Magnolia City

by Duncan W. Alderson

  “I sure do.”

  “There. You see. This will go toward paying off the consortium.” She passed him the salt.

  So they made the pilgrimage that all the new oil rich made—on the Texas and Pacific Railway from Shreveport, the sharp smell of cold new metal ringing in the air as they steamed westward. Hetty watched the Piney Woods recede and the blackland prairies stretch out on all sides, flat . . . flat . . . flat. The monotony made her drowsy. As she yawned, she wondered why she kept spotting more and more Splendora trucks in Kilgore. Was Chief Rusk moving in? Or worse, Lamar? She’d been afraid to tell Garret about it, even though there was nothing the Rusks could do to harm the Ada Hillyer. She knew everything would be fine. She’d left her baby with Pearl, their oil well under the care of Pick. Hetty lay back on the seat and drifted. Then, sometime after lunch, a city of towers lifted out of the cotton fields, immense, like magic. Hetty’s heavy eyelids fluttered. Was she seeing things?

  It was Dallas, suddenly there.

  They stepped out into the vastness of Union Station, checked into the Adolphus hotel, and shopped for a whole day at the famous store on the corner of Main and Ervay. Garret followed Hetty as she prowled through the spacious salons, trying on English tweeds, cinema satins, and the new afternoon dresses that dropped the hem almost to the ankle. For him, she picked out linen suits, Borsalino hats, and shoes made of soft kangaroo leather. Before they went to dinner, she insisted he soak in a hot bath while she scrubbed to get the last traces of black crude from under his fingernails, out of every pore.

  While waiting for their clothes to be altered, they went sightseeing on the State Fair grounds, glimpsing eels and anemones at the aquarium, and a twelve-foot skeleton of Mosasaur tylosaurus at the Museum of Natural History, an aquatic lizard which had drifted through these parts when Texas was an ancient sea. At night, they found a speakeasy near the hotel where the bartender suggested they try a Dry Snake, the hottest new drink in Dallas. They had to laugh when he brought the cocktails, crowned with limes sliced to look like snakes, remembering their part in the creation of this concoction. Hetty spoke wistfully about Odell, knowing what a kick he’d get out of the name.

  After bellboys carried their stacks of striped boxes down the grand staircase at Neiman’s and their new steamer trunks were loaded onto the train, Garret rifled through the sales tickets to see how much they’d spent. The total came to over eight hundred dollars. Hetty shrugged off her new English tweed jacket and settled into her seat for the ride to Houston. “That’s only two days of oil,” she said. She thought in barrels now, not dollars.

  On the evening of April 1, the maître d’ of the Cupola Club slipped Hetty and Garret through the velvet rope and into the wide dining room where the drone of conversation and the clink of silver rebounded off pink marble walls. She walked arm in arm with her husband, beaming smiles at strangers who looked up from candlelit tables. She’d poured herself into one of the cinema satins she’d bought and wore her hair in the latest style, curled at the back of her neck.

  Their guests rose in a body as they approached their table—the six people Hetty had chosen to witness this moment of intimate triumph: her parents, her sister and Lamar, Cleveland Yoakum and his wife, Clare. The men shook hands, the women planted kisses on each other’s cheeks, and Hetty, assuming the head of the table, called for champagne. No flasks here: In the secluded precincts of the club, alcohol was served freely.

  She found herself playing the hostess with ease, describing their adventures in the oil patch, engaging in folksy repartee with Cleveland. Lamar was boastful as usual, describing the dimensions of the house he was building for Char in Courtlandt Place, who, in turn, supplied a lot of technical details about the architecture and construction, determined to hold her own in this company.

  Following the first course of anchovy toast and clams, a champagne glass rang out. “Now, y’all, hush,” Clare Yoakum said, “it’s time somebody proposed a toast.” She wavered as she stood up. The glass trembled in her hand. “I want to remind everybody of the last time we had dinner together at the Hoggs. Garret here charmed me with his stories of Montana, but y’all laughed at him when he tried to tell us about the ocean of oil in East Texas. He didn’t give up, though, and that’s my idea of the true wildcatter. They never give up, no matter what. My wish for y’all is that the petrochemicals flow as freely as the champagne does tonight.”

  “Amen,” Cleveland shouted as eight glasses sparkled in the air. Garret stood next, his cheeks flushed, his eyes radiant. “Thanks, Clare. What you say may be true of men like Dad Joiner, but I guess I was just lucky. I hit pay dirt with my first well. Here’s to the Ada Hillyer Number One. May there be many more.”

  “Hear, hear,” Kirb shouted as they all raised their glasses.

  “And now I have a little presentation to make to your husband, Clare.” He reached into his suit coat and pulled out a cigar wrapped in a white linen envelope, which he handed with a flourish to Cleveland. Cleveland threw back his head of white hair and read the label. La Corona Belvedere. He lit it immediately, filling the air with a woodsy reek. Only then did he open the envelope, glancing at the slip of paper inside and tucking it into his breast pocket.

  Nella watched him across the table as she nibbled on a wedge of toast. “Com’on, Cleveland, don’t we ladies get to know what you gentlemen wrap around cigars these days?”

  “It’s nuthin,” he mumbled. “Just a check for eight thousand dollars.”

  “Ah,” Kirb said, “the first royalty payment. A nice way to deliver it, Garret.”

  “He got the brand right,” Cleveland said, stoking his favorite kind of cigar. “But the payment’s a day late.”

  Garret’s smile faded as he sat down. Cleveland looked genuinely stern. He blew smoke rings out over the table.

  Clare cackled. “Oh, I get it, honey. It’s April first.”

  “I can get it in by the thirty-first if that’s what you want, sir.”

  Clare cackled again. “April Fool’s, Garret, April Fool’s.”

  Cleveland blew more smoke rings. “Son, I don’t care if it comes in on the thirty-first, the first, or the fifth, wrapped around a cigar or a dried pig’s turd, as long as I get a check for eight thousand dollars next month, you hear me now?”

  “Yes, sir, I do. I want to pay back the consortium as soon as possible, so they’ll back me in another well. East Texas is sitting on a gold mine like you’ve never seen.”

  “Keep your britches on, son. You just make your first well pay off. Then we’ll talk.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Yoakum.”

  Through the Os floating in the air, Hetty watched as Cleveland turned the full power of his gaze on Garret and said, “Call me Cleve, son.”

  Garret flushed. “Thank you, sir. I mean—Cleve. I’d like to say—I really want to do more deals with you, Cleve. What’ll it take?”

  “I already told you. Just be sure that turtle gets across the road.”

  “In other words, don’t pull my head back in?”

  “That’s right. And you’d better buy up the offset location.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The farm next door. You don’t want someone drillin’ south of you.”

  Garret looked at Hetty. “Didn’t you meet the farmwife next door?”

  She nodded. “Yes. A greedy woman named Wavie Goss. I guess we’d better pay a call on her.”

  Noiselessly, fresh utensils appeared at each place, and the fish course was borne to the table on a huge, steaming platter. As they were served, the talk turned to Nella’s recent travels. She had sailed abroad again, this time to study the public spaces of European cities. She had joined Will Hogg’s Forum of Civics to help devise a city plan for Houston. She came back filled with visions of wide boulevards festooned with fountains and statues.

  “Mamá wants a Pont Neuf over every bayou,” laughed Charlotte.

  “And why not? We have a chance to turn this city into something grand, the Paris of the
South,” Nella said. “But we have to act now, before it’s too late. Look what happened to Magnolia Park.”

  Cleveland sniffed the air. “Is this swordfish a little old, Kirb, or do I smell the putrid odor of zoning?”

  “The fish is fine.”

  “Well,” Nella admitted, setting down her fork, “there’ll have to be some zoning, of course. You can’t leave these things to chance.”

  “Who said, ‘Bad taste leads to crime’?” Charlotte asked. “Stendhal, I think.”

  “Well, you would know, dear. And I agree with Mr. Stendhal. Those of us with a little knowledge will have to make the decisions for the rest of you, that’s all there is to it.”

  “I’ll be damned if you will,” Cleveland boomed out. This sparked a debate about the role of government in the life of Texas. Everyone had something to say about it except Hetty, who sat back and breathed in the fragrant air, scented with rosemary, beeswax, and cigar smoke. She looked around the room, her eyes resting on the white lilies at every table surrounded by gleaming china and crystal. She forced herself to forget the shotgun house they would return to tomorrow and wiped it out of her memory for tonight. Someday they would live in rooms like this, she told herself, crowning the skylines of cities.

  The musk of wild meat drew Hetty out of her reverie. The entrée had been placed smoking at her side circled with swirls of Duchess potatoes. She clinked on a glass to interrupt the wrangle over zoning and announced, “I have a special treat for you tonight. Real oil field fare—a stuffed opossum.”

  Clare cackled loudly, and Char wrinkled her nose.

  “Oh, com’on,” Hetty said. “You have to be adventurous in the oil business—right, Cleve?”

  “It smells good,” Lamar said, sitting right next to it.

  Hetty signaled for colored attendants to carve and serve the game along with warm glasses of claret. People took timid bites at first, then decided it was every bit as good as venison.

  After lemon sorbet to clear the palate, everyone sat back satisfied. Nella grasped the moment for one of her grand gestures. She passed a white box garlanded with silver ribbons Hetty’s way. Inside were fossils of fern leaves and spirals of shells, polished like jewels.

  “Mamá, they’re beautiful. Thank you.”

  “I thought you’d like to see where your oil is coming from.”

  “Are these Texas fossils?”

  Nella nodded, her eyes smoky with mystery. “Pass them around, and I think you’ll see.” The fossils, pale and pockmarked with ancient life, migrated from hand to hand. “It all started with creatures like these,” she told them, “once upon a time when there was an ocean where we’re sitting now.”

  Hetty ran her fingers over one of the spirals. She tried to imagine the world that Nella described, seething on that seafloor. She pictured amphibians slithering up onto beaches, ferns arising, dragonflies buzzing. And, of course, cockroaches—huge ones!

  “There were scorpions ten feet long,” Nella laughed.

  Hetty studied the shell fossil through eyes glazed with champagne. She could imagine it swimming out of her hand as her mother described the animals that followed it in evolution—the sea serpents, the sharks, the great lizards that floated through the waters like whales. Hetty looked up. Her eyes quivered. The chandelier shimmered high overhead, a constellation of stars glimpsed from underwater. “But how did these become oil? Remind me.”

  “They died. The sea bottom became a giant graveyard, swallowing everything. Sediment sealed it in. The juices of all these life-forms, their fatty oils, became bottled up. Waiting . . . just waiting . . .”

  “Whatever for?” Clare asked.

  “The secret ingredient.” Nella paused to pick up her champagne, which had started to go flat.

  Kirb tapped his fingers together. “Heat and pressure.”

  “That’s right,” Nella said after taking a sip. “Thanks to the alchemy at work deep in the earth, the fat from all those critters became transmuted into East Tex crude. It’s resurrection by hydrocarbons.”

  “I’d forgotten,” Hetty said, “that oil came from living things.”

  “I thought you could use a refresher. Millions of beings sacrificed themselves to make you rich.”

  Cleveland chuckled. “Nella,” he boomed out, planting his elbows on the table. “I never cease to be amazed at the bullshit you come up with. Millions of beings—Jesus! Oil’s just muck.”

  “Oh, really? Then why do they call it buried sunlight?”

  “That’s what they call it? Buried sunlight?” Hetty was amazed at the words coming out of her mother’s mouth. The champagne was adding a halo of significance to everything.

  “That’s not what I call it. It’s just plain old black gold to me, right, Mac?”

  “I’m with you,” Garret said, adding with relish the name “Cleve.”

  Nella smiled across the table at them both. “Maybe you men should think about what you’re doing, trespassing on the mineral kingdom like that. You know what the Hopis say—when you dig treasure out of the earth, you invite disaster.”

  “But it’s all right to use it, isn’t it?” Clare asked. “What would we run our cars on?”

  “’Course it is,” Cleveland said. “Ye shall have dominion over the earth, the Good Book says.”

  “Over, Cleve, not under.”

  At this point, both Char and Garret excused themselves from the table. While Nella and Cleveland debated loudly, Hetty turned to Lamar. “I’ve seen some Splendora trucks in Kilgore. What’s up?”

  “You really don’t expect me to tell you, do you?”

  “So something is up. Now that men like Garret have done all the work, Chief thinks he can just walk in and take over.”

  “What makes you think it’s Chief?”

  Hetty just watched as he grinned at her with his crooked smile. She was speechless for a few moments, then caught her breath. “Congratulations, Lam. I’m sure you’ll do quite well.”

  “It’s a good opportunity for me. You know, show the old man what I’m made of.”

  “Not to mention the rest of us.” She felt Lamar’s eyes following the movements of her body in the clinging dress as she slipped out of her chair and fled to the ladies’ lounge.

  Charlotte was still at the mirror when Hetty emerged from a stall. The colored maid turned on a faucet and handed Hetty a towel. She washed her hands, then splashed herself with some of the perfume on the counter. Charlotte was applying pink lipstick. “I love that dress, sis.”

  “Thanks. It’s from Neiman’s.”

  “Oh, we’re shopping at Neiman’s now, are we? Quite a change from pawning your jewels to get into Ima Hogg’s.”

  “I hope to tell you, sis! I’m glad those days are over.” Hetty reached into her purse, groping for lipstick. “Looks like we’re both going to be oilmen’s wives.”

  “Welcome to the club.”

  Hetty enjoyed the camaraderie with her sister as they preened in front of the mirror. Now that they were on an equal footing financially, she hoped for more of these unspoiled moments of sisterhood. She pulled out her vermilion lipstick and remembered how they used to fight over it. Charlotte was always “borrowing” Hetty’s things and forgetting to return them. She always acted like an only child. That led to many a screaming match. Never mind, Hetty thought, as she smiled at her sister in the mirror. Their girlhood battles now felt childish, and she wanted to exile them to the past. Hetty’s mood was expansive enough tonight to enfold all of Charlotte’s little jealousies and wipe them away like lipstick taunts on a mirror.

  “Thanks. I feel so lucky.”

  “Just how lucky?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Com’on, you can tell your dear sister. How rich are you?”

  “It’s only our first well, Char. Give us a chance.” Hetty clicked the vermilion lipstick open and pursed her lips.

  “You don’t have to be modest with me, Het. Everyone knows those East Tex wells are real gushers. How
many thousands of barrels rich are you? Lamar’s dying to know.”

  “You know as well as I do, it’s never enough.”

  “But how many? Tell me.”

  “Mind your own potatoes! Do I ask you how much money Lamar has?”

  “You don’t have to. Everyone knows that I married into one of the richest families in Texas.” She pivoted to raise an eyebrow at Hetty . . . waiting.

  Hetty tried to hold her hand steady as she glided a gash of color over her lips. A little bled onto her chin.

  “Never mind.” Charlotte shrugged and started out of the room. “I’m sure I can pry it out of Dad.”

  Hetty could hardly focus on Clare as she engaged her in a long Southern good-bye. Her eyes drifted to her sister at the other end of the table, clutched in a tremulous tête-à-tête with their father. She dipped her head to drop a question into his ear, laughed at the response, and looked askance at Hetty. Then she fluttered over to Lamar, briefing him behind her hand. As soon as he heard what she was saying, he turned and sneered at Hetty down the long table. She ignored their chatter and took Garret’s arm to lead the group out of the dining room. Charlotte managed to wedge herself in at the elevator, as Hetty felt a wet kiss quiver on her cheek, then hot breath in her ear. “Dad told me your little secret,” Charlotte whispered. “Four hundred barrels a day. I just had to tell Lamar.” She giggled. “He was amused. That’s pocket change to someone like him.”

  Hetty remained silent on the elevator ride down. Her stomach felt an odd jolt when they reached the ground floor. She’d tried to hold out an olive branch to Charlotte, only to be slapped in the face with it. She felt scratched and bloodied and walked out of the Esperson Building without even saying good night.

  As soon as they got back to their suite at the Rice Hotel, Hetty began undressing Garret. A torrent of champagne hadn’t been enough to douse the burn of Char’s laughter and the threat of Lamar’s news. Only the sounds of lovemaking would do it, filling her ears with pleasure and the kind of cries that rose after midnight. She had the more powerful man now; she knew that and so did Char, which is why she was being so catty. When Lamar had shaken her hand in greeting, his fingers had felt smooth and limp. He held on to things too loosely, and lacked the grit of greed that drove Garret to plunder and dare beyond all common sense. She loved men like her husband, loved their desperation and sweat, the edge in their eyes, their legs thick as tree trunks, the hands roped with veins. There was only one way to set the sneering ghost of Charlotte to rest: by reaching between Garret’s legs in the dark tonight and pulling up the stalk of his strength, letting him bury it inside of her over and over until her own throat cracked with the sounds that were wilder than laughter, harder than scorn.