Hell Rig

by J. E. Gurley

  “What are you getting at?”

  She didn’t like the way Jeff looked around conspiratorially before answering. “Someone in this crew did this,” he announced.

  She shook her head, shocked at Jeff’s accusation. “Someone on the delivery chopper could have done it.”

  “Maybe, but I’ll bet they unloaded and got out of here as fast as possible. It seems this rig has a dark reputation.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I talked to Ed earlier. He said the first crew that came out here after Hurricane Katrina to check out Waters’ story heard and saw strange things.”

  “Yeah, like dead mutilated corpses.”

  “No, strange things, things in the shadows, a quick glimpse of something and just as quickly it was gone and they heard voices inside their heads. One of the crew committed suicide a week after they returned. He hung himself from a closet shelf. A second started drinking and hasn’t stopped yet.”

  A hard knot grew in her stomach as Jeff spoke. She remembered the sounds she heard earlier but fought back with logic. “Who wouldn’t after what they saw?”

  “Maybe,” Jeff said, but she knew her argument was weak in the face of her own gut feelings.

  “Why tell me?”

  “Who else? If I tell the others, they’ll think I’m crazy or laugh at me. You’re educated. I thought I might have a chance of convincing you. I guess I was wrong.” He turned to leave.

  “Wait. You could be wrong, you know. You’re no expert on metal corrosion, are you?”

  “Damn it, I don’t have to be an expert to know this is recent.” He snorted out a chuckle. “Believe me, I know rust. I’ve chipped enough of it away with chipping hammers and sand blasted tons of it.”

  Lisa looked at him, trying to judge his sincerity. He believed he was right and she had to honor that.

  “Okay. I’ll trust your judgment on this.” He smiled and turned to leave. Through his open shirt, she noticed the glimmer of a shiny medallion against his chest. She reached out and grabbed it.

  “A voodoo charm?” she asked with awe as she recognized the marking.

  He jerked away, embarrassed. “Yes. What of it?” he challenged.

  She laughed and opened the neck of her shirt, revealing a stone beaded necklace. Jeff’s eyes automatically strayed a bit lower, to her breasts, before jerking back to the necklace. “It’s an Erzulie Danto charm,” she explained. “She’s a powerful voodoo Loa, or spirit, a warrior. I wear it for protection.” She fingered a second similar necklace. “This one is for Papa Legba. He’s the most powerful Loa. He controls the doorway to the spirit world.”

  “You believe in that mumbo jumbo?” Jeff asked.

  She heard the unspoken accusation in his voice. It was a question she asked herself many times and had not completely answered.

  “Not really, but I did grow up with it. My grandmother was a mambo, a voodoo priestess. I learned the names of the Loa alongside the names of the Catholic Saints. Some people call the Loas saints. I guess I’m an agnostic, but like you, I like the feel of them around my neck.”

  He laughed. “Okay. I guess I came on too strong. Look, don’t tell the others about this. If I’m wrong, it could cause problems. If I’m right, I’ll need more proof.”

  She smiled. “Which one? The TEMPSC or your voodoo charm?”

  He smiled back. “Both.”

  Lisa nodded but suddenly felt overwhelmed by secrets. She had been on the rig for less than ten hours and already had been sworn to secrecy by two different people. She trusted Jeff. He was a bit klutzy when it came to women, but she liked that rather than the smooth, self-sure operators like Tolson, who seemed to think he was God’s gift to women. There was some quality about Jeff that defied description – innocence or trust—that she had seen in few men, especially her last boyfriend whom she had found in bed with her roommate.

  The others were harder to read. Ed was like an uncle to her, but he was hiding something. A man not used to secrets changed when he had one. This one was big. She wished she knew what it was. It seemed to weigh heavily on Ed’s mind.

  Gleason was a big old bear, a simple country boy who seemed to focus on one thing at a time. If not for the others carrying on, he probably wouldn’t even concern himself with the reputation of the platform. Easton was a loud-mouthed punk with bad breath, an instigator. He was strange. Almost any man looked at her sometime, stealing glances when they thought she wasn’t watching. She knew she was no beauty, but had been called attractive. Easton, however, avoided looking at her, not even quick, furtive glances. Was he gay? She didn’t think so.

  Bale was unusually quiet but she had seen him fingering a crucifix beneath his shirt several times. There was a story there, she suspected, but he, too, seemed to avoid her. Mac, according to Tolson, was hiding something. He was observant but not in a threatening manner, unlike Sims who was cold and calculating with his incessant furtive glances. His eyes missed nothing. She had seen him smile at times over nothing. She wondered what strange thoughts ran through his head.

  She could not forget Waters. What could she say about him? Waters was downright spooky. He frightened her. He stalked the platform like a zombie, speaking to himself and jumping at shadows. He could become dangerous. Global Oil should not have sent him back out.

  She glanced at the shadows around them and shivered. “Let’s get back to the others,” she suggested to Jeff. “I don’t like it out here.” Her coffee had grown cold. She tossed the cup’s contents over the side and dropped the empty Styrofoam cup in a barrel.

  Jeff led the way with his light. She tried not to stare too deeply into the shadows.

  After dinner, Lisa longed for a shower but settled for a quick wash with seawater and a rinse with a couple of cups of fresh drinking water. The bed, still slightly smelling of mold in spite of a liberal spraying of disinfectant, felt especially comfortable as she wrapped herself in her blanket. She was asleep within minutes.

  * * * *

  She awoke brusquely sometime in the middle of the night troubled by a bad dream. Visions of dead men hanging like fruit from bloody cranes and rows of dead white trees resembling skeletons lingered in her head. She could remember nothing else except a vague feeling of trepidation about snakes, swarms of snakes. She got up to get a drink of water. She saw Waters sitting in the hallway with his back against the wall and his eyes wide open, but he didn’t appear to see her, lost in some trance. She tiptoed by him to the meeting room and took a bottle of water from the cooler. Waters did not move or acknowledge her presence as she returned. Refreshed, she managed to sleep the remainder of the night with no further dreams.

  Chapter Six

  The second day began much as the first. At breakfast, they all sat down to a meal of pancakes, eggs, skillet toast, bacon and coffee cooked by Jeff on a portable grill outside the main building, discussing the day’s agenda between bites. Ed divided them into four teams for better efficiency. He assigned Tolson and McAndrews to weld broken guardrails and walkways, remove bent pipes and cut up large metal debris into more easily manageable pieces, while Bale, Easton and Jeff cleaned the buildings of broken and ruined furniture, emptied waterlogged file cabinets, stripped peeling wallpaper from the walls and hosed out the muck and grime with high-pressure salt water lines.

  Gleason and Sims, much to Jeff’s delight, got the stinking job of cleaning out the freezer. Ed and Lisa would tackle the radio problem. Waters as usual had vanished before breakfast and no one bothered to search for him. After an hour or so behind the high-pressure water hose, Jeff wondered if things could get worse. His uniform had quickly crusted with filthy salt water and the sudden splashes left him with a mouthful of foul tasting muck. His safety goggles did little to keep salt water from his eyes. The thought of Sims and Gleason up to their knees in rotten meat and vegetables made him smile.

  Taking a quick break, he checked on them as they were taking out packages of steaks from the freezer. He almost gagged on the smel
l. They tossed some of the spoiled food over the side for the fish. The rest went into sealed plastic drums. Gleason had a handkerchief wrapped around his nose and mouth, but Sims did not. Jeff wondered how Sims could stand it and decided to ask.

  Sims stared at him strangely before answering. “If you don’t hide from the smell, you get used to it.” He inhaled deeply. “I like the smell. It smells like death. It reminds me I’m alive.”

  “Whatever floats your boat, Sims,” Jeff said, feeling like he had been let in on one of Sims’ little secrets. After a few minutes around the freezer, watching Sims and Gleason work, hosing muck didn’t seem quite so bad.

  The piles of debris were growing taller by the hour. Because of EPA rules, each piece of garbage, every pound of scrap had to be sealed in heavy plastic bags or hampers and loaded onto a barge for disposal on shore. Larger items would go into metal bins on the barge.

  When the freezer was empty, Ed placed Sims in charge of labeling the drums of refuse and moving them all to one area of the platform. He worked quietly and efficiently without complaint. Jeff was beginning to change his mind about the new hire when he saw Sims reach into his back pocket, take out a silver flask and take a swig. Jeff shook his head.

  “Closet drunk,” he said to no one in particular. “It’s no wonder the smell of rotten meat didn’t bother him.”

  Lunch was an every man for himself affair, fixings for sandwiches and chips laid out on the table and eaten hastily between jobs. Jeff downed two roast beef sandwiches while greasing the fittings on the crane. He had noticed the controls were somewhat sluggish when lifting the radio antennae into place the previous day. They would need it in perfect order to move the heavier loads.

  By mid-afternoon, according to Ed, the platform was beginning to take shape. Jeff could see it no longer resembled the burned out hull it had been, but to Jeff it was beginning to look more like an organized garbage dump. Piles of refuse lined one side of the platform awaiting transfer to the supply barge.

  “We’re making good progress,” Ed told them when they gathered for a coffee break. “If we finish ahead of schedule, I’ll buy the steaks.” He seemed in good spirits, pleased with their efforts so far. Jeff just hoped the weather held. The sky was taking on a grayish cast out in the Gulf. Tropical Storm Rita was somewhere over Cuba, headed their way and he had an uneasy feeling about it. Still, they say lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place.

  “Steaks hell!” Tolson called out. “You buy the booze.”

  Ed laughed. “It’s a deal.”

  “When is the supply barge due?” Gleason asked. “I want to get some of this stinking garbage off.”

  Ed looked at Lisa before answering. “We’re not sure. Day after tomorrow maybe.” He looked down and shuffled his feet. “We can’t call out.”

  Tolson’s smile vanished, quickly replaced by a concerned expression, “Why not?”

  Lisa answered hesitantly. “I don’t know.” Her words rushed out as she continued. “Everything checks out fine. We have power, the circuits are live and the frequency is right. It…just won’t transmit,” she finished lamely.

  “The antenna tower’s up,” McAndrews pointed out. “You should have enough range.”

  “I know. I briefly contacted the depot yesterday. We should be able to at least pick up some local ship traffic out in the Gulf,” she replied. “Maybe it’s atmospheric.”

  Jeff could see that the radio problem bothered her. “You’ll fix it,” he said with a confident smile.

  She smiled back at him but with less enthusiasm.

  “Okay, back to work,” Ed told them.

  As the others left, Jeff pulled Lisa aside. “Is it as bad as you said?” he asked.

  “All the equipment seems to be working as far as I can tell,” Lisa confided. “It just isn’t broadcasting. It’s like an invisible shield is keeping the radio waves from leaving the platform. I don’t know what the problem is,” she admitted with a long sigh. “If it requires more parts, we don’t have any.”

  “The supply ship will come whether we call or not,” he reminded her. “It’s on its way.”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  “I’ll check the antenna later, after I finish with the crane. Maybe there’s a loose connection somewhere.”

  She smiled and touched his chest with her hand. “I appreciate it, Jeff, but I doubt that’s the problem.”

  His chest felt unnaturally warm where her hand rested. He resisted the impulse to cover it with his. He felt an awkward boyish sense of joy sweep through his body, as if meeting his first girlfriend. They stood that way a few moments, looking into one another’s eyes. Her smile faded, replaced by an expression of curiosity. She dropped her hand.

  “I have to go.”

  The smell of her perfume lingered as he watched her walk away, admiring her figure. She walked solidly but gracefully, not the practiced sashay of a New Orleans hooker or the lumbering gait of a not so feminist roustabout. She glanced over her shoulder at him and smiled.

  Later, as he greased the crane’s fittings, he caught himself staring up at the spot where the Digger Man had ended his life. The bloodstains on the deck had been erased by the storm, but at times, when the light was just right, he swore he could see the shadow of a blood stain spreading across the deck. He was standing and staring at cables, hoping to repeat his earlier vision, when Waters came up behind him, as silently as a ghost.

  “You see it, too, don’t you?” he asked.

  Jeff jumped and turned to look at him. Waters looked even more haggard than when they had arrived. Large dark circles surrounded his eyes and his hands constantly trembled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he lied. “Where have you been all day?” he asked gruffly, changing the subject. “I thought you were supposed to be helping us.”

  Waters’ smile made him uneasy. “I’ve been trying, but I didn’t do any good. You’re still in danger.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It still wants all of you. I can’t stop it.”

  He took a step toward Waters. “Look. I’m tired of your sick jokes. If you aren’t going to help, stay away from me.”

  Waters backed up, cowering. Jeff felt a rush of guilt for his outburst. The platform was getting to him. When Waters saw Jeff was not going to hit him, he smiled. “Take the girl and leave while you can. I can’t stop it.”

  “No one can leave until the supply ship gets here.”

  “Swim,” Waters said as he turned to leave. “You’ll be safer in the water with the sharks.”

  Jeff watched Waters walk away and was more certain than ever that the man was insane. Waters talked to himself and made odd gestures as he scurried away, recoiling at shadows as if afraid of them. As Jeff coiled up the cable for the crane’s remote control, it occurred to him that the one thing bothering him about Waters’ macabre story focused on the remote. He eyed the length of cable attached to it. Next, he estimated the distance to where Waters claimed Digger Man’s body had hung. Without an accurate measurement he could not be certain, but it looked to him as if Digger Man could not have hoisted himself. The remote cable would not reach that far. Why would Waters lie?

  Perhaps Waters was merely mistaken or the crane could have shifted during the hurricane. Jeff knew he had left it at the exact height he had found it after raising the antennae. He slipped it into the back of his mind for the time being. He had other things to ponder.

  * * * *

  The end of the long work day could not have come soon enough for Jeff. His muscles ached and he was filthy. He was also apprehensive, as if someone was watching him. Several times during the day, he had turned quickly expecting to see someone standing there, but all he saw were shadows. All afternoon, he had felt as if something bad was about to happen. It was not quite a premonition but more than a gut feeling. He tried to place the blame on Waters’ odd behavior but knew that was not it. He knew they were in for trouble and it was not just the increasingly graying sky.<
br />
  It was not all bad news. Jeff and McAndrews had managed to run a line from a secondary freshwater tank they had located to the emergency shower. They also surrounded the shower with plywood for privacy. The water was cold but on a hot muggy day, it felt heavenly. A quick shower managed to wash away the grime and sweat but did nothing about his apprehension. The entire group was unusually quiet during dinner, except for Easton. His constant braggadocio about his accomplishments that day wore on everyone’s nerves. Finally, Gleason could take no more and exploded.

  “Shut the hell up, Easton, or I’ll swat you like a fly,” he shouted before taking a bite of his bread.

  “Try it you big lummox,” Easton challenged, pushing his chair back and half rising.

  “Stow it you two!” Ed called out, shutting them up. They continued to brood and stare at each other but said nothing more. Jeff suspected Easton knew just how far he could rile Big Clyde before pushing him too far, riding that fine edge for all it was worth. It made him want to slap Easton down himself.

  “Good dinner, Mac,” Jeff said trying to lighten the mood. Each took a turn at cooking dinner and McAndrews had managed to make a palatable meal from sliced deli beef. “What is it?”

  MacAndrews smiled. “Shit-on-a-shingle, my dad called it. It’s chipped beef and gravy with fresh peas on mashed potatoes. I chopped up the beef and sautéed it in oil before making a white sauce and adding the chipped beef to it.”

  “We ate it in the Navy but it didn’t taste as good,” Ed added.

  “Thanks,” MacAndrews said, embarrassed by the sudden attention. “I just added a few spices I found in the pantry.”

  “You’ll make someone a fine wife someday,” Tolson chided, throwing McAndrews a mock kiss.

  McAndrews threw back his head and quoted:

  “If more of us valued food and cheer and song