by Rory Harper
The first one to arrive got a fist in the face, then the other one was on me, ramming his shoulder hard into my chest. I staggered back, off balance, and he followed me. He got a knee in his belly when he closed again. Then the other one tackled me, and we all ended up scrambling around in the dirt.
I was not winning, truth to tell, until one of them quit strangling me long enough to scream. He twisted aside, trying to pull away the clawed hands of the long-haired angel that was ripping his face to ribbons. I still had a hand clutching the shirtfront of the one that was sitting on my chest. Star’s help gave me the time to use that hand to yank his face close so I could pulverize it some with the other hand.
About the time he lost interest in his part of the fight, the first one was on me again. What I could see of his face as it twisted in and out of shadow didn’t look too good.
After he got my elbow in the throat a couple of seconds later, it looked worse. He started choking and coughing, so I punched him a half a dozen times in the short ribs to clear any obstructions. He started throwing up, so I let him go. The other one was lying nearby. When I poked him with the tip of my steel-toed boots he didn’t move, so I relaxed enough to look around.
Casing gypsies were starting to slide down Lady Jane’s side. Star sat up a few yards away, holding her jaw. I crawled toward her. “You okay?” I called out. “Thanks for keeping ’em from killing me.”
She moved her jaw with her hand, testing to see if anything was broke, I guess. “Wanted the pleasure myself.”
“Aww, Star, I’m sorry as all get-out.”
“You hurt my feelings something terrible, Henry Lee.”
“Last thing I ever want to do is hurt you.” I put my hand on her knee. “I got scared. I wasn’t sure how you’d feel about me after. I didn’t just want a one-night stand.” I hung my head.
The hand that wasn’t still holding her jaw moved to cover mine. Her fingertips gently scratched my wrist. “Me neither, Henry Lee.”
Our big reunion scene was interrupted by a couple of casing gypsies moving in to check out our health, and by Doc and Tiny shuffling back into sight around Lady Jane’s side. Both of them was throwing punches, with Doc backing away from Tiny’s longer reach, then stepping up quick to get his licks in.
“Want a little help, Doc?” I called out.
He blocked a punch with his forearm, then backpedaled rapidly out of Tiny’s reach. He looked at me. “You done entertaining Tiny’s boys, huh?” He laughed. “Guess I better finish off this pus-bucket, too. We got some casing to set.”
Tiny roared and charged him, which I believe is just what Doc wanted. Tiny bear-hugged him up into the air. Doc snapped his forehead into Tiny’s face. Broke Tiny’s nose, I imagine. When Tiny’s grip loosened from the pain, Doc wrapped his hands around Tiny’s neck and start throttling him. At the same time, he was giving Tiny the knee where it hurt most. Tiny started driving punches into Doc’s ribs, but Doc ignored them.
Then Tiny wrapped his own hands around Doc’s throat. They stood in place that way, bathed in the headlights of Tiny’s pickup, straining and grunting, each doing his best to throttle the other.
It seemed to go on for hours, but it couldn’t have been more than a minute. Slowly, gradually, Tiny started to buckle. When he was on his knees, Doc brought a knee into his chest.
“That was for hurting Mooney.”
He shrugged Tiny’s hands off and dragged him over to prop him against the grill of the pickup.
“And this is for killing Cutbait Benton.” He said it in that same dead voice I’d heard twice before.
Then he started to punish Tiny.
It wasn’t my right to stop him, but the sounds of it made me sick after awhile, so I came up behind him and pulled him away.
* * *
The whole camp was up by the time Tiny’s goons got well enough to load Tiny into the bed of the pickup and head back toward some serious medical attention in Notrees. Doc and me were sitting on the tailgate of Mooney’s pickup, passing a bottle of our own medicine back and forth, when Star approached with Zeke, both of them looking upset.
“We got a problem,” Star said. “Tell him, Zeke.”
“I can’t sell you no casing,” Zeke said. “Tiny bought everything we got in stock that’s smaller than nine-and-five-eighths. I should have figured something funny was going on, but he offered thirty percent above book. I’m sorry, Doc. We shook hands on it.”
Doc just sighed. “I wouldn’t ask you to go back on a handshake, Zeke.”
“Star tells me Lady Jane was already working on some five-and-a-half-inch pipe on the way in. I could get the word out to the rest of the Casing Critters in the field and have a string ready for you in five or six days.”
“Ain’t no other pipe around?”
Zeke shook his head.
“Guess it’ll have to do, then,” Doc said.
Zeke hurried off to arrange it.
“That’s too late, Doc,” I said. “Even with Tiny off the scene, Hydroco will own Mooney Producing by then.”
“Yeah. But I can’t think of nothing else. Can you?”
I had to admit not. But it kept gnawing at me. We said good-bye to folks and headed back to location. I found out Star could say good-bye in a way that made your hair melt. That was in public. I figured her private one might kill a fella.
I guess I was light-headed from it on the way back, because I kept worry-warting on our problem.
“Maybe Big Red can pump down a hellacious bunch of cement and squeeze off the thief zone,” I said.
“Yeah, just like on Munchkin’s and Uncle Foots’ wells,” Doc replied sourly. “Henry Lee, you can fill your entire hole with concrete, but you eventually got to drill it out. And if that zone ain’t squeezed, you’ll be right back where you started. We’ll try it because we don’t have no choice, but I suspect that a nineteen-thousand-foot hole is gonna be undrillable because we can’t get the casing to cover a damn twenty- or thirty-foot thief zone.”
Something he said started me to thinking. And I got an idea. When I told it to Doc, he said it was the dumbest idea he’d ever heard. He said it was like playing baseball and skipping third base on your way to home plate. It hadn’t never been done before.
Then, he said, “And it just might work.”
He turned the pickup around and we screamed back to the camp and woke everybody up again. Lady Jane followed us out to location.
* * *
Big Red marched on the edge of Uncle Foots’ location late that morning while we played music for him. Three hundred feet of miscellaneous-sized hose ran from his pump mouth to Sprocket. They’d cemented Munchkin’s casing, then immediately bounced over to do Uncle Foots’. Three hours later, while that cement was setting up, we were ready for them to do us.
It took each casing crew on the other locations almost fifteen hours to trip their pipe into the hole. It took us two hours, much of that because Sprocket couldn’t run in any faster.
I sat and nursed my bruises. and let Star feed me breakfast while a couple of gypsies snapped casing around Sprocket’s tongue. All four joints of it. My smart idea was actually pretty simple.
If you got a zone that you need to cover, and it’s four thousand feet below your last casing, and you don’t have four thousand feet of casing—why not just cover the problem zone?
Because you don’t, that’s all. If you’re going to case a hole, you do it from the top down, not the bottom up. The thought wouldn’t occur to anybody but a worm like me.
We had Sprocket take down four joints of that five-and-a-half that Lady Jane made and land it on bottom. Just enough to make sure we covered that thief zone.
Early that afternoon, Spanky moseyed over. “Pearl told me he’ll be ready to pressure up on your cement whenever you want.”
Doc looked up from a new conductor’s baton he
was whittling. His last one got splintered in the fracas with Tiny. “Guess that means yours tested okay.”
“Yeah. We’re filling the hole with mud now.”
“Good. I’d appreciate it if you could tell Pearl I’d like him to hook up and pressure-test in about an hour. Hate to hurry it, but I don’t believe we can give Uncle Foots much more of a lead than that with any hope at all of winning.”
Spanky squinted at a cloud that was moving to cover the afternoon sun. “My crew’s been up all night and day, Doc. I figure after we get the hole full we might take a break. Catch a few zees. You can probably afford to let your cement set up proper, ’cause I don’t believe we’ll be ready to drill till after dinner.”
“That’s mighty decent, Spanky.”
“Don’t want you to have no excuses when Uncle Foots wins.”
* * *
Spanky was good as his word. That evening, just as the sun was going down, Pearl stood on top of Big Red, visible to us all, and raised his bandanna high. Sprocket and Uncle Foots were both on bottom, waiting for the signal. Pearl whipped the bandanna down. Doc’s baton led us into the first bar of “TD’s A-coming,” and Sprocket began to dance and drill.
Twenty-four hours later, they were still going at it, when the first gypsies started coming from all directions across the scenery. Zeke was first, riding on Lady Jane’s nose section. Beside him sat Mr. Mooney. “Come to see the end of the mating drill!” Zeke shouted. “Maybe party some while we’re waiting!”
They pulled up, and Zeke helped Mr. Mooney climb down. Moving kinda gingerly, he walked over and shook Doc’s hand. “Hear you been taking care of business pretty good while I was on vacation.”
“Just making hole, Mr. Mooney. Just making hole.”
“Uh-huh. I had to get out of the damn infirmary. Tiny’s boys were bitching and moaning enough to drive a man crazy.”
I hadn’t thought about it, but I guess that was the closest place for them to have gone. “What about Tiny?” I asked. “He couldn’t have been too happy, neither.”
“Never saw him. They took him off in an ambulance to the hospital at Kermit. He needed more attention than the infirmary could provide.”
“I guess we’ll have finished up here and moved on down the road before he makes it back,” Doc said.
Mooney looked surprised. “Nobody told you?” Doc shook his head. “Tiny ain’t coming back.”
“Just because he got whipped on a bit?”
“Nope. Seems like his sponsor got caught a couple of months ago with his hand in the company’s pocket. Tiny’s goons told me. This was Tiny’s last chance to hang on with Hydroco. If he managed to corner the field, they were gonna keep him on. But he screwed up royally, and Hydroco is gonna permanently run him off for it. They probably already got another fella on the way here to take his place. I don’t see any reason you couldn’t work with him.” He hesitated. “After you finish drilling my other leases, of course.”
“Of course,” Doc said. “Soon as you pay your bills.” He smiled. “I got a feeling we’re gonna do all right on these wells, Mr. Mooney.”
About then, Star stepped out of Lady Jane’s mouth. She hip-swung over and linked her arm in mine. Her other hand reached across and slid inside my jumpsuit to scratch the hair on my chest. “Howdy, Henry Lee. Good to see you again.”
“Pleasure’s all mine, ma’am.” It was.
“You figured out yet what a mating drill’s about, Henry Lee?” Doc asked.
“I ain’t sure. At first I thought it was just whoever drilled best. Now it seems it has to do with who can go deepest soonest. I figure from the way y’all was talking that the one to first hit the producing formation gets to breed with Munchkin.”
Doc just grinned. “Okay so far, Henry Lee. You tell me when you figure out the rest.” Then he strolled off laughing to meet Sabrina as she was coming out of Lady Jane’s mouth.
* * *
Later that night, after the partying had wound down, the walls of my room started to convulse. The bed began to jerk up and down spastically, damn near throwing me onto the rug-covered floor. It felt like an earthquake.
After a few seconds it settled down to a strong, rhythmical pulsing, and I managed to get to my feet. I staggered over to the ladder bolted into Sprocket’s living flesh and climbed high enough to stick my head out the hole in the ceiling. I looked around. A dozen or so gypsies stood at the well head, watching. “Is Sprocket first?” I called out.
Zeke looked up, his face split in a wide grin. “Sure is, boy. Was there ever any doubt?”
Sprocket had won the drilling contest. He was ahead of Uncle Foots in getting down to the deep-producing zone. Sprocket didn’t like nothing better than heavy crude, Doc told me on the farm. Now that he had hit he was sucking it up ecstatically. He was a drilling fool for sure.
Only—I’d seen him suck petroleum on the farm. And the rhythm was different. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought he wasn’t sucking oil up through his tongue. It felt more like—
Then Doc’s head stuck out of the hole up front. A second later, Sabrina’s appeared beside it. “You figured it out yet, worm?”
I figured I was about to make a fool of myself. “He ain’t sucking oil up now, is he? He’s pumping downhole instead.” Sprocket’s body rippled and trembled around us, and his high drilling hum had changed to another kind of howl entirely.
Doc nodded.
“They don’t mate after the drill,” I said wonderingly. “They’re mating right now.”
Doc nodded again. “Not bad figuring, for a worm. Ol’ Sprocket is pumping his seed to Munchkin right now. It’ll fight its way through the cracks in the formation, till it reaches her well, and she sucks it up to fertilize her eggs. We’ll be seeing two or three baby Drillers about a year from now.”
“Damnedest thing I ever heard of.”
“Uh-huh.” Sabrina whispered something in his ear. “Ah, Henry Lee, we’ll talk about this some more later.” Their heads disappeared back into his room.
I looked at the stars for a minute, feeling the strong, steady pulse of life around me, then climbed back down and rolled into bed.
“Henry Lee,” Star murmured as the floor’s heaving threw us together again. “Sprocket’s taking care of his business. Now you come here and take care of yours.”
In-Between
We worked the field around Notrees for eight months more before pulling up and heading on down the road. No real reason to go. Everybody got along fine with each other and with the Drilling Superintendant that Hydroco sent to replace Tiny Small. We all just started getting restless at being in one place too long. That’s a gypsy for you. The camp had gotten big enough so’s business went on as usual when we took off with Sprocket and Munchkin and Big Red and Lady Jane.
We headed down to the Gulf Coast and bounced around randomly, doing a little workover stuff at Chocolate Bayou, then moving over and drilling on a couple of government-sponsored reserve wells at Hoskins Mound. Probably should have stayed with that particular deal longer than we did. Those federal boys surely did know how to spend the money.
But Sprocket was a deep rig. All those shallow, easy wells didn’t stretch him out at all, so we drifted along, pretty much staying together, running out of the same camps. Doc and Sabrina turned into a major item, so that explained Lady Jane staying with us. Me and Star spent as much time together as our jobs allowed. Razer went from one baby-doll to another. Big Red and his bulk cement holder, with his cementing crew headed up by Earl the Pearl hung around because Pearl and Doc liked doing business together, I guess.
I practiced on my guitar a lot and got to where Doc would let me accompany the band on it.
And Sprocket and Munchkin, of course, waited for the blessed event.
Sprocket Goes Offshore
Sprocket and Lady Jane turned to the right when Broadw
ay ended at the Galveston beach. Doc had me up top while him and the rest of the crew finished dressing. We followed the seawall for about a mile before I spotted the neon sign that told me we weren’t as lost as I was beginning to think.
Just as the sun set behind us, Sprocket pulled into the parking lot beside the Bali Room’s entrance. The high school-kid parking cars for the rich folks tried not to look unhappy at the sight of Sprocket. He knew he wasn’t going to get no tip, because he wasn’t going to try to personally park a hundred and twelve feet of healthy young male Driller. Not that he particularly wanted a Driller in his high-class parking lot anyway.
“We’ll find our own place, bubba,” I told him. “Mr. Pickett invited us to drop by.” He nodded and waved us in.
Sprocket and Lady Jane trundled to the back of the lot, where there was room to maneuver, and got properly situated side by side, being careful not to trample any nearby automobiles in the process. Normally I’d have climbed out of the hole in the ceiling in my room and slid down Sprocket’s side, but I figured that wouldn’t look too dignified wearing a coat and tie and brand new ostrich-skin boots.
I guess the rest of the crew figured similarly in their own cases, because when I ducked out of my room into the central hallway that ran Sprocket’s length, a line had formed at his drilling mouth. Looked like a bunch of strangers, all duded up and slicked down. Not a patched jumpsuit or hardhat to be seen among them. One thing was normal—they were passing around a bottle of heart-starter to kick off the evening’s festivities.
Doc came out of his room and faced them. Beside him, wearing a purple suit that seemed to glow and squirm, Razer pulled a small mirror out of his vest pocket and tried to comb his mustache into surrender.