Fiction: Jaudon – An American Family (a novel) [35]

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Chapter 35. Beaumont, Texas

With the oil came the boom. Ricardo opened a bank in Beaumont and Claude had an office three doors west of the bank. Both were on the main street and a short walk to the local cat house or bar. Spindletop’s oil flow was slowing down, and there were no more exploding gushers, although plenty of oil was still being pumped. James was drilling test holes on Goose Creek, and at a couple of other salt domes along the Gulf Coast.
    In the meantime, oil was found at Sour Lake in 1902, and the following year at Batson. With all that oil hitting the market at the same time, the price per barrel dropped to record lows. Most tried to pump more oil in order to compensate for the lost revenue, which only made things worse. James capped his wells in Corsicana; the oil would still be there when the price bounded back.

    All of this was taking place while property prices in Beaumont were jumping overnight. Sometimes it was doubling from the morning to the evening of the same day. Land prices were being manipulated by speculators looking to cash in on the oil boom who had been too late to buy into the wells. They bought big chunks of land in and around Beaumont. Then, if a person wanted to open a business in Beaumont, they were charged whatever the market would bear – which was a lot.
    Ricardo warned everybody in the investment group to stay out of that market, but with the low price of oil, a lot of people jumped in. Some made money, but most lost.
    While Claude had a lot of his money tied up in land, he didn’t consider a whorehouse a good investment. The building he had his office in and the shed next door where he parked his car were on the only land he owned in Beaumont.
    But then the prostitutes and gamblers began coming in larger numbers. Gambling houses were the first to expand. Saloons were next, offering both drinks and women. A good-time lady could cost an oil-well roughnecker as little as 25 cents, if he engaged her on a street around the saloons. In the saloons, the prices ran from one to two dollars. In the high-class houses, a good time would cost a man three or four dollars, but drinks were included.
    When payday rolled around, the prostitutes would swarm into town, most coming up from Galveston, or down from Houston. With that much booze and everybody carrying a gun, it was no wonder that gunshots could be heard every night and a number of killings took place in the bars and on the streets, mostly over card games, but also over women. There was also the killing for profit. Being robbed was a constant threat, and being murdered during a robbery was very likely.
    The quiet little town of Beaumont, Texas, had been replaced by a wide-open town of ill repute. The law turned a blind eye; there was just too much money to be lost with law and order. Lawlessness filled the city’s coffers. The gambling houses, the saloons, the whorehouses, and the prostitutes themselves paid heavy fines, or city taxes, as the council called them. Everybody had a piece of the action.
    None of this had any effect on the oil people. Claude and the others liked the idea of an open city. The work on the rigs was hard and paid little money unless the rig you were working on was lucky enough to hit oil and then you would get a big bonus. Most of the people who came to work on the rigs were out-of-work farmhands or drifters. Some, like Claude’s crews, had found a profession working in the oil fields and were able to ask for top wages, but most would move on after the first or second payday.
    The whorehouses and gambling halls offered a release from a life of hard work that went on during the 24-hour workday. Those establishments did, however, pose a problem for investors who found them unsettling. Cullinan, at the suggestion of Ricardo, moved his office to Houston, and soon after other companies also moved out of Beaumont. The city didn’t miss them; the party in Beaumont didn’t slow as a result of their leaving. The twin cities of Galveston and Beaumont were experiencing a different kind of a boom.

In 1903, the Duryea brothers build and marketed the first American car. Unlike Claude’s three-wheel vehicle, their car had four wheels and a 2-stroke, 4-horse-powered engine. Claude sold his car and bought one of theirs, along with a motorcycle for Cornell from a new American company called Harley-Davidson. The little motorized bicycle Cornell had been using had given up the ghost the year before.
    Coming back from the rigs one night about seven, Claude parked his car in the shed and was waiting for Cornell before he locked the doors.
    From the shadows beside the shed came a voice, “Take your hat off and put all your money, watch, rings – everything – in it!”
    Claude turned to try to see who was talking. The clicking sound from the hammer of a gun froze his blood. “You try to see me and I’ll kill you!”
    Claude took his hat off and began to unload his pockets. In the distance, he could hear the sound of the little 2-stroke engine of Cornell’s motorcycle.
    A shot rang out, and Claude thought he would soon be dead. Then he heard another and another. He came out of the crouch he had taken and looked behind him. Cornell sat astraddle his motorcycle firing down the alley.
    When Cornell lowered his weapon, Claude asked, “Did you hit him?”
    “I don’t think so. He saw me before I could get my gun out and took off.”
    Claude still wasn’t thinking straight. “Where did you get a gun from.”
    Cornell stared in disbelief. “This is Beaumont, Texas, boss. The only people here who don’t carry a gun are the dead and the soon-to-be dead.”
    Claude looked at his hands, which were shaking. “Let’s go in and have a drink. I believe we can both use one.” Three months earlier, Claude had purchased Cornell’s first drink and first woman for his 19th birthday, and now they would have a drink together each evening. But this evening was different – Cornell had just saved his life.
    It took two drinks before Claude’s hands stopped shaking. “Cornell, tonight has taught me something. I need you more as my bodyguard than for a delivery man. You’ll be at my right hand at all times. Find a replacement for your job. From now on, I’ll give you orders and you’ll pass them down. Do you think you can handle that?”
    “I can do anything you want me to do, boss. I do believe that a bodyguard gets paid more than a delivery boy?”
    Claude laughed. After almost dying, it felt good to be able to laugh. “Quite a bit more.”
    “Then I’ll be the best bodyguard in the world.”
    “Good! Tomorrow, go tell Mr. Black to come into town. This is his new office. You and I will be working out of Houston from now on.”

Copyright © 2020 by Ed Rogers