Roughnecks
Page 28
The light he had left on in the kitchen below now sent a warm, beckoning yellow glow heavenward. Zak felt as though he could walk up to that door and hear a friendly voice welcoming him home.
“You’ve never lived without trying, right?” Corey Nightingale said. Zak whirled around, knocking over his beer while, in his embarrassment and confusion, he tried to formulate a “What are you doing here?” kind of sentence. But his mouth was full.
No one.
“Jesus, I’m cracking up!” he said aloud, with a half-hysterical ring of laughter to his voice. The sound of a true voice, if only his own, was reassuring. He righted his beer. He lit the joint. The silence, the serenity, plus the cathartic daily release of energy on the job, had wound him up tight but at the same time opened his senses too. As his tummy filled and the pleasing combination of beer and pot brought about a most pleasant buzz, he relaxed and saw himself sitting on the hill in the enveloping darkness. He was a manifestation of cosmic dust become cosmic fact, held together by cosmic fancy and by seeking, searching, needing, hungering, terrestrial necessity. His thoughts, once lost in the maniacal shivaree of the city, now came booming unimpeded from all quarters of his conscious and unconscious mind, making the recollection of Corey’s voice seem like it had been shouted from some point just above his head. He wondered how his recent ancestors would have interpreted such intense perceptions. Without the distraction of technology or the underpinning philosophies of skepticism and science, or the interfering interpretations of politics, rationalism, and communal media, what conjectures, mysticism, and superstitions would evolve to explain and make such thoughts and emotions comprehensible, even serviceable? The very speculation called up images of native peoples, to whom these perceptions must have been part of their normal skill set, their interpretations then evolving quite naturally into human customs and norms. Bellowing gods, crafty goddesses, sprightly fairies, dragons, chimeras, and demons. Of hordes of men, hordes of beasts, migrations and frightened masses, moving in the night, moving in the day. As he listened for warning sounds at work on the rig, as he sniffed the air for changes, he was learning to use all his inarticulate senses.
But here and now, as he could see and feel without doubt, the geography was vast enough to accommodate his tempered yet expanding senses. And his imagination had a role to play in sparking curiosities that would lead to solving problems. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply through his nose and released the breath slowly through his mouth. He felt his spine, supple and strong, straighten as his chest expanded. He could draw a line from the top of his head, down his spine, and continue right through to the center of the earth. As he opened his eyes, he could feel himself reaching outward in all directions into the spectacle and the specter of this prairie night.
When he returned to earth, the shifts had changed. Things that moved quickly were hiding and things that moved cautiously were beginning to creep. All had a job to do. A job that meant nothing if not life and death.
He lay back against the bumpy ground, bunching a portion of the blanket behind his head as the last blue at the top of the dome faded, giving way, like a window opening, to the bright light of stars around which other dark planets roamed. He spotted his first satellite of the evening. It zipped along at a steady pace from northwest to southeast. He followed its progress, losing it momentarily among brighter star clusters, then picked it up again when it found a patch of dark sky background.
“JESUS CHRIST! WILL YA GET a load of this?” Zak heard Jon’s voice echo through the walls of the shack and the walls of his brain. “Now here’s one roughneck who knows how to live in style! Yes sir, you really are comin’ up in the world there, daddy-o!”
Zak opened his gluey eyes for a half second and craned his neck to see where the voice was coming from. Nowhere. He felt the shack shake with thunder. In another blink he heard a loud hiss, like the air condenser on the rig, and could feel a hand at the back of his head.
“C’mon old-timer, this’ll fix ya up!” The smell that filled Zak’s nostrils was unmistakably beer. Jon tilted a can, filling Zak’s mouth and throat with a gush of freezing cold beer that sent carbonation bubbles exploding through his nose, and he sat up violently, coughing and choking, spitting most of it back all over himself and the blanket.
“I think he’s going to live!” Jon announced to Marty and Cynthia, who were coming through the door, their arms loaded with supplies.
Zak looked dourly up at Jon and swung his feet off the couch and onto the floor. He ran his hands through his hair. It was longer than it had been in years and now, when he brushed his hands through it, it stayed back away from his face, the long greasy locks falling comfortably to each side.
With his thoughts beginning to sort themselves out and his rumpled feathers beginning to settle, he looked up into their three beaming faces and shook his head, “Good morning!” he smiled. “What’s for breakfast?”
“You’re drinkin’ it!” Jon laughed and put the cold beer in Zak’s hand. Zak shrugged, took a sip, and gasped as the cold bubbly beer went down.
“Mording hell!” Marty bellowed as he hobbled into the kitchen, “de day’s dab dear ober!”
“That’s right,” Jon cracked a beer for himself, “in ten more hours we’ll be back to work.”
Zak stumbled past Jon into the kitchen. He said hello to Cynthia, who had seated herself at the little kitchen table. He leaned into the sink and splashed his face with cold water. Then he stepped outside and had a piss.
All that day the four of them cleaned, painted, scrubbed, scoured, and mended. By dinner time they had curtains up, windows patched, chairs that could support human bodies. Cynthia lined the shelves with paper and set Zak up with paper plates, plastic cutlery, and canned goods. They even erected Freddy’s tent over the latrine hole Zak had dug so Cynthia could perform her toilette in privacy.
Cynthia cooked a chicken dinner. While she worked, Marty led the boys out to the Bronco and popped open the back.
“Now we’re gonna hab sub fun!” he hissed and tossed aside a vinyl cover to reveal an impressive assortment of firearms and boxes of ammunition. The rifles were in soft leather cases and the handguns were in hard protective boxes. Zak whistled softly.
“Marty’s got the finest gun collection around,” Jon boasted for his friend.
“Yup,” Marty deftly lifted a rifle. “Yushally I keep deze here locked up back in Watford.” He opened the case, and the long black muzzle appeared, pointed at the sky. He studied it closely. He licked his thumb and rubbed the dust from the little sight at the end, making it glisten, then brought the weapon out of its case, hoisted it to his shoulder, and whirled away from them as though following a pheasant up from the ground. The rifle was slender and lightweight. The wood was fine and dark.
“Well, whadya tink?” Marty said with pride as he handed the rifle to Zak. Zak aimed at the hill.
“It reminds me of a doberman. You know those dogs are long and sleek and high-strung and powerful?”
Jon had gathered up their empty beer cans and set them up on the hillside over yonder. As supper cooked in the kitchen, the sun set to the sounds of exploding powder, clanging beer cans, screeching ricochets, and the kind of laughter that makes you want to run to the window to see what you are missing. Cynthia giggled as she worked. She hummed and whistled and talked to herself. She skipped to the window to watch Marty take his turn shooting and clapped her hands when he hit his target. With each report of a rifle outside she sang, “Pop! Pop! Chop! Chop!” Marty always told her that her cooking was like magic. He would arrive with bags full of stuff from the store, and she would turn it into supper when he wasn’t looking. “Pop chop! Chop pop!”
Over dinner she watched the three of them eat every bite, reacting ecstatically with bulging eyes and stifled sighs to each finger-licking, lip-smacking, belching, reaching, clutching, tearing, face-stuffing mouthful. She was needed. She was a p
art of it all.
THAT NIGHT A VERY STRANGE character greeted the three roughnecks as their happy convoy wheeled onto location. As soon as they were out of their vehicles, the door to the toolpusher’s shack swung open and a small, bow-legged man with messy hair and gray whiskers came limping out in a hurry to catch them before they disappeared into the bottom doghouse. At first, Zak didn’t think twice, but it was Jon’s ashen face upon stepping out of his car and seeing the old codger hobbling toward them that made Zak think again.
The old man called out in a voice that was practically a squeak, “Hey there! Howdy!”
Right away he gave Zak the creeps.
“I reckon you guys’re Jesse’s boys, eh?” the old fella stopped in his tracks, looking from one to another of them. Just when Zak was about to answer in as cordial a manner as possible, Jon exploded.
“Reckon shit! What the fuck are you doin’ out here, Vernon!?” Jon yanked his hard hat off his head and drop-kicked it a good twenty yards across the muddy lot.
Vernon flinched, then craned his neck like a goose and squinted, “Jonny! That you?” and looking to Zak explained, “I wouldn’t ah known him without the whiskers but that temper I’d recognize anywhere!” He hollered and spat and laughed and looked them all in the eye expecting they should laugh with him. Zak didn’t laugh because he knew something was terribly wrong; Jon stalked off and Marty just stared in disbelief. There was a sickening mixture of panic, exasperation, and despair written all over their faces.
Vernon got down to business. “Now lookee here guys, I’m goin’ t’be pushin’ yer tools fer yuhs the next coupla weeks while Cleaver’s on days off.” He looked from one to the other and grinned as if he expected them to think Christmas had come early this year.
Marty put his hands on his hips and with a deep simian grunt said, “Oh Lord.”
Jon stormed back. “I don’t believe this shit! You know that we’re shorthanded?”
“Sure I do,” Vernon insisted, trying to sound soothing. “Look, Cleaver’s got a new crew lined up and they’ll be here in just a coupla days. You guys are doin’ fine though, right? No big problems?”
“None till now,” Jon spat, but the fight was going out of him. “Has Jesse seen you yet?”
“Sure has,” Vernon answered with a sickly grin revealing more gum than teeth. “I think he’s gone on a drunk, too.”
In the bottom doghouse as the guys changed their clothes, Zak only wanted to know one thing, “Okay, so who is this guy?” Jon wouldn’t answer. In fact, he wasn’t going to utter another word until he saw Jesse Lancaster. So it was up to Marty to offer some sort of explanation.
“Dat, my friend, is de dumbest sum bitch ebber to step foot on an erl rig! ’Iz nambe is Vernon Orge!” Marty drew out the last name, Oooorge, and then stood there, all puffed up, looking Zak intently in the eye as though the name alone should explain everything. At last, Marty just turned, dropped his hard hat onto his head, and muttered, “And may de Lord hab bercy on our soulds.”
Up in the top doghouse things looked bad. Jesse was leaning against the door to the floor watching the Parker Brothers make a connection. He was drunk as a skunk. Great, thought Zak, beginning to understand Jon’s concern, if something goes wrong we have a drunk and an idiot ready to leap into action.
Jon produced a cup of coffee from a Thermos and handed it to the driller, who managed to slur, “Thanks,” to his motorman before spilling most of it down his front. The steam rose off the material in little wisps. Jon refilled his cup and Jesse then took a long drink that must have singed every layer of skin off his inner lips and tongue, but he didn’t even wince. He just blinked like he was having trouble staying awake.
When the Parker Brothers had finished the connection, Jesse’s crew took the floor. As they passed each other, Paul Kimberly, their dark-eyed motorman, said to Zak, “You guys really gonna work with him like that?”
“Sure,” Zak said as though nothing was unusual. Kimberly walked off, shaking his head, and Zak sidled up to Jon and with a nod in Jesse’s direction said, “Is everything okay?”
When Jon realized Zak was asking about Jesse, he smirked and made a disgusted face as though Zak had asked the stupidest question in all the world. Then, seeing Zak’s face fall, he grabbed Zak’s arm, “Jesse? Shit! He’ll be all right. It’s that moron downstairs I’m worried about. Any damn thing is possible with him around! He was a lousy roughneck, a miserable driller, and it’s inconceivable that he could be pushing tools! Bloody! Fucking! Inconceivable! I don’t know what that fucking Rusty’s got against us all of a sudden, but I’d sure like to know what we did to deserve this!”
The night passed with Jesse slowly sobering up in the top doghouse. Every time a new connection was needed, that driller would look a little shaky walking out onto the floor, his usually imperceptible limp a bit more pronounced, his steps a bit more cautious, but his performance at that brake handle was adequate. And those wraps would make up well enough to get the job done.
It was during those connections that Zak realized how ready Marty was to take that brake handle, and he lurked nearby each time Jesse stepped out onto the floor in case the old man faltered, which eased Zak’s mind somewhat, but he kept an eye on his fellow crew members as well as his inebriated driller. From their example he too began to get a feel for the older man’s moods, strengths, vulnerabilities, and distractions. Zak slipped into his roll as the third cog in an elaborate, though never mentioned, support system that had grown around the driller. It was their way of returning the many favors he did for them.
The following day, so certain was Vernon that a relief crew was on its way to them, to prove that he really believed relief was in sight, Vernon put everyone back onto their normal eight-hour shifts. His reason being that the relief crew would arrive any minute and when they did it would be best if everyone was on a normal routine.
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Jon scoffed.
Naturally, the relief crew never arrived.
By the time a week had slowly, gruelingly passed, the situation had deteriorated. New shipments of bits were late. When that company hand came poking around the hopper checking the viscosity level of Marty’s mud, he gave the derrickhand a balling out for not keeping it at the proper level. “Where’s my filler!?” Marty bellowed when he had gone. And with no relief crew and the schedule still unchanged, everyone’s days off were canceled. It got to a point where everyone was so pissed off that Vernon was afraid to poke his head out of that toolpusher’s shack. Because of his hiding, the situation escalated—as every time the various drillers needed something done, their toolpusher was unavailable.
The roughnecks then took matters into their own hands, scouting around on their off hours, making calls, and trying to get a lead on a crew. At first they left notes with names and phone numbers on the knowledge box in the top doghouse. These messages would magically disappear when they were out making a connection, and nothing would come of them. They got the same frustrating results when they tried putting notes on the toolpusher’s door with little bits of electrical tape. One evening when Jesse’s boys arrived for work, they saw a note from Smoke Denton affixed to the toolpusher’s door with a huge bowie knife that read simply, “I want to talk to you!” written in a jerky uneven scrawl on a torn piece of brown paper bag; a crudely drawn skull and crossbones delivered home the point. From that point on nobody clapped an eye on Vernon Orge for the remainder of Rusty Cleaver’s days off.
A lot of crazy ideas were passed around the doghouse during those two weeks, as roughnecks, proud of their ability to spontaneously work through virtually any and all problems that might arise, groped for some solution to their current predicament.
“If we could find four able-bodied local boys, one of the drillers could double up with us and Jesse could break ’em out,” Jon postulated. As eyebrows raised, he hurried on, “No shit, Marty and I could double
a couple of times and give ’em some pointers. Jesse’s worked with worm crews before, right?”
“Yeah, never will again either,” Jesse shook his head but nobody believed him. “You really need someone up there with yer new derrickhand.”
“I could do dat,” Marty volunteered.
“That’s beside the point though,” Rory was pessimistic. “I ain’t seen nothin’ roamin’ the streets of Scobey that comes close to resemblin’ no roughneck.”
“I’ve half a mind to twist off, gas up my outfit, and go find that fuckin’ Cleaver and drag his drunken ass right the fuck back here,” Denton wanted to cut to the chase.
“Don’t take your outfit, take Frank’s,” Rory laughed and hocked up a loogie as he did so. Frank, the company hand, had been about as scarce as Vernon throughout their current ordeal. He had the biggest trailer on location and although there had been no complaints fired in his direction yet, as no one really wants to interfere with the man who cuts the checks, there were rumblings.
Zak could tell that this kind of talk could not only get out of hand, but could make matters worse. He said, “Well, if we weren’t already shorthanded, I’d volunteer to shoot back to Watford and scare up some help. Maybe that could be a way to go. Someone could volunteer to go get help, like in the movies when the cavalry is pinned down, or the explorers are stuck in the ice.”
Silence.
THE NEXT DAY ZAK SPOTTED a hitchhiker heading west out of town past the grain elevators and the rodeo grounds. The hitchhiker was wearing Redwing boots, beat-up jeans, a dirty AC/DC T-shirt under an unbuttoned flannel shirt and a hard hat. He had a duffel bag thrown over one shoulder, a six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon dangling from his free hand, and a can of beer in the hand he was using to try and hitch a ride with. Zak nearly went off the road attempting to U-turn back in the fella’s direction. When he saw Zak turn around and pull over, the hitchhiker winked and grinned a wincing sort of hey-howdy grin, struck a bow-legged pose, and raised an a-okay thumb in the air. He walked bow-legged, too, with an extra bounce to his step like he was making minor yet tricky adjustments to his balance with every step he took. Zak realized, as the fella bounced and skipped toward the Jeep, that this was a man on his way to getting seriously shitfaced.