Эптон Синклер - Oil!

There was a chorus from the audience, “Amen!” And so there you were, a regular consecration! All the lies that Dad had told to the Watkins family and to others, the bribes that he had paid to Messrs. Carey and Coffey—all these were abrogated, nullified, and remitted, and the Ross Junior-Paradise No. 1 was from that time forth a sanctified well. And so Dad turned and looked at Bunny, who was standing by the engine with the lever in his hand. “All right, son!” And Bunny moved the lever, and the engine gave a thump, and the chain gave a pull, and the gears gave a rattle, and the rotary-table gave a turn, and down underneath the derrick floor you heard that exciting sound which the oil-men report as “Spud!”

At less than two hundred feet they struck the sands which accounted for Bunny’s “earthquake oil”; there proved to be two feet of them, and Dad said it would give them enough oil to run their own car for a year! They were going deeper, still with an eighteen inch bit, through hard sandstone formation; they were working in an open hole, with no casing, because the ground was so firm. Paul was working as a general utility man, mainly carpentry. “Dad, we’re going to make Paul our manager some day,” Bunny had said; but Paul had smiled and said that he was going to be a scientist, and he wouldn’t fool himself with the idea that the jobs at the top were easy—he’d not exchange his eight hour job for Dad’s eighteen hour job. This was a subtle kind of flattery, and gave Dad a tremendously high opinion of Paul!

Thanksgiving Day was coming; and Bunny’s soul was torn in half. It was a great occasion at the school, the annual foot-ball battle with a rival institution known as “Polly High,” located in Angel City. And what was Bunny, a real boy or an oil gnome? He fought it out within himself, and announced his decision, to the dismay of Rosie Taintor and of Aunt Emma—he was going to Paradise with Dad! It was the quail season, and Dad needed a change, the boy told his aunt; but the sharp old lady said he could fool himself, but he couldn’t fool her.

They didn’t have to take any camping things now, for they had their cabin on the Rascum place, with a telephone and everything comfortable. There was an extension phone in the bungalow, and all they had to do was to call up Ruth, and there would be a jolly fire in the cabin, and a supper on the table at the bungalow, with all kinds of home-made good things, the eating of which would make it necessary for Dad to walk miles and miles over the hills next day! First, of course, they would stop at the well, and inspect things, and have a talk with the foreman. There were traces of oil again, and Dad had told them to take a core, and he asked Mr. Banning to come up next day and study it with him.

They came in sight of the derrick. The drill-stem was out of the hole, they could see the mass of “stands” setting in place. When they got nearer, they saw that the crew had a cable down in the hole; and when Dave Murgins, the foreman, saw them, he came out to the car, and it was plain that something was wrong. “We’ve had an accident, Mr. Ross.”

“What’s the matter?”

“There’s a man fell in the hole.”

“Oh, my God!” cried Dad. “Who?” And Bunny’s heart was in his throat, for of course his first thought was Paul.

“A roughneck,” said the foreman. “Fellow by the name of Joe Gundha. You don’t know him.”

“How did that happen?”

“Nobody knows. We was changing the bit, and this fellow went down into the cellar for some reason—he had no business there that we know of. Nobody thought about him for a while.”

“You sure he went down?”

“We been fishing with a hook, and we got a bit of his shirt.”

Bunny was white about the lips. “Oh, Dad, will he be alive?”

“How long has he been down?”

“We’ve been fishing half an hour,” said Murgins.

“And you haven’t heard a sound?”

“Not one.”

“Well then, he’s drowned in the mud. How far down is he?”

“About fifty feet. The mud sinks that far when we take out the drill-stem. He must have went down head first, or he’d have been able to keep his head above the mud and make a noise.”

“My God! My God!” exclaimed Dad. “It makes me want to quit this business! What can you do to help men that won’t help themselves?”

Bunny had heard that cry a thousand times before. They had a cover for the hole, and any man who went down into the cellar was supposed to slip it into place. Of necessity the dirt caved in about the edges, so that the top of the hole was a kind of funnel, its edges slippery with mud, and in this case with traces of oil; yet men would take chances, sliding around on the edge of that yawning pit! What could you do for them?

“Has he got any family?” asked Dad.

“He told Paul Watkins he’d got a wife and some children in Oklahoma; he worked in the oil fields there.”

Dad sat motionless, staring in front of him; and nobody said a word. They knew he really was interested in his men, taking care of them was a matter of personal pride to him. Bunny had turned sort of sick inside; gee, what a shame—in his well, of all places, his first one, that was to start off the new field! It was all spoiled for him; he wouldn’t be able to enjoy his oil if he got it!

“Well,” said Dad, at last, “what are you doin’? Jigglin’ a hook up and down in there? You’ll never get him up that way. You’ll have to put down a three-pronged grab.”

“I thought that would tear him so—” explained Dave Murgins, hesitatingly.

“I know,” said Dad; “but you’ve got it to do. It ain’t as if he might have any life in him. Bend the prongs so they fit the hole, and force them past the body. Go ahead and get it over with, and let’s hope it’ll teach the rest of you something.”

Dad got out of the car, and told Bunny to take their things down to the Rascum place, and break the news to Ruth; she’d be upset, especially if she knew the fellow. Bunny understood that Dad didn’t want him around when that torn body came out of the hole; and since he couldn’t do any good, he turned the car in silence, and drove away. In his mind he saw the men screwing the “grab” onto the drill-stem—a tool which was built to go over obstacles that fell into the hole, and to catch hold of them with sharp hooks. They might get Joe Gundha by the legs and they might get him by the face—ugh, the less you thought about a thing like that, the better for your enjoyment of the oil-game!

Dad came to the cabin after a couple of hours, and lay down for a while to rest. They had got the body out, he said, and had telephoned for the coroner; he would swear in several of the men as a jury, and hear the testimony of others, and look at the body, and then give a burial permit. Paul had been to the dead man’s bunk and looked over his things, and put them all into a box to be shipped to his wife; Dad had in his pocket half a dozen letters that had been found among the things, and because he didn’t want Bunny to think that money came easy, or that life was all play, he gave him these letters, and Bunny sat off in a corner and read them: pitiful little messages, scrawled in a childish hand, telling how the doctor said that Susie’s heart would be weak for a long time after the flu, and the baby was getting two more teeth and was awful cross, and Aunt Mary had just been in to see her, and said that Willie was in Chicago and doing good; there were cross-marks and circles that were kisses from mamma, and from Susie and from the baby. One sentence there was to cheer up Dad and Bunny: “I am glad you got such a good boss.”

Well, it made a melancholy Thanksgiving evening for them; they ate a little of the feast which Ruth had prepared, but without real enjoyment. They talked about accidents, and Dad told of something which had happened in the first well he had drilled—they were down only thirty feet, when a baby had crawled down into the cellar and slid into the hole. It had taken a couple of able-bodied men to hold the mother back, while the rest of them tried to get the child out. They fished for it with the big hook on the end of a rope, and got the hook under the baby’s body and lifted it gently a few feet, but then the body got wedged somehow, and they were helpless. The child had hung there, not screaming, just making a low, moaning sound all the time, “U-u-u-” like that, never stopping; they could hear it plainly. They started twenty feet from the well and dug a shaft, big enough for two men to work in, breaking the ground with crow bars, scraping it into buckets with big hoes, and the men on top hauling the buckets out with ropes. When they got below the baby, they ran in sideways, and got the baby out all right. The hook had sunk into the flesh of the thigh, but without breaking the skin; the bruise had healed, and in a few days the child was all right.