Petrogypsies (9 page)

“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 Broadway 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.

“All right, men,” Doc started. “Mr. T-Bone Pickett has invited us to his place tonight as his personal guests, free of charge. That
don’t
mean you got permission to act like a bunch of wild animals. Don’t start no fights. Don’t spit on the carpet. Don’t throw food, not even at each other. Don’t fart loud nowhere but in the men’s room. Those of y’all that ain’t got a date—don’t mess with the professional ladies in the bar. They cost more than you got, and they won’t take kindly to you trying to dicker with ’em.” You could tell he didn’t count on his talk having much effect. Then he looked over at Razer and rolled his eyes. “Just try not to act like you was raised in a barn, okay?” he finished up.

Razer licked his mustache and combed it some more. “Doc, we wouldn’t do nothing to embarrass you in front of Mr. Pickett. I’ll keep these boys to my own high standards of behavior and attitude. You can depend on me, hoss.”

“Aw, hell,” Doc muttered, more to himself than to any of us. “At least I tried.”

When we marched out Sprocket’s mouth, we found that the ladies had already exited from Lady Jane’s mouth. Casing gypsies are all women, and for some reason most of them are medium-wonderful to look at. About half of them paired up with hands on our crew. Star swayed toward me. Her shiny dark hair fell in numerous braids to hip-height. Instead of the usual half-zipped jumpsuit and steel-toed workboots, she wore high-heels and a midnight-black dress that I immediately wanted to rub against. It was cut high up the sides and low down the front. The places that curved in on Star did it a few inches more than on most women. Likewise with the places that curved out.

Even after her being my main squeeze for almost a year, I still got seriously paralyzed at the sight of her. Not to mention the sound, and smell. And touch. And taste. And—

“Hey, sailor,” she whispered as she slid against me and linked her arm through mine. “You looking for a good time tonight?”

“I could do with a little minor partying, honey. You available?”

She bit me on the earlobe, sending tingles down to my ostrich-skin.

“Might be,” she breathed.

Before we left the parking lot, we strolled over to Sprocket and Lady Jane. While Star chatted with Lady Jane, I scratched an area about five feet off the ground on
Sprocket’s hide. After a second he moaned in pleasure and a crease in his hide unfolded to reveal a deep green eyeball about twice the size of my head. He just loved being rubbed. Come to think of it, I kind of enjoyed it when Star rubbed me, too.

“We won’t be gone too long, buddy,” I said. “You and Lady Jane keep each other company.”

I felt guilty, partying without him. But there wasn’t no way he was going to get into the Bali Room. It was a coat and tie place, and they didn’t make coats and ties his size.

I guess he didn’t mind. He just purred and leaned a little harder into the hand that rubbed him.

* * *

The Bali Room was actually a bunch of rooms, strung out along a pier that ran out from the seawall for almost a quarter of a mile into the Gulf. We went through several rooms before we come to the main restaurant one. The maitre-guy told us Mr. Pickett had been delayed by some other business of his, but had left a message with his people to take care of us. The waiters was all nice to us, although the guy with the big key around his neck, what Doc called the wine steward, almost showed some surprise when Doc spent ten minutes grilling him about the contents of the wine basement before ordering several kinds of wine for before, during, and after dinner. Doc never talked about it much, but he spent a couple of years on the other side of the Gulf near the end of War Number Two, and he got knowledgeable about all them fancy wines, since Beam and branch water was in short supply over there.

We finished up with brandy and cigars in a private drawing room for VIPs like us. I don’t smoke, myself, but Star can appreciate a fine Havana, given the chance.

After that, Doc cut us loose. Reluctantly. Most of us headed for the casino, which was situated farthest out on the pier. Me and Star sat in on a couple of card games. Separate tables, of course. I been playing penny-ante since I was knee-high to a coon, so I pretty much stayed even. Star, on the other hand, is a barracuda. Lucky, too. I played strip poker with her once. Ended up in my skivvies before she had her socks off.

She wouldn’t tell me how much she victimized the gentlemen at her table, but after we wandered into the main bar, she nudged me. “Henry Lee,” she said, “I could afford to treat you to one of those professional ladies in the booths off to the side, if you want.”

“I believe I already got an extremely talented amateur lady lined out for later on, thank you very much anyhow.” I may not be a genius, but I’m a
survivor
.

It was a good bar. Real dark. We danced a little bit to the music from the band that was sweating under the red-and-blue spotlights. That velvety black dress felt as good under my hands as I had thought it would.

Everybody seemed to be having a fine time. Most of the crew drifted in after a while, walking loose and feeling spruce.

The last drilling we did was a shallow injection well at Freddieville, just a couple miles up the road from the coast. It was contracted by Mesh Petroleum, which was one of the companies owned by Mr. T-Bone Pickett, an old-time wildcatter who had made it good and diversified into all sorts of other enterprises. Including high-class nightclubs on the island. Doc and him knew each other from back when Doc was a kid and T-Bone was rubbing two dollar bills together to try to grow a third one. Doc said T- Bone liked to collect businesses, like some people collect baseball cards or china figurines. He visited us out on location a couple times. Mostly for nostalgia, I had figured. For the last twenty years, nobody’d been in a position to make the man get mud on his boots unless he wanted to.

However, it seemed like he’d been mulling over offering us some kind of mystery deal, which he invited us to discuss this evening at one of his clubs on the island.

So I recognized him when he came striding through the bar, with about a dozen men following him. He was a compact, solid man with brush-cut white hair, and he somehow reminded you of a lion. Not from the way he moved. Just from his eyes. He nodded and smiled when he saw us. Razer yelled over the music that Doc and Sabrina was still back in the casino someplace. T-Bone waved to indicate that he’d heard, then said something to the men with him. The tallest, skinniest one of them left with him, and the rest drifted into the bar. I figured they were business associates of his.

We did some more dancing and drinking. About three or four songs later, one of the men that had been with T-Bone approached our table. He looked like a rough character. Had a black patch over his left eye.

I could tell he was stoked, but he seemed to be handling it okay. “Mind if I ask your friend for a dance, mate?” he asked.

I looked at Star. She shrugged. “No problem with me, mister,” I said.

They got out on the floor and fast-danced. I kind of kept an eye on them. Not jealous or nothing, mind you. When the first song finished, she turned to come back to the table, but he said something to her, and, after a little hesitation, she started a slow dance with him. I kept a sharper eye on them now, especially on where he put his hands while he held her. She had to move his hands twice, and about halfway through the song he whispered something in her ear.

She broke away from him and came back toward the table me and Razer and his baby-doll was sitting at. He followed her and caught her by the arm, just as she reached her chair.

“What’s the matter, missy? Fifty dollars not enough? We can negotiate.”

I scraped my chair away from the table, but Star waved me back. “Nothing to talk about, mister. You made a mistake, that’s all.” She pulled her arm loose.

He laughed, real ugly-like. “Not likely, missy. I know a high-tone whore when I see one.”

I stood up. She put a hand on my chest. “Take it easy, Henry Lee. He’s a whole lot more fried than he looks.”

“How does a hundred dollars sound, whore? That has to be more than this lubber is paying.”

That did it. “Mister,” I said, “maybe you better take your self and your money someplace else before your whole evenin’ gets ruint.”

He swung on me. Didn’t hit nothing but my shoulder, and he nearly fell down in the process.
Real
drunk, he was. I stepped forward and grabbed him by the shirt-front and lifted. He was a normal size fella, almost a foot shorter than me. Not much takes the fight out of a man like being picked up one-handed and just held in place for a minute or two, maybe with an occasional shake.

Only, he pulled a knife out of his back pocket and slashed my arm. Barely nicked me. I dropped him on his butt. He started cussing and screaming about how he was going to spread my guts out on the deck and then tromple on them. He tried to get up and come at me, so I gently kicked him in the face. The knife went flying.

About that time three of his friends jumped me from out of nowhere.

They crawled all over me, but I was still standing when two of them got snatched off of me suddenly. Razer put one in a hammer-lock and throat-clutch. Big Mac carried the other one over his head and tossed him out through the entrance door, which was closed at the time. Big Mac’s a wrestling fan and likes dramatic stuff such as that.

Everybody in the room started fighting everybody else. Women screamed and furniture broke and glasses flew though the air. Fortunately nobody got chunked out a window, since it was twenty feet down to the surf and they might have drowned. It was fun for a few minutes, though. Me and Star fought mostly back to back, me barehanded and her with a chair leg in her right hand.

The party had started to naturally wind down, everybody a little battered and getting cautious, with most of the breakables already broke, when Doc and Sabrina and T-Bone and the tall, skinny fella that had earlier been with T-Bone appeared at the door. None of them said a word, but the fighting stopped immediately as they was noticed.

Beside me a fella and his date crawled out from under one of the few tables that hadn’t been overturned and started to brush each other off.

“Perhaps we should cease giving our trade to the Bali Room, Sandra,” he said. “It looks as though they’re admitting the lowest sort of trash these days.” He looked at
me
! I didn’t start the damn fight!

He must have seen something in my face that he didn’t like, because they scurried on out of the room.

A few minutes later, the crew gathered in a room built on top of the gambling casino at the end of the pier. Nobody had taken any serious damage. Your typical recreational bar fight. The man with T-Bone had remained with his hands in the bar while we was conducted out by Doc and T-Bone. Sabrina took her crew to the ladies’ lounge to tidy up.