Oil (filmed as There Will Be Blood) (55 page)

X

Graduation time was at hand, and all the grave old seniors had the job of choosing their future careers. Dad asked Bunny if he had made up his mind, and Bunny answered that he had. "But I hate to tell you, Dad, because it's going to make you unhappy." "What is it, son?" A look of concern was upon the old man's round but heavily lined features. "Well, I want to go away for a year, and take another name, and get myself a job as a worker in one of the big industries." "Oh, my God!" A pause, while Dad gazed into his son's troubled eyes. "What does that mean?" "Just that I want to understand the working people, and that's the only way." "You can't ask them what you want to know?" "No, Dad, they don't know it themselves—except dimly. It is something you have to live." "Good Lord, son, let me help you! I've been there. It means dirt and vermin and disease—I thought I was saving you from it, and making things easier for you!" "I know, Dad, but it's a mistake; it doesn't work out as you thought. When a young fellow has everything too easy for him, he gets soft, he has no will of his own. I know what you've done, and I'm grateful for it, but I have to try something different for a time." "You can't possibly find anything hard enough for you in the job of running an oil industry?" "I might, Dad, if I could really run it. But you know I can't do that. It's yours; and even if you gave it to me, Verne and the operators' federation wouldn't let me do what I'd want to do. No, Dad, there's something vitally wrong with the oil industry, and I can never play the game with the rest. I want to go off and try something on my own." "You mean to go alone?" "There's another fellow has the same idea, and we're going together. Gregor Nikolaieff." "That Russian! Couldn't you possibly find an American to associate with?" "Well, it just happens, Dad, that none of the Americans are interested." There was a long pause. "And you really mean this seriously?" "Yes, Dad, I'm going to do it." "You know, son, the big industries are pretty rough, most of them. Some of the men get badly hurt, and some killed." "Yes; that's just the point." "It's pretty hard on a father that has only one son, and had hopes for him. You know, I've really thought a lot about you—it's been the main reason I worked so hard." "I know, Dad; and don't think I haven't suffered about it; but I just can't help doing it." Another pause. "Have you thought about Vee?" "Yes." "Have you told her?" "No, I've been putting it off, just as I did with you. I know she won't stand for it. I shall have to give her up." "A man ought to think a long time before he throws away his happiness like that, son." "I have thought, all I know how. But I couldn't spend my life as an appendage to Vee's moving picture career. I should be suffocated with luxury. I have convictions of my own, and I have to follow them. I want to try to help the workers, and first I have to know how they feel." "It seems to me, son, you talk like one of them—I mean the red ones." "Maybe so, Dad, but I assure you, it doesn't seem that way to the reds!" Again there was a silence. Dad's supply of words was running short. "I never heard of such a thing in my life!" "It is really quite an old idea—at least twenty-four hundred years." And Bunny went on to tell about that young Lord Sid-dhartha, in far off India, who is known to the western world as Buddha; how he gave up his lands and his treasures, and went out to wander with a beggar's bowl, in the hope of finding some truth about life that was not known at court. "The palace which the king had given to the prince was resplendent with all the luxuries of India; for the king was anxious to see his son happy. All sorrowful sights, all misery, and all knowledge of misery were kept away from Siddhartha, and he knew not that there was evil in the world. But as the chained elephant longs for the wilds of the jungle, so the prince was eager to see the world, and he asked his father, the king, for permission to do so. And Shuddhodana ordered a jewel-fronted chariot with four stately horses to be held ready, and commanded the roads to be adorned where his son would pass." And then Bunny, seeing the bewildered look on Shuddho-dana's face, began to laugh. "Which would you rather I become, Dad—a Buddhist or a Bolshevik?" And truly, Dad wouldn't have known what to decide!

XI

There has been during the present century a new universe opened up to knowledge—the subconscious mind—and many strange things are told about it. It is accustomed to make determined efforts to have its own way; and sometimes when it is balked it will go to such lengths as to make the body ill. A jealous wife will suffer nervous collapse, a quite genuine case, thus retaining the attentions of her husband; and so on through a catalog of strange phenomena. But the Freudian theories, not being consistent with Methodist theology, had not yet penetrated into Southern Pacific. So Bunny was entirely unsuspicious when it happened, just after his graduation, and before he set out with Gregor Nikolaieff, that Dad came down with a severe attack of the flu. Of course Bunny had to postpone his leaving, and was able to find all the trouble he needed at home. There were several days when it was not certain if Dad would live; and Bunny felt all the remorse that Vernon Roscoe had foretold. Also he faced the alarming prospect, he might have to take over control of all those millions of Dad's money! The old man pulled through; but he was very weak, and pitiful, and the doctor warned his family that the flu was apt to leave the heart in bad condition, and he would have to be guarded and kept from shock. Down in the deeps of Dad there must have been a merry chuckling, for now it was impossible for Bunny to go away. The father clung to his boy's hand like a child, and Bunny must sit and read to him the sad and tender story of the young Lord Siddhartha. Had Dad said something to Vee about the plot, or was it a telepathic contact between two subconscious minds? She came frequently to the house, and was so kind and sympathetic—the wild elephant in Bunny's spirit was tied down with a million silken cords. And then, when Dad was able to be about, and to sit on the porch in the sunshine, his shrewd conscious mind started work, and presently he had a scheme. "Son, I've been thinking about your problem, and I realize that you have a right to express your ideas. I've been wondering if we mightn't work out a compromise, and let me help." "How, Dad?" "Well, you might have some money that you could use in your own way, and wouldn't feel you were taking from mine. Of course, I wouldn't feel it was right to help you do anything that was against the law; but if there is some kind of education that isn't for violence, why, that would be all right, and if you had an income of a thousand dollars a month that you might use for such propaganda—would that help?" A thousand dollars a month! Gee whiz! Bunny forgot the standards of his own class, according to which a thousand dollars a month would not keep a string of polo ponies or a small racing yacht; he thought according to the standards of the radicals, to whom a thousand dollars a month meant a whole labor college or a weekly paper! Nothing was said about Bunny's staying at home, but he understood that the offer was a bribe; he would have to administer the fund! He yielded to the temptation, and hastened to phone Rachel—he had a job in sight for her! He invited her to lunch; and all the way as he drove to the place, his busy mind was flying from scheme to scheme. Rachel would remain secretary of the "Ypsels," and be paid a salary for her work, the same as she would have got as a social worker. The young Socialists would hire a larger hall, and would publish a weekly paper, aimed at the high schools and colleges of Angel City. Bunny was now free from the promise he had made to Dr. Cowper, not to make propaganda in Southern Pacific. And he was going to make it, you bet! The students of that university and all others would learn something about modern thought, and about the labor movement, and about Socialism, and—well, not too much about Communism, of course, because Dad would call that violence, and it might be breaking the law!

CHAPTER XVIII

THE FLIGHT 1

This summer of 1923 was a pleasant one for Bunny. To be one of the editors of a little paper, and be able to say what you thought, and print it week by week and distribute it, with no Dean Squirge to take it away from you, and no police or patriots to raid your office! To mail it to every one you knew, and flatter yourself with the idea that they were reading it, and being cured of their prejudices! Bunny had put all his former classmates on the mailing list of "The Young Student," and in the fall the "Ypsels" were going to sell it on the college campuses, and maybe trouble would begin then, and they would get some advertising free! Dad was slowly picking up. He read the little paper every week, a sort of loving censorship. But it wasn't needed, because Rachel, orthodox Socialist party member, was wasting no space on the left wingers. When these extremists got hold of Bunny and cajoled him into thinking that both sides ought to have a hearing, Rachel would say, what was the matter with their getting out a paper of their own? So here was Bunny, being "bossed" as usual—and by a woman! It was almost as bad as being married! Another source of relief—Vee was not quarreling with him so much. She had been so shocked by his mad proposal to go off and get himself killed in heavy industry, that she was glad to compromise and take half his time, and let Rachel and "The Young Student" have the other half. Vee was working hard on her new picture, "The Golden Couch," telling about an American darling of luxury who fell into the toils of a fake prince from some Balkan country. To play the part they had got a real Roumanian prince, who had most charming manners, and was willing to devote himself to Vee at all times when Bunny was busy with his Socialist Jewess. Also they were getting agreeable letters from Bertie, who had been transported to heaven. Such a brilliant world, with such important things going on! She had lunched with the Prince de This, and dined with the Duchesse de That. Why wouldn't Dad and Bunny come over and visit them—Bunny might make a really brilliant marriage. Dad chuckled; the idea of him going to Paree and trying to polly voo Francy! The blackmailers were busy, of course; but since his illness Dad had left all that trouble to Verne. Congress was on vacation, which meant a partial respite; the senatorial reds might denounce the oil leases in their home states, but the papers no longer had to print what they said. A curious superstition, that when things were said in Congress, even the most respectable newspapers found it necessary to mention them. Such things brought politics into disrepute with business men. The drilling of the Sunnyside tract was under way. A dozen wells were flowing, and justifying all that had been expected of them. Sometimes Dad was driven to the office, but most of the time the bright young executives would come out to his home, and sit in the den and get their orders. Such clean-cut efficient young men, with all their faculties concentrated upon getting oil out of the ground! No visions tormenting them, no strains of music haunting them, no hesitations, no uncertainties, never a doubt that to get oil out of the ground was the purpose of man's life! So they kept their wits about them, and mastered their departments, and increased their prestige and their salaries; and when any one of them had taken his departure, there was an unuttered sadness between Dad and his son. Why couldn't Bunny have been like young Simmons, or young Heimann, or young Boiling?

II

The doctor had said that Dad must not think about business more than two hours a day; so Bunny would tempt him for a stroll, a very slow one, and perhaps they would hear a sermon of Eli's as they walked along the street, and that never failed to divert Dad's mind and set him to chuckling. He took a kind of malicious delight in watching the glory sweep of the Third Revelation; by proving that the masses were boobs, you made it all right to take their naval reserves! Dad subscribed to a little paper issued by one of the rival religious showmen of the town, full of denunciations of Eli and exposures of his trickery. The regular churches were jealous of this new Revelation, which had burst so rudely upon them. Eli was an upstart and a mountebank, and Tom Poober, the clerical rival, declared that he faked a lot of his alleged cures, he hired people to stand up and tell how their crippled limbs had healed and their cancers had disappeared. Also, Eli's followers had not been willing to give up their customs of rolling and talking in tongues, and Eli had had to build for them a number of sound-proof rooms in the Tabernacle, where these rites were carried on. "Tarrying rooms," they were called, because you went there to "tarry with Jesus"; and when things got going, you would see a hundred men and women rolling on the floor, pawing one another, tearing off their clothing; you would see a woman jerking her head back, or leaping several feet at a time, here and there, exactly like a chicken with its head cut off. The orgies would end with a mass of human creatures piled into a heap, wriggling and writhing, amid a smell of sweat that would make you ill. The Reverend Poober would print such things, and send newsboys to sell the paper in front of the Tabernacle; the newsboys would be fallen upon and beaten, and the police would fail to arrest the assailants, or having arrested them, would turn them loose. Were the politicians of Angel City afraid of the power of this stuffed prophet? Tom Poober would ask in large capital letters, and Dad would chuckle—in the mood of that Western pioneer who came home and found his wife in a hand-to-hand conflict with a bear, and rested his gun upon the fence and took a seat and called, "Go it, woman! Go it, bear!" There was another charge—the prophet was said to be fond of the company of handsome young women. That was a cruel thing to hint, because Eli was strenuous in denouncing fornications and adulteries, as much so as any Hebrew prophet of the First Revelation. Dad chuckled and speculated; until it happened one day that he and Bunny took a long drive, and stopped at an unfrequented beach, looking for a place for Bunny to get a swim. There was a cheap hotel on the waterfront, and coming out of the door, whom should they run into but Eli Watkins, with an indubitably handsome young woman! The young woman walked quickly on, and Eli exchanged greetings with Dad and Bunny, and then excused himself. Dad stood for a minute, looking after the couple and saying, "By golly!" Then he turned and went into the hotel, and to the man at the desk remarked, in a casual tone, "I met that gentleman, but his name has slipped my memory—the one that just went out." "That's Mr. T. C. Brown, of Santa Ynez." "Is he staying here?" "He just checked out." Dad began to glance over the hotel register, and there he read, as big as life, "T. C. Brown and wife, Santa Ynez." And in the crude scrawly handwriting of Eli Watkins, which Dad had at home upon several business letters! It was all Dad could do to keep from bursting out laughing. By golly, if he were to tip off Tom Poober to the contents of that hotel register, he would knock the Third Revelation as high as a kite!