Roughneck (11 page)

       "We can wind it all up in a day or two, and then—"

       "And then we skip town?"

       "I'm telling you," said Allie. "These little job printing shops are all screaming for work. We go to one of 'em and sign him up to put us out a little throwaway for a year—a few dozen copies each month of the cheapest thing he can put together. He does everything, see, even collects news from the lodge. We give him maybe three hundred bucks, and he bills us for a thousand. The rest of the eighteen hundred is your expenses."

       I sat staring at him. Allie's pleased grin slowly changed to an uncomfortable frown.

       "Well, what's the matter with it? Just show me where there's room for a rumble."

       "There isn't any," I said. "It's airtight. Your friends at the lodge may squawk, but there's nothing they can do."

       "Friends, hell! They're chumps. I've been trying to figure out a way of taking 'em ever since I joined the outfit...We're the only friends in this deal, just you and me. I've known you half your lifetime and I've always liked you, and—"

       "And I've always liked you," I said. "You were always on the make, but you did it in such a way that it seemed more humorous than criminal. When you took anyone it was usually a sharpie or a least someone who could afford to be taken...Guys like these tonight, poor trusting bastards with some little job or business—you wouldn't have touched them in the old days, Allie. I can't really believe that you'd do it now."

       I set my glass down and stood up. Scowling, he stepped in front of me.

       "You're not going to play, Jim? You come in here today flat on your ass and I practically hand you a grand—hell, I'll make it a grand; you can have a thousand for your end and I'll—"

       "I'm not going to play," I said.

       "This isn't the old days, Jim. We can't call our shots any more. Why, Christ, I'm really doing this for your sake, anyway. You can't back out on me, leave me to try to explain to those birds, after all the trouble I—"

       "I'm not backing out," I said. "I was never in. I warned you in the beginning that I wouldn't go for any swindle."

       "What the hell are you going to do, then? Dig ditches or sponge off your friends? I've got a pretty sweet setup here, but if you think I'm going to—to—"

       I gave him a level look. He turned his head, scowling but shamefaced. "Aahh, hell, Jim, you know I didn't mean that. It's that I'm pretty damned disappointed. You know how you'd feel if a guy you'd always kind of, well...?"

       "I know exactly what you mean," I said. "Now, do I walk downstairs or do you take me on the elevator?"

       We rode down on the elevator. Diffidently, each of us hurt by the other, we parted at the entrance. We had several casual encounters in Oklahoma City after that, but the diffidence, the stiffness, remained. Allie was ashamed of himself. He was angry with me for making him ashamed.

       Years passed before we met again in another city, and Allie, still sore and ashamed, yet wanting to crack the ice between us, found a way of reestablishing our friendship. The medium he chose virtually frightened me witless—more so, I should say, than I ordinarily am. But though it almost turned my hair gray, I think it was worth it.

       I'll tell you about it at the proper time.

Shorty and Jiggs knew the location of a pot of gold, figuratively but none the less golden: an abandoned oil well with a mile of high grade pipe in it. The well was deep in the heart of eastern Texas on part of a one-time plantation. For years past the worn-out soil of the area had gone unfarmed, and was now a jungle of weeds, bush and second-growth timber. Its present owner would gladly permit the removal of the pipe for a fraction of its resale value.

       As Shorty told the story, the plantation owner had been so embittered at the drilling contractor's failure to strike oil that he had chased him and his employees from the property at gunpoint. The contractor had sued for recovery of his machinery and equipment. The plantation owner had filed counter suit. Having more money than the contractor, he won after years of litigation. But his victory was an empty one. News of the gentleman's bad temper and stubbornness had spread among the oil field fraternity, and no one would touch the job on a share-salvage basis. It was cash-on-the-line or no deal. So, with the land owner now nearly bankrupt and still as stubborn as ever, it was no deal.

       When he died, his heirs split and sold off the property as small farms. As the land went bad, the farms moved from one owner to another. One of them was no longer sufficient to support a family. It took several, and the original forty-acre plots were consolidated and reconsolidated. And even then large areas were so depleted as to be not worth tilling. Thus, the case with the land on which "our" well stood.

       "I don't know, Shorty," I said, when he first told me the story. "It sounds like another oil field fairy tale, just too damned good to be true. You actually saw it yourself?"

       "Damned right I did. I didn't believe the story myself when I first heard it, so not having nothing else to do, I looked the place up. I talked to the guy that owns the land, and then I waded on out through the jungle and looked at the well. It's there, by God. More than five thousand feet of highgrade casing. And it's free—I mean, it ain't frozen in the hole. I rocked it and I know."

       "But it might be cemented part way down. If it was cemented, say at a thousand feet, you could still get some sway."

       "Why the hell would it be cemented? They didn't strike oil."

       "Well," I shrugged, "I don't know. Maybe that plantation owner did it. He might have been afraid that someone would steal the pipe, so—"

       "But he couldn't have got it out himself if he did that! Ain't that right?...I know how you feel, Jim. It sounds so bee-yoo-tiful you figure there's just got to be something wrong, but there ain't a danged thing."

       "The derrick and the rig and the tools are still there? They're still in good shape?"

       "Good enough to do the job. Naturally, they ain't first-class after all these years."

       "Why couldn't we just truck the above-ground stuff off and sell it?"

       "Aah—" Shorty gave me a disgusted look. "An oil field hand like you asking a question like that? It ain't oil country down there. What'd you have left by the time you hauled twenty tons of machinery out of the backwoods and shipped it a thousand miles? Pipe—casing—is different. There's a dozen pipe yards within a hundred miles. We get it trucked to the railroad on credit and sell our bill of lading."

       Shorty was a driller and Jiggs a tool dresser—a full cable-rig crew. They needed a third man—I was their candidate—to help with the rigging up, and serve as boilerman and roustabout when the job proper began. They also needed about three hundred dollars for supplies, repairs and fuel oil for the boiler.

       Three hundred dollars. That was all that stood between us and the three-way split of a small fortune!

       We talked about it endlessly. It got so that we could talk about nothing else. We would sit around our freezing rooms at night, dining off of stale bread and tea, squeezing the last crumbs from a nickel sack of tobacco and passing the butt from hand to hand: three half-starved ragamuffins talking and dreaming of riches. We got out pencil and paper, and we argued and we haggled and we figured and we 'figured.' And that awesome, that terrible and frustrating three hundred dollars began to shrink...Food? Well, we would get that farmer to help us out for an increased share in the profits. Travel and other expenses? Well, we would travel by foot and freight, and nuts to the other expenses. New parts for the machinery? Well, Shorty and Jiggs both had hand tools and our time was worth nothing. We would simply rebuild the old parts.

       We cut the three hundred down to one hundred, but there we seemed to be stuck. For we would need at least a hundred for fuel oil, and that was something we could neither beg, borrow nor invent.

       Since we didn't stand a chance of raising a hundred, I gave up at this point. But my mechanically inclined friends were not so easily defeated. After conferring together several days, and making liberal use of paper and pencil, they came to me with a solution to the problem.

       There were acres of brush and timber around the well. We would simply convert the oil/gas feed boiler to a wood burner, rigging a blower to obtain the necessary high degree of heat...So that was taken care of, but I still hung back. I had several promising manuscripts in the mail (manuscripts which 'I' felt were promising) and I was about to complete a novel. Too, and this I suppose was my main reason for delaying, I was reluctant to exchange my present situation, poor as it was, for weeks and perhaps months of certain and undiluted hardship.

       I begged for time, and grudgingly Jiggs and Shorty gave it to me. It was the aforementioned Trixie who sped me, or caused me to be sped, upon my way. And when I say sped I mean exactly that.

       Trixie had come to my door in the guise of a necktie peddler, a waif with a heart-shaped face, indiscernible breasts and a pair of the largest feet I have ever seen. Naturally I was not buying any neckties, nor was I interested in the commodity which she was actually selling. But I invited her in anyway for a cup of tea I had just fixed, and she remained to chat and rest her outsize feet.

       The poor girl was undoubtedly a moron; I have seen very few prostitutes who were not. But as she began dropping in on me daily and we got to know each other better, I acquired a high regard for her intelligence in at least one respect. Moron or no, Trixie was a damned good literary critic.

       She would lie on my bed, her toes hanging over the footrail like bananas, while I read to her from my latest efforts. And always her response was the one I had hoped to achieve. She laughed in all the right places, she wept in all the right places. By turns, as I turned the pages, she was pensive, gay, frowningly thoughtful. And when I got a rejection, ah, then indeed was she a tonic beyond price for my withering ego.

       I have heard some pretty good cussing in my time, but never anything like the epithets which Trixie applied to the editors in faraway New York—those malicious imbeciles who turned down my manuscripts. The obscenities which spewed effortlessly from her rosebud lips were occasionally such as to make me blush, and I would suggest that she was allowing partisanship to carry her away. But Trixie, deferential as she usually was, would have none of this milksop attitude.

       Trixie and I became very fond of each other. But she was depressed and disturbed by my insistence on a purely platonic friendship. I had been "awful nice" to her. Now why wouldn't I let her be nice to me return favor for favor, in the only way that she could?

       I tried to persuade her that her company and conversation were more than ample recompense for any small kindness I had extended, but this she was unwilling to believe...Was there something—uh—wrong with me, perhaps? Didn't I like "it"? Did I think she wasn't clean? Well, then?

       Not only did my continence trouble Trixie, it was also, she advised me, seriously upsetting her "boyfriend, Al" ("Owl," she pronounced it). Al, it seemed, had a great deal of pride. He liked to keep things even-Steven, and he didn't take nothing off of no one. Unless I allowed her to do the "right thing," he was going to call a halt to her visits.

       Well, I had some ideas about the pride of a man like Al—if a pimp can be called a man—and I passed them along to her. And that, of course, was a serious mistake. Trixie's face turned white, then red, then white again. She cursed me, she raked, she wept...Al was "wunnerful," she scream-sobbed. He was the finest, kindest, nicest man in the world and no one had better say he wasn't because she'd kill 'em if they did!

       Finally, she stamped out, tearfully vowing that I was nine kinds of a bastard and that she would never speak to me again as long as she lived. Two days later, around noon, she returned.

       Her little head was high in the air. In place of the customary plough shoes, her gondola feet were squeezed into runover satin slippers, and she was otherwise decked out in rummage-sale finery. There had been a big change in her life's station, she haughtily informed me. She was now a "hostess" in a combination whore house-blind pig, a position which the all-wise and kindly Al had obtained for her. And if I didn't think I was too goddamned good, she and he hereby invited me to attend the grand opening.

       I murmured congratulations, squeezing out a compliment to be conveyed to Al. Immediately, Trixie's haughtiness vanished, and weeping, she flung her arms around me...Honest, she'd been just sick about the way she'd acted, calling me all those dirty names. But she simply hadn't been able to help it. Anything that hurt Al, it hurt her a thousand times worse. It just drove her out of her mind, and—and, well, would I please come? Al would be there, and I could see how wunnerful he was. By accepting their hospitality for the evening, I would free them of their onerous feeling of obligation toward me.

       "But—" I hesitated, uncomfortably. "But what about your boss, Trixie? The guy who owns the place?"

       "It's all fixed, Tommy. You an' Al are gonna get all you want to drink all evening long, and it won't cost you a penny!"

       "But I can't let you pay for—"

       "I already 'did' pay for it. You know." She blushed prettily. "I spent all last night paying for it. Me an' the boss—well, he took it out in trade and I'm taking it out in trade, and if you don't come..."

       She looked up at me anxiously.

       I told her I would come, and she squealed with delight. "An' you be sure and drink plenty, too," she said, as she gave me the address of the establishment, "because plenty's what I paid for."

       The place was a barn-like old building, a former residence on upper Washington Street. The thug who looked me over and admitted me waved me toward the living room area which was now equipped with tables, chairs and a homemade bar. A sign behind the latter fixture announced that choc beer was fifteen cents, whiskey two shots for a quarter. Beneath this announcement was the large lettered word C-A-S-H and the legend, In God We Trust And You Ain't God.

       Although it was still early in the evening, the room was already crowded with guests—largely of the type one would shun from meeting in a dark alley. Trixie spotted me in the doorway, greeted me with a hug and led me back to a rear table. At it was seated a burly, slack-jawed giant, none other than the wunnerful "Owl."

       Trixie introduced us and scurried away for refreshments. He looked me over and I looked him over, and it was one of those things...hate at first sight. Probably I would have detested him just as much if I had not known what he was.

       We were still giving each other the cold-eye when Trixie returned, but she was too happy at having brought us, her dearest ones, together to notice the congealing atmosphere. Advising us to holler when we ran dry, she gave us each a bright smile and returned to her party.

       The whiskey was white corn and was served in heavy glass jelly jars of about three and a half ounces capacity. Owl took his down at a swallow, and without any change in expression, and chased it with an infinitesimal sip from the choc pitcher. He set his glass down with a look that dared me to repeat the performance. I did so and somehow, miraculously, managed not to strangle or cough. Then, by way of pointing up my feelings about him, I poured my chaser into the glass instead of drinking from the pitcher.

       A brief flash of his eyes told me that the insult had scored, but ostensibly he took no notice. Turning suddenly genial, he obtained another round of drinks from a passing hostess, and called for bottoms up again. We downed them. A third round arrived. We downed that, too.

       He weaved slightly in his chair, then leaned forward bracing his elbows on the table.

       "T-Tommy—" he coughed, "Tommy, you're a nice guy an' it's a real pleasure to meet you."

       "Swell," I said, flatly.

       "Y-you like me, too, Tommy?"

       "How," I said, "could I help it?"

       "But you don't like Trixie, do you? Think you're too good to take favors off'n me an' Trixie?"

       "Now, look," I said, "let's get this straight, once and for all. Trixie doesn't owe me anything, and even if she did I wouldn't—"

       "S'all right, Tommy. No need to apologize. If you think you're too goddamned good to lay my girl—'hic!—'it's perfeckly all—'hic!"'

       He weaved again, and his meaty right hand came out. Obviously, or so I thought, he intended to give me a friendly pat on the shoulder, and for Trixie's sake I decided to endure it.

       "—s'all right. Understand perfeckly. Think you're too damned good for Trixie, why—'hic!"' The hand wobbled, suddenly, and swung sideways. It landed on my ear with an agonizing 'cr-aack!'

       The blow almost knocked me from my chair. Righting myself, I started to make a grab for him, but he was beaming at me waterily, too drunk—apparently—to realize what he had done. Moreover, Trixie had suddenly returned to our table, frowning at me, smiling tenderly at him.

       "Tommy hurt you, Owl? Did he? What'd you say to him, Tommy?"

       "Naah." He waved her away grinning. "Tommy an' me are buddies, ain't we, Tommy? Just havin' a friendly little conversation. Bring us some more whiz an' leave us alone."

       "That's right, Trixie," I said. "Bring us some drinks and leave us alone. Owl and I are getting along fine."

       Trixie gave me a doubtful look, something between an apologetic smile and a frown. But she brought more of the white lightning and choc, and left us alone again. As usual, we downed the drinks at a gulp.

       It was simply too much too fast, particularly in view of the fact that I had eaten almost nothing all day. A thunderbolt seemed to race up my spine and explode in my skull, and for a split second I lost consciousness. When I came to, Owl had returned to his grievance.

       So I thought I was too good for him and Trixie? Thought they were some kind of white trash, maybe? Well, that was all right. If that's the way I wanted to feel, why—

       His heavy hand wobbled and swung again. Again it cracked painfully against my ear.

       Trixie started for us at once, of course. But I smiled at Owl amiably and he grinned at me woozily, still the innocent unaware, so Trixie went back to her own table.

       Someone brought us more whiskey. Rather slowly now, studying each other covertly, Owl and I took it down. I wasn't quite sure yet about his condition and intentions. I was reasonably confident that he knew what he was doing, that he was doing it deliberately and with malice aforethought. Believing that I would do anything to keep the peace for Trixie's sake, he intended to sit here and gradually slap me silly.

       That was his scheme, I thought. But I was not absolutely positive of it, and I had to be positive before starting a riot in a place like this. Also, I needed just a little more to drink to put me in the proper fettle.

       The jelly glasses were refilled. Emptied. Surreptitiously, I lowered mine below the table edge and thence into my pocket. Owl licked his lips cautiously and picked up his favorite conversation piece. His hand began its preliminary wobbling.

       It darted, swung and landed. Smack on my ear for the third time.

       By now we had become the cynosure of all eyes, to coin a phrase, one pair of which belonged to the proprietor. So while Trixie, confident that all was well between us, stayed where she was, we received a visit from the bouncer.

       "What the hell's going on here?" he demanded. "You guys want to fight, get the hell out in the alley."

       "Fight?" I grinned bewilderedly. "Alley? Do you want to go out in the alley, Owl?"

       "Not me," said Owl firmly, and in extremely clear accents. Then, remembering his pose: "We're ol' buddies, mister. Whash all this stuff 'bout fightin'?"

       The bouncer scowled, shrugged and walked away. I pushed back my chair.

       "'Scuse me a minute, ol' buddy," I said. "Got to go to the john."

       "S-sure." He bobbed his head drunkenly. "I'll jusht—hey, where's your glass?"

       "The girl must have taken it away," I said. "You order up another while I'm gone."

       I walked back to the men's room. Stepping up on the filthy sink, I pushed up the narrow window to the alley and unlatched the screen. I stepped back down again, removed one of my socks and slid the jelly glass inside. I knotted the open end, dropped it into my pocket and returned to the table.

       Apparently Owl had got the notion that I had not intended to return, and now seeing me meekly before him again—a sitting duck as he saw it—he could scarcely conceal his malicious pleasure. It was a situation made to order for pimps, being able to beat hell out of someone who could not strike back. Tossing his drink down, he started working up to the fourth blow almost before I had finished mine.

       I slipped the sock out of my pocket and waited.

       His hand waggled and found its target. I swung the sock.

       He saw it coming and tried to fling himself sideways. It caught him on the side of his head, and the blow combined with his lurch sent him sprawling and stumbling across the room.

       He landed on top of a table occupied by four oil field workers and their ladies. But this was not, I am happy to say, the end of his travels. Showered with whiskey, beer and splintered glass, the outraged group laid hands on him, men and women together. They hoisted him up and hurled him, even as children might hurl a doll. And Owl went sailing through the air, screaming until he crashed against the far wall.

       It was a wonderful brawl, with Owl the center of attraction, but I got to see very little of it. The bouncer and the proprietor were heading toward me. So was Trixie, a beer pitcher swinging in each hand as she ploughed through the growing riot and wreckage. I fled into the toilet, and out the window.

       I trotted down the alley, wondering if it might not be an excellent idea to leave town for a while. By the time I reached my rooming house, I had come to a decision.

       I talked with Jiggs and Shorty, and we all conferred with our landlord. He generously allowed us to make up blanket rolls from our bedding, and also lent us five dollars. Early the next morning we caught a freight south.

15

Jiggs hugged the top joint of casing and braced his feet against the derrick floor. He rocked his body to and fro, then stepped back frowning.

       "Well?" said Shorty nervously. "What's the matter? It's just like I told you, ain't it?"

       Jiggs shook his head ambiguously. "You try it, Jim. See what you think."

       I hugged the pipe—it was twenty-four inches in diameter here at the well's top—and tried to rock it. I stepped back, avoiding my friends' eyes.

       "Well, how about it?" Shorty blurted out. "Goddammit, what's wrong with you guys? You—you ain't going to tell me that pipe's cemented?"

       "Well," Jiggs shrugged, "maybe it ain't 'cement', but—"

       "'Course it ain't! What sense'd there be putting cement in a duster?"

       "—but it'll sure as hell do until cement comes along. I don't think—I'm afraid we ain't ever gonna..." He broke off, and there was a heavy silence for a moment. "Oh, Christ," he said at last. "What the hell, anyway?"

       Shorty looked at us, and we both looked away. He said, almost pleadingly, "Now, look, you guys. It's just mudded up—silted down. What d'you expect after all these years?"

       "Sure," Jiggs sighed. "Bound to be something like that. Be damned funny if it did rock free."