Roughnecks

by James J. Patterson

  Zak shook his head.

  “Y’know what?” Freddy asked with a delighted smile. “Jesse comes t’see me every day. We play checkers. The ol’ fuck is good too. Kicks my ass.”

  “I’d like to see’m.”

  WAY IN THE BACK OF the shop at Zeke’s Auto Parts, sitting on a bench contentedly filing down a rusty bolt, sat a smallish man with dark hair and bushy black eyebrows. Jesse Lancaster held it up to the light which hung from a hook over his left shoulder. His fingers looked like ginger roots, the creases in which seemed permanently stained with grease and mud. His brown eyes grew wide as he assessed his progress, his eyebrows lifted, his square jaw dropped slightly, and he returned the bolt to his lap and filed some more. The sound of footsteps cautiously approaching made him lift his head in time to see Zachary Harper winding his way through the hulks of old cars and bulky machinery that lay strewn about everywhere. Jesse nodded his head and went back to his filing.

  “Good mornin’,” Zak said quietly, and sat down beside him.

  Jesse nodded.

  “How ya doin’?”

  “Not bad. I guess you’re wonderin’ what I’m doin’ settin’ here filing down this old bolt?”

  “Actually, I was just thinkin’ that looks like just the thing you should be doin’.”

  “Oh?”

  “I thought I’d come down here on days off to help George look for some hands. Have you seen Blackie?”

  “Ah, so, figure you’ll go pushin’ tools now, eh?” Jesse gave one of his signature silent laughs, his shoulders bounced, his squinting eyes remained focused on the bolt in his lap. He considered Zak’s request. “Blackie? Nope. Ain’t seen’m. He’s out West. Drillin’ in Wyomin’ somewheres.” There was a silence, then Jesse asked, “How’s old George like drillin’ again?”

  “He’s crankier’n ever. He’s good though. Not as good as you.”

  Jesse laughed silently once more, tickled at the thought of George at the brake handle, ready to get pissed at anyone or anything at anytime. “The boys?”

  “They’re grumblin’. Hansom’s crew’s still givin’ us fits, but we’re okay.”

  “Yeah, I figured you’d be all right, yer good hands. Hansom and them bunch’ll only hang around for a paycheck or two, then they’ll be out of yer hair.” They sat for a few awkward seconds and then Jesse said, “Look Zak. My wife’s real sick. Lenny, well, he won’t hang around much longer and there won’t be much I can do for him once he’s gone. I kinda figure this is a time when I should be home.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “Just don’t no one go over to the house no more, okay?”

  “No problem there,” Zak shook his head.

  Jesse gave a wry smile, “So I gotta get this done, eh? Tell the boys to look me up when they come to town, I’ll be here, or over at the City Bar. Oh, and one more thing. You tell ol’ George to give Marty a shot at that brake handle when he gets a chance. Tell’m I said.”

  “Will do,” Zak promised.

  With that he went back to filing his bolt. He squinted his eyes and concentrated, his jaw set hard, gettin’ ’er done, as though Zak had already gone.

  And that was that, that was goodbye.

  XV

  Mary Ellen put on her favorite dress. A gold form-fitting affair with a textured weave that matched her wheat-colored hair and gave her figure a more rounded, more voluptuous look. The shoulder straps broadened, then cut strikingly down, and gathered up her breasts in snug, tantalizing bunches, leaving her collarbone and neck exposed.

  She tried on a slender gold necklace, then decided against it. Tonight she was in the mood to feel a little naked.

  She bought the dress at a second-hand store in Minneapolis two years ago and had worn it exactly once. Certainly nowhere in Scobey, Montana. It was perfect for a candlelight dinner date at home. She curled her hair to give it some bounce. She put on makeup. From a bag of shoes at the back of her closet, she dug out a pair of gold, black-soled sandals with just half a heel.

  She was self-conscious about her imperfect skin. Every bump and blemish screamed out at her. And her daily ablutions of creams and oils softened but did not alter the fact that she tended to be pale and a little pockmarked here and there. But she was tanned and muscular from long summer walks, and the heavy lifting she sometimes had to do at the bar. Her color was good, she concluded, and after shaving her legs and trying on the dress, she decided to let her legs go bare as well. The stockings she had bought went unopened. Besides, what if he showed up looking like a roughneck?

  She moved the small table her father had cut from the center of an old barn door from under the bedroom window and made of it a dinner table for two using her grandmother’s handmade lace tablecloth. The old cloth had lain in a trunk so long it needed to hang over the railing of her apartment balcony all day so as to lose its musty smell. The stitching had come undone here and there, but it was still pretty, partly because it looked as old as it was. She left an unused pack of matches she had saved from a nightclub in Minneapolis next to the candle on the dinner table.

  The chicken was almost ready. The vegetables just needed steaming. The wine was open and rather than have a glass without him, she drank a beer and absently thumbed a women’s magazine.

  When she heard his car, she hurried to the window and watched him get out. He was wearing a windbreaker, a new T-shirt with the factory fold clearly showing over his abdomen, clean Levi’s, and his best dress boots. He looked different. Older. He had a bottle of something with a ribbon tied around the neck under his arm. In the same hand he held flowers.

  Flowers, all right!

  With his free hand he reached into the backseat and picked up a box which he handled by a string that tied around it.

  “I’ve got a date!” she laughed out loud.

  She guessed that his next move would be to close the car door and then straighten and look up at her window before proceeding up the steps. Her apartment was in the back of an old house owned by an elderly couple who were never there, off visiting grandchildren scattered throughout the Dakotas and Wyoming. She stood anxiously back from the window, hoping that the bright orange of the setting sun would obscure her form in its reflection.

  He did look up and appeared to linger. Was he staring right at her? Her heart quickened. Her fingers touched her lips.

  Lipstick. Oh shit.

  She dashed to the bathroom, her sandals clicking on the hardwood floor, touched up her lipstick, and then scurried to the door just as it knocked twice, then once again. She put a pleasant glad-to-see-ya smile on her face and pulled the door open just enough to frame herself perfectly in the doorway.

  He had cut his hair. It now parted on the side but not too far off center and fell over his ears. She liked the look. A little turn of hair lifted then fell across his forehead rakishly. Yes, she liked that a lot. And right then, noticing his hair combed that new way, she had an unexpected moment of clarity. She suddenly saw the future so vividly her knees went weak. Like she had opened a present she had waited a long time for and at last knew what it was. She remembered thinking at that moment the words, Ready or not. In his eyes, in that lock of hair, in that new look which would remain his look from now until the grave, she could see down the entire highway. It was a nice place. She felt comfortable there. Secure. That was worth a lot.

  Thereafter, on evenings like this, when the sun was skirting the horizon and the last colors of the day were bright and glowing, when the seasons were in midchange and the world didn’t know if it was warm or cold, she could conjure up this feeling by looking away and then back at him. Her sense of relief lifted her off her feet. I’m going with it! she thought, and would remember thinking that too, with a certainty bordering on glee. In the doorway, seeing that his hands were full and that, physically, he was momentarily helpless, she reached her arms delicately around his neck and kissed
him warmly on the mouth, taking the time to enjoy the newness of his lips, the smell of his skin, and his inability to resist or even speak. When she opened her eyes, she laughed at the preposterousness of it all and said, “Hi.”

  “Hi,” he said, his face warmed by a dash of embarrassment, overcome by surprise and delight.

  He brought her a bottle of cognac, because she had said that she liked it, and flowers, which she placed in an empty wine carafe he recognized from the hotel.

  She opened the box and when she looked inside, all ready to say something nice, she stopped, and looked at him questioningly as he lit a cigarette.

  “Here, you lift it out by this,” he said, reaching in and lifting up what looked like a hook from a clothes hanger.

  She lifted out a jangle of fishing line, polished bolts, and bits of broken glass, their jagged edges ground smooth, an old spring, and a hunk of copper wire. From the center of it was tied a beautiful polished multicolored stone about the size and shape of a shot glass.

  It was an awkward contraption that didn’t make any sense. She was sure she had ruined it somehow, whatever it was, in the act of just lifting it from the box. He held his cigarette between his teeth and squinted from the smoke burning his eyes as he gave one arm of the thing a delicate push and gently lifted one tangled wire over another arm and presto, the whole thing fell into place, the stone’s weight acting to balance the piece. The mobile tinkled and turned as she held it up.

  “Oh! Now I get it!” she turned it this way and that, her eyes darting from point to point. She turned to him and beamed, “Thank you!”

  “The rock is a core sample from about a mile down. It’s tens of thousands of years old.”

  A fern which hung from a hook by the balcony window found a new home in an empty corner on the floor, and the mobile went up immediately. She opened the sliding balcony window slightly to let whatever breeze could find its way in to play with it, causing a giddy, chiming, clattering sound. The sun had just dipped blow the horizon, and the sudden drop in temperature caused goosebumps to ripple across her arms and up her thighs beneath her skirt. She blushed but thought he didn’t notice. She closed the window.

  Over dinner her eyes studied his jaw line. He chewed slowly and swallowed before saying a word, sometimes pausing for long moments in midthought to complete the process so as not to talk with food in his mouth. She wondered if that could get to be annoying. Is he on his best behavior, or does he really eat like this? Then she realized she’d have to be pretty far gone to be concerning herself with issues such as that.

  “Do you miss Jesse?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Bad?”

  “Well, it wasn’t just Jesse. Everybody watched everybody, and was ready to lend a hand?” Jon realized that he was unaccustomed to discussing his work with anyone other than a roughneck, and finding the right words was a challenge. “Like, if somebody needed help, you went right over and helped’m. I don’t care who it was, chainhand, worm, or whoever, you changed oil, everybody was there, you packed up oil in a five-gallon bucket, you have to go down on the ground, they have an oil pump there, fill your five-gallon bucket and carry it up the steps. That’s how we change our oil, everyone carries two five-gallon buckets up those steps…” And Jon relaxed, he could talk to her about work, he smiled.

  “Wouldn’t it make more sense for whoever is in charge to write down the names of all the guys on all the crews and then perhaps rearrange the names to fit each crew more specifically together?”

  He smiled again. “That would make too much sense. Out here, anyway, each crew is its own independent unit. They can either get it or they can’t. They work as one, sharing the load and protecting each other. The stakes, of course, are life and death, so we count on the driller to lead the way.”

  She didn’t want to think about danger on the rig right that moment, so she changed the subject and told him about her two years of college in Minneapolis, about growing up on a cattle ranch with five older brothers. That she had thought of joining the military just to get out and see something else of the world but was glad she hadn’t. Not that she was a gender snob, but living with that many men was something she never wanted to do again.

  It takes five men to run an oil rig, Jon thought.

  They listened to Bonnie Raitt records while they ate. After dinner she found a scratchy old copy of Beethoven’s “Appassionata,” and as the needle hissed and popped its way across the vinyl surface and the first notes filled the room, he took her in his arms and they danced in the candlelight. She closed her eyes. She had worried he might react negatively to classical music, and had some Charlie Rich standing by just in case, but no, he was happy, it was like a movie score. Perfect.

  He buried his nose in her hair above her ear. Her smell filled his senses. Their bodies fit perfectly, causing them both to relax and melt into the rhythm of the music, of the air, and of the gentle energy all around them. His big hands roamed.

  “I love the way you move your hips,” he breathed in her ear. His hands found the top of her hips and moved slowly down each side where her hips squared slightly. He didn’t grope. He studied her shape. Her sigh told him that was a good thing to do. Her arms reached up around his neck, leaving her body available should his hands choose to roam further. She drank in his swimming blue eyes then closed hers and luxuriated in the feel of those big rough hands on her body. He pulled her hips to him and she could feel him there in front of her, pressing against her pelvis across to her hip. She felt herself turning liquid beneath her short dress. There was a lot of raw power there, she could feel it. She felt weightless. His cheek rested briefly on the top of her head. And she felt him kiss her there, a gesture of such warm affection she sighed. When she pulled away, her hands descended down his chest. She took his hand and led him to her bedroom.

  In the bedroom it was dark, and before turning on the light she pulled a royal blue veil from the closet door and draped it over the lampshade beside the bed. She had tested this gesture the night before and was certain that this light would hide her imperfections. Imperfections he would never have noticed until, in more familiar moments, months later, she pointed them out to him. They kissed long and hard standing there. His hands moved gently up her thighs, lifting her skirt. She was naked underneath. She studied his reaction which was to simply sweeten his eyes and pull the dress completely over her head. Oh yes, he knew what he was doing. The cool air in the room swirled around her naked body and the feel of his clothes against her skin made her feel more naked still. She reached between his legs and pressed her soft palm over that part of his slacks that was showing signs of life and squeezed him gently. As she did this, her other hand yanked his shirt out of his trousers. He pulled the shirt over his head without unbuttoning it further and it fell to the floor. She sat down on the bed, and a sound escaped his lips as she pulled down his zipper. She unbuckled his pants and pulled them down, and his sex swung forward, climbing steadily with each pounding beat of his heart. She squeezed it, then kissed the tip, then put it in her mouth. He shifted his weight to make it easier for her. After a long moment he stepped out of his remaining clothes and then pulled her to her feet. They embraced in the blue light for a long moment, lingering in the first feel of each other’s warm flesh. They lay down slowly, lying on their sides facing each other, their hands exploring, their eyes searching each other’s eyes.

  “I love the way you smell.”

  “Your hands feel good.”

  “That’s very nice,” he said, indicating the curve of her hip as his hand traced its outline up and over from her waist to her buttocks.

  “Mmm, your chest is beautiful,” she moistened a finger in her mouth and traced a nipple.

  His hand found her wet between her legs and she smiled, almost laughed at how aroused she was and a little self-conscious that her trembling body betrayed how long it had been since someone had touched her like t
hat.

  They relaxed and got into it. She took hold of him and squeezed gently, feeling his stiffness and tugged ever so slightly on it as they breathed in each other’s sweet exhalations.

  “That dinner was so nice,” he said while gently sliding his hand over her cunt and reaching between her legs, which she opened for him as he went. He softly squeezed her ass, feeling her moist pubic hair on his thick wrist. She bore down on him there and squeezed her thighs tight for a second, shuddering sweetly. Then she had to part her legs further to accommodate his roaming hand. He squeezed her inner thigh hard. She squeezed him back. He moaned.

  “Did you like it? I thought I would keep it simple. The dinner I mean,” she whispered, her voice trembling slightly.

  “It was perfect,” he said, “and so is this,” he kissed her again.

  She purred happily and kissed him back.

  Neither of them had a condom.

  Years later they would tease each other. “You bonehead,” she would laugh, “a beautiful young woman invites you over for dinner and you don’t have the sense to bring a condom?”

  “Me? I’m a nice guy I am. How was I to know you were lying in wait for me with your gold slippers and no underpants? If you had planned to take such advantage of my poor youthful and naïve self one would think you would have bought one. Shit, you thought of everything else!”