The tractors are trawling the middle distance. From the comfort of his air-conditioned trailer Ben watches his men reshape the landscape, heavy machines muscling tons of topsoil in the dog day afternoon. Bright orange bulldozers strain mightily behind blood-colored berms of clay, the dirt curdling, cresting, spilling in thick waves before the scalloped blades.
Everything quivers in the radiant shimmer lifting off the earth.
He’s always dreamed of striking black gold. After graduating from Oklahoma State with a mechanical engineering degree, he tried his hand wildcatting with the rest of the roughnecks. But Ben lacked the essential prophetic knack. He’d tap into the bedrock, shooting for a seismic bright spot, only to hit brine. A few dry holes in a row and you were done developing petrochemicals back then. Everyone was looking to be the next Diamond Glenn. So Ben retooled. He saw a need for more specialized equipment, took out a loan, and launched Dirt Devil Drilling. He sold drill bits and backreamers custom-made for directional boring into hostile soil, the chunk rock and cobble that wore traditional bits down to nothing in no time at all.
But the real money wasn’t in oil. It was in commercial construction. Mini-malls and tract-home developments were springing from the ground thick as milkweed back then. By the ’80s Ben had diversified, expanding his operation to include equipment rental and subcontractor services for developers and engineering firms who didn’t want to get their hands dirty. Dirt Devil Drilling was reborn as Dirt Devil Construction. Now he owns a fleet of big rigs—hydraulic track loaders and pipe-layers and articulated dump trucks and trenchers to dig every conceivable category of ditch a man might want. All of them coated in three loud layers of atomic orange paint and decorated with the diabolical silhouette of the devil Ben lifted from his high school alma mater, the Perkins Demons.
He’s made a Texas-sized fortune off people’s need to dig in the dirt.
Beyond the trailer’s windowpane Ben can see his right-hand man Ken Vincent, hardhatted against the heavens, tiptoeing through the track-worn worksite. Eight minutes late and counting. And Vincent is never late. One of the reasons he’s the right-hand man.
Ben pours himself a cup of stale coffee and waits.
A sweat-soaked Vincent comes blustering in, face afluster.
“Sky falling?” Ben says.
Vincent removes the hardhat.
“Tell me,” Ben says.
“What do you want first?”
“Surprise me.”
“The Metropolitan Area Projects oversight board has thinned the herd to two possible coordinators. Dirt Devil and New Horizons.”
The coffee has the consistency of toxic sludge.
“New Horizons will go long,” Ben says. “On everything. Materials. Budget. Timeline. Oswald, over at New Horizons, he can’t even get kickbacks right. He’ll leech the city coffers dry and come begging back for more.”
“It’s a fifty-fifty chance, Ben. I’ll take those odds any day but Sunday.”
“What’s the bad news?”
“There’s a guy on the M.A.P.S. oversight board. Gary Chambliss. Oswald’s a close personal friend of his, he says. They go way back, he says. And Chambliss has got pull with the other board members.”
“He says.”
Ben tosses the Styrofoam cup at the wastebin and commences cracking his knuckles. He’s at that phase in his career when people have started guessing about the lines of succession. Sixty years old. The lame duck years. Ben’s son Reese, the surgeon, can’t hardly stand to set foot in the state of Oklahoma, much less take over the business. Young Vincent could be the heir presumptive. Or Ben could auction the company off to Oswald, the cocksucker. But just thinking about it gives him heartburn. Not if his life depended on it.
“We have to win this, Ken. Little city like this, it doesn’t see a second chance like this very often.”
“Chambliss is going to be a problem.”
“Handle it. Anything he wants. Sooners tickets. Box seats at Texas Stadium. Pussy. Anything.”
Ben cracks the knuckle on his ring finger.
“How did your sit-down with the mayor turn out?” Vincent asks.
“Well, we’re still in the running for this project coordinator spot.”
Vincent waits.
“We reached an unspoken agreement,” Ben eventually says.
“How much?”
“You tell me. Re-election campaign advertising. Run the spreadsheets and give me a number.”
Ben knows that M.A.P.S. represents the best leg up from here. He’s always wanted to go out with a bang. Some illogical, lateral leap. A green-built residential community in the Texas Panhandle. An alternative energy project, maybe, overseas. Someplace exotic. Becca’s never been to Asia. Nor has Cecil. Some late-stage sendoff into the sunset. A thing worthy of their wonder.
“When Dirt Devil bags the M.A.P.S. bid, Ben,” says Vincent, “it will be time to talk about my future.”
Outside, a backhoe blade plows into the ground.
“Yours and mine both, Ken.”
The trailer trembles.