The next morning, I paid Vance another twenty. Then I drove forty minutes to the oilfield yard where Travis’s company keeps their equipment.
The yard is a big gravel lot full of stacked pipe, rusty machinery, and pickup trucks with mud up to the windows. The pusher, the man who runs the drilling crew and the yard, is Darnell Hodge. He’s about sixty, with a gray beard and a voice like a gravel truck backing up.
I found him in the shop office, eating a honey bun and looking at a clipboard.
“Jo Mercer,” he said. “Travis forget his lunch again?”
“No, sir. I need some pipe. Junk pipe. Drill pipe that’s no good for drilling anymore.”
He set down the honey bun. “What for?”
So I told him. The flood. The crossing. The county’s six months. The coffee can on Vance’s gatepost. Ardith counting out her ones. Tilly asking if they were poor now.
Darnell listened without interrupting. When I was done, he leaned back in his chair until it creaked.
“How much do you need?”
“Four joints to span it. Two more for handrails. They’re thirty-one feet a joint, so I’ll cut them down.”
“And decking?”
“I was going to ask about rig mats.”
Rig mats are big, heavy wooden platforms made of thick oak boards bolted together. Oil companies lay them down on muddy ground so trucks and rigs don’t sink in. When they get too beat up for the rig, they get stacked out back and forgotten.
Darnell stood up and walked to the window. He looked out at the rack behind the shop. There were dozens of joints of gray drill pipe stacked there, some of them bent, some of them with worn threads, all of them painted with a stripe of orange that meant “scrap.”
“Those are no good for us anymore,” he said. “Bad threads. A couple of them are bent. Company’s going to sell them for scrap eventually. Probably get ten cents a pound.”
“I could pay scrap price.”
“You’ll pay nothing,” he said. “I’ll send you six joints and four mats. I’ll send a truck tomorrow.”
“Darnell, you can’t just give away company pipe.”
“Jo, I’ve been running this yard for nineteen years. I know exactly what I can give away. That pipe’s been sitting in the rain since Easter. Nobody’s going to miss six joints of scrap. And if they do, I’ll write it off as donated to a community project and they can take it up with me.”
The next morning, a flatbed truck came bouncing down our road at eight o’clock and stopped just short of where the old crossing had been. Six joints of gray drill pipe and four big oak rig mats were strapped on the back.
The driver was a young guy, maybe twenty-five, with a sunburned neck and a can of Copenhagen in his back pocket. He hopped down and started undoing the straps.
“Where do you want them, ma’am?”
“Right there on the bank is fine. What do I owe for the haul?”
“Nothing. Pusher said no charge.” He pulled a strap free and grinned. “He said his grandkids ride a bus too.”
Ethan Blake is a skilled Creative Content Specialist with a talent for crafting engaging and thought-provoking narratives. With a strong background in storytelling and digital content creation, Ethan brings a unique perspective to his role at TheArchivists, where he curates and produces captivating content for a global audience.
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