Читать книгу Oil! - Upton Sinclair - Страница 18

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Old Mrs. Ross, Bunny’s grandmother, was accustomed to protest strenuously against a boy being taken about on these business trips. It was enough to destroy all the sweetness of his nature, she declared; it would make him a hardened cynic in his childhood, all this sordidness and hatefulness of money-grabbing. But Bunny’s father answered that that was life, and there was no good fooling yourself; Bunny would have to live in the world some day, and the quicker he learned about it the better. So there the boy sat, on his perch in the window-sill, watching, and recalling his grandmother’s words.

Yes, they were a mean bunch, sure enough; Dad was right when he said you had to watch out every minute, because somebody would be trying to take something away from you. These people had simply gone crazy, with the sudden hope of getting a lot of money in a hurry. Bunny, who had always had all the money he could use, looked down with magnificent scorn upon their petty bickering. You couldn’t trust such people around the corner, he decided; there was nothing they wouldn’t do to you. That fat old woman in the yellow satin dress, with her fat red arms and her fat legs cased in silk—it wouldn’t take much more to have her clawing somebody’s face. And that hatchet-faced man with the voice like a buzz-saw—he would be capable of sticking a knife into you on a dark night!

Dad wanted his son to understand every detail of these business arrangements: the terms of the lease, the provisions of the law, the size of the different lots, the amounts of money involved. He would talk about it afterwards, and it would be a kind of examination, to see how much the boy had really understood. So Bunny listened attentively, and put this and that together, remembering the points of the lease as he had heard his father going over them with Ben Skutt and Mr. Prentice while they were driving out to the field in the latter’s car. But the boy could not keep his mind from going off to the different personalities involved, and their points of view, and the hints one got of their lives. That old fellow with the stooped shoulders and the gnarled hands—he was some kind of poor workingman, and you could see he was unhappy over this arguing; he wanted somebody he could trust, and he looked this way and that, but there was no such person in the crowd. That young woman with the nose-glasses, she was a hard one—what did she do when she wasn’t quarreling? That elderly couple that looked rich—they were very much on their dignity, but they had come to get their share, all the same, and they weren’t having any generous emotions towards the “little lots”!

The old gentleman drew his chair over beside Dad and began a whispered conversation. Bunny saw Dad shake his head, and the old gentleman drew away. Dad spoke to Skutt, and the latter rose and said: “Mr. Ross wishes me to make clear that he isn’t interested in any proposition for leasing a portion of the block. He wouldn’t put down a well without room for offset wells. If you people can’t agree, he’ll take another lease that I’ve found him.”

This struck a chill to them, and stopped the wrangling. Dad saw it, and nodded to his “lease-hound,” who went on: “Mr. Ross has an offer of a lease on the north side, which has very good prospects, because we believe the anticline runs that way. There are several acres which belong to one party, so it will be easy to agree.”—Yes, that scared the wits out of them; it was several minutes before they were quarreling again!

Where Bunny sat in the window-sill, he could see the lights of the “discovery well,” now shut off and awaiting the building of tanks; he could hear through the open window the hammering of the riveters on the tanks, and of carpenters building new derricks along the slope. His attention was wandering, when suddenly he was startled by a whispered voice, coming from the darkness, apparently right alongside him: “Hey, kid!”

Bunny peered around the edge of the window, and saw a figure, flattened against the side of the house. “Hey, kid,” said the whisper again. “Listen to me, but don’t let nobody know you’re listenin’. They mustn’t know I’m here.”

Bunny’s thought was, “A spy! Trying to find out about the lease!” So he was on the alert; he listened to a steady, persistent whisper, intense and moving:

“Hey, kid! I’m Paul Watkins, and the lady what lives here is my aunt. I dassn’t let her know I’m here, see, cause she’ll make me go back home. I live on a ranch up in the San Elido, and I run away from home ’cause I can’t stand it, see. I got to get a job, but first I got to have somethin’ to eat, ’cause I’m near starved. And my aunt would want me to have it, ’cause we’re friends, see—only she’d want me to go back home, and I can’t stand it. So I want to get somethin’ to eat out of the kitchen, and when I earn some money, I’ll mail it to her, so I’ll just be borrowin’, see. What I want you to do is to unlock the kitchen door. I won’t take nothin’ but a piece of pie, and maybe a sandwich or somethin’, see. All you got to do is, tell my aunt to let you go into the kitchen and get a drink of water, and then turn the key in the door and go back into the house. You come out the front door if you want to, and come round and make sure it’s all like I tell you. Say kid, be a good scout, ’cause I’m up against it, it’s sure tough not to have a meal all day, and I been hitch-hikin’ and walkin’ a lot o’ the time, and I’m done up. You come out and I’ll tell you about it, but don’t try to talk to me here, ’cause they’ll see your lips movin’, see, and they’ll know there’s somebody out here.”

Bunny thought quickly. It was a delicate ethical question—whether you had a right to unlock somebody else’s back door, so that a possible thief could get in! But of course it wasn’t really a thief, if it was your aunt, and she would give it to you anyhow. But how could you know if the story was true? Well, you could go out, like the fellow said, and if he was a thief you could grab him. What decided Bunny was the voice, which he liked; even before he laid eyes on Paul Watkins’ face, Bunny felt the power in Paul Watkins’ character, he was attracted by something deep and stirring and powerful.

Bunny slid off the window-sill, and walked over to Mrs. Groarty, who was wiping the perspiration from her forehead after a vicious tirade. “Please, ma’am,” he said, “would you be so good as to excuse me if I go into the kitchen and get a drink of water?”

He thought that would cover the case, but he failed to allow for the fact that Mrs. Groarty was preparing for a career of elegance, and losing no chance of observing the ways of the wealthy, even to the drinking of a glass of water. Her heart warmed to the son of J. Arnold Ross, and all the vinegar went out of her voice. “Certainly, dear,” she said, and rose and led the way to the kitchen.

Bunny looked about. “My, what a pretty room!” he exclaimed—which was true enough, because it was all enameled white paint.

“Yes, it is nice, I’m glad you think so,” said the mistress of it, as she took a glass from a shelf and set the faucet to running.

“A real big kitchen,” said Bunny; “that’s always a comfort.” He took the glass of water with thanks, and drank part of it. So polite and natural! thought Mrs. Groarty. Not a bit stuck-up!

And Bunny went to the back door. “I suppose you’ve got a big screen-porch here. Kind of hot indoors, don’t you think?” He unlocked the door, and opened it, and looked out. “The breeze feels good,” he said. “And you can see all the wells from here. Won’t it be fun when they get to drilling right on this block!”

What a friendly little fellow! Mrs. Groarty was thinking; and she said yes, and it would be soon, she hoped. Bunny said that perhaps she’d catch cold, with that lovely evening dress she had on; so he shut the door again; and his hostess was so charmed by the agreeable manners of the aristocracy that she failed to notice that he did not lock the door. He put the empty glass on the drain-board of the sink, and said no thanks, he didn’t wish any more, and followed Mrs. Groarty back to the crowded living-room.

“What I say is this—” it was the voice of Mr. Sahm, the plasterer. “If you really want to sign the lease as it was, sign it as we all understood it; let’s figure the land we own, and not the street we don’t own.”

“In other words,” said Mrs. Walter Black, sarcastically, “let’s change the lease.”

“In other words,” said Miss Snypp, even more sarcastically, “let’s not fall into the trap you big lots set for us.”