Spider’s Cage Read Free Page A

the pantomime—or, vice versa, the pantomime flung him from its grasp and he flew incongruously backwards over the desk, sweeping it clean; and crashed into the slatted blinds covering the window behind. He pulled them down on top of himself, to the floor in a heap. Scotch bubbled out of a bottle onto the floor.
    Sal opened her hand. Forty quarters cascaded out of their split wrapper onto the floor boards. Then Sal pushed an astonished Jodie back into the hall, smiled mildly, and closed the door behind them.
    Several quarters twirled slowly flat, and a couple of others rolled lazily to the far corners of the room.

Chapter Three
    T HREE DAYS PASSED BEFORE ANY MENTION OF THE death of Jodie Ryan’s grandfather—“Boojum”—showed up in the newspapers. Windrow read seven California newspapers a day until the item turned up in the Tuesday
L.A. Times
, page 2.
OIL PIONEER DEAD AT 85
Vegas Cremation
    The remains of Edward “Sweet Jesus” O’Ryan, rancher, cowboy, rodeo star, philanthropist and pioneer oilman, were discovered Saturday in his desert retreat at the edge of the Temblor Range, west of Bakersfield, Ca.
    Details of Mr. O’Ryan’s death were scanty. A family spokeswoman would say only that it was several days before his badly decomposed remains were discovered by a family employee. The body was cremated in a private ceremony, attended only by members of the O’Ryan household, on Monday in Las Vegas. The press were informed of his death Monday night.
    O’Ryan began his career as a cowboy in Texas, and by the time he was 25 ran his own cattle on a 2,000 acre ranch. He lost the ranch to the depression, declaredbankruptcy, and joined a travelling rodeo as a stock handler. At this time his first wife, Jodie Dweem of Philadelphia, “packed up and went home to Momma,” according to O’Ryan in an interview granted the
Times
in 1970.
    By the time the rodeo got to Bakersfield, Ca., two years later, in 1934, O’Ryan was an accomplished bronco buster and rodeo clown. When a talent scout spotted him and offered him a job doing stunt riding for Western movies, O’Ryan quit the rodeo and headed for Hollywood. But before he left Kern County, O’Ryan made a $50 down payment on a quarter-section of “god-forsaken desert” just north of Taft, California. Nearly forty years later, asked about the purchase, O’Ryan said, “Sweet Jesus, I thought it was the prettiest land I’d ever seen. It reminded me of Texas, but you just can’t find any place in Texas with that much creosote bush on it. It was downright green. I thought that little piece of real estate was just about the most
lush
country I’d ever laid eyes on. Figured if Hollywood didn’t work out, I could always herd tarantulas.”
    O’Ryan went on to spend twelve years in Hollywood, working in over 25 western and adventure films. “The only lines I ever got paid to speak was
Eeyah
and
Argh
,” he told the
Times
in 1970.
    By 1947, O’Ryan had remarried, his Hollywood career had stagnated, and he felt he was “too old to be falling off horses for a living.” He and his wife packed up and headed for the desert. Driving through Taft, they noticed a new structure on a hillside just east of town, and stopped to inquire about it. “Was a wood oilderrick,” he recalled for the
Times
. “Greasy feller called Hardpan was standing next to it. We got to talkin’.”
    According to Hughes Tool Co. records, in 1960 O’Ryan Petroleum had 29 wells producing on the original quarter section, and owned or operated 75 wells under a variety of other arrangements, including leases in Texas, Oklahoma, the Gulf of Mexico, and California coastal sites.
    In 1970, O’Ryan established Petrofoundlings, a philanthropic organization widely known for its Old Well-driller’s Home “for fellers too pooped to poke” and the Old Stuntmen’s Home