Philipp Meyer - The Son

Then she felt guilty. She thought of her brothers, who were still in America, training in Georgia. Clint would do something to show off and be killed. Paul would be more careful, though easily convinced to do something risky, especially if a friend were in trouble. She prayed he would have no friends. Otherwise he would surely be killed. It was Jonas: he was the only one among her brothers who acted like a rich man’s son. He would not take any risk if someone else might do it instead. And he was an officer.

Outside, the grass was already brown from the heat. To the south, the flat Texas plain stretched down to Mexico; to the north the escarpment began. A yellow tint of summer haze. A mule pulling a plow. She did not know why, it was plain to see there would be no rain for weeks, the dryness made you wonder if it would ever rain again.

Her uncle Phineas was a powerful man, head of the Railroad Commission, more powerful than the governor, they said. He was not really her uncle, but great-uncle, and he determined how much oil could be pumped in all of Texas. Somehow that controlled the price. She supposed it was like cattle. In a drought everyone had to sell quickly so the price went down, though when beef got scarce the price went up again. Except the packers were now interrupting this — buying cheap from distressed ranchers while raising the price on the other end — telling the city buyers, who did not know better, that a drought meant scarcity. The packers were where the money had gone; it was no longer made on grass, but in cement buildings. Armour and Swift. Her father hated them. Meanwhile Texas made more oil than anyplace on the earth. You did not hear people who made oil complaining very much.

SHE OPENED HER eyes. She was on the floor of the great room, watching the fire. Her arm, the skin old and so thin the light seemed to pass right through it, the watch askew on her wrist. Perhaps she might inch just one finger? No. Her eyes moved around the room and settled on a globe next to the divan. It was no older than she was, but many of the countries had already ceased to exist. No hope for a single person. She could see that the mortar had begun to crumble in the fireplace; the stones would soon come apart. When did that happen? she wondered, and then she thought: I did not expect to live this long myself . Except that was lie. She had always known it was the others who wouldn’t make it.

Death the common companion; it was not like the settled places of the North. Jonas sensed it and saved himself. You did not know better. Or did and thought you could escape it . She watched the ember on the hearth. She wondered if she had really known that about Paul and Clint, or if it was another trick of the mind, the memory recording something that had never been true, like a magnetic tape that had been tampered with.

PHINEAS HAD BEEN good to her. It was hard to imagine the power he’d had: as OPEC would years later, the Railroad Commission controlled the price of oil in the entire world. Phineas had become enormously wealthy. He could make or break any oilman in the state, any politician — you might drill all the wells you wanted, but you could not pump a drop without his say-so.

The commission’s offices were in a drab state office building; the only thing giving it away were the cars — Packards, a Cadillac Sixteen, Lincoln Zeyphrs, and Continentals. Phineas had a corner office, the walls lined with his trophies, the Colonel’s Yellowboy Winchester, a brace of Colt Peacemakers, plaques from the Southwest Cattle Raisers and the Old Trail Driver’s Association. There were pictures with elephants and lions and antlered game of every description, he had hunted on five continents. There were pictures with Teddy Roosevelt in Cuba, Phineas smiling broadly, more sure of himself than the old man.

He was seventy-five now and, when seated, still gave off an impression of power. He looked nothing like the Colonel: a tall man with thick white hair, expensive suits, beautiful secretaries. He did not wear cowboy boots or a bolo tie — those were affectations of a later generation — he was more like an eastern banker.

But his health was failing. His legs were swollen, his heart unsteady. He would never live to see his father’s age, that was plain.

Jeannie watched the secretary as she left coffee and a tray of kolaches. A brunette with violet eyes, high cheekbones, a perfect figure — she would never be pretty enough. Phineas asked about the news from Paul and Clint, congratulated her on finishing school. Did she have plans? Not really. She settled into a chair overlooking the capitol and downtown Austin. She was only five hours from the ranch but it was a different country entirely.

When the secretary had closed the door, something in Phineas’s manner changed and she knew he meant to talk business.

“I suspect it is obvious to both of us that the ranch is losing money.”

She nodded, though it had not been obvious: beef had been climbing steadily since the war began.

“I lived on that land before it was settled,” he continued. “I buried my mother and father and brother there. And now my nephew — your father — is running it into the ground. He is content to burn through our money as if a fresh supply will come up like grass in the springtime. Why the old man left him majority holder, I have no idea.” He leaned back in his chair. “Have you seen the books?”

“I don’t think so,” she said.

“Of course not.” He beckoned her around to his side of the desk, where a ledger was sitting open. He pointed to a number: a little over four hundred thousand dollars. “Last year’s cattle sales. It seems like a large number, and it is, because your father sells a lot of cattle. But the next thirty-seven pages are debits.” He skipped forward, first a page at a time, then two or three at a time, until he reached the end. He pointed to another number, just under eight hundred thousand dollars. “The ranch’s expenses are nearly double its income.”

There is some mistake , she thought, but she kept quiet. Instead she asked: “How long has it been like that?”

“Oh, twenty years, at least. The only thing keeping us in the black is the oil and gas, but the wells are old and shallow and the Colonel, quite wisely, leased only a few thousand acres, trusting that we would lease the rest at higher prices. Which we have not yet done.”

He paused again.

“For reasons I do not quite understand, our state has a club of wealthy children who like to play at being cattlemen. As if the term can even exist today. Bob Kleberg has put it in your father’s ear that with technology, better bulls, and a few bump gates, he can make money selling beef, which is a feat Kleberg has not even managed on his own land. As you may or may not know, the King Ranch, all million acres of it, was on the verge of bankruptcy until Humble Oil loaned them three million dollars. Which was a pity, because I had made Alice King a very generous offer. And I have always liked the coast.”

He looked for her reaction but she sat quietly, so he continued.

“Your father is counting on the fact that I will not be around forever, because he thinks that once he gets my money, his problems are over. What he does not seem to realize — or care about — is that even with my money, the ranch will still go bankrupt — it is just a question of how many millions your father will go through until it does.”

She knew then why she had been called: he wanted her to betray her father. To her surprise she did not object to this as much as she might have hoped. Her father, for all his rough-and-tumble image, was a dandy. She had always known this, perhaps because the Colonel was always pointing it out. Earning money was the furthest thing from her father’s mind, he wanted to be on magazine covers, like the Colonel had been. She had always known that the Colonel did not respect him and now she saw that Phineas — the other famous member of the family — did not respect him, either.