by Teddy Hester
“Thanks, Frank. I needed some comic relief.”
I don’t miss the knowing twinkle. “Now go do some good.”
“On it. Rest up. I’m planning on leaving a shit-ton of tasks for you tomorrow.”
“Bring it on,” he scoffs, heading down the path toward Security. “Makes the day go that much quicker.”
I watch him walk away, his long legs a little bowed, shoulders still broad and strong, and I thank my lucky stars again for bringing this man into my life. I gotta figure a way to help him dial back the workload on future jobs—without insulting him. I want him with me for another twenty years.
When I finally navigate toward the plant, Nola’s ahead in the distance, and so is Felix. She’s carrying something, which she hands over to him. It looks like part of a tarp. Considering she’s a painter, it’s not surprising to find her with a tarp, but why would she give it to a pipefitter?
Felix takes it from her, they exchange words I’m too far away to hear, then they leave in opposite directions.
“Felix!” He stops when I call. “What’s that?”
His face is carefully schooled to neutral while he waits for me to catch up. “Piece of tarp Nola found.”
I take a dirty corner in my hand and study it. “You think it’s from the missing tarp?”
“Might be. I was taking it over to Painting to see if they could identify it.”
“I’ll be interested to hear. In the meantime, I’m on my way to test the scaffolding in the well, if you’re interested.”
Eyes cool, he nods. “Let me drop this off, and I’ll meet you there.”
The man lumbers away like a high school football jock, throwing his weight around, trying to look tough.
Sorry, man. If you had a prior claim, she wouldn’t have let me touch her. Now, she’s mine.
Jilly and I need to chat about him. I shake my head and turn toward the plant.
The wells are just outside the plant walls in their own hut. They used to be boreholes for extracting oil and gas from an underground pocket in the rock. This particular pocket is now empty, making it an ideal reservoir for Lonestar Petroleum’s geothermal purposes.
The new piping resides in a special casing for part of the well depth. The scaffolding I designed allow piping to be monitored and maintained as efficiently as possible. Climbing down between that casing and pipes is something most borehole wells don’t use, and it’s what has Felix all twitchy.
“Jack!” Doug Battles says, coming over to shake hands. “Ready to inspect some scaffolding?”
“Definitely. Like I promised at the emergency meeting, I’m gonna weld a stretch of pipe, too, for your pipefitter who’s worried about safety. I sent word for him to bring me some tools.”
He rocks on his heels, hands in pockets. “Ah, yes, Felix. That’s good. Here he is.”
Carrying a welding torch and face shield, Felix joins us and peers down the ladder nearest him.
“I’ll climb down this ladder and come up yours,” I say, throwing a leg over the edge. As I climb, I purposely jerk and pull harder than necessary, making sure everything is as solid as the various other times it’s been tested. After a few hundred feet, the temperature is considerably warmer, and I’m glad to reach the metal walkaround. I take that to the other side of pipe, to Felix’s ladder, and climb back up.
“Looks fine,” Doug hollers. “I’m going down.” He retraces my steps, his focus more on the pipe than the scaffolding.
“Ready to weld.” I don the propane tank, check the fittings from it to the torch, grab the face shield, and climb back down the scaffolding. I pick my spot, fire up the torch, and go through the motions of welding the pipe. It’s a tight fit, but not dangerous to pipefitters used to dealing with the hazards of their craft.
I turn off the torch and climb back up the ladder. “Who’s next?”
Doug goes next, and Felix goes down at the same time to see what it’s like with two people in the well. I join them, and they take turns firing up the torch and pretending to weld.
Test complete. Another item checked off the list. Now maybe yesterday’s meeting agenda can be laid to rest.
Topside, Doug pumps my hand. “Great stuff! Felix, send a couple of guys down the production well and test it, too. Then we’ll be ready for the inspectors to sign off on it.”
“Get what you wanted?” I ask Felix.
He stares at me, then nods. “It’s good. Good job. No excess safety issues. I’ll send a few of my men down later tonight.”
Doug claps his hands together, rubbing them in glee. “Excellent. Then, if you don’t need me anymore, I’m going home.”
We all shake hands, and he leaves. Felix and I walk in the direction of the pumphouse. He’s still wearing the tank on his back, holding the torch in one hand.
“Any info about the tarp?” I ask, taking the face shield from him.
“The painters can account for all the rest of their inventory.”
“Where’d Nola find it?”
“Not far from here, actually. Between here and the Paint shed.”
“Wonder what it was doing there?”
Felix shrugs. He acts like somebody who’s strangling on things he wants to say, and they aren’t about tarps or stolen materials. I could try to make it a little easier on him, but I’m not feeling all that charitable after that “emergency” meeting. Let the worm squirm.
Finally, he throws a glance over at me. “What are your intentions?”
“Beg your pardon?” As if I don’t know exactly what he’s talking about, the little fucker.
“Jilly.”
“Why’re you asking?”
His jaw clenches. “You’re leaving in a few days. What do you want from her?”
I don’t have that clear in my own mind. But even if I did, there’s no way I’m going to let him grill me about a woman who’s not even part of his family. I just keep walking.
“I don’t want to see her hurt,” he persists.
“She has a father and brothers to look out for her.”
The plant’s lighting show violent color splotching up his neck. “She’s like my little sister.”
“Is that what all this is about? The meeting? Your safety concerns?”
He has the grace to turn his head away. “They’re real concerns. For her, too.”
My fist curls, itching to fly. “Appreciated. Dealt with.”
We walk a ways more, and I can feel the struggle going on inside him, coming across in waves. “Let it go, Felix. Before you damage your friendship with her.”
Blue eyes snap to my face. “I won’t let you hurt her.”
“I won’t be asking your permission.”
He sneers and heads in another direction.
I sigh. He’s not totally off-base. I will be gone sometime after the project’s done. I’m hoping that I can talk Jilly into taking a short trip with me to unwind between our projects and the holidays. I’m not ready to turn her loose. But if she can’t go or won’t, what’ll happen then? She’s the kind of girl you take home to Mom, not off for a mindless, sex-drenched fling.
Talking and thinking about Jilly makes me need to see her, talk to her, touch her. Grab and hold onto her like she’s a life preserver. The night’s not even half over, so I can’t call her. She needs her sleep anyway.
Guess I need to stop bawling like a lost calf and get this damn project done. We can figure the rest out later.
About 6 AM, I’m doing my run-through of all departments, checking on progress, filling things out for Frank and the daytime shift change, when the intercom blasts my name.
Jack DePaul, report to Production Well.
I hit it on a run, wondering what my friend Felix has cooked up. When I arrive, staff medics are tending to a man on a stretcher, getting ready to transport him to a local hospital.
“What happened?”
Felix leaps from his crew member’s side, shoving his angry, mottled face at me. “I told you it wasn’t safe. I kne
w it!”
I scan the scene, trying to find out what’s happened. As the stretcher passes, I grasp a medic’s arm. “What happened?”
“Took a fall with the torch burning. We won’t know the extent of his injuries until a doctor checks him out.”
The man is out cold, a knot on his forehead, three deep scratches on one cheek, and both hands wrapped in gauze. “Will he make it?”
“He’s got a good chance.”
I nod and let them pass. Felix is still standing, hard as a brick wall, fists bunched at his sides. “I said your scaffolding would get someone killed.”
“How’d this happen? Show me?”
He wasn’t finished railing. If I struck him, it would probably stop his rant. But with the crowd gathering, I couldn’t take the chance. “Felix, calm down and show me what happened. I can’t fix what I don’t find out about.”
“There’s nothing to fix. It needs to be thrown out and done by somebody who knows what he’s doing. Somebody who’s not distracted by a girl.”
Red haze clouds my vision, and my heart rate jumps so fast, I may pass out. More than anything, I’m dying to shove those words back down his throat. I take a step, fists clenched. Strong hands grab me from behind. “Ignore the pussy,” Frank says in my ear, but loud enough for others to hear, including Felix.
Eyes locked on Felix, I let him snarl at me. A couple of his men are holding him from coming at me.
Bring it, motherfucker. I’ll rearrange your face for you.
Frank, my voice of reason, cuts off that satisfying train of thought. “Let’s go check things out.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Three Days to Deadline
At first glance, there didn’t seem to be anything that would have caused Felix’s pipefitter to fall or hurt himself.
“I’m going down,” I tell Frank. Before anyone can argue, I throw a leg over one of the ladders and climb down. Every step feels solid.
Frank’s face is creased with concern. “Anything?”
“No.” When my feet hit the walkaround, I take a moment to scan as far as I can around the pipe running down the center of the well. “Looks good so far.”
The light is a little blocked, but not enough to impede my scrutiny as I step toward the next ladder. I decide to climb it and test it out. Again, solid.
“Still good?” Frank asks when I get to the top.
“So far, so good. Let me take a quick look at the other ladders.”
Using the walkaround, I skirt around the outside of the pipe, scanning the casing as I go. When I get to the next ladder, something shiny catches my eye farther on. Instead of climbing the ladder, I walk past it to investigate.
It’s a wrench. Did it fall out of the crewman’s tool belt? If so, I’m not sure why the pipefitter had his full toolbelt down here for welding. Most only carry what they need for a task, and leave the rest behind.
“Find something?” Frank calls down.
“A wrench. Hold on.”
I walk back to the nearest ladder. As I grab it, something grabs me. It’s whisper soft, but definite. Scanning up and down the ladder, it looks like something’s wedged between the ladder and the casing wall.
“What the fuck?”
“What is it, Jack?”
“Not sure yet. Send down a flashlight.”
While I’m waiting, I tug at what’s wadded behind the ladder. A scream and a growl tell me all I need to know. Abandoning the task, I can’t get to a different ladder fast enough and scramble topside. A bunch of surprised faces greet me.
“Call animal control,” I say with a hollow laugh. “A pissed-off raccoon mama just registered a complaint with her landlord.”
One side of Frank’s mouth kicks up. “I’ll be damned.”
When I’m sure I’m not shaking anymore, I lift my hard hat and run a hand through my sweat-slicked hair. “Yep. Unless I miss my guess, we just found our thief.”
It takes a while, but an exterminator finally comes with cages and coaxes the raccoon and her three babies out of the production well wall. All the chittering and screaming and growling set my nerves on edge, but the guy knows his stuff and carts the little family away to relocate them to a friendlier environment.
When it was safe to go back down, Frank and I try to piece together how it all happened. Somehow she’d sneaked in, taken advantage of an irregularity in the casing, and dug into a rock fracture behind. It was a tight opening, partially hidden by the ladder, but warm and safe and plenty big enough inside for her kits.
“How did she drag all this shit into her hidey-hole without any of us seeing?” Frank marvels, helping me pull bits of tarp and plastic trash bags out of the damaged wall. Shredded bits of Nick’s tool belt appear, too. Along with probably a couple of dozen or more chewed-up gloves.
He shakes his head. “And the tools? What do you think that was about?”
“Shiny, I guess. Or maybe she just wanted the belt. Hell, as bold and smart as she is, maybe she was going to install cable TV.” The Security video comes to mind. That little dickens was slick. A magician, swiping stuff right from under our noses.
We get most of the stuff out of the hole, inspect the damage and outline plans for the cleaning crew to finish up and our guys follow behind to patch the hole. I’m exhausted.
“You got it from here, Frank?”
“Yep. Go on to the hotel.”
“Get ‘er done, buddy. I’d like to have the inspectors in ASAP. I’m ready to pack this project in.”
“Yeah, it’s time to wrap things up and take a vacation.”
My thoughts exactly. I grin my goodbye and climb up the ladder. Doug Battles meets me at the top, back for another day of supervising his construction crews. “You had a wild night.”
“You might say that.”
He peers over the side of the production well. “Mystery solved. Much damage?”
“Minimal. Frank’s got it covered. How’s your welder?”
“Shaken up, but he’s out of the hospital, at home resting.”
“That’s good to hear. Think I’ll do the same.”
Right after I call Jilly. She’s gonna love hearing about the raccoons.
After dragging myself the mile and a half to the parking lot, I’m not sure I can stay upright in Ol’ Blue long enough to get to the hotel. Amazingly, though, once the morning air hits me through the open window of the old pickup, my mind clears, and I’m good. Stress morphs into excitement running up and down my nervous system, leaving me feeling wired and happy to be alive.
The minute I’m at the hotel, I try Jilly’s phone, but it goes to voicemail. I know she’s busy on her own project, but I can’t help myself. I try her number again after breakfast and a third time after a shower. Then I crash in my lonely bed.
When I wake up, my body’s in the exact same position it was when I fell into bed. I don’t think I moved in eight hours. Jilly’s still swirling around in my head, so I try calling her again.
“Jack? Hey.”
Her drawl is like caramel flowing over me. Tension I didn’t realize I had loosens in my neck. “Hey, pretty girl. Busy day?”
“Yeah. But we made a good start.”
“You got time to tell me?”
“We’re just getting things squared away before dinner.”
I adjust the pillows behind me and settle in against the headboard. “Okay, shoot.”
“Do you know fruit harvesting?”
“No.”
“Well, then, I won’t bore you silly with little details.”
“I want to hear anything you want to tell me.”
“Oh, that’s so nice. But I’ll spare you. Today was mostly about picking as much fruit as possible, before the effects of hurricane Wilhelmina hits.”
Living on the North Carolina coast, I’ve lived through many such storms. “You’re far enough away from the coast, aren’t you, that you won’t get a direct blast?”
“Yeah. But we’ve already got more wind than is go
od for citrus trees. And heavy rain’s predicted, beginning in a couple of days.”
“That’s bad for grapefruit, too?”
“Wind knocks fruit to the ground, bruising it before we can pack it for shipping. Rain will rot the tree roots if we’re not able to control flooding and drainage.”
Shit. “I had no idea.”
“Fortunately, ours isn’t a huge operation. I think we can get the fruit picked in just a few days. It’s going to be a nice harvest. The fruit’s just the right size and ripeness.”
The excitement in her voice chases away all my previous night’s stresses. “Listen to you. You’re blossoming.”
She ghosts a little laugh. “Jack.”
“No, really. You haven’t even snarked at me once.”
“You goof.”
My lips stretch into an easy smile. “You’re happy.”
“Yeah. You’re right. It’s early yet, of course, but the harvest is going well. The pickers seem satisfied with the work. If the weather cooperates, it’ll all be gold.”
“Is this what you want to do for a career?”
“Oh, right now all I’m trying to do is prove to my family that I can make a contribution.”
That strikes a chord. Being the youngest of four brothers, I’d always had a compulsion to prove myself. One day I finally believed that I could do it. Proving it to myself ended up being more important than convincing my family.
But if anybody’d tried to tell me that, I wouldn’t have listened. In fact, witnessing it in her is helping me. I’ve worked so hard for my independence. But independence from what? Nobody in my family has held me back. That’s all on me.
My chest heats as realization fills me up.
I’ve proven my independence. Embraced it. Stand strong in it.
Do I know how to be part of something bigger? Would I even consider it?
Damn.
Where are these thoughts coming from? Is it this girl? Is it my parents’ happy thirty-year marriage?
“I miss you.” The words slipped out before I knew they were even on my tongue.
Her soft gasp didn’t slow my roll. “When we’re both done, you with your harvest and me with the green energy project, go away with me for a few days.”