Oil (filmed as There Will Be Blood) (28 page)

VI

Bunny went back to Beach City, to face a trial of the same sort. Grandma did not cry or faint, she just went up to her studio-room and locked the door and did not appear, even for meals. When Bunny was ready to go, he went and knocked on the door, and Grandma let him into her laboratory of paints and oils and high art. Her face was drawn but grim, and only her withered red eyelids gave her away. "Little boy," she said—he was still that to her, he would never grow up—"little boy, you are a victim of the old men's crimes. That means nothing to you now, but remember it, and some day, long after I'm gone, you'll understand." She kissed him without a sound, and he stole out, with tears running down his cheeks, and feeling somehow as if he himself were committing a crime. He felt still more that way when, a week later, he received a telegram saying that Grandmother Ross had been found dead in bed. He got a three day leave to come home and attend the funeral, and had to say his good-byes to the rest of the family all over again. The training-camp was located in the South, a place of blazing sunshine and vigorous perspiration. It was crowded with boys from every part of the state, mostly high school and college fellows, with a sprinkling of others who had got into the officer class by having military experience. The sons of grape-growers and orange and walnut and peach and prune growers, of cowmen and lumberman, and business and professional men in the cities—Bunny wanted to know what they were like, and what they thought about life and love and the war. He drilled until his back ached, and he studied, much the same as at school, but he lived in a tent, and ate ravenously, and grew in all directions. Now and then he would explore the country with a companion, but keeping himself out of the sex adventures that occupied most of the army's free time. Here was a place where no bones were made about plain talk; your superiors took it for granted that when you went out of the camp you went to look for a woman, and they told you what to do when you came back, and had a treatment-station where you lined up with the other fellows and made jokes about where you had been and what it had cost you. Bunny knew enough to realize that the women in the neighborhood of this camp who were open to adventures must be pretty well debauched after a year, so he had little interest in their glances or the trim silk-stockinged ankles they displayed. He had made application for the artillery, but they assigned him to study "military transportation," because of his knowledge of oil. He took this quite innocently, never realizing that Dad with his wide-spreading influence might have put in a word. Dad was quietly determined that Bunny was not going across the sea, no, not if this man's war lasted another ten years. Bunny was going to be among those who had charge of the army's supplies of gasoline and oil, seeing that the various products were up to standard and were efficiently and promptly shipped. Who could say—perhaps he might be among those who would have the job of working out contracts, and might be able now and then to put in a good word for Ross Consolidated!

VII

The new deal was going through, and Dad wrote long letters telling of the progress—letters which Bunny was to return when he had studied them, and not leave lying about in a tent. Also there were rumors in the papers, and then more detailed accounts, designed to prepare the public for the launching of a huge enterprise. Late in the summer Bunny got a furlough, and came home to get the latest news. "Home" no longer meant Beach City; for Dad had only been waiting till Bunny got through with school, and now he had moved to another house. It was a palace in the fashionable part of Angel City, which he had leased through a real estate agent for fifteen thousand a year. It was all pink stucco outside, with hedge plants trimmed to the shape of bells and balls like pawn-broker's signs. It had a wide veranda with swings hanging by brass chains, and ferns planted in a row of huge sea shells, and big plate glass windows that did not come open. Inside was furniture of a style called "mission oak," so heavy that you could hardly move it, but that was all right, because Dad didn't want to move it, he would sit in any chair, wherever it happened to be, and the only place he expected comfort was in his den, where he had a huge old leather chair of his own, and a store of cigars and a map of the Paradise tract covering one whole wall. One thing more Dad had seen to, that Grandma's biggest paintings were hung in the dining-room, including the scandalous one of the Germans with their steins! The rest of the old lady's stuff, her easel and paints and a great stack of her lesser works, were boxed and stowed in the basement. Aunt Emma was now the mistress of the household, with Bertie as head critic when she was home. On the desk in Dad's den was piled a stack of papers a foot high, relating to the new enterprise. He went over them one by one and explained the details. Ross Consolidated was going to be a seventy million dollar corporation, and Dad was to have ten millions in bonds and preferred stock, and another ten millions of common stock. Mr. Roscoe was to get the same for his Prospect Hill properties and those at Lobos River, and the various bankers were to get five millions for their financing of the project. The balance was to be a special class stock, twenty-five millions to be offered to the public, to finance the new development—one of the biggest refineries in the state, and storage tanks, and new pipe lines, and a whole chain of service stations throughout Southern California. This stock was to be "non-voting," a wonderful new scheme which Dad explained to Bunny; the public was to put up its money and get a share of the profits, but have nothing to say as to how the company was run. "We'll have no bunch of boobs butting in on our affairs," said Dad; "and nobody can raid us on the market and take away control." A little farther on in the explanations, Bunny began to see the meaning of that perpetual and unbreakable hold which Dad and Mr. Roscoe were giving to themselves. In the prospectuses and advertisements of Ross Consolidated, the public would be told all about the vast oil resources in the Ross Junior tract at Paradise; but here it was being fixed up that Ross Consolidated was not to operate this tract, but to lease it to a special concern, the Ross Junior Operating Company, and nobody but Dad and Mr. Roscoe and the bankers were to have any stock in that! There was a whole series of such intricate devices, holding companies and leasing companies and separate issues of stock, and some of these things were to go into effect at once, and some later on, after the public had put up its money! When Bunny, the "little idealist," began to make objections to this, he saw that he was hurting his father's feelings. Dad said that was the regular way of big money deals, and my God, were they running a soup-kitchen? The public would get its share and more— that stock would go to two hundred in the first year, just you watch and see! But it was Dad and his son who had done the hard work on the Paradise tract, and at Prospect Hill and Lobos River too; and the government wanted them to go on and do more such work, to drill a hundred new wells and help win the war, and how could they do it if they distributed the money around for people to throw away on jazz parties? Jist look at those "war-babies," and all the mad spending in New York! Dad was taking care of his money and using it wisely, in industry, where it belonged; he was perfectly sincere, and hard set as concrete, in his conviction that he was the one to whom the profits should come. He and Mr. Roscoe were two individuals who had fought the big companies and kept themselves afloat through all the storms; they were making an unbreakable combination this time, and they were going to get the jack out of it, just you bet!

VIII Meantime, the Germans had begun another offensive against the French, the most colossal yet; it was the second Battle of the Marne, and they called it their "Friedensturm," because they meant to capture Paris and win their peace. But now there were large sectors held by the American troops, of whom there were a million in France, and three hundred thousand coming every month, with all their supplies, in spite of the submarines. These troops were fresh, while all the others were exhausted; and so where they stood, the line did not give way, and the great German offensive was blocked and brought to a standstill. Then, a week or two later, began an event that electrified the whole world; the allies began to advance! Attacking now here, now there, they gained ground, they routed the enemy out of intrenchments which had been years in building, and were counted impregnable. All that mighty Hindenburg line began to crumble; and behind it, the Siegfried line, and the Hunding line, and all the other mythological constructions. To people in America it was the breaking of the first sunrays through black storm clouds. The "Yanks" were wiping out the famous St. Mihiel salient, they were capturing the enemy by tens of thousands, and even more important, the machine guns and artillery which the Germans could not replace. All through the early fall this went on; until the young officers-to-be in Bunny's training camp began to fret because this man's war was going to be over before they got to the scene. But all this time, not one word from Paul! Bunny received agonized letters from Ruth, "Oh, what do you think can have happened to him? I write him every week to the address he gave, and I know he would answer if he was alive." Bunny explained that it took six weeks for mail to go to Vladivostok and return; how much longer it took on the railroad no one could guess; and besides, there was a censorship, and many things might happen to letters in war-time. If Paul had been killed or wounded, the army would surely notify his parents; so no news was good news. There had been practically no fighting, as Ruth could see from the newspaper clippings which Bunny faithfully sent to her. The reports were scanty, but that was just because nothing much had happened; if there were any real fighting, or losses to the troops, the papers would get it, you might be sure. In the month of July of this year of 1918, the American and Japanese troops had made a landing in Vladivostok, practically unopposed; they had spread along the Trans-Siberian railway, and were policing it, and in fact running it, all the way to Lake Baikal where they had met the Czecho-Slovaks. With the help of these intelligent men, the allies now controlled the country clean across to the Volga; the Bolsheviks had to keep back in the interior. Now and then the newspapers would report that admiral this or general that was setting up a stable Russian government, of course with the help of allied money and supplies. At the west end of the line it would be a Cossack ataman and at the east end a Chinese mandarin or Mongolian tuchun or other strange beast; thus new stretches of earth's surface were being delivered from the wickedness of Bolshevism. Somewhere amid these picturesque and exciting events Paul Watkins of Paradise, California, was building army barracks and " Y" huts; and some day he would come back with a wonderful story to tell! So Bunny wrote, bidding Ruth keep cheerful, and have faith in the benevolence of her old Uncle Sam.

IX

The nights were growing cold in Bunny's cantonment, and from Europe the thrilling news continued to pour in, and spread across the front pages of the newspapers, six or eight editions every day. The allied advance was turning into a march, that long talked of march to Berlin! A march also to Vienna and to Sofia and to Constantinople—for everywhere the central powers were weakening, collapsing, surrendering. President Wilson issued his "fourteen points," on the basis of which the Germans were invited to quit. There were rumors of negotiations—the German leaders were suggesting a truce! There were two or three days of suspense, and then the answer, there would be no truce, only a surrender; the march to Berlin was on! And then one day an amazing report; the enemy had capitulated, the surrender had been signed! As a matter of fact, it was a false alarm, due to the American custom of keeping one jump ahead of events. Each paper wants to beat the others, so they get everything ready in advance—speeches that have not yet been delivered, ceremonies that have not yet taken place. Some nervous reporter let his finger slip on the trigger, and the message came that set all America wild. Such a spectacle had never been witnessed since the world began; every noisemaking instrument conceivable was turned loose, and men, women and children turned out on the streets, and danced and sang and yelled until they were exhausted; pistols were shot off, and autos went flying by with tin-cans bouncing behind; newsboys and stock-brokers wept on one another's shoulders, and elderly unapproachable bank-presidents danced the can-can with typists and telephone girls. A day or two later, when the real news came, they turned out to do it all over again, but never could recapture their first fine careless rapture. After that, of course, the fun had gone out of military training; all the young officers-to-be wanted to get back home, to go to college or to take up their jobs, and all who had any influence quickly got furloughs that were understood to be elastic. Such a favor came to Bunny, out of the blue void where Dad wielded his mysterious power, and he went home to watch the movements of "Ross Consolidated," which had been launched at an opening price of $108 per share for the "class B stock," and completely sold out in two days, and was now quoted in the market at i473/4. They had made the stock of "no par value"—another new device which Vernon Roscoe's fancy lawyers had recommended; there were certain taxes both state and federal which could be dodged by this method, and moreover there would never be need to issue "stock dividends" to conceal the amount of the profit. Mr. Roscoe was certainly a wizard when it came to finance, just about the smartest feller Dad had met in the oil-game. It was a tremendous load taken off Dad's shoulders, for now the enormous Roscoe machine would market the oil and collect the money. Dad's job was new developments—the part of the game he really liked. He was a member of the board of directors of the new concern, and also a vice-president, at a salary of a hundred thousand a year, with charge of exploring and drilling; he would travel here and there and lay out the tracts and select the drilling sites, and see that every well was brought in properly, before turning it over to another executive, the superintendent of operation. It was Dad's idea that Bunny should take a position under his father, to start with say six thousand a year, until everybody was satisfied that he knew the business; the two of them would have the time of their lives, driving all over Southern California and smelling out oil, just like at Paradise! Bunny said that sounded good, but he'd want a little time to think it over and get used to the idea that he wasn't going to Siberia or to France. Dad said all right, of course, he mustn't jump into things in a hurry; but Bunny could see that he was a little pained because his son and namesake did not do that very thing!