Harpooning Mother Earth

Harpooning Mother Earth∗ ELIZABETH SCHULTZ At the harbor, the girls wished us greasy luck as we set out for deep water to plumb the depths for glistening, liquid gold. The ten boys were good old boys, and our captain had his humanities, plus a streak of lightning tattooed across his heart. Day after day, we drilled, filling barrel after barrel, our captain demanding we go further, deeper into layers beneath the sea. Though we’d contracted for pocket change, our captain had his sights set on futures options, obsessed to grasp it all. It proved a butchering sort of business, this spurting of oil up through the sea, red as rusty gore, to light the merry-makings of men and the solemn churches that preach unconditional inoffensiveness by all to all. C  2010 The Authors Journal compilation C  2010 The Melville Society and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. ∗ In the 1860s, when one of the first oil wells in Titusville, Pennsylvania, began to gush, a former whaling captain in the crowd was overheard saying, “By God, they’ve harpooned Mother Earth.” L E V I A T H A N A J O U R N A L O F M E L V I L L E S T U D I E S 107 E L I Z A B E T H S C H U L T Z We drove harder, farther, winds screeching about us, our faces grimed and grim, until the rig exploded into an inferno of snaky flames and body parts, and buoyed by the corpses of turtles and albatrosses, I only am escaped alone to tell thee. 108 L E V I A T H A N ...