Respect is a Dish Best Served Cold

The rusted iron head of the sledgehammer arced through frigid air, an unnatural extension of my core flowing energy slickly through my electric arms and into the gear's sweet spot. The pipe’s union chimed its hellish bell and finally spun tight.

“There! You see?” The Bosnian hulk in dark coveralls shouted and in the orange light from the scorching flare stack his carotid artery bulged through an ink dragon. He was called Shevko and possessed a ferocious intensity, most likely invigorated by the steroids that he also dealt. “That’s why you never give up!”

Together we had solved a puzzle, assembling the labyrinth of flow-line pipe that rushed crude oil up through the wellhead and into the pressure tank (where it’s monitored and regulated before being shipped off towards production). My sledgehammer violently secured the last tricky angle, locking the rigging into working order. Beyond the rumbling and clanking of heavy machinery, the lease was peaceful, gusts of snow spraying like geysers across the silver hunter’s moon. 

Five or six conversations into our first drive North, charging down the turbulent back-roads in his supped-up Dodge Ram, he told me about a moonlit drug deal gone bad in a vacant park: a sixth sense of approaching danger and narrowly escaping a hit squad, sliding out as three big black Escalades with 26” rims pulled up. A simple meeting to deliver a message from a friend on the Inside had apparently turned into a near brush with violence from a group that was not to be trifled with. It was the United Nations, he told me with a glance from the corner of his eye.

Gnarly, I told him, but why would a bunch of diplomats from the world’s governing body be after you? This was one of the rare occasions that I made him laugh. As it happens, the UN was also the name of a fearsome gang from Vancouver marauding through oil country: a.k.a, the Global United Nations Syndicate (GUNS). They provide the drugs and prostitutes for rig-pigs, and kill who needs killin’. Friends in high places or just different kinds of highs. Shevko looks about as badass as they come, so I took his fictional-sounding tale at face value. He said nothing about my commentary on whether life imitates art or art imitates life. Talking time was over and a hand emblazoned with a grinning skull cranked back up the System of a Down.

Eventually I learned that Shevko has a ten-year old daughter with a crack-head to whom he pays child support. He grew up on a farm outside of Sarajevo and immigrated to Canada when the war with Serbia ignited in the mid-90s. He claims to find the never-ending, desperately materialistic Pursuit for the Bigger Toy ridiculous, and calls its adherents, “Nimrods”. He hopes to take his silicone-tittied girlfriend and move to a lake someday, buy a boat that’s just fast enough. Just strong enough.

But I lost him on my oration about the excesses of capitalism.

Then a moose popped out of the snowy ditch and Shevko slammed on the brakes. The massive beast was galloping across the road at a languid 45-degree angle, its long brown legs seeming to move in slow motion behind the hulking rack of antlers that glowed in the halogen light. The truck skidded down to 50kph and for a moment kept pace with the graceful animal, its body lined up directly with the windshield. Five or six seconds after it vanished into the woods, Shevko let off honking the horn. “What a fucking shit show.” He said in his thick Slavic accent, shaking his head as we carried on towards the lease.

Just a few weeks ago, he’d hit one on this same stretch of road. One moment you’re leaning over the steering wheel in the dark before the dawn, squinting into the near distance through fourteen-hour-shift eyes. The next, a moose is crumpling your truck’s front end and you’ve went from 80kph to 5 in just over a second, as if the animal had a concrete foundation, and the moose is flying away, twenty feet through the frosty morning air and sprawling its wasted bulk at the end of your high beams. The moose tries to stand up but it’s flailing, in shock. It kicks its muscular legs a few final times. Frantic eyes search for understanding. Then it dies, as you unclip your seatbelt and stumble out into the snow to call 911. Just another casualty in man’s war against the environment.

Meanwhile, Shevko’s black market home business was booming. His ex-stripper girlfriend was processing more orders than ever, new unknown clientele referred by so-and-so, and he was beginning to sense the early stages of paranoia. I warned him about getting too big for his britches, reminded him of the tug-of-war between greed and moderation. I advised him to start using those disposable cell-phones you buy from Mac’s to make his business calls (I saw that on The Wire). The Big Brother satellite grid is omnipresent if you let it and pseudo-omniscient, able to record every cell-phone conversation and scan for key threat words. "The technology is in use," I tell him, "and while the chances of you getting red-flagged by authorities of a higher level than you may be slim, you’re better safe than sorry."

"Also," I said, "you should think about investing your dirty money into the stock market. Laundering your ill-got means through a well-diversified portfolio." I stopped short of recommending my father, an investment advisor with morals. But Shevko considered my criminal wisdom sound, and the nod he gave me indicated I’d reached the front door to the House of Respect.