Roughnecks

by James J. Patterson

  “Yeah, he’ll do all right, he’s a hand. But I’ll tell you one thing, he ain’t never farmed.”

  IX

  Jesse Lancaster had always wanted to go to sea. He had taken a boat up to Alaska from Seattle to Anchorage, had worked for a brief stint offshore up there, but he had never fulfilled his lifelong dream—to stand on the deck of his own seaworthy vessel, in the midst of a long, uncertain voyage, and contemplate the vastness of oceanic space; to inhale the salty vagabond winds. To see with his naked eyes, unobstructed, three hundred and sixty degrees, the curvature of the earth. To glimpse with wonder all manner of unknowable life, sustaining, enduring, perpetuating, undisturbed or merely unconcerned with the human travelers who ride the hazardous unpredictable border of hydrosphere and gaseosphere. Sometimes in early evening or along about dawn, when the prairie breezes came up breathlike over his menial sanguine form, he would stand upon the rig’s quarterdeck, gazing across the rolling turbulent landscape of the Williston Basin and imagine the rig an old but hardy steamer bounding over the waves. In a way, the rig was like a ship, self-sufficient, with its own power source and crews, its own mission to perform. He was its captain. He would look up through the girders on the tower and view the huge mountainous clouds rolling overhead, or the movement of the stars as the earth turned beneath them, and for a fleeting moment he could stir within himself the sensation of that movement, and he would hold to his brake handle as though it were the rudder of the world.

  That the Williston Basin had been a great lake millions of years ago made profound and perfect sense to Jesse Lancaster. Special drill bits were needed to chew through fossil and shell formations at those depths. Jesse would sometimes pause by the shale-shaker there along the catwalk and reach his hand into the delicious muck and find shells and strange fragments of prehistoric life. He kept the most unusual specimens in a shoebox back in his trailer. The then and the now were somehow connected through him, he could feel it. And that feeling is what kept him going.

  Tonight there was something out of sync, something disturbing and wrong. He was restless and uncomfortable, jittery and on edge. The worst of it was that this feeling had come upon him for no apparent reason. The engines sang, the pipe turned to the right, Carl and that Cowboy Crew were going about their duties, and everything was running sweet. Now that the decision had been made to begin rigging down the following day, even George was beginning to behave like a human being again.

  But Jesse paced in the top doghouse. He had remained behind after tower this night, when the rest of the boys had gone their separate ways, with the intention of giving Marty and Cynthia a little privacy, but really, he was attempting to remain in a familiar place long enough to give those shadowy forms lurking below the surface of his memory a chance to reveal themselves.

  Surprisingly, he found himself staring into the kindly face of Flip Johnson, the first man he had seen die in the patch.

  How tough it was back then for young men willing to work! A job so hard to find in this harsh and pitiless territory. You’d take anything! And a roughneckin’ job? Men would come from miles away. Leave their families! At every location stood lines of hungry, desperate men waiting for a chance to show what they could do. The man on the rig who fucked up once, or got hurt, was replaced right then and there by the next man in line, and if he couldn’t get ’er he couldn’t stay. Getting some experience was the hardest part of it all. On Flip Johnson’s second day of work he had been told to climb the derrick and replace some cable, had lost his footing, and on the way down he had torn his strong hands into unrecognizable clumps of raw meat and bone pulling on that cable in a futile attempt to break his fall. Another man was called from the line of hopefuls and the work had gone on. There was Pete Cavenaugh, a driller who had gotten his arm caught up in the chain as it sucked into the cathead, tearing the limb completely off in the longest split second Jesse had ever experienced. On the way into town they ran out of gas. Pete bled to death. Eight pints. Doesn’t sound like much, does it. Jesse could sit down and drink eight pints of beer without batting an eye.

  It’s a lot of blood.

  When he moved up the ranks and became a driller, suddenly responsible for the lives of his crew, the condition of the rig, the integrity of the hole, he vowed that no one stranger’s fortune would be worth the life and limbs of one of his own, and his crews, throughout the long years, had been grateful, loyal, and like family.

  Family.

  Jesse shook his head, pushing the truly unbearable images back. Not tonight, he thought. Besides, the patch had broken many a roughneck’s heart. She was a tough mistress. He didn’t consider his particular set of heartbreaks and disappointments at all different or special.

  He poured himself a drink and pulled up a stool beside the knowledge box where he could watch from the corner of his eye the goings-on out on the floor. Carl was at the brake handle and he was really putting his boys through their paces. They were sloppy and inefficient. Yet they attacked their jobs with such enthusiasm Jesse had to smile. Yeah, they were something. They were all cursing and sweating, dropping things, blaming one another for their own mistakes. In spite of it all, they were getting the job done. He laughed to think that most people in town didn’t even know this rig was here. Oh yeah, the bar, restaurant, and hotel crowd knew, but not the rank and file, the early to bed early to rise church-going ma and pa taxpayers. Usually, Jesse took solace in the relative obscurity of his profession, but not tonight.

  “No one knows what goes on in the oil field,” he said through a sigh. And, fittingly, his words were drowned out by the hiss and roar of the engines and the clang and clank of iron and chain.

  Zak, come to think of it, should be throwing chain, thought Jesse Lancaster. The way Zak watches Freddy and roots him on, he seems chompin’ at the bit to give ’er a whirl. Freddy’s next in line though, the job should rightfully go to him and if the kid succeeds it’ll make something out of him he couldn’t have accomplished in two lifetimes.

  Like Ziggy.

  What a funny little guy that Ziggy was. Jesse had been on more than one crew where the current driller was simply voted off that brake handle and Ziggy voted on. Jesse believed it was Ziggy who taught him that smooth-as-silk touch when bringing that pipe out of the hole, how the flow of the moving pipe could increase or decrease with the fluid movements of a well-working crew. Or how to take a little weight off the bit while turning to the right so the entire weight of the drill stem wouldn’t force the bit to go anywhere else but down down down. “Seeing downhole,” Ziggy called it. He claimed he could close his eyes and see the walls of that hole plain as day by just touching that brake handle. Jesse always chuckled at such a notion. Then he frowned.

  “It’s just tradin’ one form of warfare for another!” Ziggy reasoned lightheartedly when he left the patch to fight in Korea. Well, many a good man hadn’t returned from the Williston Basin either.

  When Jesse was still a worm, he and his crew arrived at work one evening to find everyone on location dead. They had unexpectedly hit a pocket of H2S. You could almost see it, invisible waves in the air like heat rising off a tarmac. The first whiff you know there’s something very wrong. The second whiff drops you. The third whiff you’re dead.

  Right now Jesse could smell trouble.

  He searched his memories for some clue to his present confusion. His stomach turned. These things had made an old man of him, he reckoned. Or were about to. Every day he would look in the mirror and wonder if today was the day his age would suddenly catch up with him. How long would he be able to trust his faculties? How much longer could he get ’er? Tonight he felt as though he had come upon an unexpected crossroads. Over the years wisdom and experience had replaced youth and bravado, and this had been a comfortable thing. Would he find out too late if he was slipping? Most men, even the good ones, had gotten out long before this. The only guy he knew who was older than he and still drilling was old
Blackwell. Blackie would say, “Who gives a rat’s ass how old you are, Jesse? Drill till you drop son, drill till ya drop!” Yeah, there was a roughneck for you, true blue, tried and true, through and through.

  Before dawn he ambled back to his trailer and lay down on his cot. His joints felt different, uncomfortable, strange. Like he was in someone else’s body. There were new aches and pains. His ears reached beyond the sound of Marty and Cynthia, both snoring in the back, beyond the incessant harangue of the engines out on the rig, to seek the comforting rhythm of ocean waves lapping pleasantly at the sides of his lonesome trawler. As he began to drift, he spoke softly to old phantoms who came to pay their respects. Dream images loomed perilously in the darkness behind his eyes, like moving stately mountains of floating ice in a near yet incalculable distance.

  THE FOLLOWING DAY MARTY WAS not required in the tower, so he was free to assist the men on the floor. It was Zak’s first opportunity to observe Marty in action for any length of time and only then did Zak notice the severity of Marty’s problem with his walking. To call it a disability would have been wrong. He got around just fine. He didn’t walk so much as he bounced along on the sides of his feet with his toes turned in. He moved swiftly and fluidly with premeditation. His body compensated for his awkward gait, trying to let his feet touch ground as little as possible. Indeed, whatever the nature of his peculiar walk it seemed uniquely tailored for climbing girders, hopping down catwalks and up beaver slides, as though he had had his feet broken and realigned for that very purpose.

  Their job was to pull over six thousand feet of drill string and lay the individual thirty-foot sections of pipe down on the ground. As the pipe came out of the hole, Jesse would bring it to a stop after every joint instead of every three. The men would throw in their slips, disconnect the pipe with their tongs, and then push the pipe over to the beaver slide where the boom line was attached and the elevators removed. This was the tricky part of the procedure, because the guys would have to steady it with their hands to prevent the pipe from rolling side to side as the boom line was fixed to one end. Then, like Keystone Kops, they would run single-file down the long flight of stairs in time to catch the pipe, disconnect the boom line, and lay the pipe down in racks on the ground. From there it was back up the stairs on the double to attach the next joint waiting to be hauled out of the hole. They repeated this action over two hundred times. In just seven hours, the job was done.

  George Cleaver was amazed. When all that pipe was down and ready for the roustabout crews to arrive and load it on the flatbeds to be hauled to the next location, George took Jesse aside and said, “Look, just let the boys take it easy for the rest of the tower. Empty out the mud pits and that’ll be that. Take a hose to ’em and call it quits.”

  Then George climbed into his pickup and left to run errands before the next shift came on. He had a lot on his mind. He listed his priorities. Of the four crews he had teaming up over the next couple of days, two of them had worm drillers. The next immediate step would be to tear down that kelly. No small chore. It’s a massive chunk of iron, as big as a full-sized car and even heavier. He was sure as hell that Carl didn’t have the slightest notion how to do it quickly and properly. After all the work he had thrown at Jesse and his crew these past three weeks, he felt guilty asking them to do any more, especially after the day they had just put in. He didn’t have time to supervise up on the floor, however, and that kelly absolutely had to come down. He brought his pickup to a halt, cursed one time, then turned around and beat it back to location.

  Zak, Marty, and Jon were down opening the trap doors, letting the mud flow into the reserve pit. Jesse and Freddy were at the top of the stairs having a chat. It had been one hell of a day. They had never performed better as a crew and everyone could feel it. Everyone was up. Jesse hadn’t had to rattle that iron once to get their attention. Instead, he’d rattle that big iron as a way of hootin’ and hollerin’ at the ferocious pace they were able to maintain! Even Freddy had at last found himself. He was Jesse Lancaster’s chainhand. Freddy could tell there was no longer the shadow of a doubt in his driller’s mind whether or not his new chainhand could get ’er. Jon, normally flip and sarcastic where Freddy’s roughnecking skills were concerned, hadn’t chided him once all day about being too slow or too fat.

  Jesse threw a soft elbow at Freddy to get his attention and nodded tellingly in the direction of rig road. From the top of the stairs, they could see a considerable distance through the winding lumpy sage-covered humps of earth. The dust had hardly settled from George’s truck when there in the distance came those headlights back again, bouncing down the road, kicking up dust in the other direction. Jesse knew what it meant. Freddy had a good idea. They both looked at their watches. Whatever he wants, we’re too tired for this, Jesse thought wearily.

  George came huffing up the stairs wearing his most apologetic face.

  “What happened, Georgie boy?” Jesse smiled. “You ferget to kiss us goodbye?”

  “I just got to thinkin’, Jess, we got that worm driller and his bunch comin’ on after you there, and well, I hate to ask you this, but before you finish up, let’s disconnect that kelly and give that Cowboy Crew a head start getting it out of the way.”

  Jesse looked at his watch again, for George’s benefit, and finally, after turning it over in his mind, shook his head no.

  “I can’t ask my boys to do that for you George, hell, we’re half-dead as it is. But I’ll tell you what I will do. I’ll stay up here with you and we can get those cowboys started, and if they can’t get ’er, we’ll babysit till Rory and them come on in the morning. As loosey goosey as them cowboys are, they’re roughnecks after all, and it’s roughneck work, and if they can’t get ’er, well…” his eyebrows danced.

  “I know, I know, you’re right,” George wrinkled his brow. He looped his giant thumbs through his denim belt loops and pondered.

  Meanwhile, Freddy’s eyes bulged as he looked up at the big kelly. He whistled, and breathed a sigh of relief.

  “All right Jesse, you’re right, relief should be here any minute, I’ll be in the doghouse,” George Cleaver turned and headed for the top doghouse door, and Freddy made for the stairs.

  I’m Jesse Lancaster’s chainhand, thought Freddy Fifer, can ya beat it!

  But as George Cleaver reached that doghouse door, he turned and pointed to the pipe sitting in the mousehole. It was the last piece of the drill stem that hadn’t yet been sent down the beaver slide.

  “Well at least let’s get that bit off and packed away. We’ll let them cowboys take it from there.”

  At least? thought Jesse Lancaster, and he walked over to the top of the stair where he could see his chainhand already halfway down. He looked toward the reserve pits but couldn’t see Zak, Marty, or Jon anywhere. He figured they’d come running when they heard the motors and saw that kelly moving.

  He called Freddy back.

  “Sorry Fred, we ain’t done yet,” Jesse apologized as Freddy huffed and puffed back up the stairs. We gotta hose down the floor, but before we do that George wants us to disconnect that bit. No big deal, we can get ’er.”

  Freddy looked at the pipe sitting in the mousehole. He and his crewmates had purposely left everything ready for the next crew to twist off that bit, then run that last thirty-foot pipe down the slide.

  George wants it done. Just like a boss, Freddy thought moving over toward the pipe as Jesse reached his station. Just like a boss to give one last order, not because he had to, but because he could.

  He put his shoulder to the pipe and nodded to Jesse, who revved the engine, and ever so gently picked up the kelly. As that pipe, weighted with heavy collar subs and the bit still on bottom, lifted a few inches and began to pendulate toward the center of the floor, Freddy struggled to keep it under control. His boots slipped in the mud on the wet floor and he nearly fell to his knees. He slowed that pipe down just enough so that
it only got away from him just over the rotary table, where he hopped comically to the other side and corralled that pipe from behind. Soon he had it stable, hanging above the rotary table, stationary. Jesse then raised the whole ensemble high above their heads.

  Jesse waited patiently as Freddy trudged back over to the mousehole. There in the hole rested the bit breaker, a big, heavy iron bucket the inside bottom of which was shaped like the three giant cones the bit would be set into. He looked to the stairs for one of the others, and when he didn’t see them, he leaned down, bent at the knees, and yanked that bit holder out of the mousehole, and slipped and slid across the muddy floor to the hole in the rotary table and dropped it in with a bang!

  Jesse then lifted up on that brake handle and ever so slowly let ’er down, as Freddy guided the bit down and down, turning the pipe so those cones just set right down in that bucket as pretty as you please.

  He then grabbed motorman’s tongs, the dyes already changed to the larger pipe size, and he slammed them onto that pipe with a crash and a latch.

  What happened next no one would ever be able to say for sure. One thing we do know is that Jesse Lancaster did not see Freddy Fifer’s foot touch that rotary table. Was Freddy already slipping on the muddy floor? Were the tongs not set right and did they miss their bite too causing him to slip and fall?

  Either way, when Jesse hit that cathead, those tongs broke that joint and Freddy’s right arm with a loud and horrible Crack! And that rotary table spun, breaking Freddy’s left ankle, leg, and knee, Crack! Crack! Crack! before tossing him aside in a heap against the drawworks.

  Zak was on his way back up to the drilling platform, taking the long way up past the shale-shaker. As he reached the top of the stairs, he glanced up at the floor and didn’t understand what was going on. He could see Freddy lying motionless with his head smack up against the drawworks. He saw Jesse frozen in disbelief. He saw George step out of the top doghouse and stop dead in his tracks, staring at Freddy, not understanding what his eyes were telling him. Zak jumped over the railing, ran up the stairs, crawled over a motor, and landed in a crouch at Freddy’s side.