Firestorm (12 page)

“The woman who owns the land where you’re having all the trouble?”

“Yeah.”

Jake hung up, and he wondered for several minutes whether Kate could take the kind of heat his meddling mother and sisters would undoubtedly dish out.

He was still furious with Harlan. And mad at himself for worrying about how the man had conned Kate into letting GreenTex come and drill on her land. Stomping to the water dispenser, he grabbed a foam cup and dumped in some instant coffee. As he filled the cup with hot water, he wished he could get Kate off his mind.

He’d take her home, show her the pleasures money could buy in the city. Hopefully Kate would forget about wanting to live on this rundown place in Groveland, Mississippi.

Jake thought about his sisters—and Alice. If Kate was anything like them, it shouldn’t take more than a week for her to get hooked on city lights, boutiques, fancy dress-up affairs and the like. She’d forget all about her old home place and her objections to it being turned into an oil field.

And he’d exorcise the unwelcome, tender feelings he had for her. He had to. He couldn’t risk falling in love.

His aim unerring, he tossed his coffee cup into the wastebasket across the room.

He’d leave Skip to sink seismic holes and deal with the elusive saboteurs. And while he kept vigil at the Old Man's bedside, he’d settle some very personal business with Kate Black.

* * * * *

Kate woke up bleary-eyed. She’d tossed in her bed most of the night, thoughts of Jake, noisy oil wells, and lying land men jumbling together and keeping her from sleep.

Jake had obviously thought she knew all about his drilling plans. Kate would go to Laurel, confront Jay Harlan and make him put the promises he’d made her into writing.

Ann Jacobs

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An hour later, she was cooling her heels outside the land man’s dingy office above a variety store in the oldest part of downtown Laurel. The sour-faced woman who kept Harlan’s books had said he would be off the phone in a few minutes.

Idly, Kate looked at the dog-eared map that decorated the tiny anteroom, trying to locate her land among the highlighted areas Harlan had marked off as properties leased to GreenTex Oil Company.

“You can go on in, Ms. Kate,” the woman finally drawled.

“Ms. Kate,” Jay Harlan said, a down-home, good ol’ boy smile lighting up his florid face when he picked up some papers from a chair beside his desk. With a wave of his hand, he invited her to sit down.

Kate perched on the edge of the dusty chair and looked Harlan in the eye. “You told me when I signed the lease that the oil company probably wouldn’t even drill the first well. And you said that if they did, they would just put one well on my land. I’d like for you to put that in writing for me.”

“Now I couldn’t do that, Ms. Kate. It wouldn’t stand up in court anyway, not unless it was part of the lease itself. What's the matter? I heard your number-one well came in big, and I thought you’d be in here thanking old Jay for helping to make you rich.”

Harlan bestowed another of his oily grins on Kate before his expression darkened.

“You shouldn’t have told Jake Green what I said. That was supposed to have been between the two of us.”

“Did you know? That GreenTex was going to put a whole bunch of wells on my land? That they were going to make it impossible for me to stay in my home, enjoy the only thing my father left me?”

Kate struggled to keep her voice from rising. How could Jake’s company do business with someone who would connive like this?

“Now, li’l lady, with your royalties from Number One alone, you can buy yourself a right nice place anywhere you set your heart on livin’. Have you got any idea how much money you’re gonna make from all that oil your precious home is sitting on? You got no call to be upset. You should be down on your knees telling me you’re sorry you screwed up my making more deals with GreenTex.”

“Did you know?” Kate asked again, but she already knew the answer.

“Not for sure. Nothing's for certain in the oil business. I had a pretty good idea that wily ol’ Jacob Green wouldn’t go paying no thousand an acre for no five year lease if he wasn't planning to put a bunch of wells on it.”

“B-but he didn’t pay that. You gave me a hundred eighty thousand. That was only five hundred an acre.” Kate had spent all but forty thousand dollars of that money to pay off a balloon note on a mortgage that her father had taken on their home, and she was saving the rest to pay her taxes. The rest of that money would have eased her mind Ann Jacobs

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a lot—and made a good-size dent in the bigger mortgage whose balloon note would be coming due next winter.

“Now, listen here, you should know all about making profits. After all, your daddy ran a store. I bought the lease from you for five hundred an acre and sold it to GreenTex for a thousand. That's how I make my living.”

Kate watched the sweat form on Harlan's wide forehead. “You don’t work for GreenTex?”

“Naw. I work for me. I buy up leases when I get wind of oil companies sniffing round them. Then I sell them to the highest bidder. Sometimes I keep back a piece of the lease and get royalties when wells come in—but I didn’t on yours. Old Man Green wanted the whole thing, lock, stock and barrel. Wish I'd have kept a piece, now, knowing how big your well came in.” Harlan looked dejected.

“I'm going to see my lawyer,” Kate said, standing up and trying to maintain her dignity.

“Go right ahead. He'll charge you a couple hundred dollars an hour to tell you the same thing I just said. You signed the lease fair and square. I sold it to GreenTex, and they can put wells all over your land, as long as the Oil and Gas Board issues them permits to drill. I'd wondered about Old Jacob’s sanity when they filed for all them permits before they even started drilling the first hole, but I guess he knew what he was doin’.”

“C’mere,” Harlan said, leading Kate to the little anteroom where she’d looked at the map while waiting to see him.

“See here, sugar,” he drawled, pointing out the nine forty-acre blocks that represented Kate’s land. “That black pin there is Number One. The yellow-headed ones are smack in the middle of each forty where GreenTex has drilling permits. See the land around yours? The pieces I've colored green already belong to GreenTex. The ones in between, they'll get soon enough. I’m working on the owners.

“Anyhow, I was until you went sniveling to Old Jacob’s kid about me telling you stuff that wasn't true. Even if they never drill another well on your property, you’re gonna be living smack in the middle of an oil field if you stay.”

“Why aren’t there any yellow pins on the other properties they’ve leased?” Despite the feeling of desperation that settled in her mind, she was curious.

“’Cause the Oil and Gas Board’s giving young Jake Green a helluva time about new permits. Hasn't helped him any that some nut’s been sabotaging their number-one well site. Wish they’d hurry and catch him, because I’ve got a piece of the action on some of these other properties.”

Harlan scratched at his chin as if he were pondering something terribly important.

“Personally, I think Ol’ Man Green should've kept his kid away from the Board. Let his fancy lawyer from Dallas—Tanner’s his name if I remember right—take care of getting Ann Jacobs

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permits. Or sent Ward, the driller. That ole boy now, he fits right in with those fellas.

Green’s kid’s too much like a foreigner. You know what I mean.”

Yes, Kate knew what Harlan meant. She’d lived around here all her life and learned all about subtle prejudice. She was pretty sure that if Harlan hadn’t known her heritage, he'd have come right out and said some of the folks on the Oil and Gas Board didn’t cotton to dealing with a Jew.

Somehow she couldn’t wring out any sympathy for the greedy land man and his investment in the leases where Jake hadn’t been able to get drilling permits.

“So they’re going to concentrate on putting all the wells on my land?”

“That's my guess, Ms. Kate. At least until Tanner or Old Man Green’s kid manages to wheedle more permits out of the Board. Li’l lady, there’s nothing you can do about it.

Go on. See your lawyer. He’ll tell you the same thing.”

With that, Harlan waddled back to his desk, leaving Kate to stare at the map that represented money to the land man. It represented horror to her: horror that she had saved her home only to lose the privilege of living there in peace.

Walking out to her father’s ancient Lincoln, Kate let hope revive. Before she started the car, she opened all the windows to let the stifling air escape.

As she drove across town to her lawyer’s office, her mind wandered to Jake. She’d reveled in the heat they generated when they made love. So different from the overwhelming miasma of this summer day.

Kate refused to dwell on what part, if any, he had played in displacing her from her home.

* * * * *

Her visit to her lawyer had been enlightening, but not as helpful as she hoped. Jay Harlan had been lying. Again. She probably could, her lawyer told her, get the contract set aside for fraud in the inducement. Which, she reflected, might be what Jake was so mad about.

But even so it would be expensive and he couldn’t guarantee he could move forward fast enough to stop the next well from being drilled. Every well that was drilled weakened her case. In the end, she might only win monetary damages, and not as much as she’d make from the oil itself.

She couldn’t afford the lawsuit. And always scrupulously honest, she had to admit she would have signed the papers even if Harlan had been truthful. Without the money from the lease, she couldn’t have paid off that one mortgage, and she’d have lost her home to the bank.

Ann Jacobs

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After she left the lawyer's office, though, she had been so upset that she forgot to stop at the supermarket. As a result, she had to make a quick stop at the Groveland crossroads store where Gladys Cahill was holding court with a few neighbors.

While they had all been civil, they’d made Kate feel about as welcome as the plague. Funny. She knew now that most of them had leased their land for oil exploration, too.

Sighing, Kate let her mind wander. She didn't feel like having company. She wished, in fact, that she could just curl up in her bed and escape. She’d like to run from neighbors whose inbred courtesy didn’t quite mask the way they viewed her as an aberration—an outsider in their conservative, fundamentalist community.

And she needed to retreat from the feelings Jake evoked in her. Even the thought of seeing Becky made her cringe.

Too bad her friend was coming over. Early this morning, after a restless night spent vacillating between wanting and hating Jake Green, Kate had lacked the words to forestall Becky’s visit.

She emptied the two bags of cookies she’d just bought into a ceramic teddy bear jar and set it in the middle of the table. Then she set out plates, napkins, and glasses for cold drinks—milk for the kids, tea for herself and Becky.

When she heard the crunching of tires on her gravel driveway, she pasted on a determined smile and ran outside to help Becky get her toddlers, Rachel and Carey, out of their car seats and into the house. She gave the children some pots and spoons to play with before joining Becky at the kitchen table in front of the window.

“Who's that hunk getting out of the Porsche?”

Kate shifted Rachel's plump little body away from her face so she could look out the window and see who Becky was talking about—as if she didn't already know. How many folks in Groveland, Mississippi tooled around in costly foreign sports cars?

“That's Jake,” she said, hoping she sounded more casual than she felt. The other day she’d managed to avoid talking about him after he dropped her off at Becky's house.

“He can park his boots under my bed anytime he feels like it,” Becky said with a lascivious grin.

Kate was certain she was joking. Since they were fourteen years old, Becky had been in love with Stan Friedman. Kate and Gilda had set their caps for Stan, too, for a while. The four of them had become inseparable.

Soon, though, Stan had given his heart to pretty, dark-haired Becky. Becky would die, Kate was certain, before she would betray Stan.

“Becky, you're awful.”

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“Uh-huh. Still, he's a real temptation.”

Becky's dark eyes sparkled. Feeling her cheeks warming under her friend’s scrutiny, Kate wondered if Becky had already guessed just how far Jake had tempted her.

“Is he coming here?” She didn’t want to look out the window again, for fear her composure would shatter.

“No. Darn. I wanted to get a better look. Looks like he’s headed down toward the pond.”

“I’m not surprised. He has some men down there, drilling more holes.”

Kate set Rachel down on the floor and watched as the two-year-old toddled toward the stack of pots and spoons her sister Carey had been playing with. When the baby sank onto her well-padded bottom, Becky turned to Kate.

“Are you just going to stay here and watch oil rigs going up all over your place?”

“I don’t know. Jake told me yesterday that they might put in several more wells, and that the noise and dust would probably be so bad I wouldn’t want to stay. But this is my home. Where would I go?”

“How about a trip around the world for starters? I wouldn’t be sitting here all glum and gloomy if I knew I was going to be filthy rich before too long.” Excitement glowed on Becky's expressive face—an emotion Kate wished she shared.

“You’d like that. But you wouldn’t be going alone. You've got Stan and the girls.”

Kate tried to picture herself gadding about, having meaningless conversations with other women as lonely as she while she tried to enjoy the results of Jake’s drilling expertise.

“You could always just latch onto Mr. GreenTex himself.”

“Keep dreaming. The last thing on Jake’s agenda is getting serious. And even if he was looking for something permanent, I doubt he’d go for a plain, small-town girl like me.” The words hurt, but Kate wasn’t one to hide from painful truths.