The Sons of Adam (45 page)

Tom spat tobacco juice on the ground, wiped his hands, and walked out to meet the man.

‘Doin’ OK?’ drawled the man.

‘Not bad,’ said Tom. ‘Two hundred and fifty feet this week, pretty good considering the cave-in we had Tuesday.’

‘Done better if you didn’t have no cave-in.’

‘Done better if we had a rig instead of a rust-heap, and riggers instead of a bunch of cowpokes.’

‘Never heard a good driller blame his tools the way you do.’

‘That’s because you’ve never even seen a good driller. Wouldn’t know what one looks like. Before me, that is.’

‘Yeah, well, you want to go drill for the Rockefellers, you go drill for the Rockefellers. They won’t give you a piece of the action, though.’

Tom spat again and walked away. He picked up his jacket from the patchy grass beside the rig, shook it free of dust and insects and pine needles and put it on. He gave a whistle, and a scruffy little white dog with an enthusiastic tail came running from wherever it was she’d been sleeping, to greet her master. Tom’s face broke into a broad smile of welcome, as he bent down to accept her licks. The act of smiling made him look younger. He looked more like the man who had stepped off the boat at Ellis Island, less like the man who had failed on Signal Hill.

The man in the Ford had pulled out a fat calfskin wallet and a red-bound notebook, and was counting out some money. ‘Hey there, Pipsqueak. You still in charge here? Forty-five bucks.’

He held out the cash and Tom took it.

‘I been trying to find a better boiler for you,’ said the man. ‘Nothing harder than drilling without a good head of pressure.’

‘You could try buying some fuel instead. We’ve been stoking it with green wood and the damn stuff smokes but won’t burn.’

‘Well, that’s part of the pleasure of independence, ain’t it? I’m meeting a guy in Houston next week. A guy with some interested investors, maybe. Like I say, if we raise some new money, we can get on and sink this hole.’

‘How many interests you going to sell, Titch?’ said Tom. ‘You already sold more than a hundred per cent and you sold a lot of them to me.’

‘We hit oil, then no one’ll be complaining. Not even you, bud.’

It should have been the end of the conversation. Tom had his week’s money. Titch Harrelson had the other men to pay. But Harrelson was slow to walk over to the riggers who were waiting for payment. ‘Course, if you wanted to get a lead over them Houston investors, I could let you in ahead of them, make a special rate for you.’

‘Forget it.’

‘Now’s the time to be investing. We shouldn’t be more than a thousand feet or so from the Woodbine. Plenty of oil in the Woodbine, I reckon.’

‘Right. Another thousand feet and we’ll hit the Woodbine. Full of saltwater and broken promises.’

‘You want to work on a salary the rest of your days, that’s up to you. Like I say, I got investors coming.’

‘Yeah.’

Tom had heard it all before. The promoters, the talkers, the salesmen. Lies, promises, fantasies. He felt a familiar mixture of feelings. He had grown disgusted at the gap between the hundred-dollar descriptions and the ten-cent reality. He’d worked on a dozen independent wildcats these last few years, all of them the same as this. Worn-out equipment, local farm-hands recruited for the heavy work, the project always teetering on the edge of financial collapse. Industry wisdom was that you had to drill forty-five wildcats for every one that hit oil, and those were the odds for the industry at large. The odds facing independents were worse than that because they couldn’t afford to buy access to the sweetest drill sites and because they often ran out of money before drilling deep enough. Here in East Texas, there wasn’t a single indication of oil. Not one. A few wildcats had been drilled and nothing had ever been found. When guys from Big Oil saw wells like this, they slapped their thighs and promised to drink every barrel to come out of the hole.

But Tom’s disgust had another source. Himself. He knew the odds. He knew the set-up. And yet time after time, he couldn’t resist the lure. Perhaps
this
new well would strike it big. Perhaps
this
new promoter-geologist really did have a patch of land with potential. So time after time, Tom spent money he didn’t have buying worthless chits of paper in worthless enterprises. Sometimes he worked whole months for paper instead of money. In California, he’d become famous as ‘the only man to lose his shirt on Signal Hill’, to quote a newspaper headline of the time. He’d become obsessive about trying one more time and succeeding. Each well was a new horizon. Maybe this time, maybe, just maybe …

Harrelson paid off the farm-hand riggers. Three bucks a day was dirt cheap, even for these poverty-stricken parts, but if the rain wouldn’t come, the harvest would be feeble, and three bucks a day doing something useful was better than no bucks a day scratching at dust and praying for rain …

Harrelson wandered back to Tom, pushing his wallet away in a side pocket.

‘Give you a lift?’

‘Nope. No need.’

‘Anything I can do to cheer you up? Hey, what you say, you come over tomorrow, eat some chicken with me and Mrs Holling? She’s been saying she hasn’t seen you for a while.’

Mrs Holling was the landowner on whose land they were drilling. Harrelson sponged off her shamelessly, lied to her endlessly. Tom assumed that they slept together, but didn’t know it for a fact. Although Holling’s husband was dead, Harrelson technically had a wife and family a hundred and thirty miles away in Dallas.

‘It’s OK. I got plans.’

‘The hell you have. How could you have – educated man in a shithole like this? No sign of that wife of yours, I guess?’

‘No.’

‘Shame that. Mrs Holling thinks the world of her. Look, quit stalling. We’ll see you tomorrow. Round about six.’

‘Yeah, OK.’

‘And hey, look, I didn’t mean to bust your balls over that cave-in. Could have happened to anyone. And look, I feel bad. I owe you. I’m going to sign you up for some more interests, before I ever get to those wise guys from Houston. I’ll sign you up for another half per cent, free, gratis and for nothing. No. Don’t say nothing. It’s yours. You deserve it. Hop in the car. I’ll give you a ride back.’

Pipsqueak jumped into the car with a bark, then Tom followed her in. He’d never owned a car. Never come close. Too poor to find the three hundred bucks. He felt ashamed. The Ford’s suspension was built for a giant with iron buttocks. Tom was jolted so badly, his head almost hit the windscreen post. Another half per cent would be nice. In theory (and he knew that the well had been sold out at least twice over), Tom now had a ten per cent stake in the property. If there was oil there, he’d have ten per cent of it. His luck had been so bad, so long, it had to turn some time. The car hit a particularly vicious pothole. The engine stalled and died. Harrelson gazed out into the road. He didn’t try to restart the car. Tom realised he’d let the engine die on purpose.

‘Hell’s name, goddamn it!’

Tom knew he was meant to respond, but didn’t. Harrelson waited a moment, then went on without a question from Tom.

‘Aw hell, bud, I just realised I might’ve spoken out too soon. I made a promise to Ed Manninger that I wouldn’t give any more interests away without payment. Wouldn’t care nothing for that, of course, but he made me write something down. I’m worried that that half per cent I just gave you wouldn’t hold up in a court of law.’

Silence.

‘I’m real sorry about that, Tom. I should’ve thought before speaking.’

Silence.

‘I meant it about dinner tomorrow, though. Chicken. A man gets tired of hog and hominy.’

Silence.

Then: ‘How much?’ It was Tom asking.

‘Oh, you wouldn’t have to pay anything like the Houston guys. I mean, you been central to this whole enterprise. That’s why I feel bad bawling you out for a stupid cave-in.’

‘How much?’

‘Let’s say two hundred bucks – hell, no. Forget it, forget it. Hundred and fifty. Thirty a week for five weeks. You should have it all paid down by the time we make a strike.’

‘I can’t live on fifteen a week, Titch.’

‘Hell, you don’t have to. Ain’t I trying to offer you a chicken dinner?’

Silence.

In the gathering darkness, a big grey bird flew with heavy wingbeats across the roadway in front of them. In the distance, they could hear a thousand-wheeled freight train come clattering towards them through the night.

‘OK.’

‘That’d be thirty a week for five weeks.’

‘I said OK.’

Silence.

‘Starting now, bud. I can’t get to the paperwork till I got an instalment. Plus I promised the boiler guy he’d have thirty bucks advance this Monday.’

Hating himself, Tom took the grainy grease-shined dollars from his pocket. He divided them into two piles and handed the bigger one to Harrelson.

The freight train was close now and it sounded like thunder.

Night.

Alan lay with his face pressed to the ground. The soil was muddy, and he could taste wet clay on his lips, smell it oozing up his nose. Overhead, the night sky was screaming in pain. Shell bursts turned the air to metal, while the horizon around was tongued and spattered with fire.

Alan pushed himself forward using toes and elbows. His right hand held a revolver, which he was careful to keep out of the mud. His left hand slipped and rolled on something that had a different wetness to the wetness of everything else. Alan knew what sort of thing that was: a head, an arm, a torso. He didn’t want to look, but a German flare burst above him and he caught a brief glimpse of some torn human fragment, before he snatched his gaze away and looked forwards.

Tom was there. A hundred yards ahead.

Typically brave, typically impulsive, typically disobeying his typewritten orders, Tom was making his way through the wire.

Couldn’t he see he’d never make it? Alan wanted to rush forwards and haul him back, but he knew that to stand up here was to die. He urged his limbs forward, but he found himself in a nightmare breaststroke on a slope of liquid clay. He was shouting something, or felt like he was, but the clay in his mouth clogged the words, or perhaps the shells had simply deafened him.

Way ahead of him, Tom’s dark figure stood up beyond the wire. He was shooting. Attacking the German lines single-handed. He was crazy. The war had turned him crazy. As Alan watched, the figure sank down. Not suddenly, but slowly, softly. It seemed like he was sinking into something. Alan stood up to run towards him.

The noise was deafening.

The air split.

He woke up.

Lottie was awake and stroking his forehead anxiously. When Alan’s eyes opened and came into focus, her gaze softened and her anxiety faded.

‘Sorry, darling, was I shouting?’

‘Yes.’

‘Another dream.’

‘I know.’

‘I do apologise. Perhaps I should sleep in my dressing room. The last thing that a woman in your condition needs is –’

‘Darling, please don’t be a fathead.’

‘I’m serious. You need a full night’s –’

‘I need a husband who isn’t a fathead.’ Lottie sat up in bed, and arranged the pillows behind Alan so he would sit up too. ‘Your dreams are becoming more frequent and they’re becoming worse.’

‘They’re not –’

‘Yes they are, at least if the amount of shouting is anything to go by.’

‘But still, they’re only dreams. As soon as I wake up, I feel –’

‘Perhaps, but I don’t only love you when you’re awake. I’ve had enough of you ignoring the problem.’

Alan rubbed his eyes. The dream didn’t quite fade upon waking. It was still there with him now. A kind of nameless horror, the memory of those awful offensives, death everywhere, and Tom sinking like a shadow to the ground. He gazed around the room: the heavy red-tasseled curtains, Lottie’s things gleaming silver on her dressing table, photographs of their children, of Lottie and her parents, of Alan and George in Persia. The two worlds fought for mastery, and the daytime world began to win. But Alan knew that as soon as he lay down to sleep, the contest would start again and the war would return. He hadn’t told Lottie, but he dreamed of the war every night now, it was just that he didn’t always end up shouting.