Yellow Earth

by John Sayles

  Time to toss that puppy in the water.

  ICED TEA, UNLESS YOU put a heart-stopping amount of sugar in it, will go right through you. Rest rooms being few and far between out in these hinterlands, you want to just sip a little politely, maybe pour some out in the sink if you get a minute alone. Because it’s almost always the kitchen they choose for the sitdown, nice big table to spread the contracts out on.

  “Oh dear,” says Mrs. Sanderson when she sees them. “Ernest always took care of the paperwork.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Sig tells her. She uses the powdered mix tea, which has a stronger smell. “It was what– two years ago?”

  Two years and two months, according to the record at the county courthouse, where the lady at the desk wore headphones and listened to books on tape– she told him she had Mill on the Floss running– while she worked her keyboard.

  “I get my son to come do the taxes.”

  Please, no sons. Sons get all possessive and show-offy and, yes, you have to invoke the G-word. Sons are Greedy.

  “Well, Mrs. Sanderson, in this case, the land– the stewardship of the land– is your responsibility. The way I’m sure Mr. Sanderson intended.”

  She is early eighties maybe, starting to dim and forget to wipe her glasses clean, frowning with constant concern as he explains.

  “You farmed this land I assume?”

  “Fifty-seven years. One of the Buford boys has been leasing some acres the last little while, trying to make a crop–”

  “Not an easy life.”

  “But a good one.”

  He smiles, leans back. A V-formation of ceramic ducks on the wall, calendar flipped to last February, snaps of the grandchildren under whimsically shaped magnets on the refrigerator door– Sig has spent half his working life in this kitchen. “I think of the labor you put in, the time spent to keep a place like this up, raise the little ones. There should be a reward.”

  “We did well enough, Ernest and me.”

  “That’s obvious. But I was thinking about the land. This part of the country you need a lot of acres, whether its crops or cattle, to pull a living out of the ground. You have some children, they have children, and pretty soon when it comes to passing those acres on–”

  “That is a worry. How to be fair.”

  “But with cash, it’s so much easier to portion things out.”

  “You want to buy our place?”

  He chuckles. “Oh no. I’m here to discuss a lease– something like what this young Buford has with you– but this is to lease the right to harvest the oil and gas that might be sitting thousands of feet beneath your land.”

  She nods solemnly. “I remember back in the ’80s, there was some oil.”

  “A smallish play, relatively close to the surface. But my good news to you, Ma’am, is that the techniques used to bring these riches to the top have shot ahead in the last thirty years, and it’s now possible for us to access deposits much older and much deeper than could have been considered in those days. The Company is betting that you and your heirs might be sitting on a very valuable layer of shale rock.”

  “And you want me to let you drill into it.”

  “I think, Mrs. Sanderson, from now on it would be best to think of this as a ‘we’ rather than a ‘you’ situation. I’m proposing a joint venture– your mineral rights, our technological expertise and years of extraction experience.”

  She looks at him blankly for a long moment, then gets to her feet. “Excuse me,” she says.

  When she is gone Sig quickly jumps up to riffle through the mail piled up on top of the microwave. He hears Mrs. Sanderson turn down the volume of the TV in the next room, Dr. Phil dealing out some tough love. Three different outfits soliciting to meet and talk leasing– he slips the envelopes into his briefcase and rearranges the pile, back in his seat before she returns.

  “I want to do the right thing,” she says, as she sits across from him again. “With Ernest gone–”

  “I asked around in town,” he says, leaning forward, lowering his voice as if someone might be there to hear what comes next, “trying to get an idea of who the key people are– the folks who’ve been in this county the longest, earned everybody’s respect– in order to set the right kind of precedent. If I’m going to invite somebody onto the ground floor of this deal it should be people with real roots, real history.”

  “Ernest’s great grandfather founded the county.”

  “Exactly what I’m talking about. Somebody who can set an example.”

  “Nobody pays attention to me.”

  “You’d be surprised. Getting started in an area, it’s important to choose the right people to get the ball rolling.”

  “So it’s not just our land that’s got this shale under it.”

  He sighs then, his storm-clouds-on-the-horizon sigh, and spreads the papers out a bit, pretending to ponder.

  “The decision you’re going to make today, Mrs. Sanderson, is an important one. It affects not just you but your friends and neighbors in the community, and that’s why it’s important to understand the– the pitfalls and ramifications, and also why, besides that my time in this area is very limited, it behooves you to move quickly.”

  She clearly doesn’t like the pressure, but without pressure the oil will sit down there for another couple millennia. Psycho fracking, Dick Whittaker used to call it when they worked as a team.

  “In the oil industry as it stands,” he continues, adding the ominous note where it will do the most good, “we have to acknowledge the concept of pooling.”

  “The oil is sitting in–?”

  “The oil may be sitting under your land, as well as that of your neighbors on each side, et cetera, and since these modern wells are drilled horizontally, meaning sideways–”

  “How can they do that?”

  “A wonder of modern technology, which I am unqualified to explain. But what is important to grasp is that oil, no matter the characteristics of the rock it is trapped in, flows.”

  “You mean somebody next door could pump out all my oil?”

  Two minutes ago he was explaining Geology 101 and now it’s her oil.

  “The pooling statutes, Mrs. Sanderson, are formulated to insure both efficiency and fairness in the drilling operations.” He pretends to read the next bit from one of the documents laid out on the kitchen table. “ In the absence of voluntary pooling, the Commission, upon the application of any interested person, shall enter an order pooling all interests in the spacing unit for the development and operations thereof.”

  With men this is when the anticommunist diatribe usually starts, and Sig has to invoke the evils of Foreign Oil and call on the rights holder’s sense of patriotism. Mrs. Sanderson just looks horrified. “There’s a commission that can make you do that?”

  Sig nods. “Duly appointed.”

  If he has to, he can explain that the statute is from Oklahoma, and that even the owners who choose not to lease but are pooled get an averaged royalty from whatever is retrieved from under their land, but that’s all in the literature.

  “In fact, a penalty as high as two hundred percent can be assessed for cost and risk of the completion. Of course this is America, and you’d have your day in court.”

  Mrs. Sanderson seems to flinch at the word ‘court.’ “So what is your company offering?”

  Sig smiles. “This is my favorite part. All this”– he indicates the lease forms and literature heaped between them– “boils down to three important items. Term of lease, signing bonus, and royalty. Now, I like to offer my mineral owners– that’s you– a five-year lease. That gives the exploration and completion people more time to look for and pump up the good stuff that’s gonna make you and them a good deal of money.”

  “They’ll be drilling for five years?”

  “Drilling any individual well, Ma’am, is only a matter of weeks. Well stimulation, a different process, adds a few days onto that. For most of the life of the well it will be a
set of pipes sticking out of the ground, not much bigger than a Christmas tree, and maybe a holding tank or two. Quite honestly, we have to make a map on a big property like yours to find them after they’re operating, they’re that low profile. Now, the bonus is just that– you’ve heard of professional athletes getting a bonus when they sign with a team right out of college, and like them this is a bonus not for services already rendered but a kind of good-faith payment to seal the deal. That ballplayer could have an injury in practice and never suit up for his professional team, but still he gets to keep his bonus. If for some unforeseeable reason the Company either fails to drill on your property or the formation beneath proves not to contain profitable resources– what we used to call a ‘duster’ back in the Texas wildcat days– you still got your bonus, safe in your pocket. The Company, at this rather speculative juncture, with an unproven field in consideration, has authorized me to offer you fifty dollars.”

  “Oh.”

  Once you’ve got them on the hook, once their imaginations are running away with $$$$$$$$$$$???!!!, you can play them a bit. Otherwise there’s no fun in the fishing.

  “That’s per acre, of course.”

  “Ah.” Face brightening, then the worried look again as she tries to add it up. Sig already has his phone on Calculate.

  “That was what– four hundred twenty-seven acres? That times fifty is–”

  He punches it out and holds the tally under her nose. Mrs. Sanderson squints behind her lenses and rewards him with another ‘Oh,’ trying not to seem too impressed. A month from now it’ll take another zero on that sucker to get their attention.

  “But that’s just the good-faith money,” he continues. “Your royalty, which is your partnership with the Company, is where the real potential lies. It’s what assures you that you’re not selling your rights short– for every dollar of profit the Company makes, you make something too, only you don’t have to put out for equipment and wages like they do– all profit, no risk. And once the shouting’s over– and there will be some bit of noise and inconvenience for a couple weeks, I promise you– you just sit back and let the cash roll in. The royalty percentage is fixed, so the amount of money you receive over the years depends on the productivity, the richness, if you will, of the mineral deposit itself. We’re in this together, Mrs. Sanderson, and there’s nothing that makes me feel better than hearing that one of my lessors has struck it big.”

  She considers this for a moment. Sometimes the ones who have worked themselves to the bone on unyielding land for their whole lives don’t trust it, don’t approve of it. “So it’s just luck then, isn’t it?” she says.

  “I would call it Providence, Mrs. Sanderson. There ought to be a book– When Good Things Happen to Good People.” He slides the master form over to her. “These early leases, while we’re still exploring, I’m able to offer you a twelve-and-a-half-percent royalty. That is one-eighth of the profits from any well drilled on your property.”

  Sig remembers one old Cajun, set of teeth that’d make you cringe, who’d allowed as how one-sixteenth of the gross sounded a whole lot better than one-eighth.

  And what am I, a math teacher?

  “One thing I can tell you with total confidence about the Company,” he says as she picks up the pen he left lying casually to the side of the main form, “is that we drill. You may be contacted by other landmen in the next few months, but many of them will be merely speculating– trying to buy your rights on the cheap and then resell them to a legitimate E and P company like ours– that’s the main signature box right there, Mrs. Sanderson, but there are some side documents we’ll have to go over. Rules and regulations, making sure nobody can just storm in and do whatever they want on your surface land.”

  He loves it when they sign at the first sitting. Her hand is a little wobbly, some of the fingers bent with rheumatism, but she looks pretty pleased with herself.

  “Now, you understand, Mrs. Sanderson, that this is a private contract. You have my assurance that I’m not going to wander all over the county blabbering about your sudden good fortune. Don’t want to set good neighbors to envying each other.”

  Again the frown. “We’re not supposed to compare offers?”

  “Let’s just say that that sort of– collusion– leads to bad feelings. We have in this country what is known as the free-market system,” he smiles, nudging the rest of the forms in her direction. “Golly, in most other countries the government owns all the mineral rights.”

  HARLEIGH IS HALFWAY BACK to the tribal center when Danny Two Strike gets him on the radio. It’s Fawn again, this time out on the Reservoir Road by the boat ramp. As if I need more brushfires to stomp out.

  He’s at least on the right side of the water and doesn’t have to drive all the way around. They’d named the lake after the Shoshone girl who went along with her trapper husband to guide Lewis and Clark to the ocean. Most of the pictures and statues have her pointing over the horizon, looking noble, though a few show her with infant child in arms. There is something creepy about the look of the reservoir, something unnatural about its low, nearly treeless banks. ‘Sterile,’ Teresa Crow’s Ghost always calls it. The old fellas talk about what it was like before the government forced the dam on them– everybody grew table crops and fodder for their livestock, people got by pretty good. But the Missouri was cranky and would go over its banks pretty regular, flooding the white towns downriver, so General Pick and the Army Corps of Engineers got busy in Washington, and pretty soon it was either take what we give you for the most of your land, the best of your land, or we’ll eminent-domain it and you get nothing. Harleigh has a big reprint of the signing photo behind his desk at the council office, bunch of white bureaucrats in suits standing around looking official, and then the tribal chairman from those days, over to one side with his glasses off, weeping into his hand.

  And not only do we take it, they said, you Indians don’t get to use the new shoreline for hunting or grazing. And no cutting down trees for firewood before you go. Harleigh’s grandfather on his father’s side, not Granpaw Pete, got a job with the dam construction and for years people called him a traitor.

  There were still stone walls and foundations under the water when Harleigh swam in it as a kid– him and some of the others would go out on the float with a big rock, then dive down holding it to get deeper. Spooky. The old folks talked about the fasting areas and sacred places that went under with their houses, and didn’t seem so thrilled by the record-sized walleyes and Chinook salmon folks started catching, maybe because they’d seen the Wildlife people out shooting the fingerlings into the lake with a hose. What are salmon from California doing in our water? There was a payout after the taking, maybe worth half of what they’d lost if you were an honest insurance company, and lots of people just flocked into New Center when it rose up from nothing, hanging around the bars and the stores and the Indian Agency. Harleigh’s family was already into beef and drove their herd up onto the shelf, where the grass was poor and there wasn’t a tree standing to slow the wind down in the winter, and stuck it out.

  Danny Two Strike, who’s been head of the tribal police for some years now, has them pulled over across from the boat ramp. It’s Fawn and Ella Burdette’s grandson Dickyboy and a white kid he doesn’t know, got an old wreck of a Mustang that must have been something in its day. Fawn is leaning back against it, looking at her feet when he gets out to talk with Danny.

  “Chief.”

  “Chairman.”

  It’s a routine between them, kind of a joke between old teammates a little surprised to see where they’ve gotten to. Danny was shooting guard when they got to the state quarterfinals his senior year, his basketball sneakers the only shoes he owned, with Harleigh a forward and the leading rebounder.

  “What we got here?”

  “Oh, speed limit violation, paraphernalia in the back seat, and what feels like ten or twelve ounces”– Danny wiggles a large Baggie filled with loose marijuana for him to see– “in
the glove compartment. Don’t carry my drug scale with me, so I can’t be precise.”

  “Fawn driving?”

  “Says he just give her and Dickyboy a ride.”

  “They were smoking when you pulled them over?”

  “Nothing in their hands, nothing in the air, but they were feeling no pain.”

  “You test the town kid?”

  “Had him walk the line and he didn’t do so good. For what it’s worth.”

  “So there’s no charges on my stepdaughter, is there?”

  Danny jerks his head for them to step away further from the sulking teenagers.

  “I talk to you for a minute?”

  They move closer to the boat ramp, and seeing it puts the idea back in Harleigh’s head. I mean, why not? That cruise him and Connie went on for their honeymoon was a floating gold mine. Nice food, nice scenery, but pretty soon you’re all bored enough to park yourself at one of their betting tables and throw away some serious money. ‘We are now beyond the one-mile limit,’ they’d announce over the PA system, and the dice would roll. Hell, if we promised to stay in the part of the lake that’s surrounded by the reservation, and remind them how they drowned our only hospital when they built the dam and never made good on replacing it–

  “So what’s the deal with the thumper trucks?”

  Danny is with the bunch that would like to drain the lake and start growing squash and beans again. Danny burns sweet grass on his patrol car dashboard before he makes the rounds and wants all signs on the rez to be in the Three Languages as well as English. Danny is a constant boil on Harleigh’s ass at council meetings.

  “They send sound waves into the ground that bounce back up and tell what’s down there.”

  “I know how they work. What are they doing here?”

  Harleigh nods toward the lake. “Federal government stole all the mineral rights under the water, on what used to be most of our land. But we still hold em on dry ground.”

  “You remember that mess when we were kids.”