving bond, would study monthly reports of production, and cost sheets and price schedules, and go out to the wells that were drilling, and take part in long consultations with the foremen. Only a few years ago, an oil well had been to him the most interesting thing in the world; but now cruel fate had brought it about that one oil well seemed exactly like another oil well! Number 142 had brought in six hundred thousand dollars, whereas Number 143 had brought in only four hundred and fifty thousand. But what difference did it make, when all you would do with the extra hundred and fifty thousand was to drill another well? Dad's answer was kept in stock on the shelves of his mind: "The world has got to have oil." But then, you looked at the world, and saw enormous crowds of people driving to places where they were no better off than at home! But it would annoy Dad to have you say that—it was a step outside the range of his thinking. To Bunny he now seemed like an old horse in a treadmill; he climbed and climbed, all day long, and at night he climbed in dreams. But if you should let him out of the treadmill, he would die—for lack of any reason for living. So Bunny learned more and more to keep his traitor doubts to himself; those theories of the "class struggle" that he learned from Paul and his fellows, and the rumors of a strike that he read in the oil workers' journal. Instead, he would take Dad fishing, and they would pretend they were just as happy as of old in the bosom of their mother Nature—though the sad truth was that Dad was too heavy and too stiff in the joints to get much fun out of scrambling over the rocks.

II

Bunny spent his Easter holidays at Paradise, and it happened that Vernon Roscoe paid a visit to the tract. He had been there before, but only while Bunny was away; their meetings so far had been brief ones at the office, amid the press of business. Bunny had got a general impression of a big face and a big body and a big voice. Dad said that "Verne" had also a big heart; but Bunny's only evidence was that Mr. Roscoe had patted him on the back, and called him "Jim Junior," with great gusto. Now he came; and it happened that a desert wind came with him, and made a funny combination. As a rule the heat of the day was endurable at Paradise, and the nights were always cold and refreshing; but three or four times in a year the place would be struck by a wind off the desert, and it would be like a hot hand reaching out and holding you by the throat. "A hundred and fourteen in the shade and there ain't any shade," was the way the oil workers put it, as they went on working in the sun, drinking barley water by the quart. The worst of it was, the hot wind blew all night, and the houses, which had heated up like furnaces, stayed that way for three or four days. The "oil magnate," as the newspapers called Vernon Roscoe, left Angel City after dinner, and reached the tract just before midnight. Dad and Bunny were expecting him, sitting out on the veranda, and he saw them, and his voice started before the engine of his car stopped. "Hello, Jim! Hello, Jim Junior! By Jees, what's this you're doing to me! Christ amighty, man, I never felt such heat. Is it going to be like this tomorrow? By Jees, I think I'll turn my tail and run!" He was out of the car, and coming up the path, his face as round as the moon that shone down on his half-bald head. He had taken off his coat and shirt, and was in a pink silk undershirt; no perspiration, of course, because you were always dry when you drove in this desert heat—you might stop at a filling station and stand under a hose and soak yourself, and the wind would dry everything but your sitting down place in a couple of minutes. "Hello, Verne," said Dad; and Bunny said, "How are you, Mr. Roscoe?" He was careful to get a grip on the magnate's paw before the magnate got a grip on his—for he would make the bones crunch with his mighty grasp. He had been a cattlepuncher back in Oklahoma, and it was said that he had grabbed a Mexican horse-thief with his two hands and bent him backwards until he broke. He still had that strength, in spite of his rolls of fat. "I'm hot as hell," he said, answering Bunny's polite inquiry. "Say, Jim, do you think I'd better stay?" "You've got to stay," said Dad. "I'm not going ahead with development on that Bandy tract till you've looked the field over. We'll sit you on ice." "Has my beer come?" Hey, there, Kuno"—this to the Jap, who was grinning in the door-way. "Bring me some of my beer! Bring me a bucketful—a tubful. By Jees, I brought some in my car—I wouldn't take a chance. Did you hear what happened to Pete O'Reilly? Damn fool tried to come across the border with a crate of whiskey in his car; told me it cost him a hundred dollars a quart before he got through! Christ almighty, Verne, how do you stand this?" "Well, for one thing, I drink lemonade instead of beer." This was a reform which Bunny had imposed upon his father, and now Dad was very proud of it. "No pop for me!" said Verne. "By Jees, I'll have my suds in the bath-tub. Any women about, Verne?" And Mr. Roscoe kicked off his shoes and his trousers, and sat himself under an electric fan. "The damn thing blows hot air!" he said; and then he looked at Bunny. "Well, here's our boy Bolsheviki! Where's the red flag!" Now Bunny was expecting to reach the impressive age of twentyone in a month or two, and he had heard all possible variations on this "Bolsheviki" joke. But he was host, and had to smile. "I see you read the papers." "Say, kiddo, you made the front page all right! It did me a lot of good in some negotiations. Come down to the office and I'll introduce you to a Soviet commissar in disguise; they're trying to sell me a concession in the Urals. 'Where the hell is that?' I says; but it seems there is really such a place, unless they have forged some atlases. The guy started to pull this brotherhood of man stuff on me, and I says, 'Sure, I'm great on that dope,' I says. 'The junior member of our firm is in the business! Look at this, by Jees,' and I showed him the papers, and we've been 'Tovarish' ever since!"

III

Well, Tovarish Roscoe went to bed, in Nile green silk pajamas on a cot out in the court alongside the fountain; and at five in the morning they woke him, so that he might go out with Dad and the geologist and the engineer, to O. K. the plans for the Bandy tract. He came back with the sunrise in his eyes, puffing and snorting, and yelling for beer instead of breakfast, and how would he get some more when this gave out? They persuaded him that he must not try to cross the desert until the sent went down, so he and Dad and Bunny retired into the living-room, and shut all the doors and windows, to stick it out as best they could. Well, the sun got to work on the roof and walls of that house, and every ten minutes the great man would get up and look at the thermometer and emit another string of muleskinner's technicalities. By the middle of the morning he was frantic; declaring that surely there must be some way to cool a house. By Jees, let's get a hose and soak this room! But Bunny, who had studied physics, said that would only shift them from the climate of the desert to the climate of the Congo river. Mr. Roscoe suggested turning the hose on the veranda and the roof; and Bunny called the gardener boy, and pretty soon there were half a dozen sprinklers going, a regular rain-storm over the doors and windows of the living-room.

But that was not enough, so Dad went to the phone and called up the foreman of the sheet metal shop, and he said sure thing, he could design a refrigerator; and Dad said to drop everything else and build one, and he'd pay the men a dollar apiece extra if they finished it inside an hour. So here came four fellows with a truck and a big metal box with double walls all the way from the floor to the ceiling; and they cut a hole in the floor for a vent-pipe, and brought in about half a ton of cracked ice from the ice-plant, and a couple of sacks of salt, and in a few minutes the thermometer showed a zero wind blowing out from the bottom of that box. The great man moved over close to it, and in a little while he began to sigh with content, and in half an hour he gave a loud "Ker-choo!" and they all roared with laughter. After that he was sleepy, with all the beer he had drunk, and had a nap on the lounge, while Dad went out to see to the drilling. And then the party had lunch, and Mr. Roscoe had another nap, after which he felt fine, and did a lot of talking, and Bunny learned some more about the world in which he lived. "Jim," said the "magnate," "I want two hundred thousand dollars of your money." "Where's your gun?" said Dad, amiably. "You'll get it back many times over. It's a little fund we're raising, me and Pete O'Reilly and Fred Orpan. We can't talk about it except to a few." "What is it, Verne?" "Well, we're getting ready for the Republican convention, and by Jees, it's not going to be any god-damn snivelling long-faced college professor! We're going to get a round-faced man, like you and me, Jim! I'm going on to Chicago and pick him out." "You got anybody in mind?" "I'm negotiating with a fellow from Ohio, Barney Brockway, that runs the party there. He wants us to take their Senator Harding; big chap with a fine presence, good orator and all that, and can be trusted—he's been governor there, and does what he's told. Brockway thinks he can put him over with two or three million, and he'll pledge us the secretary of the interior." "I see," said Dad—not having to ask what that meant. "I've got my eye on a tract—been watching it the last ten years, and it's a wonder. Excelsior Pete put down two test wells, and then they capped them and hushed it up; there was a government report that mentioned it, but they had it suppressed and you can't get a copy anywhere—but I had one stolen for me. There's about forty thousand acres, all oil." "But how can you get it away from Excelsior?" "The government has taken the whole district—supposed to be an oil reserve for the navy. But what the hell use will it be to the navy, with no developments? The damn fools think you can drill wells and build pipe lines and storage tanks while Congress is voting a declaration of war. Let us get in there and get out the oil, and we'll sell the navy all they want." That was Dad's doctrine, so there was nothing to discuss. He laughed, and said, "You'd better be on the safe side, Verne, and get the attorney-general as well as the secretary of the interior." "I thought of that," said the other, not noticing the laugh. "Barney Brock way will be the attorney-general himself. That's part of his bargain with Harding." And then all at once Mr. Roscoe recollected Bunny, sitting over by the window, supposed to be reading a book. "I suppose our boy Bolsheviki will understand, this ain't for use on the soapbox." Dad answered, quickly, "Bunny has known about my affairs ever since he was knee-high to a grass-hopper. All right, Verne, I'll send you a check when you're ready."

IV

The sun went down, and it was time for Mr. Roscoe to make his get-away. But first he had dinner; and when he was through with his ice cream and coffee, he pushed his plate away, and took his napkin out of his neck, and leaned back in his chair with a sigh of content; and while he was unrolling his cigar from its gold foil, he fixed his shrewd eyes upon Bunny across the table, and said, "Jim Junior, I'll tell you what's the matter with you." "All right," said Jim Junior, receptively. "You're a nice kid, but you're too god-damn serious. You take life too hard—you and your old man both. You got to get a little fun as you go along, and I know what you need. You got a girl, kid?" "Not right now," said Bunny, blushing a trifle. "I thought so. You need one, to take you out and cheer you up. Mind you, I don't mean one of these jazz-babies—get a girl that's got some sense, like my Annabelle. You know Annabelle Ames?" "I've never met her. I've seen her, of course." "Did you see her in 'Madame Tee-Zee'? By Jees, that's what I call a picture—only one I ever made any money out of, by the way! Well, that girl takes care of me like a mother—if she'd been up here, I wouldn't 'a drunk all that beer, you bet! You come up to my place some time, and Annabelle'll find you a girl—lots of 'em up there, with the ginger in 'em, too, and she's a regular little match-maker—never so happy as when she's pairing 'em off, two little love-birds in a cage. Why don't you drive back with me now?" "I've got to go to college the day after tomorrow," said Bunny. "Well, you come some time, and bring the old man along. That's what he needs too, a girl—I've told him so a dozen times. You got a girl yet, Jim? By Jees, look at him blush, the old maid in pants! I could tell the kid some things about you that would bust the rouge-pots in your cheeks—hey, old skeezicks?" And the great man, who had been getting out of his chair as he discoursed, fetched Dad a couple of thumps on the back and burst into a roar of laughter. It was things like that that made you know Vernon Roscoe had a "big-heart." He seemed to have really taken a fancy to Bunny, and was concerned that he should learn to enjoy life. "You come see me some time, kiddo," he said, as he was loading himself into his big limousine. "Don't you forget it now, I mean it. I'll show you what a country place can be like, and you make the old man get one too." And Bunny said all right, he would come; and the engine began to purr, and the car rolled off in the moonlight, and the big laughing voice died away among the hills. "So long, kiddo!"