the Hot Kid (2005) (3 page)

Jack talked his mother out of having the swimming pool broken up and planted over. He would catch his dad staring at him and the tenyear-old would say, "I tried to save her, didn't I?"

Eight years later the smart-aleck, useless kid was trying to blackmail him. It was time to hand Jack over to Joe Rossi at the tank farm, the daddy of Carmel, the girl Jack swore up and down he hadn't raped. Joe Rossi had dug coal in the mines near Krebs, south of here. He served a few years at McAlester as a prison guard before the Glenn Pool boom came on and moved his family to Tulsa to find work in oil that paid a living wage. Mr. Belmont first had him digging earthen pits, big holes in the ground, someplace quick to store crude gushing out of the wells. Next thing he was setting wood tanks over the field before going to steel plates, setting tanks as high as three-story buildings, some holding eighty thousand barrels of crude before pumping it off to a refinery. Joe Rossi was making a hundred dollars a week now running the tank farm and bossing the hard cases working for him. Tankies all drank their wages, saw themselves as the toughest boys on the lease and looked for excuses to start fights. Joe Rossi had fists the size of mallets and used them on payday to stay in charge, hammer anybody told him to go fuck himself, or some such thing. He didn't mind their getting drunk, but would not take their lip. Mr. Belmont said put the boy on the worst job there. Rossi said that was tank cleaning. He said, "You think it's what you want him to do? The only thing liable to kill a man quicker is shooting nitro."

"I want him cleaning tanks," Mr. Belmont said, and hung up the phone.

Rossi told Norm Dilworth, a boy he'd brought here from McAlester after he'd done his time, told him to show Jack Belmont the work and stay close to him. Joe Rossi didn't trust himself to go near Mr. Belmont's son--not after what he did to his little girl Carmel, the youngest of his seven kids, fifteen years old this past July 16, the feast day of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Rossi was afraid if the boy got smart with him he'd crack his head open with a maul and shove him in the muck.

Rossi said to Norm Dilworth, not much older than Jack Belmont
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"He's the boss's son. His daddy wants him to learn the oil business."

Norm said, "Cleaning out tanks? Christ Almighty, he could die in there."

"I don't think his daddy'd mind," Rossi said. "He's a bad kid. You knew plenty like him at McAlester, only they weren't the sons of millionaires."

The two boys were lanky and looked like they could run. Jack and Norm stood smoking cigarets waiting for the setter crew to unbolt a steel plate from the bottom part of the tank that rose a good thirty feet above them, pried it free and used a truck with a chain to drag the plate out of the way. Now a thick black muck was oozing out of the opening to spread in the weeds. They could smell gas fumes coming from inside the tank.

Norm Dilworth said, "Put out your cigaret," stubbing his on the sole of a shoe and slipping the butt in his shirt pocket. Jack took another puff before he flicked his cigaret away. Jack was wearing a new pair of Pioneer bib overalls bought yesterday, complaining to the dad at the store with him they were too full in the legs. The dad bought him four pair, a buck ten each, and a pair of work shoes for three eighty-five. Norm Dilworth had on work clothes that would never look clean again but were worn out from washing, suspenders holding up his pants. He wore a hat so old and dirty you couldn't tell the shade of felt, set on the back of his head. Jack wouldn't wear a hat less he had on a suit. His brown hair was combed back and plastered down, taking on a shine in the sunlight.

"That bottom sediment's what we clean out," Norm said. "Wade inside with shovels and rakes made of wood--no metal that could cause a spark--and slosh it out the opening. You last all day you can make seven-fifty. Only if they's gas fumes like in this'n? You can't stay in there more'n ten minutes at a time. You have to come out to breathe. They's some companies tell you, 'Well, you only worked half your time,' and take out for it. You say, 'Yeah, well, the other time I was using to breathe.' It don't matter, they take breathing time out of your wage. Except Mr. Rossi, he pays a straight six bits an hour. You have to come out, he lets you come out. See, you don't want to get weak in there from the fumes. I mean it, you fall in the sludge, you're done. You keep slipping and sliding, you're choking on the gas and can't help but fall in the muck. It's like knee-deep in there, the sediment, and nobody's suppose to help you, try and pull you out, 'cause you could pull them in and you're both gone." Jack stared at the black ooze edging toward them while Norm was staring at Jack. Norm said, "I never seen bibs that narrow in the legs. Where you buy a pair like that?"

Jack was watching the sediment coming closer and closer. "I thought the pants were too roomy. I had one of the maids take 'em in." He said
,
"So this Joe Rossi is fair, huh? I haven't seen him."

"He's over in the shack," Norm said. "He wrote to me at McAlester saying he'd have a job waiting for me when I got my release. So I come here and the next thing I know I got married."

Jack was looking at him now, this hick in his worn-out work clothes.

"You were in prison, huh?"

"Year and a day for stealing cars, the first time."

"Now you clean tanks for six bits an hour? But you don't have to?"

"Shit, I can make forty dollars a week."

"What'd you do with the cars you swiped?"

"Sold 'em. I kept a Dodge to run bootleg till I almost got caught."

Jack was getting a better feeling about this hick who knew how to steal cars and run whiskey. "You ever think about getting back into crime?"

"I kinda miss running wild and free," Norm said, "but I've known Mr. Rossi from when he was a screw over at the prison. He's always been fair with me. Another thing about working for him, he won't us
e
'lectric lights when you're in the tank. The vents on the roof don't give enough light, he'll put batt'rey-powered spots up there. See, 'lectric lights, you got to worry about a current leak. Over at Seminole one time, they go in, switch on the light and she sparked. Seven men in there, the whole tank went up afire and you heard the seven of 'em scream like one person, this awful, bloodcurdling scream and like that"--Norm snapped his fingers--"they're dead. They's any kind of spark in there you're fried. Pull you out looking like a strip of bacon."

Jack said, "We the only ones working here?"

"A crew'll be coming," Norm said, and looked over at the shack where Rossi had his office, no one there yet.

Jack moved along the edge of the sediment to the opening and ducked his head to look in at a dim cavern, spooky in there, poles holding up the roof, the floor thick with sediment. He began to cough and walked back clearing his throat and blinking his eyes from the fumes. Norm said, "See what I mean?"

"I'm not going in there," Jack said. "I got an idea I like better than getting burned alive. I'm thinking of how me and you can make a hundred thousand dollars and not even get our shoes dirty." He had the hick squinting at him now with sort of a grin on his face. "You're the guy I been looking for," Jack said, "somebody's not afraid to break a law now and then."

Norm quit grinning. "What kind of crime you have in mind?" "Kidnap my old man's girlfriend. Tell him a hundred thousand or he'll never see her again."

Norm said, "Jesus Christ, you mean it, don't you?"

Jack nodded toward his Ford Coupe parked off the dirt road by some trucks loaded with used sheets of metal. He said, "Go on get in my car over there. You won't ever have to clean another tank long as you live."

Norm Dilworth looked toward the car and Jack pulled a pack of cigarets and his silver lighter from the overalls that felt stiff on him. Norm looked back to see him lighting the cigaret and yelled out, "No!" and said Jesus Christ, no a few more times, looking toward Rossi's office, looking at Jack puffing on the butt before he flicked it to arch into the stream of sludge.

Fire flashed and spread over the ooze out on the ground--they were both running now--the fire wooshing into the tank to ignite the gas and there was a boom inside, an explosion that buckled steel plates, blew the roof off the tank and rolled black oil smoke into the sky. Oris Belmont saw it from his office window high up in the Exchange National Bank Building, his NMD Oil & Gas Company occupying the whole floor. The explosion from eight miles away turned Oris in his swivel chair to see that ugly black stain in the sky, rising where his tank farm would be. He thought of his son walking out of the house this morning in his new overalls; Oris remembering the legs looked funny. In nine years there had never been an accident at the farm, not even by the hand of God like a tank struck by lightning, not until the day Jack showed up for work. Oris wasn't sure what to feel about the situation. He waited for the phone to ring.

Rossi came on to ask him, "Can you see it?"

"A full tank," Oris said, "there'd be way more smoke."

"It's one your boy was to work in."

Oris waited.

"He set fire to the sediment," Rossi said, "and drove off in his car with another tankie, I guess through for the day. If it's okay with you, I'd as soon you didn't send him back here."

Oris felt relief. He did, his boy off to work for the first time in his life was alive. It calmed him till he began to wonder, But now what? Jack had no trouble getting Nancy Polis out of her boardinghouse and in the car, the woman not even bothering to put on a hat but did grab her purse. She had seen the smoke and believed Jack telling her Mr. Belmont had been hurt in the explosion and sent him to get her. Mr. Belmont wanting her to see he was alive before going to the hospital in Tulsa, as his wife was likely to show up there. No, he wasn't hurt too bad, just some cuts that'd have to be sewed up, maybe a broken leg set, if it was broke. Jack told her he worked for Mr. Belmont in the office; he'd put on overalls today as they were going out to the lease, explaining this to Nancy Polis squeezed between him and Norm Dilworth in the car on the way to Norm's house.

It was toward Kiefer in a stand of pines back of the rail yard. Nancy didn't ask why Oris would be waiting in this workingman's house of upright weathered boards, a porch roof in front, a privy in back where a girl was hanging wash. Jack asked Norm who she was. Norm said his wife, and Jack said to bring her in the house. She was watching them now, fingering her blonde hair the wind was blowing in her eyes.

As soon as they were inside Nancy said, "Where's Oris?"

Jack told her he'd be along. Mr. Belmont had waited for the doctor they called to have a look at the tankies that got hurt. He had a feeling Nancy was suspicious now, nervous, looking around the house. There wasn't much to it, a pump on the sink, an old icebox and stove, a table covered with oilcloth and magazines sitting on it, three straight chairs, a double bed they could see in the back room. Jack was ten when they moved to Tulsa and his dad would take him out to the lease every once in a while and explain boring things about oil wells, how the first joint of pipe had a bit on it they called a fishtail that bored the hole and those big pumps they called mud hogs would clean it out. They always stopped by the Harvey House in Sapulpa for chicken a la king, Jack's favorite, and always had the same Harvey Girl in her big white apron, her hair swept up and fixed. Jack would listen to them talk in a low voice like they were passing secret messages to each other. It wasn't until he saw Nancy Polis at the Mayo Hotel he realized she was the Harvey House waitress. She'd be in her thirties now. Norm came in, the girl behind him with her empty clothes basket. He said to Jack, "This here's my wife, Heidi." It took Jack by surprise, 'cause up close this girl was a looker, even with her hair mussed, no makeup on, man, a natural beauty about twenty years old. He had to wonder why she'd settled for a hayseed like Norm Dilworth. There was a presence about her, reminding him of rich girls in Tulsa, till she said, "Y'all want some ice tea?" and she was off a farm or an oil patch. Man, but she was a looker. Nancy Polis, sitting at the table now smoking a cigaret, said, "I want to know where Oris is."

Jack was still looking at Heidi. "You got anything else?"

"I got a jar," Norm said.

Jack turned to the table and the magazines sitting there, Good Housekeeping, Turkey World, Ladies' Home Journal and a new issue of Outdoor Life. He said to Nancy, "Keep your pants on," picked up the Outdoor Life and started looking through it.

Norm went to the cupboard over the sink and brought out a mason jar, a third of clean whiskey in it. He said to Heidi, "Honey, will you get the glasses?"

She said, "We only got two," looking at Jack. "Somebody'll have to tip the jar."

Jack smiled at her staring at him. He held up the Outdoor Life and said to Norm, "You hunt?"

"Any chance I get."

"Leave this little girl here by herself?"

He winked at her and she winked back.

"She likes it here," Norm said, "after where she's lived."

Nancy said, "None for me, thanks," watching Norm pour the liquor into a couple of jelly glasses.

"It ain't for you, it's for me and Jack," Norm said, handing Jack a glass.

Nancy sat sideways to the table, her legs crossed, showing her knees and some thigh in a dark shade of hose. She looked at Jack and held out the cigaret to tap ashes on the linoleum floor.