As CEO of my family’s oil business, I couldn’t just up and leave without making sure everything would be taken care of in my absence.
My family made it rich back at the turn of the century, when my great grandfather lit a match over some bubbles out in the field and they ignited.
It was one of the largest oilfields in the State to date. That first well produced for over fifty years, and is now what we call a seepage well, producing only twenty barrels a day.
But with our luck, we found another well on the north side of our land, that promised to do even better than the first, and with today’s technology, we stood to make even more billions.
It’s a well kept secret just how much we were actually worth. It was nobody’s business but our own after all; but the women who’ve married, or been born into the family over the generations, have branched off into other business arenas.
This is Louisiana after all, there was always something you could stick your name on and make it sell.
We have a food line, a spice line and a clothing line, all thought up by the women. My two little brothers were already married to some fine ladies, and had a few children under their belts already. I was the last holdout; after school I’d just not had time to see about finding me a suitable woman.
I didn’t only run the company I liked to have a hand in every aspect of the business. That’s why I’d been working on the rigs since I was sixteen years old.
If it had anything to do with oil wells, I knew how to do it. You need a wildcatter I’m your man, roughneck? You’ve got it.
There isn’t anything I haven’t done out in those fields. The press says I have oil running through my veins instead of blood.
But I wanted to spread my wings wider; my next project is a hotel chain, that’s where my head is at.
We’ve already got the housing development and construction business here and in Beaumont, and we’ve pretty much cornered the market on everything else.
The only thing my family hasn’t tried in the last hundred and ten years is hotels; that’s going to be my mark.
Now that I’ve got that squared away in my mind, I can go ahead and get married. I’m bringing something new to the table, not just riding on my family’s coattails, as a man, that’s very important to me. I’ve found the filly, now I just have to go rope her in. Yee haw.
Chapter 7
EMILY
I heard movement outside the door again. Good, she had come to her senses and was about to let me out.
I heard what sounded like a drill and thought what the hell? I moved from the bed over to the door and tried the knob, nothing.
“Who’s out there? Daddy is that you? Let me out daddy, mama’s having another one of her spells again and shut me in.”
“You’ll be fine doll baby.” Huh?
“What, daddy, what’re you doing?” I could hear his footsteps moving away swiftly, and his voice sounded like it was coming through wet paper.
I pounded on the door, screaming my fool head off, but no one came to my rescue. Well spit, what was I supposed to do now?
The connecting door was my best bet, but they’d already locked that one as well. I could always try kicking it in, but I knew that wouldn’t work.
The doors in this old house were made of mahogany. I stood a better chance of breaking every bone in my foot than I did getting the stupid thing opened.
When this was over, I have to remember to bring some tools in here and hide them under my bed, so the next time that old lady loses her mind, I could just take the door off the hinges.
I can’t believe my own daddy would turn on me like this, and what for, that no count redneck hick? I was back to fuming again.
I finally got some sense in my head and ran for my phone, why hadn’t I thought of it before? I’ll just call my brother to come rescue me, he was over to a friend’s for part of the summer vacation, but I know he’d come get me.
My phone wasn’t on the charger. I’m gonna skin mama alive, see if I don’t, first chance I get.
Fine, I’ll just use the antiquated phone she insisted we all kept in our rooms. Heaven forbid we should get a touchtone, like everybody else in the twenty-first century.
No, according to her they just didn’t fit in with the natural décor and ambience of our home. She’s whacked in the head.
I dialed the number after scrounging around in my old address book. I kept getting dead air and wasn’t surprised to find that the cord had been cut.