He did, however, speak from time to time of the sanctity of marriage, not overtly criticizing Penelope's aims, nor even offering Jessica advice. She wasn't quite sure what he meant to convey. He didn't mention Travis at all; he simply said now and then that married people belonged together.
In this fashion they lived companionably in the same house. Oliver seemed satisfied with her work, although she began to see that he did not need her. His own health and vigor, despite his advanced age, were quite adequate to the needs of his wide business interests. He had done her a kindness in giving her a job, and he was a patient teacher. Jessica came to feel much surer of herself than she had ever felt in her life, convinced of her own intelligence and her competence to function successfully in a sphere where women were seldom admitted as anything but onlookers.
Then in early March Oliver called her in and told her that he had bad news. Jessica began to tremble. Something must have happened to one of the family in Weatherford. Her brothers—had one of them been injured?
"You know your husband is in Beaumont?” Oliver asked.
Travis? Something had happened to Travis? Jessica swallowed hard and nodded.
"I've just had word of a disaster there,” he continued somberly. “Dangerous places, those oil fields."
Jessica looked at him with wide, frightened eyes.
"Seems there was a lake of oil. Sparks from an engine set it afire, millions of gallons. Then some fellow set a counterfire on the other side of the lake, and there was an explosion that rained burning oil everywhere. Hundreds killed according to the paper.” Oliver waved his hand, and Jessica's eyes fastened on the horrifying headlines in the Gazette. “I haven't heard from Travis and can't get hold of him."
"You've kept in touch?” she asked, astonished. He'd never given a hint that he heard from Travis.
"Of course. He's been advising me on my holdings in Beaumont."
"But—but how could you trust him?"
"Do you take me for a fool, girl? I trust him because his advice is good."
"Oh.” Jessica didn't know what to say. Her grandfather trusted Travis although—although—but what did it matter now? Travis was among the missing. She squeezed her eyes shut. Fire. He might have been caught in that huge, terrible fire her grandfather had described.
"If you want to go, I can arrange it for you."
"Go?” she asked blankly.
"Yes, go to see if he survived. Go to see if he needs help. The man's your husband. He could be injured instead of dead."
"Yes, of course. When can I leave?” Panic sent an icy tide through her body. If he were alive, how would she find him among the dead and dying? How would she manage to care for him in a strange place where disaster reigned?
"I'll put you on the train in an hour. You can change in Houston to a sleeper and get into Beaumont day after tomorrow."
"Yes. All right."
"I have a lot of business interests in Beaumont, and I've heard nothing from the fellow who manages them."
"You think he's been hurt?"
"He stopped reporting long before the fire,” said Oliver dryly. “I'll want you to see what's happening there. Protect my holdings. Your law training should be helpful. The courts are full of suits over property leases and deeds, some of mine among them. You can look out for my interests."
Jessica nodded. How long did he expect her to stay there? It was hard to think of anything but Travis.
"I'll make some notes for you while you're packing."
Jessica nodded and hurried from the room without putting to him any of the questions she would ordinarily have asked about the business portion of her mission. She had to get to Beaumont and find her husband. Surely he wasn't dead. If he were, she would have known it, feeling the way she did about him.
Book III
Spindletop
March, 1901, to August, 1901
Chapter Eighteen
Too anxious to sleep during the eighty-five-mile, overnight trip from Houston, Jessica rose before dawn to sit staring out at the featureless coastal plain that stretched away into the distance. Now and then a clump of trees, ghostly with shrouds of trailing moss, loomed up outside her window, then faded away again in the dim light where low-hanging clouds became indistinguishable from flat horizons. It was an empty, ominous landscape in which Jessica herself seemed the only sentient being, and she wondered if this feeling of bleak isolation could be a warning that Travis had indeed died. She shuddered and stared down at her fingers, clenched in protest on the navy serge of her traveling suit.
Then, before six when the train was scheduled to arrive in Beaumont, the other passengers began to stir, lights came on, and men bustled up and down the aisles eyeing her curiously and talking among themselves of money, land, and oil. A few voices, like dimly heard messages from an alien world, became many; whispers from the far ends of the car grew into an alarming din as the train pulled into the station under a smoke-blackened sky and the passengers pushed and jostled their way off the car.
Jessica stayed seated, waiting until the aisle cleared and the conductor came back to assist her. She carried little luggage since she planned to stay only a few days. If Travis was alive—and surely she hadn't come all this way to bury him, she assured herself, hope renewed—she could go home, taking him with her if he needed nursing. As for her grandfather's elusive Beaumont manager, a Mr. André Malliol, she would find him and urge him to take up his responsibilities. If he was not to be found, she'd hire a replacement.
As she walked from the train, carrying her own carpetbag, she was stunned by the scene that met her eyes. The station was mobbed with people, the street with buggies, surreys, hacks, and wagons. On the board sidewalks ragged boys tried to sell her crude maps and souvenir whiskey flasks filled with Spindletop oil—"Just twenty-five cents, miss.” Hack drivers wanted twenty dollars to take her to the fabulous Lucas well. Men waving greenbacks in denominations she hadn't known existed wanted to lease or buy land from her—"You own land, lady? I'm buyin', anywhere within a hundred miles.” Others with placards in their hats offered to sell or lease land that would “make your fortune, ma'am; I got a fifteen-acre lease on the Humboldt tract."
A man in a black frock coat stood on a barrel not twenty feet from her haranguing the crowd with dire predictions—"The end of the world is at hand, brothers; fire shall sweep the earth, set by Satan in the guise of an oil driller.” Another predicted that the whole coast would collapse if the drilling were allowed to continue.
Across the street, where her grandfather had advised her to lodge, stood the Crosby House, a frame structure with tall windows and long galleries thronged with gesticulating men, the lovely gardens of which Oliver had spoken nowhere in evidence. They had been replaced by six-foot squares, crudely partitioned with boards and used as offices by swarms of frantic bargainers. Added to all this confusion, the horrendous clamor of bells and whistles assaulted her ears. Bedlam could not have been worse, and somehow Jessica had to find her husband in this frantic mass of humanity.
She picked her way across the street to the hotel, thinking to secure a room before she began her search for Travis, but once she had pushed and elbowed a path through the mob in the lobby, the clerk informed her that they had no rooms. In fact, he knew of no rooms anywhere in Beaumont. He advised her to take the next train out, if she could get a seat. Nor did he know a Mr. William Travis Parnell, although he assured her that his ignorance didn't mean there might not be such a man here among the thousands of newcomers who had crowded in since Captain Lucas's well had drenched the county in oil and oil boomers.
"Ah know Travis, ma'am,” said a Stetson-hatted man with an elbow on the desk.
"He's alive, then?” asked Jessica eagerly.
"Last Ah heard,” drawled the man.
"He wasn't killed in the fire?"
"Warn't no one killed in the fire—exceptin’ livestock."
Jessica felt her whole body wilt with relief. No one had been killed? The papers had
said thousands. Her own paper had said that; she'd have to send them a story. “Could you tell me where to find him?"
The man grinned and asked, “Wouldn't Ah do instead?"
"I'm Mrs. Parnell,” said Jessica stiffly and gave him her best quelling look, a look the girls had practiced at the Mount Vernon Seminary, a look one of the mistresses had called “as good a protection as a sturdy escort, girls, if you execute it properly.” Jessica was a master of execution when it came to the look. Her admirer in the Stetson backed up a full foot, which was as far as the mob around him allowed.
"Travis got a room down to the Ervin Boardin’ House on Calder Avenue. That's right across from Cap'n William Weiss's house. Under the big magnolia trees. He's married? Travis?"
The last was added with great astonishment and made Jessica feel very peevish. Why was the man so surprised? Had Travis been conducting himself in an unmarried fashion?
"He might be out to the hill. He's drillin'. Got a rotary rig he freighted in from Corsicana. Out east a Cap'n Lucas's well.” With each additional dab of information, the man backed a little further away, the well location taking him through a gap in the crowd and out of Jessica's sight.
Then Jessica herself squirmed through the mob in the Crosby lobby, clutching with one hand her navy blue taffeta hat with its voluminous burden of blue and white ribbons and bows, in the other hand her carpetbag. No one offered to help. No one even got out of her way. On the street, a hack driver wanted five dollars to take her to Calder Avenue and the Ervin Boarding House, which she gathered was in the very same town. She gave him a contemptuous refusal and got, for twenty-five cents, directions from one of the map-peddling street urchins, also a look at his map, which was a crude thing and vastly overpriced. He assured her that men who wanted to locate leases they had bought or hoped to buy were begging to obtain the maps for three dollars each.
Jessica felt that the world had gone mad as she began her walk to the Ervin Boarding House. What would she do if Travis had already left? She had no intention of paying the outrageous price of twenty dollars for a hack ride out to his well on Spindletop hill. If his landlady or landlord could assure her of Travis's good health, perhaps she'd just leave him a note and take the next train home. No, she had business to conduct for her grandfather. But no place to spend the night. Lord, how was she to manage?
Once Jessica got away from the maelstrom around the depot and Crosby House, she began to relax. Calder Avenue was actually a pleasant surprise; large houses sat back on spacious lawns shaded by old oaks and luxuriant magnolia trees. As she walked along, switching her bag from hand to hand as comfort required, she wished she had asked the whereabouts of her grandfather's man as well. Perhaps André Malliol had been injured in the fire; he might be in a hospital here in town, which she could visit as soon as she had seen her husband. She located the boardinghouse just where the map seller had said it would be and shifted the bag yet again as she waited for an answer to her knock.
"May I speak to Mr. William Travis Parnell?” she asked when a weary-looking woman answered.
The woman frowned at her and announced brusquely, “No females allowed here."
Jessica frowned back and replied, “I'm not looking for accommodations.” Certainly not in the same house with Travis. “I simply wish to speak to Mr. Parnell."
The woman disappeared inside without another word, leaving Jessica to wonder if she had gone for Travis or just gone. Setting her bag down, Jessica faced the closed door and waited, mouth set in an uncompromising line.
That was how Travis found her a few minutes later, looking grim but, to him, very beautiful. Had she always been so lovely, he wondered, or was he simply starved for the sight of her? He took a giant step out onto the porch and swept her into his arms. “Jess, love,” he groaned into her ear, “thank God, you're here at last."
Before she could protest what was obviously some misunderstanding on his part, he caught her mouth with his and overwhelmed her in a devouring hunger, or so it seemed to her dazed senses.
"Mr. Parnell!” came a shocked voice from behind them.
Slowly, and with obvious reluctance, Travis loosened his hold on Jessica a fraction and lifted his mouth a bare inch from hers. “Molly,” he said, his warm breath bathing Jessica's trembling lips, “this is my wife."
"Oh. Well.” The voice sounded a trifle less shocked. “Well, I don't think the missus be goin’ to let her stay here. We don't take no ladies."
Travis wasn't listening. He had returned his mouth to Jessica's, and she had to struggle away from him, mumbling shakily about misunderstandings.
"I know, love,” he replied soothingly as he ducked under her tilted hat again and nuzzled her neck, “but now that you're here, we can work out any misunderstandings we may have—"
"Travis, I'm here on business for my grandfather,” she interrupted desperately. She could hardly admit that she had come primarily out of concern for Travis's life and thus feed his evident expectation that they would be reconciled. “His—his manager has simply dropped out of contact. I thought—” ah, she had an inspiration “—I thought you might be able to give me news of the man. André Malliol?” She gave her husband a bright, hopeful look.
He stared back with puzzled disappointment, no doubt because, for a minute there, she had forgotten their differences and kissed him back with fervor. But her suspicions had swiftly returned. Did Travis's warm welcome mean that he still foresaw possibilities of using her against her family? “Mr. Malliol handled Grandfather's lumber interests here, not to mention Duplessis land holdings and the wholesale hardware business."
"Your grandfather has a house out in Spindletop Heights. Seems to me I heard Malliol's living there,” said Travis brusquely.
"What?” Here was very disturbing news indeed. From Oliver's notes to her, she had learned that among Mr. Malliol's derelictions of duty was a failure to collect rent on the house. She'd certainly have to look into that. “Would you by any chance be able to suggest the name of some respectable woman who could rent me a room for the night?” she asked stiffly. Straightening out the matter of Mr. André Malliol might take another day.
"There are none,” said Travis. “The only bed in town that might be open to you is mine."
Jessica flushed. “That's quite impossible. Not only are women boarders not allowed here, but I have no intention of—of—"
"Enjoying my company to that extent?” he asked dryly. “Well, if you won't share my bed, perhaps I can offer you breakfast. If you came in on the night train from Houston, I doubt you've had any."
"I haven't,” Jessica admitted, and she was very hungry, having been too anxious to eat much of what had been served her in a Houston restaurant the night before. She had never eaten by herself in public and hadn't relished the experience at all, although she supposed she might have to accustom herself to such unusual situations if she continued to do business for her grandfather.
"Come along then,” said Travis.
"The Queen of the Neches!” exclaimed Jessica. “This place is dreadful, certainly not the queen of anything."
Travis laughed. “Beaumont was a nice little timber and rice marketing town before the Lucas well came in. Now—well, I'll have to admit it's a bit hectic, but then that's Texas for you. Corsicana was bad in its time; so was Fort Worth when the railroad first came in and the cattle drives were still roaring through. You must have heard about those days from your parents."
Jessica nodded. Her father had been a force in the big cattle drives of the ‘70s before she was born.
"Every boom town's a hell hole until it catches up with its growth and becomes respectable—especially Texas towns. You know what General Phil Sheridan said about Texas? He said if he owned both Texas and hell, he'd rent out Texas and live in hell."
Jessica couldn't help laughing. No matter how reprehensible his behavior had been, talking to Travis, after so many evenings spent with her mother's friends, was like opening a window to let a fresh breeze swee
p through a room filled with cigar smoke—which this crowded, noisy restaurant was. Didn't any of these men know that no gentleman smoked in a lady's presence? Not only was the air unbreathable, but the service was dreadful as well.
"How good it is to hear your laughter, Jess,” said Travis, “and I must say you're looking exceedingly beautiful."
The compliments should go to Penelope, thought Jessica wryly. She herself felt like a fraud, for even after moving to her grandfather's, she had continued to use the lemon rinse on her hair, which was what must have impressed Travis.
When Jessica failed to respond, Travis returned to the subject of Beaumont. “No matter what else you say about Beaumont, it's the most exciting place in Texas right now, the most exciting place in the whole country, I reckon. That Lucas well is producing six to eight times more than any well I ever heard of, maybe somewhere between fifty and eighty thousand barrels a day. Back in Corsicana all the wells in the whole field only put out around twenty-three hundred barrels a day. We're going to break the Standard Oil monopoly right here at Spindletop."
Travis's smug pleasure in making that prediction reminded her of his remarks early in their acquaintance about Pierce, Waters and Senator Bailey. How impressed she had been with him then. How little she had understood his motives for pursuing her.
"Hell, even the Russians can't compete,” he continued proudly. “They've got a big field, but they're six hundred miles from the ocean, and there's a forty-six-cent tariff on their oil. When a few more wells come in here at Spindletop, and they will, we'll rule the world,” he exclaimed enthusiastically. “There'll be a boom like nothing anyone has ever seen, and all of us from Corsicana who know how to work the rotary drills and have the equipment and experience—” he smiled a slow, satisfied smile “—we're going to do real well."
"Have you moved your drilling business here?” she asked curiously.
Virgin Fire Page 21
