The citizens labored to erect mud embankments, and at last they arrested the fire’s progress. Still it raged, fearful magnifiloquent, until the fuel was exhausted, and the smoke gradually thinned, and the sun shone palely over a charred territory.
But as this was what’s called a flowing well, the fuel was soon refreshed, and the conflagration reignited, more furious than ever. And it’s been burning so ever since, night and day, sometimes higher, sometimes lower, fifteen years now, a gloomy inculcus of folly and greed.
Huh, George said. How about that.
* * *
We here his Life Storie & a sad one tho.
Breakfast was mush and beans again, and coffee.
The Prince spat his out in a dark sputter.
That’s the worst excuse for coffee I ever did taste! Why, it might as well be acorns shat out a squirrel’s ass and soaked in muck.
It is acorns, George said.
Roast acorns, Frank said.
We aint allowed to drink boughten coffee, George added.
Allowed! Aboard your own raft?
His eyes narrowed.
It is your raft...?
We said so, didn’t we, George said.
We built it, Frank said.
The Prince looked slowly left to right, up and down.
I don’t see who’s not allowing.
Mama said— George started.
Frank kicked George’s shin.
One bristly and princely eyebrow lifted an inch.
What George means, Frank explained, is that we was raised right Christian and our bodies’re temples not to be bestained.
Bestained, naturally not, the Prince said.
He swept both hands wide.
O gloryful elixir of the divine bean! That doth revive men’s souls from the slaw of despond and bring good cheer to the most dowry of faces. That warmeth the belly and delighteth the brain, and vigors the heart like the drummer-boy’s snare amidst the smoke of battle!
For sure? George asked.
Indeed, the Prince continued. But that heavenly draft, which is but the confusion of a humble vegetable, is wrought nobler yet by th’addendum of that spirity distillation, whisky by name in the Scots, or Caledonian, tongue, or more vulgarly, likker, which suckers the brain and lifts it loftily unto the pure imperial. And the likker alone will do in a pinch.
But— Frank protested.
Not a word! the Prince said. Not a word against it. And, lo!, I see that the faithful whisky-boat is come to deliver us from our terrible desperation.
The Prince, after much protesting at prices and waving of arms and general hugger-mugger, procured two jugs for one gold dollar.
Pop! went the first cork. The Prince lifted the jug to his nostrils, sniffed deeply, scowled.
Why this aint whisky, it’s maple syrup! Those villains cheated me!
He flung the jug overboard.
No! George howled, wait—!
But it sank out of sight, gurgling. The Prince opened the other jug, sniffed, a broad grin split his beard.
Ah, he said, a fine anti-fogmatic.
He slopped a slug into his acorn-coffee and slurped it up.
Thus is the true soul’s salvation. Boys...?
He held out the jug.
Frank and George looked at each other. Their eyes dueled dare, counter-dare, counter-counter-dare, plus warnings and refusals of same, not to mention Hell-fires.
If you please, Frank said, thank you.
He held out his cup.
Me too, George said, pushing Frank’s out of the way.
The Prince beamed at them.
Oh no no, my dear boys, no more than a dainty spoonful, a medicinal dose, nary a drop more.
Thankee, sir, George said.
Thank you, Frank said.
It made them grimace, and shudder and cough, that first taste, but they grimaced, shuddered, and coughed manfully, the Prince assured them, with admirable masculine vigorosity, like true tipplers.
Are you quite sure, he asked them, quite quite sure, that you wish for more?
When the coffee ran out, they mixed it with water instead.
The sun rolled up the sky. The water unwound under the raft like wheels along railroad steel. They weren’t running French Creek any more, it was the great Allegheny.
George blurted: But who are you, Mister the Prince?
The Prince chuckled.
Coal-Oil Johnny, he said, Prince of Oil-Men. As I said.
But who’s that? George said.
Never heard of him, Frank said.
Never heard of him!
The boys shook their heads.
Well! the Prince said. That indeed is
Another Tale,
Full Of Sound And Furor,
Worthy Of The Telling
I! John Washington Steele—better known to the public as “Coal-Oil Johnny”—was born an orphan in this big and busy world in the year of our Lord 1843, near Sheakleville. I was adopted into the family of Culbertson McClintock, a well-to-do farmer, comparisonly speaking. The only parents I ever knew were Uncle Culbertson and Aunt Sally, his good wife.
I was but twelve years of age when my uncle went the way of all earth. He left the farm to Aunt Sally, and after her death it was to go to me. I might have lived a quiet, homely life as a tiller of the soil, had not a Yankee by the name of Drake drilled a hole in the ground up near Titusville, and released a fountain of oily wealth that transfigurated our peaceful valley.
And I might have gone down unheard of had not Aunt Sally one day in the month of March, 1864, lacking kindling for the kitchen stove, poured in crude oil. The resultant blaze set fire to her clothing, and she died the next day.
I found under her bed, now belonging to me, twenty-four thousand five hundred cash dollars—and new oil royalties pouring in every day! Soon I was the country boy who’d come into an enormous fortune. Many hundreds of earnest people offered their services as separators from such quantities of money, and I received proposals of marriage enough to cause the most pronounced Mormon to drop dead from joy.
Well, of my career much has already been said in both prose and song, most of it outrageful lies. I never did, for example, buy a hotel so that I could fire the clerk who had been rude to me; I never discarded a coat due to the discomfort of the bundles of cash stuffed into its pockets; I never tossed out diamonds as tips.
True, I did buy a minstrel show, because who wouldn’t want to march at the head of his own minstrel show? And I did procure me a fine coat of arms: on a field gules, a derrick or, spewing fountain sable—noble indeed it was, and drew much satisfactory attention.
* * *
We dont goe to Pitsburg after all.
The Prince’s high-pitched voice droned on and on, like a bee worrying at George’s ear, lulling his already dazzle-addled brain. It was such a dull story, and a long one—full of names and places George’d never heard of and didn’t care to hear of. Oh why oh why won’t he just go away? Every time George’s eyelids fluttered open, the sun was a little lower. He waggled his empty cup.
The Prince kindly topped it up.
Lo, the Prince said as he pissed grandly into the river astern, in this same desolation we now pass through, the greatest glories of the age once flourished, now bodaciously used up and tetotaciously exflunctified.
Settled again, he went on:
And why? You’ve heard, surely, of that rascally ruffianly scalawag, name of Charles Vernon Culver? No? Well, he it was who single-handedly destructed the great and teeming city of Pithole, Pennsylvania, and much else. And how? Like this: He won ten thousand dollars of profit in a rich well, but did he buy more? No! He bought banks. Let others run the risks, he’d scoop up the cash. And the new oil millionaires gave it to him! I did myself. Who wouldn’t put his trust in marble walls and gilted teller-cages and glittering shandyliers? He’d bought all that perryfernalia on credit and never paid a penny for it—he just kept moving his capital around like the Queen in the three-card monte.<
br />
Huh, George said.
Dark was coming on. They should be looking for someplace to tie up soon. A gurgle at his ear as the Prince refilled his cup.
Before long the panic was in full swing, his banks collapsed, and he indulged the urge to absquatulate, and along come John D. Rockefeller, that bloodless Baptist bookkeeper, and bought up all the wells for pennies on the dollar, letting the oil-men keep on working them but making them sell their oil to his refineries at the price he set himself—and so he pocketed all the profit. A man with a ledger for a heart!
Then it was dark for real, moon hanging up there like a bitten apple. Scuffling. That’s what woke him up—scuffling, and cussing, and grunting and stamping. Two shadowy figures grappled, black against the moonlight, like a puppet show.
Why, you—
It was Frank. He was fighting with the Prince!
You—
The two jumped apart, circling.
You aint nothing but a river pirate! Frank cried.
The Prince kicked at him. Frank dodged.
If, the Prince panted, you will but kindly—fall overboard—to drown or live—and so spare my soul—the burden of murder—no?—very well then—
A flash of steel in his hand. Frank fell backwards.
Leave him alone! George bellowed and launched himself at the Prince.
But his legs went all soft and wobbly and he fell on his face.
The Prince stood over him and turned him round with a boot-tip.
Silly little whelp, he said.
Behind them, Frank was making frantic thrashing noises.
The Prince bent over George, whose gaze was caught by the sharp glint at the very tip of the knife, like a twinkling star. He tried to roll away as it came nearer, but all of a sudden he was puking his guts out.
The Prince stepped back, like he didn’t want to foul his boots.
Frank loomed up behind George and flash (like a struck match) bang (like all the doors in the world slamming shut) a scream (the Prince, arms flung out wide) a splash (he fell backwards into the river) thump (the Prince’s body struck the raft underneath) and then silence, silence, and more silence.
George struggled up, wiped his mouth on his sleeve.
What— he started.
He was trying to steal our raft, Frank said.
No, what—
I shot him.
He showed it to George: Papa’s service revolver, still half wrapped up in an oily rag.
That gunnysack! George said. You stole it!
Aint you glad I did?
How—
When you dropped off, I begun to suspicion him, so I started spitting out the liquor. He was drinking for real, though he never showed it much. Reckon he’s used to it.
But—
I pretended to wink out like you but I watched him and when he come for me—well, he sure got a surprise!
They’ll come after us! We got to get away!
I had to. Nobody’ll suspect us if you just keep your mouth shut.
George lay back down. He had to get Frank away somewhere, both of them, keep safe somehow, but he was too tired to think about it. He wasn’t even too sure what all he’d seen. The raft spun them on down the river, enclosed in night dark as sleep, and it seemed like the raft was trailing backwards a long, long string, a ribbon unwinding, all the way up the river and up French Creek and clear back to the place on the bank near Little Hope where they’d pushed the raft in. Not a tether; a trail left behind—like fairytale breadcrumbs.
And as it got longer, it stretched thinner, it got thin as a thread, as the raft ran on and on, a mile, a rod, a yard, an inch—a hair’s breadth—if they moved just one atom farther away, it would break. But the river never stops, does it?
George woke up just once. The river rushed, like wind in a forest; distant cries and shouts, like birdsong. A blear of lights through crusty eyes, towers and piers, houses and more houses, and chains of light that slid along, locomotives and carriages, and warehouses, factories—all of it doubled by the river’s reflection, so that it was like an old-fashioned pierced-tin lantern, the candlelight gushing out all its little holes, and he drifted inside some starry glittering crystal, but distant as heaven, and pulling now backwards, away, away—smaller and smaller, already out of reach, shrinking like a train gone by.
* * *
We snagg on a Big reck.
The rising sun was a gray smear, the river walled with fog.
Where are we? George asked.
Don’t know.
We passed by Pittsburgh in the dark.
I fell asleep, Frank said. What with the drink and the fight and the—well, you know—just so tucked out I couldn’t keep my eyes open no more.
What now?
Frank looked at him steady.
Well? George said.
Well’s a deep subject, don’t fall in.
You killed a man!
Reckon so.
We got to tell—
No! Frank shouted: no we don’t. We aint going to tell no one. Never. You hear?
But Jesus said—
Jesus shmeesus, you talk like a little girl! Eat your breakfast.
But where we going to sell our raft now? George asked.
Be glad we still got it, Frank said.
Sure, but what we planned was....
Frank wasn’t listening.
It was cold, like spring here hadn’t come yet, and the fog was full of noises, shouts and gurgles and muffled echoes, and you couldn’t tell where they were coming from. A lonesome booming, like far-away cannons. Voices calling? Shouts, maybe? Huffs and chuffs and, now and again, a bell, clear as if standing next to a church.
George was rinsing the bowls in the river when something big and broken loomed up out of the fog.
Frank! George shouted.
I see it!
He leaned hard on the sweep, but it was too late.
They got knocked over when the raft struck the—whatever it was—and turned round, bumped bumped bumped: and stopped thud. The water chuckled against the sides. The wreck they’d snagged on creaked and groaned.
Huh, Frank said. Raft looks ship-shape.
What is it? A fairy-tale house? Look at all them carvings.
The wreck’s side was worked all over in curlicues and animal heads, all painted in bright colors, like a heathen temple in Ballantyne’s Great Bonanza, Illustrated. It loomed overhead, all misty-foggy, and so mysterious-like, lying mournful and lonesome in the middle of the river. To get aboard of her, slink around a little, see what there was to see! Like Christofer Clumbus discovering Kingdom-Come, or Marco-Polo at the courts of Cathay.
Looks foreign, Frank said. Figure it’s hit a shoal in the fog?
Funny-looking boat. I smell smoke. Think she’ll splode?
Maybe so.
The two boys looked at each other.
They made the raft fast. Frank clambered up the side, bail of the lantern between his teeth, to a pair of shutters and pulled them open, thrust in the lantern, then heaved himself up and went head first, kicking his legs. He disappeared inside.
Silence.
Frank! George called up.
More silence.
Frank!
Frank!
His head appeared at the window.
You got to see this! he said and disappeared again.
George climbed up, tumbled in. Then he saw:
Gold!
The room was all over gold!
Sparkling and glowing, like the insides of a treasure chest. The deck was black, shiny as a mirror, and all the furniture was painted blood-red. Frank scraped his thumb against a timber, leaving a dark line and a glint under the nail.
It’s real thin, he said, like paint or something.
The walls moaned like a mortal-wounded man. Something else sighed. Then the creaking quieted as the ship settled but tilted more than before.
George opened the door a crack and peeped out and almost ran away right then. But Fran
k shined the lantern out and in just a second they saw it was only a painted statue. More lined the whole length of the passage, which must’ve stretched end to end of the boat; warriors, George guessed, all fearsome and many-armed, like octopuses but with swords; faces blank, eyes wide and red, and not armored but nekkid. Some had animal heads. All had teeth fierce as tusks.
Oh no, George said. That just aint right.
They crept along past them—like one of those paintings that watches you, its eyes following, but multiplied by a hundred. The ship kept up its wheezing and knocking. Frank held up the lantern.
Look, he said.
The biggest statue of all, stationed at corridor’s end, all eight arms just birch-pale splintered stumps. Not much was left of the doors behind it, either. Shadows rocked up and down the walls with the lantern’s swing.
What’s that? George asked, pointing at the deck. Looks like blood.
Statues don’t bleed, Frank said.
Course not. Don’t touch it!
Because Frank was bending down.
He held up his finger, smeared dark.
Clotted, he said, but still wet. There’s another one.
A trail! George said. I bet somebody needs our help. Where’s it lead?
The trail took them up steps, through cabins, all dim and uncanny by lantern light; more steps, more corridors; up through like a trapdoor, and out along the top deck towards the bow. The deck was sticky.
Then they heard it. Grunting, kind of, or sobbing. There!—hung from a high-up pole, and swaying in the fog like the big brass plumb-bob in the grandfather clock at the foot of the stairs back home.
It was a boy, black-haired and bruise-eyed, tied up hand and foot and wrapped all round with ropes like some ‘Gyptian mummy or the prey of a giant spider. He let loose with a flood of foreign talk, all sing-song.
Talk sense, George said.
Maybe he can’t, Frank said. Looks Chinee.
The boy talked again, like reading from a book.
That don’t sound like Chinee to me, George said.
Sounds like French, Frank said. But funny French, like.
Not Canucks French, George said.
The ship’s groaning rose to a shout, and something broke with a loud crash. The whole wreck shuddered.
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