Patrick Henry and the Frigate’s Keel: And Other Stories of a Young Nation (18 page)

“There ain't oil under my land,” Pa insisted, “and I don't want any fool derricks going up over it. I don't want holes dug. I don't want my stock half scared to death with your foolishness. This is a farm, and I aim to run it as a farm. That's all.”

They argued back and forth for fifteen minutes more, but Pa wouldn't budge an inch. He knew there wasn't oil under his land, and that finished the matter.

Finally, the older man shook his head wearily and started to climb into the car. But McCloud took his arm and led him over to one side. They spoke quickly, in low tones. McCloud pointing to various parts of our land. Allen came back and asked Pa:

“Who owns that piece up the hill there and over beyond it?”

“Feller by the name of Tom Patterson,” Pa grinned. “Maybe there's oil on his land too.”

“Maybe there is,” Allen said. Then they got in their car and drove off.

Pa went into the house and sat down in the kitchen, chuckling to himself.

“Who were those men?” Ma wanted to know.

“Two fools who figured I got oil under my property.”

“Well, maybe you have—”

“I guess I been on the land long enough to know,” Pa said.

The next day, Tom came over to our place and poked around the barns, rubbing his chin and studying the hogs. Pa walked over and said gruffly:

“'Morning.”

“'Morning, Mr. Todd,” Tom said.

“Guess you got business here?” Pa wanted to know.

“I guess I have,” Tom nodded. “I've been looking over your hogs. They say you raise mighty fine hogs. I've been planning to buy a couple of fine brood sows for over a year now.”

“I sell for cash,” Pa snorted.

“Uh-huh,” Tom nodded. He went into his pocket and fetched out a roll of bills as big around as his fist. “I picked my animals,” he said. “Those two, right there. You name the price. I don't like to dicker.”

Pa just stared at him.

“I'm in a hurry, Mr. Todd,” Tom said. “My farm's a mighty busy place. And if you see a good man to hire out, just send him around. I'm taking on help.”

Well, Pa was so dumfounded he hardly remembered to boost the price on the hogs. Tom took the hogs, and Pa just stood there shaking his head.

Then Pa headed for the house to sound out Ma, as she generally knew what was going on over at Lucy's. He got into the kitchen, and then he hardly knew how to start.

“Something wrong?” Ma said.

“No—no.”

Ma looked at him, and then she shook her head. “Lord, but you're too stubborn to even ask a question,” she sighed. “Yes, Tom leased out to those oil men, and like as not they'll strike oil on his place.”

“Leave his place full of holes and scrapwood,” Pa said.

“Of course, you know too much to let them drill here.”

“I know enough to keep fools off my land,” Pa said.

It was about a week later that the man from the insurance company came over to the place. Hank Bluman had been writing Pa's insurance for more than twenty years, and now he hemmed and hawed before he was able to bring himself to the point of the matter. He was in the kitchen having some coffee and some of Ma's apple pie, and he kept praising the apple pie until Ma and Pa both knew something was wrong. At last he said:

“Now look here, Amos—I don't want to quibble, but I can't renew your policy the way things are now.”

“Why not?” Pa demanded.

“Your chimney here in the kitchen isn't safe. The inspector reported that last year and the year before. Well, I pushed the renewal through each time, but now the company's cracking down. Either you fix the chimney or I can't write you insurance.”

“That chimney's just as safe as the day I built it,” Pa said. “I'm not spending good money to fix a chimney that's as safe as the day it was built.”

Hank shrugged and began to put his papers together. He knew better than to argue with Pa.

“Wait a minute,” Ma said. “It won't cost but a little to fix the chimney. Now you can't leave the house without insurance, Pa.”

“I can,” Pa said. “I carried insurance twenty years and the house never burnt down. I don't have to be told what's a good chimney and what's a bad one by a pack of dunderheads.”

“No use arguing,” Ma told Hank. “You might as well go.”

That was a bad summer. Added onto the summer before, it just about knocked the bottom out of everyone. It was hot as a furnace, with almost no rain; the dust came up, the cattle took sick, and the corn was weak and thin as weeds.

Up at Tom's place, they were drilling steadily and paying him good money for the lease. It cost a lot, but he managed to bring water to his crops, and he had a better yield than the year before. Also, he could afford to buy feed.

Young Amos was round and fat as a sausage, and Lucy was looking wonderful. They put a new roof onto the house and they widened the veranda. And then, toward the end of the summer, the well gushed.

Pa didn't say a word when Ma told him about the well coming in. It was already all over the neighborhood how he had refused to let them drill on his land. And Pa was having it hard. Two bad years in a row had taken the edge off him. He needed money, but he knew what Ma would say if he even hinted about it. So instead of letting her know, he borrowed here and there, wherever he could. But when he went to the bank for money, they told him he could get all the money he needed by developing his land—in oil.

Ma never knew how bad things were getting, but she could see that they were steadily getting worse. I guess she would have been more worried, if it hadn't been that Lucy and Tom were doing so well. The money hadn't gone to their heads; Tom stuck to farming and bought himself another quarter section of land. They bought a car, and they were making plans for a new house.

One day, well onto the end of the summer, when Pa and I were out in the fields, we saw a trickle of smoke coming from the house. Ma had gone over to visit with Lucy and left her dinner cooking on the stove. Now we saw this smoke, blacker and wider than chimney smoke.

Pa raced for the house with me behind him, but by the time we got there the whole kitchen wall was in flames. Pa and I tried to pump water from the well, but it was like flicking drops into a bonfire. By the time Ma and Lucy and Tom and the volunteer fire company had reached the place, there wasn't anything to do but sit by and watch the flames burn down.

After a while, the volunteer firemen left. Pa sat on a wooden horse and stared at the blackened timbers. Ma wiped her eyes, and Tom and Lucy stayed well behind Pa, where he couldn't see them.

“Well, they do say,” Ma said, trying to sound cheerful, “that every cloud has a silver lining. I was getting good and tired of that house, Pa, and now we ain't got a choice but to build a new one.”

“New one?” Pa questioned.

“Of course, the kind of a house I always dreamt of having.”

“Where's the money coming from?” Pa wanted to know.

Ma smiled and said coaxingly: “Now all you have to do, Pa, is to sign up with those oil men and we'll have more money than we know what to do with.”

“Oil! I'm running a farm, not an oil well. Before I make a fool of myself, I'll sleep on the ground.”

Ma's lips tightened. “Amos Todd,” she whispered, “do you mean to sit there and say you're not going to lease to those oil men?”

“Uh-huh,” Pa nodded.

“After your own stubbornness burned my home over my head?”

“Seems you had to traipse over to Lucy's and leave the dinner cooking—”

“Amos Todd, if that house were insured, you'd be grinning your head off, instead of sitting there black as Satan! Indeed, it wouldn't have burned down if you'd 'a' fixed the chimney.”

“Nothing wrong with the chimney,” Pa muttered.

“Amos Todd, not another word! Where's money coming from to build us a new house? Where are we going to sleep?”

“I came out to this country,” Pa said, “and built me a sod house. I can do it again.”

“If you expect me to sleep in a sod house, Amos Todd, you can say good-by to me right now. I've taken your contrariness for twenty-eight years, but this is too much. Jackie, you come along with me. Come along, Lucy. You too, Tom.”

“Where are you going?” Pa demanded.

“Up to Lucy's. And when you've built a house fit and proper for womenfolk and children, then I'll come back! And not until then!”

“Reckon a sod house was good enough for me once, and it's good enough now,” Pa muttered.

Pa built his sod house without windows, and when he closed up the door, not a sound could come through. I guess that was why they decided to steal his stock. Rustling by herding cows into a closed truck and then driving away with them was going on all through the section, but the cattle thieves hardly ever went right into a barn. The stock made too much noise when you woke them up at night.

But Pa built his sod hut without windows. He told me that was the way they all built them in the old times. Ma was sending me down three times a day with cooked food, so it wasn't much different for Pa from when he had slept in the barn. Except that he didn't have the animals for company. And if he had been in the barn, the stock wouldn't have been stolen.

He had been living in the sod hut for more than a month when I came over one morning with his breakfast. I found him at the barn, which was half empty.

“Hullo, Jackie,” he said. “How's your Ma?”

“Just fine. She sent buckwheat cakes down this morning. She knows you like them.”

“I sure like buckwheat cakes.”

“Where's all the stock?” I asked.

“Stolen—”

“Stolen?” I said.

“Sure enough. I couldn't hear a sound in that sod house. They drove in with one of them trailer trucks and loaded everything on.”

“Well, didn't you call the sheriff?”

“Not yet. Back in the old days, I would have gone after them myself. But I ain't so spry now.”

We walked over to the sod house, and Pa began to eat the buckwheat cakes. “Jackie,” he said, “does your Ma ask after me?”

“Sure enough.”

“Suppose I went up there now. Think she'd be gentle enough for me to talk to her? I ought to tell her about the stock.”

“You can't go up there now,” I said.

“Can't? Why not?”

“Because Aunt Effie's there. She and Uncle Ely are visiting with Ma and Lucy.”

“What?”

“Sure enough,” I said.

“Then I'm going up there right this minute! Time I gave Effie a piece of my mind! This whole business comes of Effie getting a hold of Lucy!”

I knew it wasn't any use to argue with Pa once he had his mind set, so I just followed him over the fields and up the hill to Tom's house. The house was set on the other side of the hill, so Pa had never seen it before. Now I could hear him muttering under his breath, the house looked so white and pretty.

Pa stamped around to the front and up the porch, and the first person he met was Aunt Effie herself. He hadn't seen her in twenty years, and now he just stopped and stared.

“Amos,” she whispered.

“Hello, Effie,” Pa said. He just stood there meek as a lamb.

“Amos, you're looking fine,” Aunt Effie said.

“You're looking fine yourself, Effie,” Pa muttered.

“Haven't changed a bit.”

“We don't get younger,” Pa said.

And then they just stood there and looked at one another until Ma came out and saw them there.

It was later, at the dinner table, after Pa had told about his stock being stolen, that Aunt Effie said:

“Now you young folks wouldn't know, but a long time back four drunken Indians burned down your Pa's barn. And Amos didn't turn to no sheriff either. He just lit out after them and chased them across three states until he caught them and fetched them back.”

Pa shook his head. “Effie,” he said, “you shouldn't talk about such things. It was a mighty wrong thing I did, going off and leaving my family that way. I should have just sworn out a warrant and minded my own business.”

And then he just bent over and finished eating his soup without looking up once.

9

Sun in the West