Chelsea returned to the living room to retrieve the baby. “This is really a two-parent job,” she said, bouncing Litha and trying to soothe her. She tried to nurse her again, but Litha squirmed and fussed. “Oh, Litha, you are all over the place.”
Will yelled from the room that he couldn’t sleep.
Without looking up from Litha, Chelsea yelled back: “Go to sleep!”
* * *
I stopped by Chelsea’s house again on Saturday morning. Chelsea was having a “craft day”—she was painting mugs to sell on her Etsy store and helping Will make a hula hoop. He ran through the living room and pretended the hula hoop was a UFO.
Chelsea had talked to Jacob the night before. He spent most of the conversation ranting about Kurdish politics and how the United States ought to fight ISIS.
Will stomped by us and screamed: “Santa Claus is coming to town!”
Chelsea stopped talking. “Will doesn’t like when I talk about politics,” she told me. “He’s sensitive to serious conversations. There’s been so many over the years. If you speak in a serious tone, Will starts screaming, anything to stop the conversation.”
Chelsea set a pot of water on the stove to make macaroni and cheese for Will.
“I’m going to call your father,” she said.
“I want to talk to him!” Will said, jumping up and down.
“He’s probably sleeping in his camper,” Chelsea said.
The phone rang and Jacob picked up. “Hi,” said Chelsea. “Your son would like to talk to you.” She put Jacob on speakerphone and handed the phone to Will.
“Have you ever watched the original Godzilla movie?” Will said as he skipped into his bedroom.
“I’m sure somewhere,” Jacob said, his voice crackled and garbled over the phone’s low-quality speakers.
Will shut his bedroom door to have more privacy, but we could hear Jacob’s voice cutting in and out. Will became frustrated. “Why does Mom’s phone keep doing that!” he yelled from behind the closed door.
“He really misses his dad,” Chelsea said. “He used to not want to talk to him. He said he was mad at him for leaving. But now he could talk to him all day.”
Chelsea’s long-term dream for her family was to move to New Orleans. She always loved the architecture and culture of the city. She had planned to move there after graduating with her master’s degree. She even scouted out the best neighborhoods to live in, but then, life happened. She and Jacob started a family instead. Her dream of living in New Orleans never went away. “It’s something I’ve never been able to get over,” said Chelsea. With Jacob’s North Dakota oil field experience, he could apply for jobs near New Orleans on offshore oil rigs. A typical schedule was two weeks on, three weeks off. “He’d be around more than he is now,” Chelsea said. Her old boss at the lobster shipping company, Paul, used to work in offshore oil, so Jacob already had a connection to the industry. But the plan wasn’t perfect. Her boss had eventually quit the rigs because he missed his family too much. “He missed a lot of his kids’ growing up,” said Chelsea. “He wasn’t there and he’s making up for that now. I go over his story in my head and I’m like, this is going to be Jacob. He’s going to be in his late 30s and be just like Paul, wishing he had spent more time with his kids.”
But she figured she shouldn’t worry too much about the future at the moment. “Right now everything’s so up in the air—whether he’ll come home, whether he’ll work here. I don’t know what toll [working in the oil field] is going to take family-wise.”
38. PASTOR JAY REINKE
In September 2013, the Williston Planning and Zoning Department shut down Reinke’s Overnighters program. They determined the church was not fit to house people because the building had no emergency sprinkler system, no showers, no designated sleeping area, and no social worker on staff.
Afterward, Reinke discovered a few neighbors and congregation members had met privately to discuss strategies to shut down the program. Some sent letters to the city voicing their opposition to the Overnighters. “I find myself a little confused why people reacted so strongly to it,” said Reinke. “Isn’t this kind of a simple thing? Floor space. Come on!” Former Overnighter Steve Tanck had his own theory: “They didn’t like outsiders and wanted it stopped, so they kept going until they found the right person.”
Between 2011 and 2013, more than 1,000 people stayed at the church. On its final night, Tanck couldn’t bring himself to go. “I just couldn’t. I couldn’t. It hurt too much,” he said. “We were still trying to figure out what else we could do.” Reinke broke down in tears and hugged each Overnighter before saying good-bye. Andrea posted a sign on the door that read THE OVERNIGHTERS IS OVER. In 2012, a filmmaker from California, Jesse Moss, had showed up and filmed the conflict at the church. He named the film The Overnighters, and it went on to be shortlisted for an Academy Award.
Soon after the program ended, Jay Reinke stepped down as the pastor. Allegations surfaced that he had had sexual relations with a man in his past. The Concordia Lutheran leadership forbids homosexuality, and Reinke admitted to the allegations and resigned. He called the incident his own “moral failing.” It was a hard time for Reinke. Rumors about the scandal spread quickly through town. “My resignation was very, very painful. And my own fault,” Reinke said later. His fall is detailed in Moss’s film, and when the film premiered in 2014, the entire town of Williston knew what had happened.
After the Overnighters ended and he lost his job, Reinke struggled to find footing in the community. A neighbor told Andrea she should leave her husband and encouraged them to move away from Williston, but Andrea stuck by him and they decided to stay. “I would just as soon build a new story here as opposed to someplace else,” said Reinke. “Andrea has a good part-time job, we own our home, and Eric’s doing well in school. I might as well stay. Suck it up. A lot of people say, oh, this book is done, but it’s just one chapter. In time, a new chapter starts.”
Reinke applied to become one of Williston’s city commissioners but ultimately didn’t receive the nomination. He found employment selling oil field equipment at Pipeline Supply and Service but missed his job as a pastor. “I drive by the church, and I get teary-eyed when I think of the people that slept there. It was a once-in-a-lifetime fraternity of people who were in need. I get emotional when I think about it,” he said. “It was so unprecedented. You had people who said, ‘No no no, this isn’t what a church is supposed to do.’ And in one sense, that’s true—it’s not the church’s job to provide housing for people. But if we can help a neighbor in a specific way, let’s do it. Let’s find joy in that.”
39. CINDY MARCHELLO
Home was on Cindy Marchello’s mind more often these days.
She was growing increasingly frustrated with her job. She often discussed leaving North Dakota or the oil field altogether. She talked to her supervisor, Mike Hambrick, about different positions within the company for her. She applied for a Department of Transportation job in Williston but didn’t receive it. C&J’s secretary had transferred to a different office, and Hambrick offered Marchello the job, but she’d receive no overtime and would need to move to Williston permanently. Marchello was shocked Hambrick even suggested such a position. C&J had recently opened a location in Saudi Arabia and was transferring some employees there. Some guys took the Saudi offer, thinking it would be a better deal, but they saw their wages fall once they arrived. Marchello considered going as well, but her parents thought it would be too dangerous there for a woman. She also had her doubts. “Women can’t drive over there,” she said. “You can’t go anywhere without a man.”
In the fall of 2013, she missed the birth of her grandchild. Her daughter Elizabeth was due the week before Thanksgiving, so she took time off to be home with her family and witness the birth. But the baby was late. As she was driving back to North Dakota, Elizabeth had the baby. “That drive back was the hardest drive I’ve done,” said Marchello. “I cried the whole way.” Of her six gr
andchildren, it was the only birth she’d missed.
The event caused her to seriously consider quitting the oil field. She could quit over the summer of 2014 and take back her old job as a cook for a hunting camp for about $100 a day, but the work was seasonal and didn’t pay enough to support her entirely. She also contemplated launching an online business to sell acupuncture “meridian” beads to supplement her income when she returned home. The beads were to be worn on specific points on the body to increase energy flow. One night as we were chatting, she gave me a bead and told me to put it below my knee to help with my “chi.”
Her other idea was becoming a stand-up comedian. “I told my kids, I have decided on my next career. I think I could be a good stand-up comedian. Do you think I could be a stand-up comedian?” she asked me.
I smiled. “I think you could definitely be a stand-up comedian.”
“I’m done with the oil patch,” she said, “but I want to walk out with my head held high.”
* * *
The more I got to know Marchello, however, the more her view on women’s equality confused me. She disliked feminism, she said. She and her son-in-law once burned feminist books after he took an online women’s studies class. The female teacher seemed to hate men, they said. “There’s a reason they call women bitches,” she said. “Not all of us, but enough of us.” She was annoyed by women protesting to be part of the priesthood at the Mormon church in Salt Lake City. “The man is the head of the household, the woman is the heart,” she said. “But we are equal in every way. We have the power to create; therefore, we do not need the priesthood.” Marchello believed the protesters had deep-seated issues that caused them to be so angry.
“Do you think discrimination toward women in the past caused some of those church rules to be created?” I asked.
She considered the question. “On an individual basis, yes. I’ve experienced discrimination myself.” She paused. “But then don’t go. If you can’t handle what’s going on, go somewhere else. They don’t have to have the priesthood to be equal. We all assume that because the man goes out and earns the living, he’s better than us. But there are lots of ways women can serve. Those men sacrifice their life to be the leader of the church, and women don’t have that kind of time because they shouldn’t. They should be taking care of the young and the sick.”
Yet Marchello herself was trying to bring home a paycheck in a male-dominated environment—not caring for the young and the sick. In many ways, she was the strongest feminist I knew. She fought daily to be treated the same as her male coworkers. But like many women, she seemed caught between her desire to be treated as an equal and her traditional upbringing. “I fight and fight to be equal among the men,” she told me once. “But when they treat me as an equal it still makes me mad, because I should still get to be a girl sometimes. I should still have two or three buddies who will fix my tire for me.” Feeling unsure of where she fit in was isolating and exhausting. Which Cindy Marchello did she want to be, the fiercely independent woman who wanted to be equal in every way to her male coworkers, or the traditional Mormon woman who once looked to a man to provide the paycheck while she cared for her family? The person she identified with could change by the moment. “What do I really want?” she asked once. “Actually, I just really want a paycheck. Just leave me alone. Let me do my job and let me go home.”
But Marchello couldn’t leave her desire for equality alone. In May 2014, she discovered many of the men on her original crew had been approved for raises and she hadn’t. One guy who was receiving a raise had worked at C&J for only five months and had less experience than her. She had worked there for nearly two years. She had a graduate degree (albeit in traditional Chinese medicine), was a certified heavy-duty diesel mechanic, and had years of oil field experience. She’d asked for raises many times but had always been denied. The week before she learned about the raises, she claimed her boss had looked her in the eye and told her C&J could not afford to give anyone raises. She recalled him saying that if she wanted to keep her job, she should “shut her mouth and stay behind the desk” and “quit worrying about her paycheck.”
Furious, Marchello asked around and discovered she earned the same or less than numerous men with less experience than her. One recent hire made $20,000 more than her a year. In early August, Marchello contacted the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or EEOC, to file a complaint for gender and age discrimination. “By going to the EEOC, now somebody outside of this company knows I’m alive,” Marchello said. “I have nothing to lose. I already don’t have money. I’m used to being poor.”
She calculated that C&J owed her $80,000 in lost wages after she had been moved to the office. Her claims were: She was transferred, denied pay raises, denied training, denied monetary and nonmonetary benefits based on her sex and age of 56. Marchello wanted to limit her claims to items she believed she could prove on paper. Her claims were that C&J violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, and the Equal Pay Act.
Later that summer, Marchello was on edge. She was waiting to hear if the EEOC would take her case. She had a new supervisor and they often clashed. She didn’t talk about the EEOC charge at work, but she had a feeling her supervisor knew. He’d berate her for ordering too much of one equipment item or too little of another. When she’d try to explain herself, he’d yell and say she needed to “obey” him. But even if he knew about the EEOC case, she figured C&J couldn’t fire her because it would be perceived as retaliation by the company for speaking up. “They can’t really fire me,” she said, “but they can make me so uncomfortable that I quit.” She was under a lot of stress and taking a natural pill called “Calm Spirit,” which claimed to be full of a special blend of B vitamins and amino acids. Marchello had taken the pills during her divorce from Richard and said they had helped. “At my worst, I was probably taking about 16 a day,” she said. She was also making preparations for life after the oil field. She was studying to retake an acupuncture test to reapply for her license.
Though Marchello often talked about quitting the oil field, I wondered if she actually would. In April 2014, she told me: “If, by June 1, I don’t have my hours back, I’m leaving.” Then after June 1 came and went and she didn’t have her hours back, she said: “I’m only staying here until August.” August came and she was still there. She had to get bone graft surgery on her mouth and wanted to keep her health insurance, she said. Then her plumbing at her house needed to be repaired. I was beginning to think she might never leave.
“Is it really this bad everywhere?” she asked Scott Morgan one day over lunch at Applebee’s. Morgan had recently returned from a C&J job in Texas.
“Which part?” Morgan replied. “The drama? The bullshit? The infighting? The babysitting grown-ass men who should know better?”
Marchello sighed. “The instability, I guess. The constant lack of management.” C&J had gone through seven operations managers in less than two years.
Morgan said it was similar throughout the oil field.
Marchello had also recently met someone. His name was Dennis Thomas, a widowed veteran who lived in Roy, Utah, a 15-minute drive from her house. She met him through the dating service named It’s Just Lunch. She beamed when she talked about him. Thomas respected and admired her for working in the oil field. “It’s so cool that she’s out there blazing the trail for ladies,” he told me later. Marchello bought her first dress in years to wear on their fourth date. “You did not,” Morgan said when she told him. “You’re Cindy. You don’t do anything girly.”
Then in late August, Marchello couldn’t take it anymore. A C&J human resources representative traveled to North Dakota to have a meeting with her. The meeting was private, but Marchello claimed the representative told her: “I’m here to tell you to stop it and stop it now,” in regard to her EEOC complaints. The man said the company planned to cut her wages to $15 an hour, take away her housing, her rotation home, and her per diem bon
uses, and he told her she was not allowed to speak about the case to other C&J employees. “I didn’t think he was going to be so hostile and nasty to me,” she said later.
“So is this retaliation?” Marchello asked him.
“No, this is an adjustment to what you deserve. This is what everyone else at C&J gets for the job you do,” she recalled him saying.
Marchello asked if she could return to field work. She remembered him saying that it wasn’t in C&J’s best interest to send her back to the field because the company had received complaints about her from her male coworkers. “When he told me that the men refused to work with me, I knew that was an out-and-out lie,” Marchello said. “I wanted to see it in writing.” The HR representative never filed any paperwork to implement Marchello’s wage decrease, but the message was loud and clear: the company was putting up a fight.
After the meeting, Marchello didn’t want to spend another day working at C&J, but she couldn’t afford to quit outright. She had planned to take a month off using her sick days and vacation time in early September to have surgery on her mouth, so she moved up the appointment a few weeks. She also called the EEOC and told them about C&J’s intimidation tactics. “This is the same fight I’ve had for 40 years,” Marchello told me, “wanting to be paid what the guys are being paid.”
In early October 2014, C&J’s lawyers sent the EEOC their rebuttal to Marchello’s allegations. The company denied everything. C&J said it had transferred Marchello to the office because her performance as a coil tubing operator was underwhelming, and after her crew left, there were no other coil tubing positions available. The company transferred her to the office instead of laying her off to keep her productive. It claimed Marchello never received a raise because she wasn’t qualified for the coil tubing position to begin with, had limited experience in the oil field, and was already paid an hourly wage higher than normal for her duties as a warehouse coordinator. The company cited an official warning Marchello received in March 2013 for a pump unexpectedly freezing on location as evidence of her subpar performance.
The New Wild West Page 29