by Tom Swyers
A few people in the crowd looked at one another with worried eyes and raised eyebrows. They knew that improving efficiency was a euphemism for layoffs.
“We will also look for distressed opportunities to purchase undervalued assets. We have a credit line and aren’t afraid to use it. We have access to the bond market, and we can sell additional shares of stock to raise cash, if needed. We have become a diversified oil company. We have mineral rights here in North Dakota, so we own the oil. We have depots set up to ship the oil over rail. We also have downstream facilities to receive the oil and get it to the refineries. We can take all the oil the railroads can ship and more. We will look for other opportunities to diversify ourselves and to continue our track record of being the lowest-cost producer of petroleum products anywhere in the world. That’s what we do at Helmsley Oil. Thank you for supporting and being a part of our journey. We couldn’t do what we do without each and every one of you.”
There was a thunderous ovation as the company supporters stood up a few at a time until everyone in the room was on his feet and applauding. Because Kincaid was done, David turned off his phone’s recorder and headed to the men’s room. He didn’t anticipate having a bathroom that night and decided to make use of any he happened to stumble upon.
Williston was no sleepy North Dakota burg. It was alive and kicking; it was exhilarating and frightening. It seemed like an overbooked campsite disguised as a city, on the way to becoming a third-world country. If David had had somewhere to stay, he might have grown to like the place a bit. But he was homeless for the first time in his life. It was terrifying, and he wanted out.
FOURTEEN
David thought the best way to get ready to spend the night in the car was to unwind, so he’d sleep no matter what. His choices were to walk the aisles at Walmart until closing or to down some beers at the nearest watering hole. But as soon as he read the local paper, he knew to steer clear of the bars. There had been four arrests on Saturday night for fighting; one of the guys pulled a gun. Stay out of bars. Stay out of jail. All of a sudden, doing laps in the aisles of Walmart held a lot more appeal.
Before hitting the maze at the store, he texted Annie while he marveled at the setting sun: Everything fine. Long day here. I’m going to bed and try to get some rest. I hope you and Christy had a great day! David didn’t want to talk with her that night. She’d ask how his hotel room was, and then his choice would be to lie or to admit he was sleeping in the back of a car. Neither option sat well with him. Just by the tone in David’s voice, she’d figure out something was up, and then she’d worry. He didn’t want to upset her on the eve of her first day at work in a new job at the school.
Throughout the night, David’s rented Spark rocked and creaked like a small boat in a heavy storm. It was cold outside, somewhere between zero degrees Fahrenheit and freezing. Vehicles tagged with license plates from twenty different states crowded the Walmart parking lot. A few of them were late-model vehicles, but most of them looked like the survivors of a demolition derby. David’s rental was a small hatchback that barely had any room behind the rear seats. He divided his belongings between the front seat and the rear storage area and slept on the back seat. He left the driver’s window open a crack for fresh air, which whistled with every gust. When he got cold, he turned the engine on for heat.
When the engine wasn’t running, David could hear the distant voices of men echoing across the parking lot. He picked up bits and snatches of talk amid the rumble of tractor trailers moving through town. The men sat in their lawn chairs with heaters hooked up to RVs or running off generators. Their conversations revolved around memories of their time at Walmart, trying to figure out where they were going to live next. They talked about all the money they hoped to make before leaving Williston to head home. It was like the last day of summer camp for grown-ups. On the fringes of the group, a man emerged from a battered trailer that boasted the label Tan Your Hide hooked behind an F-150 pickup. A roaming tattoo artist had just finished decorating his forearm with a tribute to Williston. The man rubbed his new work of art as his drunken pals crowded in to look it over and laugh.
The next morning, the clang of shopping carts banging into the corrals in front of Walmart woke David up. As he wiped condensation away from the car window, the sun was already up. He had sweated through his shirt during the night and realized the car smelled like a gym locker. At least he’d gotten some sleep, though.
There was a blue-vested employee in a parka slamming carts around the parking lot. His breath hung in little clouds in the echoing air. Walmart was about to begin another day of business. David had to pee, and he was starving. No fresh OJ and hot pancakes for him today. He slid a chunk of meat out of the takeout container that had gone into his cooler the previous night. He bit into it and chewed and chewed. The beef was overcooked, as tender as stale jerky, but the sauce made it worth the effort. He’d gotten it from Doc Holliday’s Steakhouse, a perfect name for a chuck wagon in the Wild West. It had taken David over forty-five minutes to drive to the joint and an hour-and-a-half wait after he arrived to get a table.
David trotted into the Walmart men’s room to get cleaned up and relieve himself. Some half-naked guy was washing his underwear in the far sink. The place smelled like ass already, and it was only 7:00 a.m. He pulled out his battery-powered razor and got in a quick shave before brushing his teeth. Then, he wetted down his bedhead and gave it a quick comb. Back in the car, he put on some fresh clothes and then hit the road. He had a two-hour drive ahead of him to make it to his appointment with Dr. Russell Red Bear.
The Medicare Summary Notices for Harold’s parents that David had discovered in the apartment listed multiple office appointments with him. He had spoken to the doctor briefly before flying out of Albany. Dr. Red Bear claimed to be a childhood friend of Harold’s and said he had been his parents’ primary-care physician for years.
David was only too happy to leave boomtown behind. He drove past a shack full of women who were hanging out a large drive-through window, flashing their cleavage to men who waited in long car lines—supposedly there to grab a cup of joe. The pink shack couldn’t possibly be confused with a Starbucks, but then again, there were no Starbucks in Williston and only a handful in all of North Dakota. The shack looked more like a strip club than a coffee shop. David saluted the Welcome to Boomtown sign on the way out. As far as he was concerned, it felt more like Shantytown, making him feel like he was a character in The Grapes of Wrath.
Just outside of town, along the highway median, there was a mess of clear, two-liter bottles lying on the ground. They looked like they were filled with frozen Mountain Dew, except that Mountain Dew came in green bottles. When David looked over at the water bottles he had thrown on the floor in front of the passenger seat, he figured out the real deal. The night before, he had peed in his empty water bottles in the car because Walmart had closed. The bottles he saw piled in the median were “trucker bombs,” two-liter bottles filled with piss tossed from trucks by drivers who were either too busy or too lazy to find a bathroom.
Many of the drivers going in and out of Williston were paid according to the quantity of stuff they hauled. Bathroom breaks cut into the bottom line. So, they loaded their trucks past the legal limit and drove like men possessed all day long. Along with the trucker bombs, the roadside held a few abandoned cars and RVs that either didn’t quite make it into boomtown or couldn’t quite make it out.
David headed south for Killdeer, a trip that took him across miles and miles of flatland speckled with more oil-well gas flares than trees. He pulled off the road to watch the orange middle fingers from hell that waved angrily in the wind, sounding like jet-airplane engines on full throttle. If ever there was a snapshot of hell frozen over, this had to be it. The scene was both awesome and disgusting.
Early settlers plodding north in their wagons could never have imagined that this mass of energy lay underneath the quiet desolation of the plains. The hidden pool of oil had vault
ed the state of North Dakota to the nation’s second-largest producer next to Texas. At the same time, the visual manifestation was an obvious waste of energy—spewing greenhouse gases and air pollution for no good reason. It was like gas blowing out of Mother Nature’s butthole with some prankster putting a match to it. But there seemed to be more interest in bottling piss than there was in capturing the flared gas as a source of energy.
The only exception to this profligate waste came from the mineral-rights owners. They held title to the oil, the gas, and anything else beneath the surface, and they weren’t seeing a nickel in royalties for the flared gas. In their eyes, the gas flares were sending profits up in smoke, a thought that had them pissing and moaning more than any trucker with a cab piled high with pee-filled jugs.
FIFTEEN
On the outskirts of Killdeer, there was a road detour that forced David to drive around the fringe of town before entering from the south. The road was clear ahead of him, but going the other way toward Williston, it was backed up with bumper-to-bumper traffic. It was mainly tractor trailers, many of them double bottoms—a rig with two independent trailers attached like train cars. They were carrying gravel, water, brine, equipment, or just plain Bakken crude. Sprinkled among them were pickup trucks, mostly company ones with firm names printed on the doors. Everyone was heading out of Killdeer to the oil fields for the day.
The detour funneled David through a residential street on the west side. It was filled with older bungalows and ranches spread unevenly apart, some with two- or three-car garages that rivaled the size of the actual houses. The lawns were dried out and sparse, except for the new football field at the high school. It was lush, emerald green, and cut perfectly. It seemed that the best-looking grass in Killdeer was made of Astroturf.
The most attractive lawn and landscaping around town usually belonged to the local funeral home. But not in Killdeer. When David turned back on the main road and entered the heart of town from the south, the first thing he saw was a rectangular, red-brick-faced, one-story building with the narrow side facing the roadway. The other three sides were made from cinder blocks painted white. It was surrounded by a gravel-and-stone-dust parking lot that pressed up against the building. It had no windows, no landscaping, no trees, and no lawn. A sign on the canopy over the front tinted-glass door announced that it was a funeral home. By the look of things, David thought the owner must have used the same architect as the strip clubs in Williston.
Next to it was a larger, two-story rectangular building in pale, grayish green. It shared the same parking lot. Other than boasting some windows and a wood-paneled exterior, it shared the same shoebox architecture as the funeral home except that it was the town liquor store. With some simple coordination, Killdeer offered the possibility of convenient one-stop shopping if you wanted to drink yourself to death.
Farther up the road, almost in the center of town, David passed the Chevrolet dealership, which had parking lots filled with pickup trucks on both sides of the two-way street. There were no cars for sale anywhere on the lot, and certainly not a single Chevrolet Spark.
He drove past the Cowboy Bar and Grill, past the post office, past the center of town and up the hill, past the Freemasons’ lodge that looked like a double-wide metal shipping container with a door. Finally, he made a right turn at the old water tower and arrived at the address of the doctor’s office.
It had taken him less than a minute to drive through the business section of Killdeer, a so-called city with a population of under 1,000. One might say that Killdeer was a one-stoplight city, but that would be an exaggeration because it had no stoplights.
David wasn’t sure he had the right address because it was a simple entrance in the rear of a shopping center. There were dumpsters and broken shopping carts by the rear exits of the retailers, whose entrances were on the opposite side of the building. But once David saw a sign along the curb that said Doctor’s Parking Only, he figured he must be at the right place.
He parked by a faded-orange dump truck pocked with dents and rust spots, a survivor from the 1960s. It said City of Killdeer on the side.
David walked to the doctor’s entrance and pulled open the tinted-glass door. There were fingerprints and smudges all over it. He was greeted by the head of an eight-point buck mounted on the far wall. The receptionist sat beneath the trophy. The place smelled like cigarette smoke.
“You must be David Thompson,” she said.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Dr. Red Bear is just finishing up with a patient. Follow me, and I’ll take you to his office.”
The hallway was narrow with dark-brown carpeting and walls to match. David felt like he was walking into a cave. At the end of the hall, there was an open door. It framed an overweight woman wearing a purple-flowered print dress that hung like a pillowcase from her shoulders. She was standing beyond the threshold, talking but moving toward the door. As he got close, David could hear Dr. Red Bear speaking from the other side of the office.
“Mrs. Reynolds, you take care, and let’s see if we can shed some pounds before the next time we meet.”
Mrs. Reynolds smirked as she waddled out the door. “I’ll see what I can do, Doctor.”
“Mrs. Reynolds,” the receptionist said, “I’ll be right with you to check you out.” She motioned to David to enter the room.
Dr. Russell Red Bear was sitting at a rolltop desk crushing a cigarette butt into a crowded chrome circular ashtray. With all the butts sticking up in the air, it looked like some kind of disgusting birthday cake.
“Dr. Red Bear,” the receptionist said, “this is David Thompson.”
David approached the doctor as he got out of his chair. He was about six feet tall, medium build, maybe fifty-five years old. His black hair was parted down the middle and hung over his ears. His nose was flat, his skin reddish-brown and weathered. He was wearing a white lab coat buttoned down past his belly, which protruded like half a bowling ball from behind the dingy cloth.
“It’s good to meet you,” he said.
“Thanks for taking the time to see me. I really appreciate it.”
“My pleasure. I’m sorry . . . I didn’t know about the memorial service you had for Harold until I heard about it afterward.”
“Yeah, I apologize. I didn’t know whom to contact when he died. He didn’t talk much about his life before moving to Indigo Valley.”
“I understand. Did you fly into Williston?”
“Yes, it was quite a flight, and Williston is quite a town.”
The doctor laughed. “How do you like our little black-gold rush?”
“I don’t know what to make of it. I’m in awe of it but repulsed by it at the same time.”
“That’s a just and reasonable response to have. Most outsiders simply see dollar signs and to hell with anything else. They come here and think the boom is going to last forever. They spend their money on hookers, blow, and toys. Then the casinos take whatever is left over.”
“So have you lived here your entire life?” David asked.
“You know, they say North Dakota is the last state people actually visit and the first state that people try to leave. Well, I wanted to leave in the worst way after high school. So did Harold. We both went off to college; Harold was lucky enough to get a scholarship. Then I went to medical school, and he went to engineering school. I returned afterward to live close to my parents, raise a family. It was real nice here before the boom. Harold went off to teach at Columbia.”
“How did you come to know Harold?”
“We lived down the road from him and his family. Our families were close—survived the dust storms and the grasshopper plague in the 1930s together. Other people left the state. Neither of our families had enough money to escape. Harold and I got to know each other in school. One day, I didn’t have any lunch. Money was tight for us. But Harold’s dad was doing okay with his general store on Central Avenue. Harold shared his food with me. I’ll never forget Harold coming to
school dressed in overalls with his honey-can lunch bucket. It’s funny, the stuff you remember.”
“Are your parents still alive?”
“My mom is, and she still lives in town, in the senior apartments. She’s eighty-three but still going strong. She plays bingo at the Masonic lodge every week and volunteers at the Lutheran church.”
“What happened to Harold’s parents?”
“It’s a shame what happened to them, a real shame. Like I said, Joseph was making out pretty well in the early 1950s after he opened his general store. The economy was on an upswing after the war was over. He purchased a house and some property, a real nice piece of land, right outside of the city. Hannah started to farm it. He didn’t know it then, but he owned only the surface rights. He didn’t own the mineral rights. The seller had sold the rights to get a new tractor or something. The issue lay dormant for something like fifty years. There may have been oil under his property, but nobody knew how to get it out profitably. Then came fracking, and the world changed. One day some oil company shows up at their door and tells Joseph they’re coming on his property to get their oil.”
“Really? Do you have any idea what oil company was involved?”
“No, I’m not sure. Anyway, there’s nothing Joseph can do. Surface-rights holders lose out to mineral-rights owners. It’s the way the law works. So these frackers came on their land to get their oil, and they were messy. In making their dirt roads and their well pad, they kicked up dust that crushed Hannah’s crop yield around where they were working, and that was just for openers.
