Roughnecks

by James J. Patterson

  His temper flared viciously. He wanted to fling his glass at the row of bottles in front of him. Maybe get the attention of one of these silent sleepy cadavers warming their bloodless arses there at the bar on either side of him. In any event, that Frank had been up his ass for two solid weeks. “Keep ’er drillin’, keep ’er drillin’, keep ’er drillin’.” Frank had been good-natured about it, was aware of all the stress they were under, but how in the hell was he supposed to keep ’er drillin’ when he had just one good crew and they were runnin’ another goddamned test every time he turned the fuck around? Huh? And don’t tell me it’s the boys down in Houston, they go along with you, Frank. We’ve been chewin’ up bits right and left what with all the formations we’ve been goin’ through, but every time we get a new bit back on bottom and start turnin’ to the right again, out come the friggin’ Halliburton boys and another tower, or two, or three, would be lost findin’ out what we already knew. We haven’t found any goddamned oil yet! Had the hole caved in? No. Had we lost pipe in the hole? No. Lose a bit? No. This ain’t Bakersfield, California, where the weather’s fine and there’s everything you need right at your fingertips. This is the fucking Overthrust Belt man! Deal with it! Oh yeah, and here’s Frank, standing there by the geolograph, holding up a printout and wondering out loud why we haven’t gone down but fifty feet in three friggin’ days. George had wanted to grab that skinny fuckin’ city boy by his store-bought button-down denim cowboy shirt and just beat the snot out of him.

  And George Cleaver laughed quietly, angrily, out loud.

  Jesse and Rory he could count on, Carl and Andy he had to watch. Everyone knew that Jesse and his boys were the ones doin’ the lion’s share of the work. When George tried to apologize for all the extra responsibility he had heaped on them, Lancaster would snort, and spit, and say in that singsong voice he used when accepting a challenge, “Well, the boys are getting a bit blue around the gills but I think they’ll give it another go for ya, George.” It was told among the older drillers he knew down in Watford, who had been out roughneckin’ in the old days down in Gillette, and it was told by the company hands and the other tool pushers like himself that Jesse had, in his younger days, worked the floor all by himself. That’s something he would have liked to have seen. And Jesse, more than ten years older than George, was still up there on that drillin’ floor, gettin’ it! Jesse could make a cat laugh the way he’d jerk his shoulders and wiggle his eyebrows and look all about the room before volunteering to do the impossible. “Aw shit, George, we can git ’er!”

  At least there wouldn’t be a worm driller on that brake handle when he arrived back on location later, George thought. He bought a pint of bourbon from Hal and resigned himself to getting tight and sleeping it off before that morning crew came on about eleven p.m.

  As he ambled out to his pickup, George mulled it all over. He knew Frank had been a well-respected driller before hiring out as a company hand. But he had only pushed tools for a short period before moving up the food chain. Ideally, you’d want that company hand to be a damn good toolpusher as well. George, representing Bomac, Frank representing the oil conglomerate, should be in lock step, but not always. George knew he had done a marvelous job getting results out here, but those results just weren’t always gonna jive with what Texas wanted to hear. Everyone looked at the same reports the geologists were making. Everyone started out on the same page. So how did we get here? Wherever the fuck “here” is.

  He looked up and down the street. The sun was setting. It was a beautiful fall evening. Then he looked at the dismal street with its closed shops and sleepy countenance. “This town needs a whorehouse,” he said out loud before climbing into his truck. He reminded himself to get each of Jesse’s boys a case of beer next time they went on days off.

  Of course, he never did.

  WHEN GEORGE ARRIVED BACK ON location, Marty and Jon were just coming down the stairs from up on the floor as they saw him pull up. Aware of George’s volatile disposition, they watched with mischievous glee as he hobbled out of his pickup, tucked the little brown sack under his arm as he reached for his stuff off the front seat, snarled deliriously at all and sundry, and stagger over to his trailer, slamming the door shut behind him. The boys knew for sure that drilling towers like this one would be few and far between during this nasty little stretch. Jesse had told them all to take it easy. No problem there.

  Zak had busied himself all evening with scrubbing the light plant. This was a thankless chore as light plant engines raise such a screaming racket that it’s hard to be in there for more than a few minutes without going insane. Regardless, Zak had done his usual thorough job. When he was done, he went looking for the boys to see if they needed a hand with whatever it was they were about. He had fallen into the habit of bugging the fellas for projects, and tonight they were ready for him. After looking nearly everywhere, he at last found Jon and Marty under the rig cleaning up the BOP, or blow-out preventer, that sits atop the hole anticipating disaster.

  “Dis big ting has big old rams in it that cut off the flow upward if we hit a gas pocket and it wants to burp up all dat pipe’n mud!” Marty explained.

  “Anything I can do?” Zak asked. Marty straightened his ovoid shape and, tilting his muddied hard hat, gave his brow a wipe with his right forearm.

  “Yeah,” Marty said, half-distracted. Jon, meanwhile, was moving around the huge BOP with a rag and a scrub brush paying them no mind. “You can git ober to dat tool putcher’s shack and tell ’im we need d’keys to d’V-doors right now, okay?”

  Zak was off at a trot. Not knowing what the V-doors were or, for that matter, the microscopic length of George Cleaver’s fuse. Jon and Marty stepped cautiously from under the rig and watched as Zak marched over to the toolpusher’s trailer and tapped politely on the door. No answer. He knocked again.

  Inside the trailer, the tappety-tap-tap at the door invaded George Cleaver’s tumultuous slumber much the same way the company hand’s timid little rapping would. A wave of nauseating disgust brought him spinning unpleasantly back to the surface of consciousness.

  “Fuck off Frank,” he hollered and rolled over.

  The door opened. Zachary Harper stepped lightly into the trailer.

  He walked quietly to the back, where the toolpusher’s shadowy form lay in a heap. Zak was about to make the fatal mistake of reaching out and touching him when Cleaver’s voice, cold, hard, and alert, issued from the hulkish adumbration there on the cot in the darkness.

  “Did you come in here to wake me up?” He sounded terribly awake.

  “Yes sir.”

  “Then what the hell are you tiptoein’ for?” George swung his feet off the cot, and they landed on the floor with a menacing thump. He reached for the pint by his bedstand and took a long, wet pull on it. “This better be fucking good,” he snarled and slapped his palms against his chest pockets, looking for his cigs. Thirty-five years of smoking filterless cigarettes added just the right amount of gravel to his voice. Zak took a cautionary step backwards.

  Outside, across the square patch of dirt between the row of trailers and the rig, Jon and Marty were standing together, sheepishly awaiting the outcome of Zak’s interview. They were getting worried. Uh-oh looks spread across their faces. Things were just too quiet. Zak, after all, was a nice guy. Their consciences were beginning to bother them.

  “We lose pipe in the hole?” George asked.

  “No.”

  “The number one engine down?”

  “No.”

  “Anybody get killed?”

  “No.”

  “Then what the hell do you want!”

  “I need the keys to the V-doors.”

  There was a long silence. Zak held out hope that George, once awake, would realize that this was official business and hand over the keys so that Zak could be on his way and let George get back to sleep.

  “You son of a b
itch.”

  “Excuse me?” Zak said quietly, confused and utterly blank.

  George sprang from the cot and slammed an open palm against Zak’s chest, driving him into the wall forcing every square inch of wind from his lungs. George’s fist clutched shirt, chest hair, and skin. With his other hand he grabbed Zak by the belt and, lifting poor Zak clean off his feet, carried him hard into the wall behind him, bringing him forward and back again and again with mythological ferocity, a cataract of oaths peeling unintelligibly off George’s tongue.

  “You!” slam! “son!” slam! “of!” slam! “a!” slam! “bitch!” slam! Next he dragged Zak to the door, knocking things clanging and clattering on their way and flung him bodily out. Zak hit the ground hard a full five feet from the trailer with George leaping out right after him just a-howling!

  Marty and Jon came trotting up and stopped in their tracks when they saw George Cleaver’s face. Between them lay Zachary Harper, pawing and squirming in the dirt, fighting for air.

  “If you weren’t the only crew worth a good goddamn on this rig I’d run yer asses off right this minute!” George bellowed, and in two steps was hovering over the three roughnecks staring right down at Zachary Harper. “I want to know who sent yer ass in t’see me! Who was it? You goddamn,” just then, Freddy Fifer, of all people, stepped in from out of nowhere and placed himself squarely between that toolpusher and Jon, Marty, and Zak.

  “C-c’m-mon, G-G-George, wha-what’s ’ah m-matter? They didn’t mean n-nothin?!” No one had ever heard Freddy stutter before and George peered into Freddy’s fat worried face as if to ascertain whether or not the roughneck was fakin’ it, trying to make a monkey out of him. He wasn’t. George stopped.

  “George!” Jesse came trotting up. Calm and serious, he pushed the others away. He got right up in George’s face and said quietly, “You know I can’t have you gettin’ tough with my hands, George. Jesus George, you bin drinkin’!”

  There was a long silence.

  “I’m not gonna say nuttin’ ’bout that George, but now I gotta go talk to my crew, and if they wanna twist off, then we’ll have to sack’m up.”

  “Aw shit,” George said and went back inside his trailer.

  Jon, Freddy, and Marty helped Zak to his feet. He was shaking. While Jon and Marty dusted him off, Freddy found his bent-up spectacles and handed them to the worm.

  Jesse looked from Marty to Jon. “You two get back down to that BOP and finish what you started. Then you come up to the top doghouse for a meetin’.” Looking at Freddy he said, “Git on over there and see if you can’t give them other prick-a-lutes a hand.” When Freddy was gone, he turned to Zak. “Are you all right?”

  Zak nodded. He didn’t think anything was broken, but his wind hadn’t entirely returned. He put his hands on his knees and leaned forward. Long strands of saliva escaped his lips and for a long minute they both thought he was going to puke.

  “C’mon up to the doghouse with me.”

  Zak tried to straighten out his glasses as they walked toward the rig. Inside the top doghouse, Jesse poured Zak a half cup of burned coffee, filling the cup the rest of the way from a bottle of Black Velvet he had stashed in his locker. “Don’t tell anybody you seen this,” he said and poured a shot, straight, into his own cup. Zak took a few sips. He was coming back to earth.

  “Yeah,” Jesse leaned back against the knowledge box and reached for a cigarette.

  “What happened, the boys send you in there?”

  “To get the keys to the V-doors. I take it that’s a joke.”

  “Yeah, shit. Them assholes. C’mon out here a sec.” The two men polished off their drinks and stepped out onto the brightly lit floor. Zak’s chest was becoming mighty sore. Jesse put an arm around Zak’s shoulder, turned him around, and pointed to a big empty space at the far end of the floor.

  “Y’see Zak, down there you got yer catwalk?”

  “Yeah,”

  “Okay, then you got yer beaver slide that comes up to the floor here?”

  “Right,”

  “Well then, you see that big empty space at the end of the floor over top that beaver slide?”

  “Yes,”

  “Them’s yer V-doors, son.”

  Back in the doghouse Freddy arrived, looking very tense. Jon and Marty followed, looking alternately sheepish and disgusted. Jon got a coffee, Freddy found a stool. After a second they all stared at Jesse.

  “Okay, look, no toolpusher’s got the right to lay a hand on one of my crew. As far as I can see, Zak’s got every reason to twist off.” Jesse looked directly at Jon and Marty. “And if he twists, I can’t see any reason the rest of us shouldn’t either.”

  “Sure thing,” Freddy spoke right up.

  “It’d mean headin’ back to Watford,” Marty was thoughtful, nodding his head. That would be fine with him.

  “It’d serve that cocksucker right,” Jon said scornfully. “He’ll have a hell of a time gettin’ another crew to come way the fuck out here.”

  “The other crews would have to pull a double,” Jesse speculated.

  “Yeah, an’ let dem get somb ob d’fun we bin gettin’!” Marty almost smiled.

  Jesse turned to Zak and said, “Are we twistin’ off?”

  Zak leaned back against a locker, hooked his thumbs in his pockets, and looked down at the floor. “Jesus.”

  The three other roughnecks all started talking at once. “We should go over there and demand an apology and then decide.” “Or maybe we oughta just go over there and beat the shit out of’m.” “We could turn that fuckin’ trailer of his over on its side before we leave.” “He’s bin takin’ advantage of you Jesse, not just us, y’know.”

  Jesse held up a hand and said loudly, “That’s enough.” Turning to Zak, he said, “Now I’m askin’ you a question, mister. Are we twistin’ off?”

  Everybody was primed for Zak to say yes, and right up until he opened his mouth, that’s what he intended to say. But as he went to speak he realized it would mean everyone would miss their bottom-hole pay, breaking up the crew, returning to Watford and starting all over again.

  “No.”

  “That’s all I want to know.”

  “I can’t see quittin’ over a misunderstanding that was largely my fault,” Zak was thinking out loud, sorting his way through this mess, but was also willing to go with whatever the group decided. The room was silent. All eyes were on him. “On another night, hell, I might’ve caught on. It mighta been funny.”

  “Poor judgment,” said Marty.

  “All the way around,” said Jon.

  “Good move, Zak!” Freddy almost cheered.

  They nodded their heads and went about their business. As they went out the door, Zak felt a cool breeze through his hair. Shit. No hat. He sighed, walked down the stairs, crossed the wide muddy patch between the rig and where the company hand and the toolpusher had their trailers, and knocked on George Cleaver’s door.

  After several more knocks, the door opened and a sleepy George Cleaver looked at Zak with disbelief.

  “I left my hat in there.”

  “C’mon in.” Inside Zak picked his hat up off the floor. As he stepped to the door, George said, “That shouldn’t’ve happened tonight.”

  “You’re right.”

  “Jesse’s got the best crew on the rig. He says you’re workin’ out real good too. You twistin’?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Anything else I can do for ya?”

  “Not that I can think of.”

  “Goodnight then.”

  THE ONLY OTHER DRILLIN’ TOWER that week fell on Wednesday, and Zak spent most of the day scrubbing and keeping his eye on that kelly. As it turned down and down, there was a point when he could no longer see it from the ground and soon he could hear the whip-cracking hiss and thunder from the floor and know that
Jesse was picking up on ’er. Then it was a matter of dropping everything and running like a madman to assume his position for the next connection. As the evening progressed Zak would, from time to time, drift up to that top doghouse for a cup of coffee and a cigarette and bullshit with the guys. Jesse had them unload a shipment of bits and had some other projects for them, but mostly they were on their own. Just before quitting time, Zak went up to that top doghouse again to see if there were any last chores to be done and found Jon and Jesse having a cup of Black Velvet coffee, chatting about changing location in the next couple of days.

  “You can bet ol’ Rusty’ll have us layin’ down pipe tomorrow,” Jesse was saying as Zak entered the room.

  “Yeah, well, breakin’ those joints every thirty feet instead of ninety, plus havin’ to run ’em all down that beaver slide one by one’s, gonna be a bitch,” Jon complained. “Wish we had a laydown machine. Do we get another crew to help out?”

  “Shit,” Jesse spat into the waste bucket, “we can git ’er.”

  Something about Jon’s cantankerous attitude made Jesse smile. “Hey, y’know? I hear them new Canadian rigs don’t need a junk basket when they tear down.”

  “No?”

  “Nope, they open a big hole right there in the floor and the tongs and everything are just lowered down and they’ll be right there waitin’ when you nipple back up instead of having to raise and lower everything over the side in those old junk baskets.”

  “Makes sense,” Jon said with an irksome harumph, as if it had been legislated somewhere that practical, labor-saving ideas were not to be employed by any rig employing him as a crew member. Suddenly Jon and Jesse looked up as though they had just noticed Zak standing there, and Jon smiled over at Jesse. “Y’know, I kinda like the way ol’ Rusty rearranged Harper’s glasses. Makes him look just crazier’n shit. What d’ya say,” he threw a nod at his driller, “what d’ya think of that new worm? Is he gonna make it?”

  Jesse’s smile slowly faded and he stared thoughtfully into his coffee cup. He gave it a delicate little shake and watched the swirling liquid for a long moment. When he looked up, he was staring straight at Zachary Harper. The look on Jesse’s face was serious as a heart attack.