14. The Oil Business

Nqong awoke to the racket of traffic overhead—big trucks, they sounded like, traveling fast. His back hurt from sleeping on the floor of the culvert underneath the highway. He had no idea how long he had slept, but when he’d crawled into the culvert it had been night dark outside and pitch black inside. Now it was bright outside the culvert, and inside it was light enough to see that he’d been sleeping on a mat of dry, hard dirt. He tried standing up, bumped his head on the metal corrugated ceiling, and felt a spider drop onto the back of his neck. He crouched back down and crawled like a crab out into the sunlight, dragging his valise. He had eaten all the food he’d brought with him, and he was hungry and thirsty as well as dirty and sore.

He stood up in the ravine beside the highway and climbed up the bank to a field of sand, rocks, dirt, and trash. He took time to stretch in all the thirty-six ways, then crossed the field until he reached a rusty barbed-wire fence. Out beyond the fence a herd of mechanical monsters lifted and lowered their heads, as if they were drinking from the earth, with a grunt of hard work and screeching pain. Scattered over the landscape, towers of metal scaffolding reached up and pointed at the cloudless sky. Men in hard hats moved about like ants at work.

Nqong lifted his valise and walked beside the fence until he reached a road, a gate, a cattle-guard, a large sign that said Maricopa Wells and a smaller sign that said Private Property Keep Out. The gate was wide open, so Nqong passed carefully over the cattle guard and walked in along the road in the direction of the men working with their machines. Nqong had never been much of a reader, but he knew what “Keep Out” meant. Still, he was hungry, and the least any of these men could do would be to tell him to look elsewhere for a hand-out or someplace he could buy food. He had money in his valise; he didn’t know how much.

When he reached a parking lot full of dusty pickup trucks and banged-up autos, he was stopped by a tall man in jeans, work shirt, and baseball cap, who said, “What do you want?”

Nqong smiled and replied, “I want something to eat.”

The man nodded. “We got a lunch counter. Right now she’s got doughnuts and coffee.”

“Anything. I can pay.”

“It’s free.”

“Okay.”

“But it’s for employees only.”

“Oh. Well, can you tell me—”

“You want a job? I’m hiring. You look kind of old. Can you work?”

“I can work.”

“Okay. Go see my foreman, that heavy-set guy over there, in the red shirt. Name’s Bevis. Over there by that derrick. He’ll put you to work, and he’ll keep an eye on you to be sure I’m getting my money’s worth. Come see me in my office at the end of the day and we’ll do the paperwork.” He pointed to a mobile home at the far end of the parking lot. “I’m paying twenty dollars a day. Any questions?”

“The doughnuts and coffee?” said Nqong.

The man shook his head. “Put in an hour’s work first. Tell Bevis I said to give you a coffee break after you show him you can work. You ever work on an oil crew before? What’s your name, by the way?”

“Nqong.”

“Weird name. Okay, Kong. Give me your bag. I’ll keep it in my office.”

Nqong handed the man his valise and said, “What’s your name?”

“You just call me Yes Sir.”

“Weird name,” Nqong said.

“Nah. My name’s Mick.” Mick offered his hand, and Nqong shook it. Mick grinned and Nqong grinned back, mostly because he was hungry. “Go on, now. Go see Bevis and put in a day’s work. It’s ten o’clock, so I’ll have to dock you two hours.” Mick turned and walked back to his office.

Nqong walked over to the foreman and said, “Are you Bevis?”

“Who are you?” said the fat man in the red shirt.

“Nqong. Mick said you’d put me to work. And I get a coffee break after I show you I can work.”

“Jesus,” Bevis said. “Okay. Tell you what. To start off, I want you to climb up to the top of this derrick here and check the water table. Not all the way to the top. Just to the platform near the top. Check the water table and come down and tell me where it’s at. Got that?”

Nqong shook his head.

“What’s a matter? You scared of heights?”

Nqong shook his head again. “The water table’s under the ground,” he said.

Bevis laughed. “Okay, I’m glad you didn’t fall for that one. Means you’ve worked as a roughneck before. Right?”

“No,” Nqong said. “But I’ve spent my life working with water engineering. Pumps. Valves. Wells, pipes, mud, temperature control, water chemistry. I don’t know the oil business.”

“Okay, sounds like you know machinery. I’m going to make you Herbie’s new worm.”

“Worm?”

“Also known as floorhand. Shittiest job on an oilfield, or anywhere else, practically. Herbie’s the motorman on that derrick, and he’ll tell you what to do. Hope you have a strong back. And you be careful, you hear? One accident and you’re fired. Any questions so far?”

“Can we talk about the coffee break?”

Bevis nodded. “Less go.” They walked together to a shack behind Mick’s office. The shack had a counter, with a small kitchen in the back. A slab of concrete in front of the counter accommodated three picnic tables with benches. A leather-faced middle-aged woman turned around in the kitchen, leaned forward on the counter, and said, “You already had your doughnuts, Bevis.”

“Relax, Tillie. This here’s King Kong, new guy. Give him three doughnuts and…” He turned to Nqong and said, “Coffee?”

“Just water,” Nqong said.

“Three doughnuts, one coffee, Tillie. And a glass of water.”

Bevis and Nqong sat at one of the tables, and Tillie brought them their snack. Bevis snagged one of the doughnuts and the Styrofoam cup of coffee. The two men said nothing until Nqong had finished his second doughnut. Then he asked, “Do we get lunch, too?”

Bevis said, “Hope you like tacos. That’s all Tillie knows how to cook. You’ll take your lunch break when Herbie tells you to. Between one and three, usually. Less go. I’ll introduce you to Herbie. One word of advice: do whatever Herbie tells you to do, but don’t let him give you any shit. And I should tell you: Herbie doesn’t like black people.”

“I just look black,” Nqong said. “I’m not really a black man.”

“Yeah, and Herbie just talks like an asshole. He’s not really a bad guy.”

Nqong walked over to the derrick and told the man named Herbie, “I’m your new worm. My name’s Nqong.”

“As in Congo, boy?” Herbie said.

“If you prefer.”

“I’d prefer you go to the tool shed and get yourself a tin hat. And bring me back a Stillson wrench. You better be ready to work, old man.”

That afternoon felt like the hardest stretch Nqong had ever done. Herbie had him lifting spools of cable that sprang lose and whipped all over the derrick floor, then made him re-coil the cable and put it back where it came from. He had to take machinery apart to clean and oil it, then put it back together, lifting fifty-pound gears and wheels. He scrubbed the iron floor, which appeared to have had its last scrubbing before the invention of steel wool. He replaced missing bolts up and down the structure of the derrick.

“Okay, Congo, it’s after three o’clock. If you expect to get your taco, you better shag ass over to the counter before Tillie runs out.”

Nqong went to the food shack, and Tillie told him he was too late for tacos because she was out of meat, but she gave him a bowl of beans and a couple of greasy hard tortillas, served room temperature, the room being an outside terrace in the full heat of a dry summer day. Tillie joined him at the picnic table, gave him a Styrofoam cup of lemonade, and said, “You got a place to stay tonight, King Kong?”

Nqong shook his head.

“I got room in my apartment, if you’re interested. Just till you find a place of your own.”

“Apartment?”

“My place. Where I live, for the time being. In town, Maricopa. Hello?”

“That’s kind of you. I have some money. I can pay you.”

“That’s okay, hon. First night’s on the house. Now you better get back to work, or Herbie will have my ass. Yours too. Go on, scoot.”

———

“Okay, Congo, quitting time,” Herbie said at the end of the work day. He dropped the Stillson wrench from his hand onto the iron deck with a loud clatter and said, “Pick up and put away all the tools, and straighten up the area before you leave. See you tomorrow.” He turned and walked toward the parking lot.

The sun was still in the sky, and the day was blazing hot. Nqong’s shirt was drenched with sweat, his shoulders and back ached, his knuckles were bruised, and his hands were rubbed raw. He longed for the cool, muddy water of the creek that gurgled in the forest above the water house. He missed Hope Springs.

He used a wheelbarrow to take all the scattered tools back to the shed, where he hung some of them on the walls and laid the rest on the work bench. He put his hard hat on top of the stack by the door. He parked the wheelbarrow behind the shed and walked slowly to the food counter, where he found Tillie wiping down the picnic tables.

“There you are,” she said. “Shall we go?” She wiped her face with her arm.

“I have to go see Mick. About some paperwork, he said.”

“Mick? Mick left half an hour ago, hon. You’ll have to see him in the morning. Come on. My truck’s in the lot out front.”

Nqong said, “Is Mick’s office locked? He has my bag. All my stuff. My money.”

“Don’t worry, babe. Yes, the office is locked, and your bag and stuff will be there in the morning. Mick must’ve just spaced you out.”

Tillie took her rag into the snack shack kitchen, then came out front and used a broomstick to unlatch a plywood shutter and let it down over the front of the shed, where she locked it with a padlock. She locked the door to the shack with another padlock, stuck out her elbow, smiled at Nqong, and said, “Shall we?”

He took her arm tentatively. “I’m filthy,” he said.

“Not to worry. I’m used to the way roughnecks smell. I kind of like it, actually.”

“I have some clean clothes, but they’re locked in Mick’s office.”

“You’ll have a nice cool shower when we get home,” Tillie told him. “While you’re washing up I’ll do a load of laundry in the basement, and we’ll throw your stinky clothes in with mine, so they can get acquainted. By the way, I keep a spare toothbrush. For company.”

———

That evening Tillie fixed Nqong an Italian dinner, Maricopa style. Spaghetti, with sauce—ground beef, ketchup, Worcestershire Sauce, and garlic. She also served shredded iceberg lettuce swimming in Wishbone dressing, and some sourdough bread she was saving in the freezer for some special occasion. Plus a bottle of red wine, which she had picked up at Payless on the way home. Nqong ate like a vacuum cleaner and accepted seconds, plus another tumbler of wine.

“I don’t have anything for dessert,” she said. “You want some coffee? No trouble, it’s instant.”

“No thank you,” Nqong said with a shy smile. “This was the best meal I’ve had in a long time.”

Tillie grinned and shrugged. She was a handsome, stocky woman, with hair like straw, a sun-weathered face, and lines around her eyes that showed she had laughed a lot, and cried a lot, too. “I’m no fancy chef,” she said, “but I feel it’s important to eat good food. If I’d known you were coming, I’d of bought the fixings for something a little more elegant.”

“Bevis told me the only thing you could cook was tacos.”

“He said that? Bevis is so full of shit.” Tillie shook her head. “The reason they get tacos every day is because it’s the cheapest meal I can cook, and Mick won’t pay me to make decent sandwiches or salads. I’ve cooked for a lot of work crews before. Cookhouse breakfast and suppers for loggers up in redwood country, lunch counters in Walgreen’s up and down the coast till they phased out lunch counters, plus short-order chef jobs in diners from Fresno to Barstow. I don’t know what I’m doing stuck in Maricopa dishing up tacos day after day. It’s steady work I guess, and I’m getting a little bit old to travel around hunting for work, but still.”

She pushed her chair back from the table and stood up. Nqong started to rise, but she told him, “Sit. I just need to get a smoke.” She stepped to the counter next to the stove and picked up an ashtray, a pack of Camels, and a book of matches. She returned to her chair, sat down, and offered Nqong a cigarette. He shook his head. She lit up, waved out her match, sucked hard on the cigarette, and asked through a cloud of smoke, “Hey, is your name really King Kong? It’s not, really. What’s your real name?”

“Nqong.”

“Inngg Kong?”

“Close enough.”

“I gotta be honest with you, hon, that’s one weird name. Oh well, takes all kinds.” She inhaled another dose of smoke.

“Tillie is your real name?”

“Nope. Matilda. But I don’t use it, because talk about a weird name.”

“Matilda is a beautiful name. I was born at Mathilda Springs.”

“Where’s that? Where are you from, anyway? Are you African or something? What are you?” She took another deep drag from her Camel.

“Wanqong. Australian. Matilda is the most beautiful name there is.”

“Oh, right. I bet it reminds you of some girl?”

“Some beetle.”

Tillie tapped the ash off her cigarette and reached across the table to hold Nqong’s hand. “You’re a funny one, all right.” They sat together, smiling at each other across the table, while Tillie finished her cigarette. She stubbed it out in the ashtray, and said, “Okay, Inngg Kong, you have a seat in the living room while I do up these dishes. Then we better get to bed. Work starts early at Maricopa Wells.”

“I will sleep on the living room floor,” Nqong offered.

“Hah.” Tillie shook her head with a mock frown. “No-ho way, Mr. King Kong. Are you kidding?”