What They Wanted (37 page)

“Small bit of gas in all these zones, Cocky, that’s why we’re drilling here,” said Frederick. He looked at the rest of the men. “We’re three hundred feet away from the reservoir. And three hundred feet could be another five, six days’ drilling. Seismic’s showing no changes. We’re not gonna tippytoe, we’re gonna make hole.” He looked at Cook, who was draining a dipper of hardboiled eggs into the sink. “The boys are highly emotional this morning, Cookie,” he said with a loud laugh. “Perhaps they can have their dessert before din dins.” He flashed square white teeth that looked like an attractive awning over an empty storefront and backed out the door.

One of the crewmen cringed. “Dumb bastard.” He tossed back the rest of his coffee, glaring disgustedly at the cousins, who were now snorting laughs his way.

“Hell with you all,” muttered the crewman, and stalked out of the cookhouse. A muffled thump sounded, followed by a loud curse.

“Fell off the step, he fell off the step,” said one of the cousins, and they broke into a paroxysm of laughs.

The blond-haired Kip stood up with a look of disgust. “Worked on a lot of scumholes, boys, but none this stinking bad.” He waved adios and walked out the door.

I watched through the window as he gunned his truck to life and sped off down the road. I looked to the rig. I could see its red-painted sides through the thickly saturated air, the white of its derrick fading like an amputated limb into the overcast sky.

I felt ill.

Cook was mixing a pound cake, the vanilla extract she was pouring into the batter smelling like Gran, like home. Like Mother. I felt like Mother. I wrung my hands. Then I busied about the cramped kitchen, picking and poking at things, tidying things already tidied and looking anxiously out the window.

Frederick was leaving his trailer, chomping on an apple.

“I’m gonna go call home,” I said to Cook, and donning her rubber boots and bush jacket, ran out into the chilly, damp air, meeting Frederick as he was about to climb aboard his truck.

“Door’s open,” he said, as I breathlessly asked for use of his phone.

Wiping the damp off my brow, I dialed quickly. Mother’s voice was light as she answered.

“Mom.” Inexplicably, my mouth began to tremble.

“Sylvie—Sylvie, is that you—my, what a good thing you called, you’ll never guess what’s happened, we found the boat, we found your father’s boat—Sylvie—you there, can you hear me—they found your father’s boat—Gar Gillingham and Roger—it was run ashore on Big Island—carried by the ice, pushed right up on shore—not a scratch—Gran said that—she said to check Big Island, she told Chris to check Big Island— he should’ve thought to look, to go and look—what’s that, I can’t hear you—your father? My lord, the look on his face when he took a gander out the window and seen his boat—I thought he was seeing Jesus walking on the water. Poor fool, yes, yes he is a fool, a poor fool,” she said to my quiet laugh, “and he’s at the window now, still gawking—wait, wait now Sylvie, he wants to talk to you—is Chris there? He’s working, is he—you be sure and tell him now, tell him his father found his boat, to not waste money buying a boat, they’ll think we’re starting our own fishing fleet—oh, my, here’s your father—the patience of Job.”

“Dolly, you hear me, Dolly—”

“Yes, Dad, hi, how’re you doing—Dad—?”

“Back on my feet, Dolly, walking the river all week, with your mother—won’t let me out of her sight—I looks at the boat and she throws a fit,” he laughed a deep, raunchy laugh that sounded more pleased than irritated with the attention Mother was giving him. But then it became strained:“They’re leaving in droves—all the young people, leaving in droves, tell him the fishery’s all but dead—not just the inshore anymore, Dolly, it’s the offshore too now, she’s all but gone—”

“Dad?”

“That’s your mother—at me agin—get him in school, Dolly, nothing here for the young—there’s your mother agin, prying the phone from me fingers—”

“Sylvie—?”

“Yes, Mom—”

“Sylvie, you’re all right then—you and Chris, you’re both all right—perhaps you can come home for a good holiday with Chris when he comes? Gran would like that—and Kyle, he mentions you at the oddest times—and Gran—she hasn’t been the same since you both left, swear to gawd she’s aged ten years—she’s having a nap now. She got sickish—just then, before you called, she got sickish—I had to help her to her room—” Mother’s voice twisted worriedly. “Not often she gets sickish, I might call in the doctor. And Sylvie,” her voice fell, as though shielding her ears from her own spoken words, “your father’s right, about school. You’re both right, I’m wrong there—but come home first—for a long visit, you and Chris, both—you both come home—you have a good day then, and yes, yes, I’ll give Gran your love—bye, bye now, don’t forget to tell him about the boat—you hear that, that’s your father calling out bye, too—bye, Dolly, he’s saying—Bye, now, you have a nice day, we’re all fine.”

COOK GREETED ME
at the door with the lunch basket. It was already past noon. The rain was a steady drizzle streaming coldly down my face. I slugged across the field, turned swampy by the rain, grateful for Cook’s rubber boots and lined bush jacket. Despite the heavy air, it sounded as though the rig was roaring louder this morning. I started up the garish steps, mindful of the slick, black mud coating them. Second step up I slipped and fell, grinding my knee across its grid. The basket buckled awkwardly around my arm, digging into my ribs. I cursed, rubbing first at my knee, then my ribs. Picking myself up, I grasped the handrail and limped up onto the rig floor.

I stepped carefully inside the doghouse, laying the basket on the table and walking over to the glass front. Everything,
everything
, was wet, slimy, and oozing mud. Skin was standing near the drill hole, his gaunt, flat face looking wearied and disgusted. He was holding the large-linked chain in his hands. Suddenly he threw it onto the rig floor as though it were a snake coming to life and went over to Ben. They shouted into each other’s face for a second, then Ben spat and swerved over to the length of drill pipe sticking up from the borehole. As he bent over, fiddling with the slips on the rotary wheel, another crewman nudged his shoulder for attention. They both shouted back and forth for a moment, their shoulders hunched against the rain dribbling off their hard hats and streaming down their collar-chafed necks.

I spotted Chris partly hidden behind a tank, his shoulders hunched to the rain. He had his hard hat pulled low, his face pallid in the grim light. His squinted eyes were drifting around the squalid, vibrating rig floor as though he were allowing himself to see it in bits. Skin was making angry hand motions to Trapp, then clawed back the chain he’d thrown down earlier. Ben, the sleeves of his coveralls shoved up to his elbows, his forearms and hands slick with grease and mud, grasped the pipe hanging out of the derrick and stabbed the end of it onto the length sticking out of the drill hole. Now Chris was leaning against the side of the tank, motionless. He watched Skin swing the chain through the air towards the pipe. He watched the chain wrap itself around the pipes, and a roughneck moving in with jawlike tongs to torque them up.

Chris shivered. I could see that he shivered. There, I thought with sudden clarity, he’s awakening to the beast. He’s seeing it as I do. He’s seeing the grease secreting through its pores. He’s nauseated by the bad blood flowing through the crew as they feed like parasites upon each other.

I turned, not wanting to watch anymore, wanting this last thought of mine to be his truth. Hurrying from the doghouse, I crept carefully down the steps. I was but twenty, thirty feet from the rig when I heard a different sound—a huge whistling, roaring sound, like that of a jet about to land on the back of my head. I turned to see pipe—a straight line of pipe—spitting out through the side of the derrick and shooting like a black spear three hundred feet into the grey sky then breaking off in lengths—sixty-foot lengths, ninety-foot lengths—and falling back into the woods beyond. I watched the derrickhand, Dirty Dan, skim down the derrick like a cat on a greased pole. I watched Skin racing savagely across the rig floor, the other crewmen—all of them—racing to the opening—the vee-door—and diving down the slide. I saw Frederick on the ground, coming around the corner of some tank, a look of astonishment on his face as he saw the pipe vaulting into the air. He bolted for the woods. The geologist appeared on top of the rig floor and jumped without looking the fifteen, twenty feet to the ground and dove beneath the rig floor. Within the second Ben, too, appeared at the edge of the rig floor and jumped. And in that second—before Ben hit the ground—the rig started spluttering into silence, leaving only the clang, clang, clanging of the pipe as it ricocheted against the steel derrick.

Silence fell. Complete, utter silence.

I stared at the rig floor. I willed so hard I saw the orange of his coveralls, and then it was gone. I was onto my feet and running to the rig. I grabbed hold of the handrails, my feet scarcely touching the steps. He jumped. He must’ve jumped. He saw Ben jump and he jumped too. I hadn’t seen him because he jumped from the back. He’d jumped from the back so I hadn’t seen him. I screamed his name in silence. I heard someone shouting. It was Ben. Ben was shouting. Trapp was shouting too. I slipped on the rig floor and fell heavily to my knees. I scrabbled to my feet and bolted to the front of the doghouse and slipped again. He was there, over there near the borehole. He was lying on his back near the borehole, the chain wrapped around his chest. I monkey-crawled to his side. His hard hat was thrown from his head and tawny strands of his hair lay in mud, his face averted from mine. I screamed his name. I screamed it again, and again. I pulled his face towards mine. His eyes were glistening as he looked at me. They were glistening and bright, so bright I thought he was smiling. Then they widened, his pupils narrowing. A sound. He was making a sound. I stared into his eyes, his glistening brown eyes, I sank into their softness, I heard him laugh, and I laughed too, wildly, with relief, with joy. Then his pupils widened suddenly, and I was caught in that fraught moment after lightning strikes and the earth readies for the pending crash of thunder. “Wait!” I screamed. “Wait! Chris, wait! Chriiiiiss!!!” and gripped his shoulders as though it were time I was gripping onto—that second of time before the heavens crashed and a dark fluid frothed through his nose, through the corners of his mouth. And the light emptied from his eyes.

I fell back. His silence reached after me, its coldness striking my cheek like a chilled wind. I groped against his vacant eyes like a lost child, frantically searching through a room suddenly emptied of light. Ben stumbled beside me. He was making hard sounds in his throat. I looked to him, into his eyes, the full brightness of them. They were filling with horror as mine were already filling with sorrow, for I held no hope. Almost immediately I had known it—a part of me had known it all along. It had been born with me, it had shown me through his dreams, for they were never of the ordinary, but of Christ. Of moons without planets. Without time—as his art, his dreams too, were without time.

I whimpered in silence, unable to bring the sound through my throat. “I won’t take him home,” I whispered to Ben. My lips were frozen, yet I knew I had spoken, had seen my words register on his stone face. Then I crumpled like an autumn leaf onto Chris’s shoulder, my face burrowing inside his dirtied orange coveralls, my hands clutching at his face, grasping his hair from the mud. I burrowed further inside his coveralls. I burrowed like a dog seeking warmth. I smelled his skin, his odour. How strange that his scent was alive when he wasn’t. But the wind would take it soon enough. Oh Mother, what will you do now, and my heart leapt with fright.

I heard others piling onto the rig floor behind me, yelling, cursing, then falling silent as they came upon me, upon Chris. I heard Ben retching over the side of the rig floor. You left him behind, I said silently to Ben, it’s not your fault, but you left him behind, it’s your fault that you left him behind. I heard the cousins from the night crew speaking urgently as they rushed across the rig floor, then falling silent as they came upon me. I heard Push’s truck roar to a stop, his snarl of outrage coming up the rig steps, then his silence, his words ambushed in his throat. Then the quiet of Dirty Dan’s voice some distance behind, his hushed, urgent words falling like pebbles against the closed lid of a coffin as he told of what he’d seen from atop the derrick, the pipe shooting back up, snapping the chain from its mount on the rig floor and cat-assing around the rousty, who was just standing there, staring off. Must’ve crushed his ribs—the busted chain must’ve crushed his ribs, punctured his lungs, and his heart, too—must’ve, for it to have been so fast. Bled out, bled out on the inside. He’d read about it once, happening to some fellow in Louisiana, crushed his ribs, punctured his lungs and his heart, bled out in minutes. And he told, too, of another thing—of Trapp staring out at the rousty getting cat-assed, of Trapp staring at the pipe shooting up the derrick, of Trapp freezing at his station, and Ben charging to the panel and shutting her down—