This is Not A Drill

by This Is Not a Drill- Just Another Glorious Day in the Oilfield (retail) (epub)

  ‘I’m going to pin this to her fuckin’ liver,’ he said, grinning through clenched teeth.

  ‘Now, now, Don, that’s what you get for making that nice girl do sick things to your butt,’ John said and slapped him on the back.

  ‘How’s that sock fetish going for you, dickhead?’ Don was ropeable. I was on the floor again, laughing so much my margarita was coming out my nose.

  A few days later we were on the rig. The entire crew had heard about Don’s new girlfriend and the poor guy was copping shit from everyone.

  A month later our job was pretty much over, we were just starting the last section, and the crew had finished checking over our tools and equipment. I wandered up to the drill floor as I knew the driller on tower from Shell’s ‘Iron Duke’ campaign years earlier. Mike had just come in on the afternoon chopper. I found him standing behind the brake. Like so many guys on rigs all over the world, we stood on the drill floor and played catch-up. I noticed Mike was limping a bit as he moved around. ‘You got a parrot to go with that limp, Mike? What’s up?’

  ‘I got clipped by a drunk driver on my Harley,’ he said. ‘Motherfucker put me in a ditch and took off. I was in there for hours before someone found me. My leg was a mess, I woke up in the hospital and realised they had amputated it.’

  I looked at him in disbelief. ‘Come on . . .’

  ‘No shit, check it out.’ He pulled up the leg of his coveralls and there was a metal shaft coming out of the top of his Red Wing boot.

  ‘Oh fuck, Mike. I’m so sorry, mate,’ I stammered, feeling awful.

  ‘It’s okay, bud, you weren’t to know. The company really looked after me, paid for all of it.’ He propped his leg up on the railing and pulled back his coveralls. ‘It’s titanium alloy, best you can get,’ he said proudly and rapped his knuckles on the shiny tube. ‘Eighteen thousand bucks.’ It looked like it belonged on the side of a space shuttle.

  Mike was a tough bugger. He had to learn how to walk again as well as dealing with the loss of his leg, and to his credit he was back at work six weeks after the accident. He poured a cup of coffee from a thermos and handed it to me.

  ‘Cheers, Mike.’ I was about to change the subject when Mike went on.

  ‘So I’m all groggy after the op and the fuckin’ surgeon is standing there. I thought my leg was still there, but when I looked down there was only one foot poking the sheet up.’ Mike was telling me this rather like you would tell someone a joke. ‘Then he says, “Would you like us to forward your leg on to your home address?” I’m laying in a fuckin’ hospital bed in Singapore and this guy wants to know if I’d like my cremated leg sent to my mom’s place in Canada. Jesus.’

  There was a moment’s silence as I was left speechless. What do you say to a man who’s lost a leg? Fortunately, Mike kept going.

  ‘What’s your problem tonight? Busting for a smoke, huh?’ he asked and smiled slyly.

  This particular rig had decided to ban smoking, and before we boarded the chopper to go offshore we were searched for ‘any source of ignition’. They turned our bags inside out and removed all our cigarettes, lighters, matches, the lot. After a month I was starting to get more and more agitated.

  ‘It’s been a month, man,’ I moaned. ‘I should be over it by now, but I’m not.’ I was biting my fingernails and eating too much, which made me feel bloated and added to my already wicked mood.

  Mike wandered closer to me. ‘Listen,’ he whispered, leaning in, ‘after your shift, come by my cabin and I’ll get you a smoke.’ I looked at him in confusion. ‘Don’t worry, it’s cool,’ he said and went back to work.

  Later, after we finished at about two in the morning, I knocked on his cabin door, he answered and I stepped inside. ‘Here,’ he said and handed me a Styrofoam cup, a box of matches and a pack of French smokes. ‘You wait till the guys in your cabin are eating, then get up on the top bunk, pile up the pillows, turn off the lights and slide the ceiling panel above your head over to one side, then sit on the pillows and stick your head up through the hole and light up.’ I must have looked vacant. ‘Are you getting all this?’ Mike asked.

  ‘Yeah, won’t someone smell it?’

  ‘Just blow your smoke into the air-con duct, put some water in the cup and ash into it, leave all of it up there, and just put the panel back when you’re done. See ya.’ He slammed the door.

  And off I went to break the rules. Everyone was still in the TV room, so I went through Mike’s routine, sitting on three pillows in the dark with a smoke dangling from my mouth while sliding the ceiling panel back and debating whether or not I should do this. I’ll end up getting caught and I’ll get run off—fired—and all because I can’t go without a fuckin’ cigarette.

  When I stuck my head up through the hole and peered about, all I could see was a long line of glowing red smokes going as far as I could see in both directions; the whole rig was up there, all puffing away without a care in the world.

  ‘Took you long enough, Pauli, you shithead,’ Mike said from halfway down the line. Everyone burst out laughing, bastards.

  The next night I was on the drill floor with Iron Mike. We were running pipe in the hole using a power tong, a kind of giant hydraulically powered wrench. It has two hoses plumbed into the back of a hydraulic motor, one hose being the supply line and the other the return line. When the tong is spinning pipe together, the volume of hydraulic oil circulating through the motor is considerable. It was while making up a joint of pipe that the motor seal blew on the tong, covering the drill floor in hot oil. I ran over to the power unit to shut it down while Mike sorted out the roughnecks to pick up the backup tong.

  He came out from behind the drilling console and was walking over to me, no doubt to give me a hand, when he hit hot oil. Both legs shot out from under him, in that classic banana peel slip. We all watched as Mike’s new eighteen thousand-dollar titanium alloy leg, as if in slow motion, flew through the air, did a nice little pirouette and bounced straight over the side. Mike had gone down hard, his hard-hat stopped him from knocking himself out, but he had seen his new leg disappear over the side. We all rushed over to help him.

  ‘Get back!’ he yelled, furious. ‘Haven’t you seen a fuckin’ one-legged driller before?’ Mike hopped over to the railing and peered into the night, his empty trouser leg flapping in the breeze. ‘Motherfucker!’ He was off, hopping down the stairs, to look for his leg.

  The rest of us exchanged blank looks.

  ‘Well, go and give him a hand,’ I told Ambu, who grabbed a walkie-talkie and went after Mike.

  After only a few moments Ambu was on the radio. ‘Hello, I have Mike leg.’ That was fast, I thought. The boys were crowded round the radio listening, and we could also hear Mike swearing below us. ‘I come back drill floor now,’ said Ambu.

  ‘No, Ambu bring the leg to the galley, okay?’ The boys looked at me. I had an idea. ‘I’m going to hide it,’ I told them. There was a lot of laughing. ‘Ambu, bring the leg to the galley.’

  A long pause. ‘Okay, come we go.’

  Ambu was waiting for me with Mike’s leg dangling over his shoulder. I had a quiet word with the camp boss who laughed when I told him I wanted to hide Mike’s new leg in his freezer.

  Poor Mike was distraught; he finished his shift on one leg and cursed all the way through his shower, his meal, the movie afterwards, and breakfast the next day. That’s when we told him where his leg was. ‘Bastards!’ He threw a cup of coffee at me, and was off hopping towards the freezer. An hour later Mike was still not on the drill floor. I found him with a paint-stripper heat gun blowing hot air into his new leg. ‘Can’t get the motherfucker on, ’cos the cold contracted the metal, you fuck’ and another cup of coffee was airborne.

  That afternoon we touched down in bad weather at Manila’s Ninoy Aquino Airport. The pilot shut down and we all hurried through the rain into the hanger to wait for the ground crew to bring in our bags.

  ‘Just beat the weather,’ the pilot said as he ran up t
o us, shaking the rain off his head. ‘I’d hate to get stuck in Busuanga.’ Busuanga is one of the larger islands in the Philippines, where choppers refuel en route to the rig. It’s a lush green paradise, though sparsely populated and therefore, I must admit, lacking in amusements.

  ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘It’s not so bad.’

  ‘I’ve got a date tonight,’ he beamed.

  Where did you meet her?’ asked Erwin.

  ‘Right here at the airport actually.’

  Erwin looked at me, I started laughing.

  ‘What?’ The pilot looked annoyed.

  The bad weather turned out to be the start of one of those Philippines typhoons that shuts off the power and transforms the streets into rivers. We ended up in a small bar that had this excellent seafood restaurant out the back and settled in for the rest of the night. It was pointless trying to leave; the whole place was in gridlock. It was close to midnight when the lights went out. We were the last group in there, all drunk, and the manager who had been sitting with us doing tequila shots staggered off to get some candles. Ambu continued eating.

  ‘He’s a machine,’ said Erwin. ‘Keep your hands away from his face when he’s feeding.’

  Ambu can see in the dark and poured himself another tequila. I was three feet from him and could only just make out what was going on. It must be one of his jungle skills or something, like his complete lack of fear. If Ambu is wearing his ‘power belt’ then, as he puts it ‘Ambu cannot die.’ I’ve seen him work over guys twice his size. I’ve also read his medical file, or rather read it to him: the official diagnosis is abbreviated as NAFOD, meaning No Apparent Fear Of Death. To Ambu, the belt is his power. He believes in it and wears it everywhere. ‘It’s magic,’ he says. Unfortunately, since airports have started dissecting us before a flight Ambu has been forced to take off his ‘power belt’; he was causing small riots in the departure lounge when a security guy pulled a two-metre long leather belt, with human teeth and other assorted charms dangling off it, from inside his pants.

  Jimmy, the restaurant manager, returned with a box of candles, a flashlight and a bottle of premium tequila. ‘This is the best,’ he said and went back to the bar for a tray of glasses.

  ‘Keep away from children.’ Ambu was reading the plastic bag the candles were in.

  We had been doing shots all night—the salt, the sticky glass and a wedge of lemon pushed into gritted teeth. We did them all: the ‘Body Slam’, the ‘Depth Charge’, the painful and completely stupid ‘Tequila Stuntman’. If memory serves, that’s the one where you snort the salt, take the shot, squeeze the lemon in your eye, and eat the worm. A great many of us have spent the early hours of the morning projectile vomiting into a taxi while your mates remind you about the worm you ate after that last shot.

  Tequila was never meant to be downed in one, with salt licked off various body parts, lemon was never part of the equation, and the worm was simply a marketing gimmick introduced in the early 1980s to sell more bottles to people who were so coked up they thought a preserved slug (that’s got nothing to do with the drink whatsoever) was neat. Sipping it and enjoying the flavour, rather like one would savour a cognac, is the way to drink tequila. Mexicans drink it that way, or in the form of a margarita.

  Still, we drink it, the new way or the old way, we will dance, laugh, throw up, fall over, but only ever on the surface. We all look after each other, even Don.

  The bottle Jimmy was pouring was shaped like a big ‘X’ and it did taste great. ‘Cheers!’ he yelled and went off to get his guitar.

  ‘Did you know tequila comes from the blue agave plant?’ Erwin was holding his glass up to the candlelight.

  ‘Yeah, it’s a cactus.’ I was really drunk.

  ‘Not a cactus, buddy, but in fact a relative of the lily.’ And he was off.

  Erwin is a remarkable man. While the rest of us are telling fart jokes and chatting up the waitresses, he can focus and tell you something other than drivel. ‘It takes roughly fifteen pounds of blue agave cores or “pinas” of the plant to produce one litre of tequila.’

  Ambu stopped eating. ‘Penis,’ he said.

  ‘No, pinas, Ambu. It’s Spanish for pineapple.’

  We then spent the next five minutes explaining to Ambu that the Spanish don’t call the penis a pineapple.

  Don was dancing with his other new girlfriend behind the bar while Jimmy played his guitar. The others were either passed out or chatting at the bar. The storm outside raged on, the water slowly starting to lap at the front door.

  Erwin went on. ‘Tequila’s origins are a combination of conquest and necessity, with mankind’s need for war and getting hammered. Circa mid-sixteenth century, what you had were a bunch of Spanish conquistadors arriving in Mexico and running out of beer.’ Erwin poured us another round. Ambu had finished his fifth crab and settled in for what was to be his bedtime story. ‘Having an intimate knowledge of the distillation process as well as warfare proved useful in between brawls in the sleepy town of Tequila. They discovered after long chats with the locals that the blue agave produced a sweet sap that, once fermented, was a knockout beverage. The native Indians had been drinking it for nine thousand years, but once the conquistadors had finished with it, the fun really started, and there you have it. “Tequila” the town had produced “tequila” the drink. Tequila is also the name of the volcano overlooking the town and probably the name of the dog that lived in the pub where it was first poured.’ He sat back smiling, Ambu had started snoring.

  ‘This is so much better than the crap we’ve been drinking all night,’ I said.

  ‘That’s why I didn’t join in.’ Erwin had been on light beer up until then. ‘Understanding the difference between the two can get complicated, so first, in case you were wondering, there is no “mescaline” in mescal. The word “mescal” is often used with tequila as roughly translated it means “cheers”. It’s part of Mexican culture, a social icon, simply a toast as well as a drink. The best way of describing the two is to say that they are made from different types of agave plant and different amounts of sugars.’ He leaned in and pointed at his glass. ‘They are distilled in different ways, but to put it bluntly it can be likened to the difference between single malt, and rye or sour mash whiskies, or if you prefer cognac and brandy. I love this one.’

  The difference between Erwin and Don, I thought, is much the same. I looked over at the bar where Don was licking his tequila off his other new girlfriend’s thigh while Erwin sipped his in the corner and laughed. Erwin is the boss, his depths are a complete mystery, but he can handle the roughest crews with a skill I could never match, even when they get really wild, close the doors of the bar, turn the plane upside down and cut their toes off.

  At some point Don was in the kitchen helping Jimmy with the crabs for the next day, when he got the idea to have crab races down the hall between the bar and the restaurant.

  ‘Sheeet son, this’ll be fun,’ he beamed. The crabs were massive, each had a body the size of a frisbee. Their huge claws were tied up with string, but their legs were going like the clappers.

  ‘C’mon, I’ve got the three biggest ones in the sink.’ Don was leaning on his other new girlfriend who looked suspiciously like a man.

  We taped different coasters to the back of the three crabs and set them up in the hallway. Erwin, Don, Ambu, Jake, John, the waitress and Don’s other new girlfriend all sat on the floor on cushions, their backs leaning against the far wall with their legs stretched out under a big glass coffee table where the drinks sat. I was up the other end of the hall with Jimmy, who giggled so much he nearly fell over trying to control three pissed-off giant mud crabs. Jimmy had pulled out three drawers from a wooden desk in his office and we had a crab under each upturned drawer. They were so strong that if you stopped holding the drawer it would take off down the hall.

  ‘Okay, you ready?’ Jimmy was all set. ‘On three.’ I struggled with the drawers. ‘One, two three!’ We flipped up the drawers and the crabs bo
lted. Team ‘San Miguel’ climbed over the drawer and straight onto my foot, then back into the kitchen. The other two were neck and neck down the hall, going straight for the coffee table. Ambu was waving his arms and slapping his thigh like people do at horse races. Don’s crab, Team ‘Heineken’, crossed the line first, his other new girlfriend rolled over onto his lap and kissed him.

  The race over, Ambu and John went after the second crab, who had made a break for the door, while Jimmy was in the kitchen putting ‘San Miguel’ back in the crate. Don’s winning crab was under the coffee table with Don’s bare feet.

  ‘Okay, who’s drinking?’ He suddenly stopped, his eyes locked on his other new girlfriend’s—they may have been separated by countless cultural and socioeconomic barriers, but the look on Don’s face crossed them all instantly. I’d never had a small Asian woman fired across a table at me before.

  There was the most blood-curdling scream. The crab, with the bigger of its claws free of the string, had latched onto Don’s little toe and, being not too happy with the whole crab-racing thing, it had decided to cut off Don’s toe altogether. Don kicked over the glass coffee table, smashing it to pieces, grabbed a huge round glass ashtray and beat the crab into pulp, while his other new girlfriend screamed and ran on the spot with one high heel on. By the time Don finished, the claw was the only thing left; still attached to Don’s toe, it lay there among all the broken glass. The place looked like a Tom Waits song. Don refused to go to the hospital. Besides, in our state we wouldn’t have made it to the end of the street. Eventually, he opted instead to cremate his toe on Jimmy’s barbeque.

  10 HURRY UP AND WAIT

  Three months after Clare and I were married, we finally got around to our honeymoon. I had six weeks off so we went to visit Europe and my family, and hopefully not get into any trouble. It made a nice change when we got to the red line at the airport. I hate the red line. Usually Clare stands right on it, we go through our goodbyes, I would cross it, walk a few yards, stop just before the barrier where immigration starts, and look back. Clare would still be standing on the red line, waving, tears rolling down her cheeks. We had done that so many times, but not this time. This time she was crossing the red line with me.