With his pocket knife, he made two sandwiches. The sun was dropping rapidly from the sky, as though it too were weary. Even the scant vegetation all around seemed to be reaching westward in one last heliotropic spasm of farewell, and Zachary Harper wondered, becoming angry in his delirium, why no trees grew in this strange country, why the land seemed to roll and pitch in so dizzy a fashion. Why nothing stood in challenge to that ubiquitous sky. Nothing except the mean iron tower of Bomac 34.
He woofed absently at his food. His mind, like the countryside all around, was in a tectonic frenzy. Of all the information he had so erudiciously compiled over the years since college, nothing jived with these new sensations of fear, awareness, incredulity. He shook his head violently, much like a night driver shakes his head to fight off sleep, and took a long swig of water. The water ran through him and, for an instant, restored some of his withering sensibilities, cooled his burning insides. The sun disappeared and the lamps on the tower came on, gently highlighting the last remaining hint of bloodstone that the wounded star, his wounded star, had spilled upon this sighing, intractable land.
JESSE LANCASTER WALKED DOWN TO the bottom doghouse to collect his crew as Zak was finishing his second sandwich. He hopped from the Jeep and jogged over to the door arriving just as the other two roughnecks were leaving. Jesse had already given instructions as to what he wanted done next and rather than go through it all again with a worm who wouldn’t understand a thing he was saying anyway, waved him off, saying, “Follow Marty and Jon, see if you can’t give them a hand.” As he trotted after them, Zak figured that was as close as he would get to an introduction.
Zak had yet to see the entire rig and, as he hurried to catch up, he observed a veritable lake of mud that formed a giant pool around behind the rig. The mud bore a strong resemblance to the muck that covered Jon and he from head to toe. When they reached the back of the rig, they stopped at the first of two iron shacks. From these shacks on the ground stretching up to the two big engines on the drilling platform were a pair of huge drive belts. In each shack was a giant pump and, like the engines up on the floor, one was in constant use while the other remained idling, ready if needed to serve as a backup. Zak didn’t understand what part these pumps played in the operation but was at least glad to begin assembling the basic pieces of the puzzle.
Marty, the Small Ape, turned on the light and walked around the number one pump, which was screaming so loud it pierced the ears with its high-pitched wail. Jon and Marty didn’t seem to notice. Marty took off his hard hat, scratched his greasy, sweaty head, and sized up the situation. He had been up in the derrick all day and so avoided the mudbath that Zak and Jon had been subjected to. Zak was not at all envious. At this stage of the game the thought of having to wrestle big iron all day while perched a hundred and fifty feet in the air was beyond him.
“Whatcher name,” Marty hollered. He was all business. Zak stumbled for just a second before he realized what Marty was asking for.
“Zak!”
“Well, Zak, we’re gonna need a sledgehammer an’a couple of tirty-six-inch pipe wrenches from up dere inna doghouse.” Marty’s eyes, set close to his sharp long nose, darted to and fro as he sorted out the situation. Marty’s speaking voice, or more accurately, his shouting voice, was pitched an octave or two higher than his looks would suggest and he spoke with an accent that was foreign, no, alien enough to be of his own invention. His attention turned from Zak to the monstrous pump engine set screaming at his side.
“Okay, anything else?”
“Nope, just hurry back, dis’s gonna take a while.”
Zak ran up, retrieved these, and while returning he heard the number one pump shut down.
In the number one pump house, Marty and Jon had assembled an odd assortment of items. Among these was a four-by-four piece of lumber about three feet in length and a couple of close-ended nonadjustable wrenches made to fit the bolts on the pump cover. These iron bolts were four inches in diameter and big enough to weigh a couple of pounds on their own. Marty held the wrench while Jon pounded away with the sledgehammer, and one by one the bolts came off. When they had removed the first four or five, Zak, still trying to make a good impression on his first day, offered to spell one of the guys, and Jon stepped clear and gave him the hammer. He attacked the wrench with a ferocious volley of blows, wanting, more than anything else, to prove that he was okay, that he could get it. He didn’t see the quizzical looks that Marty and Jon exchanged while he swung that hammer.
Another couple of hours grated away as the three men broke backs dismantling that pump. Inside the pump the big rubber swab at one end of the giant piston was hailed out and cracked. It was at the end of a polished steel rod that moved back and forth creating suction. They put the four-by-four between the sledgehammer and the rod and banged away, each taking turns when the other’s arms and back were too weary to continue. Eventually the steel rod came free and they pulled it out. They brought their prize up to the drilling floor and they attacked that swab with sledgehammers and wrenches, but it wouldn’t budge from the end of the rod. Zak was convinced they were making more work for themselves than was necessary and tried to be diplomatic.
“Isn’t there some set procedure for getting these things changed?”
“Nope,” they both answered back in unison. Marty turned to Jon and said, “We need an Indian trick,” and Jesse was summoned from the doghouse.
He stepped out onto the floor smiling all the while and dealing out the shit, “What’s wrong boys? Can’t ya git ’er?” and commenced firing orders. “Get them iron rods from over there!” and “Drive them rods underneath!” then “Leverage that son of a bitch!” until finally, “C’mon Harper, you’d better be able to hit harder than that fer Christ’s sake!”When they had hammered the new swab onto the end of the rod, the three roughnecks marched it back down to the shack.
“Dohn let ol’ Jess scare ya,” Marty offered obligingly on their way back to the pump house. Zak could hear him breathing through his long thin nose. “What he yoozly considers d’easy way is often harder dan what most people would consider unbearable.” Jon and Marty peeled off a couple of stories of legendary proportions that Zak was only partially able to understand. The language of the patch was still new to him and Marty’s peculiar dialect turned his ear sideways. He was thinking of the unbearable pace at which they had tripped out the pipe earlier that evening and how, with another hand and a bit of experience, they could have been pushed harder still.
Once the swab rod was back in place, they had to ram it back up the cylinder by using the four-by-four on one end and the sledgehammer on the other. From there it was back up to the platform to put things away and hose down the floor. Shortly thereafter relief arrived. The time was 11:15 p.m. The tower was over.
JON, MARTY, AND ZAK SILENTLY changed their clothes in the bottom doghouse. Zak was moving a bit slower than the other two, taking his time putting on his clothes on top of all that mud. A shower on location wouldn’t be a bad idea, he thought. Marty was dressed in a flash and gone. Jon finished next and walked slowly out without saying a word. It was strange. They had worked side by side all day, with more intimacy, perhaps, than men who work in an office might achieve in twenty years, and not a word passed between them when it was over. Still, he liked the Scandinavian with the giant paws. He was gutsy and quiet. Not out to prove anything. To Zak, who had been on the verge of hysteria for some time, that was reassuring. Zak had yet to take the measure of the Small Ape, Marty, who was a little unnerving at first encounter with his peculiar posture and strange unearthly ways, but there was one thing about the man that Zak was sure of: there hadn’t been a single complaint, from the floor up, all day.
When fully dressed, Zak sat on the bench there in the bottom doghouse and ruminated quietly for a few long minutes before pushing on. So many questions had been answered. More remained, but it occurred to him, as he sat there with his weary m
uscles hanging off his aching bones in much the same way as his clothes, reeking of diesel, mud, and sweat clung to his skin, that if the spirits were right, and if he was careful, he might really make it in the patch. This awareness sent a euphoric rush through his entire system, gave him the strength to stand up, close his locker, and move toward the door. He paused and looked around. After all, he had survived the first day, hadn’t he? He laughed inside. Sure it was tough, and though it was difficult to imagine how, there was no doubt it could get a lot tougher. In all that exertion, with life and limb hanging in the balance, he had released energy that had been pent up inside him for years. Immured between layer upon layer of misconception and self-deceit. What he had heretofore regarded as his active life, he now saw as passive, acquiescent, compliant, stultifying, submissive, and lifeless. The interdependencies of the world from which he had so willfully ejected—all its relationships, its manufactured and self-inflicted anxieties, its trumped-up rewards, and its false conciliations—were no match for the look Jon had given him when Zak had checked the other man’s tong latch, as a natural precaution, after his near miss, to prevent another fly-off. Jon had known, and that look informed Zak that they both knew he got it.
Back East they exacted something of him that only now was he dimly able to perceive. What was it? As of yet he couldn’t say. But somewhere deep inside he had known, had felt the loss. And one day he just turned his back and walked away, from everything. Now, the experiences of the day had been like two drops of pure water on a truly desiccated system, causing a small echo, like radar, that reached out to trace the unknown perimeters of a void within himself. He could see that void now preparing itself to contain the pure and as yet unadulterated creature he was about to become. From this day forward, he would be a completely reconstructed creature. Now, for the first time, he had a real idea of the forces he would have to engage in order to give that creature sustenance, shape, definition, and purpose. His former self would become the empty hollow, a shell, then dust, then vapor. “They’ll never take from me again,” he said under his breath as he moved toward for the door. “Shit,” he laughed out loud, “they’d have to find me first.”
He laughed again as he opened the bottom doghouse door and realized how goddamned glad he was to still be alive and unharmed.
Outside it was a whole new world. That night tower crew was up on the platform trippin’ ’er back in. He could hear their movements. He could hear the roar of the giant engines. He could see the kelly moving up and down with the drill string attached. The beast shining brightly against the blackness of the universe. These were his first real impressions of this new world. Back East a man can die a thousand false deaths a day, he thought; here on location you can only die once, as the deity of life commands. If you can’t get ’er, you can’t stay.
The sight of his Jeep as he ambled over to it was comforting. Suddenly, Jon appeared at his side.
“Zak, you got a place to sleep tonight?” his tone was neighborly but by no means familiar.
“I thought I’d try the rodeo grounds,” Zak said.
“Where? Back in Scobey?”
“Yeah,” Zak tossed his gear into the back of the Jeep.
“Is that where you slept last night?”
“And the night before that,” Zak was matter-of-fact.
Jon smiled from beneath his bushy blond beard and a momentary flash in his deep blue eyes suggested that he considered sleeping in the rodeo grounds altogether weird. “Well look, that chainhand who didn’t show up today shares a room with me back at the Pioneer. Why don’t you follow me back and take his bed for the night? There’s a shower you can use.”
“Sure, but what if that other fella comes back?”
“We’ll kick his ass for not showin’ up today,” Jon laughed as he walked over to the Olds. “He can sleep in the rodeo grounds.”
As they fired up their outfits and swerved away from location, Jon in the lead—their headlights penetrating the black veil beyond the glaring bright circle of lights on tower—Zak pushed in a tape. Danny Gatton’s Redneck Jazz.
“Hiyaaah!” he shouted. This was too good to be true.
He was reminded of the urban suspicion of the kindness of strangers. The threat of contact. The instinctual revulsion, or at least mistrust, of uncoerced generosity. Zak remembered he had only five dollars left in the whole world. More like four dollars and change. A year ago it would have made him blanch to even think of being exposed to such a decrepit state of affairs, indeed, it was his worst fear. He wondered if all bourgeois fears were so unfounded. He knew that Jon’s offer was more of a practical gesture than anything else, but still, he felt he must be doing something right. And he laughed, shouted, shrieked, and rocked as the two vehicles bounced, swerved, and rolled, up and down and around and over, one after another, through the dust, dirt, gravel, and asphalt, and the great big prairie night.
IV
I like throwin’ chain,” Jon stated flatly as the two men sipped whiskey at the Pioneer Hotel bar. “I mean, that’s what I’m good at.”
“But you’re workin’ motors now,” Zak said. Jon ended every sentence as though it were his last and Zak wasn’t about to let him stop talking if he could help it.
“Yeah, well, for now I’ve got the most experience on the floor, except for Jesse, of course. Motors is one job you’ve just got to know what you’re doin’. Freddy Fifer, the fella who didn’t show today, he’s just breakin’ out too. He started a couple of weeks ago. Before this latest switch, Freddy, bein’ new, was workin’ worm’s corner, where you are now.” Jon arranged the ashtray, salt shaker, and a cigarette butt, transforming the table top into an oil rig platform; he completed the lopsided diamond with a tap of his finger, “I was chainhand and Lenny was on motors before he got run off.”
“Lenny?”
Jon scratched under his chin, plucked a few flakes of pale brown mud from under his beard, and ground them to powder between his thumb and forefinger, raising a small fine pyramid on the dark Formica surface. He seemed to be making up his mind whether or not to continue with the gory details. When he reached a decision, he placed his big hands on the table as though holding a box between his beefy palms. Inside the box, as if by some strange geomancy, he had placed this Lenny character.
“Lenny’s Jesse’s kid,” he began haltingly. “You should know this in case he shows up again, which isn’t very likely after all the shit he pulled. I’m not sure what caused the final problem but we were all glad to see him go, even if it meant I had to give up bein’ chainhand for a while and go back to motors. Lenny couldn’t handle motorman’s responsibilities. He was a real bad apple, that Lenny was. A shame too ’cause Jesse’d been awful proud of that kid when he was first breakin’ out. When he put his mind to it he could do anything. On an oil rig that is. I’ve seen him throw chain. Would’ve made a good derrickhand too. That’s where he belonged, come to think of it, up on that diving board where we wouldn’t have to see his face or listen to his shit. But Jesse wanted him where he could keep an eye on him and besides, Marty just won’t work anything but derricks. Anyway, derrickhand has to know all about the mud and Lenny’s too impatient to learn anything that doesn’t just come naturally. He’s only nineteen. When he was seventeen I understand his toolpusher wanted him to go drillin’. Hell of a compliment for someone so young. So, naturally, after that, Lenny really got his ass up on his back and figured he was too good for worm’s corner. Hell, I’d work worm’s corner if Jesse asked, I wouldn’t mind, it’s a roughneckin’ job, after all. He and Jesse always kept it their little secret that Lenny was Jesse’s son. Hell, that toolpusher on Bomac doesn’t even know it.”
Jon paused to take a sip and simmer down. It was clear that talking made him uncomfortable and discussing Lenny was irritating. Zak decided to stay quiet and just let Jon get as much of it off his chest as he wanted. But Zak got ready for a possible explosion.
“You don’t know him yet but Jesse’d give you the shirt off his back if you were in need,” Jon’s attitude softened. “You see, Zak, Jesse broke each one of us out in the patch. Something else you should know. He’s got a keen eye for who can get ’er and who can’t. That’s the only reason we ever put up with that fucker of a son of his. I’ve been out here in the patch for two years now and I’ve never worked for another driller, either has Marty and he’s been here a year longer’n I have. Who knows? If things go well with you and Fifer, Jesse will have broken out the whole damn crew! But that Lenny just didn’t give a shit. About anything. Never pulled his own weight. Jesse was tryin’ so hard to make that kid a success that he’d be out on the floor takin’ care of motorman’s duties while Lenny’d be out fuckin’ off somewhere. Then Jesse’d try and smooth it over with the rest of us and that would just make matters worse ’cause we’d hate t’see Jesse getting used like that. We knew what Jesse was goin’ through so Marty and I decided among ourselves to let the Lenny thing slide. Hell, we owed the man that much. Besides, sooner or later, well, things would either work out or they wouldn’t, you know how it is. But I’ll tell you something else, when we heard Lenny had taken a swing at the old man the night Jesse run him off we figured all bets were come due. He’s lucky we didn’t find out about it’s all I can say.”
Jon poked the table top with an iron finger and the glasses and ashtray bounced. His eyes flared as his anger returned. “Lenny. He’d go from one to another of us lookin’ for trouble and if he couldn’t find it he’d sulk and bitch until, sure enough, everybody’d be at each other’s throats. Lenny didn’t want to be no fuckin’ roughneck. I guess his old man should’ve known that.”
Roughnecks Page 7