The High Heaven by Joshua Wheeler

Author:Joshua Wheeler [Wheeler, Joshua]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Published: 2025-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Izzy and Abel made clear to their fellow citizens of Camelot that they were in no way affiliated with Spirit Energy. They were merely independent surveyors, though it was really nobody’s business one way or the other. As their fellow citizens went around Waco gossiping about their new neighbors driving a fancy Corniche, Abel and Izzy headed back into the Permian, stopping at county offices to research leases in bankruptcy. When they found one, they’d deposit in the mailbox of the family living on that bankrupt lease a flyer in a big envelope clearly and purposefully misaddressed to some other family who lived a few miles down the lane. The folks with a bum lease would then do what folks do, which is covet their neighbor. In this case, they’d covet the fact that their neighbor had figured a way out of the bust with this so-called Spirit Energy. They’d track down Izzy and Abel and beg to get a Survey & Exorcism of their own. Then, presented with positive results, they’d purchase the mineral rights to their own land out of bankruptcy in hopes of selling them directly to Spirit Energy. When Spirit Energy proved a scam, at least they’d again own their land all the way down. And if they could just hang on, they’d be set up for when the next boom came around.

It was, in short, a scheme that stank to high heaven.

After a few weeks of laying the groundwork—including nights at every bar they could find, assuring all drinkers willing to listen that they, Abel and Izzy, were independent surveyors totally unaffiliated with any Spirit Energy—they returned to Camelot to let their grift ferment.

It was March when a man named Lee came knocking on the door of the Rancho El Rae. We can’t help you, Mr. Lee, said Izzy. It seems there’s been an error. We don’t have your property listed on our approved sites. Are you certain the offer was addressed to you?

I don’t give no damn what’s approved, said Lee. I drove out here three hours not includin twenty hours it took trackin yall down to begin with.

It’s out of our hands, said Abel.

Well now are yall an independent outfit or are yall not?

Yessir.

Yessir which way?

Yessir to our independence.

So then by my math I aint gotta care about no lists. I’m hirin you independent of any damn lists. Three hours I drove here. Put that on your list. Put on your list that I got holes punched all over my land by that damn red horse and I aint got a dime. I need this. My family needs this.

Abel and Izzy buttoned up the Rancho El Rae and hitched it to the Corniche and followed Lee three hours to his spread outside San Angelo where he kept hogs, goats, donkeys, and cattle. Spread across his dusty acreage were a dozen motionless pump jacks and various other abandoned holes.

We’ll be a few days and prefer not to be bothered none, said Izzy.

Or monitored, said Abel.

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