Roughnecks

by James J. Patterson

  In the ER, Freddy Fifer dropped his head back onto the stainless steel table and rejoined the heedless motion of the clock’s second hand.

  Jon and Marty arrived, still wearing their mud-covered rig clothes, boots, and hard hats. The thin film of dried drilling mud that entirely covered them was bright white in the glare of the clinic’s lights. They looked like antediluvian mud soldiers, water world storm troopers, molemen. The people in the lobby quieted and made way for the two roughnecks who pushed their way into the ER and, spying Freddy behind a square patch of curtain, entered his space cautiously. They each squeezed his good left hand and looked into his eyes. Freddy’s dopey eyes rolled from one of his buddies to the other. They paced around the table eager, excited and full of positive vocal reinforcement.

  “Dat gotdamn Rusty!” Marty hissed, trying not to raise his voice, and jabbed a short grimy finger downward through the air. His hair bounced and his eyes flashed. “De way he’s bin pushin’ and pushin’ de last coupla weeks, sumpdin’ like dis was bound t’happin’!”

  Fuckin’ A! Freddy thought. He prayed that these two wild tigers wouldn’t bump the table as they paced back and forth.

  Jon’s perspective was a little more self-effacing. “Yeah, but you guys should’ve called me when that bit needed breakin’. Shit, Jesse knows I’ve done that job dozens of times. No offense Freddy, but you had no business doin’ that alone.”

  Freddy rolled his head to look at Jon and spoke his first coherent sentence since the accident, “No shit.”

  Everybody finally agreed that it was just one of those things, and Jon, Marty, and Zak quickly held a conference that ended with Jon volunteering to run over to the Pioneer and pick up some beer.

  MARY ELLEN SWAYZEE DIDN’T RECOGNIZE Jonathan T. Sandlak when the roughneck entered the Pioneer Hotel and positioned himself at the end of the bar near the outside exit. He normally changed clothes in the bottom doghouse before leaving location, and as he stood there in full roughneck gear watching her talk with one of the old-timers at the end of the bar, it occurred to him that she always dropped what she was doing to take care of him. Now she simply looked up, made a gesture that she recognized him as a customer and that she’d be over soon enough. As he stood there in his roughneck disguise, he looked at her differently, candidly. In this new light she was tough, experienced, and strange. Out of politeness, he normally averted his eyes around women, but for the moment, emboldened by his anonymity, he allowed his eyes to roam over her body. She had a country girl’s hips and derriere. Hands that already showed the scars of a life of hard work yet were still young enough to reveal a feminine delicacy. One hand rested on a hip that jutted out under her ordinary waitress skirt. Her breasts were small, but bunched up by her bra like some full, plump, bite-sized fruit in the front of her blouse. Her hair was thick and brown and hard to part. As she listened to the one who held her attention, her eyes wandered back to the waiting roughneck who, in turn, was shamelessly studying her every aspect. He wasn’t leering, he was admiring, and she liked it. A bolt of electricity shot through them both. Her head cocked slightly, her eyebrows came together; until at last she said, “Excuse me,” and leaving her customer in midsentence, marched toward the end of the bar.

  “Is that you in there, Jonny?” She reached for his hard hat and pretended to peek down a hole as she lifted the lid. He had forgotten he still had it on. In his roughneck gear he wasn’t at all shy, and this excited her. Though she shifted back to the familiar woman he had known before tonight, there was a new intimacy between them. It was as if she had said, is that you looking at me like that? Is that you no longer hiding the fact that you like me? Figuring out that I like you? What a relief to at last be real with one another.

  “So, how’s it goin?”

  “Slow,” she smiled, then jerked her head ever so slightly in the direction of the only other customer at the bar. “Verrry slow.”

  “I need a couple of six’s of Pabst,” he reached under his overalls to get at his jeans pocket for some cash.

  “Having a party out at the rig?” her eyes twinkled. She kept her eyes on him as the rest of her turned in the direction of the cooler. They studied each other warmly.

  “No. I’m gonna take’m over to the hospital,” he shook a cig from the pack and withdrew it the rest of the way with his lips. “Freddy had a bad fall tonight, busted his leg all up, broke his arm.” She lit it for him. “Some of us are gonna hang out there till he’s in the clear.”

  “Freddy? Oh no. Oh I’m so sorry. Poor sweet Freddy boy?” She turned from flirtatious to earnest in one easy moment. She straightened and tipped him out a glass of draft before reaching for the cooler lid. He noticed the hair on her forearm was golden in the dim bar light. He hadn’t realized that she even knew who Freddy was. And now she was talking as if they were all good friends. He supposed they were. “How bad is it?” she asked.

  He leaned on the bar and felt a mountain of pressure lift off his shoulders as he took a long sip of beer. “I haven’t seen anything like it since ’Nam. Either has Marty. It’s real bad. Thank God Marty had some experience in the field over there.” He tilted his hard hat to the back of his head. There was a laugh in his voice. An incredulous, unfunny, little laugh. She thought it was a brave laugh; this accident could have befallen him. It registered that he mentioned the war. She waited for him to say more. He didn’t.

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Um, yeah, let’s get together sometime soon, okay? You know, sometime when we’re both not working.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “Yeah, so would I.”

  She watched as the serious young man in his endearingly ludicrous riparian garb stuffed the bagged-up six-packs under his arm and clomped out the door. Everything ordinary seemed precious and bold. She picked up a rag and wiped up the dried chips of mud from where he had been leaning.

  WHEN JON GOT BACK TO the hospital, he and the boys stayed outside, quietly sipped their beers, and waited, while inside the ER, Freddy was getting tucked away on a gurney bed with his leg all trussed up and his arm in a sling, IVs hanging upside down. It wasn’t long before a big box-shaped ambulance pulled up at the side entrance. White-clad hospital people quietly and earnestly discussed the logistics of getting two trauma patients inside with all their attendant IVs, and which available attendant would be best for the long ride down to Billings.

  The boys stashed their beers and tossed their cigs, then trooped in to wish their broken chainhand good luck. He looked as beaten and forlorn as a man can possibly look. His face sagged in a pale sickly hue. His voice was all but gone. In his right hand he limply held out his x-rays, and Jon took them as Marty and Zak looked over his shoulder.

  “Whooooweee!” Marty let go with a low whisper. Circled in yellow crayon were all five breaks, two at the ankle, two in the leg front and back, and the knee. It was Freddy’s certificate of valor, a memento of his brief career as a roughneck.

  It took a few minutes to get the young lad into the vehicle, and Marty and Jon helped two attendants lift big Freddy’s gurney. The three roughnecks stood in silence as the ambulance pulled away, its whirling lights, no siren, throwing an eerie warning through the town as it glided out of sight.

  BEFORE THE BOYS TURNED IN that night, Marty worried about Jezebel. “Dem Getter boys’ll be haulin’ down rig road early an’ if Jezebel gets clipped, Cynthia will have my gottdam head!” He was still moving fast. His eyes darted back and forth as he tried to figure his way out of the situation. They decided to sleep for a couple of hours and hit the NAPA dealership for a new fuel pump and then head out and get it installed before all hell broke loose when that rig started to move early next day. So Jon and Zak were both sleeping hard in their beds when Marty, sleeping on the floor between them, woke up and started kicking and bitching at them to get up and get their asses in gear.

  They found Tony, the NAPA dealer
, eating breakfast at the café next to Sam’s. He made the boys sit and wait until he finished a second cup of coffee before heading over to the shop and breaking out a new fuel pump. Marty had been right about one thing: The eighteen-wheel flatbeds of the Getter Trucking Company, the smaller one-armed gin trucks, and pickups were all thundering down rig road kicking up huge clouds of dirt and gravel, just ready to get it!

  Luckily, Jezebel had been spared. The trucks hammered out new paths, coming and going on either side of her like water flowing around a rock in midstream, but some had cut it pretty close. Zak and Jon jumped out to get a head start on tearing out that dead fuel pump while Marty went back to the rig to pick up Cynthia.

  When Marty and Cynthia arrived, back at the car Jon and Zak could see instantly that she was in a black mood. Her anxieties had been stretched to the limit. Her major complaint was that Marty had thoughtlessly left the car in the road all night, taking an unnecessary risk with their only means of transportation. He tried to point out that the car had not been damaged in spite of his poor judgment, but she was not impressed. Nothing was worth risking getting stuck in Scobey, Montana! Nor was she very happy about spending the whole night pacing back and forth waiting for word about Freddy. Cynthia was not the type to wail and raise a loud harangue, but today she gave Marty and everyone else in earshot both barrels. She raged against their flippant apologies and flagrant disregard for people’s feelings. Everyone was stunned. No one could remember seeing her so upset.

  It had all started with Jesse. She looked forward to making little snacks for Jesse and Marty when the towers were over and the late show was coming on the little black-and-white TV the boys had rigged with a coat-hanger antenna. But last night Marty hadn’t come home from work, and Jesse just stopped in to get something and left without changing his clothes or having a bite to eat. And he simply let it drop that Freddy had been hurt as he walked out the door. She had to go running after him to learn that it was at all serious. It was then she noticed how bad he looked. Worse than when he had run Lenny off. How was she supposed to sit and watch the late show by herself when Jesse thinks he’s the one who hurt poor Freddy? Did Jesse hurt Freddy? She didn’t think that he would just twist off and head to Watford City. So where was Jesse? And why hadn’t anyone gone out to find him?

  Marty had no good answers for her. Not coming home and keeping her in the dark were serious offenses requiring immediate apology and a long cooling-off period. The only thing he could do was plead guilty on all counts and throw himself at her mercy. Which was hard to do on rig road, with the sun already up and those trucks kicking up dangerous amounts of dirt and gravel. She climbed in Jon’s Oldsmobile and rolled up the windows to keep out the dust and locked the doors to keep out the riffraff. With her arms folded across her chest and a scowl on her fat round face, she refused to speak to or even look at anybody.

  While Jon worked under the hood, Marty and Zak lay down on their backs and crawled under the engine. The three men wrenched and banged and cursed that new fuel pump into place as all the while those Getter boys practically zoomed right over top of them. Zak and Marty pulled their legs in close several times to prevent being crushed under the tremendous onrushing wheels. They tied kerchiefs over their mouths to keep from choking on the dust.

  After that pump was finally in, it took a feat of diplomatic brilliance to coax Cynthia out of the Olds and into Jezebel. She was intentionally being as obstreperous as possible. They certainly were unworthy of her cooperation and so it was left to Zak, for some reason, to make the pleas that eventually moved her, and even though he was sweet and never ignored her, he was still a man, a roughneck friend of Marty’s, a co-conspirator, and not to be trusted. She cracked her window a tad, listened to Zak explain that she had every right to be angry, that it had been a crazy night and day, any way you looked at it, but the job was done, and although she could ride back to location with him and Jon if she wanted, wouldn’t she rather ride into town with Marty? Once she did, this madness would end and they could get away from all these trucks. She at last opened the door and marched back to her own car.

  When they had her simmered down and sitting quietly, but not calmly, in the front seat, Marty got behind the wheel and, as Zak and Jon looked on from under the hood, Marty hit the starter. Jezebel chugged, whinnied, wheezed, and after a final shudder, died away completely. Marty spat out the window and slapped his palm down on the dash. Cynthia meanwhile was on the verge of panic. It wasn’t just the car. She could see the basic support systems of her life coming apart, no less, and as Jon and Zak looked stupidly from one to the other and Marty sat there and cursed, she began to suspect that this mean little comedy was being played out for her benefit. That the car was ruined for good and these jokers were going through the motions to get their pal Marty off the hook. Well it wasn’t going to work. She shot Marty a look. Then she got out of the station wagon and returned to the Oldsmobile where she could resume her pout from a safe distance.

  But the boys truly were vexed. They scratched their heads and chewed the matter over until at last, thinking of nothing better, they decided to take the new fuel pump out and put it back in, again hoping that in the process they would discover what had gone wrong. Again Zak and Marty lay under the car with the big semis roaring past their legs. Again Marty closed his eyes, crossed his fingers, and turned the ignition. Nothing. There was only one explanation. Willy had sold them a bum pump. Jon and Zak appeared at Marty’s window, their kerchiefs still over their noses like a couple of outlaws. What now? Marty rested his big head on the steering wheel just as Cynthia marched back from Jon’s car and climbed into the rider’s seat with an I told you so click of her tongue. Marty turned his head away from her to face the boys, making a terrible grimace.

  “Aiyaiyaiyaiyaiy!” he screamed and flung open the car door. The boys backed off as he pounded to the front of the car. Jon and Zak followed him, yipping like a couple of hounds.

  Marty stood before the engine clutching and unclutching his fists. His green eyes darted. His aquiline nose pointed downward to infinity. He paced to the driver’s side of the engine, stalking his prey. He stood hovering over the window-washer tray. “Tools!” he shouted.

  Jon dashed off to grab the toolbox they had just put away as Marty lifted the window-washer tray out of its holder. He then disconnected the tubing that carried the liquid to the windshield, then rummaged around in the back of his outfit, and came up with a roll of duct tape, an old coffee can, and a hose for siphoning gasoline. Marty stuck the end of the washer tray tubing into the carburetor and secured it there with a piece of tape he tore off the roll with his teeth. After siphoning off enough gas to fill the coffee can, he poured it into the washer tray, holding some out to pour directly into the carb. Then he carefully climbed into the driver’s seat, holding the tray out the window with his left hand. Jon then taped down the hood so Marty could see as Marty turned the ignition and fired her up.

  Jon and Zak skipped over to the Oldsmobile and prepared to run interference for Marty and Cynthia. They started out slow. Marty was holding the wheel with one hand, the cup full of gas out the window with the other, and as they started to roll, the gas sloshed over the edge of the cup covering Marty’s hand and running down his sleeve.

  It was then that poor Cynthia lost her grip on the entire situation. She started crying and muttering that they were both going to be burned alive, squashed under the wheels of a Getter truck, out of transportation, out of work. She cried and shrieked and stomped her feet. When her hysterics threatened his driving space, he let go of the wheel and reached his strong right arm over and thwacked her good letting the blow land just wherever it could.

  They made it up and over that first hill and coasted down its other side with no problem. On the next little stretch of level ground, Marty kept his feet off the brake and off the gas. The car found its own slow speed regulated by the trickle of gas going into the carb from the washer tray. If the
y had been on paved road this crazy idea would have worked like a dream, for a little while anyway. He looked over at Cynthia, who was sobbing hysterically, and Marty screamed, “Aiyaiyaiyaiy!” at her, causing her to jump and flinch. Next was a downward slope, no problem there either; he tapped his foot lightly on the brake and coasted.

  It was on the following upward slope that the idea fell apart. Unable to use the accelerator to increase the flow of gas, and gravity alone insufficient to draw additional fuel into the engine to compensate for the extra drag, Jezebel crawled to a stop once again in the middle of the road.

  Now they were in real trouble.

  The big trucks bounding over the hill just ahead of them had no way of knowing there was a broken-down vehicle in their path, and sure enough, as soon as Marty and Cynthia had rolled to a stop, a giant eighteen-wheeler came screaming over the top of the hill and swerved, horns bellowing, missing them nearly, spraying them hard with dirt and pebbles.

  Marty’s heart leapt up into his throat. Cynthia very nearly swallowed her tongue.

  Jon and Zak drove onto the top of the hill, where they got out of the car and started directing traffic away from their two vehicles. Marty got out of the car and climbed the hill to join his two buddies, leaving Cynthia alone in the car screaming her head off. She wasn’t leaving the car to get smashed. And he obviously didn’t care any more for her than he did for their car, their future, anything! They were doomed!

  At the top of the hill Zak and Marty conferred while Jon motioned the trucks over to one side. Zak and Jon would leave Marty to take over from there while the two of them went off to get Zak’s Jeep. If, in the meantime, Marty could hail a passing trucker and borrow a towing chain, Zak could pull him back to town. It was a deal. Anything to get off that crazy dirt path and away from those maniac Getter boys and the perpetual cloud of flying rocks and choking dust. Jon and Zak sped off, leaving Marty on the top of that hill, level with the tops of all the other hills, waving his arms at those Getter boys, looking like Mighty Joe Young pushing those big semis this way and that around his poor wounded auto and his terror-stricken wife.