Oil (filmed as There Will Be Blood) (13 page)

CHAPTER V THE REVELATION 1

Bunny was going to school. Aunt Emma and grandmother and Bertie had got their way by incessant nagging, and he was no longer to be a "little oil gnome," and devote his time to learning to make money; he was going to be a boy like other boys, and have a good time, and wear athletic sweaters, and shout at football games, and be part of a great machine. Mr. Eaton had been spurred to a last suicidal effort, and had patched up the weak spots in the mental equipment of his charge, and Bunny had passed some examinations, and was a duly enrolled pupil in the Beach City High School. This school occupied two blocks on the outskirts of town, and consisted of several buildings arranged on three sides of a square; elaborate and ornate buildings, a great pride to the city, as well as a strain upon its purse. The school was free, and to it came the sons and daughters of that part of the population which did not have to go to work before the age of eighteen or twenty. This meant all the moderately well-to-do people; and the boys and girls, thus constituting an economic stratum, proceeded to arrange themselves in sub-strata upon the same principle. Their "secret societies" were forbidden by the teachers, but flourished none the less; the basis of admission being wealth and the pleasant things which wealth buys—well-nourished bodies, and fashionable clothing, and easy manners, and a playful attitude towards life. The young people were collected into small herds, and rushed about from room to room, where culture was handed out to them in properly measured doses. It was an enormous education-factory, and the parents had paid for the best possible equipment, but by some process impossible to explain, it was gradually being taken away from the teachers, and turned over to the pupils. Every year the young people seemed to be less interested in work, and more absorbed in what were called "outside activities"—the athletic-field, the tennis and basket-ball courts, the big swimming pool and the dancing floor. The boys and girls were making for themselves a separate world, having its own standards, its own secret life. They wore pins and badges, and had pass-words and grips with esoteric significance; they had elaborate codes, having to do with the wearing of flowers, or the color of your neck-tie, or the ribbon on your hat, or the angle at which you affixed a postage stamp to an envelope. It was a herd life, based in part upon money-prestige, like the life of the adults, and in part upon athletic prowess. It consisted in rushing about from one mass-event to another mass-event. You pitted the powers of your team against those of some other team, and the ability of your mob to shout louder than the other mob; you got together and rehearsed these shoutings, while the teams rehearsed the battles over which you were to shout. It was all practice for the later and more real glories of college and university, where the financially and athletically more powerful students would be taken up by the great fraternities, and would perform their social and athletic functions with skill and grace made perfect. Bunny, as we know, possessed the requirements of a fraternity career; he had Anglo-Saxon features, and plenty of big sweaters, and drove to school in a car of that year's model. He was taken up by an exclusive society, and was soon in demand for whatever was going on. He was enormously interested in everything; he had never imagined there were so many young people in the world before, and he wanted to know them all. He raced about with them from one thing to another, and watched with open eyes and listened with open ears to everything that came from either the teachers or the pupils. But all the time there was something which set him apart from the rest—something sober and old-fashioned and "queer." It came, no doubt, from his knowing so much about the oil business; Bertie was right in her cruel remark that he had oil stains under his finger-nails. He would never share the idea of other darlings of luxury, that "money grows on trees"; he knew that it comes by hard and dangerous work. Also, Bunny had to meet the situation at home, which he understood quite clearly; his father wasn't at all sure that high school was the best place for a boy, and was watching and listening all the time, to see what sort of ideas Bunny was getting. So the boy was always comparing the school's kind of education with Dad's kind, and which was really right? Before starting out in his new career Bunny received what parents know as a "serious talk"; and that was curious and puzzling. First, Dad was going to give him a car, and there must be rules about it. He must give his word never to exceed the speed limit, whether in the city or outside; and that was certainly a curious case of the double standard of morals! But Dad met it frankly; he was mature, and could judge about speeds; moreover, he had important business for his excuse, but Bunny was to start for school early, and the rest of the time he would be driving for pleasure. He might take out others in his car, but he must never let anyone drive the car but himself; Dad had no money to run a free garage for a high school fraternity, and it would be convenient for Bunny to be able to say, once for all, that his father had laid down the law in that matter. Furthermore, Dad wanted Bunny to promise him not to smoke tobacco or drink liquor until he was twenty-one. Here again was the "double standard," and Dad was frank about it. He had learned to smoke, but wished he hadn't; if Bunny wanted to acquire the habit, it was his right, but Dad thought he ought to wait until he was old enough to know what he was doing, and until he had got his full growth. And the same applied to liquor. Dad drank very little now, but there had been a time in his life when he had come close to becoming a drunkard, and so he was afraid of it, and Bunny's being allowed to go to college—at least on Dad's money—would have to be dependent upon his promising to avoid the drinking-bouts. Bunny said all right, sure; that was easy enough for him. He would have liked to ask more about Dad's own story, but he did not quite like to. He had never seen Dad drunk; and it was a startling idea to contemplate. Finally there was the matter of women; and here, apparently, Dad could not bring himself to be frank. Two things he said: first, Bunny was known to have a father with a pile of money, and this exposed him to one of the worst perils of young men. All kinds of women would be a-tryin' to get a-hold of him, just in order to get him to spend money on them, or to blackmail him; and Bunny would be disposed to trust women, so he must be warned about this. Dad told him dreadful stories about rich young men, and the women into whose hands they had fallen, and how it had wrecked their lives and brought shame upon their families. And then, there was the matter of disease; loose women were very apt to have diseases, and Dad told something about this, and about the quacks who prey upon ignorant and frightened boys. If one got into trouble of that sort, one must go to a first-class doctor. And that was all Dad had to say. Bunny took it gratefully, but he wished there might have been more; he would have liked to ask his father many questions, but he could not bring himself to do it, in the face of his father's evident shrinking. Dad's manner and attitude seemed to say that there was something so inherently evil about sex that you just couldn't bring yourself to talk about it; it was part of your life that you lived in the dark, and never dragged out into the light. Bunny's idea was that his father's discourse didn't apply very much to himself. He knew there were dirty boys, but he was not one, and never expected to be. The matter was made easier for Bunny by the fact that he very soon fell severely in love. There were such swarms of charming young feminine things in the school, it was simply not possible to escape them, especially when your possessions and social standing were such that so many of them set out after you! Some young misses were too bold in their advances, or too obviously coy, and repelled the shy lad; the one who secured him was very demure and still, so that his imagination could endow her with romantic qualities. Rosie Taintor was her name, and she had hair that made a tail halfway down her back, and was fluffy on her forehead, with golden glints; she was even more shy than Bunny, and had little conversation, but that was not necessary, for she had a great power of admiration, and had a phrase by which she expressed it: things were "wonderful"; they grew more and more "wonderful," with soulful, mysterious whispers; the oil business was especially "wonderful," and Rosie never tired of being told about it, which pleased Bunny, who had much to tell. Rosie's father, and also her mother, were dentists, and this is not an especially romantic occupation, so naturally the child thought it thrilling to dash about the country as Bunny did, and direct armies of labor, and command vast treasures to flow out of the earth. Bunny would take her for rides; and when they were out in the country, where it was safe, Bunny would drive with one hand, and the other hand would rest on Rosie's, and truly "wonderful" were the thrills that would steal over both of them. They were content to ride that way for hours; or to get out and wander in the hills, and gather wild flowers, and sit and watch the sunset. Bunny was full of reverence, and when one or twice, he dared so far as to place a kiss upon his adored one's cheek, it was with almost religious awe. When the weather was not suitable for outdoor courtship, he would visit her home, where the mother and father had a hobby, the collecting of old English prints; these were framed on all the walls, and there were stacks of them you could look at, quaint eighteenth-century scenes of hunting gentlemen in red coats with packs of hounds, and red-cheeked barmaids serving pots of ale to topers with big pipes. Bunny would look at these for hours—for it took only one hand to turn them over. What is there that is not "wonderful," when you are so young, and at the same time so good? It made Bunny walk on air, just to buy a new straw-hat, and meet his chosen one upon the street, and anticipate her comments!

II

When Dad took his business trips now he took them alone; that is, unless he could arrange them for week-ends and holidays. He didn't like going alone; and Bunny for his part, always had a part of his mind on Dad, and when Dad got back, he would hear all the details of how things were going. There were six wells now at Lobos River, and they were all "paying big." Dad had four more drilling, and had deepened eleven of his old Antelope wells, and had a pipe line there, through which a river of wealth was flowing to him. On the Bank-side lease he had six wells, all on production, and he had paid Mr. Bankside something over a million dollars of royalty, and had only got started, so he said. He had a good well on the next lease, the Ross-Wagstaff, and three more drilling, and out about half a mile to the north he was opening up new territory with the Ross-Armitage No. 1. It was amazing to see what had happened to the Prospect Hill field. All over the top of the hill and the slopes a forest of oil derricks had arisen, and had started marching across the fields of cabbages and sugar beets. Seeing them from the distance, in the haze of sunset, you could fancy an army of snails moving forth— the kind which have crests lifted high in the air. When you came near, you heard a roaring and a grumbling, as of Pluto's realm; at night there was a scene of enchantment, a blur of white and golden lights, with jets of steam, and a glare of leaping flame where they were burning gas that came roaring out of the earth, and which they had no way to use. Yes, when you drove past, sitting in a comfortable car, you might mistake it for fairyland. You had to remind yourself that an army of men were working here, working hard in twelve hour shifts, and in peril of life and limb. Also you had to remember the pulling and hauling, the intrigue and treachery, the ruin and blasted hopes; you had to hear Dad's stories of what was happening to the little fellows, the thousands of investors who had come rushing to the field like moths to a candle-flame. Then your fairyland was turned into a slaughter-house, where the many were ground up into sausages for the breakfast of the few! Dad had a big office now, with a manager and half a dozen clerks, and he sat there, like the captain of a battle-ship in his conning tower. Whatever might happen to the others, Dad took care of himself and his own. He had come to be known as the biggest independent operator in the field, and all sorts of people came to him with propositions; new, wonderful, glowing schemes—with Dad's reputation for solidity, he could organize a ten or twenty million dollar company, and the investing public would flock to him. But Dad turned all such things down; he would wait, he told Bunny, until Bunny was grown up, and through with this here education business. They would have a pile of cash by that time and would do something sure enough big. And Bunny said all right, that suited him. He hoped the "something big" might be at Paradise, for then he would have a real share in it. Dad said, sure, the Watkins ranch was his discovery, and when they come to drill there, the well would be known as the Ross Junior. They had made no move there; they were waiting, because of an unfortunate slip-up in the negotiations for the land. An unkind fate had willed that Mr. Bandy, owner of the big Bandy tract, had been away from home on the day that Mr. Hardacre had collected his options; and when Mr. Bandy got back, and learned about all the sudden purchases, he became suspicious, and decided that he would hold onto his land. At least, it amounted to that, for he raised his price from five dollars an acre to fifty! What made this especially bad, the Bandy tract lay right next to the Watkins section; it was over a thousand acres, and ran near to where Dad and Bunny had found the oil—in fact, Dad thought the streak of oil was on Mr. Bandy's land, he couldn't be sure without a survey. They would wait, Dad said, and let Mr. Bandy stay in pickle for a few years. It was like a cat watching a gopher hole, and which would get tired first. Bunny asked which was Mr. Bandy, the cat or the gopher; and Dad replied that if anybody ever mistook Jim Ross for a gopher, he would just try to show them their mistake. So they were waiting. Some day that mythical relative of Dad's, who was an invalid, was coming into those rocky hills and tend a few thousand goats; and meantime most of the ranches were rented to the people who had formerly owned them. Three or four were vacant, but Dad didn't worry about that; he would leave them to the quail, he said, and told Mr. Hardacre to put up a thousand "No Trespassing" signs over the whole twelve thousand acres he had bought, so as to impress Mr. Bandy with Dad's gluttonous attitude toward small game.