III
Well, Tovarish Roscoe went to bed, in Nile green silk pajamas on a cot out in the court alongside the fountain; and at five in the morning they woke him, so that he might go out with Dad and the geologist and the engineer, to O. K. the plans for the Bandy tract. He came back with the sunrise in his eyes, puffing and snorting, and yelling for beer instead of breakfast, and how would he get some more when this gave out? They persuaded him that he must not try to cross the desert until the sent went down, so he and Dad and Bunny retired into the living-room, and shut all the doors and windows, to stick it out as best they could. Well, the sun got to work on the roof and walls of that house, and every ten minutes the great man would get up and look at the thermometer and emit another string of muleskinner's technicalities. By the middle of the morning he was frantic; declaring that surely there must be some way to cool a house. By Jees, let's get a hose and soak this room! But Bunny, who had studied physics, said that would only shift them from the climate of the desert to the climate of the Congo river. Mr. Roscoe suggested turning the hose on the veranda and the roof; and Bunny called the gardener boy, and pretty soon there were half a dozen sprinklers going, a regular rain-storm over the doors and windows of the living-room.
But that was not enough, so Dad went to the phone and called up the foreman of the sheet metal shop, and he said sure thing, he could design a refrigerator; and Dad said to drop everything else and build one, and he'd pay the men a dollar apiece extra if they finished it inside an hour. So here came four fellows with a truck and a big metal box with double walls all the way from the floor to the ceiling; and they cut a hole in the floor for a vent-pipe, and brought in about half a ton of cracked ice from the ice-plant, and a couple of sacks of salt, and in a few minutes the thermometer showed a zero wind blowing out from the bottom of that box. The great man moved over close to it, and in a little while he began to sigh with content, and in half an hour he gave a loud "Ker-choo!" and they all roared with laughter. After that he was sleepy, with all the beer he had drunk, and had a nap on the lounge, while Dad went out to see to the drilling. And then the party had lunch, and Mr. Roscoe had another nap, after which he felt fine, and did a lot of talking, and Bunny learned some more about the world in which he lived. "Jim," said the "magnate," "I want two hundred thousand dollars of your money." "Where's your gun?" said Dad, amiably. "You'll get it back many times over. It's a little fund we're raising, me and Pete O'Reilly and Fred Orpan. We can't talk about it except to a few." "What is it, Verne?" "Well, we're getting ready for the Republican convention, and by Jees, it's not going to be any god-damn snivelling long-faced college professor! We're going to get a round-faced man, like you and me, Jim! I'm going on to Chicago and pick him out." "You got anybody in mind?" "I'm negotiating with a fellow from Ohio, Barney Brockway, that runs the party there. He wants us to take their Senator Harding; big chap with a fine presence, good orator and all that, and can be trusted—he's been governor there, and does what he's told. Brockway thinks he can put him over with two or three million, and he'll pledge us the secretary of the interior." "I see," said Dad—not having to ask what that meant. "I've got my eye on a tract—been watching it the last ten years, and it's a wonder. Excelsior Pete put down two test wells, and then they capped them and hushed it up; there was a government report that mentioned it, but they had it suppressed and you can't get a copy anywhere—but I had one stolen for me. There's about forty thousand acres, all oil." "But how can you get it away from Excelsior?" "The government has taken the whole district—supposed to be an oil reserve for the navy. But what the hell use will it be to the navy, with no developments? The damn fools think you can drill wells and build pipe lines and storage tanks while Congress is voting a declaration of war. Let us get in there and get out the oil, and we'll sell the navy all they want." That was Dad's doctrine, so there was nothing to discuss. He laughed, and said, "You'd better be on the safe side, Verne, and get the attorney-general as well as the secretary of the interior." "I thought of that," said the other, not noticing the laugh. "Barney Brock way will be the attorney-general himself. That's part of his bargain with Harding." And then all at once Mr. Roscoe recollected Bunny, sitting over by the window, supposed to be reading a book. "I suppose our boy Bolsheviki will understand, this ain't for use on the soapbox." Dad answered, quickly, "Bunny has known about my affairs ever since he was knee-high to a grass-hopper. All right, Verne, I'll send you a check when you're ready."
IV
The sun went down, and it was time for Mr. Roscoe to make his get-away. But first he had dinner; and when he was through with his ice cream and coffee, he pushed his plate away, and took his napkin out of his neck, and leaned back in his chair with a sigh of content; and while he was unrolling his cigar from its gold foil, he fixed his shrewd eyes upon Bunny across the table, and said, "Jim Junior, I'll tell you what's the matter with you." "All right," said Jim Junior, receptively. "You're a nice kid, but you're too god-damn serious. You take life too hard—you and your old man both. You got to get a little fun as you go along, and I know what you need. You got a girl, kid?" "Not right now," said Bunny, blushing a trifle. "I thought so. You need one, to take you out and cheer you up. Mind you, I don't mean one of these jazz-babies—get a girl that's got some sense, like my Annabelle. You know Annabelle Ames?" "I've never met her. I've seen her, of course." "Did you see her in 'Madame Tee-Zee'? By Jees, that's what I call a picture—only one I ever made any money out of, by the way! Well, that girl takes care of me like a mother—if she'd been up here, I wouldn't 'a drunk all that beer, you bet! You come up to my place some time, and Annabelle'll find you a girl—lots of 'em up there, with the ginger in 'em, too, and she's a regular little match-maker—never so happy as when she's pairing 'em off, two little love-birds in a cage. Why don't you drive back with me now?" "I've got to go to college the day after tomorrow," said Bunny. "Well, you come some time, and bring the old man along. That's what he needs too, a girl—I've told him so a dozen times. You got a girl yet, Jim? By Jees, look at him blush, the old maid in pants! I could tell the kid some things about you that would bust the rouge-pots in your cheeks—hey, old skeezicks?" And the great man, who had been getting out of his chair as he discoursed, fetched Dad a couple of thumps on the back and burst into a roar of laughter. It was things like that that made you know Vernon Roscoe had a "big-heart." He seemed to have really taken a fancy to Bunny, and was concerned that he should learn to enjoy life. "You come see me some time, kiddo," he said, as he was loading himself into his big limousine. "Don't you forget it now, I mean it. I'll show you what a country place can be like, and you make the old man get one too." And Bunny said all right, he would come; and the engine began to purr, and the car rolled off in the moonlight, and the big laughing voice died away among the hills. "So long, kiddo!"
V Bunny came back into the house, and followed Dad into his study and shut the door. "Dad, are you really going to put up that money with Mr. Roscoe?" "Why, sure, son, I got to; why not?" Dad looked genuinely surprised—as he always did in these cases. You could never be sure how much of it was acting, for he was sly as the devil, and not above using his arts on those he loved. "Dad, you're proposing to buy the presidency of the United States!" "Well, son, you can put it that way—" "But that's what it is, Dad!" "Well, that's one way to say it. Another is that we're protecting ourselves against rivals that want to put us out of business. If we don't take care of politics, we'll wake up after election and find we're done for. There's a bunch of big fellows in the East have put up a couple of millions to put General Leonard Wood across. Are you rooting for him?" Bunny understood that this was a rhetorical question, and did not answer it. "It's such a dirty game, Dad!" "I know, but it's the only game there is. Of course, I can quit, and have enough to live on, but I don't feel like being laid on the shelf, son." "Couldn't we just run our own business, Dad?" It was, you may remember, a question Bunny had asked before. "There's no such thing, son—they're just crowding you all the time. They block
you at the refineries, they block you at the markets, they block you in the banks—I don't tell you much about it, because it's troubles, but there's just no place in the business world for the little feller any more. You think I'm a big feller because I got twenty million, and I think Verne is a big feller because he's got fifty; but there's Excelsior Pete—thirty or forty companies, all working as one—that's close to a billion dollars you're up against. And there's Victor, three or four hundred million more, and all the banks and insurance company resources behind them—what chance have we independents got? Look at this slump in the price of gas right now—the newspapers tell you there's a glut, but that's all rot—what makes the glut, but the Big Five dumping onto the market to break the little fellers? Why, they're just wiping 'em off the slate!" "But how can public officials prevent that?" "There's a thousand things that come up, son—we got to land the first wallop—right at the sound of the bell! How do we get pipe line right-o'-ways? How do we get terminal facilities? You saw how it was when we came into Paradise; would we ever 'a got this development if I hadn't 'a paid Jake Coffey? Where would Verne and me be right now, if we didn't sit down with him and go over the slate, and make sure the fellers he puts on it are right? And now—what's the difference? Jist this, we got bigger, we're playin' the game on a national scale—that's all. If Verne and me and Pete O'Reilly and Fred Orpan can get the tracts we got our eyes on, well, there'll be the Big Six or Big Seven or Big Eight in the oil-game, that's all—and you set this down for sure, son, we'll be doin' what the other fellers done, from the day that petroleum came into use, fifty years ago." They were on an old familiar trail now, and Bunny knew the landscape by heart. "It's all very well for a feller to go off in his study and figure out how the world ought to be; but that don't make it that way, son. There has got to be oil, and we fellers that know how to get it out of the ground are the ones that are doing it. You listen to these Socialists and Bolshevikis, but my God, imagine if the government was to start buying oil-lands and developing them—there'd be more graft than all the wealth of America could pay for. I'm on the inside, where I can watch it, and I know that when you turn over anything to the government, you might just as good bury it ten thousand miles deep in the earth. You talk about laws, but there's economic laws, too, and government can't stand against them, no more than anybody else. When government does fool things, then people find a way to get round it, and business men that do it are no more to blame than any other kind of men. This is an oil age, and when you try to shut oil off from production, it's just like you tried to dam Niagara falls." It was a critical moment in their lives. In after years Bunny would look back upon it, and think, oh why had he not put his foot down? He could have broken his father, if he had been determined enough! If he had said, "Dad, I will not stand for buying the presidency; and if you go in with Mr. Roscoe on that deal, you've got to know that I renounce my inheritance, I will not touch a cent of your money from this day on. I'll go out and get myself a job, and you can leave your money to Bertie if you want to." Yes, if he had said that, Dad would have given way; he would have been mortally hurt, and Mr. Roscoe would have been hurt, but Dad would not have helped to nominate Senator Harding. Why didn't Bunny do it? It wasn't cowardice—he didn't know enough about life as yet to be afraid of it. He had never earned a dollar in his life, yet he had the serene conviction that he could go out and "get a job," and provide for himself those comforts and luxuries that were a matter of course to him. But the trouble was, he couldn't bear to hurt people. It was what Paul meant when he said that Bunny was "soft." He entered too easily into other people's point of view. He saw too clearly why Dad and Mr. Roscoe wanted to buy the Republican convention; and then, a few hours later, he would go over to the Rascum cabin, and sit down with Paul and "Bud" Stoner and "Jick" Duggan and the rest of the "Bolshevik bunch," and see too clearly why they wanted the oil workers to organize and educate themselves, and take over the oil wells from Dad and Mr. Roscoe!
VI
Bunny went back to Southern Pacific, and just as he was finishing his year's work, the convention of the Republican party met in Chicago, a thousand delegates and as many alternates, and as many newspaper correspondents and special writers, to tell the world about this mighty historic event. The convention listened to impressive "key-note" speeches, and smoked enormous quantities of tobacco, and drank enormous quantities of bootleg liquor; and meantime, in a room in the Blackstone Hotel, the half-dozen bosses who controlled the votes sat down to make their deals. In the millions of words that went out over the wires concerning the convention, the name of Vernon Roscoe was never mentioned; but he had his suite adjoining that hotel room, and he made exactly the right offers, and paid his certified checks to exactly the right men, and after a long deadlock and the taking of eight ballots, amid wild excitement on the convention floor, the support of General Leonard Wood began suddenly to crumble, and on the ninth ballot Warren Gamaliel Harding of Ohio became the Republican party's standard-bearer. College was over; and Gregor Nikolaieff went up to San Francisco to ship on one of the vessels of the "canning fleet," which went up to Alaska to catch and pack salmon. Rachel Menzies and her brother joined three other Jewish students who had equipped themselves with a battered Ford car, to follow the fruit-picking; moving from place to place, sleeping under the stars, and gathering apricots, peaches, prunes and grapes for the canners and driers. Bunny was the only one of the little group of "reds" who did not have to work all summer; and he was the only one who didn't know what to do with himself. In the old days, when he and Dad were drilling one well at a time, Bunny would pitch in and help at anything there was to do; he was only a "kid" then, and the men liked it. But now he was of age, and supposed to be dignified; the company was of age, too, a huge machine in which every cog had its place, and must not be interfered with. Bunny could not even cultivate the plants at home without trespassing on the job of the gardener! He had resolved to study some of Paul's books; but he had never heard of anyone studying eight hours a day, and he couldn't take Paul's job for part of the time, because he wasn't a good enough carpenter! It was a world in which some people worked all the time, and others played all the time. To work all the time was a bore, and no one would do it unless he had to; but to play all the time was equally a bore, and the people who did it never had anything to talk about that Bunny wanted to listen to. They talked about their play, just as solemnly as if it had been work: tennis tournaments, golf tournaments, polo matches—all sorts of complicated ways of hitting a little ball about a field! Now, it was all right, when you needed exercise and recreation, to go out and hit a little ball; but to make a life-work of it, to give all your time and thought to it, to practice it religiously, read and write books about it, discuss it for hours on end—Bunny looked at these fully grown men and women, with their elaborate outfits of "sports clothes," and it seemed to him they must be exercising a kind of hypnosis upon themselves, to make themselves believe that they were really enjoying their lives.
Bertie came along, making one more effort to drag her brother out into this play world, to which by right of inheritance and natural gifts he belonged. Bertie had broken off her affair with Eldon Burdick. He was a "dud," she told Bunny, and always wanting to have his own way. There was another affair on, a very desperate one, Bunny gathered, since his sister exposed her feelings even to him. It was the only son of the late August Norman, founder of Occidental Steel; the boy's name was Charlie, and he was a little wild, Bertie said, but oh, so fascinating, and rich as Croesus. He had nobody to take care of him but a rather silly mother, who was still trying to be young and giddy, dressing like a debutante, and having surgical operations performed on her face to keep it from "sagging." They had a most gorgeous yacht down at the harbor, and had asked Bertie to bring her brother, and why wouldn't he go and help her, as he so easily could, with his good looks and everything? Bunny thought his sister must indeed be hard hit, if she was counting upon his reluctant social charms! But he went; and as they drove to the
harbor Bertie coached and scolded him—he must not talk about his horrible Bolshevik ideas, and if they mentioned his disgrace at Southern Pacific, he must make a joke of it. Bunny had already learned that that was the thing to do; and so he did it, and found that it was very easy, for Charlie Norman was one of those brilliant young persons who found something funny to say about everything that came up; if he couldn't do any better, he would make a bad pun out of your remark. Here was the "Siren," a floating mansion, all white paint and shining brass, finished in hand-carved mahogany, and upholstered in hand-painted silk. The sailors who shined and polished, and the Filipino boys who flitted here and there with trays full of glasses, were spick and span enough for the vaudeville stage. The party of guests would step into a launch, and from that into several motorcars, and be transported to a golf-links, and from there to a country club for luncheon; they would dance for an hour or two, and then be whirled away to a bathing-beach, and then to a tennis-court, and then back to the "Siren" to dress for dinner, which was served with all the style you would have expected at an ambassador's banquet. There would be many-colored electric lights on the deck, and an orchestra, and friends would come out in launches, and dance until dawn, while the waves lapped softly against the sides of the vessel, and the tangle of lights along the shore made dim the stars. These people talked about the appearance and peculiarities and adventures of all their acquaintances, and it was hard to follow their conversation unless you were one of their set; they even had slang words of their own, and the less possible it was for an outsider to understand them, the funnier they seemed to themselves. They talked about clothes, and what was going to be the newest "thing." They talked about their bootleggers, and who was reliable. For the rest of the time they talked about the hitting of little balls about a field; the scores they made that day and previous days, and the relative abilities of various experts in the art. Was the tennis-champion going to hold his own for another year? How were the American golf players making out in England? Was the polo team coming from Philadelphia, and would they carry off the cup? There were beautiful silver and gold-plated trophies with engraved inscriptions, which helped to hypnotize you into thinking that the hitting of little balls about a field was of major importance!
Oil! A Novel by Upton Sinclair Page 34