Come Hell or High Water | mxm

3.2

3.2

White sun vanished. Icy drafts sluiced through waves of shimmering heat. Dense clouds scudded across darkening sky, tumbling into one another, edges netting together, finding purchase to nudge each other along. Billowing underbellies were black with rain.

Fierce wind tore through shuddering fields of grain, sliced through the quaking windbreak, gusted under the red and white checkered tablecloth. Snapping with the impact, the cloth nearly tore free of the hooks holding it to the folding plastic table. A scratched plastic chair tipped back on one leg, quivering in place for a long moment before it slowly toppled over to lie on its side in the rippling grass. The heavy branches of the poplars shuddered and shook and gave up shredded leaves with reluctance. Heavy cones thumped to the ground below the whipping blue spruce.

Guests gathered up armfuls of food: bowls of potato salad and coleslaw and deviled eggs. They hurried it all inside, a trailing line weaving in and out through the creaking screen door like ants before an incipient flood. Quip trotted self-importantly up and down the line as though herding the scurrying people. Her shaggy fur flattened to her sides before the gale but her tail waved eagerly above her back.

A blast of wind caught the door, tearing it open with an agonized screech before someone snagged the handle and wrenched it shut again.

Inside, everyone crowded into the bright kitchen, laughing and chattering. They carried laden plates in their hands, glad mostly that the barbequeing had been completed before the storm arrived. The house was fragrant with the smell of smoky hamburgers, warm with the press of bodies. Wind howled around the eaves.

In the quiet sitting room at the front of the house, Sam tapped at his laptop. Mark reclined in the armchair across from him with his plate balanced on the swell of his belly, his Edmonton Eskimos baseball cap still flattening greying blond hair. The window was a sheet of darkness, thick as night. Warm yellow lights reflected off shimmering glass.

"So you got the seven-of-four well shut in?" Sam asked, lips pulled down in a frown. He kept his voice low.

"Yeah, on Tuesday." Mark took a huge bite of his burger while Sam updated his spreadsheet. "So we gotta turn it on again in three months or somethin', right?" Mark added around a mouthful of beef and bun.

Distractedly, Sam replied, "We can hope. The well needs a hundred and fifty days of production a year to hold the mineral rights. We've got April, May and June production on that one."

"Ninety days, then. Needs another two months."

"Yeah. So much for the price rally, Christ." Sam laughed bitterly. "For now we wait to see if prices go up enough to cover the operating costs on that well, and if they don't we'll have no other choice but to get the last sixty days we need in November and December and take the loss."

"Shitty way to do business," Mark observed.

"Basically paying someone to take our oil, you mean?" Sam asked wryly.

"And basically just crossin' yer fingers and prayin' at this point," Mark agreed.

A small smile twisted Sam's lips. "Yeah, it's shitty, but we don't have a lot of choice. Everything's shitty right now. Oil's basically been in freefall for a year," he noted dryly. "At least we're still here to talk about it, there's a lot of people who aren't right now."

"Sure and I know that," Mark said, taking another huge bite of his burger. "Everybody's boys're home from the rigs. Every second headline's another major with hundreds of layoffs. Nobody's gettin' outta this one without a few scratches."

Sam's meal rested on the floor beside him, untouched. "Think we'll need to get a service rig in to clean out seven-of-four when we turn it back on?"