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СКАЧАТЬ volcanic activity occurred two hundred million years before she was born. That move was the start of the life Waters now lived. He’d been back in Natchez less than a month when Cole Smith – his old roommate and now a lawyer – asked if he thought he could find some oil. Since he had to do something for money, Waters set about mapping the region with a vengeance. Three months later, he was sure he had a cod-lock cinch. Cole sold the prospect in two weeks, and they prepared to make their first million dollars.

      What they made was a dry hole.

      Waters learned a hard lesson from that first failure, but the next morning he went back to his maps. He studied substructure for four months almost without sleep. And this time, he swore to Cole, he had it. It took Cole five months to sell that second prospect – split between sixty investors. Cole and Waters could barely afford to keep small shares for themselves. But at 4:00 A.M. in the middle of dense Franklin County woods, they hit twenty-nine feet of pay sand – a likely four million barrels of reserves – and one of the last big fields discovered in the area. After that, they couldn’t put prospects together fast enough. Waters kept finding oil, and the money rolled in like a green tide. Even after the oil industry crashed in 1986, Cole somehow continued to sell deals, and Waters kept finding oil.

      It was around this time that Lily Anderson graduated from SMU’s Cox School of Business and returned to Natchez. A CPA, she planned to stay in town only long enough to help her father straighten out some tax troubles, but after she and Waters started seeing each other, she decided to stay a bit longer. Smart, quick-witted, and attractive, Lily kept Waters from slipping into the mild depressions he sometimes felt at a life that, despite the money, seemed significantly smaller than the one he’d left behind. But there were other compensations. His mother’s health improved, and his brother graduated cum laude from LSU. When Lily expressed restlessness that their relationship seemed stalled, Waters took a hard look at his life – the old dreams and the new realities – and decided that he had not been born to roam the world in search of scientific adventure. He had built something in Natchez, a thriving company his father would have been proud of, and that – he told himself – was good enough. It was time to be fair to Lily.

      “What the hell are you doing down here by yourself in the mud?”

      Cole’s voice was slurred from too much scotch. Waters heard him push through some weeds, then stop to keep his shoes out of the gumbo mud that bordered the river here. There’d been a time when Cole wore steel-toed Red Wings out to the locations, just like Waters. Now he wore the same Guccis or Cole Haans he sported at the office. Waters turned to face him.

      “Have you lost your mind?”

      Cole’s eyes looked cloudy. “What you mean?”

      “You told them five million barrels?”

      “You said yourself it could go that high.”

      Waters’s frustration boiled over. “That’s you and me! In the office! That’s blue-sky dreaming. The outside of the goddamn envelope.”

      “We’ve hit it before.” Cole’s eyes narrowed with resentment. “Look, I handle the investors. You have to trust me about what makes them tick. It’s the romance of it, John. They’re just like women that way.”

      “You’ve obviously forgotten how women get when they’re disappointed. You’d better start trimming their expectations a little.”

      Worry wrinkled Cole’s fleshy face. “You don’t think we’re gonna hit?”

      “You said it yourself one out of twenty-nine.”

      “That’s factoring in all the assholes who don’t know what they’re doing. You’re one out of three, John.”

      Waters felt a hot rush of self-consciousness at this admission of the degree to which everyone’s fortunes depended on him. “We can’t ever rely on that.”

      “But I always have.” Cole smiled crookedly. “And you’ve never let me down, partner.”

      “We’ve hit the last two we drilled. That ought to tell you adversity can’t be far away.”

      Cole blinked like a fighter realizing that he has underestimated his opponent. A little clarity had burned through the scotch at last. Even in his inebriated state, Cole knew that fate was always out there waiting to hand you an ass-whipping.

      “Who are those guys, anyway?” asked Waters. “The mullets.”

      “South Louisiana guys, I told you. I’ve hunted with them a few times. They got some land leased south of town this season. Paid thirty an acre.

      “You don’t hunt anymore.”

      “Not without a damn good reason.” Cole grinned suddenly, his old bravado back in a flash. “You know deer season’s my favorite time of year. While all the husbands are in the woods chasing the elusive whitetail, I’m back in town chasing the married hot tail.”

      Waters had heard this too many times to laugh. “Look, I know you want me up there. But I’d just as soon not spend much time with those guys. Okay?”

      “Don’t be an asshole. Investors like having the witch doctor around while they’re waiting to log. Tones up the party. Unless it’s a dry hole. Then nobody will want to see your ass.” Cole grinned again. “Least of all me.”

      Waters started to walk up out of the mud, but more words came almost before he realized he was speaking.

      “What do you know about Eve Sumner?”

      Cole looked nonplussed. “The real estate chick?”

      “Yeah.”

      “What about her? I thought you didn’t want to know about any of my adventures.”

      “You’ve slept with her?”

      “What do you think? She ain’t no prude, and she looks like two million bucks. Besides, she likes married guys. Fewer complications.”

      “Is she—” Waters dropped the thought. “Never mind.”

      “What? Don’t tell me you’re thinking about hooking up with her. Not Ward Cleaver himself.”

      “No. She just came on to me a little, and I was curious.”

      “Yeah? Watch out, then. She’s a hell of a lay, but too twisted for me. She’s a sly one. Always looking for advantage. Reminds me a little of me. I like my women a little more … pliable.”

      “Yes, you do.”

      “Hey, though, Evie does this thing with her—”

      Waters stopped him with an upraised hand. “Don’t tell me, okay? I don’t need to know.”

      Cole snickered. “You don’t know if you need to know or not until I tell you what she does.”

      “I think I can live without that knowledge.”

      “Okay, fine. Now come on up here and hang out with the great unwashed, okay?”

      “I will, if you lay off the scotch. I’m looking for two million barrels, but this baby СКАЧАТЬ