OFF SHORE
by
G. Alexander Virden
Copyright 1997 All rights reserved
When evening comes, after a twelve-plus hour day, to the small offshore oil field, in Black Bay Louisiana, we return to the field’s camp. Most people cross paths with the work barge, at some point during the day. It gives you have at least a nodding acquaintance with everyone else standing humped over on the other day shift boats pulling in.
De Camp is a cluster of sheet metal buildings, built a top of thirty foot pilings, on an island, that could easily disappear, forever, in a not too violent tropical storm. The living complex is a converted drilling platform barge. A two-story structure, raised up on steel legs and tied to the offices on shore with a steel grading bridge. At the top the quarters it the helo pad, a great place to watch the sunset. When it's windy, you can stand at the edge, spread your arms, and pretend you're flying.
Around the camp island are a series of galvanized, deck grading, walk ways. Their original purpose being to give access to the wells scattered around the island. The marsh and pools on the island would be impassible without them. After chow, for those who didn't try to make offshore like home by immediately plopping down in front of the tube with a soda and a bag of microwave popcorn, the walks become quiet paths of refuge from the constant noise and activity of the day.
The main road out, about three feet wide and raised two to four feet off the marsh, passes a perfect ring of open water that forms a donut island on the island. Cranes stoically stand or move slowly around the shallow mote without the slightest attention to human passage. The raccoons sit at the edge of the water, carefully breaking open oysters on rocks and will vamoose after assuring themselves that you are going to continue closing on them.
When I inquired about the agile little bandits I was told, "Those fat little things be swimmin' like a mutha fucka. You can't sink em." Apparently they make their living swimming between the islands, of the bay, like I do.
Black Bay won't be on any Triple A map you have of Louisiana, though you might see it on a placemat, if you stop for seafood on the way down. It's a place you reach by catching a crew boat out of Hopedale. Hopedale has: no paved road, one boat ramp and a bait shop-where you can get a beer, but only Bud or Miller.
An old Link-Belt Crane, with pealing red paint and orange rust spots, sits by a seawall that keeps what is there from sinking into the bayou and gives the crew boats a place to tie up. Pickup trucks and a few cars keep the two parking lots full. But there’s no gas station. You've got to remember to fill up before you head down the bayou road that takes you there.
The first thing you notice going offshore is the mosquitoes, waiting for you at the dock, like starving vampires. We usually get to the docks just before sunrise or just after sunset. These are the times that Johnson Wax films those Deep Woods Off commercials that have more bugs in the air than oxygen. By the way, these feasters bathe in Skin So Soft. They come over, suck up a couple of quarts of A+, while they spread a little oil on their wings, then set up their little sun chairs and digest. In winter the mosquitoes come out in pestilent hordes whenever we have a couple of warm days. During the summer forget it.
The mosquitoes aren't always the problem. Close to the coast, on a still day, the knats would drive the gods mad. Someone once told me that knats have the largest teeth to bodyweight ratio of all creatures. If anyone ever tells you this, they’ve been to Black Bay. Fortunately the SSS works on them. You've never inhaled such an aroma as a half a dozen sweaty, Cajuns, rednecks, and wharf rats, with enough Skin-so-Soft on they could take a flying leap up Nancy Regan's butt.
Originally they called me out to repair a natural gas leak. A week before a barge had dropped a spud-a steel holding leg-on a gas line. Someone was welding on deck, at the time, and the resulting explosion blew the barge out of the water like a republican at a Black Panther meeting. Three people out of five got the answer to the big question.
To repair the leak you go down and uncover the line with a water jet. Then pull it up on deck with the crane and cut out the offending joint (oil field term for forty foot section of pipe, not a green leafy substance, of unknown origins, rolled in a tampon wrapper). Replace the pipe and we’re cruising off to an unending number of trawl claims.
Black bay is a public fishing ground and contains a wild oyster reef, which means anybody with a boat and a license can harvest the oysters. The flat, wide, boats with names like, The Miss Mabel, The Captain Jack, and The Sally May, were all around us, going in steady circles, dredging. An oyster dredge looks like the skeleton of a steam shovel claw, with a net in the back. It hangs from a chain, hooked to a wench-one on each side of the boat. They space its finger claws to scoop up only larger oysters. Rails, on the sides, keep them from catching on pipelines, sort of.
The bay is one of the oldest offshore fields in the world. There’re places down there that look like a giant steel spider web. Dredges hang up on this spotty past and that's where the diver comes in. The oil company only owns the mineral rights to Black Bay; it's responsible for seeing that other rights such as fishing and boating are protected.
Working off an, eighty x thirty foot, spud barge, we cruise around doing maintenance on the field. After freeing and returning a dredge, we have to scrap the offending pipeline, which can mean a thousand feet of dead pipe. If it's just one joint, you can cold-cut it under water. Hook it up the crane and five minutes later you’re wrapped in a towel, watching Oprah. If it's several joints, we pull it up on deck with the crane and use a torch to cut it into sections.
Divers do a variety of work: burying pipelines, installing risers (The pipe that goes from the platform to the bottom to start the pipe line), salvage, emergency pipeline repairs, etc., but there is a whole other aspect to working offshore that doesn't really have to do with diving; it's the micro community that comes along with it. My immediate cell is the barge. The people I work with directly every day.
On this trip out the barge foreman, Rambo, was a young weight lifter. His nickname was stitched over the top pocket of his coveralls and printed on his hard hat. His Mississippi accent twangs in a way I have seldom heard used except in parody and his small town values caused him to be greatly offended when the barge pilot accused him of sleeping with a woman other that his wife.
"I don't like that. You saying I don't have no morals."
Rambo wasn’t exactly an educated man, but he was country sly. When I told him, I was from California he said.
"Oh god, another one."
It seems he'd run into a woman from California that had followed him from one bar to another. After introducing herself she asked why everyone down her spoke so fast. "I know when someone's making fun of me." He said. "You do?" I asked. The point had slipped by me because, since coming to this state, I've run into people who spit out words like mice, in an uncovered blender, on frappe. After thinking about it, I realized, there were those who spoke so slow I wanted to chop them up in little tiny pieces, to see if I could find the sentence they were trying to finish.
"Yeah, I pick up on those things pretty quick." He chuckled. "So I started looking over my shoulder at the door and she finally asked me what I was looking for. I said I was keeping an eye out for my girl. The last time she caught me, talking to a woman, she cut her up pretty bad." He paused to laugh with me. "She didn't stick around very long after that."
The contract welder works a steady seven and seven, but is employed by a subcontractor. He’s been in the oil fields since the early seventies and has the leathery face and a voice that sounds as if he’d turned the torch on his throat. He's one of those guys that could go on a steady siphon of donuts and soda without gaining an ounce and walks in a steady crouch from years of bending over, fabricating metals, and has the bitterness that’d make an onion cry.
Gather round for the story of many oil workers who are now making a quarter in actual, not inflation adjusted, dollars, than back in the boom days. The unfortunate result, of believing it would go on forever, has left him with no savings and a wasted depression that hangs on him like one of those big wool coats the homeless people wear in Los Angeles.
The pilot was an old wiry guy-excepting an isolated pot hanging over his belt-that was on a mission to see just how many obscenities he could ejaculate per hour. He was a regular Mario fucking Andretti at this. His snaggle tooth mouth virtually erupted with slurs, directed with venom, at anything, or one, who annoyed him. Apparently this is not a difficult zone to fall into. As he walked hunched over to work on the barge or run the crane, the words multiplied like fleas on a hot dog. They ejected with such unbelievably reliability, they lost meaning and occasionally I would burst out in laughter at the absurdity of it. The screwy part was that he was a complete Jim and Tammy, North Carolina, clone-head that believes the world is going to end in eight years because Pat Robinson says so.
This came out during a religious discussion, on my seventh day. The field’s resident holy roller, who had come on board to replace Rambo-due to a steroid induced ailment that involved glands swollen to the size of grapefruit and his rectum. This buzz top, pumpkin head, was trying to convert everyone on the barge into something. I'm still not clear on what. Even if someone said they believed in Jesus he had to make sure they believed in his Jesus. I think like a lot of people who call themselves Christians, by wearing crosses on their heads, and driving fish cars, he just liked hearing himself talk about anything. Especially a subject that he can wax on about, with impunity, or fear of direct challenge. One he can invoke divine retaliation if you disagree or try to turn away. Until, of course, he met me.
I have no problem with Christians who follow true word of Christ. But people who call themselves Christians to hide their bigotry chap my hide like black leather car seats in August. He had been preaching for a while when I entered the conversation. He almost took my head off (literally, not figuratively) when I made a logical argument that made his sermon sound like the Idiot’s Guide to the Universe. It was something like, god wouldn’t have let acid burn 90% of his father’s body in the first place, if he was watching. Not to say he wouldn't be there to help pick up the pieces, but I thought it was silly to worship a god that would burn 90% of a man's body to make a point, unless that person was one evil son of bitch.
There’s something intense, not like the creation of the universe intense, more like your brakes just went out in traffic, intense, about getting one of these cranial deprived, neck disable, tire chewing, maggots so whipped into such a frenzy that they actually have a thought. It’s not the blinding halogen idea. It’s more along the lines of, Hugh? But you know, when you look into those pale watery eyes, that are used to seeing from the outside, his brain is trying to do a push up. It’s like his whole being shuts down from the effort. That big gelatos lump of preconceived programs has actually tried to start. It makes a sound sort of like a naked fat man's, hairy butt cheeks, slapping against a red Formica kitchen table, as he lets got of a beer and pizza fart, three days old. The rectangle kind with the chrome trim.
A crew boat captain had to physically restrain him. I thought I was going to see something really cool when I mentioned something about his non-Christian behavior. His eyes began to spin like Michael Jackson on PCP. He reached over the captain's shoulder, pointed at my black sunglasses, and screamed that I even looked like the devil. By this time the watery look of simple fear had morphed into the blind red passion of rage and now it’s like the fat man's sitting on the table farting like a mad gastro goose. That brain is just a screaming away. He-p me! He-p me! Insufficient Memory! Error! Error!
My fellow diver is rare, in that he's actually from this area, most divers are transplants. He’d hoped diving would step him out of a poor working class life and give him a future. While he has improved his life, it hasn't been the golden cow he'd hoped for. He, like most of us, is bouncing from paycheck to paycheck and would give up the occupation tomorrow for a job that was steady and let him go home on the weekends. Unfortunately Louisiana doesn't have a great abundance of those unless you want to work for minimum wage. So he's willing to work way beyond the normal diver routine which is: If it's not wet I don't touch it.
He follows behind the welder grinding his cuts, is always the first to grab a line to tie up a crew boat to the barge, and cleans up like a maid, all in hopes that Callon will make him their steady contract diver. I say more power to him, he's a great worker, but it's hard enough to stay ahead of the, I believe I tell you the truth. Therefore I do., company we work for. I could spend a few moments of prolonged bitching about the company. But it’s like everything, you got there somehow, so you can get out of it. It’s just a matter of how much you’re willing to hurt to make the change.
I myself am somewhat suspect to the others of my barge family because of my affection for books.
"I don't understand how a Mother Fucker can just sit there and read!"
"I've got extra books if you'd like one."
"Nooo, no. You ain't gettin' me ta read no books." My religious friend was especially adamant about this philosophy.
After supper my destination, on what became a nightly stroll, over grading that was occasionally choked with grass and sage, was a lagoon on the opposite end of the island. The first night I came out, to this quiet shallow, I disturbed a Blue Heroin so large, and rare to my eyes, I sucked in and held my breath until she had lumbered into the air and sailed beyond my pathetic human vision.
At the lagoon one can sit and watch the day fade from orange to coal specked with more stars than you could see in a year from your balcony in the city. You sit and stare to the edge of the world at dusk, the end of the universe at night. There is nothing but a few tiny islands and dots of oil wells that rise ten to fifteen feet out of the water, to disturb the horizon of clouds, that dwarf the Sears Tower and make the imagination ache with want. To the west a two story pump house, built forty feet above the water, lights up like a mini-mall as the last glow of the sun hangs on like the passing of love and hate.
Of course since the capitalist idea of these high-rise paths is utility it is best to bring something to sit on. I scavenged some driftwood to lay across the grading then used my work vest as a cushion.
There is little olfactory confusion; the tastes are direct and isolated falling on a blanket of salt air like colors on a blank canvas. As you walk past them, or the breeze shifts bringing them to you, you’re mind is wiped of banality by the attack of red. Cooking, diesel exhaust, natural gas, the putrid smell of the industrial trash compactor by the dock, the sweet rotting smells of the marsh, the green and sage scent of the grass and scrub brush.
They mix with the night sounds, all a contrast to the busy work racket of the day: jack up and spud barges, cranes lifting, crew, work, and jo, boats. The babble of talking, cursing, shouting, radios blaring country or rock, VHF radios of the fishing and sport boats and company radios on the loud speaker that tell you what everyone in the field is doing by what they need or what they are reporting.
A face appears in front of me.
"So, you pulled a thousand feet of pipe today."
"Ah, yeah, we did. Who are you?"
Offshore relationships last five minutes to forever.
With the cadence of the day silenced, like a book slammed shut, and life moves from the realist to the Monet. Mullet jump, seeming to cry out, "I want to fly! I want to fly!" with every leap, speckled trout Floff their tails against the surface as they strike and descend back to depth, and red fish Pop, Fooshhh!" attacking their prey ferocious appetites.
The constant white noise that is buried during the day becomes a fusion jazz jam session. You can close your eyes, concentrate on the beauty of it, so for a moment you can believe you not just selling years of your life away for thirty gold pieces. The low steady thumping of diesel generators-so continuous that it disappears completely, waves, wind, distant boats, low quality natural gas vented from the pumping station, all set the melody for the unique and sudden silence. A crew boat, with its throaty diesels, takes off. The rumble disturbs tired sea gulls. They rise in a complaining circle around the setting sun, crying at the boat, long after its engines have become distant. The occasional air blast of a boat's horn, lets you know some are still wandering. And often, at night, thunder, from deceptively clear skies. Tree branch lighting walks across the sky like veins in and old drunks face, illuminating the field, with a giant strobe.
And as it gets dark the beacons dot your eyes; navigation lights, on top of every well in the bay, come to life on solar charged battery power and remind you of the reason you’re here. You smile thinking, if the fools only knew, they’d take even this away from us. This good to be found, in what seems a thankless job aside for the occasional wave of a fisherman you’ve helped. And you gather up your books, you no longer have the light to read, and hang you work vest over your arm and return to your little four man room, shared by two, to get some sleep, because you know, come five o'clock, it all starts over again.
The End
Ozarts Inside Ozarts Grand View Stories By the Baron