Читать книгу The Dryline - Jack Grubbs - Страница 13

Broken Wing Ranch

An early morning chill melted beneath the growing sun, allowing the threesome a fine breakfast on the patio. Piled all over the table were hot biscuits, sausage links, crisp bacon, and a large mound of scrambled eggs. The conversation, interrupted only by voracious appetites, focused on the business for the day. Tom’s J-3 sat half a football field’s distance to their front.

“It’s no big deal. I knew you were coming, so I saved the day on my calendar. Even got a five-mile run in while you racked out.” Tom hesitated only long enough to finish off a biscuit and stab another sausage link. “Got the Piper gassed and ready to go. Planned to take you up sometime today anyway.” He nodded toward the plane. “I’ll take you there. You find out what happened and make some decisions with Elam. We’ll be back here before dark.”

Don acquiesced. “All right. It’s a deal. But it’s my treat at the Montgomery Steakhouse tomorrow for breakfast.” He reached for his cell phone. “I’ll tell Elam to pick us up at the airport.”

“Good,” said Susie as she pushed her chair back and stood up. “But it’s warming up fast, so you’ve got fifteen minutes to finish breakfast, grab your gear, and get airborne. I’ll handle the dishes.” Her “timed event” comment came from simple physics: the hotter the temperature, the more runway needed. With two men weighing over one hundred and seventy pounds each, cool conditions were critical on a short runway. The only baggage was Don’s briefcase and cane.

While Don called Elam, Tom dove into the remaining eggs and sausages.

Fifteen minutes later, Susie hugged Don warmly, kissed Tom affectionately, and stepped away from the Cub.

Tom sided up next to the plane and turned to Don. “Here, let me give you a hand.”

“Outta my way.”

The doors on Piper Cubs operate opposite to conventional doors, swinging about a horizontal rod and attaching to the wing above the pilot’s seat. Don moved to the back end of the cockpit and aligned himself with the tandem passenger’s seat. He placed his cane on the floor and, with his hand, lifted his right leg to the foot rung attached to the wing strut. Next he put his right hand on the back of the pilot’s seat and his left hand on the passenger seat. He gathered his strength, grimaced slightly, and hopped off his left foot while simultaneously trying to push off with his right leg. The right leg did not respond. It slipped off the rung, catching the bottom of the strut. Don fell butt-first into the grass.

“Fuck!”

Tom bit into his lower lip while reaching a hand toward Don. He was rebuffed.

“I can get myself up. Fuck,” he repeated. He struggled to get up, almost falling a second time.

Susie tightened her jaws and blinked her eyes rapidly to keep away the tears. She looked away.

Don faced the opening once again. He turned around, back to the plane, and tilted his back to the inside of the plane while pushing up from the steel tubing with the palms of his hands. He made it to the floor and, using every bit of his arm strength, lifted himself into the seat.

Don looked at Tom, sweat trickling into his eyes. “I don’t want help and I don’t want sympathy. Let’s hit the road.”

Tom said nothing. He prepared the plane for takeoff.

Magneto on. Throttle near idle. Pull the prop. Engine start. Tom pulled the wheel chocks while Don held the heel brakes. Once onboard, Tom guided the plane slowly to the east while Susie walked to the west end of the runway. Tom eyed the windsock and relaxed, knowing he had a light west wind. At the end of the runway, the 1940 Piper J-3 Cub circled and stopped.

Full throttle. The propellers bit into the air, driving the plane forward. The extra weight of the new passenger multiplied the effects of an uneven grass runway. Still, as always, the small yellow plane gathered speed and headed toward freedom.

C’mon. C’mon. Tom willed his way down the runway.

Don enjoyed it all.

Tail wheel up. More speed. More lift. The small yellow plane unchained itself from the runway, rising gently into the sky. A pretty woman waved at the brothers as they flew by. Pine trees, grabbing at the wheels, passed thirty feet below them.

Don spoke through the intercom. “Nice takeoff.”

Tom turned around and winked at his brother. They both smiled as the sky opened to their front.

Majestic patterns of dark green pines and beautiful oaks passed beneath them, giving life to the unborn grasses of East Texas. They only needed ten minutes to cover the eighteen miles to Conroe. Tom and Don changed planes at Conroe and flew the Grumman Tiger west to Luling. The coral-blue sky, devoid of even a popcorn cloud, held for the entire trip. Thick stands of pines eventually withered into sparse, open rangeland dotted with mesquite, oak, and pecan trees. Their flight path took them along I-10, a gentle sweep to the northwest, and then generally south-southwest to Luling’s Runway 22. Tom eased the Tiger into a smooth glide while yawing into a 10-knot west wind. The landing, smoother than an escalator ride at the mall, impressed both passenger and pilot.

“Smooth as silk, Tom.”

“Just another perfect piloting job. Like all my others.”

Don smiled, remembering a few other landings. “Yeah, right.”

Don tapped Tom on the shoulder and pointed to a man sitting on the left fender of a ‘91 Cadillac DeVille. “There’s Elam, over by the hangar.”

Elam Duquette, his graying, unkempt hair blowing in the wind, slid forward and walked toward the parking apron and approaching plane. He looked older than his years. A noticeable limp, the result of a fall from an oil derrick, was one of Elam’s personal signatures. More memorable was a broad, kid-like smile stretching beneath a nose that tilted slightly toward his right cheek. He’d won most of his fights, but his proboscis had taken a sizeable number of good shots in the process. God-awful brown chinos hung from his butt. New clothes, a shave, and a haircut would cut at least twenty years from his appearance.

The Tiger rolled to a stop. Tom cut the engine and slid the canopy back. He stepped out onto the wing, grabbing Don’s briefcase and cane.

“Hey, Tom, how the hell you doin’? Give me that briefcase.” Elam reached upward.

“Good, Elam. Got some bad cargo though.” Tom pointed at Don.

Tom jumped to the ground, shook Elam’s hand, and then walked around to Don’s side of the plane.

With the canopy completely behind him, Don found it relatively easy to stand up. He lifted his right leg over the side, took his cane from Tom, and stepped onto the wing. It only took the support of Tom’s hand to help him to the ground.

Don, buoyed by his triumph over the plane, shook Elam’s hand and grinned. “Whew. Pretty damn hot for December.”

“Sure is.” Elam slapped the fender of his Cadillac. “But Betsy’ll cool you off real quick.”

Elam, briefcase in hand, led the two brothers toward the waiting Betsy. He spoke out loud to himself. “Got both the Seiler boys with me. What an honor.” He transitioned right into the events for the day. “We’ll grab some coffee at Buchanan’s. I’ll bring you up to date on what I know about Juan. I talked to the Luling police, and they’ll let us see the preliminary investigation around noon. They called me because my cell phone number was in his wallet. We’ll head to City Market for lunch.”

Buchanan’s coffee was piping hot and only five minutes old. Delicious. Wooden tables and chairs sat on top of wide, 1890-vintage pine floorboards. The walls were painted in vertical stripes of red, white, and blue, and the long counter parallel to the east wall of the café easily handled ten round, swivel-top stools. Buchanan’s still offered fountain Cokes and black cows for a quarter; milkshakes were a buck.

“He died from a fall off that transmission tower north of town just off of 128,” said Elam as he swallowed hot coffee. “Been drinking and tried to climb the damn thing and fell.”

Don said, “I’ve done stupid shit like that many times, but I never did it alone.” He took a quick breath, his face showing an unsure thought. “Who was with him?”

“Can’t say anybody. At least, nobody’s reported anything. All I know is a rancher saw Juan’s car and thought it strange. Checked it out and found him sprawled out on the concrete.”

Unpleasant images formed in Tom’s mind. “What kind of injuries did he have?”

Elam thought it an unnecessary question, but let it go. “Don’t know that either. I did hear one of the cops mention his skull was broken. Like I said, they’ll let us see the report around noon.”

Tom asked, “Can we take a look at his body?”

“Shit, I guess so, if you want to. Who wants to see a dead body?”

“It’s something I do if I get involved before a body has been disposed of. Doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it helps me sort things out.”

Tom looked at his watch. He wanted the morning coffee social ended and sorting out Juan’s death started. He thought, five more minutes and we need to go.

Elam changed subjects mid-stream. He leaned forward, both hands squeezing the sans-handle coffee mug, and smiled at Don. “Got a new girlfriend. Early forties and the prettiest one I’ve ever dated. Very nice woman.”

Don shook his head. “Elam, how does someone your age stay so preoccupied with women? You’re one beat up SOB, but your dick is always raring to go.”

All three laughed.

“Well, yeah, could be. But this one, she’d be a keeper if I weren’t such a vagabond. Still, I might be bad merchandise, but I do know class from the feminine side. She’s got it.”

Don swallowed and leaned forward, looking Elam in the eye. “Elam, compared to you, a water buffalo has class. I hope she didn’t see you in that crap.” He sat up and finished his coffee.

Before Elam could rebut Don’s accusation, Tom interrupted. “Coffee’s gone and I’ve got a trial on Thursday. We need to wrap this up today. Before going to the police station, let’s check out where Juan died. I’ve got the bill.”

Tom placed seven dollars on the table and led his partners into the street.

They drove out on County Road 128. Small homes and businesses comingled with the pumpjacks dotting the countryside. The sweet smell of crude oil, reaching back to the glory days of the 1920s, filled their nostrils.

“That’s it.” Elam pointed toward their right front.

Elam turned right on the dirt road and drove toward the tower. Fine dust billowed behind them. He pulled up some twenty feet from the tower base, stretching and cocking his neck to gaze up the length of the thin steel pyramid.

Once out of the car, each man studied the tower, with both Don and Elam juxtaposing personal thoughts of climbing oil rigs against Juan’s death.

“I fell off some scaffolding on an ocean rig in Alaska. Fixing me up was when the docs ran into my MS.” Don returned in his mind some twenty years.

“Crazy son of a bitch. At least when I got tore up on the derrick I was doing what I had to do.” Just as Don did, Elam retreated into memories. “Never did I go up on a rig for fun.”

Tom ignored the conversation and walked toward the nearest concrete footing. Don and Elam followed.

Tom stopped at the edge of the concrete and looked upward. Rising nine hundred feet above the men, the tower, marked by triangular patterns of steel trusses, stretched into the bluish-white haze of the late morning sky. Slowly tracing the near leg from its pinnacle to the ground, Tom visualized from where someone might have jumped or fallen. At the terminus of his gaze, directly at his feet, was a small, circular spot on the concrete. Tom bent over, hands on his knees, and studied the spot.

“Looks like blood.” Tom lowered himself to his right knee. He leaned closer to the dark spot, his face no more than twelve inches away. “Not much, though. Strange. It’s dry but pretty fresh.” He turned his head toward Don. “This must be where your worker hit the ground.”

Tom pulled a camera from his stuffed shirt pocket and started taking photographs.

“Damn shame. He was a good kid,” Don sighed dejectedly.

Tom stood up and took a mechanical pencil and small spiral notepad from his shirt pocket. He sketched a rough site plan of the tower footprint, including the dirt road terminating at the base. He added the location of the blood found on the concrete footer and made a note concerning the amount of blood found. On a second page he made a two-dimensional sketch of the tower.

Elam was confused at Tom’s attention to detail. This isn’t a fucking murder case, he thought. It was simple to Elam. A worker gets killed playing around—get a new worker.

The Luling police station was on East Pierce Street. On the way, Don and Elam discussed the status of their invention and the interminable delays in obtaining a patent. Tom studied his notes in the back seat.

“You don’t look much like next of kin, but what the hell, he’d be glad somebody cared about him.” Sergeant Archie Hamblen stapled the copied three-page incident report and handed it to Elam. “The medical examiner said no to releasing a post-mortem to you. If you want, you can see the body at Breuner’s Funeral Home on South Laurel.”

Tom asked, “Have you got the yellow pages? I’d like to call them first.”

Archie, notwithstanding the look of a junkyard dog, was one friendly cop. “I’ll do you better. I’ve got the number right here. Only had to call it a few times, but you remember funeral home numbers the first time around. Hang on, I’ll give them a call for you.”

“Let’s eat first,” said Elam with a twinge of urgency. “I won’t be hungry after seeing the kid.”

Tom and Don agreed. They left the police station shortly before noon and headed for Davis Street and City Market. Elam caught a lucky break just as he turned onto Davis Street. A car pulled out of a parking space in front of City Market. He quickly turned in to the vacant space, a slight smile of conquest on his face. They got out of the car and walked through the front door toward one of the most succulent aromas known to mankind.

City Market is a Texas culinary gemstone. Long lines are the norm and reach to a back dining room, sometimes out the door to the sidewalk along Davis Street. The front half of the counter area offers souvenir knickknacks, and the back serves as the watering hole for customers. Wooden booths fill opposite walls and numerous benches occupy the center of City Market. Entrance and exit doors protect the cooking grills in the kitchen where Frankie, Ray, and Alex banter with customers ordering sausage, brisket of beef, pork, onions, and half loaves of bread. Iced tea or a good Texas beer from the watering hole closes out the main menu; pecan patties make for a great dessert.

The men joined the queue and slowly edged their way to a square counter area in the main dining room. After they sat down with their food, Tom swallowed some brisket, sliced onion, and bread, chased them with his iced tea, and then focused the other two on the project. “OK, last night we didn’t get much into the operational details of the JETS. How about starting with the macro implication of this thing? We’ll get into more nuts and bolts later.”

Elam started first. “What do you know about stripper wells, Tom?”

“Not much. They’re wells that don’t have a lot of oil. Most aren’t worth the cost of pumping. That’s about it.”

Elam continued. “That’s right. And cost is the big factor. If the price of oil is low and pumping it from stripper wells is expensive, then forget ‘em. But suppose there’s a device that pumps the oil cheaper than anything else out there, and,” Elam pointed his index finger into the air, “suppose the cost of oil rises above what the world has been used to over the years.”

Don interjected, “Suppose, hell. OPEC has bounced it all over the place. Soon as the price went over a hundred bucks a barrel I knew the United States was in deep kimchi. Assholes like Chavez in Venezuela are trying to strangle us.” His eyes closed slightly and a furrowed V formed along his forehead. “If the Mideast becomes destabilized—and it’s a powder keg at best—there’s no knowing what the price will be. Add to that the fact that we aren’t doing shit to develop additional oil sources. It’ll go down from time to time, but in the long run, let’s say at least another twenty years until alternative energy is achieved, and the curve will go up.”

Tom took another bite as Elam threw out some financial tidbits. “Don’s dead on. That’s where we come in. For starters, it’s not just about our consumption of oil in the states, no sir. The Chinese and Indians have jumped in with both feet. Everybody’s using it like it’s going out of style. I’m telling you, consumption is going to go ballistic. Check out the quarterly profits of our large oil companies. It’s un-fucking-believable. With oil prices soaring, our ability to pump cheap oil with JETS turns every stripper well into a gold mine. From mom and pop to the major oil companies, we can be in the money.” Elam began to get excited. “Don and I checked with the Texas Railroad Commission. It’s those folks who monitor and regulate the state oil industry. Of the 350,000 oil and gas wells in Texas, some 115,000 stripper wells pump less than ten barrels a day and another 30,000 pump between ten and a hundred. The owners only keep the small ones running because Texas will make them plug the wells if they don’t produce at all. That costs money they don’t have. We can make money for each one of them—and for us. Not just here in Texas, but the rest of the country and everywhere else. There are seventy million stripper wells around the world.”

Tom listened intensely as the full potential of their system took hold. It would be a new experience to join the ranks of people who considered money by putting four to five additional zeroes before the decimal point.

Elam added, “Let’s say that we could get access to only 5 percent of those wells. That’s 3.5 million wells. We could pump the oil ourselves, lease the system to users, or sell it outright to a large company. Of course, anything we sell to a company would come with a clause for residual compensation in direct correlation with the amount of oil produced.”

“So what’s your bottom line?” Tom said and swallowed more tea.

“As conservative as we can be, it would come to no less than one thousand dollars a well. Tom, we’re looking at 3.5 billion dollars.” He grinned that shit-eating grin of his. “At a minimum.”

Tom responded, “You could almost live on that amount and the government would make its own fortune.” He chuckled slightly as he processed the difference between a pipe dream and the one-in-a-million jackpot.

“No shit,” said Elam and Don in unison.

Don declared, “Young troopers, we’re in place for a big payoff.”

Tom’s last bite disappeared. He chewed, swallowed, and answered, “I agree. When we head back home, Don and I can work on improving your design. What I heard last night tells me that your basic concept is good and we just need to brainstorm the shortcomings.” Tom smiled as he stood up. “I can help you. But first, lunch is over. It’s time to visit your worker.”