Roughnecks

by James J. Patterson

  Zachary Harper had a sixth sense that told him when experts start using the word “never,” sell all your shit and head for the hills.

  It suddenly occurred to him that he had no idea when the Federal Reserve was scheduled to meet next, and that made him smile too. Because, he told himself, he didn’t give a shit either.

  He was glad he had spent the night in town. He was clean. He was fed. And he needed to get his laundry done.

  WITH HIS STREET CLOTHES IN a duffel bag and his work clothes in a potato sack, he set out for the laundromat across the street from Sam’s. Anyone upon entering that establishment as Zak got his loads under way would have known immediately that here was an oil field worker, or, more specifically, a roughneck. The street clothes consisted entirely of outdoor wear while the work clothes were entirely encrusted with mud. The reek of oil, diesel fuel, and grease filled the room. As he fished them out of the sack, huge chips flaked off, leaving a pile on the floor and a trail to the machines. The washer and dryer smelled of that diesel after the first wash, so he put them through a second time.

  As his clothes tumbled, on and on Zak sat down with his F.W. Woolworth’s Daily Aide which he used as a diary. It had been weeks since he had opened the little brown hard-backed book, and he had a lot of catching up to do. He reached into his empty shirt pocket for a cigarette, and finding none, dashed out to the Jeep where he kept a fresh pack under the beanbag ashtray that sat next to the gearshift. It occurred to him that he had smoked very few cigarettes the last several days. The reason was simple. He needed his wind. This would be a good time to quit, he thought. He left the package unopened in his pocket. Zak flipped open his Daily Aide and pondered over the events of the last two weeks. Rather than attempt to render them chronologically, he decided it would be best to begin with the here and now and work his way backwards as memory came to him.

  Just as he was putting Bic pen to paper, the back door to the laundromat pushed open and a tall, slender, elderly man shuffled into the room. He wore a Goodwill-type sport coat and slacks that were so old, tattered, and so heavily stained it seemed they could never have been new. He looked like a city bum from one of those black-and-white depression era buddy can you spare a dime newsreels. The old man glided past a row of dryers then slipped into the men’s room. Zak couldn’t remember seeing any guys like him in the small towns that dotted his journey west. He figured that small towns generally weren’t big enough to support them. No places to hide. Not enough quality refuse. Worse, everyone in these small burgs knows who and everyone knows why.

  Zak turned to his diary with a heavy sigh of relief. He was no longer so completely on his own. He tried to imagine Calico sitting next to him; to hear his cousin talking his oil field talk filtered through Zak’s new experiences, taking it all in stride like it was no big deal, just another week in the patch. He recalled the numerous times he had listened to Calico spin yarn upon yarn about his oil field adventures and it all seemed so archaic. Hard to grasp and appreciate fully. He would like to hear them all again. It might have been just another week in the patch, but it was a pretty big week in the life of Zachary Harper.

  The old guy had been in the john for quite a while. Just as Zak was considering tapping on the door to see if the old buzzard was still alive, the bathroom door opened and out stepped a new man. He had shaved, combed his hair, and cleaned himself up considerably. His efforts revealed an intelligent face. He had a full head of white hair, parted high on the left side with a lock that turned over his forehead and fell into his right eye. The hair that had overrun his collar in back added a kind of worldliness to his look. This was a hard man to gauge. In his day he might have been physically big and powerful, just as he could always have been the way he was now: tall, lanky, and spry. As the old gent drew closer, Zak could see that his eyes were a brilliant violet, the whites clean and unmuddied. Zak, determined to satisfy his curiosity, he held up a hand as the stranger attempted to move past him for the front door. He clearly didn’t appreciate being summoned in this manner.

  “How ya doin’ today?”

  “How ya doin’ today?” the old man answered, mimicking Zak perfectly. It was a creepy thing to do and Zak instantly regretted having said anything as the old man stopped to look him up and down, eyeing him the way a coyote might some possibly edible creature.

  “Not bad.”

  “Not bad,” said the old man as though he had never heard it put quite that way before. Zak, going under the assumption that when in doubt optimism can sometimes be an effective diversion, smiled and pointed out the window.

  “Looks like we’re going to have another beautiful day today,” he said cheerfully.

  “They’re all beautiful,” said the old-timer with a for-all-you-know bite to his voice. Still, the old man turned to look out the big window as though following some parade of phantoms moving down the empty boulevard. His brow wrinkled.

  “But you may be right, this one might be particularly beautiful.”

  Zak reached into his shirt pocket for his cigs, tore the pack open, and gave it a shake, “Smoke?”

  “Nope, I sure don’t, but I’ll take one just the same if you don’t mind,” he placed it behind his ear. Zak lit up. The old-timer then took the cigarette from behind his ear, and putting it to his lips, said, “Got a light?”

  “I thought you said you didn’t smoke?”

  “I don’t, but what the heck. You’ve never lived without trying right?” Zak offered him a light the way you might offer a horse a lump of sugar, to lure it close, to see it, smell it, try to understand it, without necessarily being aware that the horse may have the same reason for taking it. Before touching the tip of the cigarette to the flame, the old-timer paused, taking a good long look at Zak and then he dipped the dry end of the weed into the flame. His hands were old, the skin cracked here and there, but showed no signs of a lifetime of hard physical labor like the other men, in town, young and old. On the contrary, his fingers were long and had a delicate touch. The old man threw his head back and drank in the smoke luxuriously, as though he had been smoking, and enjoying it, all his life.

  “Want to sit down?”

  The old fellow pinched his pant legs above the knee and sat down a couple of chairs away. He made a show of crossing his legs and getting completely comfortable, indulging in a moment of relaxation as though he really had someplace else to be, taking another long pull on his cigarette, holding it in, aiming his lips at a point in the ceiling, and letting it out slow.

  “So, you’re a roughneck,” the old man ascertained correctly, eyeing the mud on the floor. “But you didn’t get those premature gray hairs on the floor of no oil rig.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I bin around, I know a lot of things.”

  “My name is Zak Harper.”

  The old man took a long second before lifting his hand and placing it in Zak’s. The handshake was weak and noncommittal and the old-timer waited patiently for Zak to relax his grip before taking his hand back. Zak again reminded himself to quit shaking hands so much.

  “I’m Corey,” he paused to see if the name rang a bell. “Corey Nightingale.”

  “I’m glad to know you, Corey.”

  “And I’m glad to know you. Some of the folks in town who don’t know any better call me Crazy Corey. Ever hear that name?”

  “No.”

  “Some others call me Moony, ’cause they say I’m Moon Mad,” he said with what Zak thought was either a touch of pride, or irony, or mirth, maybe all three. Zak waited a few beats, making sure to exhibit no outward signs positive or negative.

  “I like it here in Scobey,” Zak said, hoping to bring them to more familiar ground. “I came up here a week or so ago from down in Watford City.”

  “Oh I know. You’re the one’s here to replace that kid who got run off.”

  “Yeah, that’s me,” Zak chortled. He was
struck slightly dumb. It seemed as though everyone he met these days knew all about him. Like it had been in the news or something. Flash! Zak Harper arrives in Scobey! New Bomac Worm Survives First Week on Widowmaker! Lives Outside! Builds Fire! Eats Weird Food! “Well, this neck of the woods is a bit more relaxed. I’ve been real lucky to date. I don’t have much money and that rancher who leases the land our rig is on was nice enough to let me pitch a tent right on his old fishing hole.”

  “Yeah?” Corey scratched his freshly shaved chin and took another pull on his cigarette. “Well, it’s got to beat sleepin’ out in the park,” he said spitting smoke through a soft chuckle. “There’s an old hot dog stand in that park, in case you ever need to get in out of the rain. By the way, who’d you talk to over there?”

  “Over where, oh, you mean the rancher? I guess I talked to the man himself.”

  Corey nodded his head. His shrewd look told Zak that every name and every place in this region was going to be very well known to him.

  “Oh, I see. So you spoke with Mr. Coster himself, did you?”

  “I must have.”

  “Well, I know that fishing hole. It sets next to an old outhouse that old Coster built himself back in the thirties. He and his boy liked to camp out there overnight and just keep fishin’ all the next day. He lost that boy somewhere along the line.”

  “How so?”

  “How? How does anyone lose anything? Hmm,” Corey scrutinized Zak carefully. “There’s a lotta things you don’t know, I can tell. Oh, you’re a smart one, no doubt, but there’s a lotta things you don’t know. I’ll bet you think ol’ Coster stands to make a bundle if you guys strike oil, hmm? Well, he won’t make a dime. That’s right.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because people are of the opinion that if oil is found on their land that their problems are over, but they’re wrong, and when people find out that they’re wrong, they get mighty upset. You know that. Have you ever heard of the Burlington Northern Railroad?”

  “Should I have?”

  “Maybe you should have and maybe you shouldn’t. Do you think that just because a man owns the land, what’s on the surface, he also owns what’s underneath?”

  “Well, I would imagine any rancher, landowner, would know the difference between surface rights and mineral rights.”

  “Never occurred to many a poor rancher and farmer too. I’ll tell you what. But mineral rights take precedence over surface rights. Now a hundred years ago or so when the government wanted the big railroads to connect the East with cattle country, they gave the railroads the land to put their tracks on, and the railroads negotiated for so many miles of land on either side of those tracks. So when time came to sell off all the land they owned, they sold the surface but kept the mineral rights. Now if they think there’s oil under there, or anything else worth a good Yankee dollar, they just come and get it, like you boys with your rig. Don’t get me wrong, ol’ Coster gets a pretty penny for his inconvenience, but it don’t amount to a thing compared to say, one percent of any oil you might find. See? Now there’s something you thought you knew…” The old man sat back with a satisfied grin and stared off as though he could see through the walls of the laundromat to the world outside.

  Okay, thought Zak, maybe this guy is a little nuts.

  “You said he lost his son?”

  “Well, yeah, y’see, after ol’ Coster realized his boy was gone and wasn’t comin’ back, he never used that ol’ fishin’ hole much.” Then Corey Nightingale suddenly caught a notion and looked at Zachary Harper with a newly suspicious eye. “Y’know, Coster, he’s kinda particular about who’s usin’ that fishin’ hole. He musta taken a likin’ to you. Yes he sure musta. So I’ll give you a tip. You stand at the door of that old outhouse and you look up the hill right in front of you, then you walk up to the top of that hill, you’ll find somethin’ you didn’t know was there, and I’ll tell you something else not too many men know.”

  “Yeah?” Zak didn’t know whether to simply humor the old guy until his laundry was done or make real inquiries. What happened to the son? What’s at the top of the hill? Wait and see.

  “Coster, he’s a rich and powerful man,” Corey’s tone dropped to a hushed type of whisper usually accorded privileged information. “He’s got an airplane and he flies it himself. He likes to go to Las Vegas. He’ll jump into that plane of his and he’ll scoot down there for the weekend. He’s got good-looking women that he sees down there. That kind of thing. Yeah, he sure knows how to spend the money on the ladies to get’m to do what he wants. He flies up here a day or two later and his wife Nancy is never the wiser. Bin doin’ that fer years. Bet ya didn’t know that?” And Corey sat back again and grinned a self-satisfied grin.

  “Well, that all might be true,” Zak smiled, giving the stranger the benefit of the doubt. “Of course, I wouldn’t know. But Mr. Coster struck me differently.”

  “That’s because you’re from back East and you only believe what you see and what you hear, or what you’ve heard or what you’ve read from someone who told you you had to believe’m on accounta they should know. But out here things are different. There’s a lotta things you don’t know.”

  Zak was suddenly aware of the hot temperature there in the laundromat, the noisy drone of the machines, the echo of his and Corey’s voices, loud one minute, hushed and careful the next, the sweet stinging odor of the detergents and bleaches and diesel. The old man’s clothes had a stink to them too, masked only slightly by hand soap and Old Spice.

  “Well, anyway,” Zak tried again, “he’s got a good spot out there. It’s just right for me, for now. That’s why I’m sorry I’ve got to leave it next week as we’re changing locations.”

  Corey’s eyes brightened, “You bottomed out? You bin told where that new location’s gonna be yet?”

  “I’ve heard it’s somewhere south of town, but no, we haven’t been told exactly where.”

  “Well,” Corey sat back, shifted his weight on his chair several times, crossed and recrossed his legs. “There are a lot of powerful men in this town. You wouldn’t know it, but I do. I’ll tell you something else. I know exactly where that next location is going to be. And yeah, there’s probably a man or two down around that country that might let a guy have a spot for a while.

  “Now you take Stitch Cronan, for example,” Corey rolled on. “Stitch is a big powerful man. Six foot two or better, two hundred fifty pounds ’r more. I suggest you chat with him about a place to stay. Old Stitch had a shack down on a ranch he owns south of Scobey. I lived in that shack once, though that was many years ago. It’s a square little place with four rooms. There’s three chairs and a sofa. A single bed in the bedroom with the springs busted out on the right side of it. If I remember correctly, that shack might even have electricity.”

  “When did you stay there?”

  “Oh, about twenty, twenty-five years ago. No reason to think it ain’t still there. I was workin’ for Stitch back then but times change, don’t they? Anyway, I’m sure ol’ Stitch don’t use it much. Maybe during hunting season, y’know?”

  “So how do I find this guy?”

  “Ah. Hmm, well, Stitch isn’t a hard guy to find if you know where to look. He’s got a new Dodge ’79 pickup. Blue. Randy Hughes has a red TrailBlazer; you might see Stitch riding with Randy from time to time. Sometimes Stitch can be seen riding in a ’77 Toronado belonging to Carey O’Niel. Stitch helps her out once a week with chores, odd jobs, and the like. The type of stuff a man might do for a woman. Especially if he was in love with her. Carey O’Niel is a beautiful woman and half the town thinks there’s something funny going on with her’n Stitch, but I’m here to tell you it ain’t so. She’s the widow of one of Stitch’s best friends, Skipper O’Niel. Old Skipper got crushed under his wheat combine and that was the end of him. Messy ugly way to go.

  “Stitch has a place at the south end of Main h
ere. He’s got another spot north of town and a spread south of town where your next location’s gonna be. Yes, Stitch Cronan is a very important and powerful man. Loves sports. He announces all the Scobey High School basketball and football games. He’s got his own plane too.”

  Zak thought Corey might be getting his stories mixed up.

  “You watch football, doncha Zak?”

  “I used to.”

  “Tell me somethin’. Do you believe that everybody on that field is who they’re supposed to be?”

  “I never gave it any thought but right now I’d believe just about anything.”

  “Well, hmmm, there aren’t too many people know this. Stitch Cronan, he loves to play football. I mean, he really loves it. He’ll jump in that plane of his and he’ll fly down to Houston, or L.A., or San Diego. He’ll be settin’ there on the bench wearing somebody else’s name, somebody else’s number, but Stitch Cronan, he’ll play. Y’know? There’s quite a few guys like Stitch Cronan. It happens more’n you’d think. Not too many people know it. I know it. Now you know it too.”

  Corey began emptying his pockets, searching for something. Before long, on the seat between them, there was a pile of all his worldly possessions. A small tube of toothpaste, a toothbrush, a comb, a couple of old handkerchiefs, a slug of chewing tobacco, and a disposable razor. From an inside pocket he pulled out four small bundles of business cards, each bundle held by a rubber band. As he thumbed through each stack, he paused here and there to give Zak a brief sketch of certain “powerful individuals” from all around the country. This man was from Texas, this one from Chicago, here’s one from St. Louis who is wealthy and has this, that, or the other thing. Corey drew up intimate dossiers on each, reciting facts that even their loved ones couldn’t know about them. Stories so incredible they were believable. Zak nodded his head all the while encouraging Corey to continue on, until Corey Nightingale realized he was being regarded as a serious man.