"Thompson, Jim - Cropper's Cabin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Thompson Jim)

"But," she looked up into the mirror. "Yes, I guess you'd better. Try to keep him from coming over to our house, darling. I'm always afraid he--that he and Dad might-- And it would change us, Tommy! We wouldn't want it to, but . . ."
"I'll try. God knows I'll do my best," I said.
She kissed me quickly and then drove away. I ran crouching across the road to the house.
It was, well, I don't know how many times it was that I'd seen her. But now that she was gone, it seemed as incredible as it had the first time. It was hard to believe that it had happened. She had everything, she was everything a man could want.
I glanced back over my shoulder and made a spurt toward the porch.
The chances were that I'd be a mighty sore-backed ploughhand if I wasn't a little more careful.

3
Most people think of Oklahoma as being new country, a place that wasn't settled until the last forty years or so, and that's reasonably true of part of it. But it doesn't hold for the south and southeast section.
The Five Civilized Tribes--the Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Cherokees and Seminoles--started moving in around 1817. They came up from the deep south, blazing the Trail of Tears as they called it; and they established five Indian nations with towns and courts and schools and newspapers, and, well, about everything you'd find in any country of the period. Because maybe they had reason to hate the white people, but they'd lived too long like whites to change. They farmed like whites, they and the slaves they brought with them; they cottoned and corned the land to death. It began losing topsoil, then subsoil; and by the time of statehood there were whole counties that weren't producing a fourth of what they should have.
The state and federal governments finally woke up and tried to build the soil back up. But the share-crop system just naturally doesn't attract people with much brains; if they understood anything about scientific farming and all, they wouldn't be croppers in the first place. Anyway, it's hard to show a man where he can gain by improving land he doesn't own.
So, as late as fifteen years ago, when we moved in from Mississippi, a lot of land was still going to pot--and it still is--and probably it's a good thing it was. Otherwise we'd never even have been able to buy ten acres from one of Matthew Ontime's kin.
We'd never got any more than that because that was another farm that Matthew fell heir to, and he knew what could be done with worn-out land as well as Pa. He knew a lot more about the subject than Pa did.
So all we had and were ever going to have was those ten acres, and the two tenant shacks and outbuildings that had come with 'em. But that was something; it was a big step up from being ordinary croppers, and we'd made the most of it.
We'd placed the two shacks end-to-end, with a screenedin breezeway connecting them, and we'd torn down one of the outbuildings and built a long porch across the front. We'd rubbed down the floors with sandstone and varnished 'em--they're probably the only cropper-house floors in the country with varnish. And we'd painted the outside white with a green trim; and that's something else you don't see often--a painted house--in cropper country. It looked real nice, for what it was.
I reached the porch just as the oil scout's car slowed down for the turn into the yard.
Mary snatched the sweater out of my hands. She thrust a bucket at me with a little water in it and disappeared inside the house. I hadn't needed to tell her a thing. She'd known just what to do.
I poured the water into the wash basin and jerked up my sleeves. By the time the car lights hit me, I was bent over the washbench, busy as all getout.
I'd just brought in an armload of firewood, maybe, and now I was scrubbing up for dinner.
The car stopped in the yard, and for a minute or so there was a heavy silence. Then the lease scout--I couldn't see what he looked like--cleared his throat. And I picked up the water bucket and sauntered down toward the well.
"I just can't understand," he said, irritated and trying to sound like he wasn't. "I've been in this business all my life, Mr. Carver, and I can't . . ."
"I'm trying to tell you, mister . . ."
"Is there anything that isn't clear to you? What more could you ask for? We'll give you a royalty of one-eighth of the production, the usual production royalty; no one can give you more than that. But we'll pay you an advance against that royalty of twenty-five hundred dollars an acre . . ."
_Twenty-five hundred! That was two-fifty more an acre than the last offer we'd had_.
". . . think of it, Mr. Carver! We pay you twenty-five thousand dollars--tuh-wenty-fi-uhv thousand--cash on the barrelhead! And that's just a starter. Why, if this area here is even half as rich as our geologists' report, you'll . . ."
Pa groaned. He actually groaned, and without seeing him I knew the way his face was twisting like a man in agony.
". . . tuh-wenty-fi-uv thousand dol--"
"Stop it! Durn your hide, stop it! Don't you say another word!"
"But I don't under . . ."
"I've been tryin' to tell you!" Pa yelled. "I've been tryin' to tell you for an hour, now! You can't lease my ten acres! You _can't!_ Your company wouldn't let you!"
The scout started to butt in again, but Pa yelled him down. "Don't you reckon I know? I've seen it tried, man! They'd have to check over the lease before the money was paid, and they'd find out that my little ten here was all they could get! And they wouldn't touch it then with a ten-foot pole! They couldn't hope to more'n break even, if they were lucky enough to do that!"
"If you'd just leave that to . . ."
"I ain't going to leave it to you! I ain't gonna let you waste your time or mine. What's it cost to drill a deep well, anyway? A hundred to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, right? So you can't just have you enough room for one well; an' you put two or three down side by side you don't gain nothing. They just drain each other off. Before you could drill on my acreage, you'd want everything in sight under lease! And that biggety Indian won't let you have one single acre! Not one, mister."
The scout laughed. A match flared as he lighted a cigarette. "Well, now, I'm sure if we offered him the right kind of proposition . . ."
"All right, mister," said Pa, wearily. "All right."
"It's a deal, then? You and I have a deal?"
"You go talk to him," said Pa. "Or go talk to some of the oilmen around town. Then come back and see me."
"Agreed! We'll call it a deal, Mr. Carver. I'll bring an attorney out tomorrow morning, and . . ."
"No," said Pa. "You won't be coming back, tomorrow morning or any other time. But I ain't goin' to argue with you about it."
He got out of the car, swinging the white meal sack full of groceries over his shoulders. He stood back to let the scout drive off, and then he went plodding up toward the house, not looking at me; probably not even seeing me. I emptied the water bailer into my bucket and ran and caught up with him.
"Here, Pa," I said, "let me take that."
"Huh?" he blinked at me. "Oh. Howdy, boy. How's school?"
"Fine," I said.
"You're showin' 'em, huh? You ain't slackin' up any? You're showin' 'em what us Carvers can do?"
"Yes, sir," I said.
I eased the meal sack onto my shoulder, but he still stood blinking at me, looking at me and through me. He was as tall as I was, tall and wiry. But years of cropping had pushed his chest in, curving his back and neck, and he had to bend his head back to look at me. His leathery upturned face made me think of one of those big snapping turtles that grab hold of something and never let go.
"You see that fool Indian girl?" he said.
"Indian girl?"
"Almost ran me and that oil feller into the ditch. Good thing she ain't my daughter. I'd peel the hide right off of her."
"Yes, sir," I said.