Roughnecks

by James J. Patterson

  As kids, Zak and his pals had argued over who was better, Elvis or the Beatles. They tallied up record sales as evidence. Who had more number one hits. Who sold more albums. As a businessman, he had listened with nodding acquiescence to lawyers and bankers pat themselves on the back and describe their clever manipulations of the marketplace, their sales and promotional strategies, as an “art form.” This or that guy was a “real artist” when it came to closing deals. “I mean it, the way he does his job is a real art!” At the time, Zak thought it a mere conceit but now he found that form of hubris infuriating. The clever huckstering of these clowns shared nothing in common with individuals cursed with real talent, driven to cultivate it at the cost of personal relationships, wealth, and physical well-being. Still, the businessman in him tried to understand both sides.

  “All I have is a lifetime of respect,” Jesse’s voice broke in, “self-respect, damn it. I’m just too damn good not to know when I’m goin’ down.”

  And Zak wondered what had pushed Corey Nightingale over the edge.

  XI

  Down an old gravel road fifteen miles southeast of Scobey, Montana, over a cattle barrier and through a dilapidated but functional wood and wire picket, left past a row of blue-topped grain storage bins arranged in order of height, then up and over a grade that reached eastward to the sky, was the next location of Bomac 34.

  At nine o’clock that morning there was very little happening.

  A ’dozer had been out the day before leveling a big square patch where the rig was to be mantled up. It also dug the two swimming pools that would serve as the reserve mud pits. The hole, already begun, consisted of twenty-four-inch tubing set six feet deep in the center of the square.

  A gin truck was nearby unloading a couple of Black Hills Trucking flatbeds, and off to one side was a new Chevy Bronco parked next to a big ol’ Oldsmobile that had seen better days.

  Inside the Bronco, Marty, Cynthia, Jon, and that daylights driller from the last location, Rory, were sipping Cokes and smoking cigarettes—except Cynthia, that is, who didn’t smoke, and only drank 7Up, Sprite, or ginger ale. They were getting each other caught up and wondering out loud whether or not Jesse Lancaster would show for work that day.

  “I’ll tell you boys one thing,” Rory said, sitting in the driver’s seat holding his pop can and cigarette in one hand resting on his knee while his other arm dangled over the back of the seat. “We sure missed you guys around here while we were tearing down. That goddamned Cowboy Crew had us all runnin’ ragged. I for one have had it. They just don’t give a shit how they do anything!”

  Jon reacted to this with a chortle as if to say, yeah, what else is new? He didn’t like that Cowboy Crew on principle and was more than willing to condemn them on merit.

  Rory went on, “I caught a couple of ’em tossin’ railin’s in the mud tanks,” he said casually, as though he felt compelled to check off his list of indictments for the public record even though their crimes were already legend. “Naturally, they were stackin’ things just any ol’ way an’ tearin’ things apart just sloppier’n hell.”

  Marty gave a grunt. He knew, as did they all, that how neatly you packed up the rig had a lot to do with how difficult it would be to nipple-up at the next location. Being derrickhand meant that he was second in the pecking order and because he aspired to go drilling himself someday and because he spent his time with his ass quite literally out on a limb, he took these criticisms and these procedures seriously and hung on Rory’s every word.

  Now Rory didn’t have any notion to go pushing tools, which was the next logical step up the ladder, so to speak. Making the jump from driller to toolpusher was a big step and carried responsibilities a lot of roughnecks just wouldn’t naturally want to take on. A driller like Rory with a hardworking crew that didn’t cause trouble and kept that bit turning to the right, could, generally speaking, always get that toolpusher’s ear should there be a need.

  “I told George, I said, ‘Now goddamnit, you run them sons a bitches off just the first chance you get,’ and he better, else he’s gonna find himself alone on this rig with them fuckers, ’cause I swear I’ll twist, and if Jesse cuts out, which seems likely, that Cowboy Crew’ll be the only ones left…”

  “Derr’s de Parker Brudders,” Marty reminded him of the fourth crew.

  “You’re right. And they’re pretty green. They might put up with more bullshit than most, and they like to stay together. I guess he could go a couple of days with two crews workin’ twelve hours…well, it’s just a lot of bullshit. If Jesse don’t twist off I bet George runs ’em cowboys off today. I sure wouldn’t trust them bastards with nothin’ important when we nipple up. As it is I’m watchin’ ’em like a hawk. Like I got nothing better to do than babysit them cocksuckers. That’s the problem workin’ out here in the middle of nowhere, not enough hands.” And it was understood that he didn’t just mean guys who were willing to roughneck, he meant honest to goodness hands, guys who could get ’er.

  Rory was a strange but likable bird. He had big bulging eyes that resembled billiard balls. He kept his dark, thin hair cropped so close to his head you could see scalp when he wasn’t wearing the green hunting cap that was his signature. He wore that cap even under his hard hat, which made his big ears stick out like some cartoon caricature of a humanoid mouse. His upper lip poked out over big buck teeth. In spite of his comical appearance, strangers always took him seriously—partly because at first glance they thought he was insane, but mostly, because he was all business, always. He lived and breathed the oil field. He dedicated his life to it the way some people get religion. On days off, he could be found poking around location, fiddling with this and tinkering with that or just hanging out watching another driller do his stuff. He didn’t hang with the roughnecks much. Some, if they noticed, thought him snobbish. The patch was all he ever talked about though, and everyone noticed that. If a bunch of them were sitting around chewing the fat like they were today, and the subject somehow got changed, he would sit and listen patiently until it was his turn to make a point, and then launch right into some patch-related subject that might be light years from where the rest of the group was going. He wore work clothes exclusively.

  “One can only stand so much ob dat guy,” Marty would say behind his back. All Jon had to say about Rory was, “Well, he’s consistent.” Rory’s crew generally gave good relief and if he said he could handle a job, he handled it. He wasn’t the best man in the patch, but this didn’t concern him in the least. In fact, the best of them might not regard Rory as very good at all. If a job came up that was a little too much, he would just sit back, fold his arms over his chest, and say, “Someone else is gonna have to get this one.” Just the same, he would be in the oil field as long as there were fields to be in. He was a lifer. Right now, it was the Cowboy Crew that was making that life miserable.

  Jon flipped an ash out the window. “Rory, you know our crew is shorthanded. I’ll be surprised if Jesse even shows up, which means we may not even be a crew. That’s number one. Number two, if Jesse does come back, it’ll be a miracle if he shows up here with a new chainhand. And number three, should George run them cowboys off, workin’ this old iron with just three crews means that every day some crew or another is gonna have to double ’cause one crew is always gonna be on days off. I don’t know,” he paused in that the-world-is-out-to-fuck-with-us way of his, “Maybe we should all twist off and head’m back to Watford.”

  Rory shrugged and sipped his soda.

  Jon was silent.

  Cynthia looked alarmed.

  Marty grinned. He was counting on his bottom-hole pay from the last location to help offset the cost of the new Bronco. Cynthia knew this and was frightened to think that her man might suddenly be out of work. Marty always found her terrified reactions amusing. Given a little time, these things usually had their own crazy way of working themselves out. He’d twist off with the o
thers if he had to, but he had to admit he could use the dough. “Wait and see,” he offered lightheartedly.

  Cynthia frowned and stared off into a gloomy distance afraid to speak, when all at once she gasped and giggled and pointed west where could be seen a dirt-brown ragtop Jeep CJ7 trailing a small convoy of gin trucks and Black Hills flatbeds loaded with gear.

  The mood inside the Bronco lightened considerably.

  “Hey,” Jon said, “did anybody ever tell Zak where this location was? I didn’t.”

  Nobody had.

  “How’s that new worm workin’ out?” Rory asked, ignoring the obvious humor in the fact that Zachary Harper must have left Scobey heading south until he found some rig traffic and simply pulled in along behind.

  “Good,” Jon chuckled. “He’ll be a hand. Never saw anybody hustle so hard when they didn’t know what in the hell they were doin’.”

  “I hear he tells everyone he’s a farmer from South Dakota but that he’s got an Eastern accent, wouldn’t say ‘shit’ if his mouth was full of it, has soft hands, and never talks about farmin’.” Rory gave the stubble on his chin a rub and then concluded, “Jailbird.”

  Jon laughed some more. “I don’t think so.”

  Marty, on the other hand, was intrigued at the notion. “Y’know, der is sumpdin ob der mastermind about dat guy.”

  “Shit,” Jon shook his head, “You guys’re nuts. Zak’s a college man. Got it written all over him. Reminds me of a lieutenant I had in the Air Force.”

  “Don’t mean nothin’,” Rory said with all due respect. “Isn’t he the one who’s been stayin’ in that tent way out by Coster’s place? You gotta figure that anybody who would choose to live by himself, outside all the time, has got to be some kind of loner. You never know about loners. Besides, what’s an Eastern college man doin’ out here roughneckin’ in the middle of nowhere?”

  “Maybe he’s goin’ for a degree,” Jon suggested.

  “Oh yeah,” Marty howled, “dat night he tangled wit Rusty he got tree huntred sixty degrees!” There was laughter all around.

  “Here in the patch you can’t get a degree till you pass yer drill-stem test,” Rory laughed through a kazoo-like film of cigarette phlegm. He washed it down with a sip of pop, then righted himself by taking a pull on his cigarette.

  “Yeah,” Marty was getting excited, his beady green eyes darted back and forth over his long skinny nose. “An’ whad about all dem gray hairs? Bin a while since he was a schoolboy.”

  “Well what are we doin’ here?” Cynthia blurted out. “I mean, if this godforsaken place is good enough for the bunch of us, why not some nice college man who just might want to get away and work for himself for a time?”

  “Maymbe he’s one ob doze serial killers!” Marty bore down on Cynthia’s uneasiness. “Maymbe he goes around, where no one knows him, bein’ all nice an’ shit, then, when ebryone gets likin’ ’im he strikes, bam! bam! bam! and chops ’em all up with that big knife he wears on his leg unter his pants!”

  “You stop it! You’re scaring me!” Cynthia drew back and slapped at her husband with a chubby palm. She held her hands over her ears while Marty gave her a bear hug and everyone laughed. She liked Zak. And although his insaniac towing of Jezebel had demonstrated that he might be just as crazy as the rest of them, it was hard to sit in this new Bronco and feel bad anymore about their old car. Zak could be unyielding, sure, but he could also be understanding. Zak always behaved as though he had no better place to be when sometimes you knew his mind was really somewhere else. Most of all, deep down, she could feel his affection for all of them: Jon, her man, Jesse, as well as herself. That was rare in a world where people come and go like they do in the patch. Where people guard their true feelings with tough talk and rough-edged cynicism or out-and-out belligerence. She always felt nice inside when Zak was around. He always had a smile and a kind word for folks, even strangers. When Marty let go of her, she felt her face redden. She wanted the last word. “Zak ain’t no jailbird. He ain’t no stuck-up college man either.”

  WHEN ZACHARY HARPER CAME OVER the ridge and saw the big dark postage stamp the bulldozer had made in the otherwise woolly countryside, he was at once struck by the immensity of the work about to commence here in the Montana hell and gone.

  That big square patch was the only symmetrical thing out there, and the logic behind it made it seem like a strange piece of mathematical art. Nowhere else in this landscape was there anything flat, nor were there any angles or straight lines, but there on that manmade plateau was order, cognizance, the notion of a preconceived idea set down in an otherwise chaotic universe. Any sentient being who might happen upon it would get the notion that an idea can become a thing. Zak was driving his Jeep at the end of a train of gin trucks and flatbeds all zeroing in on that square patch with violence and thunder. Like pilgrim workers pledged to the well-being of the piece, they would make it bigger. It was to be their devotion. As they drove through the dirt and the brush they were making a road by the sheer weight and determination of their vehicles, like blood forcing its way through solid muscle until capillaries and arteries form.

  Zak spied Jon’s Oldsmobile and veered off from the column and headed out overland toward it. As he bounced and hammered through the sage and underbrush, he could see the boys spilling out of another vehicle parked nearby and would have, from any distance, recognized Jon’s strong slender build and Marty’s unique husky rondure. Another fella, Rory, slipped out of the driver’s side and strolled over to a gin truck nearby. Zak scanned the terrain round about, but saw no sign of Jesse Lancaster, neither his Merc nor his trailer.

  Zak came bouncing to a stop next to the Oldsmobile, shut his outfit down with a roar, and hopped down. Jon and Marty watched him while leaning against the new Bronco, and they had a word with each other and a laugh at Zak’s expense before he was within earshot. Zak reached for his cigs as he drew near and offered them around with his hellos.

  “You guys been here long?”

  “’Bout’n hour.”

  “We were the first ones out,” Jon said, then threw a glance at Marty who very nearly winked.

  “No word from Jesse?”

  “Nope.”

  Zak began to wonder what he was supposed to be catching on to—why these two dopes were standing there looking stupid and digging their toes in the dirt—when he noticed Cynthia sitting in the cab of the Bronco turning red and about ready to burst. Zak beamed. His eyebrows lifted over his glasses in a comic interrogative, while the rest of his face broadened into his biggest smile.

  “Is this thing yours?” Zak asked Marty, whose head was bobbing up and down, causing his Buster Brown haircut to shake forward and back. The three of them let out with whoops and screams, slapped each other’s palms in the air and banged body parts together like school kids scoring their first touchdown.

  “Well let’s see what this baby can do!” Zak screamed, and the three of them clamored into the vehicle just a-hootin’ and a-hollerin’!

  “You guys are pretty funny,” Zak laughed as they bounded over the first rise. This was wide-open range and grazing land not quite as undulating as that of the last location but still oceanic. The sea was just a little calmer in this area.

  They bounded over the hilly mounds and bluffs with Marty jerking the wheel this way and that. Cynthia alternately giggled with delight and shrieked with terror in the shotgun seat up front. Zak clung to the backseat and the window sill, arms outstretched, laughing each time his ass left the seat. Jon just smiled.

  “Picked ’er up in Williston yesterday,” Marty said over his shoulder. “I got to tinkin’ dat ol’ Bomac’ll probably be in dis neck ob de woods for coupla more holes an’ wat wid de winter comin’ up right around de corner, an’ dis bein’ pretty harsh territory once dat snow decides to hang around, we figured we ought to be prepared.”He looked over to Cynthia who was lost in a daydream and
brought his mighty palm down with a slap! on her fat thigh, making her squeal, “Didn’t we?”

  “Be prepared!” She giggled right on cue.

  Jon shot her an Oh Please look. His tolerance of her simple ways apparently had its limits. Cynthia rubbed her thigh and wrinkled her nose.

  “Well I think it’s just the ticket. Congratulations. Cynthia, have you ever been in a new car before?”

  She shook her head no, delighted beyond words.

  “How much did you get for Jezebel, if you don’t mind me askin’,” Zak was a bit nervous seeing as how a person could feel that he was directly responsible for trashing their previous vehicle. Marty and Cynthia seemed to have dealt with all that just fine.

  “Nuttin’, she’s at d’shop. Gonna tow ’er back to d’house in Watford. I’m gonna work on ’er on days off. See if I can’t get ’er fixed up.”