After that, Lee met Allerton every day at five in the Ship Ahoy. Allerton was accustomed to choose his friends from people older than himself, and he looked forward to meeting Lee. Lee had conversational routines that Allerton had never heard. But he felt at times oppressed by Lee, as though Lee's presence shut off everything else. He thought he was seeing too much of Lee.
Allerton disliked commitments, and had never been in love or had a close friend. He was now forced to ask himself: 'What does he want from me?' It did not occur to him that Lee was queer, as he associated queerness with at least some degree of overt effeminacy. He decided finally that Lee valued him as an audience.
Chapter 3
At was a beautiful, clear afternoon in April. Punctually at five, Lee walked into the Ship Ahoy.
Allerton was at the bar with Al Hyman, a periodic alcoholic and one of the nastiest, stupidest, dullest drunks Lee had ever known. He was, on the other hand, intelligent and simple in manner, and nice enough when sober. He was sober now.
Lee had a yellow scarf around his neck, and a pair of two-peso sunglasses. He took off the scarf and dark glasses and dropped them on the bar. 'A hard day at the studio,' he said, in affected theatrical accents. He ordered a rum Coke. 'You know, it looks like we might bring in an oil well.
They're drilling now over in quadrangle four, and from that rig you could almost spit over into Tex-Mex where I got my hundred-acre cotton farm.'
'I always wanted to be an oilman,' Hyman said.
Lee looked him over and shook his head. 'I'm afraid not. You see, it isn't everybody can qualify.
You must have the calling. First thing, you must look like an oilman. There are no young oilmen.
An oilman should be about fifty. His skin is cracked and wrinkled like mud that has dried in the sun, and especially the back of his neck is wrinkled, and the wrinkles are generally full of dust from looking over blocks and quadrangles. He wears gabardine slacks and a white short-sleeved sport shirt. His shoes are covered with fine dust, and a faint haze of dust follows him everywhere like a personal dust storm.
'So you got the calling and the proper appearance. You go around taking up leases. You get five or six people lined up to lease you their land for drilling. You go to the bank and talk to the president: 'Now Clem Farris, as fine a man as there is in this Valley and smart too, he's in this thing up to his balls, and Old Man Scranton and Fred Crockly and Roy Spigot and Ted Bane, all of them good old boys. Now let me show you a few facts. I could set here and gas all morning, taking up your time, but I know you're a man accustomed to deal in facts and figures and that's exactly what I'm here to show you.'
'He goes out to his car, always a coupe or a roadster—never saw an oilman with a sedan—and reaches in hack of the seat and gets out his maps, a huge bundle of maps as big as carpets. He spreads them out on the bank president's desk, and great clouds of dust spring up from the maps and fill the bank. ''You see this quadrangle here? That's Tex-Mex. Now there's a fault runs right along here through Jed Marvin's place. I saw Old Jed too, the other day when I was out there, a good old boy. There isn't a finer man in this Valley than Jed Marvin. Well now, Socony drilled right over here.'
'He spreads out more maps. He pulls over another desk and anchors the maps down with cuspidors. 'Well, they brought in a dry hole, and this map. . . .' He unrolls another one. 'Now if you'll kindly sit on the other end so it don't roll up on us, I'll show you exactly why it was a dry hole and why they should never have drilled there in the first place, 'cause you can see just where this here fault runs smack between Jed's artesian well and the Tex-Mex line over into quadrangle four. Now that block was surveyed last time in 1922. I guess you know the old boy done the job.
Earl Hoot was his name, a good old boy too. He had his home up in Nacogdoches, but his son-in-law owned a place down here, the old Brooks place up north of Tex-Mex, just across the line from. . . .'
'By this time the president is punchy with boredom, and the dust is getting down in his lungs-oilmen are constitutionally immune to the effects of dust—so he says, 'Well, if it's good enough for those boys I guess it's good enough for me. I'll go along.'
'So the oilman goes back and pulls the same routine on his prospects. Then he gets a geologist down from Dallas or somewhere, who talks some gibberish about faults and seepage and intrusions and shale and sand, and selects some place, more or less at random, to start drilling.
'Now the driller. He has to be a real rip-snorting character. They look for him in Boy's Town—the whore district in border towns—and they find him in a room full of empty bottles with three whores. So they bust a bottle over his head and drag him out and sober him up, and he looks at the drilling site and spits and says, 'Well, it's your hole.'
'Now if the well turns out dry the oilman says, 'Well, that's the way it goes. Some holes got lubrication, and some is dry as a whore's cunt on Sunday morning.' There was one oilman, Dry Hole Dutton they called him—all right, Allerton, no cracks about Vaseline—brought in twenty dry holes before he got cured. That means 'get rich,' in the salty lingo of the oil fraternity.'
Joe Guidry came in, and Lee slid off his stool to shake hands. He was hoping Joe would bring up the subject of queerness so he could gauge Allerton's reaction. He figured it was time to let Allerton know what the score was—such a thing as playing it too cool.
They sat down at a table. Somebody had stolen Guidry's radio, his riding boots and wrist watch.
'The trouble with me is,' said Guidry, 'I like the type that robs me.'
'Where you make your mistake is bringing them to your apartment,' Lee said, 'That's what hotels are for.'
'You're right there. But half the time I don't have money for a hotel. Besides, I like someone around to cook breakfast and sweep the place out.'
'Clean the place out.'
'I don't mind the watch and the radio, but it really hurt, losing those boots. They were a thing of beauty and a joy forever.' Guidry leaned forward, and glanced at Allerton. 'I don't know whether I ought to say things like this in front of Junior here. No offense, kid.'
'Go ahead,' said Allerton.
