Roughneck Read online

  Now, there are no light objects around drilling machinery. The stuff all weighs into the hundreds of thousands of pounds. It is meant to be moved with winches and cranes—with machine power. And we had a great deal of clearing away to be done before we dared cut steam into the rig. Everything had to done by hand, ours alone, ostensibly, and since ours were simply not adequate...Well, I can't explain it, how we got the necessary help. All I can do is tell you about it.

  We would be struggling futilely with some immovable object, when suddenly, from north and south and east and west, men would come plodding through the tangles of underbrush and blackjack. Negro and white, sharecroppers and tenant farmers. Poor ragged devils, even poorer than ourselves if that were possible, bonily emaciated with the ravages of hookworm and malaria. Exactly the right number came to get the job done—no more, no less. They expected no pay and they seemed surprised and embarrassed by our thanks. As soon as the task at hand was completed, they departed again.

  It was an eerie phenomenon, one that I have observed nowhere else but in the "lost country" of the Deep South. There were no telephones in the area, and many of our helpers came from miles away. Incredible as it seemed, we were forced to accept the fact that these men could anticipate our need hours before it arose. They knew what we were going to do before we did! We would start to work in the morning, faced with so many tasks that we didn't know which to tackle first. Or, perhaps, we would start on one job, then shift to another. In any case, when the time came that we needed help, it was there and in the right amount.

  Unlike Shorty and Jiggs, I could not shrug off this weird state of affairs as "just one of them things." There is a peculiar twist of my mind which impels me to fly into every puzzle as though dear life depended on it. So I pestered our farmer friend about it whenever he put in his appearance. And while I never got a straight explanation of the riddle, I did achieve some understanding of it.

  The "how" I never learned. But the "why-for," to use the dialect of the section, became clear.

  The occasion was one morning some five weeks after our arrival. We were practically through with the rigging up, and the farmer had been standing around watching us. With an almost abrupt adieu, he stepped down off the derrick floor and started for the backbrush. I asked him where he was going.

  "Over to Lije Williams'—" He paused uncomfortably. "Figger I'd he'p him clean out his cellar. Got a plumb big beam to tote back in place after the cave-in."

  I asked him when the cave-in had taken place. He mumbled evasively, somehow abashed by the question.

  "It hasn't happened yet, has it?" I said.

  "Didn't say that," he mumbled. "Just said I was goin' to he'p him."

  "How do you people know things like that?" I asked. And he shook his head awkwardly: he didn't know; he couldn't say; he didn't like to talk about it.

  "If you knew this cave-in was coming, why didn't you warn Lije? Maybe he could have stopped it."

  "Caint," he said simply, his face clearing a little. "Couldn't hardly do that. Suthin's what's goin' to be, it is."

  "So you do know," I said, "you just admitted it. How?"

  He was growing increasingly uncomfortable at the quizzing, and my friends were nudging me to get on with the work. But I kept after him, and his inherent politeness restrained him from telling me what he should have: viz., to mind my own business and let him mind his.

  "Looky, friend," he blurted out at last. "I caint—I don't rightly know how to—to—"

  "Make a stab at it," I encouraged him. "Put it in your own words. How do you folks know when somebody needs help?"

  He frowned troubledly, scuffing his overrun shoes in the rocky and ruined soil. He looked around at the desolate wasteland. And then his eyes lifted to the bleak, unpromising sky, searching perhaps for a Deity whose head seemed forever turned.

  "Got to," he said, bluntly.

  That was the end of his explanation.

  It was enough.

  With the wreckage cleared out of the machinery, we were able to complete the rest of the cleanup with power, and we got it done in a matter of hours. We used the remainder of the day to rig our casing cable and blocks; then, early the next morning, we fired up for the big event.

  Since the well had been a deep one, the steam lines were outsize, extra-heavy duty. Similarly, the boiler was something to warm the cockles of an oilman's heart. It had a capacity of one hundred and twenty-five pounds pressure (the safety valve was set to pop off at that point) which is enough power to move a mile-long freight train. It was certainly enough to move a pile of pipe, we felt...if the pipe was movable.

  I started off with the water glass (gauge) at the third-full mark, gradually opening the injector valve. The first fifteen or twenty pounds of pressure were hard to get, but after that, with the steam-driven blower cut in, the pressure rose swiftly. Shorty and Jiggs retired to the derrick floor, and readied themselves. At seventy-five pounds, I shouted a high sign.

  Shorty manipulated the gear lever. Jiggs kept an anxious eye on the cables and blocks. The derrick creaked as the line tightened. The guy wires began to hum. Then a sound like a monstrous groan rent the air, and there was a high-pitched, ear-shattering whining—and the bull wheel spun uselessly in its belt.

  We took the belt off, tightened it with a splice and put it back in place. It spun almost as badly as ever. No power was being transmitted to the machinery.

  We took it off again and resurfaced the wheel with bits of old belting. This time it held; there was not the slightest skidding or slipping. But when Shorty "hit it" with ninety pounds pressure, the seven-eighths inch casing cable snapped like a thread.

  We re-rigged with two lines instead of one. With the boiler pop-off valve shrieking, with a full one hundred and twenty-five pounds pressure, Shorty began to "run" at the pipe—to let the lines go slack and then hit it with everything he had.

  That went on for two days, at the end of which we had to knock off to chop wood. The pipe hadn't budged. Jiggs said it wasn't going to.

  "I ain't sore, understand," he told Shorty. "You musta known that pipe wouldn't pull, and you oughta have your butt kicked for draggin' me and Jim down here. But—"

  "It'll pull." Shorty's face flushed. "We're gonna re-rig with four lines."

  "What good'll that do? The two we got can take anything we can put on 'em."

  "You'll see," said Shorty sullenly. "You guys don't want to help, you don't have to. I'll do it myself."

  Well, we weren't going to let him do that, naturally. So we finished the wood-cutting, and strung an additional two lines through the blocks and down to the stubborn pipe. Shorty then ordered a double-guying of the derrick—two guy wires for each of those we now had.

  We asked the reason for them. He was sullenly uncommunicative. The rig was going to be double-guyed, and to hell with us if we didn't want to help.

  Curiously, Jiggs and I did our share of the job.

  "Now," said Shorty, when finally everything was as he wanted it, "you think that derrick'll hold? You figure there's anything we can put on it, it won't stand up to?"

  There was only one answer to the question; the rig, of course, was bound to hold up. It was inconceivable that it shouldn't.

  "And them four casing lines? You figure they'll hold—three and half inches of solid steel line?"

  Yes, we nodded, and the lines also would hold. They could no more give way than the rig could. 'But—'

  "What the hell you drivin' at, anyway?" Jiggs demanded angrily. "The derrick an' them lines could stand up against three boilers like the one we got. They could take four hundred pounds of steam an' never feel it. But we only got 'one' boiler and we only got a hundred and twenty-five pounds, so—"

  Shorty walked off, leaving Jiggs talking. We followed him out to the boiler. He stepped up on the firebox door, and braced his body against the barrel. Taking a piece of wire from his pocket, he firmly wired shut the safety valve.

  By no means a professional oil field worker,
I did not immediately grasp the significance of this action. But Jiggs's face turned slightly green beneath the tan.

  "Are you crazy?" he snapped, as Shorty leaped back down to the ground. "Why you think that's set to pop at one-twenty-five? Because it'll blow up if it don't!"

  "No, it won't," said Shorty grimly. "They test these things high. If it's set for one-twenty-five, it ought to take a hundred and seventy-five or two hundred. For a while, anyways."

  "Yeah, but for how long a while? And how you going to know if it ain't built up to two-fifty or three hundred? The gauge only reads to a hundred and twenty-five."

  "It won't raise more than two hundred. It just ain't got the fire and water capacity."

  "Well," Jiggs said, "I wouldn't want to be around it if it was carrying a hundred and fifty pounds pressure, but..."

  He turned and looked at me. So did Shorty. The decision was mine, their attitudes said. They worked up on the derrick floor, more than seventy-five yards away from the boiler. If it blew up, I would be the one to be blasted into the next county.

  I hardly knew what to say. We had put in almost two months here, and it was agonizing to think of going back to Oklahoma City empty-handed. But I naturally preferred returning empty-handed to not going back at all.

  "I don't like to ask you, Jim—" Shorty broke the silence. "But I honest-to-God think it'll be safe enough. You don't need to hang around the old pot...very much. Just crowd that pressure needle around until she hits zero again; then you can load the firebox with all it'll hold and head for the bushes."

  "Yeah. But suppose it blows while I'm doing all that?"

  "All right," he said dejectedly. "I'm not asking you to."

  "Anyway, the steam won't hold. You start hitting it in the rig and—"

  "It'll hold long enough, Jim! A half hour or so. That's all I need to get the pipe started."

  "And you think it will start?"

  "By God, its 'got' to!" he declared. "With all that power on it, it can't help but come, even if it's cemented. The rig and the lines won't give, so the pipe has to!"

  Jiggs scratched his head, remarked that for at least once in his life Shorty seemed to be making sense. I wasn't so sure, but as they waited, silently, looking at me, I felt compelled to go along with the stunt.

  "All right," I said. "I think I'm making a hell of a mistake but—all right."

  We drew the fire from the boiler, swabbed the flues and cleaned the firebox of its last speck of ashes. The next morning, while Jiggs and Shorty made a final check of the rigging, I retired.

  The pressure needle moved steadily toward the pop-off point. It swung past it with a sinister lurch, and on around to the zero pin. I wanted to run at this point; never in my life have I wanted to do anything so badly. But the box had to be well-stoked first and the ash was banking up so high that there was little room for the necessary wood.

  I flung open the door to the grates and began raking at them furiously. I slammed it shut again, and snatched frantically at the wood pile. I hurled in wood by the armloads—jammed it in until it was hanging out of the firebox. I turned the blower on full blast, opened the water-injector valve to its widest. And ran.

  I reached the safety of the bushes, and dropped down breathless on the ground.

  Shorty hit the steam.

  He jolted the pipe a few times, slackening then suddenly tautening the lines. Then he braced his feet against a post, pulled the long lever out as far as it would go, and held it there.

  The guy wires hummed. They began to howl with the strain. There was a vast creaking of timber, and the gears shrieked and groaned and screamed. Louder and louder grew the tumult; and then gradually it dimmed. We had lost our head of steam.

  And the pipe had not moved an inch.

  I fired up three times that day, lingering a little longer each time before running. It was no good. Maybe, by all the laws of physics, the pipe 'should' move, but apparently it was not law-abiding pipe.

  I told Shorty that we were throwing good time after bad. He implied, rather sourly, that I was at fault.

  "I just ain't gettin' the steam, Jim. You give me 'enough' steam and that pipe'll pull all right."

  "What the hell do you call enough?" I sputtered. "How can I give you any more?"

  "Well, I got a little idee about that. I'll think it over tonight—kind of work it out in my head—and we'll give it a try in the morning."

  He arose ahead of Jiggs and me in the morning, and when we yawned out into the chilly dawn his invention was ready. It was a stoker, rigged from odds and ends of pipe and a length of sheet iron. Amidst an uncomfortable silence, he demonstrated its operation. He looked at me, and abruptly let go the contraption.

  "All right, Jim, forget it. We'll just pack up an' get, and to hell with the damned pipe."

  "No, we'll try it," I said. "If we don't get that casing, it won't be my fault."

  "You're sure you want to? You know what you'll have to do?"

  "I'm dying to do it," I said, not too pleasantly. "And that's probably exactly what I will do."

  We had breakfast. Shorty and Jiggs retired to the derrick, and I fired up again.

  The steam rose. I cut in the blower, and began to fire more rapidly. The pressure gauge rose to a hundred and twenty-five pounds; the needle swung around to the zero pin. I flung open the grate doors, began to rake ashes with one hand and feed the firebox with the other.

  At last the ashes were all removed, while, at the same time, wood bulged from the firebox. I swung the stoker up to the door, and loaded it out to the end.

  It was a cold day—bitter with that gnawing, seeping-in cold peculiar to the southern low country. Yet despite this, and the fact that I was stripped to the waist, I was sopping with sweat. It ran down over my body in rivers, and my feet seemed to float in my shoes...out of fear, partly, I suppose. But equally, at least, because of the heat. If I had not been sweating so much, I think I should have literally caught fire.

  The boiler plates began to flow with an ugly, warning pink. The pink became a dull cherry-red, and then, slowly, a bright scarlet. Threads of steam curled up ominously from the rivets.

  God only knows how much pressure was straining beneath those plates. But the steam had to hold, and already the stoker was practically empty. The intense blaze was gulping down wood as though it were so much paper.

  I fed and raked ashes, blind with exhaustion and sweat, numb with fear. The boiler began to quiver and shimmy, but I kept on. And at last I had what Shorty wanted. The grates were clean, the firebox full, the stoker loaded. All at the same time. There was as much steam as could be got, and the steam would hold.

  I stumbled back from the glowing, shaking monster. I tottered up the hill and fell down among the bushes, fighting to get my breath.

  Down in the derrick, Shorty grasped the long lever to the casing reels.

  It was hot—even 'that' was hot. He yelled and did a little dance of pain. Then, he grabbed hold again with a piece of sacking, and pulled it all the way out. And Jiggs jammed it there with a crowbar. They stood back, then, Jiggs looking up into the tower—alert for any breakage—Shorty with his eyes on the pipe.

  The by-now familiar and threatening clamor began, but a dozen times louder than it had been on any of our previous attempts. The guys sang; there was an insane howling of tortured wood and metal. It grew to an unbearable pitch, until it seemed to pierce down through your flesh and bones and into your vitals. And, then, suddenly, it was almost quiet.

  Every tiny cell and molecule of the equipment had been stretched and squeezed to its limits. There was no longer any give in them, no room for friction nor clashing, and hence it was silent. The only noise was the hissing of steam.

  Around me the earth began to tremble, the bushes to weave and sway. Fascinated, I waited and watched. I had heard about this all my life and now I was seeing it; the legendary meeting of the irresistible force and the immovable object.

  A shout from Shorty snapped me out of my reverie
. I got up and trotted down the hill.

  "It's coming, Jim! The pipe's moving! You gotta give me some more steam!"

  "You're crazy!" I stammered. "I wouldn't go near that boiler now for all the—"

  "Get movin'! Just a little bit more, Jim, an'—'oof!"'

  Jiggs had dived into him like a football tackle, knocking him off the derrick floor. He had come off of it at a run, and now still running he propelled us ahead of him.

  "Run, damn you, run! The pipe—it's—"

  "Damn you, Jiggs!" Shorty tried to jerk away from him. "That pipe's just startin' to move an' if Jim would—"

  "Sure, it's moving! It's stretching!"

  "Stretch? Why, goddammit, it couldn't—'Yeeow!"' yelled Shorty. And he led the race for the bushes. For, fantastic as it seemed, the pipe 'was' stretching.

  And suddenly it snapped.

  It soared up out of the hole, some forty feet of "indestructible" twenty-four inch casing. Like a giant lance, it rose up through the tower of the derrick, smashing through the crown block, batting the heavy gear and pulleys high into the air. And then, snared by the attached lines, it whipped sideways and plunged earthward again.

  It came down on the rig, splintering braces and cross-braces, leaving the derrick a wobbling ruin. It landed thunderously amidst the machinery...and, for all practical purposes, that machinery ceased to be. Steam spouted from the maze of broken lines—rose mercifully over the ruin. When it cleared away, we trudged back down the hill.

  There was nothing to salvage. The rig was utterly and completely beyond repair. At any rate, we were ready to admit that the pipe could not be pulled.

  We could not trust ourselves to speak. Case-hardened wretches that we were, we were that near to weeping. Our farmer friend took the disappointment much more philosophically.