“Shit,” Brewster leaned slightly to the left and spat, “well whaddeya know.” He took the offered cigarette and broke off the filter before lighting up. “He was a sharp one. Wild as a hare though. Tell’m that when he gets tired of all them books he can come back to the patch and throw chain for me anytime.”
Zachary Harper took a pull on his cigarette, looked off into the distance, and came to the point. “He said that you might be able to point me in the right direction to findin’ a job out here. I’d sure appreciate your help. I’m pretty broke.”
“Hmm,” Blackwell took slow steps toward Zak’s Jeep, making note of the South Dakota plates as he looked it over. “You’re new in the patch, where from?”
“A little town called Wall down in South Dakota. Been farmin’ the last few years, decided to try something else.”
“Wall,” Brewster rubbed his chin, then threw a sly glance back toward the house as though thinking of something else, “that’s where they have that big drugstore, ain’t it?”
“Wall Drug, yeah, I worked there when I was a kid.”
“Uh huh,” Blackwell was still preoccupied. “Bought a flying jackalope there, used to keep it in the doghouse. Look,” he shifted gears, “let’s take your outfit.” He trotted over to the Jeep and yanked open the door.
“Um, don’t you want to tell your people where you’re headin’?” Zak asked as he hurried to catch up.
“Shit,” Blackwell grunted happily as they settled inside. Zak noticed the quizzical look Blackwell gave him as he buckled up.
“I’ve actually fallen out of this thing on a sharp curve,” Zak said in self-defense. “Landed real hard on my ass.”
“Let’s go.”
Zak fired ’er up and backed out onto the street while the man filled him in. “I’m lettin’ my girlfriend and her three daughters stay with me for a while. Hell. I’ve slept with all but the youngest. Three of them have kids of their own. They’ve got enough to keep ’em busy without concentratin’ on where I am all the time.” Brewster looked around the Jeep as he spoke. At his feet was a paper bag full of cassette tapes. In the back, the bench seat had been removed, and in the three-and-a-half-foot square hollow that remained were a sleeping bag, a pillow, a high-intensity battery-powered lamp, a copy of The People’s Almanac, a cardboard box filled with foodstuffs, and a water jug. Pressed against the back of the Jeep was a duffel bag; on top of that, a laundry bag filled with dirty laundry. Brewster looked at Zachary Harper, “You livin’ in this thing?”
They drove to the Sagebrush, found seats at the bar, and Blackwell introduced Zak to Andrew, the barkeep. He was an older fella, slightly bent at the shoulders, wearing a dirty plaid cotton shirt, dungarees, and work boots. They drank hot toddies. A couple more bucks. Everyone seemed to know “Blackie,” and as they chatted Zachary didn’t feel quite as strange as he had a short while ago. Halfway through his drink, Blackwell began to come around. He had twisted off the night before and had been on a drunk ever since. He didn’t seem too concerned about anything, except that he needed a lift back out to location so he could pick up his gear. His outfit was down but not to worry. Sooner or later someone from the crew would be in and they’d give him a ride. When Harper offered, Blackwell turned him down but after they had gone around it a couple of times they bought a six-pack for the trip.
It was one of those clear blustery afternoons in the northland, and they rode with the window flaps down. They drove south on 85, and the highway was filled with oil patch traffic. Every car and pickup was carrying crews of roughnecks to or from location. There were water haulers and fuel haulers. Gin trucks. Getter boys. Here and there were the green and white, eighteen-wheeled Black Hills Trucking flatbeds; rigs on the move.
Brewster Blackwell liked to talk freely about his days in the oil fields, and he and Zak chatted continuously during the forty-mile drive down to Westburn 54. Brewster had started out, years ago, racing mule teams, at one time even owned one, and a prize-winner too. He became a roughneck in the 1950s and had broken out in the Dakotas. Had moved on to Montana, Wyoming, had worked offshore in Texas and the Alaskan slopes. He was fifty-four years old and looked at least ten years older than that.
Eventually they passed Fairfield by about four miles where they turned west into some rugged terrain. Zachary Harper followed the tire tracks and deep grooves that rig traffic had carved around blind corners and tall stone walls, trying eagerly to anticipate potential oncoming traffic. Blackie held onto the roll bar above his head as they bumped and swayed and rocked over pit holes and rubble rock, when all of a sudden the tall iron tower of that Westburn rig loomed up out of nowhere from behind a short butte in the near distance. The tower stretched a hundred and fifty feet into the air like some yawning dinosaur, unconcerned about this little flea buzzing circuitously toward it, as though it had been caught in the act, indeed, turning ever downward toward conjunction with the slick byproduct of life on earth, that had lain fermenting for millions of years, thousands of feet below this very spot.
Zachary Harper had seen rigs before on his way West, but this would be the first time he had ever stepped foot on location and all his senses were alert and tinged with anticipation. He followed Brewster up into the top doghouse, and that toolpusher was there with his daylights crew. The atmosphere was tense, as the boys had had to pull a double when Brewster and his crew failed to show, and Zak just stood around not wishing to engage anyone while Brewster emptied his locker and collected his gear. At last, the toolpusher broke the silence.
“I guess yer not drillin’ for us anymore, eh Blackie?”
“Nope. Decided to twist off.”
“You workin’?”
“Nope.”
And that was that.
BACK IN THE JEEP, BLACKIE fussed while popping the last of the beers. A weight had obviously lifted from his shoulders.
“I was just having a bitch of a time putting together a crew that was worth a shit on that rig. No goddamned experience. My car’s on its last fuckin’ legs anyway. Turn here, we’ll head east to Killdeer for a drink. Y’know Zak? That cousin of yours would sometimes have some of that marijuana he’d roll up and we’d have a smoke. Got ’ny?” Zak was only mildly astonished at the request, but he broke out a reefer just the same, and after their drink in Killdeer they headed north and then west back to Watford City. Blackie went home to sleep, and Zachary Harper went to the City Park where he lay out on the grass for a little shut-eye under the huge sky.
THAT EVENING ZAK WENT TO the Sagebrush where he found Blackie getting loaded for the third time that day. They chatted for a bit until Blackie pointed out two women who were sitting at the far end of the bar. The big one was Blackie’s girlfriend Alicia. All two hundred pounds of her. The other was an Indian friend of hers named Minnehaha, but her friends called her Minnie. This was on account of her high squeaky voice and the way her ears stuck out from her slick black hair. Minnie was fortyish but it was impossible to guess her age because of the huge black and purple shiner over her left eye and the seven or eight stitches that tracked across her nose. At five feet tall, she weighed in at a respectable hundred and forty pounds, most of which was in her round protruding belly. To Zak’s chagrin, she immediately picked up on his unsalted presence and didn’t take her eyes off him as Blackie called them over, made introductions, and not soon enough to suit Zak, gave the invisible signal for them to retreat back to their end of the bar. This all made Zak uneasy as hell which wasn’t lost on Blackie, who was by now pleasantly high and ready to start a little mischief.
“Well, whaddeya know?” Blackie drawled in some sort of long-lost dialect. His arms were folded over his belly and his eyes were gleaming like he’d just caught the local pastor climbing into the sack with the mayor’s wife. “Minnie seems to have taken a real shine to you, son,” he smiled at the look of incredulity spreading like a brushfire across Zachary Harper’s face. “Now just a secon
d, Zak, don’t be so quick to judge. I’ve had ’er and she ain’t that bad. Now donchoo worry, kiddo, ol’ Blackie’ll set you up,” and he clapped a heavy, brotherly palm on Zak’s shoulder as he hoisted himself off his stool and took a step toward the other end of the bar.
“Blackie, Jesus, hold up!” Zak pleaded in a strained whisper. “Christ Almighty! Look, I don’t have time for foolin’ around. I’m practically broke. I’ve been sleeping outside for weeks. I’ve got to find a driller who’ll give me some work or I’m sunk! Now don’t get me wrong, but you’re supposed to be my buddy, supposed to be helpin’ me find a job. Jesus H. Blackie, you’re not doin’ me any favors settin’ me up with the likes of that!”
Blackie’s eyebrows shot up and a strange smile came over his face as he eased back down onto his stool. “What’s wrong kid? Don’t you think she’s purdy?”
Zak heaved a sigh of relief and took a long drink of scotch. “You were serious, weren’t ya? You were about to go over there and get me in serious trouble.”
Brewster Blackwell rubbed his salt-and-pepper chin and peered strangely into Zachary Harper’s deep blue eyes. “I might or might not’ve gone over there. But you’d a got yerself into trouble, besides,” he brightened and held two fingers up for the barkeep, “look down there, she likes you.”
Zak stole a furtive glance down the bar and sure enough, Minnie was staring back, no left front tooth.
“Good God, Blackie, what happened to that poor woman’s face?”
“Well, since you asked, that little squaw is married to one of the biggest bucks around. He came in here the other night and smacked her around but good.”
“What for?”
“Cheatin’.”
BLACKIE WAS ONE OF THE last great storytellers and the subject inevitably came back again and again to roughneckin’. He talked about his years in Alaska as a heavy equipment operator and a driller. “I shit you not, it would take sixty or seventy big airplanes, big airplanes, loaded right up, to move in just one rig and all the paraphernalia needed to drill a hole. We were goin’ down sixteen, maybe eighteen thousand feet on some ob’m. The company provided room and board up there of course. Not like out here where it’s every man for his goddamn self.” Blackie chortled and shook his head as he took another drink. For an instant he peered into a deep and textured distance before returning to focus on the admiring and inquisitive gaze of Zachary Harper.
“Alaska was a good time for me,” he went on, “twelve hours on, twelve hours off. Six weeks on, two off. For days off I’d head on down to Anchorage and hit all the bars and whorehouses. Two weeks of that and I was ready to head ’em back to work. I swear, hard work’s the only thing’s kept me alive all these years.” With his earnings he had bought a bar down in New Town, North Dakota. “I bought it because it was the only bar I had ever been thrown out of. I’m just sentimental I guess. Anyway, before my divorce, my wife would run it for me. I gave it all to her when I left. The bar. My Alaska savings. Shit Zak, I ain’t no fuckin’ bartender, I’m a roughneck.”
You wouldn’t think Blackie’s coarse and battered hands capable of anything gentle until you saw him pick up a shot of whiskey and his eyes flash refulgently with happy fire. The West had known such men very well. But to hear Blackie tell it, that was back before the last of the cowboys had been chained and shackled and covered over indefinitely by heavy industry, unions, and orthodox corporate uniformity. As Blackie ambled on, Zak shuddered to think of the choices he had been making in his own life and wondered if he would ever be so reconciled with his decisions and their consequences.
“Take this bunch here,” Blackie jerked a thumb at the other end of the bar. “Before I came along, Alicia and her people just had nowhere to go. No work. No place to stay. They’d been goin’ into the Teddy Roosevelt Hotel and just stayin’ with anyone who’d take ’em in for the night. Eventually got run right out of town. Now that’s a fine somethin’ for three mothers and their babes, eh? Where they gonna go in country like this?”
Zak grinned.
“That’s right,” Blackie laughed, “my place.” He polished off his whiskey and ordered another round. Blackie insisted that Zak put his money away, and Zak was again reminded of his own jobless predicament and, in a brief flash of melancholy, wondered where does anyone go in country like this, but Blackie’s voice brought him around quickly. As the night wore on and the liquor took over, Blackie unstacked the years; years that had left their marks around his eyes and carved a wry and pensive smile across his mouth. The effort in and of itself was revivifying and carried them away to strange, cold, dangerous locales.
“It was somewhere in Wyoming. A night tower in the middle of winter. We’d been turning to the right all night and it was just snowin’ to beat hell. At quittin’ time there was no sign of relief. We’d have to double. The bit only had about twelve hours on ’er so we just kept turnin’ to the right all mornin’ and jeez, that snow just kept fallin’ like a bitch. Eight hours later there was still no relief. We started taking turns sleeping, still turnin’ to the right. After twenty-four hours, we were so cold and hungry I decided to just pick the bit off bottom and circulate to maintain the hole. That toolpusher and the company hand each had plenty of heat and a large supply of frozen food and canned goods, but with an entire crew stuck out there it didn’t last long. By the end of that first week we were out of everything and gettin’ pretty scared; didn’t know which we’d do first, freeze to death or starve. Then one mornin’ we had just about given up when we heard a noise outside and saw this big ol’ cow fightin’ its way through the snow toward the rig. By God, we dug out one of the pickup trucks, got a gun, milked, shot, and butchered that son of a bitch right then and there! Best damn steak any of us had ever tasted. It was two and half weeks we were stranded out there before help actually arrived. Shit, we coulda held out two weeks more! They brought with ’em emergency life support, the whole damn bit, sure as hell we’d all be dead, or close to it. When they got there we was all playin’ baseball in the top doghouse with a crumpled-up pop can and a crowbar. I swear, when they pulled up ol’ driller Purvis was standin’ on the catwalk lookin’ down on’m as they piled out of their outfits and he hollers down to’m, says, ‘Didja bring any beer?’ Goddamn,” Blackie laughed and wheezed and coughed cigarette smoke. “Never did find out who owned that cow. We talked about buyin’ whoever it was a new one but nobody ever got around to it.”
That night Zachary Harper unrolled his sleeping bag on the grassy lawn of the Watford City Park. Before he fell asleep he lay on his back and wondered how long he could hold out. He peered into the brilliant distance of the Milky Way and, before dozing off, enjoyed the thought that its light had traveled thirty thousand years to illuminate his slumbers.
AT TEN THE NEXT MORNING he was back at the Sagebrush. Blackie was there already and the place was jumpin’. Roughnecks, Indians, cowboys, farmers, welders, truck drivers, and the like were coming and going. Many seemed to know old Blackie. When they said hello they’d give Zak a nod, not knowing if he was a seasoned hand or just a worm; they don’t ask too many questions about a man. To the ones Blackie thought worth asking he would say, “Look, if you’re shorthanded, Zak here is a good friend of a fella I worked with up in Alaska. He’s never worked on the rigs before but I know he’d make you a good hand,” but there was nothing.
It was late in the afternoon when Zak returned to the Sagebrush. He had spent the intervening hours at the City Park, exercising and reading from The People’s Almanac. Now, even more than a job, he was in search of a bath. He had been sleeping outdoors and working out for God knows how long and was becoming uncomfortable to say the least. Andrew suggested the Sather Dam.
“Pass Blackie’s on the road to Williston there, oh, I’d say about fifteen miles, and there’ll be a sign pointing south. Another two miles and there’ll be these two giant golf balls sittin’ on tees on the side of a big ol’ hill. There’s yer d
am.”
Zak pulled a discreet distance off the highway and parked close to the water’s edge. Sure enough, two giant golf ball–like objects ten stories high sat in the middle of a hillside. Microwave receivers? Satellite antennas? Nuclear missile trackers? Later, back in town, he would make small talk by asking what in the world they were. Nobody had ever given them a minute’s thought.
He rummaged through his gear for a fresh JCPenney long johns top, Levi’s, and a bar of soap. After a quick look in all directions, he stripped and tiptoed across the mudbank to the water. Though it was a warm sunny blue day, the wind rolled unimpeded across the low-lying hills and buffeted him with short crisp gusts that sent ripples across the water’s surface and raised goosebumps across his flesh. The water was thick and muddy close to the shore, so he walked out till it was near his knees, tossed a bar of Ivory out into the lake, then dived in and swam hard after it out to the clear, cold, blue center. The shock gave him a pleasing jolt of adrenaline and he shouted each time he came up for air. He dove down deep to where the water turned really dark and really cold. He splashed and tumbled about like a slippery young otter. Then for a while he lingered, his toes reaching downward, feet pedaling, arms swirling, snorting like a platypus, his nose and eyes above the water, taking in the deep cobalt blue of the reflected sky, the green hills, the brown and gray jutting cliffs, feeling the cold water swirl about his naked body. He would hold his breath and sink down, completely immersed, weightless, letting his entire body go limp, numb, then float to the surface and lay on his back and watch the clouds. The soap drifted away and he chased after it. The tension in his limbs and back lifted from him. For the first time in weeks, he relaxed and didn’t think.
A shudder through his bones told him when it was time to get out, and he chucked the soap back onto shore and swam back through the mud, laughing and shivering as he wiped the mud off with his dirty clothes before getting dressed. The stink was gone at last and that alone made him feel fresh and crisp like a brand-new one-hundred-dollar bill.
Roughnecks Page 2