Size Bridge

A pair of guys named Berol and Edwin began working weekends in the oil patch while still in high school. They didn’t draw any pay, but got to stay in swank motels, eat pretty high on the hog, and learn to be a ‘roughneck’ (oilfield worker).

Their boss was an independent wildcatter named Sol Pinner. Like them, he also lived in Dalice. He operated three leases in Central Texas, and two in Southern Louisiana The Texan wells were shallow, about a thousand feet, drilled into oil permeated sandy shales, while the Louisianan wells were thousands of feet deep, and sunk into chalk limestone. The crude dribbled in and was pumped out.

It was important to make a distinction between pumped, and free flowing wells. Free flowing wells were deeper ('gushers' that free flowed were sometimes a mile or more in depth), and tapped into pools of oil under tons of pressure from the soil above them. Once punctured, the oil would flow out of the ground on its own.

On one of the expeditions out of Dalice to the West, Mister Pinner, Berol, and Edwin set out early, and stopped at a cafe to eat breakfast. After they placed their order, Edwin went to the restroom. When he got ready to leave, the door latch was somehow disengaged; the knob only freewheeled. He fiddled with it for ten minutes, thinking maybe he could get it to catch. When it wouldn't, he grew angry. He sincerely tried to break the door down. He would back away from it, then charge and ram it. It wouldn't give. He at last sat on the throne, exasperated, and smoked a cigarette. Surely someone would come eventually. Perhaps the cursed door would open from the outside.

He amused himself by the perusal of graffiti on the wall. One limerick read:

You can shake it,
You can break it,
You can beat it against the wall;
but you got to put it in your pants,
before the last few drops will fall.

At last there was a knock at the door. It was Berol, "Say man, are you okay in there? You're eggs are gettin' cold"

"This mucking door won't open from in here. The knob won't catch. Will it open from out there?"

It did. Edwin had to smirk when he thought about the next poor dastard who went in there.

Mr. Pinner once scraped together enough capital to drill a shallow oilwell.

Berol and Edwin worked on it. The contracted drillers couldn’t find hands that were willing to work for minimum wage. They offered them work when they finished school.

The drillers were brothers, and the younger man had a rock house close to the nearest town, named Caca Springs. He said he’d let them live there rent free if they decided to come work for them. It was in disrepair, but they could fix it up, or just hole up there until they found someplace else to live.

When they finished their studies, the pair went west. On their first day in the oil patch, they went to a parcel of ground called ‘The Montana Floss’. It was to have six wells drilled on it.

A river bisected the land and irrigated both sides. There were two ways in: the front way, and the back way. The heavy equipment went in the back way. The front way went over a questionable bridge that, in the words of Berol, "sang a different tune ever' time you drove across it". The trucks might collapse it. Passengers in a vehicle held their breath when they crossed.

From the middle of it, the broad backs of giant alligator gar could be seen as they crested the surface of the river. Edwin and Berol vowed to bring a case of 'cowboy cool' beer there one weekend, and fish for them, but never got around to it.

There was comic relief on that, their first day of ‘roughneckin’. One of the reasons it was so comical was ignorance. As they stood by the river, snakeheads could be seen popping up, then submerging. Edwin and Berol would later learn there were no venomous water reptiles in those parts.

That day though, they were told to get a wire across to provide lights after dark. The drilling rig was to be run twenty-four hours a day. Since it was private property, there would be no boat traffic that might snag the line. In retrospect, they should have run a trotline in the river, but no one thought of it.

They could have both walked the half mile to the 'bridge of sighs', one of them taken an end of the cord across, then walked back down either bank with it. That would have been just too easy.

A seaworthy barrel was found, and it was decided that Edwin would straddle it. With the inertia from a big push, he would float across. Edwin tied the cord about his waist, gamely mounted the drum, and with a shove from Berol, was on his way. About midstream the cask rolled over, and dumped him in the water. He went under, then came up sputtering and coughing. A snakehead popped up in front of him, and he thrashed madly back to shore.

"Why did'n you just go on across?" , Berol demanded angrily. "You were almost halfway!"

"Cause them water moccasins were in front of me!"

They shelved that idea, and decided to tie the wire around a stick, then fling it across boomerang style. After four tries it worked. They didn’t work that night. The pit had to fill.

Each wellsite had a ‘pit’ dug out near the hole. It was filled with water the mud pump sucked out and hydrostatically forced through the bit. The earth’s cuttings would then be flushed from the hole, and run back into the pit. If the excavation was the correct size, and the targeted depth wasn’t exceeded, the surrounding dirt would be level with the buoyed cuttings when the well was finished.

A dozer man had come out before them, and dug the pits. A small pump at the river's edge filled the pit halfway. It was enough to get started. The portable pump kept going as they worked. After sundown, the stream of water stopped. They all agreed it had probably run out of gas, and chose Edwin to go see.

It was kind of eerie down by the river. Luckily for Edwin, there was enough moonlight so when he removed the gas cap from the pump, he could see it was bone dry. While he was bent over looking, a crashing on the far bank caused him to freeze. The far bank was covered with brush, and it sounded like King Kong was walking through it. Edwin's blood froze.

By moonlight, he saw something emerge from the brush, and enter the water. It looked like a dog. By the feeble lunar light, he could see a wake in the water as whatever it was swam directly toward him. It got out of the water and shook itself off, then walked straight at him. He didn't realize it, but he'd been holding his breath. When he saw that it was only an armadillo, he emptied his lungs with a whoosh! Armadillos have urinally poor eyesight, and this one had no idea he was there until then. When he exhaled, it took off like a rocket. He heard it dislodging rocks with its hooves until it was far away. He doubted if a man could keep up with it. He filled the gas tank on the pump, started it, and went back to the rig.

The next day they hit gravel. It soaked up most of the water, so they took off early to let the pit refill.

On the way out, Berol and Edwin stopped off at the county line store and got some beer. Edwin got two bags of locally produced pigskins. They got in the pickup with Berol driving, popped open cold soda pops to drink ‘til they got home, and started to the house. Edwin was happily munching the cracklings.

"Gimme’ one of those pork foreskins", Berol said.

In most of the bags of skins Edwin had consumed, there were a couple that should have fried a bit longer. He had already encountered one such, and pushed it aside to be thrown away with the bag. Half of it was raw and slimy. He casually fished it out, and gave it to Berol, rare side down.

Berol popped it into his mouth without even looking at it. The air conditioner was on. Berol couldn’t get the window down fast enough. Once he did, he spat the skin out.

"That’d gag a maggot, eh? Snoddiest sum’ beech’ I ever had in my mouth that I didn’t make myself." In between harkings, he gasped, "How can you eat them got’ dam’ nasty things?"

After the sixth well was drilled, and all the drill pipe and hardware stacked on the trailer, they moved to the next site, about thirty miles away. It was after midnight when the tractor truck, and fully laden trailer went out the back way. Berol drove, and Edwin rode shotgun. They figured later the flatbed trailer had around fifty thousand pounds on it.

A deer was seen in the headlights. It stood on the side of the road a couple hundred yards ahead. It stayed there `til they were within twenty feet of it. At the last second before they passed, it bounded across the road. Berol hit the brakes, and all eighteen wheels locked up. The truck and trailer didn't slow any. There was so much weight, a rapid stop was impossible. All the tires stopped turning, but the mass pushed it at the same speed they'd been traveling... it didn’t slow a bit.

They hit the deer, and it went airborne. Edwin's right arm was out of the window, resting on the door. Something wet splashed onto it. He got a rag, and wiped it off by Braille, then chunked the rag out the window.

"What was it?", Berol asked after Edwin's exclamation.

"I don't know, and don't wanna' know", Edwin replied.

The bridge of sighs caved in after Berol and Edwin were long gone. An empty school bus got halfway across, and a front tire broke through. The driver got out and walked on across. Before he was on terra firma, the other front wheel went through. When he reached safety, and looked back in time to see the bridge collapse. The bus was badly smashed.

The river was so shallow there, the water didn't break the fall any. The motor, differential, tires, and transmission were salvaged, then the rest left there to rust in peace.

© Sam E Hime 2001