Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Jack
"There's also the matter of your niece."
Lily was five years old. No father, and now no mother, and the woman on the phone was still talking and I was standing in a dry shack in North Dakota trying to understand what was being asked of me.
The baseboard heater hummed, a thin, electric sound that didn't do much against the cold leaking through the floorboards.
The last time I'd seen Lily was a year ago.
I'd driven up to Clear Creek between jobs, stayed for dinner, left after.
Lily had been shy the whole visit—hid behind Cassie's leg when I came through the door, watched me from across the room while we ate, said maybe four words the entire time.
Cassie had to crouch down at one point and say this is your Uncle Jack like I was someone who needed an introduction, which I supposed I was.
I was putting my jacket on at the door when Lily appeared at my elbow.
She held out a drawing without looking at me.
Crayon, a house, three figures in front of it.
Sizes all wrong the way kids draw them, with the smallest figure with dark hair drawn in careful, deliberate strokes, like she'd taken her time with that part.
"That’s Mommy," Lily had whispered, her eyes fixed on my boots. "And that’s me."
I’d looked at the third figure. A tall, rectangular shape with jagged black hair and oversized hands. "Who’s this?"
"You," she said. Just the one word, like it was a fact I should have already known.
I didn't know what to say so I just took it.
I still had it. Folded in the front pocket of my backpack, soft at the creases now, the crayon gone waxy with time. I hadn't looked at it in months. I hadn't thrown it away either. It was the only thing I owned that didn't have a functional purpose.
"Mr. Henley?" The woman on the phone. "Are you still there?"
"Yes," I said. "I'm here."
"Your niece is currently with one of our family liaison team. She's safe and she's being looked after, but they'll need to speak with you as soon as possible." A brief pause. "I can give you a number."
"Go ahead."
She read it out. I had nothing to write with so I just held it in my head and repeated it back once to make sure. She said the sorry part and I let her finish before I hung up. The silence that followed was louder than the rig.
Cassie was dead.
I stood in the dry shack and let that be true for a moment. The baseboard heater ticked, its rhythmic snap like a countdown. Outside someone was moving equipment, the familiar clank of steel on steel, the rig doing what the rig did regardless.
Cassie was dead and Lily was five years old and sitting in a hospital somewhere with a stranger and I was the only person left who was supposed to do something about that. I looked at my hands—grease-stained, scarred at the knuckles, better at breaking things than holding them together.
I closed my eyes, pulled the number back, and dialled before it could slip from memory. I didn't think about what I was going to say. I just thought about the waxy drawing in my backpack, and the little figure with the dark hair.
* * *
I packed in eight minutes. Everything I owned fit in one bag and always had and I'd stopped thinking about what that meant a long time ago. I’d chosen to live a life that could be zipped shut in under ten minutes, and I liked it.
Roy was outside the bunkhouse when I came through with the bag over my shoulder. He looked at it, then at me. Instead of moving, he just stood there with his arms crossed, his shadow long and thin against the gravel.
"Family," I said. It was the only word that covered it and he didn't ask for more. That was the thing about men like Roy—they'd seen enough to know when a question would cost more than it was worth. Out here, "family" was usually the only thing powerful enough to pull a man off the line.
"I'll square it with Kowalski," he said.
I nodded and kept walking.
The truck to Bismarck left in an hour. I knew because I'd checked the schedule the same way I always checked exit routes—not because I planned to use them, just because knowing was a habit I'd never managed to break.
Maybe it was an old instinct, born in a house where you always needed to know where the door was.
Bismarck to Denver, one connection, I'd worked it out while I was packing.
Six hours if the connection held. I'd be in Cedar Falls by nightfall.
The kid, Myers, was by the truck when I came out. He'd been inside when I took the call—thin walls on a dry shack—and he'd put it together well enough. He looked at the bag, then at my face, his eyes searching for a crack that wasn't there.
"I'll take you to Bismarck," he said.
I hadn't asked, but he grabbed his keys anyway.
I went back in for one thing—my crescent wrench, the good one, the one I'd had since a rig outside Casper seven years ago. The steel was smooth from a decade of my own grip, the weight of it familiar as a heartbeat. I set it on Myers's bunk without a note. He'd figure it out.
Outside I stopped for a moment and looked back at the platform.
The flare stack still burning, the derrick against the grey sky, the whole operation running the same as it had been an hour ago and would be tomorrow and the day after.
The earth didn't stop giving up its oil just because a heart stopped beating in Colorado.
It didn't need me. Nothing out here ever did, which was exactly why I'd come.
I threw my bag in the back of Myers's truck and got in.
Myers didn't talk, which was the right call. I watched the rig disappear in the side mirror, the orange glow of the flare stack fading into the grey, and tried to remember the last time I'd had no idea what I was doing.
I couldn't.