Giant by Edna Ferber Read Free Book Online Page A

out to nobody. Well, Jett gets hot the way he does, he started out just rawhiding but now he gets wild the way he does when he’s by-passed, he gets serious he starts fighting like he does when he’s been drinking they had beer and whiskey too with the barbecue. He hits the fella over the head with a beer bottle, the fella dies, Jett has to pay his widow ten fifteen thousand dollars besides all the other expenses and lawyers and fixers and the plane trip and all, why it must of cost Jett Rink better than twenty-five thousand dollars to eat that plate of barbecue. It’d been cheaper for Jett to buy that fella and his barbecue shack and all that part of town including the grain elevator. Funny thing about Jett. If he can get a thing he won’t want it. But if he wants it and can’t get it, watch out.”
    “That’s right,” ruminated Congressman Bale Clinch. “Yes sir. You got to say this for Jett Rink. He goes after what he wants.”
    A heavy silence fell upon the occupants of the great rich car as it swept along the sun-drenched streets of Hermoso’s outskirts.
    Leslie Benedict had been sitting with her eyes shut. Vashti Snyth reached over and patted her hand almost protectively as a mother might touch a child. She ignored the presence of the others.
    “Mott got one fault, it’s talking. Talktalktalk. What he missed out in growing he makes up in gab.”
    Congressman Bale Clinch smiled chidingly upon her. “Now now, Vashti. You hadn’t ought to talk about your lord and master thataway.” He then roared as at an exquisitely original witticism.
    “We will soon be there,” Leslie said to the Ambassador. “Just another minute or two. The Conquistador isn’t in the heart of the city, you know. Like the other hotels. It’s almost like a big resort hotel. Very lavish.”
    “Air-conditioned,” shrilled Vashti, “from cellar to roof, every inch of it—except the help’s quarters, a course. They say there’s gueststhere never had their faces outdoors since Jett flang it open—or sealed it shut, you might put it.”
    “And the recipe for the barbecue,” the South American persisted gently. “Did he get it then?”
    Pinky looked doubtful. “Well sir, I never rightly heard. The place was closed down or sold out. Jett he felt terrible about the whole thing when he sobered up. There was a daughter, girl about eighteen, she got a job in Jett’s outfit somewheres. In the office in Hermoso or Houston or Dallas or somewheres. Did real well.”
    “She sure did!” said Vashti with more bite than her speech usually carried.
    Silence again. The streets were broad boulevards now, the houses were larger, they became pretentious. Hermoso oil and cattle society had gone in for azaleas, the motorcars flashed past masses of brilliant salmon-pink and white and orchid and now you could see the towers of the Conqueror, the Conquistador, rising so incongruously there in suburban Hermoso thirty stories up from the flat Texas plain. Towers, balconies, penthouses, palm trees, swimming pool. Flags and pennants swirled and flirted in the hot Gulf breeze—the single-starred flag of the Lone Star State, the Stars and Stripes above this, but grudgingly; and fluttering from every corner and entrance and tower the personal flag of Jett Rink, the emblem of his success and his arrogance and his power, with his ranch brand centered gold on royal blue as he had sketched it years ago in his own hand—years and years before he had owned so much as a maverick cow or a gallon of oil: the J and the R combined to make the brand JR. Houses had been razed, families dispossessed, businesses uprooted, streets demolished to make way for this giant edifice. All about it, clustered near—but not too near—like poor relations and servitors around a reigning despot, were the little structures that served the giant one.

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    Royal blue and gold smote the eye, the air swam with it. The doorman’s uniform, the porter, the swarm of bellboys that sprang up