Roughnecks

by James J. Patterson

  Freddy’s cherubic jowls fell jiggling and his eyes were wide and fearful. “I was up in the doghouse talking to Jesse about throwing chain.”

  “Yeah? What did he say?”

  “He went over the basic moves with me, took me out on the floor.”

  Zak wished he had been there. He knew that throwing a chain was somehow involved in the process of putting pipe back into the hole, and if it was at all as tough, and it had to be, as pulling pipe out of the hole, any type of demonstration beforehand would be welcome.

  “Tell you the truth,” Freddy went on sincerely, “Jesse said that I ought to talk to you about it. Said that you were the best hand he ever broke out in the patch, that nobody threw chain better or faster’n you.”

  Freddy was a manchild, overweight and out of shape and therefore not at all assured of his functions. And Jon, surprised to find himself holding the lifeline of Jesse’s words of praise, dropped for a moment his tone of derision and sarcasm and threw him a rope.

  “Well, you’re lucky we didn’t have to pull a round trip today. You sure don’t want to have to throw chain for the first time after pulling sixty-five hundred feet of pipe.”

  Round trip? Zak asked himself. It could only mean tripping the pipe out of the hole and then turning around and running it right back in again. All during one tower! He was right, things could get worse.

  “I guess the best way for you to start, if you’re lucky, would be during a drillin’ tower. When you’re just sittin’ there turning to the right you only have to throw it once every so often when it’s time to make another connection. You don’t have to move so fast.” Freddy now had something to wish for. Jon turned to Zak and explained further, “When you’re trippin’ in, or fast holin’ after riggin’ up, it can be murder to have an inexperienced chainhand workin’ the floor with you. You are makin’ those connections every few minutes and when that chainhand misses his throw, you’ve then got to tighten those pipes with your tongs instead and that means takin’ a bite and torquin’ it, takin’ a bite and torquin’ it, takin’ a bite and torquin’ it, and Jesus, it just kills your arms. It also slows you way the hell down and you lose your work rhythm, which is another pain in the ass. You don’t want to have to go through that more’n once. On the other hand, if you’re quick to learn, you can get in an awful lot of chain throwin’ in a short period. Depends on the individual.”

  “Yeah, well this individual would like to take as much time as possible!” Freddy had already heard enough. He changed the subject. He had heard that Zak was a farmer, which reminded him of a story. “Back in high school we renovated a tractor once,” Freddy said. Jon rolled his eyes and took a sip from his rye and Coke. He would have said something but nothing sharp enough came to mind; besides, Freddy was now atop a steep hill and ready to roll. “I took Mechanical Engineering. An old tractor had been donated to the school. Somebody’s uncle had been out plowing a field when his induction papers came to go fight World War II, or was it Korea, hmmm. Well, he just parked it right there where he was when he got the news, went off to fight, got killed, and that ol’ tractor sat there ever since ’cause nobody had the heart to move it. Think about it. Year in and year out, that tractor sat there, weeds and shit growing all up and through it, with them still workin’ the field, planting soy or wheat, and that old tractor just sittin’ there in the middle of it all like a gravestone. Like one night, that guy’s ghost was gonna come back, fire ’er up, and finish plowin’ that field like he hadn’t never missed a beat! It was all froze up and rusted to hell.

  “We had a devil of a time gettin’ parts for it, went combin’ through junkyards and old barns. We just had to invent or re­engineer a lot of stuff. By the end of the year we had that old thing runnin’ like a top. I’ll bet they’re still usin’ ’er too. Y’know? I had more fun in that ol’ shop class than I had the whole damn time I went to school. I used to tell my guidance counselor that they should let some guys just go to shop, y’know, turn that part of the school into kind of a shop college. A lot of guys, y’know, just aren’t much good at all the other shit they teach, might as well be doin’ something useful, doncha think? He thought I was just shittin’ him but I was serious.”

  Freddy shook his head, “What can ya do when you live in a shoe?” He saw that their drinks were empty and went to the bar for another round. When he returned his thoughts, had skipped ahead a few years. “Seismographin’, now there’s an enjoyable job. I had a bunch of goin’ nowhere jobs when I got out of high school then I took a job seismographin’.” Freddy had picked up on Jon’s didactic tone and was overjoyed to have another worm to share his experiences with. Jon was a good listener and Zak was eager. Freddy had a green light.

  “You see, there’s a stage, just before they decide where they’re going to set up a rig, where they do their geological surveys. They set off dynamite and other explosives in order to get readings on what’s below the surface by measuring the sound waves that bounce back. I drove a thumper truck, which is a little different as we didn’t use any explosives, which was fine with me! The thumper truck hammers the ground and a recording truck nearby takes the readings. But all the time, y’see, I’m watching those roughnecks living from hole to hole, making that good money, doin’ what they please, and I’m sayin’ to myself, ‘That’s what I ought to be doin.’ It took me a while to get up the nerve. I’m damn glad to be breakin’ out with Jesse Lancaster, he’s just about the best. I only wish things didn’t have to move so fast. I’m not exactly ready to start thrown’ chain right away.”

  “Shit, you’ll do all right once you get started,” Jon said. It was the one bit of encouragement Freddy had been looking for all night. Freddy’s next remark seemed curiously personal.

  “Anyway, I’m twenty-one years old, still real young, and there’s plenty of the world that I haven’t seen yet, y’know?”

  “Yeah, well, take my word for it,” Jon said under his breath, “there’s plenty of the world you don’t need to see. This here might just be as good as it gets.”

  “Here, here,” Zak agreed.

  They proceeded from that point to get completely drunk. When the bar closed they staggered up the stairs, took showers, and, for the second night in a row, Zachary Harper unrolled his sleeping bag on the cold tile floor in Jon and Fifer’s room. He was drunk. He was glad to be alive. He still ached all over but no longer cared. That these were good guys with big hearts was easy to see. They weren’t going to willfully do him any harm, and he felt lucky to have drawn them as crew members. He stretched out on the floor and relaxed like he hadn’t done in months. As he went to sleep, he could hear himself laughing at Jon and Freddy who continued to give each other a hard time as they climbed into their beds in the dark.

  “Hope yer a sound sleeper, Zak,” Freddy warned, “ol’ Jonny there saws logs like a pioneer.”

  “Yeah,” Jon continued Zak’s initiation, “and if you wake up with a sore arsehole in the mornin’ don’t go blamin’ me.”

  And Zachary Harper set the incident with The Man From Halliburton aside from his thoughts.

  THE NEXT MORNING ZAK GROANED as he staggered to the bathroom, stiff, sore, and hung over. The three of them clomped downstairs for breakfast and although Zak offered, Freddy insisted he was still in their debt and so he picked up the check. Jon and Fifer poked fun and bitched at each other all through the meal, occasionally turning their attention to Zak, “You should’ve seen this son of a bitch yesterday mornin’,” Jon said, wagging a stick of bacon in Zak’s direction. “He was hurtin’ so bad I didn’t think he was gonna make it.”

  “Yeah? My first day trippin’ nearly killed me,” Freddy commiserated.

  “Oh man,” Jon laughed. “Freddy was cryin’ and groanin’ like he’d just had his appendix out. Christ you were somethin’.”

  “He’s right, man, I never hurt all over so bad in my life.”

  “Not only that, yo
u nearly killed the rest of us! Every other stand was gettin’ away from you. Shit, fat boy, iron was flyin’ around that derrick like there was a war goin’ on. I swear, every time he’d push ’em over, we’d all have to run for cover.” Jon laughed and raised his hands over his face like he saw one coming right that instant.

  “That’s not true, Zak, a couple got away from me, not every other one. I’d’ve been okay if that fuckin’ Lenny would’ve helped.”

  “Lenny!” Jon scowled. “Remember he stood there with that one stand just dancin’ like crazy, like he didn’t care whether it hit him or not. He kind of sneered at it like it was an asshole or somethin’!”

  “That Lenny was scarier’n any piece of iron.”

  “Oh yeah, remember at one point during that trip he walked over and said something to you? Jesse and I thought he was going to kill you. What did he say?”

  “I don’t know, I couldn’t hear him.”This got a laugh from Jon, who was clearly more amused by the prospect of a confrontation with Lenny than Freddy had been.

  “Say Zak,” Jon changed the subject but threw Freddy a wink to keep his attention, “Freddy’s got a tent out in the back of his outfit he says you’re welcome to if you’re still in need, right Fred?”

  “Oh yeah, it’s almost new. I’ve only used it once or twice.”

  “Well sure, thanks.”

  Jon and Freddy exchanged quick “I told you so” glances back and forth. Zak couldn’t tell which one had bet against him. Now that he had a few bucks in his pocket, it must have seemed a sure thing that he would take a room.

  They hit a few spots in town and goofed off for a while before returning to the Pioneer for a couple of beers. They eventually bought a six-pack for the trip out location road.

  They set up the tent a safe distance upwind from the outhouse and as they headed for work, Zak looked forward to the night when he would have a private place to go, to think, to adjust, to be himself.

  ZACHARY HARPER’S THIRD DAY AS a worm hand on Bomac 34 was also the third day of September. It was gusty and cool. Comparatively speaking, it was an easy day. Freddy’s wish was granted: It was a drillin’ tower. They were turnin’ to the right. The kelly, a huge steel device suspended in the derrick and attached to the topmost joint of drill pipe, turned with the pipe as the rotary table down on the floor turned, and the entire drill stem, thousands of feet long, spun swiftly and smoothly.

  When Zak and the boys were dressed and ready, Freddy took Zak around and showed him worm’s responsibilities. He was to visually monitor that kelly’s slow descent through the derrick as it followed the pipe turning down into the hole, and record every ten feet of progress by taking a sample. Zak followed Freddy up a steep staircase at the side of the rig to a slender perforated iron walkway just a few feet below floor level. “Derrickhand mixes the mud down in the hopper,” Freddy screamed in Zak’s ear and pointed through a gap in the winterizing wall to a shack down on the ground. “The mud then runs through that hose up into the kelly and flows down through the pipe all the way to the drill bit where three high-pressure nozzles force the debris back up to the surface outside the pipe along the sides of the hole. It comes back through that return line and into this shale-shaker!” Freddy slapped his palm against a square iron device that stood about waist high beside him. “We’ll come back to this in a second.” They moved down a couple of steps to a smaller box. “This is the desander,” and on another couple of steps down the line was the “desilter.” Then he pointed to a lake of mud next to the rig, “It eventually ends up there in the reserve pit.”

  They made their way to the end of the catwalk alongside the giant whirring belts that stretched from the big twin diesel engines up on the floor down to the pump houses on the ground. These pump houses were nestled among a line of iron shacks, and Freddy, seeing Zak was still confused, started with the one on the far end. “That one’s the light plant that powers all the lights on the rig. The next one down is the hopper where derrickhand mixes his mud. After that, you have your mud shacks and it’s from there that the number one pump draws the mud it sends down the hole. The number two pump is used for the mud mixer in the hopper; keeping the viscosity level just right is tricky. You’ll have to get Marty to explain it, all I know is that the hole gets priority at all times, as far as these motors are concerned, and that number two pump has to be ready to fill in if number one goes down. So we keep number two runnin’ constantly, if only at a low idle.”

  With the extent of his knowledge now exhausted, Freddy turned and Zak followed him back the way they came. Freddy negotiated that slender catwalk with surprising agility. They were still twenty or twenty-five feet above the ground and Zak found himself hurrying, looking down, and constantly reaching for something to hang onto as he tried to keep up. Back at that shale-shaker, Zak took his first sample as Freddy supervised. He scooped out a couple of mounds of muck from the shale-shaker into an old-fashioned prospecting type of wire net pan. He shook out the mud, rinsed it, shook it some more, rinsed it again, and then took a handful of whatever was left and put it into a small sack. This he stored in a rack behind the main motors up on the floor for future reference. Freddy reminded him to keep alert to how many feet per minute they were drilling, which would be contingent upon how deep they were and how many hours were on the bit. These factors would change from one drillin’ tower to the next. Freddy was very patient and very concerned that Zak get every detail down pat. A friendly contrast to the lack of instruction during those first two grueling days of tripping.

  Collecting those samples was to be Zak’s primary responsibility and, when he wasn’t doing that he figured, unless he was told otherwise, he’d scrub. And did he scrub! He did more scrubbing than anyone else on that rig had ever seen! He didn’t realize it, but he made a lot of friends that day. Jesse, as it turned out, was glad to have found a hand who wasn’t going to be dead weight, and a scrubbin’ crew makes that driller look good. Marty was happy because Zak scrubbed both pump houses, inside and out, they being derrickhand’s responsibility. But it was Jon who, throughout the course of the day, kept a cocked eye on Zak’s scrubbing madness. At one point, Jon actually climbed a ladder to join Zak on the pump house roof.

  “You silly bastard!” he smiled. “You don’t have to do all this scrubbin’!”

  “I know, but I want to make a good impression with driller Jesse, and, to tell you the truth, I ache so goddamn much that this is kinda helpin’ to work my joints free.” Getting up that morning had been at least as tough as the two preceding and coupled with the aftereffects of eight or ten scotch and waters he was in dire need of an ameliorative. He liked to drink as much as the next guy, but he wondered how men like Blackie and Jesse did it.

  “You can get used to damn near anything,” he could almost hear Blackie saying.

  That third day also brought another new wrinkle. Every couple of hours, when the kelly reached a low point in the derrick, everybody dropped what they were doing and dashed up to the floor to connect another joint of pipe to the drill stem. Freddy had been dreading this moment for days, weeks, all his life, and it was clear to everyone as they took the floor that first time that Freddy was just nervous as hell. He would have to throw chain. Even though Zak was relieved that the pressure to perform was no longer centered on him, he felt for poor Freddy, whose diffident looks from hand to hand would have inspired compassion in all but the most stone-hearted wretch. Just as they were about to begin, Jon held up his hand for Jesse to wait. He walked over to Freddy and spoke something into Freddy’s ear. Freddy nodded his head with the shameless air of a man who has been granted a temporary reprieve and the two roughnecks changed places. Jesse smiled and shook his head. As Jon took chainhand’s position for a quickie demonstration, the sigh of relief all around was damn near audible. Zak was glad to see it done correctly if for no other reason than he wanted to be ready for anything when Freddy did eventually take hold of that chain
and prepare to give it a throw.

  In a hole next to the rotary table, the mousehole, sat the next joint of pipe to be connected to the drill stem. After they had thrown in their slips, Jon slammed his tongs onto the bottom joint and they unlatched the kelly from the joint in the hole. The three floorhands had to then push the huge steel kelly over to the pipe in the mousehole and make it up. From there Jesse hit the drawworks and hoisted the assembly out of the mousehole. “Dope it up!” Jon hollered as they shouldered the pipe into position. He motioned with his head to a bucket nearby and Zak, ever ready, ran to it, not really understanding what was needed. The bucket was full of some greasy goop and a brush, and he immediately slopped the pinhead with it as Jesse let down the pipe. Jon and Fifer then guided the male pinhead down into the female box end of the pipe waiting in the hole. At this point Jon picked up the free end of a long Y-shaped chain, one end of which was attached to the chain tongs, the other end wound around the make-up cathead on the engine. Then with one arm, Jon adroitly flipped the chain, and with a ferocious crack! it leapt upward from the bottom joint to the top one wrapping neatly in whip-like fashion four times just above the pinhead. Jon stepped closer, still holding his end of the chain tight, and with the flat of his gloved right hand, he deftly guided those wraps so they wouldn’t lose their grip as Jesse hit the cathead, violently sucking in that chain, thus spinning the top pipe madly for only an instant until it was tightly screwed down into the bottom one. Chain tongs then went onto the top joint, worm tongs to the bottom to tighten it one last little bit, and the connection was made. An astonishing procedure, thought Zachary Harper. It had been accomplished so smoothly and so fast that he feared poor Freddy’s anxiety would only increase.

  Next, Zak was instructed to scoot down to the ground, attach the boom line to another thirty-foot pipe lying in the rack, and follow it up the beaver slide to the floor where they would place it in the mousehole for the next connection. As soon as they started up that beaver slide, however, the pipe began heaving dangerously from side to side, and Zak corralled it between his legs to calm it down, bruising his ankles, shins, and legs in the process, giving him some worm bites of his own. He didn’t want to think of it coming free altogether.