Roughnecks

by James J. Patterson

  Chief Red Jacket of the Iroquois Indians called Washington the “town destroyer.” Washington didn’t free his slaves until after both he and Martha were dead.

  And what had Zachary Harper learned when he felt the call to step out into the world and take his place? That everywhere he was met with confusing signals. If he were to find a place for himself, must he wrest his space from someone else? Couldn’t he just create a new space altogether? When he first attempted to summon the warrior within himself he found to his horror that his kindred spirits were in full retreat, the battlefield overrun, spoiled, used up. And those who would be his mentors and teachers were all in opposition. Wherever and to whomever he turned, he had found a wasteland. He made up his mind, in secret, that his only alternative was to seek an alternative and to do that one must go a-yondering. On the next page under the heading, “Little Known Facts,” his eyes fell upon this paragraph:

  One of the most mysteriously misleading facts of the Washington Legend is the story of the pious general kneeling in prayer in the snow at Valley Forge. Not only is there no evidence to support this tale, but Washington was notorious in his parish church for his refusal to kneel at any of the customary moments in the Episcopal service. As his minister declared disapprovingly after the President’s death, “Washington was a deist.” Although Martha was a devout churchwoman, George never shared her enthusiasm. On communion Sundays he always walked out before taking the Eucharist, leaving Martha to participate in the service alone.

  Zachary Harper had known men who dignified their docile, manageable capitulation and housebroken idolatry, in the language of deference, homage, and prostration. Men to whom grovelling was a way of life, who zealously defended their chosen space for kneeling, and who designated kneeling space for others. Refusing to kneel never occurred to them. Zachary’s eyes left the page and scanned the rolling tumultuous landscape. We will all humble ourselves before something, and, if we do not make that choice, it will be made for us. Where had he heard that? He flashed for an instant on the screaming, gleaming tower of Bomac 34. To some, these issues matter little, if at all. Others are aware of the trade-offs they make and choose to live happily behind the bars of their own rationalizations, comforted by the sound of the cattledriver’s yips. He flashed again on faces, names, acquaintances, and placed them all on that narrow steep stairway leading up, like a gallows, to that oil rig platform.

  At the bottom of the page was this quote from George himself:

  How pitiful in the eyes of reason is that false ambition which desolates the world with fire and sword for the purposes of conquest and fame, when com­pared to the milder virtues of making our neighbors and our fellow men as happy as their frail conditions and perishable natures permit them to be. 1794.

  I guess he ought to know, thought Zachary Harper.

  ZAK TOOK THE REST OF the day easy. He snoozed on and off in the warmth and privacy of Freddy Fifer’s tent. He waded in the creek and tossed a dozen or more softball-sized rocks up onto the shore and made himself a small fire circle. When he was done, he scanned the naked horizon and laughed at himself. “What is there here to burn?” He rolled into town and purchased some canned goods, an opener, potatoes, corn, a big pot, a smaller one with a long handle, some coffee, assorted necessities, a bag of charcoal, and a small shovel. At one of the local cafés he was able to beg a chipped coffee cup, a cracked plate, a bowl, some bent silverware. They even threw in an old skillet and a couple of pots for good measure. On his way to and from town he stopped from time to time to chase down a tumbleweed, or to pick up some boards that had fallen from the back of a pickup. By the time he left for work, the back of the Jeep was filling with burnable matter.

  That fourth day on location was simply another drilling tower and in the course of eight hours they made four connections exactly as they had done the day before. Fifer’s chain throwing had not improved, or gotten any worse. Those wraps still limped to the top of the joint, but got there nonetheless. The rest of the time was taken up with scrubbing, group chores, and individual projects. The nucleus of the crew, Jon, Marty, and Jesse, got along so smoothly that the atmosphere in that top doghouse was positively homey. When he told the others about his difficulty finding firewood, it immediately became a group project to search the rig for suitable stuff to burn. Jesse came up with some thick planks that had been used during nipple-up. Marty, Jon, and Freddy each contributed to the effort, and by the end of the day there was a pile of junk sitting beside Zak’s Jeep.

  Meanwhile, Zak was still self-conscious about having virtually no experience soldering or tearing down motors and pumps. He knew he could scrub, however, and when he wasn’t up on the floor giving it his all he scrubbed his heart out. He assiduously marked the downward progress of the kelly, something he would later do by sheer instinct, and took his samples dutifully. Also, he made it his business to keep abreast of what the other crew members were up to, and whenever they went on a mission involving basic maintenance, he would drop whatever he was doing, if at all possible, to observe, assist, and pick up pointers. Apparently, certain guys who had hired on in the past had been colossal assholes and yet, in some cases, had ended up working with them for quite some time. In contrast, he could tell by how at ease everyone seemed with him that, for the time being at least, they were glad he was on their team. He was also feeling comfortable enough to start asking questions. Jon and Marty were really the only ones to ask, as Fifer hadn’t been at this kind of work much longer than Zak had and Jesse, well, Zak just didn’t want to bother him.

  That evening Zak was scrubbing the catwalk leading to the shale-shaker when Jon called up to him.

  “Hey Zak. We need you for a minute, okay?” Zak bounded down the stairs and followed Jon at a gallop toward the hopper where Marty was dumping big sacks of mud powder, which he tore open with a wicked-looking knife, into the mixing machine which was the hopper itself. Marty seemed all in a fluster. He had fallen behind and that toolpusher would be back before you know it to see if that viscosity level was up to where he wanted it. As soon as he had done with the last sack, they dashed around back to a long row of mud sacks stacked up about chest high along the wall. They each grabbed one, “Hurry de fuck up wid deez here!” Marty hollered and scurried back to the front door of the shack. The sacks weighed a hundred pounds or more and each man’s legs wobbled as he hurried with his load. Marty carried his inside, Zak and Jon dropped theirs at the door and ran back to fetch two more. When they were a dozen or more ahead of Marty’s feverish pace, Jon and Zak paused, leaning against the mud sacks at the back of the shack to catch their breath. They lit up.

  “Y’know, you seem to be a pretty strong fella,” Jon said.

  “I’m about average, I guess I’m as strong as some, others are stronger. These bags could come in smaller units,” he laughed, mildly curious as to what Jon might be getting at.

  “Yeah,” Jon chuckled, “well, they’re heavy. That’s for sure. But you’re pretty strong all right, for your size and all, there’s no doubt about that. Tell you what, let’s see you raise one of these sacks over your head, like this.” Jon clenched his cigarette between his lips and, straining under the weight, heaved one of the sacks up over his head, raising veins in his neck and arms, squinting from the smoke drifting into his eyes. Zak began to raise his bag but turned and looked up. There on the roof of the shack was Marty holding his long knife, ready to tear it open over Zak’s head.

  “Got damn it Jonny! You tipped’m off!”

  “I didn’t!”

  Zak left them there barking and cursing. A short time later from his perch up by the shale-shaker, Zak spied Freddy Fifer passing by the bottom of the stairs, covered in mud powder from head to toe, looking for all the world like some roughneck ghost wearing black-framed glasses.

  “Two worms on one crew,” Jesse laughed strolling up to peer over the side of the rig to see Marty and Jon duck into the mud shack down below like a
couple of marauding Apaches. “I ought to make ’em pay for them mud sacks.”

  IT WAS ABOUT ELEVEN FIFTEEN p.m. when Zak arrived back at the campsite. He washed his hands and face in the creek, brushed his teeth, and slept soundly in the warmth of his bag in the tent.

  The next morning he awoke feeling truly rested and fresh after two relatively easy towers, and this would be the last work day before days off. He made a fire that he started with a jar of number one diesel fuel and the junk he brought from location the night before and boiled creek water in both pots. In the smaller one he tossed some coffee grounds, in the larger one some potatoes. He opened a can of beans’n franks and set it at the fire’s edge. When the potatoes had softened up a bit, he dumped out the water and poured in the beans, a piece of beef jerky, a couple of raw eggs; he then nipped the leafy end off a tomato and tossed it in whole. He opened a bottle of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce and shook it vigorously at the concoction.

  Later, as he sat by the creek, reading The People’s Almanac and taking the day easy, Jon and Fifer came rolling up in Jon’s Oldsmobile.

  “Roughneck stew!” Fifer laughed as he took a whiff. He scooped some out with a tin can and the three of them ate and drank.

  “Y’know,” Freddy said through a mouth stuffed with stew, “some people might think yer nuts to stay out here like this, but I think it’s cool as shit.”

  Jon shook his head. He was carefully sipping the coffee from a Styrofoam cup he’d found on the floor of his car, trying to leave as many grounds as possible in the bottom of it. “I’ll bet it’s cool, you come out here tonight and take a bath in that creek, fat boy. That’s gotta be cold, Zak.”

  “It is.”

  ZAK AND THE BOYS ARRIVED for work that day at about two thirty in the afternoon. When Jon and Fifer pulled up alongside the Jeep, Jon got out of his car and slammed the door shut, clearly, all pissed off.

  “What’s the matter?” Zak hurried over, thinking maybe Jon and Freddy had gotten in a fight during the short ride from camp and maybe he could help set things straight.

  “Black leg,” Jon scowled as he tromped toward the doghouse.

  “Black leg?” It sounded like a pirate’s nickname, or some tropical disease.

  “The pipe in the derrick,” Freddy said, hustling along after. “You call that black leg. Looks like we’re gonna have to finish trippin’ that son of a bitch out.” Zak stopped and stared up at the tower. He had noticed the pipe standing in the derrick when he pulled up but had made no mental note of it. Over the course of the last few days he had accustomed himself to not taking anything for granted. They changed clothes and Jon led the other two roughnecks up to the top doghouse. Sure enough, that daylights crew was pulling pipe out of the hole. Marty was already climbing the tower and Jon, Zak, and Fifer melted out onto the floor and replaced their daylights counterparts in midswing.

  Rory, that daylights driller, hollered “Whooee!” at how smoothly Jesse’s hands gave relief. Rory stayed with that brake handle as Jesse had yet to arrive, and for a half-dozen stands the boys worked with a foreign driller. When Jesse stepped out onto the floor he was all smiles. The whole process came to a stop when Marty reached the derrickhand’s station. That daylights derrickhand, the wild-looking one, turned over his safety belt and began his long climb down. Marty, when he was ready, waved down to Jesse, who took hold of that brake handle and they were off! They were looking at pulling the rest of the pipe out of the hole, changing the bit, then running all of that pipe right back in again.

  Now that the crew members all knew one another a little better, the work didn’t seem nearly as strained as it had those first two trips. Even Jon seemed to lighten up. Before too many stands, they were up to speed, yanking those stands out of the hole at a ferocious clip. “Hey old-timer!” Jon goaded Jesse on. “You sure are slow! Is this as fast as you can get ’er!” and when those joints broke and the mud flew into their faces, Jess would throw his head back and laugh like hell. Occasionally Freddy would slack up when they were pulling on those slips and Jon would scold, “Goddamn it fat boy! Pull on those sons ah bitches! Pull on ’em!” And when they’d take a bite with their tongs he’d scream, “Make ’em bite! Make ’em bite!”

  When they were at last out of the hole and had broken out a new bit, Jesse said, “All right, hurry up and grab a bite to eat,” and he wasn’t kidding. Before Zak had finished making his second sandwich, they were called back up to the floor. He was shoving the last big bites into his mouth as he took his station.

  Zak’s new function as they tripped it back in was to stab pipe. This wasn’t entirely new to him as he had stabbed pipe when making connections the last two days but it was much more intense as these stands were ninety feet high instead of the smaller thirty-foot joints used during connections. Just trying to steady the ninety-foot stand with only his shoulder as it hung there in the derrick was tough enough. Next he had to coordinate with driller Jesse, who lowered the stand down over the hole at the exact moment Zak stabbed the six-and-a-half-inch-diameter pinhead straight down into the six-and-a-half-inch pipe. If Zak missed, Jesse had to pick that stand up again for a second try and Jesse yelled, “Harper! What do I have to do, put hair on it for ya!?”

  By the end of the day Zak’s shoulder was absolutely raw and any and all movement was extremely painful. In spite of this, Zak was having an easy time of it compared to poor Freddy. He had been terribly anxious over his first real bout with the chain and for good reason. Already exhausted from tripping out, he was looking at throwing it maybe ninety times if all went well. It didn’t. By the middle of the trip back in he was huffing and puffing and his arms were like rubber. When his agony, futility, and despair reached unmistakable proportions, Jon, in a Simonian gesture, suggested they change places, saying, “Here, let me take over for a while, maybe you can get some pointers from me.” Each and every time Jon threw that chain it was just perfect. That pipe would make up just fine. Those wraps would leap from bottom to top. The drawworks would hiss and screech, and that mighty chain would spin that top section down into the bottom one clean and clear. The pace picked up measurably. Down, down, down those joints disappeared through the floor of the rig. The rows of stands waiting in the derrick emptied one after another. Jon and Freddy changed back, and though Freddy attempted to emulate Jon’s fast breezy style it wasn’t long before the pace slowed once again to accommodate Freddy’s jerky, unsure way. And in Freddy’s face you could see disappointment, self-ridicule, and shame with every feeble attempt giving birth to an even more feeble try.

  Zak had gotten into the habit of continually asking himself, “Where’s my danger?” In this instance, his danger was clearly Freddy Fifer. That chain was thrown immediately after Zak stabbed pipe and his face was always just a little too close to that stand for comfort. He could see all too clearly that if Freddy were to lose the tail end of that chain as Jesse was sucking it in, Zak’s face would be right in the path of that lethal flying coil and this conjured gruesome, horrific images. It was a long, long day. Relief seemed to show, magically, just as they touched bottom.

  Exhausted as he was, Zak trotted down the stairs to the bottom doghouse knowing he had just made it through his first whole week of work. It was one of the most spectacular achievements of his life. He wanted to shout, dance, celebrate, tell the world! Freddy, on the other hand, was morose as he sat on the bench in front of his locker wearing the woeful expression of a man breaking into pieces. Zak’s euphoria dissipated as soon as he set eyes on him. Zak patted Freddy on the back as he walked past him to his locker.

  “I’m twistin’ off. I can’t get ’er,” Freddy blurted out forlornly.

  “No!” Zak said with an incredulous whisper.

  “I’m serious, I let you guys down up there. I suck at this. I’m headin’ back out to the farm.” He lifted his hard hat off with both hands and pitched it into his locker.

  Just then Marty and J
on bounded into the doghouse happy as pups. As far as they were concerned, work was already far behind them. When they saw the blubbering lump of goo named Freddy Fifer sitting there on the bench, they stopped in their tracks. It was Jon who broke the silence.

  “Hey lightnin’, hurry up’n change, we’re gonna go get drunk!”

  Freddy slowly unbuttoned his shirt, staring straight ahead.

  “He’s thinkin’ of twistin’ off,” Zak informed the others.

  “What for?” Marty looked genuinely startled. Freddy said nothing.

  “C’mon, Fred, snap out of it,” Jon scolded, unwilling to surrender his jovial mood so easily. “Tomorrow you’ll be so hung over this’ll all seem like a bad dream. You think too much, that’s all.” But Freddy was inconsolable.

  Marty meanwhile sidled up to Zak and asked, “Whadz iss problem?” Then he stepped over to Freddy and pumped him once in the shoulder, “Hey, kit? Do ya tink I care if id takes all fuh-kin’ day t’throw some pipe ina holer? You tink we got someblace bedder to be? Who fuh-kin’ cares, man?”

  “Really, Fred, it’s just no big deal, hey, you can only get better!” Jon tried to lighten the load but the buddy-buddy stuff clearly wasn’t working, and having tried that, they all stood there stupidly and watched poor Freddy plummet beyond their reach. There followed an agonizing moment of silence before the others moved toward their lockers.

  A moment later the bottom doghouse door opened up and in walked Jesse Lancaster. This was the first time Zak had seen the driller, or any figure of authority, venture into the roughnecks’ lair. He assumed that traditionally this was taboo. But Jesse had a sixth sense about his crew and he walked right over without looking at anyone and sat on the bench next to Freddy. He waited a moment, then laid a palm down on Freddy’s knee. The others backed off.