“What time did you go to bed?” I asked.
“The baseball game was on. It couldn’t have been too late.” He flicked his cigarette into a pool of water and coughed into his hand. Up ahead, the welder on the tack rig was starting his first weld of the day. We were working extralong days, paying out large sums in overtime, trying to meet our contractual deadline.
“What’s going on, Hershel?”
“I ran into a couple of guys in a hotel bar. I showed some bad judgment, that’s all.”
“What were you doing at a hotel bar?”
“Linda Gail and I had a fight. She went out to Hollywood for a screen test.”
“There’s a thermos of coffee in my pickup. We’ll talk about this later.”
I began walking down the right-of-way alongside pipe that was propped on skids all the way to a saltwater bay. Up ahead, I could see two tack-welder rigs and one hot-pass rig moving up the line, the welder’s helpers yanking up the steel pipe clamp that acted as the ground, and running with it after the truck; then the welders crouched again, their shields down, the arc crackling alight when the stringer-bead rod touched the metal.
The oil boom broke the back of the Southern plantation system and was a godsend for working people. There was a tradeoff, though. A mistake on a drilling or seismograph rig or a pipeline could cost a man a limb, an eye, or his life. It happened in a blink, and it happened with regularity. That’s why there were no second chances in the oil patch.
I looked over my shoulder at Hershel. He was sitting in the passenger seat of my pickup, holding the plastic thermos cup to his mouth with both hands. He looked back at me, shamefaced. At noon I told him I would buy him lunch. We made it about three miles down the highway.
“Stop the truck,” he said.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m about to puke my guts. I’ve never been so sick in my life.”
He got out of the vehicle and walked through a field of buttercups into a grove of live oaks, clutching his stomach all the while, his face beaded with sweat. He sat down in the shade, his back against a tree.
I squatted down next to him. “Some people have a violent reaction to alcohol,” I said. “It doesn’t mean they’re weak-willed or lacking in character. In my family, it’s like matches and gasoline.”
I could see he wasn’t listening.
“She called me paranoid,” he said.
“Why would she do that?”
“Because I don’t trust these film people. Because I saw that guy again.”
“Which guy?”
“The one we had trouble with at the dance hall in Opelousas. The one who’s been following us around.”
He was wearing a straw cowboy hat. I took it off his head and placed it crown-down on his lap. He lifted his eyes to mine. His face was beet-red, his breath rank. “Don’t do this to yourself,” I said.
“I won’t,” he said, his hands knotting.
“Let Linda Gail have her way. If this Hollywood overture isn’t on the square, she’ll let it go. But it has to be her choice. In the meantime, we keep the cork in the bottle.” He didn’t reply. I fitted my hand on his shoulder and looked into his face. His shoulder bone felt as sharp as a knife. “Do we have a deal?”
“Yes, sir. How far in the red are we?”
“Seventy-six thousand dollars, plus what we owe my uncle.”
“We’re still afloat, though?”
“We lost the contract for the job in East Texas. I couldn’t pay the up-front money on the pipe. We’re in danger of having our welding machines confiscated.”
He looked seasick. “All because of those dadburned wells outside New Roads. It eats my lunch thinking about it.”
I picked up his hat and put it on his head. “They can kill us, but they can’t change us.”