Boom Town Boy

by Lois Lenski

  “Stickers! Teacher don’t like stickers!” giggled the children.

  “And Mrs. Gordon made me stop and admire her roses,” Miss Plumley went on. “She gave me this bouquet, and the roses have stickers too!”

  Laughing, the children tumbled pell-mell into the schoolhouse, and Miss Plumley seemed more of a human being than she had been before, just because the children had seen her bare feet. She washed them, and put on her shoes and stockings. Orvie rang the last bell and school began.

  He sat down in his seat and looked out the window.

  To think they had started an oil well in the schoolyard during his absence. If he had known that, he never would have missed. The rig was much higher than the building, and from where he sat, he could see the drillers working. Maybe he could climb to the top of this derrick some time. The drilling shook the building, and ever so often the steam engine let off a blast of steam.

  Orvie looked around, and there sat Bonnie Jean Barnes in front of him. There were many other new faces. Every seat was taken and some held two. He recognized certain Stringtown children, Freckles Hart and other boys from Whizzbang. School was suddenly exciting—but it was hard to keep his mind on his books.

  “We’re too crowded,” said Miss Plumley,” with so many new children, but we’ll get along. Perhaps next year we’ll have a new school building. We must try to get used to the drilling outside our windows and not pay too much attention to it. Now Orvie, you have a lot of work to make up …”

  A swishing burst of steam drowned the sound of her voice, and the rest of Orvie’s scolding for being absent could not be heard.

  “We’ll have to talk fast, then stop and take a breath while the noise lasts,” Miss Plumley went on. The children laughed. “Orvie, will you please read the first paragraph of …”

  Pz-z-z-z-z-z-t! Pz-z-z-z-z-z-t! sizzled the steam again.

  And so it went all day long. Each time they started something, the bursts of steam stopped them. Miss Plumley had to give instructions by signs because of the noise. The vibration shook the building. Desks and furniture shook and shifted, chalk and erasers would not stay on the chalk-tray. Miss Plumley had a hard time keeping the attention of the children on their books, but the interruptions gave drama and zest to what had been dull and humdrum school life before.

  That afternoon Orvie took his books home, intending to do his homework and get caught up, but there were interruptions there too. The men had just finished laying pipes to the Robinson house for gas.

  “Golly!” he exclaimed, as the man lighted the gas burners in the new kitchen stove for the first time. “You can cook on it without wood?”

  “I won’t know how to act,” said Mama, dabbing her eyes with her apron.

  “Will it explode?” cried Addie, looking scared.

  “Course not,” said Della. “You just turn the handles off and on.”

  “It will take me a long time to get used to it,” said Mama.

  “Now I won’t have nothing to do,” said Orvie, smiling. He thought of the cords and cords of wood he had chopped for the old cook-stove that now sat out in the yard under the cottonwood tree. He thought of the hours of time he had spent chopping it.

  “And to think there was plenty of gas down under our farm the whole time, and I never knew it!”

  There was a bright gas light in every room now, with an upturned glass shade. Each light burned from what was called a jet. Papa lighted them all and the family walked from room to room to look at the glow. The lights shone with golden brilliance even in the daytime.

  “No more kerosene lamps to clean and fill, Della,” laughed Grandpa.

  “I’m not sorry,” cried Della. “I’ll hide the old lamps away in the attic where we’ll never see them again.”

  “Now, ain’t you glad we drilled for oil, Jennie?” asked Grandpa.

  “Yes Pa,” said Mama, dabbing her eyes again.

  “We’ll put in a telephone next,” said Grandpa.

  “A telephone! Oh my!” said Mama.

  Orvie called to Della: “Know who the new tool-dresser is at No. 2?”

  “Who? Slim?” asked Della, blushing.

  “Yes,” said Orvie. “He told me to tell you. I’ll go out now and tell him I told you.”

  Orvie jumped on his bicycle and rode out to No. 2 Robinson. But Slim was busy and could not see him. The boilerman whose job it was to tend the steam boilers was sick and had not come, so Slim was taking his place. The engine housing had not yet been built, so Orvie could see from a distance that Slim was occupied.

  Nobody knew how it happened, but some one said afterwards that the water level had been allowed to get too low before refilling the hot boiler, and this produced a flash of steam beyond the capacity of the safety valve. Suddenly the steam boiler exploded with a mighty roar, and Slim was thrown two hundred yards off into the slush-pond.

  Orvie screamed. “Slim!” he yelled, pointing. “Slim, oh Slim!”

  The men yelled and ran too, but Orvie was the first one there. He was sure they would pick Slim up dead or broken in pieces. He watched while the men helped Slim up, covered with mud and water from head to toe. Slim could walk, so he wasn’t killed.

  “Hey, kid, get to a telephone quick!” ordered Heavy, the driller. “You got one at your house?”

  “No,” said Orvie, “but we’re gonna get one.”

  Slim was walking along, supported by two of the men.

  “Where’s the nearest telephone?” yelled the driller angrily.

  “Oh, er …” Orvie tried to think. “The Murrays … no, they ain’t got one … Old Pickering, yes the Pickerings had one put in … across the road and down a piece …”

  “Get on your bike, go and telephone quick!” ordered Heavy.

  “Who should I call up?” Orvie, already on his bicycle, yelled back over his shoulder.

  “The ambulance, you nitwit, and do it quick before Slim dies!” came the answer.

  Before Slim dies … before Slim dies … The words ringing in his head made Orvie’s legs pump faster and harder than they had ever pumped before. “Oh, I never thought anything like this would happen to Slim … he could still walk …”

  Orvie was half way to the Pickerings when he remembered that they had moved away, and the place was now a dance hall. Should he go in a wicked place like that? He knew Mama wouldn’t want him to, but there must be a telephone there, and it was the nearest and the quickest.

  Before Slim dies … before Slim dies … he pedaled faster.

  He didn’t have time to look at the verandah that had been all glassed in around the front, nor to notice the shiny floor varnished for dancing. All he saw was a tall thin man, with loose shaggy hair.

  “Telephone!” he cried out. “Telephone!”

  It was lucky for Orvie that he had memorized the signs stuck on telephone poles on the way into town. Now, one of them came back to him just when he needed it: Ambulance phone 473. He got an answer right away, and a man said they would come at once to No. 2 Robinson.

  Orvie hung the receiver up and sank limply down into a chair.

  “Somebody hurt?” The long thin man stood beside him.

  “Slim! Slim Rogers,” said Orvie. “There was an explosion and he got blowed into the slush-pond. He musta got burned or something. He could still walk, but he never said one word …”

  “Too bad,” said the long thin man. He sat down at the piano and began to play softly.

  Orvie stared at him. “Is it you makes all that loud music?”

  “Part of it,” said the man. “We have other instruments too.” He stopped playing and looked at his own hands. “The tips of my fingers are all calloused,” he said. “That comes of having to play all night long.”

  “You play all night long?” asked Orvie.

  “Yes,” said the man. “Can you hear it over at your house?”

  “Yes,” said Orvie. He knew the man wanted him to say something nice, so he added. “It sounds beautiful—I like it.”

>   The man’s sad face broke into a smile. “I’m glad,” he said.

  “Some folks say we ought to try to get rid of your dance hall,” Orvie went on, “because you have drinking, gambling and dancing going on over here. But we never hear any loud noise nor yelling—only music, so Grandpa says we can’t complain. Your music’s pretty—it can’t harm us none. I wish Della could hear it—she wants a piano, so she can take music lessons.”

  The man smiled again. He turned to the piano and began to play as Orvie ran off to his bicycle.

  When he got back to the oil well, the ambulance was there, and Slim was lying on a stretcher. He smiled at Orvie but did not speak.

  “Is he hurt bad?” demanded Orvie.

  But Heavy and the other men did not answer. They loaded the stretcher into the ambulance. Its rear door closed with a bang, and its siren began to screech as it rolled out into the road. Orvie had seen ambulances go screeching by many times before. It was a common enough sight in the oil field, and had not meant anything. Now it was different.

  “Is he hurt bad?” Orvie asked again.

  “Don’t know,” said the driller. His voice, usually so cross, was kinder now. “Hope not. You go tell your sister what happened.”

  “Della?”

  “Yes,” said Heavy. “Slim will want her to come to the hospital to see him, you bet.”

  “Are they takin’ him to the hospital?” asked Orvie.

  “Sure,” said the driller. “They’ll fix him up in no time.”

  “Drilling oil wells is dangerous work,” said Orvie.

  “Sure is,” said the driller.

  Della cried and cried when she heard the news. She cried again when she came back from her first visit to the Tonkawa hospital. Slim was badly burned on his back and legs, and had to have considerable skin grafted on. He was to be in the hospital for two months or longer.

  “Two months,” said Orvie. “I’ll sure miss him.”

  CHAPTER IX

  Basket Picnic

  “I hear you’re havin’ a basket picnic, so I come early.”

  Orvie held the school door open. “We’re not ready yet,” he said.

  “Oh, Mrs. Soaper, I’m glad to see you,” called Miss Plumley. “Come right in.”

  Mrs. Soaper marched in, followed by little Annie, age four, and Georgie, three. She carried a large basket in her hand.

  “Oh Ma,” cried Charley from his seat. “You’re too early.”

  “We got a ride with that machine-shop man,” said Mrs. Soaper. “No other way to get here. Good thing I came early, I can help you get ready. Here you, Freckles, sweep this mud out.” She thrust the school broom into the boy’s hand. “And you girls, bring some water and we’ll scrub the floor.”

  “Pump’s broke, Ma,” said Charley. “Can’t get no water.”

  “Dust up this mess then, girls.”

  Soon everybody was working under Mrs. Soaper’s direction.

  “Ralph, you and Orvie take the two doors off their hinges,” said Miss Plumley. “Lay them over the desks to make a long table. Bonnie Jean and Ruth, get out your table cloths, and Lorita, bring that bunch of flowers for a center piece.”

  It was the last day of school. Now that the end had come, Orvie wished school would last longer. He enjoyed watching the oil drilling from the window beside his desk. But most of the parents thought it too dangerous for the children to have an oil well so close to the building, and other locations for more wells were being staked off in the schoolyard.

  Charley Soaper stood by the open door to welcome the parents as they came, and Ruth Wilkins directed them to place cakes and pies at one end of the table, and main dishes at the other. Each mother brought plates enough for her own children. Orvie’s mother was too busy to come, but had sent a large basket. Mrs. Soaper opened her basket and took out a large mixing bowl filled with coleslaw.

  “Cabbage is cheap and fillin’,” she said.

  “I’m hungry!” begged Annie Soaper. “But I don’t want slaw.”

  “I want a piece of pie,” cried Georgie Soaper.

  They stared at the array of food as if they had never had anything to eat in their lives.

  At eleven-thirty Miss Plumley called everybody in and began the program. Like the regular school work, it was interrupted by loud bursts of steam from the engine by the oil well. But everybody was patient, and the children did their best.

  Rosy Woods sang a song and the First Grade spoke a piece in unison. The older children produced a funny burlesque play called “The King of the Cannibal Isles” to loud applause. The entire school sang various selections while Miss Plumley played the piano. The singing of America ended the program.

  Old Biddy Bascom appeared on her crutches just as lunch was ready.

  “Hello, Orvie, my boy!” she cried. “And Freckles—another of my boys.”

  They dodged to escape her embarrassing pats. Everybody stared at the boarding-house keeper, as she was a newcomer in town. She wore her queer costume with long pantaloons beneath, green stockings and galoshes. Gray wisps of her hair stuck out from under her flopping sunbonnet.

  “Where’s your basket, Miz Bascom?” asked Mrs. Soaper.

  “Didn’t bring none,” said Biddy. “Too far to tote it.”

  “But folks round here never come to a basket picnic without a basket!” scolded Mrs. Soaper. “Who do you think you are?”

  Miss Plumley spoke up hurriedly. “Oh that’s all right, Mrs. Soaper, we have twice as much food as we can eat. And you, Mrs. Bascom, you’re very welcome, so don’t give it another thought.”

  The two women glared at each other.

  “Did you walk clear over from town, Mrs. Bascom?” asked Mrs. Barnes, trying to be friendly.

  “No, I hitch-hiked!” Biddy cackled loudly. “Got three lifts and hopped the rest of the way.”

  Everybody found seats and the dishes were passed around. Soon young and old were busily eating. Charley Soaper dropped a hard-boiled egg on the floor and ducked under the table to get it. He came up with a howl on the other side.

  “Poor Charley, how’d you get that big old knot on your head?” asked his mother.

  “Orvie kicked me,” yelled Charley.

  “Never touched you,” said Orvie.

  “Then Freckles done it,” yelled Charley.

  “No I never,” answered Freckles.

  “You ought to know how to fall on the floor without hittin’ your head, by this time,” said Mrs. Soaper.

  “Didn’t fall—they kicked me!” retorted Charley.

  “Boys will be boys!” cried Biddy Bascom, glaring at Charley’s mother.

  Orvie took two sandwiches and went out the open door. There on the front steps below the porch Nellie Jo and Edna Belle Murray were sitting. They were dressed in new and expensive dresses that looked wrong somehow.

  “What you sittin’ out here all alone for?” demanded Orvie.

  “We’re not allowed to talk,” said Edna Belle.

  “What’s the matter—cat got your tongue?” asked Orvie.

  “No,” replied Nellie Jo.

  “Miss Plumley scold you?”

  “No,” said Edna Belle.

  “Why then?”

  “It’s because we’re so rich,” said Nellie Jo. “Mama told us not to talk to other people. They might try to kidnap us.”

  “Kidnap—what’s that?” asked Orvie.

  “Don’t you know?” said Edna Belle. “I didn’t either, but I know now. They’ll take us and hide us, and make our Papa give ’em a lot of money before they bring us back.”

  “I don’t want to be kidnapped,” said Nellie Jo, starting to cry.

  Orvie looked at the two girls. “Your Papa’s oil money is not makin’ you very happy, is it?”

  “No,” whispered Edna Belle. “I wish we’d never got rich.”

  “I’d rather be poor like the Soapers,” said Nellie Jo in a faint voice. “They’re poor and dirty, but they have fun. We can’t do anything.”


  Orvie remembered how he used to tease the two girls. Now he felt sorry for them, and wished he could do something to help them. “You had anything to eat?” he asked.

  “No,” said Edna Belle. “We left our basket in there on the table. Our Mama wouldn’t come, and we were afraid to talk to anybody else.”

  “Here, take these.” Orvie thrust his two sandwiches into their hands. “I’ll go and get you some more stuff.” He went in and returned with two plates heaped high with food.

  The Murray girls ate well after all, and went home happier than they had been in a long time.

  After the picnic dinner was eaten and the tables were cleared away, Miss Plumley and the boys arranged a cake-walk. Ralph Wilkins put numbers on the floor in a circle, and the girls numbered all the cakes. Ralph Wilkins held up one cake, while Bonnie Jean and Ruth went around selling five cent chances on it. Then Miss Plumley played the piano, while those who had bought chances walked around the circle. When the music suddenly stopped, the person standing on the same number as the cake, won it.

  It was great fun and everybody clapped and laughed. Freckles Hart took in the nickels, and as each cake brought in nearly a dollar, and there were fifteen cakes, Miss Plumley had the sum of fifteen dollars in her pocket-book before the afternoon was over. She said it would be used for a new pump in the schoolyard when school reopened in the fall. If the school was moved to a new location because of the oil wells, it would be used for a new pump there.

  Then the last day of school came to an end, and everybody went home.

  Orvie walked back over the prairie. The wheat fields were getting yellower each day as the grain ripened. In a few weeks, it would be time for harvest. Papa and Bert had already cut the alfalfa, which had been damaged by too much rain.

  Orvie went into the barn and came out on Star’s back. He wanted to ride. He called Shep and soon they went flying off over the back pasture. Shep ran back and forth sniffing.

  “What are you after, Shep?” called Orvie. “A jackrabbit?” Then he saw the coyotes. “Shep! Shep! Come back here, Shep!”

  But it was no use. The dog was after the coyotes now and he soon disappeared with them in the blackjack oaks.