“Hitting the fruit jars again?”
“I hope to tell you! Spending what little money we have on corn whiskey. Why do men do these things?”
“They’ll run you crazy. Where’s the baby?”
“Asleep, thank God. Maybe we can get some work done. Why don’t you cut the pie?”
Hetty unfolded big sheets of newspaper that rustled when she wrapped plates in them. She tried to ignore the headline: Wolters Tells Guards to Shoot at the Waistline. As she worked, she skimmed the smaller articles reporting the growing unemployment all through East Texas. She worried about Pick—he’d left them that afternoon to hunt for work up in Longview.
A truck drove by outside. A few minutes later, she heard a loud rap at the door. Pearl went to open it.
“Now look here, y’all—” Mr. Smackover planted himself in the middle of the room with his hands on his broad hips. “It ain’t time to put the chairs in the wagon yet. Mac said you was packing up. I come to tell you my teapot’s back in business.”
“Sit down and have some pie,” Pearl said, scooping wedges onto dessert plates.
“Don’t mind if I do, Pearl.” Smack sat ponderously at the table.
“But wasn’t he shut down?” Hetty asked, continuing to pack while the others ate.
“He was. Everybody was,” Smack said, chewing. “But there’s always a way to sneak around the law. The guy was living in a shotgun next door, so he joins the two with a makeshift porch and declares it his residence. Strings up a barbed wire fence, so nobody can enter but us truckers. And he’s getting away with it. Put out a call for petrol. I say we start running hot oil again. It’ll keep us alive during martial law.”
“I’d love to, Smack, but how?” Hetty said. “We’re surrounded by an army.”
“Pay them no mind. I still say you got a right to the oil out of your own damn well.”
“That’s what Odell says in his letter.” Pearl slid the pages out of her apron pocket. “He says we need to capture our oil while we can.”
“He’s right. Boss Ross is in cahoots with the big boys. Why—Governor Sterling was one of the original partners in Humble Oil.”
“I didn’t know that,” Hetty said.
“Throws a different light on it, don’t it? They’re trying to run us little guys out of business, that’s all that’s happening here. And you’re cooperating!”
“Odell says, if y’all don’t capture your oil, somebody else will.”
“What are you talking about?” Hetty asked.
“It’s all in the letter here. I’m trying to tell you about it.”
“Read it to us, Pearl,” Hetty said.
“Well, not the first part, that’s personal,” she said, swishing the pages through her spindly hands. “But here—” She began reading. “My best wishes to both Garret and Hetty. I heard about the governor ordering troops to your parts. It’s been all over the papers they allow us to read here. Do not be disheartened, my friends, this too will pass. In the meantime, don’t give up. Don’t let them wipe out the lone wildcatter like yourself, Garret. You can be sure that’s exactly what the big oil companies are hoping to do—just like they killed the cattle business by closing down the open range. Let’s keep Texas free! There’s something you should know about the production of oil. It’s governed by an old English common law called the Rule of Capture.”
Pearl looked up at them. “He’s got it capitalized,” she said, “so it must be kind of important.”
She read on. “If I kill a deer on someone else’s property, it’s poaching. But if the deer strays onto my property, he’s fair game. Now, why is it important to know this? Because oil also migrates. It moves wherever the pressure takes it. From what I’ve read of the Woodbine, it flows from west to east. The Ada Hillyer Number One is located, I think you said, at the western edge of the field. So the more the Majors pump out of the reservoir, the more likely oil is to flow away from your location. The advantage the Majors have is that they can continue to drill new wells, and you can be sure, as soon as martial law is lifted, they’re going to bleed all the oil right out from under you. So I—”
“Wait,” Hetty said, lifting a white china plate, “read that last part again.”
“As soon as martial law is lifted they’re going to bleed—”
The plate Hetty was holding fell with a crack. “Oh my God!” Her heart skipped a beat. She had to grasp the edge of the counter as a wave of light-headedness swept into her brain.
“What’s wrong?” asked Pearl, poised to read more.
“I just realized what’s happening here.” She moved her hands away from shards of china and held on.
“Where?” Smack looked around the room.
“Right under our feet. That’s what Splendora is planning to do—bleed us to death.” Hetty turned to face their puzzled expressions. “Don’t you see? If Odell’s right, that means no more oil is going to flow into this section. It’s all going that way.” She pointed toward Kilgore. “Damn him!”
“Who? Odell?” Pearl asked.
“No! Lamar!” she said, going white-hot inside. “I knew something was up. He’s been too quiet.” Hetty pulled a chair out and sat down until her head stopped swimming. The others just stared at her. “All this time I thought we were safe. Wasn’t I the little fool?”
“Safe . . . ?” Pearl asked.
“I thought Lamar couldn’t do anything to harm the Ada Hillyer, but the bastard found a way.” She remembered the way he had looked at her when they all dined together at the Cupola Club. Like he had a secret he was bursting to tell her. Now she knew what his secret was. The trickster had struck again. He had turned the oil field into a giant playing field, moving derricks around like chessmen with one purpose in mind: to checkmate the queen. And, as usual, he was cheating. The thought made Hetty boil.
Smack pushed his plate away. “What all can he do?”
“Plenty! Why do you think he set up shop southeast of us? Don’t you think he knows about the Rule of Capture? Of course he does. He’s got the best geologists and lawyers working for him. He knows exactly what he’s doing.”
“Y’all really think he’d make a move on account of—”
“You obviously don’t know the Rusk family like I do. Help me put these dishes back in the cupboard, Pearl. I’m not about to let Lamar rob us of our oil. We’re turning our well back on.” She tossed pieces of jagged porcelain into the trash.
“And how do you plan to do that?” Pearl asked.
“I’ll do it myself if I have to. As Smack says, there’s always a way to sneak around the law. I’ll open the pipes at dusk and turn them off at dawn. Nobody’s coming out here in the dead of night to check the well.”
“That’s the spirit.” Smack clapped his hands. “Just remember, I don’t pump. Y’all have to get the motor going.”
“Just leave it to me, Smack. We’ve got to suck all the oil we can out of that sand before Splendora gets their greedy clutches on it. What do you say, Pearl? Are you with me?”
“Tell me what to do, hon. You know best.”
“Send Odell a big kiss for me. We’re going to capture our oil, by God! And I dare Lone Wolf to gun down a couple of women with those pearly pistols of his.”
A lurid crimson light woke Hetty the next morning. Tugging on the same dress she’d worn for two days, she went and knocked on the door of the other shotgun house. While she waited for a response, she looked through the pines. A bloodred sun festered through a gash in the clouds. You haven’t beaten me yet, Lamar. Just wait.
Pearl answered in her nightgown.
“Did I wake you?”
“Oh, you know me, already blowin’ and goin’.”
“Would you mind watching Pierce and making us some coffee? I think Garret’s going to need it.”
“Glad to, hon.” She looked past Hetty. “Oh my! Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning.”
Hetty walked into the plush of pine needles on the ground, soggy from a heavy
dew. The red light of the wounded sun bled into the world. The whole sky was inflamed with it. She crossed the bridge over the creek, still rife with decaying frogs. Peering into the doghouse, she spotted Garret in the purple shadows of the morning. He had fallen into a stupor on a piece of canvas stretched over heaps of rope. Empty fruit jars littered the floor. Hetty bit her lip. It wasn’t that long ago she’d dreamed of sleeping beside him on a bed spread with cool Egyptian cottons. If Lamar were here now, standing by her side, he’d be happy to see his rival so fallen—curled like a child on coils of rope in this rough-hewn wooden shed. Lamar would shoot her one of his lopsided grins and offer her his arm in triumph. You bastard. Get off our lease! she would snarl, the eyes of dead frogs watching him with hatred as he crossed the bridge.
Hetty knelt and stroked Garret’s cheek, craggy with a two-day’s growth of beard. He stirred. “You don’t have to sleep out here, honey.” As he stretched, the odor of rancid sweat rose in the air. “Come have some coffee.”
She pulled him up by the hand and escorted him across the bridge. As they stepped onto the floor of pine needles, she steered him toward the tank at the bottom of the hill. “Show me how to start this pump,” she said.
“Why?” He yawned.
“Just do it, please.”
“You crank it like the old Model Ts.” He stooped to pull out the choke, then twirled the handle like a lasso through his hands until the machine coughed into life. He inched the choke back in. It looked easy. “Why do you want to start the pump? There’s no oil in the tank.”
“There will be. Come have some coffee and I’ll explain.”
While Garret sipped at a steaming cup and lit his first Camel of the day, Hetty sat across the table and told him about her discovery. Pearl gave him Odell’s letter to read, then went to fetch Pierce, who’d started crying in his cradle. After Garret had finished the letter, Hetty said, “That’s why I’ve changed my mind about leaving. Lamar is robbing us blind.”
Garret sat there glowering, staring vacantly into space as if old ghosts were rising in front of his eyes. “I’ve changed my mind, too. Now I think we should go home.”
“And let Lamar win? I thought you said you’d never give up.”
“No—I said only one thing would ever make me give up, but it could never happen here.”
“Does that mean it has happened?”
“It’s about to.” He got a haunted look in his eyes. “We need to leave here before we get swallowed by an anaconda.”
“What are you talking about, Mac?”
“The best thing we can do now is sell the well against future profits. It’ll produce again someday.”
Hetty just stared at him.
“I’ll take the log into Tulsa’s and see if I can find us a buyer. We still owe five thousand to the consortium.”
“I don’t care. I’m not caving in to my sister and Lamar.”
“I thought I was in charge of the well here?”
“But you’re not taking charge. You’re lying out in the doghouse getting drunk.”
“Stay out of this, Hetty.” He walked out with his cup of coffee and slammed the door behind him. That was Pearl’s cue to appear with the baby. Hetty hefted Pierce on one arm and said, “I don’t understand your father. Don’t you dare grow up to be like him.”
“That’s an Irishman for you,” Pearl said. “They’re friendly, but they never tell you what’s really going on inside.”
Even though Garret had warned Hetty to stay out of the business dealings, she just couldn’t. She watched through the front window all day to see if he’d drive into town as he’d threatened. But neither vehicle budged. Nothing happened. Garret took his dinner down to the doghouse and didn’t return. After putting the baby to sleep, Hetty decided to take matters into her own hands. She imagined tiny gurgles rising from underground as their oil slowly drained away. After opening the valve on the well, she called Smack and arranged for him to make a pickup early the next morning. She had such bad dreams that when the alarm went off at four a.m., she was lying there awake waiting for it, castigating Lamar in her mind. She made her way down to the tank with the help of an electric lantern. She tried a few times to get the pump going but just couldn’t seem to crank the cold motor into life. She gave up and went to the derrick, turning the beam of the lantern into the doghouse. Garret was asleep with a grease-stained wool blanket pulled over him. She flashed the light at his eyes.
“Mac, get up. You’ve got to start the pump for me. I can’t do it.”
Garret threw off the blanket and shielded his eyes. “Will you let me figure this out?”
“What? Give up and go home? Let Lamar beat you?”
“He already has.”
“What kind of a man are you?”
“Go to hell.”
“I mean it, Mac. I’m really disappointed in you. I didn’t know you were a quitter.”
“That’s not fair!” He sat up, his eyes red and swollen in the lantern light.
“Why not? I notice Lamar didn’t give up. He found a way to steal our oil. He found a way to win. And if we let him, he’ll gloat about this for the rest of his life.”
“So let’s sell it and deny him the satisfaction.”
“No! That oil is ours. I don’t want anybody else to have it.”
Garret slid off the canvas and stood to face her. “You don’t want Lamar to have it, you mean.”
Hetty faced him down. “No, as a matter of fact, I don’t.”
They stared at each other in silence, their faces ghostly in the quivering beam.
Finally, Mac looked away and asked, “What happened that night?”
“What night?”
“The night you went out to dinner with him?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I think you know what I’m talking about. What happened?”
“I conceived Pierce, that’s what happened. You should remember—you’re the father.”
“Nothing else happened?”
“No.”
“Then why is Lamar so interested in our little oil well?”
Hetty tried not to look guilty. She glanced away, then met her husband’s bloodshot eyes and held his fretful gaze without blinking. “I think he’s getting his revenge on me, Mac.”
“So nothing did happen that night?”
“No, nothing happened. That’s why he’s angry.”
“But he did try to get into your pants?”
“Well, of course. But he didn’t succeed.”
Garret drew back his hand as if to slap her. Hetty flinched, but he stopped himself in time. “I knew it. Why would you go out to dinner with him in the first place?”
“He offered to help us . . . I was hoping . . .”
Garret’s uplifted hand twisted into a fist. “What about me? Didn’t you wonder how I’d feel about it?”
“Is that still eating away at you? After all this time? We’ve had a baby together. We’ve struck oil together. I’m with you, Mac.”
“But you’re not with me. You’re fighting with him.”
“I was hoping you’d fight with me.”
“That’s not the wise thing to do, Hetty.” Garret brushed past her and stepped out of the doghouse. She aimed the beam into the darkness, catching his profile cocked back at her. “I can’t stay here any longer. I’m leaving. If you love me, you’ll come with me.” He extended his hand.
She watched his fingers opening to her, golden in the light streaming out of her electric beacon. She felt split in half, one hand longing to reach out to his, the other holding the lantern so tight her knuckles were aching. She just couldn’t let go. “You’re asking me to give up everything. I won’t do that. I’m staying.”
“You made your choice then.”
He started to walk away, but she spotlighted him. “Mac, if you’re really leaving me, let me have one last going-away gift. You owe me that much.”
“What?”
“Start the pump, dam
mit.”
Garret packed his clothes and was gone by dawn. He left her the Wichita truck and twenty-five dollars in cash. Hetty tried to find out where he was going, but he wouldn’t tell her. He left without saying good-bye.
Later, she set the alarm for four a.m. even though she probably wouldn’t need it. She lay there in the dark and quiet, her mind ablaze. She thought of Humble’s inferno, the well that someone had dynamited during the war over proration. Everything had caved into the fiery crater, even the roughnecks. She wondered what they saw on their journey down to hell. Yes, it was true what people said about war—it is hell but not because of what you have to do. It’s the way it makes you feel, that’s the hellish part. You fall into the crater. Churning with deep dark heat and hate. Hetty remembered reading in the safety manual at the Warwick Hotel that fire isn’t as bright as people imagine. Fire is pitch-black. Which is why it’s so hard to escape.
When the alarm woke her, Hetty was tempted to turn on the carbide lamp Garret kept on the derrick floor, but she was afraid its searing light could be seen from a distance. Instead, she flicked on the electric torch just long enough to locate the pump, covering it with her fingers and letting one thin ray of light through. It x-rayed her hand, turning her skin bloodred.
She knelt and grasped the metal crank, spinning it as hard as she could. She knew it was up to her now. The cold motor refused to sputter into life. In the distance, she heard a rumble and saw two yellow lights weaving down the hill toward her. Smack cut his motor and let his truck roll slowly toward her, gravity bringing it to a rest nearby. He killed his parking lights and waited in the cab.
Hetty tried over and over to rev up the pump, her arm muscles burning with the effort. But she just couldn’t get it churning fast enough. She smelled gasoline. Perhaps she had pulled the throttle out too far and now it was flooded. She rested for a minute, then she went at it again.
In between attempts, she heard the scrunch of the truck door opening and looked up. The sky was beginning to turn a dark blue.
“I’ve got to go!” she heard Smack wheeze.
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