Roughnecks

by James J. Patterson

  “Is it your head?!” Zak screamed to be heard over the engines.

  “My leg!” Freddy screamed.

  “Try to stay calm!” Zak hollered. Freddy’s left leg looked multijointed and was resting there in many impossible directions. There was a patch on his pant leg growing with dark red blood.

  “My arm!” Freddy managed between hurried gasps for air.

  Zak could see Freddy’s right hand wasn’t aimed in a proper direction either.

  “Uh, uh!” Freddy cried out trying to turn his head to look. He let out a heartwrenching scream. His agony was escalating instant by instant. Sweat was pouring. His eyes grew wild. He opened his mouth and had to take a series of short hysterical pants to get up enough wind to scream again. His tongue stuck out. He was panting again, taking shorter and shorter breaths each time, screaming louder and louder. “Ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! Aaaaaaaah!” until his face was contorted beyond recognition.

  Jesse and George landed at Freddy’s side, Jesse was shaking. “Freddy! Shit!” He looked at Zak, “In the doghouse, emergency fireblanket!” Zak was off at a gallop. George took off to find Frank.

  The fireblanket was in a box on the wall; Zak grabbed a jacket off a hook.

  Back out on the floor he placed the rolled-up jacket under Freddy’s head. Jesse had him by the shoulders and was having trouble screaming over the engines right on top of them.

  “Freddy!” but he couldn’t get Freddy’s attention.

  Jesse and Zak wrapped Freddy’s writhing torso in the blanket. Frank and George came running up. Frank had the first-aid kit, and George had some rope and a stack of guns and ammo and girlie magazines for making a splint.

  He tossed the keys to his pickup over to Jesse who was staring, ashen faced, at his chainhand. “Jesse! get downstairs and find the stretcher! Then get over to my truck and back ’er up to the bottom of the stairs!” George then turned to Zak while taking a knife out of his jacket pocket. “Zak! Got a knife on ya?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well get ’er out and let’s get this boot off him!”

  It would have been hard to believe that Freddy could scream any louder than he already had, but when George and Zak began cutting into that tough leather boot he started hollering louder than ever. Zak looked up.

  “Don’t pay that shit no mind! Just cut!” George yelled, and Zak began sawing off that boot with a vengeance.

  When the two knives started up Freddy’s tight blue jean pant leg, Freddy began rolling his head from side to side and thrashing about wildly. He was a big heavy fella and Frank had to kneel at his shoulders and pin him down bodily while that pant leg came off.

  “Oh sweet holy God,” George gasped when he saw the leg. The fibula was jutting up through the skin just below the knee in splintered shards, and he and Zak were suddenly catching a fine, warm, sticky spray right in their faces. They could taste Freddy’s blood. They recoiled backward. Zak frantically wiped his forearm across his mouth and turned away just as his stomach emptied and splashed over the iron floor behind them. George was stunned.

  The knee was so badly mangled that the leg moved freely in all directions. When they collected themselves and resumed cutting the pant away and when Zak grabbed the leg to steady it, Zak’s hand mistakenly clasped the tibia that was jutting out through the skin at the back of the calf. Dark red muscle bulged through the broken skin like mattress stuffing made from beef steak.

  “A tourniquet,” George muttered, regained his composure, and then screamed, “we need a tourniquet!”

  Zak staggered to his feet, then stumbled off for the top doghouse. Just then Jon and Marty came strolling up onto the floor, “Hey, what’s goin’ on? Are you all right?” Jon asked, seeing the blood on Zak’s face as he passed. Zak just pointed at Freddy and kept moving. A second later Marty was standing over Freddy assessing the situation. His bright eyes were blazing. Marty threw off his hat, loosed his overall straps, ripped off his flannel shirt, and stripped off his long john top. He grabbed up George’s knife and swiftly began tearing long strips out of the back of that white shirt.

  “Cut dat gotdamn pant leg up to de crotch,” Marty ordered. As George set to doing that, Zak arrived back with a whole box of twine.

  Marty dropped to his knees and jammed the heel of his big hand to the wound that was spitting blood, grabbing the twine from Zak’s hands as he did so and in a second, had cut a long strip that wrapped around the leg just above the knee. Freddy started to scream and thrash his free leg wildly.

  “Holt dat!” Marty screamed, and George and Jon both pounced on and secured the good leg. To Jon he screamed, “Go get me a stick about dis long!” and he held his arms up showing the length he wanted.

  “Oh my God! Oh fuck! Help! Help! Sweet Jesus, ah! Ah!” Freddy bellowed.

  “Freddy!” Frank hollered in exasperation as he struggled with the man’s shoulders. “Why don’t you do us all a favor and pass out!”

  Marty wrapped the twine about Freddy’s thigh just above the knee. Zak helped Jesse untie the stretcher behind them as Marty sat back on his heels and looked things over. “Der’s a gudt break dere,” he pointed to the bone jutting through the flesh. “Dat ankle broke a couple a ways. Dat knee’s all fucked up, too! We gotta wrap his upper body in de blanket, dat arm looks broke too.”

  Jon returned with a sliver of wood about two feet long, and Marty put it under the twine and, when he turned the stick, the twine tightened the spraying spluttering blood dropped to an oozing trickle. “Gudt!” Marty said. He then set about tying bandages around the exposed parts. While he worked around the knee, he saw the kneecap dangling and swiftly placed it back where he thought it should go before wrapping it tightly. Jon returned with a freshly cut plank that was the perfect length, and Marty quickly held a group conference over poor Freddy’s writhing bloody form.

  “Now, dis gotta happen fast. I’m gonna straighten out dis leg. Den we gonna tie it up. Dis ankle we do twice. You guys put dem magazines all along here and we’ll duct tape’m to his leg. Den tape’m up good and tight one more time. Den we hoist ’im onto dat stretcher. Frankie, you gotta sit on his chest. Got it?”

  They all nodded.

  “Oh shit, oh please, oh God! No, no no!” Freddy screamed.

  “Den let’s do it!” Marty said.

  Frank hopped onto Freddy’s chest. Marty, who had scooted down to that ankle, moved it into a normal-looking position, and with both hands pulled down firmly, yanking the entire leg into as straight a position as possible.

  “Oh! Uhnnn!” Freddy’s groans and murmurings took on an unholy sound.

  “Quick, put dat!” Marty indicated the magazines and when they were in place yelled, “tape it!”

  Freddy was now screaming in a contorted, unintelligible groaning gurgle.

  Frank was muttering constantly, hysterically, tears streaming down his face, “It’s okay Freddy, we’re going to go as fast as we can, we’ll get you through this buddy, hang in there, you’re going to be all right pal, quit screaming Freddy, we’ll get help, Freddy, please Freddy, quit screaming, Freddy, you’ll be okay Freddy,” but nobody, especially Freddy, could hear him.

  Zak cut lengths of twine and handed these to Jon and George who tied Freddy’s legs together.

  “We gonna pick ’im up straight, Frank, you hop up and kick dat stretcher underneat. Wait!” He put a hand to Frank’s shoulder, keeping him on Freddy’s chest. To Frank he yelled, “Whatever happens don’t let doze arms get free!”

  Marty ran around and crouched next to Freddy’s face, took it between his strong bloody hands, and looked Freddy in the eyes. Freddy stopped screaming. Marty had to shout to be heard.

  “Freddy! We goin’t put you on dat stretcher. It’s goin’t hert. You gotta stay straight. You can’t fight us and fall off. You are really hert. You are gonna make it, but you really are hert.”

  Freddy n
odded.

  “M-my glasses!” Freddy screamed.

  “Fuck dem,” Marty screamed back as he turned away. Zak saw them lying by the rotary table and stuck them in his pocket.

  On the count of three, Frank hopped off and Zak, Marty, Jon, and Jesse lifted Freddy a foot off the floor as George slid the stretcher underneath him. With Frank now off his chest, Freddy could really get some wind and his screams resumed full force as they tied him to the stretcher.

  “Jesse,” George hollered, “get on the phone and start waking people up in town, tell ’em we’re leaving location for that clinic and we’re gonna need real help.”

  Marty sent Jon down to the hopper and told him to get five or six mud sacks down to George’s pickup truck. On the double!

  Zak and George picked up the stretcher with Zak at the head and George at the feet and started moving for the stairs. The stairs were too narrow to allow more than one man down at a time, and worse, the stretcher was too wide to fit between the railings. Two men would have to carry him, chin high, all the way down the thirty-foot flight. George and Zak heaved to lift Freddy up over the railings, then George carefully took the first few steps, backwards down. When Zak hoisted Freddy even higher to compensate for the eighty-degree incline the chainhand’s dead weight crunched down on that leg and he thrashed violently, spinning his head around, screaming, his face up full flush against Zak’s. Both Zak and George stumbled, nearly losing Freddy over the side.

  “Freddy, you silly bastard!” Zak screamed angrily, right into Freddy’s ear as soon as they steadied themselves. “If you think it hurts now, wait till I drop your ass down these fuckin’ stairs!”

  “Listen!” George screamed, “This isn’t going to work. We’ve got to go back up and take him down head first. He’s moving too much and he’s bleeding like crazy!”

  From that point Freddy made a conscious effort to subdue himself, crying softly and whimpering between breaths as they paused at the top of the stairs to retie him to the stretcher.

  When at last they reached the bottom of the stairs, they hustled him over to the waiting pickup truck, laid him in the back and Zak jumped in beside him. Marty hopped in and placed those big heavy mud sacks, like sandbags, all along his legs to keep them from moving. George slammed shut the gate. Marty hopped out. They roared out over grass, dirt, and gravel just as fast as George could push it. He had the accelerator pushed to the floor and was manhandling the wheel like a cowboy wrestling with a steer.

  Zak was hanging on for dear life and Freddy, tied to that stretcher, bouncing and vibrating around the back of that truck, screaming, “Stop! Oh please Jesus, slow down! Help me God! Aaah! Aaah!”

  “Don’t you think we should maybe go easy?” Zak screamed through the open back window.

  “Go easy?” George hollered back, taking his eyes off the path to look at Zak for emphasis, then swerving violently to find the lost path again. “Look goddamnit! Goin’ slow isn’t going to make his leg feel any better is it?! The best thing we can do for him is get him to the hospital as quick as possible! That’s all I’m trying to do!” And they bounced and they roared and they swerved for forty miles before coming to the main road.

  JESSE, JON, AND MARTY HOSED the mud, blood, and puke from the floor and finished dismantling those collar subs and were itching to get started for the clinic when relief showed. Carl and the boys were rapturous at not having to trip, lay down pipe, or even empty the mud tanks.

  “You mean you lost another chainhand?” was all someone said.

  Marty drove a late-sixties Ford station wagon he named Jezebel. She was green with sheep’s wool covering on the front seat. As Marty zoomed off headed for town, Jon was busy hacking his way into Freddy’s locker to get his clothes. Most important was his horseshoe belt buckle where he secreted his cash in its false back. As Jon trotted out to his car toting Freddy’s things in a ball under his arm, he took a quick look around the grounds for Jesse. The driller’s Merc was still parked beside his trailer, but Jesse was nowhere in sight. Jon was worried about the old man and had half a mind to drop Freddy’s things in the backseat and go have a look for him.

  The Lenny episode had hit Jesse hard, and Jon, Marty, and Freddy had worked shorthanded until days off that week to give Jesse time to find another hand back in Watford. That’s when Jesse had hired Zachary Harper. Not that Jon had anything against Zak, as a matter of fact it was rather uncanny how adaptable Harper was, on the floor as well as off, but from then on Jon had had two worms to contend with instead of one. A dangerous proposition under the best of circumstances. And now this.

  Jon tossed Freddy’s things into the back of his car in a paralytic gesture of despair. He could have kicked himself in the ass. While he had been down at the mud tanks with Zak and Marty, Freddy had been up there doing a job that was clearly meant for two men at least. That poor fat uncoordinated slob had gotten himself all busted up for no good reason. Now they would need another hand, and with so few rigs in the area they would probably have to bring one in from Watford City or hire another worm. Jon lit a cigarette, took another futile glance in all directions for Jesse, then got into his car. Something told him he better get moving. Time was wasting. He wheeled his car around and took off, hellbent for leather, down rig road.

  FROM THE TOP OF A sage-covered hill a hundred yards off, a flicker of light. A small dark man lit a cigarette and watched the rig gleaming bright in the black prairie night. He saw Jon’s car peel off into the blackness beyond the rig. He watched the headlights cut beams through the blackness. He heard the engines on the rig. He heard the men on the floor shouting to be heard over those engines. He could hear the engine of Jon’s car trailing off into the distance. He could hear the stillness behind all these sounds. He listened to the stillness. He smoked and drank and watched and listened.

  NOT HALF A MILE FROM location, Jon’s headlights picked up Marty and Jezebel stopped in the middle of the roadway. Marty had the hood up and was flapping his arms over the engine, trying to dissipate a cloud of smoke. Jon fishtailed to a stop, and then lined the front of his car up to Jezebel’s back bumper and hit the horn a couple of times. Marty waved and got behind the wheel while Jon pushed him off the roadway.

  “Dat gotdamned fuel pump,” Marty spat as he climbed into Jon’s car, stepping up to his ankles in empty beer cans, sandwich wrappers, and nonrefundable Pepsi bottles. They streaked off once again for the hospital and, as they turned onto the main highway, they passed George’s pickup headed back to location and slowed down to see if George would stop and give them the lowdown but he kept on going. And Jon and Marty agreed that it was a crazy night.

  FREDDY FIFER WAS LYING ON a table in the emergency room of Daniels County Memorial Healthcare Center. He watched the second hand of the big schoolroom-type clock up on the wall steal inertly along from one second mark to the next. As he watched, the spaces between those marks grew farther and farther apart, wider and wider until the seconds stretched way beyond any preconceived limits of aoristic measure. Time had widened stretched into huge fathomless planes and multisided dimensions. Two large-bore IV drips were going into each arm, one with blood, the other with fluids. The morphine they hit him up with as soon as he arrived had him in a languid, swirling, laconic state. They cut away that splint. He clutched the side of the table he was strapped to with his one working arm and groaned. The second hand moved smoothly, sensuously along, he relaxed his grip, he tried not to listen to the words but concentrated on the calm, low, atonal voice of the doctor as he worked his way up Freddy’s leg, cleaning and wiping away clots and dictating to his assistant.

  “Open comminuted fracture…pure torsion injury…fibula…the posterior and anterior cruciate ligaments…tibial bone…”

  When George realized it was going to be a long haul, he left Zak with Freddy and went back to the rig to ride herd over that crazy Cowboy Crew.

  Just outside the emergency room the do
or to the main lobby burst open, and in came a crowd of people carrying a fourteen-year-old boy. He had been riding his trail bike after dark, taken a spill, and torn up his right leg something awful. Bone was jutting through his trousers and the good people who had found him had been unable to stop the bleeding. They thought he would die, he looked so bad. The room went hush as the doctor calmly and efficiently gave his orders. The emergency room staff had to forcibly push the lad’s people, except his parents, out of the room and calm them down so they could work.

  When the boy was stable, the doctor went and found Zak in the lobby. “Two compound leg fractures in one night, and a broken arm,” he said in amazement. “I’m just a GP, Mr. Harper. But I had some orthopedic and lots of trauma experience in Vietnam. You guys did a good job getting him here. And I’ll tell you something. The tourniquet was a good one, but luckily that bumpy ride here loosened it, and though he lost a lot of blood, loosening that tourniquet probably saved his leg, we’ll have to see. He didn’t bleed out, so that’s to be thankful for. Anyway, the arm break was clean, far enough below the elbow and high enough from the wrist. I set it and put a cast on; that should be fine. The knee, the ankle, whoever straightened out his leg, well, got lucky. He’s in a bit of shock, understandably. He has some spiral fracture issues going up the thigh. Both these patients need to be transported to Billings for surgery in the morning, and there’s an ambulance big enough to carry them on the way here from down in Sydney; should take another hour, then it’s a five-hour drive from here.” He shook his head and then turned to address the young man’s people, who were beside themselves with worry and blame.