II
One evening they all went to hear Eli; in a great tent such as would hold a three ring circus, with thousands of cars parked in the fields about, and sawdust strewn in the aisles, and hundreds of wooden benches, crowded with soldier boys and ranchers and their wives and children. There was a platform with the evangelist, wearing a white robe with a golden star on his bosom, for all the world like some Persian magus; and there was a "silver band," with trumpets and bass-tubas gleaming so that they put your eyes out. When those big blarers started a hymn of glory, and the audience started to rock and shout, "Praise the Lord!" the top of that tent would bulge up! Eli preached against the Hun, telling how the Holy Spirit had revealed to him that the enemy was to be routed before the year was by, and promising eternal salvation to all who died in this cause of the Lord—provided, of course, that they had not rejected their chance to be saved by Eli. In the middle of the stage was a tank constructed, with steps descending into it, and the converts sitting in rows on the platform, garbed in white nighties; when that stage of the ceremonies arrived, Eli descended into the water himself, and grabbed his victims one by one by the backs of their necks, and in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost he swung them forward, souse! into the water. Thereby their sins were washed from the very last hair of their bodies, and if from the holy water they contracted any of those diseases which are the penalty of sins, even among military crusaders—well, all they had to do was to come back again and have themselves "healen" by the prophet of the Third Revelation. Next day the family drove home, and how much they had to gossip about on the way, and for weeks thereafter! Bunny was looking forward to living this camp-life the coming summer— except that, because of the preparation he was getting in school, and also because of Dad's influence, he was to be in an officer's training-camp. He was full of consecration, and working harder than ever at his duties. Late in March began that long-dreaded onslaught on the Western front; one of those battles to which the world had grown accustomed, extending .over a hundred miles of front, and lasting all day and all night for several weeks. Such a battle was not named from a town or a city, but from a province; this was the battle of Picardy. The German rush broke through the British line, and drove them back in rout for thirty or forty miles, and captured a hundred thousand men, and it seemed that Dad's worst forebodings were to be realized. But neither the Germans nor the allies knew that in an obscure village amid the fruit orchards of California a mighty prophet was exercising his magic on their behalf. It chanced that Eli Watkins read a news item from the front, declaring that the only thing which could save the British army was rain; and forthwith he assembled his hosts of prayer, and all night long they rocked upon their knees and wrung their hands unto the Lord, invoking storms in Picardy; and the Lord heard them, and the floodgates of heaven were opened, and the rain descended, and the feet of the Huns were stuck fast, yea, and their chariot wheels also, and their mighty men at arms were drowned in mud; but on the side where the hosts of the Lord were battling there fell no rain, but the ground was clean, and reinforcements came up, and the British line was saved, and back amid the California orchards the hosannas of the faithful shook the blossoms off the prune-trees.
Even amid such agonies and thrills, Bunny, being young, had his personal life. On his way home after drill he ran into Nina Goodrich, one of his class-mates, turning a corner in her car, clad in a bathing-suit with a cape over it. Upon such little things do one's life-destinies depend! She slowed up and called, "Come have a swim with me!" He hopped in, and she whisked him down to the beach in two minutes, and in five more he had hired a bathing suit and got into it, and the two of them were running a race along the sand. Nina Goodrich was one of those lavish Junos, of whom California brings to ripeness many thousands every year. Her limbs were strong trunks, and her hips were built for carrying a dozen babies, and her bosom for the nourishing of them. She had fair hair and a complexion that had not come out of a bottle, and her skin was bronzed by hours in the surf, in those fragile one-piece bathing suits the girls were wearing, which revealed considerably more than fifty per cent of their natural charms. Never could a man who took himself a wife in Southern California complain that he did not know what he was getting! The two swam down the shore, a long way, not troubled by the chill of the water; they ran hand in hand on the beach, and as they went back to the bath-house, Nina said, "Come have supper with me, Bunny; I'm tired of home." So Bunny slipped into his clothes, and she drove him back to her home, and while she changed he sat in the car and got up his next lesson in nineteenth century English poetry. The poet called attention to a chain of natural phenomena:
The sunlight clasps the earth And the moonbeams kiss the sea! What are all these kissings worth, If thou kiss not me? They drove to a cafeteria, an invention where California fish and California fruits and California salads are spread out before the eyes in such profusion as to trouble a nineteen year old Juno already struggling to "reduce." There was nothing so safe as eelery, said Nina, it took both space and time; while she munched, they sat by the window, and watched the sun set over the purple ocean, and the slow fog steal in from the sea. Then they got into the car, and without saying a word she drove out of town and down the coast highway; one of her hands was is Bunny's, and he, searching the caverns of his memory, remembered having heard Eunice mention that Nina had had a desperate affair with Barney Lee, who had enlisted a year ago, and was now in France. They stopped at a lonely place, and there was a rug in the car, and pretty soon they were sitting by the noisy surf, and Nina was snuggled close to Bunny and whispering, "Do you care for me the least little bit?" And when he answered that he did, she said, "Then why don't you pet me?" And when he began to oblige her, he found his lips held in one of those long slow kisses which are sure fire hits on the silver screen, but which the censors cut to a footage varying according to geography—oo in Japan up to 8,000 in Algeria and the Argentine. It was evident that this nineteen year old Juno was his to do what he pleased with, there and then; and Bunny's head had begun to swim in the familiar alarming way. He had never got the ache of Eunice out of his soul, and here at last was deliverance! But he hesitated, because he had sworn to himself that he would not get in for this again. Also from some of the English poets he had begun to hear about a different kind of love. He knew that he didn't really love Nina Goodrich, she was all but a stranger to him; so he hesitated, and his kisses diminished in ardor, until she whispered, "What's the matter, Bunny?" He was rattled, but a sudden inspiration came to him. "Nina," he said, "it doesn't seem quite fair." "Why not?" "To Barney." He felt her wince as she lay in his arms. "But Barney is gone, dear." "I know; but he'll come back." "Yes, but that's so far off; and I guess he's got a girl in France by now." "Maybe so, but you can't be sure; and it don't seem quite right that a fellow should go risk his life for his country, and somebody else steal his girl away while he's gone."
So Bunny began to talk about the front, and what was happening there, and how soon the Americans would get in, and how he expected to go right after graduation, and about Paul and what he thought about Russia, and what Dad thought about Paul; and the young Juno continued to be in his arms, but with a more and more sisterly affection, until at last the fog began to chill even their young blood, and they got up to go, and the nineteen year old Juno put her arms about her escort and gave him an especially violent kiss, declaring, "Bunny, you're a queer fellow, but I like you an awful lot!"
IV
The Germans made another gigantic thrust at the British, and this time it was the Battle of Flanders. They captured a great stretch of the British lines, and if it had not been for a six day stand of laborers and chauffeurs and what not behind the lines, every man hiding in a hole and fighting for himself with any weapon he could pick up, the Germans would have taken the whole railway system in Flanders. A month or so later came another offensive, this time to the South, against the French, the battle of the Aisne and the Oise; it looked as if Paris was doomed, and
people in America held their breath while they read the bulletins in the newspapers. In the midst of that battle, covering nearly two hundred miles of front, an epoch-making thing happened; the hard-pressed French commander put in the first of the newly-arrived American troops. These boys had had only a few months training, and the French didn't think they would hold; but instead of giving way like the rest of the armies, they hit the German line and went forward a couple of miles over a three mile front. So more of them were rushed in, and a few days later came the battle of Belleau Wood, and all over America went a thrill of exultation. It was not national pride, but more than that, men felt—it was a victory of free institutions. When you ran over the lists of dead and wounded in these battles you found Horowitz and Schnierow and Samerjian and Samaniego, Constantinopulos and Toplitsky and Quong Ling; but they all fought alike, and it was a victory for that golden flood of eloquence that was being poured out from the White House. In the midst of these excitements came Bunny's commencement time, and he had to make the great decision. He and his father had the most serious talk of their lives; Bunny had never seen the old man so deeply moved. What he said was, "Son, can't you possibly see your way to stay and help me with this job?" What Bunny answered was, "Dad, if I didn't get into the army, I'd never feel right the rest of my life." Dad pointed out what it was going to mean to him personally. He was no longer able to carry this load alone. There had to be more and more wells, and every one was an added care. They simply had to have a big refinery, and that meant also a chain of service stations, you could not count on government contracts forever. This Paradise tract was Bunny's, but if he wanted to give it up, why then Dad would have to negotiate with some of the big people who had been sounding him out on the question of mergers. If Bunny went into the army there would be no use counting on him, because Dad was sure this war wasn't half over. "Those that go now aren't many of them coming back," was the way he put it; there was a catch in his voice, and with a little bit more they would have had to pull out their pocket-handkerchiefs, which would have been equally embarrassing to both. All that Bunny could do was to repeat, "I've just got to go, Dad; I've just got to go." So Dad gave up, and a couple of weeks later Bunny got his notice to report to his training-camp. Aunt Emma spilled tears over him, while Grandma drew her withered old lips tight over her badly-fitting false teeth, and said it was a crime, and it ended her interest in life. Bertie made arrangements for a farewell party, and Dad reported that he had opened negotiations with Vernon Roscoe, the biggest independent oil operator on the coast, president of Flora-Mex and Mid-Central Pete, who had several times broached the project of a vast enterprise to be known as "Ross Consolidated."
V They drove up to Paradise, to give Bunny a farewell look at things, and there they found that Paul was expected home for a furlough, preliminary to a journey across the Pacific Ocean. This war, Dad said, was like a fire in a "tank-farm," you could never tell which way things would explode, or what would go next. Here was Paul, with the bunch of carpenters he directed, ordered onto a transport to be shipped—of all places in the world—to Vladivostok in Siberia! It appeared that when the Bolsheviks took charge of Russia they found themselves with a great army of war prisoners, among them a hundred thousand Czecho-Slovaks. This was a new name— you looked it up in the encyclopedias and couldn't find it, and had to have it explained to you that they were Bohemians, but this was a German word, and just as we had changed hamburger into liberty steak and sauerkraut into liberty cabbage, so the Bohemians became Czecho-Slovaks, which nobody knew how to spell when they heard it, or to pronounce when they saw it. The people of this race were revolting against Germany, and the Bolsheviks had agreed that their Czecho-Slovak prisoners would be shipped to Vladivostok, where the allies might take charge of them, and bring them to the fighting front if they saw fit. But on the way across Siberia the Czecho-Slovaks got to fighting with the Bolsheviks and the released German war prisoners, and had seized a great section of the railroad. So now into this weird mix-up the allies were intervening. The newspapers explained the matter: the Bolshevik movement was an uprising of fanatics, imposed upon the Russian people by the guns of hired mercenaries, Chinese and Mongolians and Cossacks and escaped criminals and general riff-raff; it couldn't last very long, a few weeks or months at the most, and what was needed was to supply a nucleus about which the decent Russians might rally. The allies were now undertaking to do that; American and Japanese troops were to help the Czecho-Slovaks in Siberia, and American and British troops were to organize the Russian refugees at Archangel in the far north. So here was Paul, going to build barracks and Y. M. C. A. huts along the famous Trans-Siberian railway, and see for himself those exciting events about which he had been debating with Dad. Bunny was going to a training camp, and maybe when he got through they would send him to the same front—that was a case where he would let Dad use his influence! Bunny meant to work hard and rise in the service, and maybe he would have Paul and his carpenters under his command! They had a hard time keeping their spirits up, because of Ruth, who was utterly inconsolable. She would go about the place with tears running down her cheeks, and now and then would have to jump up and rush from the room. When the time came for Paul to say his last farewell, Ruth almost went out of her mind; she locked her arms about his neck, and he had to pull her fingers away. It was sad for a fellow, to be driven away with his sister lying in a faint in a chair. Old Mr. Watkins had to come up and take her home, and send up Sadie to do the housework for Dad. By golly, it made you realize about war!
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!
Oil! A Novel by Upton Sinclair Page 26