Philipp Meyer - The Son

As for the minerals, there has been a good deal of drilling along the big river; trucks and roughnecks no longer garner any notice. Lease prices have tripled. But still the closest strikes are at Piedras Pintas, far to the east, which produce only a few hundred barrels a day under pump. The rest is just gas, which for now is useless.

APRIL 26, 1917

The Colonel, who has been gone a week, returned today from Wichita Falls with a nearly new rotary drilling rig on several old trucks. He claims to have gotten a good price. Feller who owned it went bankrupt, he told me, as if this were a selling point.

Accompanying the Colonel is a very drunk man who claims to be a geologist. A second drunk who claims to be a driller. Drunks number three through five are the floor- and derrickmen. They look to have been sleeping in hog wallows.

“Where did you get all that?” I asked him.

“Wichita Falls,” he said, as if I didn’t know where he’d been.

“We puttin’ in more windmills?”

“Don’t you worry about it.”

He and the geologist went to explore in the sandy Garcia pastures. The rig builder, toolie, and driller retired to the Colonel’s porch to drink.

MAY 4, 1917

Having come up with nothing better, they have located a spot to drill, barely half a mile from the house, based on a foggy recollection of a seep my father might have seen fifty years ago, which has not been seen since.

“That’s an interesting spot,” I told him, “where we can see and hear it from the house. I guess you couldn’t find anywhere else in almost four hundred sections.”

“That’s what the doodlebug told me. Always listen to the doodlebug.”

There are times I can’t tell if he thinks I’m a simpleton, or if he really is one himself.

MAY 27, 1917

Panic sweeping through the Mexicans. Six of our top hands, including Aarón and Faustino Rodriquez, informed me they are resigning and returning to Mexico — they do not think it will be safe for their families.

Reason: The good people in Austin just approved funding to expand the Ranger force. Number of Rangers on border will increase to eight hundred (currently forty).

I tried pointing out to the vaqueros that Mexico is a war zone. They don’t care. Safer than here, they say.

Freddy Ramirez (our segundo who first caught the Garcias stealing cattle) also put in his notice. The factories in Michigan are still hiring Mexicans. Or so he has heard.

I tried to make a joke about it: “Michigan? Muy frío! ” Rubbing my hands on my arms.

He did not find this funny. “The cold we can survive. The Rinches, maybe not.”

MY FATHER DOES not care that we are losing seven of our best hands. After putting half our employees to work assembling the derrick and getting supplies to the drilling site, the real work has begun. Din is oppressive. Where there was once the sound of cattle, a creaking windmill, it now sounds like a train station, though the train never gets closer, or farther, or quieter. Because of the heat all the windows are open. I walk around with cotton stuffed in my ears.

JUNE 19, 1917

Drilling continues and so far nothing but sand. Meanwhile, because of the sale of the Pinkard Ranch, and other smaller ranches like it, the town is nearly unrecognizable. Trucks and vegetable pickers instead of horses and vaqueros. Gilbert’s store selling fertilizer by the ton. Went there to buy some digging bars, a few shovels, and a case of.30-cal gov’t for the Lewis gun.

“Is that my price as well?” Everything was three times as expensive as it had been.

“Nah. I figure the few of us left ought to stick together.” He pretended to do some figuring on a pad and reduced the bill by half. It was still a 20 percent increase over the previous month. I decided not to mention it.

“Who’s left?” I said.

“Far as the greasers, none of them. About ten families, Vargases, Guzmans, Mendezes, Herreras, Riveras, I don’t even fuckin’ know who else — all happened the same day, it seemed like — they sold their lots to Shaw who owns the rooming house, bought a few old trucks, and headed to Michigan, forty or fifty of them in one caravan. Cleaned me out of coats and blankets. They say Ford hired two thousand Mexicans in one factory. Which is pretty funny when you think about it, greasers building cars and all.”

Considered mentioning that several of the “greasers” (Vargas and Rivera, at least) had gone to college in Mexico City while Gilbert and his cross-eyed brothers were diddling heifers in Eagle Pass.

“Even old Gomez sold out. Everything in his store for cost. I got crates and crates of metates, chorizo, horsehair bridles, and hide ropes. Plus his curandero shit. You believe that? You are looking at the new town curandero, right here.”

The thought of any Mexican trusting Niles Gilbert to sell them medicine was depressing. I paid the bill and tried to hurry out, but not before he added: “Funny thing is, I do miss all those people, which I never thought I would say, given all the trouble they caused.”

Fine sentiments for a murderer. I suppose I am no better.

DESPITE THE DISAPPEARANCE of the last of the original Mexican families (many of whom have been here five or ten generations — longer than any white), a new crop has arrived to fill their places. They speak no English and will be easy prey for men like Gilbert. Still, it is better than northern Mexico, where a state of open warfare persists. Dunno what they’re complaining about, said my father. At least there’s no taxes.

After I got home, I rode out to help rotate the beefs off the number 19 pasture. We are getting everything cross-fenced, and as Pinkard said, this place is beginning to run like a well-oiled machine. But when does the soul go out of it? That is what no one seems to know.

JUNE 20, 1917

Need a new truck. Have settled on a Wichita. The 2.5-ton would be a dream. Cannot decide between the worm drive and the chain drive.

Considered a Ford (they now make the Model T cars in Dallas) but everyone who owns a Ford has had a shoulder dislocated (or broken) when the starting handle kicked back. You can judge a Ford driver by the cast on his arm — that is the old joke.

You cannot build junk and expect to survive in today’s world. People want things that last.

JUNE 21, 1917

A poor Mexican woman came to the door today. Was surprised she was bold enough to come through the gate. She looked familiar but I could not place her, presumed she was the wife or sister of one of the hands. She was thin and pale, wearing only a shift and a thin shawl over top, and when the wind blew her dress against her body I could see her legs were nearly skeletal.

“ Buenas noches, ” I said.

There was a pause.

“You don’t recognize me.” Her English was perfect.

“I guess not,” I said.

“I am María Garcia.”

I stepped back.

“I am Pedro Garcia’s daughter.”

At first it was just a fever but then the spots appeared and everyone panicked. A quarter of the band struck their tipis, gathered their horses, and left the camp within a few hours. A few days later, the people who’d first taken sick were covered in boils, their faces and necks, arms and legs, the palms of their hands and the soles of their feet.

The medicine men built sweat lodges along the stream; people were dunked in the cold water, put in the sweat lodge, then dunked again. It wasn’t long after that that people started to die; soon all the medicine men were sick as well.

The whites had been variolating their children for a hundred years, but by the time of statehood, you could find the vaccine in most cities. The Germans had paid a doctor to come to Fredericksburg and my mother had taken us there to get our shots.