The Dryline. Jack Grubbs
a drafting table and hammed it up. Don rose slowly and walked to the front of the room. He braced himself against the front door and clicked away several times.
“I did my duty.” He paused briefly, then added, “Aw, shit.” He offered the camera to Mark. “Cindy wants one of me too.” Mark took two more shots and the formal duty, at Don’s wife’s command, was finished.
For another two hours the five men engaged in a myriad of topics. Women, politics, women, sports, women, and engineering were the subjects of choice. They sang hearty rounds of outrageously bawdy songs, and by party’s end, Vince had been fully accepted as a “friend of the company.” He also knew a fair amount about a device named JETS, the acronym for Jet Extraction Technology System.
Jay and Mark left around six o’clock. Don suffered from multiple sclerosis and could not drive at night; Elam was less competent to drive than Don. The obvious choice, Vince gave both a ride to Don’s home on Millwood Circle in Ventura, where Elam was the guest for the night. Vince and Don poured Elam out of the car and guided him to the house. Vince returned for Elam’s bag and turned it over to Don’s wife, Cindy. Radiant red hair, a sincere smile, and genuine thanks convinced Vince that Don had hit the jackpot in selecting a mate.
“Join us for dinner. Elam will be fine in an hour, and I have a ton of chicken and beef fajitas,” said Cindy as a sincere invitation to Vince.
The hunger gnawing at Vince’s stomach said “yes,” but his need to put memory onto paper mandated “no.” He apologized for his quick departure, climbed into his car, and headed out of the small subdivision and west on Telegraph Road. Oblivious to the heavy traffic, Vince mulled over his impression that Don, Cindy, and Elam were good-natured, hard-working, and naive; a moral nerve tugged at him ever so slightly. He had no idea where his investigation into the whole Seiler family would take him, but he did suspect that the ultimate intentions of his employer were not good. Vince stopped at a chain Italian restaurant and, over lobster ravioli, wrote down everything he could remember about the JETS. Two glasses of wine stunted his appetite for dessert. He had a long drive back to the Marriott LAX.
The shrill ringing rattled in her head, waking her from a fitful sleep. She fumbled at the nightstand before finally grabbing the phone.
“Hello?” Her voice was slurred.
“It’s me—Vince.”
At first she couldn’t put it all together. Vince? Who? Her mind, drugged in sleep, struggled for function. Vince? The PI? She started to focus. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”
Vince had forgotten the three-hour time difference. “Damn. I’m sorry, I just forgot. This can wait until tomorrow.”
“I’m already awake. What do you want?”
Vince’s pleasant thoughts about Don, Cindy, and Elam slammed shut.
“I might have stumbled onto something of significance related to this guy Seiler’s brother. Are you familiar with the term ‘stripper well’?”
Elizabeth Harker, still groggy but beginning to grasp her surroundings, focused not on stripper wells, but on the possibility that she would be able to bring incalculable grief to the person of Thomas Mannan Seiler. He had ruined her life and she would repay the favor tenfold.
“What do you think?” she said. “I’ve lived in Texas.”
Two
Monday, December 28
Houston, Texas
Don! Don Seiler. Over here,” yelled Delana Lally above the din of the traffic and the hurried travelers heading in all directions. Bush Intercontinental Airport was built with airplane traffic in mind. Vehicular traffic was an afterthought.
Don lifted his cane, smiling beneath a straw hat, and pointed back at Delana. She closed the door with Delana’s Taxi Service written on it and hurried toward him, leaving the small van easy prey for roving police. Delana and Don hugged briefly.
“Welcome back, stranger. Where’s your navy hat?”
“Good to see you, Delana. My navy hat’s hiding from me somewhere in my house. How’ve you been?”
“Good. Business is better than expected this week. Next week will be strong, what with everyone headed home.” Delana grabbed Don’s single traveling bag and turned toward the van. She looked back at Don. “Need a hand?”
“Nope. Got my cane and put my troubles on the doorstep.” He lifted the cane so that she could see that it also doubled as a stubby fishing rod, including a small reel attached at the handle. He had to remove the hook for the flight from California.
Delana hotfooted it back to the van, placing Don’s bag in the rear. Don slowly made his way across two lanes of traffic, his right leg barely able to move. The pedestrian crossing was too far away to bother with, so he just counted on the good will of Houston drivers. A pedestrian in traffic could get away with multiple sclerosis in Texas—not so much in New York City. Don took off his hat and leather jacket, tossed them and the cane in the back, and joined Delana in the front seat. They were off to a small ranch deep in the heart of Texas. Delana drove west on Beltway 8 and north on I-45. Tom and Delana were originally introduced by Don’s brother Tom, and they had some catching up to do. The friendship began when Delana picked Tom up at Houston Hobby Airport. He found her both polite and a good driver, so he took her phone number. From that day on Delana was the brothers’ driver of choice.
“Where you been, baby? Must be six months since I last saw you.” Delana looked over at Don, then back to the snarled traffic. Don smiled at the ad hoc accent. A transplant to Texas courtesy of Hurricane Katrina, Delana arrived with seven generations worth of New Orleans dialect. Houston was OK, but she couldn’t wait to return to the end of the Mississippi River.
“Really been busy,” Don replied. “In spite of the economy, interest in offshore engineering has picked up lately in California. At least my part, the little nuts and bolts, has picked up. Also, I’ve been moonlighting on an oil field device with a friend. It’s got great potential. I called Tom about it last week and we’re going to discuss modifications that might make it work better. He understands mechanical things better than I do. I’ll be here two, maybe three days. Give you a call for a ride back.”
Delana smiled. “Just call me, baby.”
Don, the endless mixing of billboards with strip malls negating his visual fondness for Texas countryside, found it easy to forge into Delana’s family life. “How’s Pete doing? Still on the rigs?”
Delana answered, eyes on the thick traffic, “Yeah, pretty much the same routine. Three weeks on, two weeks off. He’s doin’ good. He hopes he’ll get moved back to the rigs off of Cocodrie. If he does, I’ll be headed back home.”
Don thought back to the time he spent in the Gulf of Mexico with Poole Offshore. Until his MS had taken its toll, most of Don’s life had been a strange elixir of hard work, serious hell-raising, and bit-by-bit maturing.
“When’s he get home next?”
“Friday. We’re going back to N’awlins to see my Mama on Saturday.”
“For some lagniappe, huh?” The idea of lagniappe—a little something extra—permeated life in Louisiana.
“You bet, baby. Those shrimp po’boys and that andoullie sausage are calling us home.”
Both could almost smell the aroma. Don added, “Did you know that when I got my first job in the Gulf, I lived in Gretna?”
She did know. Filled with nostalgic tales, they focused their conversation on life in bayou country.
Entering Conroe, they headed west on State