Them Bastard Roughnecks: Concrete to Leather

Back in the Day – Goldie.  “Wanna say somethin’ about it, yew dumb motherfucker?!”

The commotion had made his nap restless, but the yelling made his bloodshot eyes pop open.  The man camp at the far edge of the land the company owned was a series of sun bleached trailers in rows of 2, and in between the buildings, all manner of mischief was bound to pick up.  14 hours on, 14 hours off.  You build up steam that needs to go somewhere.  You drink, fuck when you can, get high (but not too high), gamble with the boys, call home, read, whatever you can get your hands on.  But lots of guys think just working the rig makes them John Wayne himself, think it makes them some kind of untouchable badass, and while drilling might make you big noise with the townies…here, hell, it didn’t mean much.

But that never stopped the ones who needed to prove it from trying to prove it.  Often.

Compulsion, maybe.  And if they couldn’t get anything organized up, they’d pick their targets, no different than a school bully.  He crawled out from his bunk to the window, peering through the busted blinds and dirty, cracked glass to see what was happening, what the commotion was.  He figured by the words it was Tackett, and he wasn’t wrong.  Tackett was on the wrong end of 30 to be acting like this, but he also never got anywhere with his life, so he had to lord his years over people.  And like most bullies, he had gotten a few worms in his orbit, hangers-on quick to agree with him and back him up and try and beat on people he decided needed beating on.  But their choice this time left a little bit to be desired.  He had seen this crew really fuck some people up in their time, seen the results, helped patch them, take pliers to loose teeth and help glue up nasty cuts that looked like great furrowed wagon tracks in mud.

The big kid was just that, a big kid.  He truthfully probably wasn't much younger than most of them, but his face was chubby and smooth and babyfatted, and his lacked any of the wrinkles that many of them had developed before they could legally drink.  He was courteous and he kept to himself, and that made him like a wounded antelope to these wolves.  They could smell the blood he left in his wake, they were just so fucking certain they had a weak target to take down.

They were still taking 4 to the party just to be sure though.  And why not?  Big kid was an easy 6 and a half feet, and if he was a pound under three bills, it’d come as a great shock.  In the sputtering AC of the trailer, the onlooker grasped his chin and the crown of his skull and turned his head clock and counter, waiting for a great resettling crack of vertebrae on both sides.  Tackett didn't wait for a back and forth, he just suckered the baby faced derrickman and his boys jumped in.  Watch as, even outgunned, this hoss cat still throws in, gives as good as he’s getting.  So much so that the crew decided they had to even the score.  The onlooker caught the flash of the brass in the golden sun, distinct from the parched land and the long, blue shadows.

He slipped his shitkickers on.

He was out the door.

—

Current Day – TBR

“C’mon, man.  We gotta clock in.”

Clocking in has a different meaning for them now.  The big boy is a baby-faced hosscat with a mustache and a mullet, gigantic in scale, his battered cap was probably Mossy Oak Bottomland camo at one point, but it’s weathered into something like saddle leather.  His face is warm and friendly, his voice is an unholy amalgamation of rural redneck and bay area, a bleat from some gigantic primordial goat monster.  The smaller of the two–still strapping and solid, but dwarfed whenever they’re together–seems leaner and meaner.  Hair slicked back, shorter, mustache trailing from his nose down his cheeks in a solid bad luck horseshoe, bottom lip plumped up with something that feeds his system nicotine.  His eyes are squinted, he looks like he’s waiting to see where the fight is coming from.  Likely because he’s waiting to see where the fight is coming from.  When he talks, it’s dust from a tomb, pure north Texas.

“‘Clock in.’  Man, y’know they wanna hear me talk?  I can’t wrap my skull ‘round that shit.”  He shoulders his duffel bag, which was probably a nice piece of luggage in 1987.  Now it’s primarily duct tape and cracked finish.  The bigger one, his smile so damn easy, reassuringly claps his partner on the shoulder.

“Not like we gotta be eloquent or anything, Gold.  Them folk understood who they were hiring, they know they didn't sign a couple of song birds.”  He thinks on things for a second, chewing his lip as the boys cross the parking lot to the Detroit Downtown Comfort Inn, Jefferson Chevrolet in the background.  These look like men out of their element, neighborhood, and even time, both clad in beaten Carhartt and various degrees of additional layer.  You can almost see the dust trailing behind them, two violence-oriented Pigpens adrift in the miasma of the fields and the derrick.  But they’re a long way from those days.

Those days, things got blood for blood too fast.

—

Back in the Day - High Cotton

He tried to keep a low profile, he really did.

But when you sprout as tall as he did and as burly as he steps, you draw attention.  Attention he didn’t mind, he enjoyed sports in school, all that.  But the wrong sort of attention was a dangerous thing, and certain worms out here on the field wanted him to either bruise for them in bar fights or roust his fellow workers for grievances and perceived slights.  And really, neither appealed to him.  He just wanted to make his money, maybe save up enough for a truck, maybe go back to school or at least get his union book in something less backbreaking.  Keep your head down, hit the books, work hard, don’t draw attention.  That’s a recipe for succeeding on the rig and never having to see it ever again, and the lucky ones never got the bug for this place in their skin.  Once that chigger is in, it’s holding on for dear life, and then one day you wake up for another 14 hour shift and you realize you’ve turned into a broken back supporting a leathery frame that only has a few good years left.

And then someone shoulder checks you for no good reason.

But you’re cool.

You say “Sorry, man.”  It arouses contempt in rage in the heart of a specific type of man, guy who’s animal enough that a routine pleasantry is enough to start a DEFCON.  He feels the spit hit his shoulder–he heard the shoulder checker hocking, but was absolutely certain it wasnt intended for him.  But there it is.  The big man knows this is Tackett, and he knows Tackett’s rep, courtesy of a couple of the other hands advising him to steer clear of the guy.  The big man tried.  That didn’t work.  He turned and made the last mistake of the interaction: he locked eyes with the bully and his gaze was filled with the exact sort of anger a grown man should have when another grown man spits on him.

“Wanna say somethin’ about it, yew dumb motherfucker?!”

Then they’re off to the races.  The big man catches it bad in the jaw off rip, but he gets his licks in: the boot connects to hard parts of a midsection that give way and let him dig into the softer insides, he can feel the air go out of him.  He’s eating blows for dinner but he arcs his meaty arm down and clips the ringleader right between the eyes with a hammer blow so sweet that he ends up feeling the nose give way.  For a moment, he thinks he might be able to take them.  For a moment, in the swirling dust, he feels like something untamed.  Then they come, real anger.  The others get him in the kidneys, in the balls, one of them hacks at his knee.  Enough to hobble him.  Then noise gets all muffled until a ringing takes over.  He’s on his ass.  He sees them then, knuckledusters. He can’t get his bearings.  His arms and legs are betraying him.

Then there’s a flash out of the corner of his eye.  Then Tackett isn’t standing anymore, he’s been taken to the dirt and mounted by a buck-assed naked man wearing unlaced metatarsals.  The big man knows the tattoos.  The shock of the moment, of what the sinewy nude form is doing to the guy who had the upper hand not a moment ago, it stalls everyone else.  The bully takes a elbow to the jaw, a headbutt to his already busted nose, and then the nude man is on his feet, pale dick flopping as he starts laying those reinforced boot tips right to ribs.  There’s only one thing the big man can say, as he shakes his rapidly swelling head and gives a lumbering grunt to get back to his feet.

“Fuckin’ wildcat…!”

The race is back on.

This time the ending’s been rewritten.

—

Current Day - Goldie They tell me I’m s’posed to talk, ‘cut a promo’, alla that shit.  Ain’t me.  Ain’t my way.  How I’se raised I guess.  Ain’t no need to just flap my fuckin’ gums about it–better to just fuckin’ get into it, y’know?  Alla this chatter like it means much.  It don’t.  What matters is when them dukes get put up.  What matters is if whoever across from us has any goddamn sense or toughness in ‘em.  That’s it.  That’s the whole hog of it.  Why would I spend a half hour talkin’ bout my dick before I fuck?  … When we told folks what we were doin’, they’d ask a lot.  Leavin’ a job that pays good always seems a fuckin’ risk, whole world trying to grind alla us down to fuckin’ paste.  But that life weren’t no life.  I seen too many old timers lookin’ like a set a’broke down boots hobbling off and on that fuckin’ floor.  Some a’them we used to work with’d call us cowards for walkin’ away.  Like there’s some damn badge of honor in killin’ yerself for billionaires. ‘Cowards.’  Look, you can say a bunch about me.  I’m dumb, I got a bad attitude, I ain’t got much impulse control, alla that.  I’m just two steps away from a fuckin’ ape, throwback-ass caveman fucker, any of it.  Gimme three minutes and I can change yer thinkin’ fast though.  Think they’d call that ‘disabusing’. 

—

Current Day - High Cotton Lots of people wanna look at me and make assumptions.  Been that way since I got hair on my balls.  You get to a certain size and it don’t matter how small you try and make yourself, everyone just already knows everything they need to know about you.  They know you broke the chair, they know you dropped ass, they know you think you can bully people, they know, they know, they know–brother, I’ve fucked up my rotator cuff with how bad I’ve made a jackoff motion at people who all just fuckin’ know me better’n I ever knew me.  But then there’s other times when people know me and they know me just as well as I do.  Like when those Lasanga Boys watch this and probably YouTube me and Goldie an’ they see who the hell I am and how the hell we do…they’re gonna know that High Cotton McClellan could fuckin’ near drive them right into the floor like a post for a bull gate.  They’ll have that knowledge, and it’ll be as true and jarring as a 3 AM tornado siren.  Knowledge ain’t power.   Knowledge is acceptance of what you ain’t gonna be able to avoid or get out from under.  Pretty sure some fella said that a while back.  Good advice.  Keep it close.

—

Current Day - TBR

Probably that they don’t know any better, these two titans are splitting a two-bed queen room.

Or maybe they just grew up too poor.

“Shift” completed, they’ve come back to eat, drink, and figure out what their adversaries are about.  The match on the television isn’t holding their attention.  They’re a few beers deep and Goldie is pacing, man is a animal in a cage about this.  Hiram notices.

“Yo, Gold.  The hell’s the matter?”

“I dunno.”

“Well c’mon man, don’t just stand there like a unsucked dick.  Level with me.  We’re here, we made it, we took one flight and Spent like 2 hours at an arena and we’re sitting here eating good.  Air conditioning.  No one cracking a whip at us and no Tina’d up worms to try and steal our shit out the trailer.  And you know what?  This food tastes like food, this beer tastes like beer.  Not like dust and crude.”  He slaps his tomahawk steak paw on the cheap bedspread.  Invitation.  “Cmon.  Sit down, tell me what’s eating you.”

“S’like…I’m a fuckup.  I know that.  Always been one.  Prob’ly the son of a fuckup.  Maybe his daddy was a fuckup too, I’ll prolly never know.  An’ most days that I’se okay with, cause th’ world is fulla fuckups.  Fuckups ain’t bums, we earn, we pay those bills, bring food to th’ table.  When you said let’s do this, I thought it was just gonna be a whole other thing I fucked up.”  Goldie cracks his neck the same as back in the day.  Grip the chin, grip the crown, up and turn until you hear the snap.  Side one, side two.  “Crazy thing was you were right.  We are good at this shit.  An’ after a while I started to get some idea that maybe I was worth more’n just breaking my back an’ paying them bills.  Sometimes I’d be in th’ ring an’ we’d win an’ I’d feel somethin’ like thunder out there, like somethin’ was waitin’ for me to become it.  An’ I thought maybe that was this.  Maybe I’d feel diff’rent after we got here.  But that thunder’s still out there, man.  I think it’s like…th’ ghost of who I could be.  It’s a fuckup chicken waitin’ for th’ worst time to come on home to roost.”  Hiram munches a bite of bucket chicken and thinks.  He thinks for a whole drumstick.

“So you’re…nervous?”

“Man, that ain’t what the fuck I said, is it?”  That lash out has battery acid in it.  He softens.  “...I mean, yeah.”

“...I am too.”

“It don’t freak you out?”

“It does and it don’t, I guess.  I think about it too hard and everything here just dissolves.  Pulse gets real high, y’know?  Most of these people here have been here.  They’re established, people at least feel a certain way about ‘em, love or hate.  Us?  They don’t give a shit about us.  That’s scary.  And yeah, we’re a big noise where we come from, but anyone with one eye and half a brain coulda seen we were big goddamn fish in that soup bowl.  I dunno what we are here.  We could be sharks, could be bluegill.”  He peels another Tecate from the ring and presses the crimson and silver into Goldie’s palm.  “Look, we’ve had each other’s backs for years now.  Up against scrubs, up against tough fucks, up against folks just lookin’ for a good time and some real evil people.  Dude I read about once, one of them guys from back in historical times that wore a bedsheet, right?  He said the only way to be happy was to stop giving a fuck about what you can’t control.  This pans out or it works out ain’t on us, not really.  We can’t make ourselves a big success.  But we grinded it the fuck out and we made it, Goldie.  So alls we need to do is stay havin’ each other’s backs.  The rest’ll…just be what it is.”  The smaller one cracks a smile, and it’s surprising how easily it breaks out across his scarred, sour mug.  He pops open the brew and taps cans with his partner.

“Well shit, Hiram.  Long as I ain’t alone.”  They tap cans again and house them both to remnants with pelican gulps.  Crackle.  Two more dead soldiers to join the pile overtaking the plastic motel garbage can.  High Cotton nods to the television.

“Nah.  Never.  And these two?  Gonna be a real flattening.  Blindside hit.”

“Concrete to fuckin’ leather, man.”

“Hell yeah fuck yeah, Gold.”