Эптон Синклер - Oil!

A strange thing was life! If Bunny had stayed home that day, he’d have taken Rosie Taintor to the foot-ball game, and at the moment when poor Joe Gundha had plunged to his doom, Bunny would have been yelling his head off over a few yards gained by his team. And now, in the evening, he’d have been at a dance; yes, Bertie actually was at a dance, at the home of one of her fashionable friends, or at some fancy hotel where they were giving a party. Bunny could see, in his mind’s eye, her gleaming shoulders and bosom, her dress of soft shimmering stuff, her bright cheeks and vivid face; she would be sipping champagne, or gliding about the room in the arms of Ashleigh Mathews, the young fellow she was in love with just now. Aunt Emma would be all dressed up, playing at a card-party; and grandmother was painting a picture of a young lord, or duke, or somebody, in short pants and silk stockings, kissing the hand of his lady love!

Yes, life was strange—and cruel. You lived in the little narrow circle of your own consciousness, and, as people said, what you didn’t know didn’t hurt you. Your Thanksgiving dinner was spoiled, because one poor laborer had slid down into a well which you happened to own; but dozens and perhaps hundreds of men had been hurt in other wells all over the country, and that didn’t trouble you a bit. For that matter, think of all the men who were dying over there in Europe! All the way from Flanders to Switzerland the armies were hiding in trenches, bombarding each other day and night, and thousands were being mangled just as horribly as by a grab in the bottom of a well; but you hadn’t intended to let that spoil your Thanksgiving dinner, not a bit! Those men didn’t mean as much to you as the quail you were going to kill the next day!

Well, the coroner came, and they buried the body of Joe Gundha, on a hill-top a little way back out of sight, and with a wooden cross to mark the spot. It was a job for Mr. Shrubbs, the preacher at Eli’s church; and Eli came along, and old Mr. Watkins and his wife, and other old ladies and gentlemen of the church who liked to go to funerals. It was curious—Dad seemed glad to have them come and tell him what to do; they knew, and he didn’t! Obviously, it didn’t really do the poor devil any good to preach and pray over his mangled corpse; but at least it was something, and there were people who came and did it, and all you had to do was jist to stand bare-headed in the sun for a while, and hand the preacher a ten dollar bill afterwards. Yes, that was the procedure—in death, as in life; you wanted something done, and there was a person whose business it was to do that thing, and you paid him. To Bunny it seemed a natural phenomenon—and all the same, whether it was Mr. Shrubbs, who prayed over your dead roughneck, or the man at the filling station who supplied the gas and oil and water and air for your car, or the public officials who supplied the road over which you drove the car.

Dad had sent a telegram to Mrs. Gundha, telling her the sad news, and adding that he was sending a check for a hundred dollars to cover her immediate expenses. Now Dad wrote a letter, explaining what they had done, and how they were sending her dead husband’s things in a box by express. Dad carried insurance to cover his liability for accidents, and Mrs. Gundha would be paid by the insurance company; she must present her claim to the industrial accident commission. They would probably allow her five thousand dollars, and Dad hoped she would invest the money in government bonds, and not let anybody swindle her, with oil stocks or other get rich quick schemes.

So that was that; and Dad said they might jist as well go quail shooting, and forget what they couldn’t help. And Bunny said all right; but in truth he didn’t enjoy the sport, because in his mind somehow the quail had got themselves mixed up with Joe Gundha and the soldiers in France, and he couldn’t get any fun out of mangled bodies.

Christmas was coming; and Bunny had his program all laid out. He was going to take Dad to the Christmas Day foot-ball game, and next morning they would leave for Paradise, and stay there until it was time to go back for the New Year’s Day foot-ball game. The well was going fine; they were down over two thousand feet, in soft shale, and having no trouble. Then, a couple of weeks before Christmas, Bunny came home from school, and Aunt Emma said, “Your father just phoned; he’s got some news about Excelsior Peter.” That was a joke they had in the family—“Excelsior Peter”; Aunt Emma had guessed that “Pete” was a nickname, and she would be real lady-like and use the full name! So, of course, they teased the life out of her.

“What is it?” cried Bunny.

“They’ve struck oil.”

“At Paradise?” Bunny rushed to the phone, in great excitement. Yes, Dad said, Dave Murgins had jist phoned down; “Excelsior-Carter No. 1,” as the well was called, had been in oil sands for several days, and had managed to keep it secret. Now they were cementing off, something you couldn’t hide.

Bunny jumped into the car and rushed down to the office. Everybody was excited; the afternoon papers had the news, and some of Dad’s oil friends dropped in to talk about it. It meant a new field, of course; there would be a rush to Paradise. Dad was the lucky one—to think he had got twelve thousand acres up there, owned them outright! How had it happened? Dad said it wasn’t his doings; he had spent a hundred thousand dollars jist to amuse his boy, to get him interested in the business, and perhaps teach him a lesson. But now, by golly, it looked as if the boy had done the teaching! Mr. Bankside, who had got to be quite an oil-man now, and was drilling a well of his own, said that he always hoped his sons would lose when they started gambling, so they’d not get the habit; Dad said yes, but he’d risk Bunny’s soul this once, there was too much money at stake!

After that, of course, Bunny was on pins and needles to get to Paradise; he wanted to quit school, but Dad said no. Bunny decided he didn’t care about that old Christmas Day foot-ball game; what did Dad think? To which Dad answered that he’d managed to get along to the age of fifty-nine without ever seeing a foot-ball game! So Bunny said he’d write and tell Ruth, they’d run up on Christmas eve, starting after school, and have dinner late, in regular society style. It would be hard for Ruth to believe that fashionable people in the cities ate their dinner at eight or nine o’clock at night!

Meantime, the bit was grinding away in the well; they were down to 2300 feet, and it was known that Excelsior-Carter No. 1 had struck the sands at 2437 feet. Bunny was so much excited that he would run to the phone in between classes at school, and call up his father’s secretary at the office, to ask if there was any news. And so, three days before Christmas, he got the magic word; Dad was on the phone, and said that Bunny’s well was in oil-sands. It was too early yet to say any more, they were taking a core, that was all. As soon as he got free from class, Bunny went flying over to the office, and there he listened to a conversation—Dad had put in a long distance call, and was talking to the man from whom he got his machinery. He was ordering a patent casing-head, the biggest made, to be shipped to the well; it was to be put on a truck and start tonight. And then Dad was talking to Murgins again, telling him at what hour the casing-head was due, and they must set to work and break out the drill-stem, and put that casing-head on tight, with lugs on the side, and jist bury it with cement, not less than fifty tons, Dad said; they were away off from everything, out there at Paradise, and if they was to have a blow-out, it would be the very devil.

Well, they got their core, eight feet of it, and it was high gravity oil—a fortune waiting for them, down underneath those rocky hills, where the feet of goats and sheep had trod for so many years! Dad ordered his “tankage,” and then he ordered more. Then they learned that the casing-head had arrived; it was screwed on, and the “lugs” were on, and when the cement had set, all the gas under Mount Vesuvius couldn’t lift that there load, said Dad. They started drilling again, and took another core, and found the oil heavier yet. So finally Dad gave way, and said it was too important, he guessed Bunny would have to beg off a day in school. Dad gave orders to “wash” the well, and he called up the cement man, and arranged for the big truck to set out for Paradise; Dad would meet them there, and they would do the job the day before Christmas, and if they got their shut-off, they’d celebrate with the biggest turkey in that famous turkey-raising country. So, early the next morning, Dad and Bunny chucked their suit-cases into the car, and set out to break the speed records to Paradise. Three hours later they stopped to telephone, and the foreman said they were “washing;” also that the Excelsior Pete well had got a water shut-off, and had drilled through the cement, and was going down into the oil sands, the final stage of making a well.