“Be you up in the tree, little bugger—you wouldn’t hear a train coming, you goes into a trance. Out of the way, I have some packing to do.”
A SHORT TIME LATER and we were heading down the highway, bouncing and jolting on the springy seat: me in the middle, Chris clinging to the door handle, Ben hunched over the wheel and complaining about the frost-pocked pavement as he drove us straight south.
“Ribcage. Riding a ribcage,” said Chris for the hundredth time as Ben plied the gears with relish, both of them leaning into the cab’s heaving and jolting as might riders on cranky horses. “So, tell me about the rigs, man,” urged Chris, elbowing me, “like, what I needs to know, man. Did you know, Ben’s giving up his job for me,” he said to my testy look. “What do you think of that—moving himself up to roughneck and giving me his greasing and scrubbing job.”
Ben mustered a smile. “Not something I’m bloody happy about, bud. Moving up on the rigs is a backwards step to me.”
“Right, so what’s that agin—what’s my new job—rousty. Roustabout. Like it, Sis?” He kept elbowing me, making me laugh. “So, what else do I gotta know?” he asked Ben.
“Keep the hell outta the way.”
“Keep the hell outta the way,” repeated Chris.
“Else they’ll have you running around looking for bird cages.”
“Bird cages.”
“Bird cages. For their seed.”
“Their seed—ahh, their seed,” said Chris, inadvertently scratching his groin, chuckling softly. “How about I bring them fresh socks instead?”
“See, he’s getting it,” said Ben.
“I don’t get it,” I said.
“Heh heh, hope not,” said Chris. “So, all right. So, how do you know what’s gotta be done?”
“See, he’s getting it,” Ben whispered to me, “told you he’d get it. Now, then, here’s how you know what’s gotta be done: if it moves, grease it, if it don’t, scrub it. And that’s it, Pablo, that’s the life of a roustabout—have a grease gun or a bucket of diesel dangling from your wrist at all times, and be going somewhere at all times. The best place is behind the mud tank. Warm as toast when it’s cold, shady when it’s warm. Thought out lots of stuff curled up behind that mud tank—see that pine?” He pointed through his side window. “Ever see pine like that?”
“Big, hey. Jeezes, never seen pine that big,” said Chris. He leaned within an inch of the windshield, the beak of his cap shading his eyes as he took in the jack pine and balsams flanking the roadside, the mossy forest floor, and the multitude of meadows patchworked with the deepest and tenderest of spring greens. “A garden, a frigging garden, what do you say, Sis? What’s the matter, not saying much—changing your mind, aren’t you. Told you not to come. Want us to take you back— not getting sick, are you?”
I waved him off.
“Sure you’re not getting sick? We can stop if you’re getting sick.”
“I’m not getting sick.”
“You getting sick?” asked Ben.
“She always gets sick on bumpy roads. Couldn’t take her nowhere when we first left Cooney Arm. First sight of a car and she was carsick.”
“Oh, Chrissy, please.”
“Just saying—every time we drove to Ragged Rock, first thing we had to do was put buckets and wet rags aboard the back seat—used to get sick myself, just watching. Ooh, man, look at that,” and he was leaning into the windshield, pointing at a bald eagle gliding overhead.
“Two—two of them,” said Ben, “see that, buddy—two of them.”
“Them heads … whoo, man, look at them white heads— and that wingspan—see them, Sylvie?”
“Yuh, I see.” I gazed along with him at the snow-white heads of the eagles gliding through the blue. I pulled back, laughing as he craned his neck further, near busting through the windshield with excitement, like when we were youngsters combing the beach and he’d burst ahead in his eagerness to see what new thing lay just ahead—a sunfish, a dead shark, a pretty bottle cast ashore during the night.
“Look at that tree over there—cripes, the size of it.” He clutched the dash as Ben hit a rut, exclaiming, “Jeezes, what pine, what pine. Wouldn’t Father love this.”
His face shadowed. He sat back, resting his elbow on the window and leaning his cheek against the ridge of his knuckles.
“Hey,” I nudged him, “so we’ll take a picture and send it to him. Think he won’t like that—nice picture of a pine tree to look at?”
He half smiled. “Six weeks’ burning is what he’d see.”
“Yep, that’s our da. And them birds would make a damn fine gravy.”
“Hey.”Ben tossed us both a glance. “Your father’s got some rounds left in him yet. Tough as hide them old fellows are. Cripes, the old man’s been smoking and dragging about boats and houses since he was nine. Nine! I was still wrapped in me blankie when I was nine.”
The truck hit a deep rut, throwing me against Ben, my bare arm pressing against his. I felt its heat, smelled it. His ratty white T-shirt was stretched so tight across his chest I could see the padding of chest hair beneath, pressing spongelike against the thin fabric. He rubbed his jaw, making a scratchy sound with his day-old stubble, and I saw a nick where he’d shaved too close. Could he smell me, I wondered, and tried to remember whether I’d dabbed my collar that morning with a bit of lavender from the vial Mother had given me and that I always kept in my purse. I hadn’t. Cigarette smoke. Cigarette smoke from the bar is what he smelled. I shifted sideways towards Chris.
“Who’s who, that’s what you needs to know about the rigs,” Ben was saying. “Who’s who, so you know who you’re talking to, so you don’t tell the wrong man to bugger off. And the first man you pays homage to is the fellow who gave up his cushy job for you, got that? You got that, buddy?”
“Yuh, got that.”
“Good. Now then, here’s how you keeps your main man happy. You brings him his coffee. Important you understand that—you’re always bringing your main man coffee.”
“Right, got it. What’s the other workers like?”
“Babies,” said Ben. “Pretty as babies.”
“Babies.”
“And Push is the prettiest. Push is the boss—the tool push, biggest job on the rig. Lovely man, Push—hemorrhoids hanging down to his knees. Gets a bit mean sometimes. And that’s where you learns love for your fellow man, when he got hemorrhoids hanging like cloudberries down to his knees, because, buddy, that’s a bit painful, so you expects the man to be always firing off his mouth. It’s when he starts firing you, as in Get the fuck off my rig, that’s when you punches the sonofabitch, because a bad case of hemorrhoids is no cause to be firing a man. Hey, just giving him the facts,” he added after a grunt from me.
“Getting like your mother, Ben; running on like a brook.”
He laughed. “Tongue like a machete.” Crossing his arms atop the steering wheel, he looked back at me.
I flushed, the sun burning through the windshield making me hotter, heady with the smell of heated vinyl coming from the dash. Ben settled back, one hand loosely sitting on the steering wheel, his other falling onto his thigh, his arm lazily grazing mine with each sway of the truck.
“The babies,” said Chris. “Tell me more about the babies.”
“Just do what you’re told,” said Ben. “And if anybody gives you trouble, sic Sis onto them.”
“So, Push—you call him Push because he’s a pushover?”
Ben turned to me with a disparaging look. “Greener than a spring pasture,” he said with a groan.
“Told you,” I said. “Should’ve left him in the tent.”
“Left him in the tent,” muttered Chris. “Good thing I got confidence.”Baring his teeth, he nipped my shoulder. “So, let’s see now,” he said over my yelp, “Push is the tool push, biggest job on the rig, and you call him Push and he’s a prick—”
“Pious prick,” corrected Ben. “And he owns the rig. He’s the manager, top hand, in cha
rge of everything—crew, equipment, overall drilling operation. He sees to everything and everyone and he wants no screw-ups. He wants to drag that rig to the next hole, and the next, and he wants nothing left behind when he leaves but a hole, and it got to be straight. The rig’s his life and he don’t want it getting blown to hell. That’s what happens if you’re not doing your job, not watching them gauges, she can blow. One thing you always keeps in mind, there’s a whole fucking forest buried beneath us, and it’s been fuming and fermenting and smouldering since T. Rex and with no vent. Second we punctures through with a drill bit— be prepared, buddy, because there’ll be one jeezes bad-ass bed of gas bursting up through them pipes like a cyclone. And if you can’t hold her back, can’t control her—she’s gonna blow and you’re gonna blow, and every cocksucker snoozing behind that mud tank is gonna blow. Just think of a whale coming up for a blow beneath your punt,” he added with a laugh. “Well, that’s a soap bubble compared to that gas bubble bursting up through your floor.”
He stopped laughing at the silence in the truck. “’Course,” he added reassuringly, “that’s why Push got to have Frederick!” Ben cleared his throat, pronouncing the name with an assumed dignity. “Frederick,” he said again, with a deepening of his tone, “is the engineer. He likes himself a lot—aside from that, he keeps track of all what’s happening underground— rocks, fractures, salt piles—anything you comes across underground, Frederick knows from his seismic charts. So we always know what we’re drilling through, that we’re not gonna accidentally hit a bed of gas that’s not on our charts and that we’re not prepared for.”
“And if you do?” I asked. “I mean, she’s not just going to blow up—”
“Ohh, yeah—you drills into a bed of gas, she’ll blow. But we’re not going to hit that bed of gas. So, you keep your mind on peeling spuds for Cook. And you,” he reached along the back of the seat and grabbed Chris’s nape as he would the scruff of a dog, “you keep bringing Ben his coffee. Got that, bugger?”
“Got it, got it,” yelped Chris. “Cripes.”He rubbed the back of his neck gingerly. Fixing his cap straight, he rolled down his window, whistling towards the long prairie grass fringing the roadside. A dry wind flattened his hair to his forehead and he glanced towards me, grinning. I grinned back, smoothing down my hair from the wind tunnelling through the truck and flapping at our faces. Jamming his foot on the clutch, Ben wrenched into a lower gear as we laboured up a high grade, then slipped it into neutral as we mounted the ridge and looked out over a sweeping view of thick green forest. The steel grid of some kind of tower rose out of the woods to our right, another rising even higher to the left a bit farther on.
“Derricks,” answered Ben as Chris pointed them out. “They’re what rises up from a rig platform—have you never seen a picture? Cripes, not even a picture?” he asked as Chris shook his head.
“There’s a fellow works on top, right?” I asked.
“That’s right—listen to your sister, buddy, she got it. He’s called the derrickman. That smaller tower over there—one to our right—is a service rig. The big one farther out is where we’re going—drilling rig. Service rig services the holes already drilled by drilling rig—”
“There’s another one,” cut in Chris, “way over there—”
“Yeah, rigs everywhere around here,” said Ben. “Popping up like gophers. Tomorrow’s dinosaurs. Whoa …!” He hit the brakes. A gravelled access road was coming up to the right at the bottom of the grade with a shiny red truck off the road a few feet in, its front right wheel in the ditch.
“Trapp’s,” said Ben, pulling to a stop alongside. “Must’ve missed the turn.”
“Is this the road to our rig?” asked Chris.
“No, road’s another twenty miles down the highway. The boys hops over here to the service rig sometimes when they’re out of smokes or booze—gets a lend, you know.”
We drove a short distance over the bumpy road, which ended abruptly in a large clearing, the rig some distance away. It was too far back on the field to see anything clearly—a dark bulk of machinery sitting on what appeared to be the flatbed of a eighteen-wheeler, the steel-framed derrick rising above it about a hundred feet up. As Ben pulled to a stop beside a couple of dirt-grimed trailers, he stared over at a forty-foot tanker parked beside the rig.
“Nitrogen truck,” he said, studying the canary yellow cab. “Tank’s full of nitrogen—colder than a winter’s night. Must be doing a frac job. Come on, get out, let’s stretch our legs—see if Trapp’s in the cookhouse.”
“Does he—does Trapp know about Chris coming?”
“Yeah, he knows. You’ll be a sweet surprise, though.”
I piled out behind Chris, looking about the partly sodded clearing. Aside from the low moan of the generators running electricity through the trailers and the idling of the nitrogen truck, the air was quiet.
“Rig’s shut down,” said Ben. “Frac job, must be doing a frac job.”
“What’s a frac job?” asked Chris.
“Frac job is when you’ve got your well already drilled and you’re looking to make it easy for the oil to flow into it, so you blasts shit down there—like nitrogen, or water—and creates small cracks or fissures in the formation. They mostly use water—this is a small well—you’ll learn all this shit—hey, look over there.” He shaded his eyes towards a couple of figures walking some ways past the truck. “There’s Trapp—I think— yeah, that’s him, with Push.” He started towards the two distant figures, Chris following.
Suddenly the air was shocked by a thunderous BOOM!!! Followed by a violent HIISSSSSSSSSSS! I stood rooted to the spot, watching in utter astonishment as the yellow tanker vanished within a belching white cloud. Bewildered, frightened cries of men sounded as the cloud mushroomed out, swallowing the rig, spreading silent as morning mist across the field towards where Ben and Chris stood immobilized.
Ben explained to me later what had happened, that the crew working the well-head accidentally sent a good-size chunk of metal flying through the air and punctured the side of the tanker—and kaboom, the compressed nitrogen collided against the warm spring air and blew the side out of the tanker, exploding into that frigid ball of London fog.
But there, in that moment, with everything being swallowed by a hissing wall of white, I bolted with a cry to Chris, grabbing his arm. Ben yelled at us to hang back and broke into a run towards the mist. Chris ran after him, with me holding on to his arm, trying to pull him back. Ben stopped, listening intently to a voice sounding through the mist—a harsh, wheezing voice: “Stun bastards, stun cocksuckin’bastards.”
“Push!”said Ben. A greyish shape appeared and Ben lunged towards him, taking hold of his arm and half carrying, half dragging him towards where Chris and I stood staring. Push’s thickset body fell heavily to his knees, his bull neck straining as he coughed and cursed. “Stun fuckin’ bastards, stun fuckin’ bastards, forgot the valve, forgot to open the gawd-damned valve—blew the pump off the rig—through the motherfuckin’ tanker, stun fuckin’ bastards.” He broke into a harsh series of coughs, water squeezing out of his eyes and streaming down a hard, flat face.
“Oh,” I blurted. I knew that face from the bar. He sat alone most times, grunting his orders and pawing back his change, even the occasional penny rolling off the table onto the floor. “Cheap as scuzz,” Cork once said, “wouldn’t tip a blind man he was sitting backwards for communion.”
Push turned to the sound of my voice with the sharpness of a dog catching a scent. The quiver of recognition on his face was cut suddenly by a thin, terrified cry sounding from the fog.
“Where’s everybody, where’s everybody!”
Trapp. Push’s bearlike hand clamped around Ben’s, holding him back. “He’s mine,” he choked through his coughing, and staggered to his feet. He charged back into the fog, roaring, “Over here, over here, Trapp, buddy, over here.”
“Where the fuck’s everybody,” cried Trapp as he tumbled through the white,
his cries short, frightened mewls now as he made his way towards the sound of Push’s roars.
“Over here, Trapp, man, over here.”
“What the fuck you doing?” hollered Ben.
“Over here, Trapp, run, run,” screamed Push. The mist swirled upward like a raised curtain, revealing Trapp’s small face pinched with fear, his eyes bulging as he floundered towards us. Suddenly his body vanished as though he’d been sucked down through the earth, the fog closing around him like a coffin’s satin lining.
Ben plunged in through the dense white, shouting his name. Chris stood looking about, dazed, then lunged in after him. I heard a frantic call from Ben, then Push’s frenzied shouting: “Gimme your hand, gimme your hand, Trapp, Trapp, man, gimme your hand!” They sounded close, just a few yards away. Holding my breath, I ran in through the mist, singing out Chris’s name. A fecal stench polluted the air and I covered my mouth. I heard Ben’s shouts turn to a groan and a low cursing. The mist thinned, becoming wispy, exposing Trapp on his gut, crawling, his body muddied and soaked, his face plastered with filthy wet toilet paper.
Push let out a loud, jeering laugh. Trapp staggered to his feet and lunged towards Push, who was now bolting into the mist.
“Get back, get back to the truck,” Ben yelled upon seeing Chris and me standing there. “Go! Fucking go,” he yelled again and ran after Trapp.
The mist was thinning fast. “He don’t want Trapp to see us,” said Chris. “Come on.”
“What is it—what’s making the stink?”
“Sump hole. Push lured Trapp into the sump hole.”
“Sump hole?”
“Shit hole. Think septic—an open septic tank—three feet of water, shit, and piss. Like what they had in the hydro camp down Cat Arm last year.”
Chris and I walked back to the truck as some of the rig crew crept carefully out of the woods, shouting out to each other, looking about in wonderment. The mist was mostly evaporated now. Push appeared from the direction of the tanker, his arms held off from his sides like a haughty commando as he marched to the rig.
What They Wanted Page 19