The Shell Collector by Hugh Howey Read Free Book Online Page B

lighthouse whirs in the distance.
    “Four generations of oil men,” I say. Ness nods. “Help me understand how … how you aren’t all the same.”
    He laughs. “Because it’s a better story and much easier to write if we’re the same. But let me start from the beginning.” He glances at the dive watch on his left wrist, possibly wondering how much time he has, what things to leave out.
    “Please,” I tell him. I’m sure I won’t hear anything new, but I look forward to what things he chooses to leave out, where he decides to embellish. And I’m in no shape to drive. No shape to confront him with the shells. It might have to wait until tomorrow. I’m going to have to take him up on the offer to come back.
    “My great-grandfather William built Ocean Oil from scratch,” Ness says. “He worked on deep sea rigs while he was in his teens. Dropped out of high school after ninth grade, ran away from home, and became a roughneck on a Shell Oil platform. By the time he was twenty, he was a shift foreman. At twenty-two, he had his own rig. This was ten years younger than anyone in company history.”
    “Because of your great-grandmother, right?”
    “No. Because he produced barrels like no other, and that was all anyone cared about. He met Shelly, my great-grandmother, after his promotion. I know … that name, right? It was the most common name for both boys and girls at the time. A curse. She was eighteen, and accompanied her father on a rig inspection.”
    “And her father was CEO of Shell Oil at the time—”
    “Shelly’s father wasn’t CEO yet, just VP of Engineering. One of my dad’s biographers got that wrong, and he got the timing wrong as well. Everyone keeps repeating the same wrong source until it’s gospel.”
    I make a note of this.
    “By the time William—I only ever knew him as Paps—and Shelly started dating, Paps had his own rig. It wasn’t some kind of favor to him. He earned everything he ever got. If anything, the rig got him that first date, not the other way around. The story is that Shelly fell in love with him at first sight. Saw this young man ordering around people twice his age. He was covered in grime, refused to wear a hardhat but cussed out anyone who neglected theirs, used to say God made his head plenty hard enough.”
    “That’s the kind of detail I wish I’d had a week ago,” I say. “I reached out to your publicist several times—”
    “And if she ignored your inquiries, she earned every penny of what I pay her,” Ness says.
    Until I ran the story you didn’t like , I think to myself. But then I have to remind myself that the story I ran isn’t the one he’s worried about. It’s the next one.
    “So your great-grandfather was climbing the ranks pretty fast. He had his own rig, was dating a VP’s daughter. But then he leaves the company.”
    “A few years later, yeah.”
    “Seems abrupt. He was twenty-five at the time?”
    “A few years can be a long time,” Ness says.
    I think of the years Ness has been a recluse and wonder if he’s speaking from experience. I wonder exactly what he’s been doing with his time. Surely not sitting idle. Maybe he spent that time perfecting the shells in my bag.
    “A lot happened during those years,” Ness says. “Look—” he glances at his wristwatch again. I touch the screen of my phone to wake it up, make sure it’s still recording. “My great-grandfather saw the future of drilling at a young age. He was ambitious. Driven. He had good ideas for getting at oil that no one thought we’d ever reach. He could’ve worked his way up the company. He was young and smart and determined, probably would’ve been CEO of Shell before he was forty. Instead, he quit his job, filed a few patents, and started begging for capital to start his own company.”
    “Which didn’t go so well.”
    “No. It didn’t.”
    “And your great-grandmother Shelly, how did she take this?”
    “The two of them were married on an oil