Memories of Midnight

Nearly all the men involved in the actual drilling—the geologists, surveyors, engineers, and oil chemists—were Americans, for the new rotary drill had been invented in the United States and the Americans were more familiar with its operation. The young man went out of his way to make friends with them.

Constantin Demiris spent as much time as he could around the drillers and he never stopped asking questions. He stored away the information, absorbing it the way the hot sands soaked up water. He noticed that two different methods of drilling were being used.

He approached one of the drillers working near a giant 130-foot derrick. “I was wondering why there are two different kinds of drilling going on.”

The driller explained. “Well, son, one’s cable tool and one’s rotary. We’re going more to rotary now. They start out exactly the same.”

“They do?”

“Yeah. For either one you have to erect a derrick like this one to hoist up the pieces of equipment that have to be lowered into the well.” He looked at the eager face of the young man. “I’ll bet you have no idea why they call it a derrick.”

“No, sir.”

“That was the name of a famous hangman in the seventeenth century.”

“I see.”

“Cable tool drilling goes way back. Hundreds of years ago, the Chinese used to dig water wells that way. They punched a hole into the earth by lifting and dropping a heavy cutting tool hung from a cable. But today about eighty-five percent of all wells are drilled by the rotary method.” He turned to go back to his drilling.

“Excuse me. How does the rotary method work?”

The man stopped. “Well, instead of slammin’ a hole in the earth, you just bore one. You see here? In the middle of the derrick floor is a steel turntable that’s rotated by machinery. This rotary table grips and turns a pipe that extends downward through it. There’s a bit fastened to the lower end of the pipe.”

“It seems simple, doesn’t it?”

“It’s more complicated than it looks. You have to have a way to excavate the loosened material as you drill. You have to prevent the walls from caving in and you have to seal off the water and gas from the well.”

“With all that drilling, doesn’t the rotary drill ever get dull?”

“Sure. Then we have to pull out the whole damned drill string, screw a new bit to the bottom of the drill pipe, and lower the pipe back into the hole. Are you planning to be a driller?”

“No, sir. I’m planning to own oil wells.”

“Congratulations. Can I get back to work now?”

One morning, Demiris watched as a tool was lowered into the well, but instead of boring downward, he noticed that it cut small circular areas from the sides of the hole and brought up rocks.

“Excuse me. What’s the point of doing that?” Demiris asked.

The driller paused to mop his brow. “This is side wall coring. We use these rocks for analysis, to see whether they’re oil-bearing.”

“I see.”

When things were going smoothly, Demiris would hear drillers cry out, “I’m turning to the right,” which meant they were making a hole. Demiris noticed that there were dozens of tiny holes drilled all over the field, with diameters as small as two or three inches.

“Excuse me. What are those for?” the young man asked.

“Those are prospect wells. They tell us what’s underneath. Saves the company a lot of time and money.”

“I see.”

It was all utterly fascinating to the young man and his questions were endless.

“Excuse me. How do you know where to drill?”

“We got a lot of geologists—pebble pups—who take measurements of the strata and study the cuttings from wells. Then the rope chokers …”

“Excuse me, what’s a rope choker?”

“A driller. When they …”

Constantin Demiris worked from early morning until sundown, hauling rigs through the burning desert, cleaning equipment, and driving trucks past the streamers of flame rising from the rocky peaks. The flames burned day and night, carrying off the poisonous gases.

J. J. McIntyre had told Demiris the truth. The food was bad, living conditions were horrible, and at night there was nothing to do. Worse, Demiris felt as though every pore in his body were filled with grains of sand. The desert was alive and there was no way to escape it. The sand filtered into the hut and through his clothes and into his body until he thought he would go crazy. And then it got worse.

The shamal struck. The sandstorms blew every day for a month, driven by a howling wind with an intensity strong enough to drive men mad.

Demiris stared out the door of his hut at the swirling sand. “Are we going out to work in that?”

“You’re fucking right, Charlie. This ain’t a health spa.”

Oil discoveries were being made all around them. There was a new find at Abu Hadriya and another at Qatif and at Harad, and the workers were kept busier than ever.

There were two new arrivals, an English geologist and his wife. Henry Potter was in his late sixties and his wife, Sybil, was in her early thirties. In any other setting, Sybil Potter would have been described as a plain-looking obese woman with a high, unpleasant voice. In Fadili, she was a raving beauty. Since Henry Potter was constantly away prospecting for new oil fields, his wife was left alone a great deal.

Young Demiris was assigned to help her move into their quarters and to assist her in getting settled.

“This is the most miserable place I’ve ever seen in my life,” Sybil Potter complained in her whining voice. “Henry’s always dragging me off to terrible places like this. I don’t know why I put up with it.”

“Your husband is doing a very important job,” Demiris assured her.

She eyed the attractive young man speculatively. “My husband isn’t doing all the jobs he should be doing. Do you know what I mean?”

Demiris knew exactly what she meant. “No, ma’am.”

“What’s your name?”

“Demiris, ma’am. Constantin Demiris.”

“What do your friends call you?”

“Costa.”

“Well, Costa, I think you and I are going to become very good friends. We certainly have nothing in common with these wogs, have we?”

“Wogs?”

“You know. These foreign people.”