“Certainly, Gales, you can have it for cash or on loan, just as you like.”
“All right. I’ll buy it. The boss can charge it to me on pay day.”
As she was weighing the bacon, Mr. Shine returned from town with the mail and a few purchases.
“You’ve come just at the right moment, Gales,” he said. “I’ve got some news for you.”
“For me? Where from?”
“Direct from town. While I was at the store I met Mr. Beales, the crew manager from Oil Camp 97, an acquaintance of mine. He was sitting there drinking one bottle of beer after another, with a grim face. He’s in a fix. They’ve had some trouble at the derrick. It seems they were changing the drills — eights for tens — when one of the pipes kicked out and injured a driller’s right arm. One of the native laborers had been careless — nothing new, the same kind of thing has happened before — and didn’t secure the pipe in time. The driller’s an experienced man, a reliable fellow, and they don’t want to lose him. So they’re looking for a good temporary man to take his place until he can come back. It’ll be three or four weeks before he’s fit for work again. It’s a ticklish time for them just now. They’re drilled to seven hundred feet and are on clay, so if they don’t get a good driller they might get a bend in the bore pipe. You’ve worked in the oil fields and know what this would mean — expense and a loss of time. The drillers and tool dressers would have to be laid off — maybe the whole camp.”
“You’re telling me,” I replied. “But it’s the sort of thing that can happen in the best-managed field, no matter how careful the men are.”
“Could be. I don’t understand anything about drilling,” Mr. Shine said, anxious to go on. “Now the manager’s wondering what to do next. He’s already worked one shift himself, but he can’t carry on like that. If he telegraphs his company in the States it’ll take another three to four days before he gets a new man here, and then it’s not certain that he’ll get a good relief man. You know a good man normally won’t take on a job for three weeks and maybe risk missing out on a good, six-month job. So I said to the manager, ‘Mr. Beales, I’ve got just the man you’re looking for.’”
“But I still don’t see where I come in,” I said. “Why do you do this for me? Are you trying to get rid of me?”
“Now, wait a minute, Gales. I’m on the level with you. In three, or at most four days we’ll have the cotton picked. What are you going to do then?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ll wait and see. I may go north or south, or I may go east or west. Actually I was thinking of tramping down to Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Panama — maybe to Colombia. I’ve heard there’s a good deal of oil being pumped down there.”
“Fine!” said Mr. Shine. “That’s just what I thought. It’s all the same to you where you go. There’ll be time enough, later on, to visit Guatemala and all the other beauty spots waiting just for you. So I said to the manager: ‘Well, I’ve got a fellow at the farm, helping me with my crop, a white man, honest all through, a very reliable fellow, with experience in drilling, tool dressing, and all that goes with it.’ I had to lay it on a bit thick, you know, Gales, to get results. ‘Well, Mr. Beales,’ I said, ‘I’m going to send the man down to you!’ Now what do you say, old chap, eh?” Mr. Shine asked me, grinning all over his face. “So down you go to the store tomorrow morning. The storekeeper knows the way to the camp; he’ll direct you. You’ll be at the camp in time to sit right down to a full-sized meal.”
The part about the meal was tempting.
“If you find you can’t manage the job, you won’t have lost much. Whatever happens, you’ll get a day’s pay and on top of that you’ll have some good eats, for one day,” Mr. Shine added.
I really didn’t have to waste much thought on the offer. There was only three or four days’ work left here, hard and ill-paid work. At the oil field you also had to work a twelve-hour day as there were only two shifts, but at least you were not working in that blistering sun. Moreover, you got ice water to drink, and as much of it as you wanted. But above all you got, as Mr. Shine had rightly said, decent food, with plate, knife, fork, spoon, cup, and glass on a table that might have been crudely knocked together but was a table all the same, and there was a real bench on which to sit. Black beans, hard as pebbles, would cease to be a major part of every meal. And they didn’t sleep without bedding on the bare floor, but in clean camp beds with soft mattresses and well protected by thin veils of mosquito netting. There would be a toilet. You could shower every day. I had quite forgotten that there were such things in the world. These workers lived in good houses, and had a hospital and all conveniences in their camps.
So I thanked Mrs. Shine but changed my mind about the bacon. When I got back to the campfire the most important thing as far as I was concerned was to settle my egg account with Abraham. If I’d remained even ten centavos in his debt he’d have pursued me in my dreams right down to Cape Horn.
I arrived at the oil camp and reported to the manager. He was an American. All the managers, high employees, and even specialized workers in the oil fields were mostly foreigners, as practically all the companies exploiting the oil in this country were either American, English, or Dutch and they preferred to give employment to their own compatriots. Mr. Beales didn’t look a bit surprised to see his new driller in such rags and tatters as no man in his own country would ever have dared walk around in. He obviously didn’t care what I wore; he needed a reliable driller.
The workers at the camp were glad that Dick, the sick driller, had a substitute and would be coming back. He was a likable guy who had worked in the camp ever since the first planks went up. They fixed me up, one man bringing me a shirt, another pants, another socks, another working gloves and shoes.
When I’d finished my first shift, Mr. Beales said: “You can stay on until Dick comes back, at full driller’s pay.”
This certainly was very good news. But Dick recovered faster than anybody had expected, so at the end of a week’s work I had to be on my way again. When I left, Dick gave me twenty dollars extra out of his own pocket, for traveling expenses, and, as he said, to treat myself to something good.
When the manager paid me off he said, “Listen, Gales, couldn’t you hang around in the vicinity for another week or so?”
“Yes,” I replied. “Easily. I could go to Mr. Shine’s and stay there for a while. Why?”
“There’s a fellow in one of the fields here who wants to take a two-week vacation to go up to the States to see his folks. You could fill in as his substitute — beginning of the month.”
“Agreed,” said I. “You can leave a message at the store for me, care of Mr. Shine, when you need me.”
“Right, that’s settled!” said Mr. Beales.
So I went back to Mr. Shine’s the next day and asked him if I could put up for a while in the shelter.
“Certainly, Gales,” he said. “Stay as long as you like.”
I told him about my oil field chance, and then asked about the other pickers, my former companions.
“Oh, them. Well, the tall nigger went the day after you — up to Florida, I think. The short one, the one called Abraham, turned out to be a scoundrel—”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, he sold me some hens — good layers, he swore — that he’d bought from some peasants, I found out later, for one peso apiece. Sold them to me for two and a half pesos each. The hens were well fed, heavy, good to look at, so I paid the price. But that black devil, he got me on the part about layers. They’re not laying one egg among them. Oh, well — I s’pose they’re worth the price for meat.”