The Butcher’s Cut and the Owner’s Cut
The entrance to the gas station had been plastered with red foreclosure notices just two days earlier.
Now, in the evening glow of sunset, a long line of battered freight trucks stretched across the gravel lot, the whole place washed in a strangely pretty light.
The pumps out front were dark, but a faint fluorescent glow leaking from the warehouse in back told everyone the station was open for business.
Most of the truckers who had come after hearing the rumor were independent drivers.
The kind who didn’t have a company card and had to pay in cash, hard-earned bills damp with sweat.
They stood in silence, exchanging only brief nods with one another.
A quiet sense of solidarity hung over the whole station.
Meanwhile—
“All right, next.”
Lee Seonggeun, the station owner, was scanning the line in a clean shirt.
If it had been in the past, he would have been flustered, constantly watching the customers’ faces, but now there was a calm ease in his expression.
In fact, it was the customers who were watching the owner.
Low whispers drifted through the line of truckers.
“Is it still seventy-seven cents today?”
“No, I heard it was seventy-five cents.”
“Jesus, it got cheaper again?”
“Can we use cards?”
“What do you think, idiot? Bring cash and keep your mouth shut.”
“My buddy came here yesterday and asked for a receipt after filling up, so I beat the crap out of him.”
“Okay, okay, I get it. I was just kidding.”
This place had already become a shrine known only to those in the know.
And then it happened.
Vrrrrrr—thunk!
From far off came the deep, raspy growl of a diesel engine.
A battered Mack truck came roaring in, headlights blazing, and shoved its way to the very front of the line.
Skreee—!
The truck stopped at an angle, hazards flashing.
The driver’s door flew open, and a hulking white trucker climbed down.
Sweat-soaked tank top, filthy jeans, a red face and bloodshot eyes that looked soaked in booze and exhaustion.
Ignoring the line completely, he strode straight toward the counter.
“Hey, Chinaman! Fill her up with diesel! Hurry, hurry!”
The man’s voice was shrill and demanding.
A few of the truckers in line exchanged glances, but none of them stepped forward.
Lee Seonggeun let go of his crossed arms and took one slow step forward.
“If you’re in a hurry, you should’ve come yesterday.”
A few snickers rippled through the crowd.
The white trucker stared at him, incredulous.
“What the hell are you talking about, you ching-chong? Just pump the gas already. I’m busy.”
“Sure. It’s $1.30 a gallon.”
At once, the white trucker’s face twisted.
“What? One-thirty? You’re insane! That’s more expensive than Texaco on the highway! You think I’m some sucker, you damn Chink?”
“It’s my land, my station, my fuel. I set the price.”
“You goddamn Chinese con artist— I forgot to fuel up and ended up here. You think this is the only gas station around?”
Just then, an elderly Black trucker at the front of the line stepped carefully forward.
He lifted his worn hat and gave a slight bow of his back.
“Mr. Lee, I believe it’s my turn. If it’s all right, I’d appreciate it if you’d take care of me.”
“Of course, Joe. Long time no see. You’re on the west route again today?”
Lee Seonggeun’s expression softened at once.
“Seventy-five cents a gallon.”
The moment those words left his mouth, the white trucker’s eyes, which had been lazy and half-open only a second ago, snapped wide.
He looked back and forth between the Black trucker and Lee Seonggeun, then barked, “Hold on! Why the hell does that nigger get seventy-five cents and I get a dollar thirty? What, is this, is this racism?”
It wasn’t the right word for it, but nobody bothered correcting him.
Lee Seonggeun gave a faint smirk and stepped closer.
“I charge ‘friend’s rates’ to customers who treat me like a friend, and ‘you-will-never-see-me-again rates’ to bastards who walk in acting like trash and start with the insults. What’s the problem?”
Boisterous laughter and whistles broke out among the truckers in line.
The white trucker’s face turned crimson, and his mouth opened and shut uselessly.
Silence hung for a moment.
Then he let out a long sigh and dropped his gaze to the ground.
“I’m sorry, boss. I guess that’s my fault.”
He took off his hat and squeezed it in both hands, his voice suddenly much lower.
“I haven’t slept properly in two days because I’ve been driving, so I guess I was on edge. That’s not an excuse, I just wanted to say I’m sorry. Could I maybe be friends with you too, boss?”
“If you want to be friends, go stand at the back of the line and get some sleep. Otherwise you’re going to cause an accident. And it’s seventy-five cents a gallon.”
“T-thank you!”
He hurried back up into his truck and soon pulled it all the way to the end of the station.
* * *
Late at night.
When the last truck left, silence settled over the station.
The warehouse, where even the burner and the centrifuge motor had gone still, had fallen quiet.
Still wearing the sweat- and oil-stained clothes I’d had on all day, I opened the office door with my father.
···Click!
The instant the fluorescent lights came on, a mountain of banknotes piled across the floor came into view.
One-dollar, five-dollar, ten-dollar, and twenty-dollar bills, all mixed together with sweat and oil on them, had been stacked into a small hill.
Coins, too, filled a crate to the brim.
I felt a surge of emotion too large to name.
I’d touched enormous sums of money countless times while working on Wall Street, but this was the first time I’d ever seen money I could actually hold in my hands like this.
My mother couldn’t even speak.
“Honey... with this, we can pay off all our debt, right? We won’t have to see those red notices anymore, right?”
Her voice trembled.
But strictly speaking, my mother was wrong.
Her wish would not come true.
Because—
“What are you talking about? This is money we made after paying off every last cent of debt! The repayment was finished yesterday!”
Just as my father said, we no longer had any debt.
Which meant this money was pure net worth.
My father smiled and pulled two crumpled foreclosure notices from the drawer beneath the desk.
“These papers are just trash now.”
“Yahoo!”
My mother hugged my father, her face caught between laughter and tears, and nearly lifted him off the ground.
He’s sneakily strong, isn’t he.
My uncle, standing beside me, chuckled and rested a hand on my shoulder.
“Nephew, did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“Your father said he’d give all the money to you.”
“!”
That was the first I’d heard of it.
My father spoke seriously.
“This money was earned by our son. Finding the oil field, planning the refinery process—Sanha did all of it. We’re just employees. We’ll take a salary and do the work, so you use all the profits however you want.”
I hesitated for a moment.
Something hot and ticklish rose in my chest, and for a while I couldn’t speak.
After a brief silence, I managed, “We made this money because everyone worked hard. I’ll just... manage it.”
“Whatever the case, let’s count it first! I’m curious how much it is!”
My uncle shouted cheerfully.
I knelt down on the floor.
My mother and uncle naturally took seats beside me.
My father pulled out an old calculator and set it on the table.
“All right, let’s count today’s sales.”
I picked up a dollar bill that smelled of sweat and oil.
A crumpled one-dollar bill.
Its corner was torn, and a faint stain of someone’s sweat still lingered across the center.
As I counted each bill one by one, I realized something.
Every single bill in my hand was someone’s blood and sweat.
The hard, grueling life of truckers was all packed into this money.
“...Two hundred eighty-seven one-dollar bills.”
My mother read the tally in a calm voice.
“...One hundred thirty-four five-dollar bills.”
My uncle wrapped the bills with rubber bands and said, “...Eighty-nine ten-dollar bills.”
My father tapped at the calculator.
“...Fifty-six twenty-dollar bills.”
I silently counted the last stack.
“...Twelve fifty-dollar bills. Three hundred-dollar bills.”
Numbers stacked up on the calculator one by one.
287 + 670 + 890 + 1,120 + 600 + 300 = $3,867.
And if we added the coins, then...
“A total of $4,120! Right on the nose!”
My father said it first.
“That’s incredible for a single day.”
“Then in two days...”
“We’ll be over eight thousand dollars.”
“If sales keep climbing, they won’t be going down anytime soon. Truckers are always on the road.”
My uncle let out a long whistle.
“That’s thirty thousand a week. More than a hundred twenty thousand a month.”
I nodded.
“Yes. But if we sell too quickly, we’ll draw attention. We need to control the pace.”
“Right. We have to be careful.”
My father answered while organizing the bundles of bills.
I started running the numbers in my head.
Even after wiping out the bank debt, this much had come in after only one day.
And in the backyard, there were still rows of untouched crude oil drums, while the oil field in back was still gushing like a black swamp.
Words I had worn smooth from overuse in Wall Street flashed through my mind.
Seed money. Initial capital. Leverage.
The oil price chart right after the Gulf War unfolded before my eyes.
1991. Now.
The war had only just ended.
During the fighting, crude had surged as high as forty dollars a barrel, but after the war it had fallen into the mid-twenties.
Still, the scars of war remained.
The Kuwaiti oil fields were burning, and the Middle East was still unstable.
Iraq was under economic sanctions, disrupting crude supply, and Saudi Arabia and the other OPEC countries were discussing output controls.
At the same time, the U.S. economy was beginning to crawl out of recession.
When the economy recovered, demand for oil would rise with it.
A post-spike correction, but if you factor in Middle Eastern instability and recovering demand, the long-term opportunity is still there.
The reports I’d pored over all night at Black Diamond flashed through my mind.
Back when international oil was holding around twenty dollars and refining margins were just starting to explode. The chart looked exactly like this.
Then as now, the best way to make money was stocks.
And the ability to choose the theme of those stocks was, in the end, a matter of skill.
...The energy sector. Especially oil-related stocks.
Several names surfaced in my head.
Exxon, Shell, Chevron, BP...
The major refiners were stable, but their upside was limited.
Small and mid-sized exploration companies were different.
When oil prices rose, their share prices could explode.
High risk, high return. If I used leverage on top of that, in theory I could multiply my money hundreds of times over in a single day.
Good. For a while, I’ll ride the oil theme.
I was going to use the money made from oil to grow it through oil, and do it properly this time.
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