“Ready?” Floyd asked Dale.
“Ready!” he shouted.
“Okay.” Floyd addressed the roustabouts. “I want you all to count down from three with me. Are you ready?”
“Ready!” They called. Daphne looked around at their faces, hungry with an emotion she couldn’t quite name. It seemed to swallow the air and charge it with desire, to send waves of commingled hopes and dreams and lusts and needs radiating out into the sky, where they coalesced on a single, massive object: the rig.
Floyd held up three fingers. “Three!” he chanted along with them.
He raised his hand high into the heavens, so it was silhouetted against the brilliant blue sky. He dropped one finger, making a momentary peace sign.
“Two!”
The crew roiled with energy, and Daphne felt their frenzy. This was it—Carbon County was about to change forever.
“One!” They all screamed together.
For a moment, there was absolute silence. A bird chirped, and then there was a great mechanical clanging and a rush of motors starting up loud as jet engines.
The floorhands scrambled over and around the rig, pulling levers and hoisting pipes and frantically screwing and unscrewing gaskets, and deep in the pit of the rig the machinery began to pump rhythmically, dipping into the ground and emerging with a brief shuddering eruption before plunging back in again.
The roustabouts cheered, and Daphne joined them. The rig was working: drilling deep into the earth and bringing up barrels and barrels worth of rich, black oil. She felt her own face stretch into a smile, her hands come together in applause.
She looked over at Uncle Floyd, but he was staring up at the flare stack, the worry lines between his bushy eyebrows as deep as tire tracks on a muddy road. Why wasn’t he smiling like everyone else?
As she followed his gaze, a sound like a stampede of wild horses ripped through the flare stack, exploding from the top in a fireball of sudden, blistering heat and blinding light.
Plumes of flame erupted from the flare tower, shooting molten fire into the sky and sending a deluge of red-burning natural gas plummeting toward the rig. Uncle Floyd’s face was frozen in horror as thick black smoke swirled through the rain of flames, and Daphne realized with a sick shock what was happening: The pressure of the excess gas was too great for the narrow pipes in the flare stack. All of the gas was trying to shoot up from underground at once, turning what was supposed to be a controlled burn into an unbridled blaze.
Floorhands dropped to the ground at their feet like bombs, racing from the rig one after another, the skin on their faces and arms already blistering from the heat. They crawled away, choking on smoke and gasping for air.
Daphne turned and saw Owen standing openmouthed and enraptured, his eyes glazed over as if the billowing flames had him in a trance. “Come on!” she screamed, taking his hand and dragging him back. He shook his head quickly, seeming to register her for the first time.
“Fire . . .” he said slowly.
“We need to put it out!” she rushed through the knot of roustabouts, grabbing whomever she could. “Purple K’s in the safety shed—let’s go.”
The safety shed was the closest to the derrick, a fire hose thick and heavy as an anaconda coiled on its wall. She grabbed the end, grunting under its weight, and began lugging it toward the blaze. A moment later, she felt the pressure on her shoulders slacken as Owen and the other roustabouts fell into line behind her, grabbing sections of the hose.
Pointing the hose’s tip at the roiling spumes of flame still tumbling from the stack, Daphne released a blast of Purple K, a chemical fire suppressant that filled the air with what looked like a massive cloud of violet cotton candy.
The flames met the Purple K with a hiss and sizzle like a dragon dying. Violet smoke choked the air, and Daphne had to close her eyes against the sudden sting. When she opened them, Owen was dousing the last of the mutant fireball with a final blast of chemicals. Floorhands raced into the rig’s guts, struggling three at a time to turn the huge wheel that would lock the valve into place, choking off the extra output of gas until the flame atop the flare stack burned even and controlled.
Her heart pattered erratically as they began coiling the hose.
“Thanks for saving my ass back there,” Owen murmured, his breath feathering against Daphne’s ear. “I don’t know what came over me, looking into those flames.”
Daphne opened her mouth to respond, to say that he’d looked like he was in a trance, but before the words were out of her mouth Dale was upon them like a hurricane, his hard hat pulled low over his trademark scowl.
“That never should have happened,” he muttered, head close to Floyd’s. “We calculated everything—the velocity, the pressure. There must be way more oil under there than we realized.”
He turned quickly to Daphne, clapping a hand on her shoulder. “Way to save the day, though, kid,” he said. “Today I’m thinking you’re just about the best hire I ever made.”
“Thanks,” she murmured, still not quite processing what had happened. There had been fire, and she’d known what to do, had remembered from their safety training and been the first to act. She’d been able to stop chaos in its tracks.
Floyd joined them, draping an arm over her shoulders. “Well, that was some way to get ’er going, wasn’t it?” His voice was hearty, though the back of his suit was drenched with sweat.
“You can darn well say that again.” Dale shook his head, squinting up at the flickering flame. “I’m just glad nobody was hurt.”
“Well, if you ask me, it’s a good sign—maybe even an omen from God.” Floyd stared wonderingly into the rig’s machinery, a slow smile spreading across his face. “Judging from that little blast, there’s enough oil in this ground to make that flame up there burn for all eternity.”
A gleeful hoot came from the back of the crowd. Someone else took it up, and soon the entire crew was cheering, waving their hands in the air and giving shrill, two-fingered whistles.
Her face black with soot and eyes still stinging from smoke, Daphne joined them.
“WILL that be all, miss?”
Janie looked down at her shopping cart, which was piled high with infant clothes and stuffed animals, soft toys and the most adorable little terrycloth bath hoods shaped like monkeys and frogs.
“I guess so.” She smiled her sunniest smile as the Babies “R” Us cashier began to swipe her items, the numbers on the register going up and up. It was okay for her to keep smiling, she told herself as the numbers went past a hundred, then 130. She had her dad’s credit card, the new gold one that had come in the mail just the other day, and her mom had said to put as much on there as she wanted. Things were different now. They were rich.
The cashier lifted an infant car seat out of the shopping cart, and the number on the register soared to 225. Janie’s smile faltered, then dropped entirely. She loved shopping almost as much as she loved Jesus, but she could swear on His cross she’d never spent that much in one go in her life. It felt wrong to just waltz into the mall and pick up whatever her heart desired, without going around to every dollar store and looking online for a deal first.
But things were changing, just like Pastor Ted said, and her son wouldn’t have to grow up wearing off-brand labels. She put her hand on her belly and felt the warmth of the tiny life growing inside of her, the miniature person she already loved more than anyone else in the world.
“When are you due?” the cashier asked.
“September sixth.” Janie reluctantly looked up from her belly. “Gosh, it’s so soon!”
The cashier smiled sympathetically. “Don’t worry—you’ll be ready.” She nodded at the overflowing bags in Janie’s cart. “And if not, you can always come back.”
“I guess so—it’s a trip, though!”
“You’re not from Cheyenne?” The cashier gent
ly arranged a diaper pail and baby monitor in one of the bags.
“Nope.” Janie shook her head. “I’m, like, three hours away, in Carbon County.”
The cashier froze. “Where they found the oil?”
“Uh-huh—right in our backyard!”
“Oh.” Something cooled in the cashier’s smile, which had been wide as a summer sky just moments before. “That must be nice.” She dropped her eyes and busied herself bagging the final items. “That’ll be four hundred seventy-three forty-nine, please,” she said briskly, not meeting Janie’s eyes.
For a second, Janie thought she’d have to pick her jaw up from the floor. It was more money than she’d ever spent on anything in her life, almost more than she’d even thought it was possible to spend. Her fingers trembled as she reached for the new gold credit card, and she suddenly felt like one of those spoiled, snobby girls on the reality shows, the ones who went throwing Daddy’s money around like it grew on trees and then had tantrums when they didn’t get the car they wanted for their sixteenth birthday.
Was that why the cashier had gone so cold all of a sudden—because she thought Janie was a rich snot like those girls? She felt like explaining that her family still lived in a trailer, and that she’d take a strong hug and a prayer over all the fancy baby clothes in the world any day of the week. But she shouldn’t have to explain herself to this girl! What right did she have to go judging Janie just because her family had gotten lucky?
She signed the receipt, thanked the girl in the most clipped and formal voice she could muster, and hustled her shopping cart on out of there, struggling to keep the wheels from fishtailing on the floor.
In the shade of a fake palm tree near the mall’s food court, she lowered herself onto a bench and texted Doug. He’d gone into Cheyenne to find a new dirt bike and asked her to come with him, suggesting she could pick up a few things for the baby—and since it was the first time he’d really asked her to do anything since Trey’s accident, she’d jumped at the chance.
There in 30, Doug texted back. Wut r u wearing?
She giggled into her palm, then looked around to see if anyone had seen. Doug was being cute and funny again—and it felt so good to see him getting his sense of humor back!
U know wut—same thing i wore here! she replied.
A second later, her phone buzzed.
Go buy urself a nice dress, the screen said. Im takin u somewhere fancy 4 dinner.
“Yay!” Janie squealed out loud, this time not caring if anyone heard. She couldn’t believe Doug was turning the excursion into a real date. He’d never really been the romantic type—it just wasn’t his thing, he was too much of a guy—and lately he’d barely even acted like a boyfriend. He’d been drinking more since Trey’s death, his neck constantly red and his eyes puffy and bloodshot, and he’d been moodier than ever before. A couple of times, he’d flown off the handle for no reason, screaming at her and calling her a fat cow when all she wanted was to satisfy a perfectly normal pregnant-lady ice cream craving—and once he’d even raised his fist in anger, making her cower away from him in terror before he lowered it quickly and resumed his normal sneer of disgust. She figured it was just the way he grieved, that if she showed him enough patience and turned the other cheek he’d eventually come around. Now it looked like she’d been right.
Her ankles were swollen and beginning to ache, but she struggled to her feet and waddled through the mall to Mimi Maternity, where she told the salesgirl she was going to a really fancy dinner and let herself be sold a floor-length black gown with a slit halfway up one side and silver sequins glittering on the neckline. It cost five times what she’d spent on her prom dress, but when she handed over the credit card, she felt only a tiny pang of guilt—much less than the tidal wave that had flattened her back at Babies “R” Us, although she still made a promise to herself that she’d make a big fat donation to the church when she got home.
She wore the dress out, stopping at Sephora to freshen her makeup with the free samples they left lying around everywhere, and even splurged on a pair of dangly black chandelier earrings that the guy at Kay Jewelers assured her looked very elegant. Waiting for Doug in the sheltered area outside the mall, watching the sunset turn the sky over Cheyenne into a big bowl of strawberry-peach yogurt, she felt like the star in one of those rom-coms about people in cities with really perfect hair. The air had cooled, sending a refreshing breeze skipping across the parking lot, and just before Doug’s pickup pulled up she felt the baby kick, reminding her of the sacred bond that would keep her and Doug and their brand-new little family together for always.
Doug rolled down the window and let out a long, low wolf whistle when he saw her. “Hey, sexy,” he called. “When I told you to buy something nice, I didn’t think you’d come out looking this good!”
She glowed at the compliment. She always did her best to look hot for her man, but it wasn’t every day that he noticed.
“Why, thank you, handsome.” She fluttered her eyelashes. “You want to help me with these bags?”
Doug put the truck in park and hopped out. His hair was slicked back, and instead of his jeans he had on the dark blue suit he’d worn to their senior semiformal. He’d put on some weight since, and the seams cut in a little at his shoulders, but with his white shirt and dark tie he was still as great-looking as Janie had ever remembered him, the big, muscular hunk she’d fallen in love with her sophomore year.
“You buy the whole store?” he joked, loading bag after bag with the Babies “R” Us logo (and, okay, a few that said Mimi Maternity, too) into the truck.
“Just the good stuff.” She leaned in and kissed him, breathing in Abercrombie cologne and that musky Doug smell that always got her kind of hot. “It’s for our baby.”
“I know it is,” he said, helping her into the passenger’s seat. “That kid’s gonna be mad rich—first-generation oil money, like a boss.”
Janie sat back happily as Doug maneuvered out of the parking lot and onto Prairie Avenue. It felt so good to have the old Doug back: the Doug who joked and laughed and noticed when she looked pretty, instead of the moody creature who had taken over her boyfriend’s body practically the moment she’d announced she was pregnant. Sometimes it seemed like the more their child grew, the surlier Doug got, as if he was the one with hormones rushing all over the place instead of her.
She glanced over at him, stopped at a red light. He was nodding along to the hard rock song on the radio, his face scrunched up against the sun’s low, orange glare. He had that look on his face—the tense one that meant that something was bothering him—but she shook it off. He was probably just squinting at the road.
“Where are you taking me, anyway?” she asked, fiddling with one of her new earrings.
“Somewhere special.” His eyes didn’t leave the road. “Like you.”
He turned at a maroon sign that read Luigi’s Ristorante in curly gold script, and stopped in front of a building with a fancy circular entrance supported by white columns. A man in a uniform with gold buttons rushed to open Janie’s door, and she had to swallow a squeal of delight as he took her arm and helped her alight on the pavement. It was like a fairy tale: the red carpet, the potted shrubberies that twinkled with fairy lights, the glass doors beyond which she could hear muffled jazz music and laughter and the clink of glasses. People on TV went to places like Luigi’s Ristorante all the time, but the closest Janie had ever been was the banquet hall of the Rawlins Holiday Inn for prom.
Maybe that would change, too, she thought as Doug came around the side of the truck and took her arm. Maybe being rich would be even better than she thought.
“I told you this place was nice,” he said low in her ear.
The man in the coat with the gold buttons held the door open as Doug escorted her into the restaurant. Inside it smelled like garlic and roses, and a woman with milky skin and dark hair took their name
s and led them through a maze of tables where couples older than Janie’s parents sipped wine and gazed at each other over flickering candlelight.
“It’s like an American Express commercial!” she whispered in Doug’s ear. He smiled tensely, obviously feeling out of his element: His shoulders were all hunched up, and he walked awkwardly in front of her, trying not to bump any of the tables.
“You like it here?” he asked once they were seated. Their table was at the back of the restaurant, under a trellis hung with imitation ivy and more twinkling fairy lights that made it feel like they were in an enchanted garden.
“It’s beautiful,” Janie breathed. A rush of gratitude caught in her throat, so strong that for a moment she thought she’d cry. Even in his grief over Trey, Doug was doing his best to make her happy. Even if he’d been tough to be around (and, okay, maybe a little scary sometimes), his moodiness hadn’t been his fault. He’d just been upset about Trey. Soon he’d be over it and they’d be back to normal . . . maybe even better than normal.
A waiter in a white shirt with a long, black apron came by and introduced himself as Lorenzo. “May I start you off with some wine?” he asked, handing Doug a leather-bound book the size of the Peytons’ photo album. Janie started to say no and gesture to her belly, but Doug cut her off.
“Yeah, uh, we’ll have a bottle of red,” he said.
“Of course, sir. May I ask which variety? We have one of the most extensive wine lists in the state.” Lorenzo leaned over and flipped open the book, revealing what looked like an entire page written in Italian.
End Times Page 15