by Janet Dailey
"Maybe." But Abbie doubted it, the feeling again returning that her world was being threatened. As the grimness and tension came back, she turned toward the stables. "I think I'll go check on Breeze."
The oil industry had changed considerably since its early boom days when the famed Spindletop gusher turned Houston into a city and a center of the oil industry with its inland port, oil refineries, and petrochemical plants. Technological and scientific advancement had bought more sophisticated equipment and techniques into use. Environmental and federal controls had reduced pollution and waste, and increased costs. Demand and deregulation of oil and natural gas prices had sent the world price of crude oil soaring in 1980 to more than thirty dollars a barrel, with predictions of future prices reaching fifty, sixty, maybe even seventy dollars a barrel.
One factor remained constant: the key role played by the independent oil men, the wildcatters. They still drilled the vast majority of test wells in the exploration for new fields, as high as nine times the number drilled by the giant oil companies. The wildcatters were responsible for some 80 percent of the gas and oil discoveries in the United States.
Few, if any, wildcatters absorbed the full cost of drilling. They spread their risk, selling off percentages of ownership to the majors or other independents, giving up percentages to the landowner or the drilling contractor or both, and selling limited partnerships to private investors. The successful ones were cautious and conservative gamblers.
MacCrea Wilder might call himself a drilling contractor, but Abbie knew better. She'd listened to too many discussions between her ex-husband and his banker father not to know that most financial institutions were reluctant to speculate on newcomers. They wanted to look at a wildcatter's track record and examine his staying power. With his small deals here and ownership percentages there, MacCrea was establishing a performance record in wildcatting and generating royalties that were both an asset and an ongoing cash flow. His drilling company gave him an independent income and a business history, as well as knowledge and experience in the field.
When everyone from mail-order promoters to lease brokers called themselves wildcatters, Abbie wondered why MacCrea played it so low-key. She smiled at herself, amused by her own curiosity about him. There was no doubt that the man had thoroughly aroused her interest.
In every direction she looked, the scenery was all sky, a blue dome towering over the flat coastal prairie of cropland, broken now and then only by a ground-hugging farmhouse occasionally shaded by a lonely tree. A crop-dusting plane swooped low over a rice field, releasing its white misty trail of pesticide or herbicide, then buzzing her red Mercedes convertible before climbing higher, giving the pilot an eyeful of the dark-haired beauty behind the wheel, dressed in a simple back-less sundress in royal purple, belted at the waist with a chain of silver conchos, lizard-skin sandals on her feet.
Still smiling thoughtfully, Abbie returned the pilot's wave and continued down the road, speeding by a pasture scattered with slow-bobbing pumpjacks rhythmically drawing crude oil from completed wells. She watched the horizon to her right, looking for the distinctive iron skeleton of an oil derrick. According to MacCrea's directions, she should see it any minute now.
Suddenly there it was, poking its head up about a mile off the main road. She slowed the car, anticipating the turnoff that would take her to the drill site. Less than a quarter-mile ahead, a gray-white strip converged on the highway at a right angle. Abbie turned onto the road spread with oyster shells and followed its straight line to the iron-ribbed tower in the distance.
The tall derrick dominated the drill site from its perch atop the substructure platform. Sprawled at its feet were the support components: the diesel engines that powered the rig, the racks of pipe stacked in layers, the mud pumps and pits along with their auxiliary equipment, the fuel tanks, and the on-site office trailers. All were interconnected by a system of walkways and stairs.
More than a half-dozen vehicles were parked in the clearing that surrounded the drilling rig. Abbie parked her Mercedes in the space next to MacCrea's black pickup. The steady roar of the diesel engines covered the slam of her car door as she paused to look around. Several workers were in sight, but none of them seemed to notice her arrival. Without the cooling draft of the moving car, the heat became oppressive. She tucked her hair behind her ears, grateful for the turquoise sweatband across her forehead.
As she started toward the nearest office trailer, MacCrea stepped out, dressed in a pair of blue-green coveralls and a hard hat. Right behind him came a second man, dressed in street clothes—a print shirt and tan trousers—but wearing the requisite hard hat.
"Hello." She walked over to MacCrea, glancing questioningly in his companion's direction. "Have I come at a bad time?"
"Not at all," he replied and introduced her to the on-site representative of the major oil company that had contracted the drilling of the well. "Like me, Chuck lives on the site," MacCrea explained, gesturing over his shoulder at the trailer behind them. "I promised Miss Lawson I'd give her a tour of the operation."
"Be my guest. Anyone who's been in the business any length of time at all has heard about your grandfather. Here." He removed his safety helmet and offered it to Abbie. "You'll need this."
"Thanks." Like them, she had to speak louder to make herself heard clearly above the steady din from the power plant and the equipment in operation.
After MacCrea had adjusted the inner band of the hat to fit her and set it on her head, they started out along the walkway. He took her by the mud pits first, showing her the heavy gray-brown fluid that had been the basis of her family's fortune. He explained how the mud was pumped from the pits through a discharge line to the vertically mounted standpipe on the near leg of the derrick (properly called a mast, since it needed no assembly), and from there it entered the kelly hose down the kelly, the drill pipe and collar exiting at the bit at the bottom of the hole. Abbie discovered that, with all the noise in the background, it was easier to understand everything he said if she read his lips, too.
From the mud pits, they traveled down the elevated walkways to the steel pipe that carried the mud and bit cuttings circulating out of the hole and dumped them onto a vibrating screen called a shale shaker. He pointed out the raised earthen pits behind it where the cuttings were dumped after being extracted from the mud. The mud was recycled back to the pits after passing through some other processes that Abbie didn't follow completely—although that was only indirectly MacCrea's fault. He introduced her to the mud engineer on the site, and when he learned that he was talking to R. D. Lawson's granddaughter, his explanations became very technical.
"You made a big impression on him," MacCrea observed dryly as they headed for the stairs leading to the rig's raised platform. "He'll be bragging to everybody how he explained modern drilling-fluid methods to R. D. Lawson's granddaughter."
"Too bad I didn't understand any of it."
At the bottom of the narrow set of stairs, MacCrea paused and let her go in front of him. As Abbie mounted the steps, she was conscious of the beads of sweat forming above her upper lip—and of the curious glances from the crew when she reached the top. She paused to let MacCrea take the lead again.
"The floor of a rig isn't the cleanest place in the world. There should be an extra pair of coveralls in the doghouse." He directed her to the small storage shed atop the platform a short distance from the stairs. Inside the storehouse, he took a pair of blue-green coveralls, like his, off a hook and handed them to her. "They aren't the latest fashion, but at least they'll keep your clothes from getting dirty."
Abbie could tell just by looking at them that they were too big and too long, but she put them on anyway and rolled up the pant legs. She felt like one of those clowns in baggy pants, and judging by the gleam in MacCrea's eyes, she looked like one, too.
But he was right: the floor of the rig around the hole was slopped with the grayish mud. There was relatively little activity at the moment. MacCrea i
ntroduced her to the driller, who operated the drilling machinery from his control console and supervised the work of the other floormen. She met a couple of the rotary helpers, too, known as roughnecks in the old days.
MacCrea attempted to explain some of the equipment and its uses, but by the time he got done talking about monkey-boards, catheads, ratholes, catwalks, and mouseholes, Abbie wasn't sure whether she was on a drilling rig or at a zoo.
Her head was pounding from the noise, heat, and mental confusion when they finally descended the steps back to the ground. She felt the guiding pressure of his hand between her shoulders and glanced up, wondering what he could possibly want to show her now. He pointed at the near trailer. She walked to it gladly.
As he opened the door for her, she felt the blessed coolness of air-conditioning and practically ran inside. There she paused and gratefully swept off the hot helmet and her sweatband, shaking her damp hair loose with a toss of her head. As the door closed behind her, muffling most of the rig's noise, the telephone on the desk started ringing. Abbie stepped out of the way as. MacCrea walked over to answer it.
"Wilder Drilling."
Abbie unzipped the protective coveralls as she glanced around the Spartan office. A pair of filing cabinets stood against the wall behind his desk. A Naugahyde sofa that showed the abuse of the drill site faced it from the opposite wall. Two straight-backed chairs completed the furnishings. The paneled walls were blank except for a framed photograph propped against the paneling on top of a filing cabinet.
"Yeah, Red. Just a minute." MacCrea covered the phone's mouthpiece with his hand. "There's not a lot I can offer you in the way of refreshments, but there's a little kitchen through that door. The coffee in the pot is probably black syrup by now. If you want to make fresh, go ahead. There's beer in the refrigerator and a jar of instant tea in the cupboard. Help yourself."
"Thanks." Abbie stepped out of the coveralls and laid them across one of the straight chairs, her own clothes ticking to her skin.
The trailer rocked slightly as she crossed to the door, already partway ajar, and pushed it the rest of the way open. The cupboards, range top, and sink took up one short wall in the compact kitchen, with the refrigerator against the opposite wall. A table and two chairs took up the rest of the floor space. Beyond the kitchen a door leading to the rear of the trailer stood open. Unable to resist the opportunity to explore, Abbie peeked to see what was back there.
A bed, its covers all rumpled, hugged one wall. Opposite it was a built-in dresser next to a closet. Beyond it the door to a small bathroom stood open. She realized MacCrea had been serious when he said he lived here.
In the kitchen she fixed herself a glass of iced tea, then, on impulse, made one for MacCrea, adding sugar to both, and carried them into the office. He smiled his thanks when she handed it to him and took a long drink before continuing his conversation on the telephone.
Sipping at her own, Abbie wandered over to take a closer look at the photograph on the filing cabinet. A much younger MacCrea smiled back at her, minus the mustache he now wore. She was struck by the differences between the MacCrea she knew and the one in this picture. An occasional lazy gleam had replaced the laughter shining out of the dark eyes in the photograph. The same lean, strong features were in the picture, but they hadn't been honed to a hardness yet; the lines and creases were missing. She had no impression of determination or inner toughness when she looked at this younger version of MacCrea. This one had the world by the tail, and was ready to whip it into shape.
Curious, she shifted her attention to the older man who MacCrea had his arm around. He, too, grinned proudly at her, almost hiding the tiredness in his weathered face. Abbie saw the resemblance between them, and realized the older man had to be MacCrea's father. The love between them was obvious to anyone looking at the photograph. Abbie felt a sudden stab of envy, followed by a twisting pain from her own loss—a loss rooted in more than just the death of her father, but in the bitter discovery and disillusionment that came after as well.
"Yeah, I'll talk to you later, Red." MacCrea hung up the phone, the chair squeaking as he pushed out of it. Abbie continued to stare at the photograph, giving herself time to control that sudden surge of resentment.
"That's your father, isn't it?" The ice cubes clinked in her glass as she used the hand holding it to indicate the picture.
"Yes. It was taken a month before he died." Taking a drink from his tea, MacCrea turned away from the filing cabinet and the photograph. Again, Abbie noticed the total lack of emotion in his voice when he referred to his father or, more specifically, his death. She sensed it was something he didn't like to discuss. "Sorry about the interruption. That was my toolpusher on another site, filling me in on their progress."
"A toolpusher." She felt inundated by the flood of new terms she'd heard in the last two hours. She was amazed by how much she'd thought she knew about the oil business, when she actually knew practically nothing.
"A toolpusher is in charge of the entire drilling operation and coordinates everything with the company man. That's temporarily my job here," he explained. "My regular man is in the hospital with a broken leg. Normally I'm not tied to one site like this."
Abbie caught herself watching his lips when he talked. Slightly disconcerted that she had allowed the practice to carry over from the tour of the drilling operation, she quickly averted her glance, focusing it instead on the iced-tea glass in his hand. Immediately she noticed the peculiar crooking of his little finger, its suggestion of daintiness completely at odds with the smooth toughness conveyed by the rest of him.
"Why does your little finger bend like that?" She thought it might have been broken at some time.
"This?" He glanced down at it, his mouth quirking, tilting one side of his mustache as he lifted a shoulder in a shrug of indifference. "I was born with a shortened tendon in the first joint. It's a family trait."
"I wondered," she admitted, smiling.
The trailer door opened behind them, letting in the noise from outside. As Abbie turned toward it, one of the roughnecks poked his head inside. "We got a kick, boss."
In the next second, MacCrea was brushing past her, shoving his tea glass on the desktop and grabbing up his hard hat as he went by. "Does the company know?"
"Not yet," the roughneck replied, pulling back as MacCrea charged out the door.
"Tell him," MacCrea ordered, his tone sharp and abrupt.
She didn't understand what was going on. Why had he sent for the company man? Had they hit oil? Intrigued by the possibility, she hurried to the door before it swung shut, reaching it in time to see MacCrea bounding up the steps to the rig floor, covering them two at a time. Abbie started to run after him, then remembered she didn't have her safety helmet on. When she went back for it, she saw the coveralls on the chair. She hesitated briefly, then pulled them on over her clothes and hurried out the door, still struggling with the stubborn zipper.
By the time she reached the raised metal platform, MacCrea was standing off to one side, holding a conference with the company man, Kruse, and the mud engineer. Everyone else seemed to be just standing around, waiting. Then Abbie noticed that the level of noise had fallen off and saw that the rotary table wasn't turning. She realized they'd stopped drilling. But she still didn't know what that meant.
She walked over to MacCrea to ask him. None of the three men paid any attention to her at first, too intent on their discussion, which was totally beyond her limited knowledge. MacCrea glanced briefly in her direction, his brow furrowed in concentration as he kept his attention focused on the mud man.
Suddenly he shot another look at her, and recognition turned into anger. "What the hell are you doing here?" In two strides, he had her by the arm.
"I was just—" Abbie tried to explain as he roughly spun her around and propelled her toward the stairs.
"You get back to that trailer and you stay there! Do you read me, lady?"
"Yes, I—" She was stunned by the
anger that seethed from him, as palpable as the sun's burning heat.
"Then get going," he snapped, shoving her down the steps.
Abbie grabbed at the rail to stop herself from falling, wrenching the muscles in her left shoulder and arm in the process. When she regained her footing, MacCrea was gone. Embarrassed that others had witnessed her rude eviction from the premises, Abbie ran the rest of the way down the steps and walked back to the trailer, holding herself stiffly erect.
The minute she set foot inside the trailer, she rubbed her aching arm and nursed her wounded ego, her embarrassment turning to indignant anger. She stripped off the coveralls and the hard hat, dumping them both on top of his desk. She started pacing about the room, letting her anger build.
Abbie had no idea how long she waited in the trailer before he returned, but she knew it was a long time—more than enough time for her to have cooled off, but she hadn't. She was boiling mad when he opened the door and walked in.
She didn't even give him time to shut it before she launched into him. "Just who the hell do you think you are, pushing me around like that?" He looked tired and hot, sweat making dark spots on the front of his coveralls and under his arms, but she didn't care.
"You had no business being there," he muttered, shouldering his way by her, barely even glancing at her.
"And just how was I supposed to know that?" She followed him, addressing her demanding question to his back as he swept off his hard hat and combed his fingers through the curly thickness of his dark hair. "You never said anything to me. You just barged out of here without so much as a word to me."
MacCrea swung around, glowering at her. "Dammit, you heard Pete say we had a kick!"
"You had a kick." She longed to give him one. "Hasn't it occurred to you that I don't know what that is? And I still don't. But did you bother to explain? No. You—"
"So it's another damned lesson you want, is it? Well, honey, you damned near got more than that. A well 'kicks' just before it blows out. Have you ever seen a well blow?"