I. I miss being a child, and I could paint this
better than I could tell it.
The life of an
oil rig largely parallels that of a human being. In its prime, the platform
works 12 hour days, seven days a week. The platform must perform difficult
tasks under strenuous conditions, sometimes in inclement weather. Oil rigs die
just as humans do, they tire, wear out, and no longer function. They have
coroners, too. An official comes to inspect them by helicopter or boat to declare
them dead. When an oil rig dies, the petroleum companies are left with two
options. They can disassemble the platform, reusing certain pipes and parts in
other younger, profitable rigs, and destroy any fragment too plagued with rust
or barnacles. The second option is to simply leave the dead rig be, its pillars
fixed to the ocean floor for all of eternity. It decomposes as best as metal
can, becoming an accidental reef for the mollusk or crustacean that won’t know
the difference.
Oil rigs are
floating cities, mechanical islands where only a select group of people can work
and live. And we don’t even get to stay longer than a few weeks at a time. We force
up the oils and gases from the depths of the earth, from levels of core and
heat man was never really intended to come into contact with, maybe. We drill,
extract, purify, contain, tiptoeing and whispering with the caution one might
have around explosives, and at the end of our two week long shift, we are
shipped home with almost urgent punctuality. We hear stories of men who’ve
stayed too long on the derricks, stayed so long they believed the stagnant, grease-logged
structure was land, was home. Home in this iron island in the Gulf of Mexico. A
false home in Tartarus 146, this shallow-water rig 3 miles off the coast of
Louisiana.
II. I am having
a dream.
Big Red sits
across from me. I’m not wearing my white hardhat; it rests on the table beside
my hands. My fingernails are dirty, maybe a bit too long. They get dirty a lot
easier when they’re too long. Big Red’s fingers stroke a glass of scotch. They
leave grease patterns in their wake. We sit in the cramped roustabouts’ common
area, next to one of the larger cranes. I can hear someone struggling with the
turntable outside. Big Red lifts his wide bald head up, his watery eyes meet
mine.
I miss being a child, Neil.
Why?
I could breathe then. I can’t breathe now,
Neil. I can’t breathe.
Like asthma? Maybe it’s the sulfide?
I know how the
men who work the drills outside cough at night, hacking up their lungs without
complaint. How it is almost a comfort to know there will always be someone
struggling more than you to breathe.
No, it’s not the gas.
Then what is it?
Outside, roughnecks
pump cement into the well, sealing each crack and fissure in the old pipes. I
hear orders yelled, affirmed. Somewhere off the derrick a supplies boat
approaches.
I can’t breathe in my skin. My calluses
are rough and yellow and brown and won’t come off. When I hold a picture of my
son I always leave stains on the emulsion and they don’t come off either.
His fat lip
begins to crumple. I fear he might cry. 300 pound, ruddy-faced Big Red will cry.
I say nothing.
Neil.
Yeah?
I can feel
the cement. It feels like too much. I
think that maybe I should tell them that they’re pumping too much, that I can
feel it in my veins, the methane bubble swelling in my bloodstream. But I can’t
seem to move. That is the thing with dreams. They can move you so terribly but
how often can you move in them?
I used to paint, Neil.
I didn’t know that.
Well I did.
He looks out the
window. A slow vibration swells across the platform, seems to come from deep in
the rig’s bowels. The lights flicker above us. Outside, I see that no one is manning
the turntable or the main pipes. A strange red liquid I’ve never known begins
to seep out of the drill hole. Soaks the wood paneled flooring, makes it bleed.
I smell gas.
Red what’s going on out there? Where is everyone?
Big Red doesn’t
answer me. Because in my dream, Big Red is a philosopher, and he does not fear
death. I grab the fist that isn’t busy with the scotch glass. His sausage
fingers unfurl in my hands. A crumpled school picture of a chubby little boy
falls from his sweaty palm, makes that sad non-sound of paper hitting table. I
can’t look there anymore, so I look back outside. Just in time. To see the port
side of the derrick fly into a petroleum rage.
Together we
stare at the flames. They change color with each new gas they meet, from blues
and reds to unnatural pinks and greens that make me sick. I feel as though I
could vomit right there on the table. Right on Big Red’s scrunched up
two-dimensional son. Big Red speaks.
I could paint this better than I could
tell it.
Gas
billowing under the door. I try to be like Big Red. I watch him as he greedily inhales
the toxic air as if it were his wife’s home cooking. How he loves her shrimp
gumbo. His face darkens.
Maybe not better. Reagan says that
freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. And he’s right.
Do you understand, Neil?
Big Red doesn’t
look at me. I’m not sure if he’s even talking to me anymore. He picks up the
photo of his son, uncurls it as gently as his large fingers allow, staining it
once more with the greasy fingerprints of his labor. His sun-spotted brow
furrows.
He means that you’ve got to fight for
that freedom, fight to keep it. To keep it for your sons and daughters. We make
good money out here, Neil. We really do. They pay us well. We work hard, and
we’re rewarded. That’s all anybody could ask for, dammit.
The red liquid
has seeped into the room, rising hot and sticky beneath our boots. I feel my
soles thinning, smell burning rubber. I try to stand up. Can’t. The flames
begin to surround Big Red’s beefy shoulders. I want to ask him if he knows that
it’s rude to discuss politics at the table, but there isn’t enough time.