Читать книгу The Sons of Adam - Harry Bingham - Страница 50

Norgaard rolled over on his bunk and handed Tom a handful of acorns.

‘Pissed up against an oak tree on my way back from the factory today. I found these.’

Norgaard had a handful himself and he began cracking the shells and crunching up the nut inside. Tom did the same, chewing carefully. His stomach was beginning to balloon outwards, but all it held was painful wind. He tried vomiting sometimes, but all he had to vomit was stale air, and the retching brought no relief. Each time that happened, he thought of Alan Montague. Anger, bitterness and self-pity jammed together in a ball that hurt every bit as much as the wind in his belly.

‘What were you up to before the war?’ asked Norgaard, ‘and I’m not asking you to list your ten biggest ever meals.’

Tom grinned. Most conversations in the camp these days were about food, or soap, or beer, or the countless other tiny things of life. ‘Oil,’ he said. ‘I was in the oil business.’

‘You don’t say?’ Norgaard sat up, dropping his acorns into the blanket. ‘On the drilling side or … ? Hey, d’you even have oil fields in England?’

Tom shook his head. ‘Marketing. And no, the country’s as dry as a bone.’

‘Bet the King’s mad as all hell about that … Which company?’

‘Standard, actually. Standard of New Jersey.’

Tom expected the patriotic Norgaard to be pleased with his reply, but instead Norgaard pursed his lips and spat. ‘Goddamn Rockefeller. Ruined the industry for all of us. And dissolution was a bust. Standard of New Jersey, my ass.’

They continued to talk. Before the war, Norgaard had been an independent oilman, a driller with his own crew.

‘And every time we sent the drill bit down, we more than half expected to hit the smell of oil. Boy, I never sharpened the drill so carefully as when I was on my own thirty acres. Every single time you do it, you could find oil sands glistening on the end of the bit.’

‘Did you ever make a strike? For yourself, I mean.’

‘Twice, just twice.’

‘Yes?’

Tom’s hunger vanished, his thoughts of home, his anger with Alan. He was transfixed, the old addiction biting harder than hunger.

‘First time was a little well up near Bradford, Pennsylvania. First day, I pumped thirty barrels. Two weeks later, eighty-five. Four weeks later, no matter what I did, the well gave me ten barrels of oil, if I was lucky. I ended up selling that well for the price of a new pair of pants. Two miles down the road, on land I’d offered on but never clinched, a friend of mine made a strike. Three thousand barrels a week that son-of-a-bitch got out of there.’

Tom breathed out in awe. This was the sharp end of the oil industry, where luck, adventure and geology all met in one glorious mix. ‘And the second strike?’

‘Second strike was sweet as a dream. I called the well Old Glory right from the start. Drilling was as easy as slicing butter. Hit gas after two thousand feet. Three hundred feet later and we were bathing our feet with oil. Six hundred barrels a day, Old Glory produced at her best, God bless her.’

‘And?’ Tom knew that Norgaard was playing with him, but he couldn’t help but fall for the man’s game. ‘And?’

‘And John D. Rockefeller stole every last drop … He owned all the refineries in the area. The price he paid for oil wasn’t hardly worth the cost of hauling it. He sweated me out of what was mine, then bought the well off me when I came begging at his door. It ain’t enough to find the oil, Tom, it’s turning it into dollars that counts.’

Over the weeks and months that followed, Norgaard continued to tell Tom of his days as an oilman in Pennsylvania and Oklahoma, and ‘never did get out west to California, but if all your kings and kaisers ever get tired of fighting each other, then that’s where you’ll find me, drilling for oil in my own back yard.’

Tom’s old addiction grew again. If he ever got out of prison camp, then he knew what he would do. He’d get into the oil business: not with Alan, but by himself. Not in Persia, but in America. And not relying on anybody else’s money or goodwill, but relying only on his brains, his guts, his determination to succeed.

Stuck away in prison though he was, it sometimes felt as though finding oil was the most important thing in the entire world.