Roughnecks

by James J. Patterson

  George gave Jesse’s crew the first day off and though there were some grumblings, no one could argue with giving the shorthanded crew the first break.

  Jon was pissed anyway. Twelve hours on and twenty-four off meant that if you got off work at seven a.m. you didn’t have to be back to work again till seven the next morning. Then you’d get off at seven p.m. and be back at seven the following evening. Get off at seven and be back at seven. Some people don’t care when they sleep as long as they get their requisite number of hours, but those people are special. “He’s going to turn us into zombies!” Jon groaned.

  A DAY AND A HALF LATER Zak was sitting up on what he had come to call his lookout peak when he saw Marty’s Bronco and Jon’s Olds bustin’ down the road toward his little shack. Everyone was all excited.

  “Ol’ Rusty’s finally gone and done it! He’s hired a crew and we’re back on schedule. So we go in tonight at eleven instead of tomorrow morning.”

  When they arrived on location, Zak was not surprised when he stepped up onto the floor and found that he was relieving Archer Hansom’s crew. Skiddy was climbing down out of the derrick and as he passed Zak on the floor he merely gave Harper a wink and a nod, barely letting on they knew each other. Zak could smell beer. When Jesse looked at the chart for the night’s work he said “Shit!”

  “What’s the matter?” Zak asked.

  “Them dumb fucks’ve been turnin’ to the right and not gettin’ any damn where all day. That bit’s gotta come out. They fucked the dog on us is what they done. Some crews just sit and babysit the hole and let others do the work. They should have been halfway through a trip when we showed up.” Jesse thought about it for a second and then threw up his hands.

  “We can get ’er!” Zak smiled.

  The next morning over breakfast Jesse’s boys were feeling pretty good about themselves. They had tripped pipe the night before at record speed, shorthanded or not, and had plenty of time left over to powwow in the top doghouse. They decided to just let things slide for a while with the new crew. If this kind of thing got to be a habit they’d make a stink, naturally, but they had been without help for so long they were glad to even have babysitters. Besides, they felt that they were so damn good it just didn’t matter. “Let’m give us all the hard work they can,” Jon chortled. “Beats hell out of standin’ around doin’ nothin’.”

  “Dese guys’re gonna shit on us every which-a-way,” Marty laughed. “Maymbe we should just meet’m somewheres and teach’m what’s what!” his eyes flamed and he brought a powerful fist into an open palm with a loud smack.

  “I used to care about all that but after these past few weeks I couldn’t care less,” Jon said. “We’re hot, man!” He was getting loud, and others in the restaurant looked around. “Did you see Jesse’s face this mornin’ when we came off the floor? This is the best damn crew I’ve ever been on! Go ahead and ‘shit on us!’ I don’t care if they shit on us ’cause we can get ’er, damn it! What do we care? Leave us a bad drill bit? What do we care? We’ll just trip that son of a bitch out of there, change that bit, and trip that son of a bitch back in! It ain’t a problem! Man?” And Jon, now becoming ferocious, banged the table and confronted Zak as though Zak were the duly designated representative of the collective fates of the universe, “Man! What’s the problem?”

  “There ain’t no fucking problem!”

  “Fuckin’ right there ain’t!”

  It was decided then and there that they would take every job that the other crews could leave for them. They’d do anything, without complaint or reservation. They were invincible!

  Zak had great ideas.

  They all had great ideas.

  They would stick together forever.

  They would see the world together! They would stay with Jesse as long as they could. They were the sons he never had. He was their father and mentor, their sage and guru. They’d go work up in Alaska with him, take him offshore in Texas. Then they’d save up their dough and head for the Middle East. They’d roughneck the world over. There was no rig too big! The North Sea! Australia! Russia! Fuck! The possibilities were endless.

  Those next few weeks flew by. Jesse would stand in the doorway smoking a cigarette and let each roughneck take a turn at that brake handle during connections. It meant a lot to Marty, who wanted to drill someday. But for Jon and Zak it was useful to just get the feel for what that driller’s needs were in a crewman. If he was feeling frisky Jesse would actually go out on the floor and take one of the vacant positions while this was going on. They were the envy of the rig. They had the whole rig fired up! Rory’s crew, those Parker Brothers, even Archer and his boys stood a little taller in their presence. From Jesse and the boys there were no secrets. Jesse’s crew would know everything that had happened on that rig in their absence from the very moment they stepped foot on location. Other crews became dependent on them. “Save it for the wonder boys,” they would laugh when a difficulty arose. And all the while Jesse’s boys worked shorthanded and couldn’t have cared less.

  George held each member of Jesse’s crew with a kind of awe and openly admitted that he had never seen a crew take over a rig quite the way Jesse’s had. That company hand smiled and tipped his hat to them each and every time he saw one of them.

  About four in the morning during one drilling tower, Zak entered the top doghouse to see Frank Kramer, that company hand, George Cleaver, and Jesse Lancaster all standing around drinking coffee. They had obviously been having a serious discussion and had just about exhausted whatever topic they were on. While Zak poured himself a cup, Jesse broke the silence.

  “Shit Franklin, I’ve been doin’ this all my life. If you’ve got the pipe, I can send ’er down the hole.”

  “I believe ya, Jess, but I don’t know,” Frank was leaning against a locker staring into his coffee cup which he swirled around in a gentle circle. “I got no problems with Jesse taking us deeper. If he says he knows how to rack the extra pipe, well, that I’d actually like to see. It’s them other drillers I’m afraid of. That drill stem is mighty heavy as it is. I don’t know how much more this ol’ rig’ll take.”

  “Well, she’s built for ten thousand feet. We’re pushin’ that right now,” George reminded them.

  “Rory and Andy can get ’er,” Jesse said quietly. “Hell, my trailer’s right out front, I’m right here. I can keep an eye on it.”

  “Yeah, what’s the story on this Archer Hansom?” Frank asked, using his official company hand voice.

  “Hey, we needed a crew,” George shrugged. “The other boys’ve had to cover for’m from time to time. But out here, well, shit.”

  “Jesse?” Frank asked.

  “Handling all that extra weight is tricky but not impossible. We could try it for a couple of days.”

  “Maybe someone could switch days off with Hansom’s crew,” Zak jumped in, “that way they’d be out of our hair.”

  “That’s a thought,” Frank said, chewing on a thumbnail. “What I’d really like is a week though.”

  “I don’t know,” George shook his head. The politics of giving one crew early days off because they aren’t up to snuff made him shudder. He could hear Smoke Denton already.

  “Look,” Jesse said at last, “let’s give ’er a try one tower at a time. If anybody’s going to make a trip, come and get me. I’ll drop in on each of the drillers during their tower and if things look like they might go haywire, we’ll just stop. We can take ’er slow and easy.”

  In the following days Zak would look up into that tower and listen to the structure groan every time Jesse picked up on that brake handle. They racked pipe where no one would believe pipe would go. Jesse and Marty would hold long strategy sessions on just where to set that extra pipe aside. And they got two thousand feet more than Bomac 34 was supposed to give.

  Jesse was happiest of all. The night after they tore down the rig and loade
d ’er up to be moved to the next location there was a party at Zak’s shack. Nearly everyone was there and everyone got completely smashed. Jesse Lancaster put his arm around Smoke Denton and waved a glass at George, “Hey Rusty!”

  George ambled over, smiling at the older driller and pretending not to have heard the name, “Yeah old-timer?”

  “You see them three prick-a-lutes standin’ over there all in a row having themselves a piss?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well them three sons ah bitches, them’s the best fuckin’ crew on this rig, them’s the best fuckin’ crew in this here patch, and them’s the best fuckin’ crew I ever had.”

  And it couldn’t be argued.

  That’s why it hurt so bad several nights later, after they had nippled up northeast of town in the Medicine Basin, the day after bottom-hole checks were issued for the previous hole, when Zak and Jon tumbled into the bottom doghouse laughing and full of it and ready to go to work, to find Marty and Cynthia sitting expressionless, and George, wearing overalls, boots, work gloves, and a hard hat. Worst of all was his death-mask expression as he announced coldly, “Jesse’s twisted off. This time for good. I’m yer driller tonight.”

  XIII

  There was just no outward rhyme or reason for it. But his trailer was gone. His locker was empty. He had even taken his smokes and the bottle of Black Velvet everyone pretended not to notice from under the knowledge box.

  Jon just exhaled softly and stepped out onto the floor. It was over. From now on it was just another job, just another rig. Just like that.

  Zak bounced from Marty to George full of questions, as though some overlooked detail could be revealed that would prove that it wasn’t true; that Jesse had just gone to town, that a simple explanation would put everything back the way it was. It was a mistake, that’s all, but they only shrugged as if to say, That’s life in the patch, no big deal, we’ll get by. Only Cynthia had a mind to express what they were all feeling. It was in her eyes, her tone of voice.

  “He come in this mornin’ and asked me to get our things out from his trailer. Then he just drove away. Marty was in town. He left me standing in the mud with all our stuff.”

  She looked at Zak, who stood there stunned, deflated, without his happy noise. Instead of coming back to her with his usual encouraging words, he fell in line and followed the others as they trudged through the door and took their positions out on the floor. The men yelled a few angry yet necessary things back and forth to each other. Cold night air filled the top doghouse where Cynthia sat. She pulled her heavy sweater tight around herself and rubbed her arms to keep warm.

  Out on the floor, bright overhead lights cast many tiny shadows at the feet of every object. The ringing engines pierced her ears like a fire alarm everyone pretended not to hear. The hard canvas weather walls, stretching up from the perimeter of the floor, created a box in which they all were placed. Those walls provided a neutral blue backdrop that made the space appear to shrink the more she watched. She wished they would roll them up as they sometimes did when it was hot out and the air was still.

  They waited while Marty climbed the tower. Cynthia waited too. She waited right there in her chair. Tonight she would watch them work. She felt that there was nowhere else for her to be, even though Marty suggested she sleep in the Bronco with the radio on. She watched from her chair. She would know when her man was doing something important by the way those on the floor depended on movements from above. She watched George, at Jesse’s station, his neck craned back, watching her man climb his mighty tower.

  Marty would tell her stories at night to put her to sleep. He would tell her about climbing the ladder. Higher and higher until everything below got iddy-biddy. She would gasp in fear for him and he would assure her that the safety belt he wore on the way up made it impossible for him to get hurt. He would tell her about reaching the top. About standing at the top and taking a big drink of air. Shoulders back. Chest out. Looking out across the land and feeling like a giant. Like he could reach down and pick up Jesse’s trailer and peep inside to see what she might be doing. Then he would lift the covers and peep inside and say devilishly, “And what are we doing?” She, however, would want him to finish the story. Her man, on top of the world. Then he would take another deep breath. He would walk along the perforated iron catwalk to his position, fasten his safety belt, and wave down to the driller below—he was ready. Ready to jam those long needles into the belly of the world and pump out its blood. “Like a big mosquito!” Blood for us to live on. Blood for us to dream on.

  The rig rumbled and she jumped in her chair, startled. George had his right hand on the brake handle. His other hand grabbed one of the many levers of different length at his left and yanked it back and forth. The huge machine in which their fragile bodies worked and breathed began to move. For a crazy moment she closed her eyes and imagined George about to drive the rig out into the great big nowhere beyond the lights of the rig compound, slowly at first, until they could pick up the trail of Jesse Lancaster’s escape and follow him home.

  When those eight hours were over and relief was milling about the top doghouse, when George waved Marty down from the tower and the men exchanged places out on the floor, George’s crew found Cynthia, sleepy but awake, still sitting in her chair, waiting.

  THE MEN OUT ON THE loud loud floor worked in the silence of their independent thoughts. Together, those same thoughts occurred to each: that George was a good driller, that he lacked the fast clean touch that Jesse had. George also lacked the sense of mirth and playfulness that Jesse brought to his lively machinations. That pipe didn’t talk to them the way it used to. It was just hard cold iron in a hurry. But George got it done.

  Before very long the all-for-one-one-for-all-throw-us-your-worst-we-don’t-care attitude on Jesse’s crew evaporated. Drudgery floated down on everyone like a soft smothering volcanic ash. Over the course of the coming weeks, if they arrived on location to find that Archer’s boys had racked the pipe carelessly, or let the mud get too thin, or had perpetrated some other petty malfeasance, Zak and the rest would put it right before beginning their chores, but it was a nuisance. The work was hard, the extra work made it harder. The boys began to grumble. After tower, they went their separate ways.

  Marty, who had had to take Cynthia back home to Watford and leave her there, was staying with Jon and Zak at the hotel and none too happy about it. Every time he called home there was some crisis or other that had Cynthia in hysterics. The thermostat was broke. The walk to and from the grocery store was too far for her to carry her bags. She was afraid to be alone. Little noises kept her up all night in terror. In one week, Marty had driven back to Watford after tower on three separate occasions only to learn that whatever crisis had brought him home had sprung entirely from Cynthia’s head. As a result he got no sleep. And this had Marty edged. The boys began to worry that in his fatigue and crankiness, Marty might slip up during a trip, or make the kind of mistake that can cost a roughneck dearly. Marty was so intense and committed that the others said nothing to his face, but everyone had to be on their toes at all times. The added tension was something else they didn’t need.

  WHEN DAYS OFF ROLLED AROUND, Zak loaded up the Jeep and headed out for Watford City, North Dakota. He hoped to find a worm to take their shorthanded slot, maybe even a driller so George could get back to pushing tools. He also hoped to see Jesse Lancaster.

  Before leaving Scobey he thought of recruiting Jon for the trip to Watford, but decided against it, and stopped in at Sam’s for some breakfast instead.

  “Will you try to bring him back?” she asked thoughtfully, considering Jesse, and Zak’s mission, from a safe distance.

  “No.”

  “That’s smart,” she said retaining her tone of passive interest. “It’s important, I think, for you to step into Jesse’s world for a brief time.”

  “What do you mean?”

 
“I mean from his world it may be useful for you to glimpse your own.”

  The more he thought about this last remark, the more it pissed him off. All the way down to Watford he turned it around in his brain. Neither Jon nor Marty were in a position to strike out and go exploring for the team. George had clearly failed. Jon was preoccupied with Mary Ellen and Marty would be spending all of his days off calming Cynthia’s ruffled feathers Zak was sure.

  But Jesse’s world? Zak’s world? What about’m? Business is business, after all, and right now business was a shambles. What about our world? What about our crew? What about the great thing we had going? Hadn’t Jesse worked all his life to get a crew as fine as this? Jesse was the glue that held it all together. Not just on his own crew, but the entire complement of workers on Bomac 34 were, in one way or another, swept up in and beholden to the camaraderie and ethic that had been pouring off that floor at any given time. You could feel it. Even among Hansom’s boys. Not only on the rig, but hell, you could feel it in town! Everyone, it seemed, was holding their head just a little higher. Other rigs were moving into the area and as the population of oil people grew, it was clear that those roughnecks on Bomac were the go-to guys in this corner of the oil patch. It appeared to be welcomed, too. Hell! People were happy. Jesse was happy, he couldn’t deny that. Doesn’t happiness count for something? That’s why it made no sense. Zak then had to admit to himself that one reason he wanted to see Jesse was to make him feel guilty. To make Jesse look him in the eye and tell him he was twistin’ off, tossing it all away for his own reasons which he hadn’t shared with anyone. This wasn’t just another rig, just another crew. Zak refused to believe that.

  THE PRAIRIE STRETCHED OUT ENDLESSLY in all directions.

  At first the eyes rejoice at the comprehension of such vast dimensions. It just feels so good to be able to take in so much; not only the mere physical pleasure of seeing so very far but the added realization that there is so much potential in a world. Before long, however, the soul aches for something to fill the void. Something beautiful, or something made beautiful because it functions so well within its proper space; something to fit together within this vast empty landscape in a harmony of fulfilled purposes. Something as magnificent as the open spaces themselves imply. Eventually each bump in the terrain is a call to celebration. Each distant weather pattern a welcomed, studied, yearned-for thing.