The Rig Lights Across the Road

The co-op

The next week, Jim stopped at the co-op in Kingfisher on his way back from a job, to pick up a sack of dog food and a pair of gloves.

The coffee men were there, the same retired farmers at the same table every morning.

Two of them go to church with Wade. Dale and Gene. Good men. Dale was a pallbearer at Dad’s funeral.

Jim told me that Wade came in while he was paying. He went to get his coffee, and Gene said, friendly enough, “That’s quite a rig across from your place, Wade. That your well?”

And Wade said, “No.” And Dale said, “Whose is it then?” There was a pause, Jim said, long enough that everybody at the table heard it. “My sister’s,” Wade said.

Gene whistled. “Well, how about that. Carrie’s got a well. And you’ve got the home place leased too, don’t you? Same company?” Wade said it was. “So when do they drill yours?” Gene asked.

Wade set his coffee down without drinking it. “Don’t know,” he said. “None of your business anyway.”

He walked out without his feed. Jim said the table was quiet for a long time after the door shut.

He did not come back for coffee the next morning, or the one after that. Dale called Mom on Wednesday to ask if Wade was feeling all right.

Wade had been going to that coffee table every morning for twenty years. It was where Dad went before him. I did not feel good about that either.

The hard hat

When Mom moved to town, I helped her clean out the garage. Up on a high shelf in the back, behind the Christmas boxes, I found Dad’s old hard hat from when he worked on the rigs.

It is aluminum, the old kind, dented on one side and scratched all over. Inside the band, he had scratched his first initial and last name with a nail.

Dad worked rigs one winter, the winter of 1978. Wheat had been bad, and the note on the home place was due, and the oil boom was on, and they were paying good money for anybody who could stand the cold. He roughnecked from November to March on a rig south of Okarche, twelve-hour tours, seven days on and seven off.

Wade was born that February, while Dad was on tour. Mom drove herself to the hospital in Kingfisher.

I took the hard hat home that day and set it on the dashboard of my pickup, and it has ridden there ever since.

Mom’s call

The second Saturday, Mom called me at seven in the morning.

“Carrie,” she said. “Dale Fischer says there’s an oil rig on your place. Across from the home place.” I told her yes ma’am.

There was a long silence on the line. I could hear her kitchen clock ticking.

“And Wade leased the home place,” she said. “Dale says Wade leased it last spring and there was money.”

I closed my eyes and told her yes. “How much money?” she asked.

I had sworn to myself I would not be the one to tell her. I had protected her from it for seven months. But she asked me straight, and my mother raised me not to lie to her face.

“Forty-eight thousand dollars,” I said. I heard her breathe in. Then nothing, for so long that I said her name twice.

“I’m here.” Her voice was very calm. That frightened me more than if she had cried. “Pick me up tomorrow after dark. I want to see it lit.”

I told her she didn’t have to. “Carrie Ann,” she said. “Tomorrow after dark.”