M.A. Lee: Texas Sun ~ Opening and Links

Texas Sun ~ Means. Motive. Opportunity

The grime of a working oil field draws together people at odds with the summer heat and with each other.

In the heady flush of a new romance, Nedda tries to ignore the blazing tensions, yet troubling shadows have gathered.

Then Death makes his entrance, and the grim pressures erupt.

LINKS Below.

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Opening ~ 1 ~ Means

The morning blasted, bright white.

Colfax Ingram grabbed Nedda’s arm and jerked her behind the cab of the big Army truck as a second explosion shuddered the oil patch.

Shouts erupted. Debris rained onto the steel truck hood. She cowered against the mud-caked wheel as pings and clangs and clunks broke over them. Colfax crouched beside her until the debris stopped pinging on the Liberty truck. Then he leaped to his feet and ran toward the yelling men.

Nedda straightened and braced a hand on the steel heated by the Texas sun. She dreaded looking toward the drilling floor.

Her tall Texan, closer to the explosion and danger, remained upright.

The oil derrick remained erect, ninety feet into the blue sky, not yet hazed with summer heat. Leroy clung to the top and shouted down.

Her Hank deflected questions from Denny, the youngest roustabout. Colfax loped toward them.

The motorman Fuller levered up from the engine. He had flung himself across the equipment that ran the bit chipping deep into the ground. Centered under the derrick, O’Hara swung a chain to release it from the pipe.

Beyond the planked drilling platform, the job foreman Rhode Tabbert and the driller Witt straightened from their crouch. They’d been shack-side of the platform, closest to the explosion, and the shockwave had rolled over them first. Tab brushed dirt from his shoulders. Witt spat on the ground then peered at the derrick’s top. He gestured at Leroy then turned back to Tab.

Heart beating again, Nedda looked for the explosion’s cause.

Splintered planks, twisted pipes, and warped tin littered the ground beyond the derrick, flung outward from a churned-up crater in the desert floor. The tool shack had disappeared.

She came around the Liberty’s front and perched on the heavy steel bumper. Her movement caught Hank’s attention. He tapped his head then pointed at her. She sighed then fetched his battered hat from the cab and crammed it on her head. Then she picked her way to the derrick, watching the ground to avoid curled pieces of knife-sharp tin and shards of splintered wood.

The explosion had catapulted the drilling pipes stacked beside the tool shack. Twisted and bent, they littered the desert. None had landed near the truck.

As she approached, Leroy began his climb down. At 90 feet in the air, he more than doubled the distance from the truck to the destroyed shack, but he reached the drilling platform before she reached Hank and the others.

She stepped over a twisted and torn pipe, unusable. The drilling would have to stop now.

Hank McElroy shouted at the motorman. Fuller bent to the engine. It sputtered to a stop, leaving a strange silence.

Broken by raised voices. Tab and Witt, arguing. Again.

Nedda reached the men. Without looking, Hank stretched back his hand. She took it, and he drew her to his side.

Colfax started around the drilling platform.

“Stop, boy,” O’Hara snapped.

He stopped, but the twitch of his shoulders expressed disagreement. “The danger is over.”

“Let O’Hara go first,” Hank said.

“I’ll go with you.” Of an age with Colfax, Denny had revived with the excitement.

“Ain’t no reason,” O’Hara groused. “Ain’t nothing left.” They all looked at the cratered epicenter of the explosion.

Fuller wiped his hands on a greasy rag. “No more drillin’ without new pipe.” He nudged a warped pipe with his boot. “Can’t use nothin’ of what we had.”

“When does the next train run?” Hank asked, a question Tab should answer, but he was ensnarled in another argument with Witt.

None of the roustabouts looked at the two men who had charge of the oil patch. “Thursday,” Fuller said.

Hank wiped the sweat trickling down his temple. He gave a short nod, moving ahead without Tab and Witt. “I’ll telephone the office to send a shipment.”

“You do that.” The motorman rubbed his stubbly jaw as he looked over the debris field. “I guess we’ll clean up the mess.”

Denny groaned.

“I’ll be back to help after I contact the office.” Hank turned toward the truck.

“Wait.” Nedda dragged down his hand and dug her brogans into the sand of the desert. “What caused the explosion?”

Hank stopped. He gave no sign of the need for haste, only a willingness to accept her question as necessary. In the three weeks since they’d met in New Orleans, not once had he slighted her input, treating her like a partner as well as a beloved, a courtship that she preferred over flowery words.

O’Hara sighed heavily. He wiped his brow then re-settled his hat. “Might’ve been me. Weren’t no problems with the refining barrels this morning, but I might should’ve checked it closer.”

“How much oil had you refined?”

“Enough to run the engine for a week. The diesel we had were running low.”

“That’d account for the second explosion,” Fuller mused.

“Yep.”

“Then what the f—beggin’ yer pardon, ma’am.” Denny flushed under his work grime. The bruising sliding under his right eye flared purple. “What the heck caused the first explosion?”

“What indeed?” Hank sounded grim.

He had a right to be grim. The oil patch was nearly a year beyond the predicted two years of drilling. In the last few months one problem after another had plagued the roustabouts, troubles enough that Texas Petroleum and Refining had first sent Rhode Tabbert as foreman to speed up drilling and then sent Hank to determine if the patch was worth further investment.

And Hank had asked Nedda to accompany him. Curious about field drilling and pleased at his invitation, she accepted. Colfax came with her, off for the summer months from the Sacred Heart Academy.

“Tab, get over here,” Hank shouted.

The argument stopped.

The foreman came, trailed by the driller who ran the oil patch.

Nedda hadn’t determined the problem between the two men. Tab had a forceful personality and snapped his orders, but he worked alongside the men. He didn’t have the experience of Witt and O’Hara, but he knew engines and stringing pipe as well as Fuller. Witt’s nasal twang edged across bone, but he’d grown up drilling oil. What he didn’t know wasn’t worth knowing. He didn’t lay about with his orders. Tab irked the man, and Witt didn’t let a day pass without a handful of arguments.

She glanced around the gathered men. Luck had saved them from injury, but the explosion could have seriously harmed one or more of them.

Or killed one of them.

Cold ran over her, dissipating the summer heat.

While Hank spoke with Tab and the roustabouts, she turned to Colfax. “Are you coming to town?”

“I’ll stay here. Give them a hand with clean-up.” He grinned, a sudden shift of his oft-solemn face. His grey eyes had a curious gleam. “Maybe find out how crude oil is turned into diesel.”

“You do that.”

He gave an abrupt nod then turned away, punching Denny high on his arm. The two trotted away to gather ruined pipes.

Hank caught her hand. “We’re going.”

When her tall Texan moved, he dropped that slow drawl and went. She had to lengthen her stride to keep up.

Tab’s presence at the truck surprised her, but it made sense. The foreman would know the number of supplies the office would need to replace.

Hank boosted her to the driver’s seat and climbed up as she slid to the middle. Tab waited at the grill to prime the engine. He stared at the oil patch.

Hank fiddled with the gears. “Crank it.”

Tab gave three hard, fast turns. The Liberty’s engine sputtered then caught with a revving roar. As he came around the engine cab, Nedda opened the passenger door. He climbed in as the big motor sputtered then settled into a muted roar.

Hank leaned forward and unclamped the wind shield. He motioned, and Tab copied him. With the glass down, the wind from their movement would cool the building heat.

“What was it this time?”

Tab grunted. “Same old, same old.”

Nedda caught a breath, but Hank said nothing. He turned the army truck in a tight circle then headed for the track that aimed for the town. The Liberty bounced over rocks, jostling them on the hard seat. She leaned into Hank to avoid bumping Tab. The breeze tugged at her hat, and she dragged it off her head to hold in her lap.

Hank didn’t wait long. “Tell me.” He raised his voice over the motor and wind. “Or is he still on about giving Stevie’s money back?”

“That, too.”

“What’s first?”

Tab watched the scrub of the passing desert, wattle and mesquite, the tall blooms of agave cactus and clumps of creosote brush. A tall bird streaked from under a mesquite and ran across the track to disappear in burnt red rocks. “Witt thinks we’re drilling in the wrong place.”

“Now he agrees with you? Nearly three years on this patch, he’s argued that there’s oil in the hole, and now he decides you’re right?”

“We’re not as deep as we could be. We’ve had bad luck. Drill bit broken. Engine giving out or blown to bits. Pipes the wrong size. Other patches aren’t having these problems. We should strike soon.”

“Tab, what are you saying?” Hank shifted gears as the truck labored up a rise. “Now you think there’s oil here?”

Tab compressed his lips and looked back at the desert. “I think it interesting that Witt wants to find another patch on the same day that the shack exploded.”

“Sabotage?!”

Tab shrugged. “It’s a dirty word, but it fits.”

“Witt has brought in wells for us before.”

“I’m not accusing. Maybe it is coincidence.”

“You think Witt and O’Hara—.”

“I don’t know what to think, and that’s truth, Mac. My gut’s telling me, told me all morning, that we’re close. It’s deep and massive, and we just need faith.”

“Your gut’s telling you to keep the faith?”

Tab huffed a laugh. “Yep, exactly that. And for you to use the `phone at Doc Turner’s.”

“Not the depot?”

“Nor the grocer’s,” Nedda added, naming the most public of the three telephones in town.

She said nothing about the explosion. She kept quiet whenever Hank talked with Tab about the oil business. Conversation about Texas P & R didn’t concern her. She did question whatever affected Ingram & Son Investments, for she had responsibility and interest in that company. In her travels with her late employer Hyatt Ingram, she’d gleaned information about leases and mineral rights and contracts. She knew finances and the business side of petroleum. High up in Texas P & R, Hank knew both sides of the oil industry.

Convinced of oil in west Texas, Texas P & R used science and common sense to sink three wells in the vastness of Hartman County. The first well, close to the town clustered around the depot, had come in with a gush and enough oil to pay for its investment. It ran slow, though, and sputtered, promising a bust rather than a boom. Buzzard No. 2, dry for two years, was abandoned to throw all efforts at the third site. Buzzard No. 3 gave just enough oil to promise more further down.

If Buzzard No. 3 came in, it would be the first benefit the town had seen since its founding in the far-off dry past of the Chichuahuan desert. The land didn’t welcome them, producing nothing in soil baked by a blazing sun into dry rock and sand. The people depended on trucked-in food to survive. Only nocturnal animals and spiny or thorny plants thrived in Hartman County.

At Nedda’s warning about the gossip that spread when people overheard telephone conversations, Hank swore.

The Liberty truck jerked over a rock and ground to the top of the rise, offering a wider view of the desert.

He leaned forward, glaring at Tab. “What was the argument this morning?”

“Witt wants to move a mile to the south.”

“We don’t have a mineral rights agreement one mile to the south.”

“No, we don’t. And we’re not likely to get it. At least, I’m not. Land’s owned by Collier.”

“The railroad clerk?”

Nedda’s wince echoed Hank’s. Mr. Collier worked for the railroad. A lonely man with a lonely occupation, time had aged him early. He remained protective of the people in “my town”. When Hank had arrived, Mr. Collier approached him with complaints that the people who’d signed leases to Texas P & R had been duped.

“We can offer him an improved lease.”

“He won’t sign it.” Tab sounded sure, his gaze on a trail of Texas longhorns maneuvering through a thicket of mesquite. “He’s not an easy one to talk to.”

“If the oil comes in,” Nedda said quietly, “he’ll be a wealthy man. Have you pointed that out? It would matter to some.”

“Don’t see it mattering to Collier,” Hank rebutted. “He likes being cranky and lonely.”

She glanced at Hank. How had he missed—? She shook her head. Sometimes men missed the obvious. “He’s in love with Millie Donovan.”

“So?”

“She’s in love with the idea of leaving Hartman County. She knows an oil man will eventually leave a no-name town and take his new wife with him. Out of here. Gone for good.”

Hank paused the truck to pick the track down the rise. “Explain to a blind man, please.”

“Tab’s an oil man.”

Beside her, Tab stiffened. Hank looked around her at the foreman. “I haven’t seen you with Millie.”

Tab kept watching the cattle. “No, that’s over.”

Three words, but they confirmed what Nedda had guessed after a single evening of watching the young beauty interact with the oil men. Millie had ignored Tab the entire evening.

Hank looked confused. “She flirts with Denny.”

“That’s not serious. Denny isn’t important to her. He’s too young.”

Tab grunted. “She didn’t stop her brother when Stevie punched Denny.”

“Exactly. She didn’t care. She has her sights set on Leroy or Fuller. I haven’t decided which one. She may not have decided.” Tab shifted, uncomfortable with Nedda’s insights. She continued, undeterred. “Leroy might be more impressionable, but he’s a stubborn streak. Fuller’s steady. Or maybe she wants to make Mr. Tabbert jealous.”

Very carefully, Tab leaned away from her, pressing against the truck door as if she were a sybil to avoid.

“Witt would see all of that,” Nedda added, more certain now, “especially since he watches everything after he leaves the poker game. He sees how Millie serves Mr. Green without interacting with him, that she blushes whenever Mr. Collier compliments her, that she tries to coax Stevie not to risk so much during the game. She teases Denny, and she flutters her eyelashes at Fuller and Leroy. And Witt watches all of you.”

“Trouble all around,” Hank said and started the truck down the rise.

The big Liberty jolted and slipped over rocks, but gradually it crept closer to the distant cluster of buildings that formed the no-name town around the Hartman County railroad depot.

. ~ . ~ . ~ .

“Texas Sun” is the second of three novelettes in this tie-in series to M.A. Lee’s Sailing Into Mystery stories and Into Death novels featuring the artist Isabella Newcombe Tarrant. Nedda Courtland enters 1925 America with these stories as she is Courting Trouble.

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