Bittersweet Sands (15 page)

“We all felt good about that.”

“What about poker?” Dougdoug said.

“They ain't games of chance. Not around McMurray. Those games don't have a damned thing to do with luck. I've seen a poker game that had so much money in the pot, you couldn't see the table. A guy lost everything in that game. We didn't see him for three days, just lay in his bunk, staring at the ceiling.”

“How much?”

“They say he worked that year for free.”

“I'm pretty good at cards.”

“I thought I was pretty good too. One time, me and a couple of guys played this shark. We didn't have fifty cents between us, but we wanted to play this... this barracuda, just to say we did. We were joking and laughing, but halfway through the game, I realized that each time the pot was won, the next hand went to the guy on the right. To this day, I don't know how he did it, but he controlled the game so well, every hand he'd move the pot one place to the right. That son of a bitch moved the pot wherever he wanted to. That sobered me right up. Those games don't have a thing to do with luck.”

“Well...”

“And you don't know who you're playing against. Back in the day, one of the camps started stinking. They thought it was a dead raccoon that had crawled under the camp and died. So they dug around in the snow, and found it was some guy wrapped up in plastic garbage bags shoved under the trailer. With the number of men coming and going through here, there's not a hope in hell of his killer ever being caught.”

“No leads? Nothing?”

“Never heard. So do yourself a favour. If you are going to play, go down to the casino in McMurray or leave the poker playing at home with Granny.”

Dougdoug flipped the half-card in his hand, studying it.

Men were stretching and moving in their seats in anticipation of going back out into the cold.

“Once in a while, the guys try to change the game,” I continued. “So, just before the cheques are handed out, they all put their money in a hat. Once the cheques are handed out, the guys gather together and they read the last four serial numbers on the cheque, and then the cents column in the amount. Those six numbers gets you a poker hand. Best poker hand wins.”

“Seems complicated,” Dougdoug said.

“And the game's not foolproof. The person making up the cheques can control the game.”

“They wouldn't.”

“Never say never. When there's thousands of dollars on the line, never say never.”

“Maybe I'll keep my money in my pocket.”

“Too late, you've already bought in.”

“I have not!”

“You're here, aren't you? Stash, or someone like Stash, will be back again and again. And you know what? They're like alcoholics. They get mad if you don't drink with them, or gamble with them.”

“G.A.?”

“Gamblers Anonymous. Stay in the trade long enough and you'll have more than a passing acquaintance with either A.A. or G.A.”

“Is everybody around here nuts?” Dougdoug said. “I think I'm the only sane one in this whole crew.”

“You cut me deep, kid.”

“Okay maybe you're goofy, but in a nice way.” Dougdoug smiled.

The new apprentice fingered the card. The quiet was broken by a great shuffling of feet. The crew had stayed in the lunch trailer far enough past the end of the noon break to show the bosses they were independent, but not long enough to get yelled at.

I looked at Dougdoug. “I been around a long time and I do know this: if there's going to be a fight, it'll be because of money, booze, or women.”

“So?” Dougdoug asked.

“The only two women we got on this crew scare the crap out of everybody. We're in camp now, so booze is out. That just leaves one thing: money.”

I looked at Dougdoug.

Dougdoug looked at the card, and said:

“Wanna buy a card, Rance?”

Day Twenty-Three
( Spider )

On a winter's night, the steam clouds from a hundred vents hang silent above Albian Sands Extraction like a formation of dirigibles. The lights make the bellies of those steam clouds glow a mottled orange. When there is no wind, those silent clouds spread, join, then slowly sink between tanks and passageways, making the edges of the buildings and pipes glow a soft orange. You half-expect to stumble over a body.

The Extraction Building is where boulders and sand go one way and crude oil starts going the other. It's an ominous, dripping place that shakes and smells of tar and damp and a touch of fear. The massive conveyors growl and hurl acres of rock and sand and boulders into giant vats. The tumbling, Toyota-sized boulders growl and foundation-shaking thuds rumble the building when the sand gets ripped from its treasure. On the death-cold cement floor, pools of water tremble in cadence with the thump of powerful motors. When they walk past, workers give those tanks space.

The building has the smell and feel of newly tarred roof beside a cold mountain waterfall. Circles of shimmering gold lights bleed down the walls in futile shafts of light that give the walls dimension but no illumination, so the roof of that huge building is lost in an indistinct black.

Me and my apprentice walked through the mist, sidestepping a six-ton front-end loader that “meep-meep-meep”ed past us. The yellow-and-rust steel dinosaur pushed the fog aside, and just as quickly disappeared, leaving the smell of burnt diesel in its swirling wake.

“This place reminds me of Mordor,” Dougdoug said.

“Huh?” I grunted.

“
Lord of the Rings
. You know, Mordor.”

“You mean with all this yellow fog and the trucks an' the scary noises? Why would you say that?”

Dougdoug smiled.

“Guess what that makes us,” I said.

“Orcs?

“I prefer hobbits.” I snorted. “You know, laddie, in the summertime when the doors are open an' there's no fog, this place looks like one of those huge buildings they got down in Cape Kennedy, the ones with the huge doors where they put together those rockets. I saw one once on one of my trips to the Keys.”

The apprentice stopped mid-stride. He knelt and picked up something, and held it in his gloved palm. Both of us studied the dot. It was a spider. There was nothing special about it. The spider was just an ordinary black spider. This one had a slight limp, and rather than move around and explore, the insect sat in Dougdoug's damp glove. Eight eyes stared back at us.

“Musta rode in on the conveyor.” Dougdoug studied the insect.

“Quite a ride.” Both of us listened to the rumbling of a particularly huge boulder tumbling in that vat behind the mist.

“First bug this year,” I said. “It's still February.”

Dougie was quiet for second. Then he looked up. “Can you imagine? You're sittin' in your spider-hole, all fat, dumb, and happy, waiting for spring, and this gigantic claw comes down and grabs your whole world and dumps you into a truck, and then dumps you onto a conveyor, and then dumps you into a bin...”

“I know, ruins your day. C'mon, kid, let's go.”

I stopped, then looked at the young man as Dougdoug continued to study the insect. Dougdoug spoke.

“Gee, it makes you think.”

“About what?”

“About just how many other animals get eaten by these machines. After we're done with it, that sand comes out as white as talcum powder. After we're finished with it, the ground's just sterile... dead.”

“It's a spider.”

“You can't even grow weeds on the shit after we're done with it. Where'd all the animals go? You can't hide from something that takes a twenty-foot bite. Nothing burrows that deep.”

“An' they boil the soil to get the oil. C'mon, let's go, Mr. Save-The-Planet.”

“You know in that movie when that Death Star blows up that planet?”

I put my hands on my hips. “Where are you going with this?”

“Well, that's what it must be like to these insects. Kablooie!” Dougdoug blew up an imaginary planet.

“You know what, kid? These last three minutes, I'll never get them back.”

“Where can we put it?”

“What?”

“This.” The young man held up the spider.

“You're not reading the memo, Dougie. Let's go!” I showed Dougdoug the closest drain. Dougdoug scowled and walked over to the wall. He placed the insect behind the warm heat pipe.

I muttered. “It's a spider.”

“It's not... just that spider.”

“You know, kid, with that live-and-let-live attitude, I'm afraid you're not going too far in the oil industry. Besides, this dig-and-dump is the old technology. The new way is to leave everything on top, drill sideways, and suck the shit out. It's spider-approved.”

Dougdoug looked at me, then laughed. He said, “We're digging ourselves a huge karma debt here. Payback's gonna be a bitch.”

“Once you been here for a while, kiddo, you get to know who's lying to you, and it ain't always the oil companies. But for what it's worth, Miss Muffet, you've saved a spider.”

We walked for a bit. Finally Dougdoug mumbled.

“The Egyptians have their pyramids, we got tar ponds.”

“Kid?”

“Yeah?”

“It was a spider.”

Day Twenty-Four
( The
Great Eastern
)

“Don't ya love that sound,” Jason said.

“What sound?” Pops asked, looking up from Gwen's desk. “Oh, that.” Pops stared at the wall in the direction of the coker, listening to the rattle of impact wrenches closing up man-ways. “When is Gwen getting back?”

“Haven't a clue.” Jason said. “Once we got the call about Lobotomy—ah, Tim—was in the hospital, she grabbed her stuff and took off. Said something about running interference. Took the truck too.”

“They were close?” Pops asked.

“Apparently.”

The two men stopped to listen to the staccato metal-on-metal bang of another impact gun, tightening metal nuts the size of fists until the steel almost distorts, closing up the man-ways, getting the men ever closer to home. Jason smiled.

“You know, Jay,” Pops said, “twenty-four days ago, if you walked inside the coker and saw the broken steel trays, walls with huge divots in them, metal in shards, you'd have thought, How the hell are we ever going to finish all this in twenty-four days? Then the guys start working like ants on a sandwich, and somehow it all comes together. She's done.” Pops set down his coffee mug by the computer, creating another coffee ring on top of Gwen's spotless desk.

“You're lucky Gwen's away,” Jason said, looking at the desk.

“A guy told me once that a bunch of years ago in Sarnia, he and his buddy were working together on Tower Fourteen. As he comes out of the tower for the last time, the mechanics were sealing up the man-ways. He turned to his friend and said, ‘Where's the tools?' They look at each other, then back at the tower. They didn't tell anybody that they had left the tools inside the tower. That's not something you'd advertise. Even the guys would give you static, not to mention the bosses.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Jason said.

“So, a year passes. There's another shutdown in Sarnia. These two guys are working together again. One says, ‘I wonder if those tools are still there?' So just after the crew opens the man-ways again, they climb back inside.”

Jason stared at Pops.

“All that was left was the galvanized pail's bottom ring where they had put it down. What was left of the flashlight was just wires, and an outline on the steel where the batteries once were. And the hand wrenches? They were all shiny and clean, laying there, just like new.”

“What did they do with the wrenches?” Jason asked.

Pops shrugged. “Put 'em in another pail.”

The old welder leaned back and put his feet on Gwen's desk.

“I used to weld in the double bottoms of icebreakers in the Arctic. The ship was built with one hull inside another hull, so if a hole gets ripped in the outside hull, the ship won't sink. Well, that's the plan, anyway. The space in between the outer hull and the inside hull is divided up into small—I mean really small compartments. Each compartment was about the size of four coffins. You could lie down in them, but you couldn't stand up, not fully. The only thing you could do is kneel, kneel, and crawl.

“Everybody got a compartment to weld. One compartment, one lightbulb. Shit, it was dark. Dark, smoky, noisy, and real easy to get scared. I spent three months singing to myself so I wouldn't panic. I had this repertoire of songs I would go through. It got to the point that once I went through all the songs and got to ‘Mary Had A Little Lamb,' I knew I was close to freaking out. Time to get out and check the welding machine, whether it needed it or not.”

“‘Mary Had a Little Lamb'?” said Jason.

“Yeah.”

“That's not a song.”

“I know my nursery rhymes.”

The office went silent, except for the sound of two men humming.

Jason coughed and looked around. “Did you ever hear about the
Great Eastern
?” he asked.

“No.”

“The
Great Eastern
was a steel-hulled ship that was made in England. Men were still wearing stovepipe hats. Back then they riveted the ship together, no welding. The shipyard rattled so much with all those riveting guns going that everybody was deaf by the time they were thirty.

“The
Great Eastern
was so underpowered it could barely get out of its own way. When they launched the ship, the wave came across the river and drowned a couple of people. The architect who designed the ship died young. The shipyard that made the ship went bankrupt. The company that owned it went under. For twenty years, everybody who even came close to the
Great Eastern
suffered. It was a jinxed ship.

“The only time the
Great Eastern
made any money was as a storage ship for the first telegraph cable laid under the North Atlantic. No other ship in the world had enough room to hold all that cable.