by Billy Farmer
“This simply is not possible. There has to be something else going on here.” The look on his face as he said that, for the first time since his father died, told me he was grappling with feelings he was ill-suited to deal with. That worried me greatly.
“Come on, bud. You got this.”
He nodded.
As I walked away, something Avery said struck me odd. Careful to control my tone, especially given his frail mental condition, I asked, “You only mentioned two of the three generators. What’s the matter with the third?”
He explained how we had three main generators, only two of which were needed at any given time. Generator number two wasn’t working due to something unrelated to the control board. I guess I should’ve known that, but I’d grown detached and disinterested. That and Titouan taking over my job as drill superintendent a few weeks into the rotation had further sullied an already bad attitude towards all things oil drilling – all things Miley.
There was too much bouncing around in my head in that moment to fully register what he had said. I left it at that.
“I’m not sure what’s going on, Avery, but I know whatever it is, you can handle it. Don’t beat yourself up.” I gave a quick scan of the area, making sure the wrong ears wouldn’t hear what I said. “Titouan’s an asshole. He’ll do everything in his power to put this on you. Don’t give him any ammunition to use against you.” I waited to make sure he was paying attention to me. “Remember what I just told you, okay?”
He nodded.
“I’ll leave you to it. I’ll make sure Titouan knows what’s going on.” I handed him my flashlight. “I’m pretty sure you’ll need this more than me.”
Occupied with his thoughts, he took the flashlight without looking at me and slowly walked back to the COM shack.
***
I heard before seeing someone approaching me. Before I could ask who it was, a harsh New England accent agitatedly asked, “What the hell is going on?”
“Glad to see you, too, Simon.”
“Well, William?”
“Damn generators, again. Avery’s working on them as we speak.”
“People are pissed, especially Harvey. He was watching porn on his tablet in the Commons again when the power went out. You should’ve heard him. He was cussing and pitching a damn fit about how Avery must’ve been doing an experiment or something that caused his tablet to stop working. Not that smart of a guy. Still, all kinds of strange things going on tonight, William.”
Choosing to ignore the minefield that was Harvey and his porn habit, I said, “Yeah, I’m not sure what the hell’s going on. Could be static electricity or something, you know?”
“Yeah…” He started to walk away but quickly turned back towards me and called out, “Hey, while I have you here--”
Simon was a bit of a talker. He was one of the better riggers, so I usually bit hard on a tough stick and took his long-winded conversations like a man, but I didn’t have time that night. “I hate to be rude, Simon, but have you seen Sam or Jack?”
Irritated, he said, “Yeah, they’re over at the dock drinking. Can’t blame them with this shitty leadership.”
“Thanks. I gotta run.”
He kept talking with each step I took, until I eventually shouted, “Sorry—can’t hear you over the wind.”
“Jackass,” he said.
By the time I got to the lean-to, it was snowing harder than I’d ever seen it snow at the Patch. It reminded me of my days staying with my aunt and uncle in Michigan. We would get these storms my uncle said were snow squalls. The snow would fall so thick and hard you couldn’t see more than an inch or two in front of you. That was awesome as a kid. It was a little different when you were older and had to work in it.
I banged on the door, but it was locked. “Come on in,” called a man with a long, Eastern Kentucky drawl.
“I’d come on in if the damn door was unlocked,” I said, as I kicked the hell out of it.
I heard someone struggling to unlatch the door. I inhaled deeply as I waited. Finally, there was a tug at the door, but it didn’t budge. “Oh, damn,” I heard a voice I knew well say. “Forgot the other latch.”
The smell of kerosene and booze assaulted me as I entered. “Come on in and have a couple long pulls with us, William,” Jack said, not a care in the world. Straight tequila will do that to you, and they were drinking straight from a mostly empty bottle.
“Yeah, someone has to work tonight. Apparently, you guys didn’t get that memo,” I told them.
“Hell, ya got Faux Mulder and Emperor Tit. Not sure why ya need us shit shovelers?” Sam said, laughing. The others joined in the chorus.
As much as I was aggravated with the nitwits, aside from Avery, the three idiots who were trying to drink the night away were most of the reason why I came to the Patch anyway. They were all my good friends, which did make being their boss difficult.
“We have to figure some shit out. We might be down for a while,” I said as I warmed my hands over the heater.
Jack, who was by all appearances already drunk, asked, “What’s going on?”
“Damn generators. All of them.”
Jack laughed. “More time to drink.”
Whether it was drugs, women, or insert vice here, he didn’t have a stop button. I grabbed the bottle away from him. “I’m serious, guys. Titouan is going to go ape shit if we don’t get things figured out.”
Tom stood up, adjusted his ball cap, and said, “What do you need us to do?”
We ran through options. Since the generators were out, there was no heat. Even though it was relatively warm by Arctic standards, it was still very cold. The only space at the Patch large enough to accommodate everyone was the Commons. We decided the best option would be to round up what kerosene heaters we had and place them inside the Commons in case the power couldn’t be brought up as quickly as we hoped. Cold people are angry people. I had one angry bastard to deal with, and that was enough for me. Speaking of which, it was time for me to pay the piper. I had to find Titouan.
Before I left, we quickly ran over the plans for a second time. Jack and Tom were going to help Avery. Sam was going to ready the Commons for the worst-case scenario, while also taking inventory on the things we would likely need in case of such an event. I was going to talk to Titouan. I got the shit end of the deal, by far.
***
It didn’t take long to find him. He told me he had lapped the Patch a few times looking for me, and how he had just come from the generators, but no one was there. He, of course, berated me because Avery wasn’t working on them. I told him we must've left shortly before he got there. I also told him what I knew at that point, and exactly none of it pleased him. What infuriated him even more was when he saw Sam placing kerosene heaters inside the Commons. He asked me what the hell was going on. I told him I was taking precautions in case the power couldn't be restored – it was mostly a precautionary thing.
“What the hell do you mean the power can’t be restored? And you know you’re not in charge here. Why are you making these calls behind my back?” he yelled.
I ground my teeth as I quickly formulated what not to say. "I said in case. We have three generators not working right now, but that doesn't mean--"
“I guess Avery’s blaming me?”
“He didn’t say anything. Why would it be your fault?”
Ignoring my question, he said, “Avery isn’t cut out for this, William. It’s too much for him. I knew it the entire time.”
Through gritted teeth, I said, “We’ve had one damn instance, besides today, when the power had completely gone out, and that was for, what, a half hour or a little longer?”
“That’s only the case because I’ve spent eighteen-thousand dollars on new controller boards for those generators. He repairs nothing. All he does is replace parts, and that is expensive. You know this.”
“Look, Titouan, I trust Avery with this stuff. He knows a hell of a lot more about these things than either of
us could dream of knowing. If he says something has to be replaced, I trust he knows what he’s talking about. If anything, blame Miley for buying crappy generators.”
“He doesn’t know more than the makers of those so-called crappy generators. The engineer I talked to said the boards should be functioning perfectly well in the cold.”
"Yeah, I'm sure he'd happily tell you how well they would operate in the Marianas Trench, too, if that’s where you needed them.”
Titouan angrily shook his head. “Let’s just go to the generators. It’s pretty clear you can’t separate your emotions where he is concerned.”
One of these days, I thought. One of these fucking days. “Lead the way.”
“Somebody has to, which is why I am, and you aren’t.”
Ten years prior I would’ve punched him right in his pussy ass little face. Instead, I forced a smile and said, “Yeah, sure.”
He angrily stomped off in the direction of the generators.
***
Essentially things had gone from bad to worse. We found Avery well into the process of working on the generators. He had two control boxes completely taken apart, and Jack and Tom were nowhere to be seen. “Where’s Jack and Tom, Avery?” I asked.
“Looking at the transformer,” he mumbled to himself, not bothering to look at either of us or translate his mumblese.
“Why would they be looking at the transformer?” Titouan asked.
“Because I told them to.”
“Is it too damn much to want a short update on what the hell is going on here?” Titouan continued.
Ignoring him, he focused on me. “Can you shine the flashlight into this box, William?”
Here we go again.
I reluctantly grabbed the flashlight and shined it where he asked. He used what looked like a tiny pick to push a recessed yellow button two times. He went through the exact same process on the other board with exactly the same results. This time, however, after what he tried didn’t bring about the desired result, he heaved the tiny pick, nearly falling to the ground for his effort.
After cursing under his breath and flailing angry hands in the air like a demented conductor, he blurted, "Just as I thought. Both boards are bad. We will be down until I can replace them."
“What the hell do you mean they’re dead?” Titouan asked.
“I meant that colloquially. They are inanimate objects--”
“I know what the fuck you meant. Why would you need to change the boards? You changed one last week.”
“I changed one last week because it stopped working correctly.”
“That’s six boards in eight weeks. Eighteen thousand dollars I’ve spent so far.”
“We need two more.”
Titouan paced. He started to say something but hesitated. He looked at me before settling his glare on Avery. “You fucking suck at your job. My ass is going to be in a sling because William caudles your ass--”
Sensing Titouan rapidly increasing anger, I positioned myself between the two of them. “Calm the fuck down. We’ll change the boards, and when we’re not half frozen, we can talk about this.”
Avery gave me this odd look, like I was late to the party and everyone else but me knew the secret. “We do not have backup boards.”
Titouan shook but not from the cold. “Don’t you put this on me, you weasel fuck. This is you. This is your fault. There’s a whole goddamn pile of them around here that you could use if you knew what the leaping fuck you were doing.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Wait… wait a minute. We don’t have backup parts?”
They both answered no, but both had different arguments as to why there weren’t replacements. Avery told Titouan he needed more boards because they were malfunctioning because of hot and cold cycling. He said something about the manufacturer using PCB boards that were too thin to function properly in the Arctic. Because of the nature of the control boxes, the internal temperature was either hot or cold, which caused the already too thin board to warp over time. It was this warping that caused the microcontrollers to unseat themselves from their sockets, resulting in the unit’s failure.
Titouan made the same argument he made to me a few minutes prior. The manufacturer said they should be working great. They shouldn’t warp or do any of the things Avery complained about. After talking to the manufacture, Titouan refused to order more. He told Avery he better repair the boards, but Avery remained firm that what he wanted was impossible.
“If you had hired someone who knew what they were doing instead of dragging along Gilbert Grape, here, we wouldn’t be dealing with this.”
When I left Avery the first time to look for Titouan, he was at a loss as to how to deal with the unfolding situation. After the brow beating Titouan had given him that turmoil had evolved into unbridled anger. Knowing him as I did, I knew the next step in his evolutionary transformation would be rage with a chance of violence. Avery, even with his terrible temper, was generally non-confrontational. His many years of playground conditioning at the hands of bullies, jocks, and greater wimps had caused him to shy away from fighting. But there were limits, and Titouan was pushing all the wrong buttons.
"Enough of the bullshit already. I don't care whose fault it is because at this point we’re all fucked."
Titouan acted as if he were going to walk away, but instead of leaving he started pacing again, back and forth, all the while muttering under his breath and working his hands in frantic motions. High-stress positions weren’t in his wheelhouse.
The elephant in the room was evacuation. With the outfit I worked for, though, that would come with complications. Miley was not your typical business owner. He didn’t get rich by being a nice guy. If I were to tell you he crushed his competition, your natural proclivity might be to read that metaphorically. Don’t make that mistake. He had a mob mentality of running a business, especially in his later years.
Miley was making a hard push into the Arctic, and the word on the street was he was strapped for cash. Any downtime at the Patch, which by that time had become his biggest cash cow, would only exacerbate cash flows. With the potential long downtime because of the bad boards, which could be a month or longer, it was unclear how Miley would react. I feared reprisals.
I was well on my way to being out the door before the power went out. I had jobs lined up for Avery and me back in Indiana. The reprisals and blacklisting wouldn’t affect us, but they most certainly would my close friends. Tom and Sam had worked in the oil industry since Tom graduated high school. That’s all they knew. Jack worked in some construction, but with the economy like it was, he would be lucky to find a job.
As the thoughts of reprisals poured through my mind, something odd occurred to me. Avery had told me how one of the generators was down because of bad bearings. Why hadn’t he thought to check that generator’s control board? Surely it was good, and if it were, why couldn’t it be used in one of the ones with bad boards, I wondered. We wouldn’t be able to resume full operations with one operating generator, but we wouldn’t have to evacuate, either. It would save a massive headache for everyone.
“Avery, you said one of the generators was on maintenance because of a bad bearing, right?”
“Yes. Bearings Titouan had not yet ordered.”
Titouan stopped his pacing but didn't respond to Avery's barb.
As much as I was trying not to further stoke the dragon that was Avery, the pressure I felt finally let go in a torrent. “Well, take the damn board out of the one needing bearings, and put it in one of the two with bad boards. We should’ve already been doing this. Let’s get this done, bud.”
Titouan laughed, smacked himself in the face, and started rubbing his temples after the damage was done, talking to himself all the while.
“That is a bad call, William. The board is currently being held flat. There is a good chance that once the screws holding the board flat are removed, it might warp and become unusable. The safer choice would be to take t
he good bearings out of one of the generators with the bad board.”
“How long will that take?”
“Four to eight hours to take the bearings out.”
“Versus taking just the board out?” Titouan asked.
“An hour or a little more,” Avery said.
Titouan laughed again. “You make the fucking call, William. I’m not going to be responsible for his incompetence anymore. I refuse.”
“You can’t have it both ways, Titouan. Either you’re running this place or you’re not. If you are then I suggest you do your job and tell us what to do.”
“Fine. I’m telling you to make the call. You’re fucking maintenance, aren’t you?”
I exhaled deeply. “If I’m making the call, there’s no need for you to stay here. All you’re doing is making this harder.”
“I’m not going anywhere, and you’re going to make the damn call. This is your baby.”
“You’re something else, you…” I stopped myself from making things worse.
I counted to ten or a hundred before finally turning away from Titouan’s sour-puss stare. “Take out the bearings and put them in the one with the working controller. Tom and Jack should be here any moment to help.”
***
Titouan stood uncomfortably close to Avery as he worked. To Avery’s credit, he was doing an amazing job of controlling himself. Titouan, on the other hand, was fit to be tied. Every passing second infuriated him a little more. So when Avery stopped what he was doing with the bearings and moved to the control panel, Titouan had finally had enough.
“What the fuck are you doing? I know enough about these generators to know the bearings aren’t in the control box.”