Читать книгу Oil! - Upton Sinclair - Страница 35

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It was growing so cold that the little fire no longer sufficed for comfort; so the Watkins family took their departure, and Dad and Bunny set up the tent, and stowed their goods in it, and Bunny did his job of puffing at the mattress until it was full. The stars were shining, so they made their bed in the open. After spreading the blankets, they took off their shoes and outside clothing, and laid them in the tent, and crawled under the blankets in a hurry—gee, but that cold made you jump! Bunny snuggled up into a ball, and lay there, feeling the night breeze on his forehead; and he remarked: “Say, Dad, what is the Church of the True Word?”

Dad chuckled. “The poor old crack-brain,” he said; “I had to get some way to shut him up.”

They lay still, and pretty soon Dad was breathing deeply. But the boy, though he was tired, did not go to sleep at once. He lay thinking: Dad’s code was different from the one which Bunny had decided to follow. Dad would lie, whenever he considered it necessary; he would argue that the other person could not use the truth, or had no right to it in the particular circumstances. And yet, this also was plain, Dad didn’t want Bunny to follow that same code. He would tell Bunny to say nothing, but he would never tell Bunny to lie; and as a rule, when he had to do any lying, he would do it out of Bunny’s presence! There were lots of things like that; Dad smoked cigars, and he took a drink now and then, but he didn’t want Bunny to smoke or to drink. It was queer.

Bunny’s head and face were cold, but the rest of him was warm, and he was drifting, drifting off; his thoughts became a blur—but then suddenly he was wide awake again. What was that? The mattress was rocking; it rolled you from side to side, so that you had to put out your elbows. “Dad!” cried Bunny. “What’s that?” And Dad came suddenly awake; he sat up, and Bunny sat up—putting his two hands out to keep himself steady. “By jiminy!” cried Dad. “An earthquake!”

Sure enough, an earthquake! And say, it was queer to feel the solid ground, that you counted on, shaking you about like that! The tree began to creak over their heads, as if a wind were rocking it; they jumped up and got out from under. A clamor arose, a bleating and moaning—the goats, who liked this sensation even less than the humans, having no ideas of earth structures and geological faults to steady their minds. And then came another kind of clamor—from the Watkins family, who apparently had rushed out of their cabin. “Glory hallelujah! Jesus, save us! Lord, have mercy!”

Dad said, “It’s all over now; let’s crawl in, or we’ll have them folks up here praying over us.”

Bunny obeyed, and they lay still. “Gee, that was a terrible earthquake!” whispered the boy. “Do you think it knocked down any cities?”

“It was likely jist local,” answered Dad. “They have lots of them up here in this hill country.”

“Then you’d think the Watkinses would be used to them.”

“They enjoy makin’ a fuss, I guess. They don’t have so much excitement in their lives.” And that was all Dad had to say. He had plenty of excitements in his own life, and was not specially interested in earthquakes, and still less in the ravings of religious maniacs. He was soon fast asleep again.

But Bunny lay and listened. The Watkins family had “let go,” and were having a regular holy jumping service, out there under the cold white stars. They shouted, they prayed, they laughed and sang, they cried “Glory! Glory!” and “Amen!” and “Selah!” and other words which Bunny did not understand, but which may have been Greek or Hebrew, or else the speech of the archangels. The voice of old Abel Watkins dominated, and the shrill screams of the children made a chorus, and the bleating of the goats was like a lot of double basses in an orchestra. Cold chills ran up and down Bunny’s back; for, after all, the scientific mind in him, which knew about earth structures and geological faults, was only a century or two old, while the instinctive mind which pronounces incantations, is thousands and perhaps hundreds of thousands of years old. Priests have wrought frenzies and pronounced dooms, and because the priests believed them and the victims believed them, they have worked, and therefore they were believed more than ever. And now here was an incantation against earthquakes—and people down on their knees, with their hands in the air and their bodies swaying—

“Chariots to glory, chariots to glory,

Chariots to glory with the Holy Lamb!”

Bunny dozed off at last; and when he opened his eyes again, the dawn was pink behind the hills, and Dad was slipping into his khaki hunting-clothes. Bunny didn’t stop to rub his eyes, he popped out of bed and got his clothes on quick—that cold just froze your bones!

He clambered up the hill-side and began pulling dead brush, and got a fire going and the saucepan on. And then came Eli, bringing the clean plates and things, and asking whether they wanted last night’s milk, which was cold, or this morning’s milk, which was warm. “And say, did you feel that yearthquake!” asked Eli, in excitement. “Say, that was a terrible yearthquake! Does you-all have yearthquakes in you-all’s parts?”

Eli had pale yellow hair, which had not been cut for some time, and had not been combed since the “yearthquake.” He had pale blue eyes which protruded slightly, and gave him an eager look. He had a long neck with a conspicuous Adam’s apple. His legs had grown too fast for the pair of worn trousers which were supposed to cover them, and which revealed Eli’s shoes without socks. He stood there, staring at every detail of the equipment and clothing of these city strangers, and at the same time attempting to probe their souls. “What does this yere True Word teach about yearthquakes?”

Dad was busy frying the bacon and eggs, and he said they would like some of this morning’s milk—which was a way to get rid of Eli. But it didn’t take Eli long to come back, and he stood and followed every morsel of food as it went into their mouths; and he told them that the family had “prayed a mighty power” over that yearthquake, and yearthquakes meant the Holy Spirit was growing weary of fornications and drunkenness and lying in the world, and had they been doing any of them things? Bunny had but a vague idea concerning fornications, but he knew that Dad had told a whopping big lie just a short time before that “yearthquake,” and he chuckled to himself as he thought what a portent the Watkinses would make out of that, if they knew!

The old man came, to make sure they were all right. Mr. Watkins was a bigger and taller edition of his son, with the same prominent pale blue eyes and large Adam’s apple; his face was weather-beaten, heavily lined with care, and you could see he was a kind old man, honest and good, for all his craziness. He too talked about the “yearthquakes,” and told about one which had shaken down brick and concrete buildings in Roseville a couple of years ago. Then he said that Meelie and Sadie were going out to school, and they would bring in some bread if the strangers wanted it. So Dad gave him a dollar, and they had a little argument, because Mr. Watkins said they wouldn’t take only the regular price what they got for the eggs and the milk and the taters at the store, and they didn’t want no pay for the camping out, because that wasn’t no trouble to them, they was glad to see strangers; it was a lonely life they lived up in these here hills, and if it wasn’t for the Lord and His Gospel, they would have very little pleasure in life.