Philipp Meyer - The Son

The decision was made. She was not going back. An arrangement would be figured out, she was worth fifty million dollars and it was insane, actually insane, that she should be trapped here, or anywhere else, by children, her husband, this situation, she was not sure how to properly describe it, but it was all of those things, and it was over.

She heard the car pull into the driveway. She stayed in the yard where it was dark. Inside, she watched Hank come down the steps into the living room, past all the new furniture, two hundred thousand dollars’ worth — her money — she watched him go to the bar and pour a whiskey and stare into his glass. Then he went to the window and looked out. It was too bright in the house for him to see her; he was looking only at his own reflection. His coarse sharecropper’s face and his thick hair and the lines already around his eyes, yes she loved him, but she stayed where she was. He would have to choose.

HE WAS A good man. But in the end, the money was hers, and without that, she was not sure he would have given in.

It did not seem right, having to bargain with her own husband, having to manipulate him, but maybe he’d been doing it to her the entire time, even if neither one of them had realized it.

THEY HIRED TWO more nannies, and she went back to work. They thought she was a bad mother. She overheard the secretaries, of course they were all unmarried, of course they were all jealous, of course they would have slept with Hank in a heartbeat — a wealthy, good-looking man. Women pretended sisterhood until it counted; they acted as if they cared nothing for men they were actually in love with. Naturally, she made sure that every girl they hired was so unattractive that Hank would have to be extraordinarily drunk to even consider them. We have the ugliest secretaries in the world, he always said.

Still. They thought she was a bad mother. She tried to forget it.

Slept only a few hours, thinking of her on the other side of the house. She did not report for breakfast and if she left her room at all, she must have done it quietly as an owl. When I went for lunch I found dishes in the drying rack, freshly washed; she had been there, I had missed her. Lost interest in eating and returned to my office.

Picked up and set down at least two dozen books. Considered, then dismissed, calling Sally. Overcome with need to tell someone about this. If I could climb to the roof and announce it with a bullhorn…

But I am happy simply knowing she is in the same house. If there is any question of whether it is better to love or to be loved… the answer is obvious. I wonder if my father would agree. I wonder if he has ever felt this way; like all men of ambition I suspect he is incapable of it. I want to weep for him. I would trade everything in this house, everything we own, to keep feeling this, and at this thought, I do begin to weep, for my father, for María, for the Niles Gilberts and the Pedros.

FORTUNATELY OR NOT, I was pulled from this morass of emotion by events that required my action. Around two P.M. there was a loud noise. When I got up to investigate I could no longer see the top of the derrick sticking up over the brush.

AS IT TURNED out, the driller had hit a gas pocket and lost control of the rig. One of the hands rode the derrick to the ground; by some miracle he is still alive (they say drunks fall better). By a second miracle the gas did not ignite and by a third miracle (from the common perspective) there is oil now flowing steadily into our pastures, down the hill and into the stream.

By evening the entire town had arrived, looking at the fallen derrick where it lay in a swamp of oily mud. It was plain this was a coup of monstrous proportion, that what few worries we might have had are now over, we are even further removed from the daily lives of the citizenry. But the townspeople did not seem to understand this. They almost seemed to think it was their good fortune. People were dipping cups into the mud to taste the oil as if it were coffee.

It is as my father says. Men are meant to be ruled. The poor man prefers to associate, in mind if not in body, with the rich and successful. He rarely allows himself to consider that his poverty and his neighbor’s riches are inextricably linked, for this would require action, and it is easier for him to think of all the reasons he is superior to his other neighbors, who are just poorer than he is.

As the crowd pressed around the fallen derrick, the lake of oil growing larger, the driller, whose back teeth were still well afloat, could not decide whether or not to ignite the well. Gas can travel hundreds of yards aboveground, flashing at the smallest provocation; it is not uncommon for spectators to be immolated in this fashion, hours or even days after a well comes in.

After more whiskey to clear his head, he decided not to flare the well. The oil was flowing, not gushing. There could not be much gas. Or so he reckoned. I reckoned he was drunk. I told everyone to stay clear of the well, though when I saw Niles Gilbert and his two porcine offspring clomping out of the viscous mud, having stood nearly at the mouth of the burbling black spring, I began to wish for a divine spark. It occurred to me, as I watched the oil flow down the hill, that soon there will be nothing left to subdue the pride of men. There is nothing we will not have mastered. Except, of course, ourselves.

THE VAQUEROS ARE using horses and fresnoes to build a dyke, but they are losing the battle. A jimberjawed Yankee farmer offered to rent us his new Hart-Parr tractor. Had he been born here, he would have simply driven it over, but being from the North he thinks only of what fattens his pocket. After some consideration I agreed to pay him. The oil is flowing strongly into the stream — the fresnoes are not designed for emergency work.

Nonetheless everyone was in a good mood and proceeded to get drunk, including the fallen derrickman and the partially crushed floorhand. People from Carrizo began to show up, though what attraction there was — a black pit, a sulfurous stench, even more money flowing into their wealthiest neighbor’s pocket — I did not understand. The Colonel appeared at midnight, having driven all the way from Wichita Falls at sixty miles an hour, blowing out a tire from the speed.

He found me in my office. Through the windows came a faint odor of brimstone, as if Old Nick himself were having a smoke on our gallery. By sheer coincidence, I am sure, this is also the odor of money.

“Son,” said the Colonel. He hugged me. He was already as drunk as the others. “From now on, you can pay for all the brush-clearing you want.”

Not a word about María. In a moment of panic I went and checked her room: she was asleep in her bed, sighing about something. I watched for a long time until she stirred.

JULY 8, 1917

This morning I find her waiting for me downstairs.

“Very exciting news, no?”

I shrug. I am only thinking about what she’s lost; I’m happy the oil was found on our land, instead of hers.

“Will you have much work today?”

“I don’t think so,” I say. “I have some errands in Carrizo, if you want to come.”

She agrees, which puts me in a good mood about everything, even the steady stream of cars going to and from the drilling site, the gates left open — fifty heifers found on the road this morning.

When we get to Carrizo there is nothing in particular either of us want to do. On a whim we decide on Piedras Negras for lunch (Nuevo Laredo is brought up; María does not want to go there). It will be a three-hour drive; we will be home late; we do not discuss this. She ties her hair back to keep it out of the wind; I steal glances, her warm mouth, dark eyelashes, the fine hairs at the nape of her neck.