Scobey was a much different town from Watford City. There was more color. It was quieter. The sign at the edge of town had read “Population, 1280.” Main Street was barely two blocks long. At the edge of town, past the grain elevators and the railroad tracks Lancaster had mentioned in his directions, he found the rodeo and fairgrounds.
The place looked deserted, but to make sure, Zak drove once around the dirt perimeter by the high white-washed wooden fence that surrounded the grassy field. Perfect for a fair, rodeo, cattle show, or demolition derby, at one end a broken-down backstop, but no real baseball diamond. He decided to drive out to the center of the park and shut ’er down. Silence. When he hit the lights, total darkness swallowed him and carried him into its dizzying, weightless space. Tingling shards of fear pushed him from the Jeep and he staggered on the grass where he was greeted by a chill wind that wrapped him and pulled him another step deeper into the night. A storm was coming. He could feel the air turn warm with moisture. The wind was with him and through him. It blew through the bleachers at the far side of the park. It rolled over the wooden fence and gently rocked the abandoned hot dog stand whose warped awkward wooden frame thumped the hard ground with a dull dead sound.
He sat down on the grass. He stood up. He figured he’d do some exercises to occupy his body and so occupy his mind, but only caught himself pacing around in a confused little square. He groped his way to the top of the bleachers and sat down. He dug his fists deep into his jacket pockets. The wind tried to take his baseball cap, so he pulled it down tight. Over the far wall of the park, he could see a lone streetlamp throw a dim dirty yellow light against the broad gray shadowy walls of the grain elevators a block or so down Main Street.
“What the fuck am I doing here!” he shouted at the alien night. But the wind picked the words from his lips and scattered the sounds, mingling them with a blustering commotion that was confusing and surreal, and Zachary Harper was momentarily stunned at the insignificance of his complaint. Suddenly, every premise upon which he had based his actions over the previous few months seemed irrational and absurd. He doubted his ability to make simple judgments. How could he then trust himself to handle what was coming? Something very dangerous and very real. Strangers. Heavy machinery. Incomprehensible commands and impatient unpardonable necessity. He rocked back and forth. Electrical bolts of panic shot through him, lancing him keenly, randomly, in the groin, in the stomach, in the chest. He was hot. He was pouring sweat. He was shivering. The empty blackness made him dizzy. He was falling. He gripped the bench with all his might. He wasn’t falling. His mouth hung open, and a long strand of drool ran from his lower lip and landed on his thigh making a dark, warm, oily circle on his jeans. His mind, abhorring the vacuum before his eyes and in his heart, filled the blank space before him with a vulgar display of faces and events; filled his ears with familiar yet receding voices; gouged his remaining senses with tastes and smells that were at once familiar and irretrievable. It was an obscene collage that taunted his self-confidence and made him feel small, helpless, stupid, wrong, and pitifully alone.
He groped and stumbled back down the bleachers, barking his shins and scraping his knuckles.
He walked stiffly across the grass to the entrance of the park. Up the street in a stark circle of light, a pay phone stood on a stem next to the streetlamp. He jogged up the road, his boots crunch crunch crunching the gravel and asphalt as he went, while digging frantically into his jeans for as much change as he could find. He jammed the coins through the slot. There was the familiar hiss of the long-distance connection.
A familiar ring.
A second wave of panic shot through him. His sweat turned cold and a nasty shuddering rattled up his spine. His breath rasped audibly in his chest. At the other end of the line, he could feel his old life, so far away a moment ago, drawing near. It had been withering, dangling, drifting away, but it was not yet out of reach. All he had to do was hang on and he could bring it back; it didn’t have to disappear.
Or he could let it go.
The memory of that life and its attendant details threatened him with their familiarity. If he let go of that string, those details would soon change; circumstances would alter themselves to conform with the reality of his absence. The numbers—phone numbers, street numbers, numbers of people, numbers of dollars, numbers of friends, encounters, possibilities, built one upon the other—would simply fall out of significance or meaningful array. But something back there, something nameless, had been slowly and methodically devouring what he had come to identify within himself as his soul, he was sure of it now. It had not followed him here and it couldn’t follow him here—uninvited.
No, that thing he had no name for was going to starve from inattention and neglect. Out here in the empty distance. In the Phantom Zone. And the closer it came to death, the more his own eyes opened. The more his eyes opened, the more he knew that to survive he had to move. Move and keep moving until he felt the beast release its hold on him once and for all, until he could feel another force, pull him somewhere else—pulling him here, where he could move toward a life of real and acceptable consequence. If he didn’t find it, something or someone else would, and he would be returned to the service of the creature at the other end of this long string. He wouldn’t get another chance. He would be enslaved.
He slammed the phone back down.
And as he exhaled, his muscles relaxed, and the night, for that one instant, grew calm and sweet.
The wind changed direction. A fat wet raindrop smacked his cheek and rolled down the canvas front of his down vest. He stood there staring at the phone for a long moment, as at a vanishing shore. The light bulb overhead snapped and buzzed. The night flooded into his awareness; the pebbles underfoot and the great black prairie beyond his physical reach were somehow joined. He wanted to rise up and spread out in all directions. He shook his head, retrieved his coins, and walked back to his Jeep.
By the time he reached it, the rain was falling straight down in a heavy shower. With the coming of the storm the wind had died out completely. He climbed into the back of the Jeep, took off his boots, replaced the vest with a dry, warm, hooded sweatshirt, and fished around for his flashlight. He propped himself up against the duffel bag and read from The People’s Almanac to the dim light of his fading batteries. A while later he curled up and pulled the sleeping bag over him. It stormed all night, and as the rain hammered the canvas roof of the Jeep, his anxiety wrenched and twisted him through a tumultuous and unrequited sleep.
THE NEXT DAY, THE FIRST of September, was sunny, clear, and beautiful. The air had a delicious taste that teased the palette. Zak walked down Main Street and stopped in at a little café for a roll and some coffee. He had hoped to run into some other Bomac crew members, but it was no dice. There wasn’t a roughneck in the joint. The place was a local hotspot all right, but it was crowded with ranchers, farmers, townfolk, and old-timers. There were old-fashioned wooden cabinets filled with fresh pies and cakes behind closed glass doors. A fly strip hung in a corner behind the counter. When Zak queried a heavyset man in bib overalls and a hat as to the possible whereabouts of that Bomac rig, the man had never even heard of it. If fact, neither he nor any of his buddies knew of any rigs in the area at all. Zak was baffled until he realized that Scobey didn’t look like an oil town in any respect. He wondered if his was the first drilling site to setup in the area, if there would soon be many more to follow. He thought of the insane twenty-four-hour-a-day hustle and bustle of Watford City and wondered if this pleasant little community had any notion of the tempest that was poised to strike.
In the men’s room mirror, he could see the scabbed-over scar from where the canvas ragtop had sliced his temple, the scabs on his knuckles too may have been the reason behind the funny looks he was getting from the patrons of the café. He cleaned it up, using a little antiseptic ointment from his shaving kit. Not only was he a stranger, but he looked like he’d b
een in a fight the night before.
There was time to spare before work so he decided to take a trial run out to the rig and back. Lancaster’s directions were easy enough, and the four buttes where he was supposed to make his left actually had a little town named after them: Four Buttes. After a bumpy ten miles, the gravel road turned to dirt, a detail Lancaster had failed to mention, though bifurcated and puzzling it definitely was.
At last he came up over a hill and there in the distance stood Bomac 34.
“It’s good iron.”
The landscape all around was rugged, woolly, and strange. It was as though a giant had taken the earth by its edges and given it a tremendous shake. The oil rig stood on top of a hill that was no larger or smaller than the endless random field of hills that rose and fell like a massive still-life ocean. He was maybe three miles off, but the vantage point was a good one, so he shut down the Jeep, rolled himself a reefer, and tried to still the butterflies in his stomach. He would get his chance to see it close up soon enough. For now he was content to just sit and listen to the mild metallic roar of the rig in operation. After a while he turned around and drove back to town, walked the streets, and had a cup of coffee in each of the three cafés that Scobey had to offer. At a quarter till two, he left for work. This time for real.
He arrived on location about half an hour early. None of his other crew members had arrived and, not knowing what was customary, he got out and leaned against the front of the Jeep, trying to discern the responsibilities of the men still on duty.
A line was coming off the tower with a chain attached pulling yet another cable. Zak could see a man in a clean shirt standing up on the platform apparently orchestrating things; from Blackie’s description, he must be the toolpusher.
The other men must all be roughnecks.
Two men were standing on the ground having a devil of a time trying to spool out new cable from a giant roll. Zak’s eyes traced the white painted girders upward until they came to rest upon a big man climbing quickly down out of the tower. He had a full black beard and bare muscular arms and was covered in grease from head to toe. The big man stopped for a minute to survey the scene below and when he saw Zak, he raised one fist in the air and let out a ferocious roar. He jumped the last few feet to the platform, bounced down a catwalk, and heaved himself down a steep flight of stairs that were next to a big metal ramp, then he ran to the aid of the men on the ground. All the way he was screaming and attacking his job like a maniac. Once he was down on the ground, things started to happen fast and it was clear that, crazy as he might seem, he was an essential piece of the puzzle. But what in hell were they really doing? Zak had absolutely no idea.
A Mercury Marquis pulled up, and Jesse Lancaster, another man, and a woman got out and walked directly to a small trailer parked nearby. Next, a ’76 blue Olds four-door pulled up and parked next to the Jeep. The newcomer remained inside, lit a cigarette, and waited. He was about twenty-four years old with Nordic features, a full beard, and blond hair that fell past his shoulders. He took no outward notice of Zak but sat there smoking, cool and serious, as he watched the goings-on.
Zak was standing there trying to discern which door on the rig would lead to the bottom doghouse where the lockers were kept, when Jesse and the other man emerged from the trailer and started walking toward the rig. Just then the fella in the Olds got out, opened his trunk, and fished out a duffel bag and hard hat. This is it! Zak thought, and hurried to collect his own gear from the back of the Jeep.
The men were solemn as they walked toward the rig. He was eager to get on with it. He wanted to shout to them that he was here and ready to go. Wanted to know all their names and assure them that a little patience on their part would be well rewarded in the form of hard work, loyalty, and whatever else was necessary. Jesse climbed the stairs to the top doghouse by himself. Zak followed the other two through a ground-level door where the men went to their lockers and began taking off their clothes. Zak moved to the back of the long narrow room and took a locker that was a bit removed from the others.
There in the doghouse there were no expensive suits, jewelry, or fancy pedigrees, sheepskins, or titles to interfere with one’s assessment of a man, and though the others kept to themselves, Zak was acutely aware of being sized up on one level and one level only—how tough and how strong he was. The other two were all muscle. The man who had driven up with Jesse was short, stocky, and bow-legged with arms as big as tree trunks. He was completely covered with hair and looked like a small ape with a smooth quiet face, alert blue eyes, and straight unkempt reddish-brown hair that hung at random lengths past his ears and halfway to his shoulders. The Scandinavian was about a hundred and eighty-five pounds with hands like human vise-grips. The look on his face was pure cynicism. His pursed lips, pinched eyelids, and the short gusts of wind from his lungs as he pulled on his overalls told everyone in the room that he wasn’t pleased. There was no conversation, but the way he avoided eye contact, the crisp opening and closing of his locker, and the all-business manner in which he went about his preparations said it all. As far as Zak was concerned, other than his own comparatively poor musculature, they knew he had very little to offer. He was a new hand and not only that, he was a worm. Also, he could tell that there was something else fueling the tension in the air, which made Zak even more self-conscious, uneasy, and sure he was the cause of it.
ZAK FOLLOWED THE OTHERS UP to the top doghouse. That toolpusher was there with Jesse and the driller from that daylights crew. Their conversation stopped when the three roughnecks entered and that daylights driller, a comical-looking Louis L’Amour type of character with a full brown bushy beard and wild blue eyes, gave them each a sardonic “Hello? How are you today?” that elicited only grunts in reply. Whatever their private little joke was, Zak didn’t think it was too damned funny. He then spotted a door at the other end of the doghouse that could only lead to the floor of the rig, and he was suddenly possessed with an overpowering need to see it, study it, even if it was just for a few seconds, before it was time to go to work. As he stepped to the door, his ears caught a fragment of conversation over his shoulder.
“Can one of your boys pull a double?” he thought he heard the toolpusher say to that daylights driller.
“Oh hell, George, we can get ’er,” Jesse broke in.
Zak stepped out onto the floor but was desperately trying to sort out what was going on back inside. Jesse was trying to reassure the toolpusher that they could do the job. Were they thinking of pulling him and making a member of the previous crew work another tower? Could he possibly have come this far with just five bucks left in his pocket to be turned away? He felt dizzy and sick. He stepped boldly back into the doghouse and when he got the chance he decided he’d argue his case.
“I don’t know, George, we’ve pulled three doubles this week already, I kinda hate to ask,” that other driller was saying in a low, serious voice.
“George,” Jesse stayed cool, “it’s not like we ain’t never worked shorthanded before. We can get ’er. We’ll start out slow and work up to speed. I don’t see any problem.” That toolpusher breathed a sigh and folded his hands over his chest and looked straight at Zak.
“Well, what about ’er mister, you ready?”
“Yes sir,”Zak said as firmly as he could without showing disrespect. His voice echoed through the top doghouse. He heard the Scandinavian mutter something underneath his breath behind him and turned just in time to see his two crew members step out onto the floor together. As Zak followed them out, it slowly started to dawn on him that four roughnecks work on a crew and they were still short one man. The ominous look on that toolpusher’s face took on a new meaning. Whatever task lay before them they would have to tackle it shorthanded with a worm breakin’ out. No wonder everyone was so concerned. Right now it was clear that every man on that rig, except one, knew exactly what they were preparing to do. Suddenly Zak wished he could go
down to that bottom doghouse himself and ask those daylights crew members if one of them wouldn’t mind working an extra shift to help out. Instead, he took a deep breath and followed the others back outside.
As soon as his foot touched the iron platform, his eyes locked onto the center of the floor. There was a round turntable and, standing up through a hole in the center of it, was a pipe firmly in the grip of another very large and heavy-looking device with cables coming off it. These cables stretched up and up into the tower. As he stood there taking it all in, he noticed another device that looked like a giant horseshoe just hanging there suspended by cable from about forty feet above. The cable looped around a shiv and back down to a counterweight—a cylindrical container filled with rocks and debris running up and down on vertical tracks. On the opposite side of the hole several feet away was another horseshoe set up in the same manner. Virtually everything was made of iron.
The Small Ape and the Scandinavian were standing close by, and Zak’s first inclination was to turn to one of them and say something like, “Hey, look, I’m a little worried, why don’t you watch me through this one,” but that was clearly not the thing to do, and he had no idea whether these guys were going to be allies, indifferent, or if they would enjoy watching him fall on his face. He had no idea what type of men they were. All he really had to go on was what he knew of driller Jesse, who, when he hired him, was as drunk as one man can possibly be.
For an awkward moment everyone waited. Up in the derrick that maniac derrickhand from the last crew was climbing down toward them. Every few feet he would stop, let go of the ladder with one hand, wave his free arm deliriously in the air, and scream something unintelligible. He was clearly having a lot of fun at the expense of Zak’s crew. The boys on Jesse’s crew failed to see the humor. When he reached the floor, he and the Small Ape had a friendly word before that Small Ape began his ninety-foot climb to his station in the sky. It was then that driller Jesse stepped out of the top doghouse.
Roughnecks Page 5