Deep in the Heart of Trouble Read Online Free PDF

other.”
    “How much will you pay me?”

chapter THREE
    SWEAT DRIPPED into Tony’s eyes but he never slowed his pace on the grinding wheel. Pumping his foot to keep the grindstone spinning, he pulled the drill bit across the wheel’s surface again and again, raising a burr on the stone that set off an explosion of sparks.
    The wheel sat within calling distance of the rig but far enough away to quit grinding if the crew smelled gas. All it would take to blow them to smithereens was a single spark. Over his shoulder, Tony could see the cable-tool boys bailing out the hole. Soon they’d be finished and would need the drill he was sharpening.
    Pulling his foot from the pedal and the chisel-like bit from the stone, he dipped the tool in and out of a water bucket to cool the steel. The grindstone whirred almost to a stop before he started it up again and laid the chisel flat on the stone, rubbing it side to side.
    After a week on the job, he’d been expecting to have his mettle tested any time, but according to the others, “Grandpa” didn’t allow any hazing, harassing, or fighting on the oil patch.
    Grandpa, the driller in charge of the rig at Fourth and Collin, was thirty years old and got his nickname from the way he hunched over when he walked. Skilled and proficient, he was a patient teacher, and Tony had made up his mind to be the best hand Grandpa had ever brought up through the ranks.
    Most of the other men working the rigs were boomers—here today, yonder tomorrow. All they wanted was a place to sleep, food to eat, and plenty of good whiskey to wash it down. He smiled to himself. A couple just wanted the whiskey.
    Not me, he thought. He had a business to build. A mother and sister he still felt responsible for. It killed him that they had to rely on his half brother’s mercy, so Tony was determined to provide for them as soon as he could. He would work harder than any man in the patch and move up the chain of command accordingly.
    Just a few more rubs and the bit would be ready.
    “Ain’t ya through with that drill yet, Rope Choker?”
    “I’m coming, Gramps,” Tony hollered over the sound of the wheel, giving the chisel a couple more swipes before dousing it in water.
    “Wall, whatchya been doin’ all this time?”
    Once the steel cooled properly, Tony jogged to the eighty-twofoot rig, holding the bit in two hands. Three cables ran up and over a pulley system in the crown block at the top of the derrick. One cable was the drilling line, one was for the bailer, and the third to lower and pull casing.
    Jeremy Gillespie stood high up on the double board about thirtyfive feet above the derrick floor. The eighteen-year-old was wiry, quick, and exceptionally strong. What impressed Tony most, though, was the boy’s sense of timing.
    Grandpa worked fast, expecting Jeremy to handle those cables and to run or pull pipe without missing a stand. The youth took his trips with a semi-controlled madness that made him as competent an attic hand as a person could be. Not surprisingly, he was no boomer, but a local Corsicanan.
    Below him on the derrick floor stood a structure that looked like a giant seesaw. An upright post acted as fulcrum for a horizontal timber. One end of the timber extended over a band wheel. The other end extended into the derrick as far as the center of the floor. Grandpa waited there to inspect the bit.
    “Good as new,” Tony said, holding the bit while Grandpa attached it to a drilling cable suspended from the timber.
    “There we are. You can let her go now.”
    Tony pulled his hands back and watched Grandpa gently lower the bit into a hole until it rested on the bottom. Once the cable showed some slack, he put a mark on the line three or so feet above the floor and put the rocking beam in motion, raising and dropping the bit as it pounded away at the bottom of the hole.
    The chisel would only break up three feet of the black gummy soil before they’d have to stop and bail out all the rock