Petrogypsies (13 page)

He leaned back in his chair, rubbed his eyes tiredly, and motioned for me to clear a space on his bed and have a sit.

“How’s the new piece going?” I asked.

“It’s gonna be longer than I thought. I figured I had an idea for a nice ten or fifteen minutes of structured noise, and it’s turning into a goddam major composition right in front of me.”

“Tough,” I said.

“Yeah.” He smiled.

He stretched, and his face got serious. “I talked some with Pearl today.”

“Yeah?”

“He told me the county coroner finished a detailed autopsy on Pegleg. Kept the results quiet for almost two weeks while the DA decided what to do.”

That could only mean one thing. “They figure it wasn’t an accident.”

“Uh-huh. He was dead before he went in the hole. No water in his lungs, for one thing. His clothes were drenched with a couple of different kinds of oil, none
of which were present in the mud we were running. He had abrasions and cuts on his hands and face, and the way the oils were present in most of them indicated that they’d been smeared in during some kind of scuffle, not by him banging around in the casing after he died. And his skull was cracked.”

“They think somebody killed him and dumped him in the well. They gonna charge me with murder?”

“No. The DA decided that he couldn’t get a conviction without more evidence directly implicating you.”

I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.

“Thanks, Doc.”

“Just wanted you to know as soon as possible.”

I stood up and headed for the door. Then I realized what he had really meant. “They’re gonna try to get more evidence aren’t they? They still think I did it.”

He rubbed his eyes again. “Hell, I don’t know what they think, boy. Just be careful.”

* * *

I climbed out of the hole on top of Sprocket, with my Epiphone strapped to my back and the little battery-powered Pignose amplifier clipped to my guitar strap and plugged in.

It had just got too close inside Sprocket. That didn’t happen too often for me, but after talking with Doc, I was wondering about Pegleg’s death and if it was going to follow me around for the rest of my days.

I patted Sprocket half-heartedly and wandered down his length toward the rear of the ship. I brought the Epiphone around and strummed on it lightly as I walked. If anything, it made me feel worse. The notes sounded wrong, boring, stupid.

After awhile I ended up on the fantail at the very rear of
Miz Bellybutton
.

I sat down and played for half an hour, staring at the three-quarter moon, cranking up the Pignose as loud as it would go, and getting more and more depressed.

“Say, you’re pretty good,” said a voice behind me. I turned. It was Chief Hightower.

“Thanks.”

He pulled a mouth harp out of his shirt pocket and blew into it experimentally. “You mind a little accompaniment?”

I was still surprised that any of the ship’s crew was actually talking to me. I’d seen the chief once or twice since Pegleg’s body turned up, and he’d nodded politely at me, but he always seemed to be on his way someplace else at the time.

“Couldn’t make it worse, anyhow,” I said.

He nodded. “I guess. You were sounding awful depressed on that thing. What’s the matter?”

I still didn’t quite trust that he wasn’t setting me up to say something nasty to me. “What you think?”

He blew into the mouth harp again, doing a blurred upward chromatic run. Sounded like he would probably be competent on it. “Hmmm … I suspect you got the news today about the autopsy.”

“How’d you know about that?”

“Man from the DA’s office had a long chat on the radio with me and Captain Johnson day before yesterday. Asked us to re-interview the crew for any more details that might link you to Pegleg’s murder.”

“Great.”

“Johnson asked Mr. Miller again to remove you from the ship this afternoon.”

“And?”

“You’re still here.” He tapped the harp against his palm. “Don’t worry about the captain. He’s edgy because this is his first time out on
Miz Bellybutton
. He’s trying to get along with a crew new to him, most of which don’t like you a bit.
”

“I noticed.”

The chief grinned. “He’s caught between a rock and a hard place, because Mr. Pickett backed Mr. Miller up on this matter. Axis Ortell, our old captain, would have told Mr. Pickett to take a flying leap and then tossed you over the side if you pissed him off. Better for you to have to handle Johnson.”

“I’m so relieved.”

The smile faded off his face. “Hey, it’s not that bad. You didn’t do it. You’ll be cleared eventually.”

“How do you know I didn’t do it?”

He leaned against the rail and looked somberly at me for a long minute. Moonlight gleamed on his bald head. “I’m a good judge of character,” he said finally. “I’ve been around awhile, and I know very well what kind of person it takes to kill. You
don’t qualify. I’m sorry for the way my boys have treated you. They simply don’t want to think it might have been one of them.”

For some reason, I believed him. It made me feel less guilty.

He blew into the mouth harp again. “I was listening to you,” he said. “Your problem is, you got the blues.”

“You got that right.”

“Best thing to do is
play
the blues when you got them.” A long wail like a lonesome train in the distance came out of the mouth harp. He followed it with an involved riff that sounded so sweetly aching that I shivered.

He broke off and grinned. “See?”

“How did you
do
that?”

“It’s the blues. I’ve been a fan since I was a boy.”

“What scale is that? The note intervals sounded almost like an incomplete Major, but your phrasing was—”

He blew a descending six-note scale. “This is a G harp, so it plays blues in D,” he said. “I don’t know anything about scales, but that’s the notes I was taught.”

I echoed the notes, and we worked it out over the next half hour. It was exactly the sound I’d been trying to find. It was so lonesome that it was perfect for how I felt. The band played jazz blues on occasion, but this was different. The progressions were simpler, more elemental. And somehow harder. The scale was a pentatonic minor with an added flat-5th, and I figured out that the song structure was a I-IV-V chordal progression in twelve bars, twelve/eight time.

I started getting excited. “How come I never heard of this stuff before? This is great.”

“It’s Negro folk music,” the chief said. “From the way you’ve been talking, your bunch comes from a more classical orientation. I don’t know much about that sort of music. I just know what I’ve learned about the blues from a life spent hanging out on the wrong side of the tracks.”

We played for another hour, me mostly accompanying with chords while he wailed. He showed me some variations on it, including minor blues, which sounded positively suicidal. It was wonderful.

Eventually, we went back to his stateroom where he cranked up his record player and put on one of the hundreds of blues records arranged neatly in three cases beside his bed. I realized we hadn’t even scratched the surface. I managed to pick clumsily along with a few of the easier tunes.

Finally, exhausted, I headed back for Sprocket.

The chief escorted me to the bulkhead and shook my hand. “Thanks, Henry Lee. I haven’t had so much fun in a long time.”

“Me, neither. Mind if I come listen to more of those records some other time?”

“Sure. Any time at all.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “I believe in you. You’re going to be all right.”

I was grateful as a puppy given a new bone.

* * *

Me and the chief hung out a lot together after that. I’d go to his room for hours and listen to his records and play along with them. A couple of the hands on Sprocket’s crew knew a little about the blues, but said they didn’t much care for them. Preferred the more technically demanding forms of jazz or classical music. Doc pulled a couple of instruction books about the blues from out of the file cabinet for me, but otherwise seemed less than interested. His new composition was keeping him up at all hours, anyway.

The chief would talk to me when I visited, and he showed me around the ship and the engine room. I think he tried to get a couple of the sailors to party with us in his room, but I ain’t sure. Nobody ever showed up. He visited with us and Sprocket during his off-time, for dinner and the like. Seemed to get along with everybody. I showed him around the drilling operation, explaining the ins and outs of making a well as best I could.

He made me feel better, but I still got depressed about most of the ship’s crew thinking I was a murderer. Life went on.

Sprocket was down around twelve thousand feet when he hit a pocket of high-pressure sour gas. It was the middle of a lazy afternoon. Most of the crew was taking a nap while me and Big Mac watched the drilling. Mac had gotten bored and was face down on the deck doing one-handed push-ups. A couple of sailors leaned over the balcony rail that ran around the back of the foc’sle, smoking hand-rolls. They still hadn’t thawed to us much, but some of them seemed to enjoy listening to Sprocket’s soothing hum while he made hole.

Sprocket had been in the hole for about a day and a half, drilling steady. Suddenly, his low, relaxed purr got louder and higher. His eyes began to blink open and shut rapidly. Then he stopped drilling and marching. He took a couple of steps forward and clamped his mouth over the wellhead. The wrinkles on his face deepened as he pressured up on the hole.

“Doc!” I yelled. “We got a problem!”

After a couple of seconds Doc’s head poked out of the hole in the top of his room. He yawned and dug sleep-crackles out of his eyes. Then he climbed out and crawled forward on his knees until he could see the way Sprocket’s mouth covered the wellhead.

“Drilled into a high-pressure formation,” he said. “Get the mud weighted up.”

“Believe it’s more than that.” Sprocket started to march in a different cadence, driving his legs down in triplets, hard against the ship’s surface. It wasn’t the signal he usually made when he hit a high-pressure zone. I’d seen another Driller march in this cadence only once before. “Believe he’s got into some sour gas.”

“Aw, crap,” Doc said. Then he looked at me speculatively. “You’re on tower, Henry Lee. Handle it.”

“Are you out of your mind?” I looked over my shoulder at the sailors in the foc’sle. They’d clumped together in a bunch and were watching us intently. I moved closer to where Doc sprawled. I spoke as soft as I could and still be heard by him. “I could kill everybody on this ship if I screw up.”

Doc nodded. “Uh-huh. But you been around the oilpatch almost two years now, Henry Lee. You been standing tower by yourself for half of that. You can’t handle the pressure, I’d just as soon find out now.”

“But—”

Doc frowned at me. “Don’t but me no buts, boy. You’re in charge. What you gonna do?”

A couple of other heads had popped up along Sprocket’s top. They all stared at me, waiting. Well, it wasn’t as if I hadn’t been schooled up on how to handle sour gas. I took a deep breath.

“Sour gas! Get your asses below, worms! Now! I don’t want to see any of you again without a respirator on your face!”

I gestured at Big Mac. “Bring me a mask and get one on your own self.” He gave me a mock salute and double-timed away.

I licked a finger and tested the wind with it. We were lucky. The wind blew from the nose of the ship. The foc’sle was upwind. But the engine room wasn’t. I moved myself upwind of the hole, just in case.

“Razer!” I yelled. His head popped up out of his hole. The respirator covered his entire face, with the oxygen cannister hanging down on his chest. He yanked the straps down tighter where they met at the back of his head. He goggled at me through the face-plate. “We got spare masks in the iron room. Get ’em to the engine room ASAP. Along with a detector. Explain to the chief. Show him and his boys how to use ’em.”

He gave me a thumbs-up and ducked below again. As a couple of the crew, all wearing masks, popped out of holes atop Sprocket, I turned to the sailors that was gawking at the goings-on. “One of you, please get the captain for me. The rest, stay upwind of the hole.”

“What’s the big deal, lubber?” one of them shouted.

“No big deal. Just kindly stay away from the wellhead till we say otherwise.”

I turned again and saw Doc had climbed out of his room and was getting ready to slide down Sprocket’s side.

“Hold up there, Mr. Miller!” I said. “You get upwind with your shaving kit and take that beard off right now.” The hair on his face would keep the mask from making a perfect seal. And, around sour gas, perfect is the only way to be.

“Aw, Henry Lee,” his words came muffled through the respirator. “I got positive pressure blowing on this thing. I even smeared Vaseline all over my face.”

“Fine for you. You get killed on your own tower. Long as I’m in charge, we do it API.” My voice rose again. He wasn’t the only one on the crew that sported a beard. “You hear that, people? Shave it off. Right now! That means sideburns, too!”