The Wildcatter

He knew he was dying. Each breath now labored; his chest weighted by a large rock. He strained to inhale, strained more to exhale. His legs had little feeling. They were like two willow branches—white, straight, with dark striped markings. He had woken but still felt he was dreaming; the dream that replayed his life. People and places advanced in front of him. He was traveling to distant lands, shadows of faces and voices surrounded him.

John looked out his bedroom window. The drapes had been pulled back so that he could look past his feet at the manicured gardens below; he viewed the white stone fountain at the end of the walkway, pumping water into a spray that misted to the right as the morning wind came in from the north, pushing the jet of water off center. He fought against the pillows that encircled him. The early morning light entered from the ceiling high windows, which were now fully opened. The advancing sunlight moved across the bed in a slow crawl.

He remembered now, they called him the richest man in the world. The money did not help heal his heart, which slowly beat as the blood backed up, pressing on his lungs. His heart was failing; a heart that turned to stone long before it stopped pumping. The low flow rate reminded him of a well going dry. There had been many over pouring wells; wells that exploded from the ground in geysers hundreds of feet high; wells that showered men in glistening black water. That water turned into a river; black water that made him wealthy beyond his or anyone’s imagination.

“Daddy, can you see what it brought? Do you see the mansion, high on this English hillside? Daddy do you see these walls, covered in rare paintings and hallways crowded with ancient statues?”

John’s vision cleared. He saw the nurse entering from his left.

“Sir, how are you today? I have to change the IV bag and it’s time for your pain shot. This won’t take long.” The nurse, a young and lithe twenty-year-old, seemed to float in the air next to his bed.

“So young and pretty. I love the women of this age. They glow. They move so sweetly.”

New voices were falling out of the ceiling, some he could remember, others he did not recognize.

“Jake, I need you over here, grab that pipe, bring me a wrench,” his father said. His father always called him Jake. They were on the rig platform. The drill was pushing farther into the earth; they would need to install a new section of pipe.

“Yes sir, here you go.” John now Jake said. “Have we gone 300 feet yet?”

“Almost,” his father replied, his raw hide skin baked by the Oklahoma sun. It was so hot you the thermal waves rose from the brown grass surrounding the wooden drill rig. The cross beams of the rigs formed a checkerboard across the horizon.

He knew his father would not stop for lunch. They were close to a strike, his father worked in a fever. They would not stop the drill until dusk, when the sun light shrank behind the derrick and a man might lose a hand by not seeing the recoil of the drill bit. His father would work non-stop, only grabbing a ladle of water from the bucket, gulping it down or dumping it on his head.

John not Jake thought about the summer he quit the fields. He had bought his own drill site with his earnings and hit a gusher, making more money than he could ever think of using.

“Dad, I think I’ve had enough of oil fields. I am going to take some time to think about what’s next. Maybe college.”

“What? Are you quitting?” his father’s voice shook with anger. “How can you leave now, when so much is here for the taking?”

But Jake felt the need to wander, to explore more than an oil field. His father would never forgive him.

He now felt the warm sand between his toes. He could see the beach, the curve of blue and white surf, waves tumbling onto the hot white sand. He bobbed in the water, feeling the sun caress his bronze shoulders, taut and carved with lines of muscle from the days on the rig. Now he paddled out to breaker line. He loved the surfing life, the bronzing of his body, the pretty high school girls, the drinking all night around the bon fire. “Could there be anything better?” Some called him beach bum, playboy, degenerate. He did not care; he loved the beach life.

“Excuse me sir, I have another pain shot for you.” The lovely vision in white had floated over to his bedside again. “The doctor will be here soon.”

John slept. So many faces were appearing. He saw his first wife in tears. Then his second wife’s angry stare when he told her of the divorce filing. Then his son asking why he had missed the recital, or was it the school play? All of these people with their questions, their outreaching hands, their endless demands.

The pressure in his chest intensified. He could hear the rush of his pulse inside his ear. Whoosh, Whoosh, then silence, then Whoosh, then silence.

The doctor entered the room. He shined the pen light across his eyes. “John, can you hear me?” the doctor raised his voice. He placed the stethoscope on his chest, “Sir…”

Jake could not hear him. He had turned the surf board across the wave, he stood and bent his knees, perfectly balanced, he knifed across the glistening, translucent green of the surf. He looked to the shore, smiling as he caught the force of the wave, sure footed. He felt the sun on his back; the salt spray filled his breath.

“Oh, how I love this life!”

Finis