Seeking Who He May Devour: There Will Be Blood Fic

[bitterfic]

 
1928

In a Washington D.C. hotel room the radio played a live broadcast of a sermon being preached by the evangelist Eli Sunday.

“Satan is a roaring lion, seeking who he may devour,” the preacher intoned.  “A roaring lion.  Seeking who he may devour.”

Paul Sunday, Eli’s older brother, lay on the hotel room’s narrow bed.  He was naked, his body battered and streaked with blood.  Much of the blood was Paul’s, but a good deal of it belong to another man, who had stomped out of the room a few minutes before scattering a handful of banknotes as he went.

“Satan is like a roaring lion,” Eli Sunday cried.  “Seeking who he may devour.  Will he find you my sisters and brother?  Will the devil, Satan, this roaring, devouring lion find you?”

Though it pained him to move, Paul Sunday began to laugh.

And laugh.

And laugh.

***********

Washington D.C. was full of oil men that month.  The most powerful and prominent of them had flocked to the nation’s capital, hoping to influence a Senate regulatory committee on their industry.

Paul Sunday was a modest success, owner of a few wells, certainly not among the elite.  And yet he found himself in Washington D.C. simply because he was willing to do what others would not or could not.

There were men with more wells and larger fortunes who were too moral or too prideful to treat a politician to dinner in a good restaurant or even a night in a brothel for the chance to plead their own case.  And so they bankrolled Paul Sunday who had no objection to scrapping and bowing in his best interest and theirs.

Of course it didn't hurt that Paul was a dead ringer for one of the most trusted and beloved men in the country, his long estranged brother Eli.

Paul Sunday had the face of an angel without the bothersome scruples.

Early on a Sunday evening Paul was in a Georgetown speakeasy meeting with a legal representative of one of his backers.  Paul drank seltzer water and reported on his progress.  The lawyer didn’t seem to hear a word he was saying. He was distracted, spooked.  Finally he leaned over the table and whispered, “Who the devil is that?”

Paul laughed.

“Who the devil indeed.”

Daniel Plainview’s eyes were burning holes in him from across the room.

It had been seventeen years since Paul and Plainview had last had dealings - a single business transaction that had been defining for them both.  Plainview had gained control of an ocean of oil; Paul had sold his family for a pittance.

Paul held no grudge.  The pittance had been enough for him to make his start as an oil man and betraying his family had brought him the deepest satisfaction he had ever known.

Seeing Paul had finally noticed him, Daniel Plainview started over.  The lawyer excused himself, doubtless a wise move.   His suit was expensive, his watch made of gold, but Daniel Plainview bore an undeniable air of wildness and of menace.

“Paul Sunday, as I live and breathe.”  Plainview greeted him.  His voice was hale and hearty.  It filled the room.  He clapped Paul on the back so hard he nearly fell over.  He sat down at the table and called for a bottle of whiskey.

It caught Paul’s interest that Plainview should greet him as a long lost friend and do his best imitation of friendliness.  While Daniel Plainview had been known to turn on the charm in his early days from what Paul had heard it had been a good many years since he’d made the effort to keep up a pleasant façade.  He wasn’t very good at it any more.  When Paul had come to Plainview years before he’d thought that the man maintained a veneer of civility over a pit of rage.  The veneer was now worn to transparency and the pit was fathomless.  Every time Daniel Plainview smiled it seemed like his face was about to crack open and the horrors of hell come rushing out.

Plainview drank most of the bottle of whiskey while Paul sipped his seltzer water.  They discussed the oil business and Senate Regulatory Committee.  Paul asked after Plainview’s son, H.W.

Though he offered her no encouragement and never replied, Paul’s sister Mary still wrote him now and then.  Perhaps because her letters seemed to be delivered into the void, she disclosed the details of her life with an intimate frankness.  Paul knew of her marriage to H.W. Plainview and he knew of the divesting break between father and son.

At the mention of his boy, Plainview’s eyes blazed and his grip tightened on his shot glass. Paul smiled, feigning innocence.  Plainview glared at him, ready to kill then chuckled horribly.

“You put me in mind of your brother just then,” Plainview said.  “Eli’s really made something of himself.  Your folks are proud.”  It was Paul’s turn to cringe.

It had been seventeen years since he’d left the Sunday’s house.  Seventeen years since he’d betrayed them and sold them and done his best to be rid of them.  Why did they still exist?  His fool of a father he could care less about but Eli…

Plainview clapped him on the shoulder once again.  Once again Paul nearly wound up on the floor.

“Seems like we have a great deal to catch up on,” Plainview hissed in that huge, clipped voice of his.  “Are you staying nearby?”

“Yes, not far at all.”

“Perhaps we could adjourn to your room, catch up on old times.”

His eyes were like black diamonds, coals burned beyond white hot.   Mentioning Eli seemed to have stirred up the anger and hatred in him even more than it had stirred Paul’s.

It would be a mistake to take Plainview to his room.  It would be a dangerous thing to do.  Paul was by nature a coward, but his curiosity had been piqued.  All along Plainview had been looking through him, to Eli.  He wanted to know what kind of enemy his brother had made.

Paul’s hotel room was modest, a plain bedstead, a varnished wood floor, wallpaper striped blue with a narrower stripe of white, a small round table, an upholstered chair, a lamp, a radio.  When Plainview entered the room he switched on the radio and fiddling with the dials called up a gospel choir.

“What are you doing?”  Paul asked with a sideways smile.

“Don’t you know your brother’s preaching tonight?”

“No, I had no idea.  Eli and I parted ways long ago.”

“Did you, did you now.”

“I told them he was a hypocrite and a fraud but they wouldn’t believe me.”  Paul opened his hands, beseechingly.  “Why would God choose Eli?  Eli was always the stupid one.”

Their father had always said Eli never had a lick of sense.  Paul had always been the clever one, always a step ahead.

Daniel Plainview locked the door.

“Tell me about Eli,” he said.

“I was always the clever one,” Paul said.  “Eli never had a lick of sense.”

“You don’t say.”

“When he was fourteen, he had a fever.  For three days he talked gibberish.  When the fever broke he said the angels spoke to him.  Ma thought he’d gone simple.  They would have sent him away but I told him to keep his mouth shut and he knew enough to listen to me then.”

“When did he stop?  When did he stop listening to you, Paul?”

“Libby Hascup had an orange striped kitten.  Prettiest thing you’d ever seen.  It got stepped on by a horse.  I heard its spine crack, snap in two.  It was lying on the ground, twitching and crying.  Libby was screaming but Eli just smiled.  He picked up the pussycat, started talking gibberish like when he had the fever.  Then he said some words from the bible, from the place where Jesus heals a blind man with his spit and he gave the cat back to Libby good as new.  That night Eli told our father what had happened.  Pa asked me if it was true and I said it wasn’t.  Eli got whipped that night but before long they were calling him a prophet.  They built him a church.  They believed him.”

“But you know better.”

“Yes, Mr. Plainview.  God doesn’t exist, only evil.  If Eli has powers they come from the same place all power comes from - lies and money and hatred.  My brother’s no different from you and me.”

“You’re a clear headed young man, Paul,” Plainview said.  He extracted a flask from his jacket and drank deeply.  “I can’t say I like you but I find you less repulsive than most of the fools I’ve encountered in my life.  Still, sitting with you in that tavern it was all I could do not to take my thumbs and gouge your eyes out.”

He sunk his fist into Paul’s stomach.  Paul fell to his knees, doubled over.  He couldn’t even catch his breath enough to cry out.  Plainview began kicking him, hard and furious, knocking him to the floor.  All he could do was curl up to protect himself from the onslaught.

Finally, breathing heavily Plainview fell back.

“That’s for my boy,” Plainview said.  “I might have made a fortune in Little Boston because of you, but it was the ruination of my boy.”

The attack was no less than Paul had expected.  He had resigned himself to accept a certain amount of mistreatment for the sake of gauging just how far gone Plainview was and how far he was willing to go.

“Your boy?”  Paul spat out when he was able to speak again.  “It had been my understanding that you no longer had a son, only a competitor by the name of H. W. Plainview.  It had been my understanding that you were in this town tonight in hopes of influencing legislation that would sabotage this H. W. Plainview’s interests.”

“You son of a whore,” Plainview said.  “You filthy son of a whore.  You asked after my boy when you knew this all along?  Do you think you can play games with me?”

“You seem to think you can play them with me.”

Plainview came at him, towering, furious, his eyes glazed with liquor and raw hatred.  Despite his best intentions, Paul began to scream.  He even fought back, after a fashion.  It didn’t do him much good.  Plainview backhanded him across the face a dozen times, picked him up by the throat and threw him to the ground then picked him up by the throat and shook him like a terrier with a rat till his teeth rattled.

“How dare you toy with me you soft, weak, mealy mouthed little bastard,” Plainview screamed.  “I’m going to thrash you into next week.  I swear I’ll have you crying like a little girl before I’m done.”

Plainview dropped his hold on Paul who obligingly fell to the floor where he curled up once again, sobbing, wondering what Plainview was going to do to him.

When he heard the clink of a belt being undone and the thwack of the leather strap against Plainview’s hand he knew.

Paul stumbled to his feet, backing away.

“No,” he said, hands gesturing meaninglessly in hopes of keeping the man at bay.  “You’re not going to do that to me.”

Plainview smacked the belt against his hand.

“I am.”  He promised.  “I’m going to whoop you, boy.  Whoop your ass.”

“No one’s done that to me since I left Little Boston.  Came a time when I wouldn’t take it from my father any more and I won’t take it from you.”

“Came a time I wouldn’t take it from my father any more and I won’t take it from you,” Plainview repeated in a high, whiny sing-song.  “You’ll take whatever I say.  You’ve been a naughty boy so take your pants down for your Daddy.”

“Stop.”  Plainview made a grab for him but Paul slapped away his hand.  Plainview shot back with a vicious slap of his own.  He grabbed a fistful of Paul’s hair and dragged him kicking and screaming over to the bed.  Sitting on the bed, Plainview pulled Paul across his lap and with considerable struggle managed to yank his pants down.

The strap bit into the tender flesh of his bottom and thighs.  Paul writhed and thrashed not just from the pain but in a desperate attempt to escape this, the most humiliating punishment of childhood.  His throat was raw but he kept screaming not even hoping for help but just to drown out Plainview’s taunts.

Only when Plainview pushed Paul off his lap did he hear the pounding on the door.

“Sunday, what the devil is going on in there?  Open the door this minute or I’m bringing back a policeman.”  It was his landlord.

Cursing to himself Daniel Plainview yanked out his wallet.  When he threw open the door he had a wad of bills in one hand and the leather belt in the other.

“I think you’d best make yourself scarce, friend, and leave me and Mr. Sunday to our business.”  Plainview said to the landlord with a kind of dark high spirits.  “You may avail yourself of what is in my left hand or my right, but either way you will leave my young friend and I to our business.”

“What?”  The landlord stammered, baffled by the strange man and his stranger offer.

“You take this money and pretend you didn’t hear a thing or I take my strap to you.  Is that simple enough for you to understand?”

The landlord’s eyes frantically scanned the room and filled with undisguised horror when they settled on Paul who was sprawled on the floor, his face streaked with snot and tears and blood, and his pants around his ankles.

“Take the cash,” Paul said firmly.  It couldn’t end now.  If it ended now it would be nothing but humiliation.  Oil drilling metaphor - he was deep into this, but not deep enough for it to pay.

Paul’s landlord grabbed the money Plainview offered and closed the door.  On the radio, the choir had stopped singing.  A woman was telling how she’d led a life of sin until Jesus Christ (with the help of Eli Sunday) had turned her around.

“You’ve surprised me, Paul.”  Plainview said.  “I thought for sure you’d wiggle away from me at the first opportunity.”

“If that meddling ass had chosen helping me over cash in hand it would have shaken my faith in human nature.”  Paul answered.

Plainview laughed uproariously for what seemed like forever.  He tousled Paul’s hair, petting him with something that almost resembled affection.

“You’re a hard-hearted, opportunistic bastard, Paul Sunday.”  Plainview chuckled.  “At least you don’t pretend to be anything else.  As far as I’m concerned that makes you worth ten times what your brother is.”

Plainview’s fingers tightened in Paul’s hair.  He hauled him off the floor and pushed him down onto the bed.

“Do you know what I’m going to do to you now?”  Plainview asked as he peeled away Paul’s clothes.  “Do you have any idea?”

He wasn’t supposed to know.  It was supposed to be something he could never imagine but Paul knew.

He’d always been one step ahead.

Flat on his back in a Washington D.C. hotel room, the smell of liquor and ringing in his ears it all seemed so distant.  His heart pounding from fear of discovery whenever the quails rustled in the bush.  Tasting the inside of Eli’s mouth, touching Eli.  The way he could make Eli whimper like a puppy, begging for more.

He grabbed the front of Plainview’s shirt, pulled the man down on top of him.

“I know,” Paul said.  “I was always a step ahead.”  He ran his tongue along Plainview’s jugular, felt Plainview’s fingers tighten on his thigh, pushing his leg upward and to the side.

On the radio the woman was crying.

Someone said “halleluiah”.

Someone said “amen”.

Daniel Plainview spit on his hand.

“Before God claimed him Eli belonged to me,” Paul said.  “Our father always beat us, ruled us by brutality.  I never hurt my brother like that but I ruled over him just the same.”

“Sexually?”  Plainview hissed.

“I did what I pleased with him.  It was easy.  He had no control, no will.  I could make him whimper like a puppy dog.”

“Yes.”

Paul shrieked when Plainview rammed inside him.  It felt like being torn open, turned inside out.

“Tell me more about your little brother,” Plainview snarled.  “I don’t think I’ve been hard like this thirty years.”

Paul couldn’t speak, it hurt too much.  He threw back his head, gritting his teeth and with all his strength dug his ten fingernails into Plainview’s back.  Somehow feeling the skin split and the blood well up, hearing Plainview’s strangled yelp of pain eased his own.

“After God claimed him Eli wouldn’t let me touch him.”  Paul gasped.  As Plainview thrust into him, Paul’s clenched fingers slid raking deep trails into his back.  “He said we had been living in darkness and now that he had seen the light he’d sin no more.  I was afraid of God, just like I was afraid of our father, so I let him alone.  I let them call him a prophet, let him walk around thinking he was something special.

“The oil changed it all.  When I was seventeen, Eli and I started to notice the oil oozing up from the ground.  We realized soon enough its value we just didn’t know how to get at it.  Eli was all excited, he said it was another sign that God had chosen him.  Said that God was giving him the means to built a mighty church and spread the word.  I looked at him, eyes all shining and I knew then it wasn’t God at all, it was just greed and ambition and a hunger for power.  The same things I felt when I saw that muck coming out of the ground.  God had nothing to do with it because there was no God.

“That night I went to my brother’s bed.  There was no God anymore, so I wasn’t afraid.  I thought I could use him however I wanted, just like before.  Only it was different.  He lay under me like a corpse, unyielding.  I did everything I knew how to do but I couldn’t get him to bend to me the way he once had.  He said God was protecting him but it wasn’t God.  It was hatred and anger toward me and it was pride.  He called it God and he believed in it, so I couldn’t reach him no matter what I did to his body.

“I left Little Boston the next day knowing the power of malice, Eli’s and my own.  I found you and sold you his hopes for glory for $600.  It was worth more but I wanted to sell cheap, for pure spite.”

“All have sinned,” Eli’s voice came over the radio.  It tore through him worse than all of Plainview’s exertions.  “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  Tonight let us humble ourselves, let us fall on our knees and confess our shortcomings.  Let us cast out our devils and put away our sinful way.  Let us return to God’s embrace.”

Plainview managed to wrench Paul’s claws from his back, pinning his hands to the mattress.  He thrust with renewed savagery and Paul thrashed against him, meeting violence with violence as Eli Sunday spoke of healing and repentance.

“Shut your mouth, boy,” Plainview growled speaking to the man on the radio, not the one under him.  “Shut your goddamned mouth.  I told you I’d eat you and I will.  One day believe me, I’ll eat you up.  Right now, this is just me, taking a taste.”

He sunk his teeth into the slope where Paul’s neck and shoulder met, shuddering to a rough climax as he did.

Then it was over.

Plainview picked up Paul’s discarded shirt and wiped away the worst of the blood and semen that was on him.  He started putting his clothes back on.  When his pants were back on he noticed Paul huddled on the bed, shaking, breathing too fast.   He opened his flask, shoved it to Paul’s lips.

“Here, drink this.  Go on.”  He ordered.  Spluttering and coughing, Paul managed to swallow a mouthful of the liquor, another and another.  “Damned milquetoast.  Better?”

Paul nodded, sunk back onto the bed, let the alcohol ease the clenched knots of his nerves.  Eli’s voice on the radio was distant, almost soothing.

“I trust that your discretion, like your landlord’s, can be bought and paid for?”  Plainview asked.

“Yes,” Paul said shakily.  For all the drunken, bestial rage he contained there was still something hard and cold and coherent in Plainview’s eye.  He had heard every word Paul had said.  He would remember it.  When the time came he would use it with all his searing force of will.

Eli was a dead man.

“Name your price then.”

“I paid three days deposit on this room that I won’t be getting back,” Paul said.  “And you’ve ruined a new shirt.”

“To say nothing of your virtue.”

“Two hundred dollars should cover everything.  Including my virtue.”

Plainview laughed and took out his wallet.  As he left he scattered the money across the room.

“As always, Mr. Sunday, it’s been a pleasure doing business with you.”

The door slammed.

Eli’s voice came from the radio.  “Satan is like a roaring lion,” he intoned.   “Seeking who he may devour.”

Somewhere within his bruised and aching body, Paul found the malice to laugh.

And laugh.

And laugh.