VI
At less than two hundred feet they struck the sands which accounted for Bunny's "earthquake oil"; there proved to be two feet of them, and Dad said it would give them enough oil to run their own car for a year! They were going deeper, still with an eighteen inch bit, through hard sandstone formation; they were working in an open hole, with no casing, because the ground was so firm. Paul was working as a general utility man, mainly carpentry. "Dad, we're going to make Paul our manager some day," Bunny had said; but Paul had smiled and said that he was going to be a scientist, and he wouldn't fool himself with the idea that the jobs at the top were easy—he'd not exchange his eight hour job for Dad's eighteen hour job. This was a subtle kind of flattery, and gave Dad a tremendously high opinion of Paul! Thanksgiving Day was coming; and Bunny's soul was torn in half. It was a great occasion at the school, the annual foot-ball battle with a rival institution known as "Polly High," located in Angel City. And what was Bunny, a real boy or an oil gnome? He fought it out within himself, and announced his decision, to the dismay of Rosie Taintor and of Aunt Emma—he was going to Paradise with Dad! It was the quail season, and Dad needed a change, the boy told his aunt; but the sharp old lady said he could fool himself, but he couldn't fool her. They didn't have to take any camping things now, for they had their cabin on the Rascum place, with a telephone and everything comfortable. There was an extension phone in the bungalow, and all they had to do was to call up Ruth, and there would be a jolly fire in the cabin, and a supper on the table at the bungalow, with all kinds of home-made good things, the eating of which would make it necessary for Dad to walk miles and miles over the hills next day! First, of course, they would stop at the well, and inspect things, and have a talk with the foreman. There were traces of oil again, and Dad had told them to take a core, and he asked Mr. Banning to come up next day and study it with him. They came in sight of the derrick. The drill-stem was out of the hole, they could see the mass of "stands" setting in place. When they got nearer, they saw that the crew had a cable down in the hole; and when Dave Murgins, the foreman, saw them, he came out to the car, and it was plain that something was wrong. "We've had an accident, Mr. Ross." "What's the matter?" "There's a man fell in the hole." "Oh, my God!" cried Dad. "Who?" And Bunny's heart was in his throat, for of course his first thought was Paul. "A roughneck," said the foreman. "Fellow by the name of Joe Gundha. You don't know him." "How did that happen?" "Nobody knows. We was changing the bit, and this fellow went down into the cellar for some reason—he had no business there that we know of. Nobody thought about him for a while." "You sure he went down?" "We been fishing with a hook, and we got a bit of his shirt." Bunny was white about the lips. "Oh, Dad, will he be alive?" "How long has he been down?" "We've been fishing half an hour," said Murgins. "And you haven't heard a sound?" "Not one." "Well then, he's drowned in the mud. How far down is he?" "About fifty feet. The mud sinks that far when we take out the drill-stem. He must have went down head first, or he'd have been able to keep his head above the mud and make a noise." "My God! My God!" exclaimed Dad. "It makes me want to quit this business! What can you do to help men that won't help themselves?" Bunny had heard that cry a thousand times before. They had a cover for the hole, and any man who went down into the cellar was supposed to slip it into place. Of necessity the dirt caved in about the edges, so that the top of the hole was a kind of funnel, its edges slippery with mud, and in this case with traces of oil; yet men would take chances, sliding around on the edge of that yawning pit! What could you do for them? "Has he got any family?" asked Dad. "He told Paul Watkins he'd got a wife and some children in Oklahoma; he worked in the oil fields there." Dad sat motionless, staring in front of him; and nobody said a word. They knew he really was interested in his men, taking care of them was a matter of personal pride to him. Bunny had turned sort of sick inside; gee, what a shame—in his well, of all places, his first one, that was to start off the new field! It was all spoiled for him; he wouldn't be able to enjoy his oil if he got it! "Well," said Dad, at last, "what are you doin'? Jigglin' a hook up and down in there? You'll never get him up that way. You'll have to put down a three-pronged grab." "I thought that would tear him so—" explained Dave Murgins, hesitatingly. "I know," said Dad; "but you've got it to do. It ain't as if he might have any life in him. Bend the prongs so they fit the hole, and force them past the body. Go ahead and get it over with, and let's hope it'll teach the rest of you something." Dad got out of the car, and told Bunny to take their things down to the Rascum place, and break the news to Ruth; she'd be upset, especially if she knew the fellow. Bunny understood that Dad didn't want him around when that torn body came out of the hole; and since he couldn't do any good, he turned the car in silence, and drove away. In his mind he saw the men screwing the "grab" onto the drill-stem—a tool which was built to go over obstacles that fell into the hole, and to catch hold of them with sharp hooks. They might get Joe Gundha by the legs and they might get him by the face—ugh, the less you thought about a thing like that, the better for your enjoyment of the oil-game! Dad came to the cabin after a couple of hours, and lay down for a while to rest. They had got the body out, he said, and had telephoned for the coroner; he would swear in several of the men as a jury, and hear the testimony of others, and look at the body, and then give a burial permit. Paul had been to the dead man's bunk and looked over his things, and put them all into a box to be shipped to his wife; Dad had in his pocket half a dozen letters that had been found among the things, and because he didn't want Bunny to think that money came easy, or that life was all play, he gave him these letters, and Bunny sat off in a corner and read them: pitiful little messages, scrawled in a childish hand, telling how the doctor said that Susie's heart would be weak for a long time after the flu, and the baby was getting two more teeth and was awful cross, and Aunt Mary had just been in to see her, and said that Willie was in Chicago and doing good; there were cross-marks and circles that were kisses from mamma, and from Susie and from the baby. One sentence there was to cheer up Dad and Bunny: "I am glad you got such a good boss." Well, it made a melancholy Thanksgiving evening for them; they ate a little of the feast which Ruth had prepared, but without real enjoyment. They talked about accidents, and Dad told of something which had happened in the first well he had drilled— they were down only thirty feet, when a baby had crawled down into the cellar and slid into the hole. It had taken a couple of able-bodied men to hold the mother back, while the rest of them tried to get the child out. They fished for it with the big hook on the end of a rope, and got the hook under the baby's body and lifted it gently a few feet, but then the body got wedged somehow, and they were helpless. The child had hung there, not screaming, just making a low, moaning sound all the time, "U-u-u-" like that, never stopping; they could hear it plainly. They started twenty feet from the well and dug a shaft, big enough for two men to work in, breaking the ground with crow bars, scraping it into buckets with big hoes, and the men on top hauling the buckets out with ropes. When they got below the baby, they ran in sideways, and got the baby out all right. The hook had sunk into the flesh of the thigh, but without breaking the skin; the bruise had healed, and in a few days the child was all right. A strange thing was life! If Bunny had stayed home that day, he'd have taken Rosie Taintor to the foot-ball game, and at the moment when poor Joe Gundha had plunged to his doom, Bunny would have been yelling his head off over a few yards gained by his team. And now, in the evening, he'd have been at a dance; yes, Bertie actually was at a dance, at the home of one of her fashionable friends, or at some fancy hotel where they were giving a party. Bunny could see, in his mind's eye, her gleaming shoulders and bosom, her dress of soft shimmering stuff, her bright cheeks and vivid face; she would be sipping champagne, or gliding about the room in the arms of Ashleigh Mathews, the young fellow she was in love with just now. Aunt Emma would be all dressed up, playing at a card-party; and grandmother was painting a picture of a young lord, or duke, or somebody, in short pants and silk stockings, k
issing the hand of his lady love! Yes, life was strange—and cruel. You lived in the little narrow circle of your own consciousness, and, as people said, what you didn't know didn't hurt you. Your Thanksgiving dinner was spoiled, because one poor laborer had slid down into a well which you happened to own; but dozens and perhaps hundreds of men had been hurt in other wells all over the country, and that didn't trouble you a bit. For that matter, think of all the men who were dying over there in Europe! All the way from Flanders to Switzerland the armies were hiding in trenches, bombarding each other day and night, and thousands were being mangled just as horribly as by a grab in the bottom of a well; but you hadn't intended to let that spoil your Thanksgiving dinner, not a bit! Those men didn't mean as much to you as the quail you were going to kill the next day! Well, the coroner came, and they buried the body of Joe Gundha, on a hill-top a little way back out of sight, and with a wooden cross to mark the spot. It was a job for Mr. Shrubbs, the preacher at Eli's church; and Eli came along, and old Mr. Watkins and his wife, and other old ladies and gentlemen of the church who liked to go to funerals. It was curious—Dad seemed glad to have them come and tell him what to do; they knew, and he didn't! Obviously, it didn't really do the poor devil any good to preach and pray over his mangled corpse; but at least it was something, and there were people who came and did it, and all you had to do was just to stand bare-headed in the sun for a while, and hand the preacher a ten dollar bill afterwards. Yes, that was the procedure— in death, as in life; you wanted something done, and there was a person whose business it was to do that thing, and you paid him. To Bunny it seemed a natural phenomenon—and all the same, whether it was Mr. Shrubbs, who prayed over your dead roughneck, or the man at the filling station who supplied the gas and oil and water and air for your car, or the public officials who supplied the road over which you drove the car. Dad had sent a telegram to Mrs. Gundha, telling her the sad news, and adding that he was sending a check for a hundred dollars to cover her immediate expenses. Now Dad wrote a letter, explaining what they had done, and how they were sending her dead husband's things in a box by express. Dad carried insurance to cover his liability for accidents, and Mrs. Gundha would be paid by the insurance company; she must present her claim to the industrial accident commission. They would probably allow her five thousand dollars, and Dad hoped she would invest the money in government bonds, and not let anybody swindle her, with oil stocks or other get rich quick schemes. So that was that; and Dad said they might just as well go quail shooting, and forget what they couldn't help. And Bunny said all right; but in truth he didn't enjoy the sport, because in his mind somehow the quail had got themselves mixed up with Joe Gundha and the soldiers in France, and he couldn't get any fun out of mangled bodies.
VII
Christmas was coming; and Bunny had his program all laid out. He was going to take Dad to the Christmas Day foot-ball game, and next morning they would leave for Paradise, and stay there until it was time to go back for the New Year's Day foot-ball game. The well was going fine; they were down over two thousand feet, in soft shale, and having no trouble. Then, a couple of weeks before Christmas, Bunny came home from school, and Aunt Emma said, "Your father just phoned; he's got some news about Excelsior Peter." That was a joke they had in the family—"Excelsior Peter"; Aunt Emma had guessed that "Pete" was a nickname, and she would be real lady-like and use the full name! So, of course, they teased the life out of her. "What is it?" cried Bunny. "They've struck oil." "At Paradise?" Bunny rushed to the phone, in great excitement. Yes, Dad said, Dave Murgins had just phoned down; "Excelsior-Carter No. 1," as the well was called, had been in oil sands for several days, and had managed to keep it secret. Now they were cementing off, something you couldn't hide. Bunny jumped into the car and rushed down to the office. Everybody was excited; the afternoon papers had the news, and some of Dad's oil friends dropped in to talk about it. It meant a new field, of course; there would be a rush to Paradise. Dad was the lucky one—to think he had got twelve thousand acres up there, owned them outright! How had it happened? Dad said it wasn't his doings; he had spent a hundred thousand dollars just to amuse his boy, to get him interested in the business, and perhaps teach him a lesson. But now, by golly, it looked as if the boy had done the teaching! Mr. Bankside, who had got to be quite an oilman now, and was drilling a well of his own, said that he always hoped his sons would lose when they started gambling, so they'd not get the habit; Dad said yes, but he'd risk Bunny's soul this once, there was too much money at stake! After that, of course, Bunny was on pins and needles to get to Paradise; he wanted to quit school, but Dad said no. Bunny decided he didn't care about that old Christmas Day foot-ball game; what did Dad think? To which Dad answered that he'd managed to get along to the age of fifty-nine without ever seeing a foot-ball game! So Bunny said he'd write and tell Ruth, they'd run up on Christmas eve, starting after school, and have dinner late, in regular society style. It would be hard for Ruth to believe that fashionable people in the cities ate their dinner at eight or nine o'clock at night! Meantime, the bit was grinding away in the well; they were down to 2300 feet, and it was known that Excelsior-Carter No. 1 had struck the sands at 2437 feet. Bunny was so much excited that he would run to the phone in between classes at school, and call up his father's secretary at the office, to ask if there was any news. And so, three days before Christmas, he got the magic word; Dad was on the phone, and said that Bunny's well was in oil-sands. It was too early yet to say any more, they were taking a core, that was all. As soon as he got free from class, Bunny went flying over to the office, and there he listened to a conversation— Dad had put in a long distance call, and was talking to the man from whom he got his machinery. He was ordering a patent casing-head, the biggest made, to be shipped to the well; it was to be put on a truck and start tonight. And then Dad was talking to Mur-gins again, telling him at what hour the casing-head was due, and they must set to work and break out the drill-stem, and put that casing-head on tight, with lugs on the side, and just bury it with cement, not less than fifty tons, Dad said; they were away off from everything, out there at Paradise, and if they was to have a blowout, it would be the very devil. Well, they got their core, eight feet of it, and it was high gravity oil—a fortune waiting for them, down underneath those rocky hills, where the feet of goats and sheep had trod for so many years! Dad ordered his "tankage," and then he ordered more. Then they learned that the casing-head had arrived; it was screwed on, and the "lugs" were on, and when the cement had set, all the gas under Mount Vesuvius couldn't lift that there load, said Dad. They started drilling again, and took another core, and found the oil heavier yet. So finally Dad gave way, and said it was too important, he guessed Bunny would have to beg off a day in school. Dad gave orders to "wash" the well, and he called up the cement man, and arranged for the big truck to set out for Paradise; Dad would meet them there, and they would do the job the day before Christmas, and if they got their shut-off, they'd celebrate with the biggest turkey in that famous turkey-raising country. So, early the next morning, Dad and Bunny chucked their suit-cases into the car, and set out to break the speed records to Paradise. Three hours later they stopped to telephone, and the foreman said they were "washing;" also that the Excelsior Pete well had got a water shut-off, and had drilled through the cement, and was going down into the oil sands, the final stage of making a well. They got to San Elido; and Dad said, "We'll just stop and shake hands with Jake Coffey." They drove up to the store, and Bunny jumped out, and there was a clerk and he said, "Jake's gone up to Paradise to see the well. Have you heard the news? Excelsior Pete has got a gusher, there's oil all over the place!" Bunny ran out and shouted to Dad, and leaped into the car, and gosh-amighty, the way they did burn up that road across the desert! Dad laughed, and said the speed-cops would all be up at the well. They got to Paradise, and the town was deserted, not a soul on the streets, and not a car, except those that were hurrying through, like the Rosses. A burglar could have made off with the whole place—but a
ny burglar would have been watching the gusher, along with the speed-cops! You had to park your car a quarter of a mile away from the well, and you could hear the gusher roaring like Niagara Falls! And then, walking, you came round a turn in the road, and you could see the valley, and everything in sight was black; there was a high wind blowing, and it was a regular thunder cloud, a curtain of black mist as far as you could see. The derrick was hidden altogether—you had to make a detour, behind a little ridge, and come over the top to windward, and there the crowds were gathered, staring at the great black jet that came rushing up out of the ground, a couple of hundred feet into the air, with a sound like an endless express train going by. You could see men working, or trying to work, under the derrick; you could see a bunch of them with picks and shovels, throwing up a sort of dam to hold the oil; they wouldn't save much, Dad said, it evaporated too fast. Dad could watch this scene philosophically; it wasn't his "funeral." If it had been one of the independents, like himself, he'd have offered to help; but this was a dirty crowd, Excelsior Pete, they didn't think the little fellows had any business on earth, there was nothing too mean for them to do. Of course, it was a shame to see all that treasure going to waste; but you couldn't be sentimental when you were playing the oil game. What you had to watch out for was that the wind didn't shift suddenly and ruin your good suit of clothes!
Oil! A Novel by Upton Sinclair Page 18