The Son

Chapter Twenty-six. Jeannie, Summer 1945

VE-day came and for a few weeks it seemed everything would be different and then it wasn’t. Her brothers did not return, the vaqueros went about their business without her — she did not see the point of helping them lose money. Several times she packed a suitcase, feeling desperate enough to take up Jonas on his offer, but she could never reach him before she changed her mind, she was sure that if she found him in Berlin, it would be no different from Princeton, he would abandon her some way or other.

Mostly she was bored. She made runs to Carrizo for the cook (always managing to forget a thing or two), she made trips to San Antonio, where a few dressmakers knew her and promised to introduce her to young men, but never did. She visited with Phineas, always expecting an invitation to stay with him, in his grand house overlooking all of Austin. She thought they might sit on his gallery and talk long into the night, but he was a private man (you are a grown woman, is how he put it) and so she roomed at the Driscoll instead.

It was a good year for the land. The grass had stayed green. With so much good grass she knew she ought to buy a few hundred stocker animals, but the cattle were a luxury, the horses were a luxury, even the grass was a luxury: the poorer ranches now looked like patches of dirt. Anyway, she preferred grass to cows.

Once a week she would saddle her father’s horse, General Lee, and take him out on the land. Sullivan objected — he’d wanted to shoot the animal — and he was probably right. A few times General Lee had nearly gotten the best of her. He would stand quietly, allowing himself to be saddled, and then, just as she mounted, he would begin to kick. He did tend to buck a straight line, but he had thrown her more than once. You ought to be grateful, she told him. I am the only reason you are still alive.

But he was not grateful. He must have known she did not appreciate him, or that her feelings were mixed, or maybe, like her, he was simply bored, because he had no job and no prospects and when you went on like that too long, habits tended to grow on you.

Texas had once been full of wild horses, five million, ten million, no one knew. But they had mostly been rounded up and shipped to the British during the Great War. Between the war and the rendering plants, Texas had been just about cleaned out of ponies. In her childhood, most of the old cow horses still went to East Texas to become plow horses, but the tractors had changed that. Old horses now became feed for other animals.

Oil was what mattered. The Allies had burned seven billion barrels during the war; 90 percent of that had come from America, mostly from Texas. The Big Inch and Little Big Inch: they could not have invaded Normandy without them. The Allies had sailed to victory on a sea of Texas oil.

She sometimes wondered about that — if the pipelines had not been finished — if the liberation of Europe had been canceled — maybe Paul and Clint would still be alive. Or maybe the war would still be going on. Maybe Jonas would be dead as well. That was what they always said — if this or that terrible thing had not been done, the war would never have ended.

She was not sure she believed them. They sounded like men who’d been thrown from horses because they’d wanted to get off anyway. And as for the war ending, it turned out the Russians were as bad as Hitler.

No, she would not go to Europe. She would not follow her brother around like a stray. Something would change, she could feel it.

SINCE THE VAQUEROS had done their work on the landman, there had not been any other callers, but one day there was a letter from a manager at Humble Oil. He wanted to take her to lunch.

They met in town and he was nicely dressed with fine features and gray hair that was neatly parted. He was handsome and tan and she liked him immediately and right after they ordered their steaks he offered four million plus 25 percent royalties.

It was double the offer from Southern Minerals but after pretending to think it over carefully she said: “What else will you give us?”

He held the same sweet expression.

“I know that you put in bump gates for people, but we already have them.”

“What else would you like?” he said.

“What if I asked you to clear all the land within”—she thought of a large number—“five thousand feet of each well?”

“You want us to root plow your mesquite.”

She nodded.

“You want us to root plow five hundred sixty-eight acres of mesquite around each well.”

Was that the real number? She had no idea. She had no idea how he’d calculated it without pen and paper. But she knew she couldn’t reveal her ignorance so she said: “Actually we want you to clear the acreage around each drilling site, whether it’s a good well or not.”

He laughed, reminding her of Phineas. “Honey, you realize there’s a lot of proven land in South Texas, and no one else is asking for these improvements.”

“I know you paid three and a half million plus royalties for the King Ranch,” she said. “And that was ten years ago, with nothing proved, and I know all the work you’ve been doing to their land, because we are friends with Bob Kleberg.”

It was quiet and it continued to be quiet. Outside it was busy, people dressed in city clothes, shopping or out for lunch. She started to apologize, she’d pushed too far, but of course this man wanted something from her, same as the other one, and she made herself sit as if the silence was perfectly natural. She could sit without talking for a hundred years. The man was looking out the window. She took note of his bright eyes, his small features — a man’s features, but finely done — he had clearly taken more from his mother. He was quite a striking man. It occurred to her that he was just as aware of this as she was. He seemed to decide something. Now he was judging.

“I wish we could do better, but…” He put up his hands.

“What if we just connected to your pipeline?”

“That is funny,” he said.

“Well, there is very little oil going through it at present. It will likely rot.”

“If you’re planning on drilling your own oil, Ms. McCullough, let me assure you there is no faster way to go bankrupt, and you’ll end up living in one of these houses with the niggers and the never-sweats. If you take our offer, that land will be supporting your family for the next few centuries and you will not have to dirty a finger except to sign the lease.”

She knew he was wrong but she didn’t know why and she knew if she said another word her ignorance would be laid bare, if it had not been already. She collected her purse and shook his hand and walked out of the restaurant before their food even came. It was a three-dollar steak and she wondered if she ought to leave money. No. She slowed her pace, making her way down the street in the town named after her family, the shade of the awnings, parked cars, the sky looking bright between the brick storefronts. Four million dollars. It did not seem meaningful to her. In truth she felt more guilty about the three-dollar steak.

Then she began to feel stupid. She was not a grown-up at all, she was a girl, the accountant said she would owe the government five million dollars in estate taxes — that had not seemed real, either. They could get an extension but they would have to drill, and soon; it was a question of finding the right people. Phineas had told her not to worry, but she had not been worrying anyway.

The road turned back to dirt. She passed the houses of the Mexicans, their filthy alleys, doors that didn’t close properly, people living ten to a room, slabs of meat hanging in the sun, collecting flies. She was sure she ought to turn around, to catch the man from Humble before he left.

But she was still walking. It was brush and farmland. Her feet, in her good shoes, sank into the dust; they would be ruined. It was stupid talking to people without Phineas around. It was stupid what she’d said about the pipeline. She should not be taking these meetings alone. But that made no sense, either. Phineas would not live forever, he was no different from her father.

Ed Freeman was in his onion field, tinkering with his irrigator. Did he still owe her father money? She waved and he looked as if something might be wrong — as if he might be required to help her. She continued along the bar ditch, sweat running down her back now.

Her father had allowed her to hate mathematics; he’d told her it didn’t matter if she were good at it or not. He had been wrong about that as well. It did matter. What had the man figured — five thousand times five thousand? No, it was a geometry problem. I haven’t the faintest, she thought.

She watched a car pass, roiling up the dust, a white man taking four Mexicans to work. License number 7916. Seventy-nine times sixteen. It seemed impossible. She did not see how the man had done it. And yet he had.

AS SOON AS she got home she had called Phineas and told him what happened, including what she’d said about the pipeline. He told her not to worry: she hadn’t said anything they weren’t already thinking. She felt relieved but Phineas was still talking. He was inviting her to Austin. He had someone for her to meet.