What They Wanted (36 page)

ELEVEN

C
HRIS CAME ALONE
for breakfast. “Ben’s a bit slow getting started,” he said, his voice carrying that early-morning gruffness of a deep sleep. He sat back, cracking his knuckles, watching as I poured us both tea and slathered blobs of butter across the hot toast.

“You look tired,” I said, passing him the bread and noting for the first time creases under his eyes. “Didn’t you sleep?”

“Yeah. Damnedest night, though.”

“Oh?” I backstepped, glancing out the window at the sound of a derisive laugh from Frederick, and saw Push’s truck pulling up through the greyish morning light. He got out and rested against the door for a moment, his eyes puffy for want of sleep and his movements sluggish as he yawned heavily, pushing his hardhat to the back of his head. Seeing Frederick coming towards him, he showed more of a fist than a hand, and pushed off from his truck.

“Anything goes off, you come get me, scholar boy,” he called out, his voice like charred oak. “You come rap on my door and get me.”

Frederick, his heavy framed glasses splotchy with drizzle, was about ready to sink his teeth into an apple. “Have a nice morning now, Cocky,” he said. “Nice easy day ahead.”

“They’re all easy till something goes off, you dumb fuck,” muttered Push and walked off towards his trailer.

“What’re they at out there?” asked Chris.

“The usual.”I sat across from my brother. “What is it, what’s wrong?—how come you couldn’t sleep?”

He was cupping his mug, staring gloomily at the hot liquid inside. “Funny dreams,” he said quietly.

“Ohh, good one. You and funny dreams.”

“Dreamt about Father agin. Same dream as the other night. That I was him, sitting in his boat.” He looked at me. “It was the exact same. Right down to the odd mitts on his hands.”

“Odd mitts?”

“Yeah. He was wearing odd mitts—one green-checkered along the back, the other blue-checkered. It was the same freakin’ dream.”

“And—were you still just sitting there?”

He nodded.

“Him? Or you?” I asked.

“What?”

“Was it you being him, or him being you—?”

“Jeezes, how you split things. What the hell’s the difference, me being Father, Father being me?”

“So, what did it feel like—I mean, were you nervous—like there was a storm coming—?”

“No. No, it was perfect. Totally content. More than content. Like this was everything—sitting in the boat. I dunno.” He smiled. “Woke up feeling right calm, though.”

“Well, that’s Father there—always calm after a morning in boat.”

“Know something, Sis—most of the time I was in boat with him, I felt him wishing I wasn’t. He loves it, he do. Sitting in his boat all by himself, doing nothing, gone off somewhere in his head.”

“No. That’s you,” I said, smiling, “going off in your head. Father’s seeing every ripple in the water. Hearing every snap of the wind. He’s as much outside of it as he’s a part of it.”

“Yeah. Suppose. Know something else though—lots of times I showed up ready to go with him, and he was already gone. Always felt like I was late or something. Mother was always hurrying me up—she didn’t like him alone in boat. I wonders now—I wonders if he wouldn’t sneaking off.”

“Like the morning of his heart attack?”

He shrugged. “Don’t know about that.”

“We should go to town,” I said impulsively. “This evening let’s go to town. Ben will drive us—soon as the shift ends. We can buy a present or something for Father—and Kyle,” I added as his eyes took on a glint of interest. “Been near on two weeks now—they must be missing you.”

“Money,” said Chris. “We’ll send home money. I got about five hundred bucks clocked. You lend me that much and I’ll stick it in the mail.”

“Great, we’ll take a few days off—”

“No, we won’t.”

“Then how you gonna send money, everything’s closed by the time we get to town.”

“Write a cheque, stick it in the mail.”

“I just said, everything’s closed.”

“Right. So, back home when the post is closed, we shoves the envelope in through the mail slot, throws in the right change and—”

“—and the postmistress licks on a stamp and mails it,” I ended for him. “Don’t happen that way here.’Course, we can always stay in town once we’re there—find sensible work—”

“Jeezes, here she goes.”

“Kidding, just kidding.”

“Yeah, right, just kidding.” He got up, slopping the rest of his tea down the sink. He stood there, watching the milky liquid run down the drain hole, then looked at me with a sad smile. “Don’t think I’ll ever sit in Father’s boat agin.” He shook his head. “Don’t think I will.”Draping his arms around my shoulders, he kissed the top of my head and went outside. When next I looked out the window he was sitting aboard the truck with Ben and Trapp, his arm dangling out the window, his flaxen head bobbing as they lurched over the ruts and potholes.

I WAS AT THE WINDOW
again ten minutes later when the night crew came roaring up to the cookhouse door.

“Cook! Come look, come look,” I shrieked. Falling out of their trucks, the men looked like oversized boys just back from a mud fight on some riverbank. The whites of their eyes gleamed against their brown, muddied faces—their throats, hands, clothing—every part of them that hadn’t been covered in coveralls was slathered in mud.

“Spillover,” said Cook.

“Spillover?”

“Mud coming back up the pipe.”

Spillover. I remembered Ben’s big spiel that first evening at camp, sitting in the truck and telling Chris about the rig. Pressure. Everything’s pressure, he’d said. Keeping it balanced. Same quantity of mud being pumped down the pipe comes back up the borehole outside the pipe. If the mud starts coming back up the pipe—you stop everything. There’s something pushing it back up. And nobody moves till that something is known.

“Like a geyser. Broke the pipe to make a connection, and she flowed up like a geyser,” said one of the irate men when I leaned out the cookhouse door to ask. He lingered behind the rest as they headed for the showers in the bunkhouse, his bald head the colour of chocolate, his round blue eyes like pools of spring water amidst his muddied face. “First time I seen such a thing,” he said, and then followed after the others with a look of surprise still clinging to his face as though one of them might’ve smattered him with mud cakes when he wasn’t looking.

I strained to understand their words as the men trickled into the cookhouse later for breakfast, faces scrubbed, hair wetted back. They weren’t looking their usual tired selves, near falling asleep into their food as they ate. Their eyes were bright, their movements quick, and their talk loud and overrunning one another’s.

“Can smell gas, can smell fucking gas in the mud—”

“Because it’s down the hole, numbnuts, it’s in the formation—that’s why we’re drilling there—”

“Don’t like it, don’t fucking like it—”

The driller, nicknamed Eeyore for his high forehead, long ears, and slow, dragging speech, nodded as he spoke around a bite of toast. “U-tubing, boys. Small kick. She’ll right herself, we’re too far from the zone—”

“Can still blow, can always fucking blow, man—one highly pressurized crack, and she’ll blow—”

“That’s what drilling is, sonny,” said a raunchy voice, “sitting on a mega bomb some stun bastard might trigger any minute. Can’t handle knowing that, go to town.”

“Can’t hack’er, pack’er, sonny,” said Eeyore, still nodding over his bit of toast. “This is just a phenomenal thing that happens in the course of drilling. We’ve pressured up—we’re flowing a bit of mud—and now we’ll see. She’ll drop off in an hour. She’s U-tubing—”

“Been smelling gas all night, and we got pressure, it’s a kick,” said a crewman.

“Shut her down, should be shutting her down, I say we call Push, get Push outta his bunk,” said another.

“Thatta boy.”A tall, bony man named Chop leaned forward with a snort, his shoulder blades lifting from his back like amputated wings. “You go wake
Pushie
if you want, I’d rather the blowout. Hey, boys, don’t anyone trust ol’ Eeyore, here— he’s the one hired to see. That right, boss? Sees everything through them gauges, don’t you?”

“What if he can’t see anything, bonehead?”

“Then it’s his fault if she blows—he’s the driller—everything’s the driller’s fault—”

“That’s good, numbnuts, that’s just great—meanwhile we’re flying through the air with DoDo and Toto—”

“Right on, bud—who the hell knows what’s going on three miles underground; how the fuck does anybody know that?”

“Already told you what’s going on,” said Eeyore.

“Don’t trust it, man—you’re the driller, you should’ve shut her down. I think we’re in the zone and you should’ve shut her down—it was your call, man, you’re the driller.”

“Opinions are like assholes, bucky; everybody got one.” Eeyore’s eyes hardened and a flush of anger reddened his ears, creeping up the length of his forehead. “I said we’re nowhere near the zone, I made my call—you boys got that? You don’t like it, take it up with Push. Take it up with Freddie the Engie— they’re the ones calling the shots—I made my call, and now it’s theirs. You boys got that?” He shot a surly look around the table then closed his eyes, rubbing the bridge of his nose as though the burst of anger had fatigued him. “But it’s the driller’s call to tell somebody if his gauges are showing pressure,” he added. “I didn’t see any pressure till she broke. That I can tell you.”

“Sad to say it, Eeyore, but you ain’t instilling a whole lotta confidence in me, man,” said a quiet, steady voice.

I glanced towards the fellow talking. Kip. Hired on but a fortnight ago. He kind of looked like Chris with his blond hair blending into brows that ridged darkly over questioning eyes.

The confused, muddy-faced crewman from earlier, and two young cousins with black hair tightly clipped to their skulls, had been casting expectant looks around the table as though wanting this irregularity to be done with, to be soothed over so’s they could fall into bed for an easy sleep. They’d looked dispiritedly towards Kip as he spoke, but their faces grew expectant again as the driller shook his head, saying, “Can’t hack her, pack her, boys. Ride to town if you’re looking.” Eeyore shoved his plate aside and got up from the table as Frederick’s truck drew up outside.

“Bonehead. Not a synapse in his fucking skull,” muttered one of the crewmen, glowering at the door closing behind the driller.

“How’d they all find each other?” asked Kip. “Never seen so many boneheads on the one rig.”

“She’s not right out there—I warned the day driller—” said one of the cousins.

“What did he say?” asked the other.

“He didn’t like it, could tell he didn’t like it, but the engineer come up to him. Talked him over; I could see him being talked over, and I told him that too, that he was being talked over—”

“Fuck, what did he say to that—?”

“His face gnarled up like a knuckle, thought he was gonna spit at me—”

“What’s going on out there—what’s making them all so edgy?” asked Kip.

“That four-eyed fuck of an engineer is what’s making them edgy—that’s what she’s all about, that four-eyed fuck hating the Push and calling his own shots. That’s what’s happening on that rig floor.”

“They’re laughing out there now,” said the irate crewman from earlier, looking out the window at the driller and the engineer. “Must’ve figured out what was happening, else they wouldn’t be laughing, would they?”

The cookhouse door opened and Frederick strolled inside, nodding towards the crew. “She was U-tubing, boys,” he announced, with the satisfied look of a captain surviving a thunderous storm at sea. “I told everybody what was gonna happen. We’d pressure up, flow a bit of mud, and it was gonna die—pressure was gonna drop off in an hour.” He looked at his watch. “Which is exactly what happened. She was U-tubing. We been drilling fast—too much weight in the annulus. Pushed the mud back up the pipe. She’s evened out.”

The men looked at each other as Frederick spoke, some nodding in agreement, others shaking their heads and grunting.

“I think we should be casing,” said one of them with a heated look at Frederick. “I think we should call Push. I don’t like that smell of gas.”