by Rory Harper
“He’s dying, Papa,” I said. “He wants it so bad nothing or nobody can stop him.”
“The family’s in the fields finishing with the harvest, Son.”
“Not today, Papa. I’ll be a farmer tomorrow, but please, not today.”
Sprocket’s breathing stopped.
For a frozen second I sat there. Then I lurched up, almost knocking Papa aside. “Doc! Doc! He’s not breathing.”
Doc had fallen asleep in a chair, his baton slipping from his fingers to lie in the dirt. I frantically yanked him erect and dragged him to Sprocket. Shaking his head to clear it, he inserted his arm into a crease and felt around. “Pressure down to nothing,” he muttered.
Finally, blessedly, I felt the tears streaming down my face. “It’s over.”
Then Sprocket’s body started to shimmy, quick little waves traveling along his body. Doc jerked his arm out as the first real convulsion hit. Sprocket’s eyes popped open, nothing but the whites showing. His body began to jerk and twist and hunch, carrying dozens of his feet off the ground at once.
Then a deep growling sound like a hurricane grew in the air, and Sprocket’s body began to tie itself in knots as we all backed away.
“Jesus, Son of God!” Doc yelled. “The well’s coming in on us!”
I looked down at Sprocket’s mouth and saw it grinding in the dirt, squeezed tightly around his tongue, and knew Doc was right. In addition to the normal bottom-hole pressure, Sprocket had drilled into a real high-pressure formation, and the upward force was trying to blast everything out of the hole. Sprocket was fighting it with his last remaining strength.
The wrinkles in his hide disappeared as he swelled up. Doc began to backpedal. “He ain’t handling the kick! His bladders are filling with mud coming up. Head for the tall grass! Blowout! Blowout!”
We all turned and ran like the devil was after us. The gasoline tanker, which was the only beast close up to Sprocket, ripped loose, crashed through the fence into the woods bordering the pasture, and left a wake of shattered pine trees behind him. The rest of the beasts took off in whatever directions they were already pointed in. In the midst of the turmoil, I caught a glimpse of Papa, high-stepping his best. He was fresh from a night’s sleep, so he was just about leading the pack. He didn’t know what the hell was going on, but he was willing to find out from a safe distance.
I glanced back over my shoulder and saw Sprocket bloated like an enormous black balloon. Then he blew out. It looked and sounded like a tornado erupted full-grown from the top of his head. A stormy dark gusher fountained a hundred feet in the air. I kept running. If it caught fire, I’d be fried to the bone in a second.
Finally, I fell face down between two furrows, exhausted. It started to rain on my back, and I turned over. The rain was black. It was oil.
Fifteen minutes later, the gusher gradually grew smaller, and finally sank back into the ground. Cautiously, we slipped and scrambled among drenched wreckage until we came to Sprocket. Somehow, he’d held on and finally shut it in. He squirmed and wiggled happily in the middle of the mess, a deep, dynamo hum vibrating his entire length.
* * *
Three mornings later, the gypsies had washed off and repaired their belongings as best they could. The pasture and cornfields were covered with petroleum—black, clumpy globs of it, drying in the summer sun. A welter of intersecting pipes and valves called a Christmas Tree guarded the hole that Sprocket had drilled. I stood on Sprocket’s head and turned all the way around slowly. Papa and Grampaw and my brothers clustered in front of the farmhouse.
A trail of dust led down the road back to Hemphill and places beyond, marking the departure of all of the gypsies except Doc’s crew. Doc’s head popped out of the hole beside me.
“About time for us to go, Henry Lee,” he said.
I slid down Sprocket’s side and walked slowly toward my family. Behind me Sprocket’s legs started to churn in place, limbering up for the march ahead of him.
When I hugged him, Papa tried his best to smile, because he loved me.
Sprocket’s drilling mouth opened instantly when I tugged on it. We were halfway to the cattle guard before I made it through Doc’s room and up his ladder.
As we looked back and waved good-bye, Doc said, “Damned if I understand you, Henry Lee. That well’s gonna produce a whole lot of oil, and it’s gonna be the only one around here, ‘cause I don’t think anyone else is crazy enough to try to get into a reservoir that deep. You could stay and be one of the richest men in this state.”
I dropped my hand and turned to face the road. “Money’s fine for them that value it, Doc, but I’ll take the romance and excitement any day.”
In-Between
We had settled down outside Waco that night. For the past week, we had mostly stayed on back roads, since Sprocket traveled slower than most any truck or car. His cruising speed was about thirty miles per hour. When I finished washing the dishes after dinner, Doc called me into Sprocket.
“How’s it going so far, worm?” he asked. He stood beside a curtain that opened onto a room across the hallway from his.
“Just fine, Mr. Miller, sir. I lo-o-o-ve my job.” As soon as I hired onto the crew, everybody forgot my name and started calling me ‘worm’. Razer had explained that it was an old custom; everybody new to the oilpatch got called that until they demonstrated that they’d learned the basics. Fortunately, the old custom didn’t demand that I had to pretend to like it. Matter of fact, being disrespectful seemed to work better than any other response.
“Well, good,” he said. “You seem to have mastered the important stuff quick. So I got some more for you to do now.”
I groaned. The important stuff he was talking about was washing or cleaning or painting or scouring anything that didn’t move out of the way quick enough. I had put in fourteen-hour days since we left the farm, repairing steel hose, greasing bearings, cleaning Sprocket inside and outside, cooking dinner, cleaning up afterwards, and on and on.
It wasn’t farming, and wasn’t nearly so hard as farming, so I enjoyed every second of it. Of course, I didn’t let anybody on the crew know that.
I figured he had some more stuff for me to clean or fix.
“Hey, Sprocket, how about lightening up in there?” he called.
The warts inside the room began to glow softly, then brightened further.
“Today, we start the most important part of your schooling, boy.” We stepped inside. I looked around the room. I only recognized about a third of the instruments. “You got a passable sense of rhythm,” Doc continued, “but we need to get you up to speed on a real instrument.”
The walls were covered with hanging tubas and oboes and trumpets and saxophones in three sizes. Black leather cases containing god-knows-what cluttered the floor. He pulled open the top drawer of a file cabinet bolted to the wall and displayed hundreds of music scores; then he opened other drawers that were full of books and further small instruments made of wood and brass.
“You got any preferences?”
I looked around the room, almost breathless. “Uh, not really. I always kinda wanted to play the fiddle.”
“Huh. Afraid the violin is hard as hell to play well. Best to start on it while you’re less than four feet tall. I’d prefer we find something that you can sound decent on fairly quick. Besides, Razer already plays fiddle for us.” He pulled a saxophone from the wall. “How about this? Tenor sax.”
I took it gingerly and handled it for a second, looking it over. I blew into the mouthpiece. It made a sound like a horse throwing up.
“Well, maybe,” I said.
I shuffled aside, fingering the keys on it. My foot bumped into a case leaning against the wall and knocked it over. The top sprang open when it hit.
It revealed my instrument.
Fifteen minutes later we left the darkened room behind us. Doc carri
ed the books and music folios he had pulled from the file case. I held my case by the handle. I had clipped to my belt the tiny battery-driven amplifier. The curving word ‘Pignose’ was impressed in tin along its top, with a tiny metal snout poking out above the speaker grill.
In my room, we dumped all the goodies on the bed, and I popped the case open again. Under the neck of the cherry-red instrument were extra sets of strings, a couple of cords for hooking up to the Pignose, and a flat box holding a couple of dozen picks.
I picked it up, and somehow it felt immediately comfortable in my hands. I slipped the strap over my head and settled it across my chest. I smiled. I caressed the headstock, which was inlaid with the word ‘Epiphone.’
Doc shook his head mournfully. “Just what the oilpatch needs. Another hillbilly guitar player.”
I barely heard him. I was in love.
Sprocket Goes Courting
“It’s a matter of pride to come into a new camp with your tanks topped off, Henry Lee,” Doc said as we came off State 302 late in the afternoon. “Shows folks you been taking care of business.” The guy at the only filling station in town didn’t act too surprised when the gleaming black, hundred-and-twelve-foot length of Sprocket pulled up to the pumps, and Doc and me popped out of a hole on top and slid down his flank to order eight-hundred gallons of high-test. But he did want cash up front. Doc whipped out a roll big enough to choke a hog and started peeling off bills. After Exoco paid off on the well drilled on the farm, the Sprocket Limited Partnership was flush again.
I looked around and didn’t see anything too interesting. Ain’t many towns have a name that fits them. This one was called Notrees, and it fit like skin. Then again, we weren’t out here because of what was above the ground.
I took off my goggles and wiped road dust from my face with the bandanna I snatched out of Doc’s back pocket.
Doc looked at me. “Hey, worm, get to pumping. Me and this fella’s gonna be busy counting money for awhile.”
“Yes, sir. Happy to, sir. Please don’t beat me no more, sir.”
Doc grinned through his beard and went back to business.
I pulled the pump hose loose and dragged it over to Sprocket and stuck it in his eating mouth. A quick, happy little ripple pulsed down the length of his body when he got his first taste of that sweet gasoline. I reached up and scratched hard at the crease a couple of feet above his mouth. He moaned in pleasure, and the crease opened lazily to reveal a deep green eye twice the size of my head. Sprocket and me stared at each other affectionately while he sucked his fill.
Presently, Doc and the filling-station guy came around the side, talking.
“Farm and Market 181 crosses about five miles east of town,” the filling station guy said, pointing. “Cut off to the left and the main camp’s about a mile and a half further on. Must be about forty or fifty animals up there now. Say, which kind of animal is this one here? I still can’t tell ’em apart.”
“This here is the best goddam Driller in the oilpatch, Mister Oglesby. His name’s Sprocket, and he just finished making the deepest producing hole known to living man.”
The guy shook his head admiringly. “You oil gypsies are the braggin’est people I ever seen. Every one I talk to says their animal’s the finest there is.”
“Most of ’em are liars,” Doc admitted. “But I ain’t.”
* * *
Eleven of us made up Sprocket’s drilling crew. We’d all washed up and put on our best jumpsuits and tuned up the instruments that needed tuning. Sprocket’s hundreds of feet fell into a loose dancing stroll as we rounded a bend in the road and sighted off to the left the dozens of tents and animals that made up the camp. Every man stood waist high, poked out of a hole on top of Sprocket. Being the pusher on the rig, Doc had the room most forward, so he poked out of a hole just back of Sprocket’s bullet head. He faced backward toward us, raised his conductor’s baton up high, then kicked the band into a jazzy tune called “Downhole Dreamer.”
By the time we got to the center of the camp we were setting that song on fire. Razer poured out a flowing river of music from his fiddle, underlining and clarifying the complicated melody. I still had a long way to go before I’d be able to play guitar with the band, so I still kept time by banging the rhythm sticks together.
Before we were halfway through the song, gypsies from the camp had surrounded Sprocket, many of them adding their own instruments to the music-making. Sprocket danced in a rippling circle through the final, drawn-out chorus.
When the last note died away, Doc nodded and slid his baton back into the pocket running down his left leg. “If you boys worked as hard as you play, we’d all be rich.” He surveyed the camp and called out. “Who’s camp boss around here? We heard there was some hole bein’ made in these parts and come for a piece of it.”
An older man stepped forward from the crowd. “We can always use another Driller. Welcome to the field. I’m Zeke King, and I’d be honored if you gentlemen would allow me to buy you a round.”
We adjourned to a large tent nearby, with folks following us in until it was pretty near filled. A couple of casing gypsies worked behind the bar.
After the first couple of doses of heart-starter and some getting acquainted, Doc and Zeke got around to talking business. I only heard a few snatches of the conversation due to the noise in the tent and the fact that the casing gypsy who served my drinks was cuter than a month-old foal. She kept stealing my attention, what with the way she gracefully sashayed back and forth, ever now and then flashing her electric blue eyes in my direction.
“Hydroco’s got the field purty-well sewed up,” Zeke said. “About a year ago, they came in and drilled a couple of test holes, then P and A’ed ’em all and left.” I already knew what he was leading up to then, from bull sessions with Doc and the rest of the crew on the way here—you Plug and Abandon a well when you don’t find any hydrocarbons worth producing. Sometimes companies do it to fake out the competition.
“So,” Zeke continued, “nine months later, when everybody had about forgotten ’em, their land men slipped in and quietly bought up lease options on damn near every piece of property in sight. A couple of small independents caught on toward the last and managed to get a few leases, but Hydroco’s playing hardball.” He shrugged. “Tough on the independents, especially while we’re running past the full capacity of the camp here, but it makes for nice prices when it comes time to dicker for service.”
Doc nodded. “Yeah, I see how they could pull off something like that in this godforsaken wilderness. Must be costing ’em, though.”
“They act like they don’t care. It’s a small field, but they figure there’s enough petroleum down there to make it worthwhile to go for it all.”
I lost track of the conversation for a minute or two again, because that little casing gypsy came by and refilled my glass. Her dark green jumpsuit was unzipped further than a preacher might like. In the process of pouring, she bent over a bit more than was strictly necessary and handed me a couple of glimpses of heaven. Paralyzed my mind for a while. The sweet smile she gave me didn’t help, either.
By the time I regained consciousness, another fella had joined Doc and Zeke. He wasn’t wearing a jumpsuit—just jeans, a white shirt, and work boots. They spoke in low tones, with the other fella’s face changing from hopeful to frustrated.
Doc poured a dose from the bottle him and Zeke shared. “I’d surely be happy to do business with y’all if we can work out a deal, Mr. Mooney, but me and my boys just finished a week on the road. We’d like a day or two to rest and get the lay of the land.”
The fella smiled unhappily. “Well, Mr. Miller, just keep in mind that I’m willing to pay premium prices for your rig time, with good bonuses.”
Doc stuck out his hand and Mr. Mooney reluctantly shook it. “I’ll keep you in mind, sir,” Doc said. “We’ll settle things one way or the
other before too long.”
The fella handed him a business card and started to drift away. “Remember, I got a room at the Driscoll Hotel in town.”
Doc raised his glass and nodded. “Yessir. I’ll remember that.”
Shoulders slumped, Mr. Mooney left the tent.
I came up behind Doc and touched his elbow. He turned and grinned at me. “Oh, howdy, Henry Lee. Zeke, this here’s Henry Lee MacFarland, new worm we picked up on the way over from that mess at the Morgan City field I was telling you about. He’d appreciate it if you could tell him the name of that little honey behind the bar, the one with the black hair down to her sitter. And if she’s hooked up with anybody right now.”
I expect I turned red. Zeke laughed and stuck out his hand. “Pleasure meeting you, Henry Lee. Everybody calls her Star, and she ain’t tied down that I know of. You got a fair shot at her, since I hear she likes ’em big and ugly.”
I nodded and kept from crunching his hand to splinters. When I turned fifteen, Papa took me out behind the barn and convinced me to handle normal-sized people gently-like. They break too easy.
I turned to Doc. “I couldn’t help noticing—”
“Yeah, I noticed that you couldn’t help noticing.”
“Uh … not that. I mean, it looked like you was turning down an offer by that Mooney fella to drill a well for him.”
Doc nodded and took a sip from his shot glass. “Sure was. Don’t believe in swimming upstream if it can be helped. He runs Mooney Producing. Him and anybody that works for him is going to have a hard time from Hydroco. Besides—” He looked at Zeke. “How many leases he got?”
“Three. And they run out in four months if he don’t make hole on them.”