Oil (filmed as There Will Be Blood) (34 page)

VI This meeting with Paul was the most exciting event of Bunny's life. It transvaluated all his values; things that had been wicked became suddenly heroic, while things that had been respectable became suddenly dull. Bunny, confronting the modern industrial world with its manifold injustices, had been like a man lost in a tangled forest. But here he had been taken up in a balloon, and shown the way out of the tangle. Everything was now simple, plain as a map. The workers were to take over the industries, and run them for themselves, instead of for the masters. Thus, with one stroke, the knot of social injustice would be cut! Bunny had heard of this idea, and it had sounded fantastic and absurd. But now came Paul to tell him that it had actually been done! A hundred million people, occupying one-sixth of the earth's surface, had taken over their industries, and were running them, and would make a success of them—if only the organized greed of the world would stand off and let them alone! Bunny took Paul in his car, to show him all the field. They investigated the new refinery, that wonderful work of art. Before them rose a great building, made entirely of enormous baking-pans set one inside another—a stack half way to heaven; the angels were making caramels for the whole world, dainties with a new, patented flavor, and sickish sweet odors that spread over the hills for miles and frightened the quail away! It was twilight, and the white steam that rose from these pans had a faint violet tinge as it merged with the sky. Electric lights came on, white and yellow and red, until the place looked like a section of Coney Island. And this resemblance increased as you drove farther, and came to a building, long and low, in which forty-four Dutchmen sat hidden puffing on forty-four pipes, and doing it all in unison, like an orchestra; the most comical effect you could imagine—forty-four exhausts all keeping time, quick and sharp—puff-puff-puff-puff-puff-puff-puff! Bunny felt his old embarrassment in connection with the Paradise tract; his title to these vast possessions was not clear, and Paul was bound to be jealous, realizing how his family had been tricked. But, then, in swift flashes of revelation, Bunny discovered how completely out of date these old feelings had become. Nevermore would Paul be jealous for his lost heritage; never would he consider the claims of the Watkins family—any more than the claims of the Ross family! The Paradise tract belonged to the Paradise workers; the beautiful new refinery was a ripe peach, hanging on a tree and waiting to be picked! All that was needed was for some one to point this out to the men. If Paul had not been weak and exhausted, he might have pointed it out that evening, and they could have taken over the plant, and had it ready for operation under the new management by morning! All power to the Soviets!

VII

Bunny went back to the university, charged with these electrical new thoughts; at one moment he would be trembling with excitement, and at the next he would be frightened to realize what he had been thinking. Some instinct warned him that the idea of expropriating the industries of Southern California would stand no chance with his class-mates; so he contented himself with telling the good tidings about Russia—that the revolution was not a blind outburst of ferocity, but the birth of a new social order. Bunny told this; and Peter Nagle received the gospel with his large mouth wide open; while Gregor Nikolaieff said yes, but why had they got his cousin in jail; and Rachel Menzies said they had got thousands of Socialists in jail; and Billy George said, "Let's get a group of fellows together and have Paul come and talk to them." The rumor spread with magical swiftness through the university, and the quick imaginations of Bunny's friends supplied all those details about which he had been silent. Bunny Ross knew a workingman who was an out-and-out Bolshevik, and had made Bunny into an out-and-out Bolshevik too; "the millionaire red" became his future designation. Men and women gathered round to question and argue with him; the arguments often broke up with furious word rows, but all the same it was interesting, and they came back for more. Bunny was made into a centre of Soviet propaganda; for, when they drove him to the wall with their arguments, what could he do but go to Paul for more facts, and then come back and hurl them at his adversaries' heads? His fraternity brothers sat up half the night with him, wrangling over his challenge to everything they considered good. With rest and home cooking Paul picked up considerably, and in a couple of weeks came down to Angel City to meet a friend. Bunny joined him, and had another adventure, in the person of Harry Seager. This man, ten years older than Paul, was the head of a small business college, who had put his affairs into a partner's hands and gone in for "Y work" during the war. They had sent him to Siberia, to help those two hundred and eighty railway men whom the bankers were paying. He had travelled up and down the line, seeing everything there was to see, and now he had "kicked over the traces," and was telling the truth about the situation, in spite of the protests of the " Y" authorities, and the army, and the state department, and the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association, and everybody that could put pressure on the head of a business college in Angel City. Dad was up to the ears just then in work, on account of some wild-catting they were planning on the Bandy tract. But Bunny insisted he must meet Harry Seager, and lured the two of them to lunch, and Paul also, and before the soup was eaten they had got Dad so stirred up that he did not eat any more. Of course he was horrified at their story; but there was no use expecting his mind to work the same as Bunny's. Dad couldn't straighten out all the tangles in the world, and didn't feel the impulse to try. What worried him was that the Japs were in Siberia; and that our diplomacy was so unaware of oil; and most of all, that his son was falling under the spell of wild and dangerous ideas. This fellow Seager, for example—a big six-foot Westerner, handsome as a Viking, and picturesque because of hair turned prematurely grey by his labors; you couldn't deny the fellow's facts, you couldn't think he was lying—but good Lord, there was no use being thrown off your base, and going round the country raising a public disturbance, attacking the government because it had made a blunder in the confusion of wartime, and then hadn't known how to get out. Bunny dragged his father to a Socialist meeting at which Harry Seager was to speak. It was in a big hall, with two or three thousand people packed into it, and Dad thought he had never seen so many dangerous people in all his life before: foreign faces, dark and sinister, intense-looking intellectuals with hair over their collars, women with short hair and big spectacles, workingmen, sullen and dull, or sharp-faced, bitter—oh, terrible, terrible people! And this man Seager, lashing them to frenzy! Telling about the "death-train" he had seen on the Trans-Siberian—more than two thousand men and women packed into cattle cars, prisoners of the "Whites," who did not know what to do with them, but ran the train here and there, shunting it onto sidings for weeks, while the victims perished of hunger, thirst and disease. And American troops standing by, feeding such murderers, supplying them with money, protecting them with guns! Yes, and it was still going on! Right now Polish troops were invading Russia, wearing American uniforms, killing Russian workingmen with American ammunition! What did the people of America have to say? What the people of America had to say was a roar that sent shivers down the spine of J. Arnold Ross. He looked about him at this human ocean tossed by a storm—hands waving, fists clenched, heads bobbing up and down with excitement; and he knew what it meant—nobody could fool him. When presently the crowd burst into cheering at the name of Lenin, they were not cheering for what the Russian Lenin had done, but for what some American Lenin meant to do. "Hands off Russia!"—that was mere camouflage; what they meant was, "Hands on Ross Consolidated!" And then, out of the corner of his eye, Dad stole a glimpse at his son. Bunny apparently did not feel one particle of his father's fear! Bunny was like the rest of the mob, his face shining with excitement. Bunny was shouting for "Hands off Russia!"—and either he did not know what this mob meant to do to Ross Consolidated, or else—worse yet—he did not care!

VIII

The little bunch of "reds" from the university had attended this Seager meeting, and next day were all a-thrill with it. Most of Bunny's fraternity brothers had refused to go; and now they proceeded to criticize an argument they had not heard! Bunny's feelings boiled over as he listened to them. All this rubbish about nationalization of women, these faked figures concerning millions of victims of Bolshevism! It was a disgrace to a university that such stuff should pass for knowledge, and no effort made to contradict it. Bunny voiced this idea to Peter Nagle, and Peter went home and talked to his father about it, and came back announcing that he was willing to serve as editor for a student paper to present the truth. There was another meeting of the conspirators, and thirty dollars was quickly subscribed, and it was voted to publish a four-page weekly sheet of all kinds of truth-telling, to bear the name of "The Investigator." It was agreed that the best approach to the Russian problem was Harry Seager, because he had been a "Y" worker in good standing; therefore Rachel Menzies was requested to write a two thousand word interview with Mr. Seager. Another young rebel was to collect facts and rumors concerning secret payments made out of an alumni fund to bring promising athletes to Southern Pacific. Bunny, as social light of the crowd, was assigned the theme of college snobbery, apropos of the fact that a Hindoo student with high scholarship records had been blackballed for the "Lit." And then Peter Nagle brought up his favorite hobby, in the form of a poem mildly satirizing God. There was some question as to the wisdom of bringing in the religious issue, but Peter asserted his prerogatives as editor; either he was or he wasn't, and if he was, then he took his stand upon the Russian formula, "Religion is the opium of the people." Billy George backed him up, insisting that the new paper should cover the whole field of modern thought. Well, "The Investigator" was written, and edited, and set up into galleys, and pasted on a "dummy," and then cut up and pasted differently. At last it was printed; there lay the sheets, fresh from the press, soft and damp, like locusts newly emerged from the chrysalis. Next day they would be dry; and meantime, "Ssh! Not a word!" How were the papers to be distributed? There had been much discussion. Bunny, with his lordly ideas, wanted to give them away. But Rachel brought word from her father, the tailor, who was also literature agent for Local Angel City of the Socialist party, that the papers must be sold; people wouldn't respect them otherwise. "What they pay good money for they will read," said Papa Menzies, with proper Jewish insight; and his daughter added, with proper Socialist fervor, "If we really believe in our cause, we won't mind a little ridicule." It was a call to martyrdom, and one after another they responded—though not without qualms. So, promptly at eight-thirty next morning, the campus in front of the Assembly building beheld a sight, the like of which had never thrilled the student-body of S. P. U. since the first days of the Methodist Sunday-school. The discoverer and heir-apparent of the Ross Junior oil field turned into a newsboy! Standing on a beach, with an armful of papers, shouting gaily, "The Investigator! First issue of the Investigator! Five cents a copy!" Did they buy them? Oh, ask! They crowded around Bunny three deep, he couldn't make the change fast enough; as the excitement spread, they crowded six deep, ten deep—it was a mob, a riot! Everywhere, all over the campus, men and women, seeing the throng, came running. An accident? A fight? What was the matter? People who got their copies and drew out of the crowd, became centres of minor disturbances, others trying to see over their shoulders, asking questions. For just about ten minutes this went on; until from the Administration building there emerged, portly and dignified, with gold nose-glasses and a roll of fat around his neck—just such a personage as you would meet in any big real estate office or bank in the city—Reginald T. Squirge, Ph.D., Dean of Men. Quietly and masterfully he penetrated the throng, and quietly and masterfully he took charge of the millionaire newsboy, and conducted him into his private office, still clutching his armful of papers. "Wait here," he commanded, and again went out, and returned with Peter Nagle; a third time he went out, and his prey was Gregor Nikolaieff; while at his heels came deputy deans, appointed ad hoc, escorting the other criminals. How many copies had been sold no one could say; the unsold copies were stacked in a corner of the Dean's office, and if they were ever counted the result was not made known. But enough had been distributed to set the campus ablaze. "Have you read it?" "Have you got a copy?"—that was all anybody heard that day. The price of "The Investigator" leaped to one dollar, and before night-fall some had sold for two or three times that price. One reason was that a copy had reached the Angel City "Evening Booster," most popular of newspapers, printed in green, five editions per day. The second edition, on the streets about noon, carried a "streamer head" across the front page: RED NEST AT UNIVERSITY! Bolshevik Propaganda at S. P. U. There followed a two-column story, carried over to page fourteen, giving a lurid account of "The Investigator's" contents, including the most startling of the facts about the hiring of athletes for the university, and the whole text of the satiric poem about God—but alas, only a very brief hint as to what Harry Seager had told about Siberia. A little later in the day came the rivals of the "Evening Booster," the "Evening Roarer" and the "Evening Howler"; they had been scooped one whole edition, but they made up for it by a mass of new details, some collected by telephone, the rest made up in the editorial offices. Said the "Evening Roarer": RED COLLEGE PLOT UNEARTHED and it went on to tell how the police were seeking Russian agents who had made use of Southern Pacific students to get their propaganda into print. The "Evening Howler," which went in especially for "human interest stuff," featured the ring-leader of the conspiracy: MILLIONAIRE RED IN COLLEGE! Son of Oil Magnate Backs Soviets! And it scooped its rivals by having a photograph of Bunny, which it had got by rushing a man to the Ross home, and informing Aunt Emma that Bunny had just been awarded a prize for the best scholarship record in ten years. The good lady was so excited, she sent the butler out to the corner drug-store three times, to see if the "Evening Howler" had arrived with the story of that prize!