The Hammer of Eden

developed an intuitive feel for what people wanted from him — deference, affection, humor, whatever — and the habit of giving it to them quickly. In the oilfield, what held the men together was humor: usually mocking, sometimes clever, often obscene.

Although he had been here only two weeks, Priest had won the trust of his co-workers. But he had not figured out how to steal the seismic vibrator. And he had to do it in the next few hours, for tomorrow the truck was scheduled to be driven to a new site, seven hundred miles away, near Clovis, New Mexico.

His vague plan was to hitch a ride with Mario. The trip would take two or three days — the truck, which weighed forty thousand pounds, had a highway speed of around forty miles per hour. At some point he would get Mario drunk or something, then make off with the truck. He had been hoping a better plan would come to him, but inspiration had failed so far.

“My car’s dying,” he said. “You want to give me a ride as far as San Antonio tomorrow?”

Mario was surprised. “You ain’t coming all the way to Clovis?”

“Nope.” He waved a hand at the bleak desert landscape. “Just look around,” he said. “Texas is so beautiful, man, I never want to leave.”

Mario shrugged. There was nothing unusual about a restless transient in this line of work. “Sure, I’ll give you a ride.” It was against company rules to take passengers, but the drivers did it all the time. “Meet me at the dump.”

Priest nodded. The garbage dump was a desolate hollow, full of rusting pickups and smashed TV sets and verminous mattresses, on the outskirts of Shiloh, the nearest town. No one would be there to see Mario pick him up, unless it was a couple of kids shooting snakes with a.22 rifle. “What time?”

“Let’s say six.”

“I’ll bring coffee.”

Priest needed this truck. He felt his life depended on it. His palms itched to grab Mario right now and throw him out and just drive away. But that was no good. For one thing, Mario was almost twenty years younger than Priest and might not let himself be thrown out so easily. For another, the theft had to go undiscovered for a few days. Priest needed to drive the truck to California and hide it before the nation’s cops were alerted to watch out for a stolen seismic vibrator.

There was a beep from the radio, indicating that the supervisor in the doghouse had checked the data from the last vibration and found no problems. Mario raised the plate, put the truck in gear, and moved forward fifty yards, pulling up exactly alongside the next pink marker flag. Then he lowered the plate again and sent a ready signal. Priest watched closely, as he had done several times before, making sure he remembered the order in which Mario moved the levers and threw the switches. If he forgot something later, there would be no one he could ask.

They waited for the radio signal from the doghouse that would start the next vibration. This could be done by the driver in the truck, but generally supervisors preferred to retain command themselves and start the process by remote control. Priest finished his cigarette and threw the butt out the window. Mario nodded toward Priest’s car, parked a quarter of a mile away on the two-lane blacktop. “That your woman?”

Priest looked. Star had got out of the dirty light blue Honda Civic and was leaning on the hood, fanning her face with her straw hat. “Yeah,” he said.

“Lemme show you a picture.” Mario pulled an old leather billfold out of the pocket of his jeans. He extracted a photograph and handed it to Priest. “This is Isabella,” he said proudly.

Priest saw a pretty Mexican girl in her twenties wearing a yellow dress and a yellow Alice band in her hair. She held a baby on her hip, and a dark-haired boy was standing shyly by her side. “Your children?”

He nodded. “Ross and Betty.”

Priest resisted the impulse to smile at the Anglo names. “Good-looking kids.” He thought of his own children and almost told Mario about them; but he stopped himself just in time. “Where do they live?”

“El Paso.”

The germ of an idea sprouted in Priest’s mind. “You get to see them much?”

Mario shook his head. “I’m workin’ and workin’, man. Savin’ my money to buy them a place. A nice house, with a big kitchen and a pool in the yard. They deserve that.”

The idea blossomed. Priest suppressed his excitement and kept his voice casual, making idle conversation. “Yeah, a beautiful house for a beautiful family, right?”

“That’s what I’m thinking.”

The radio beeped again, and the truck began to shake. The noise was like rolling thunder, but more regular. It began on a profound bass note and slowly rose in pitch. After exactly fourteen seconds it stopped.

In the quiet that followed, Priest snapped his fingers. “Say, I got an idea.… No, maybe not.”

“What?”

“I don’t know if it would work.”

“What, man, what?”

“I just thought, you know, your wife is so pretty and your kids are so cute, it’s wrong that you don’t see them more often.”

“That’s your idea?”

“No. My idea is, I could drive the truck to New Mexico while you go visit them, that’s all.” It was important not to seem too keen, Priest told himself. “But I guess it wouldn’t work out,” he added in a who-gives-a-damn voice.

“No, man, it ain’t possible.”

“Probably not. Let’s see, if we set out early tomorrow and drove to San Antonio together, I could drop you off at the airport there, you could be in El Paso by noon, probably. You’d play with the kids, have dinner with your wife, spend the night, get a plane the next day, I could pick you up at Lubbock airport.… How far is Lubbock from Clovis?”

“Ninety, maybe a hundred miles.”

“We could be in Clovis that night, or next morning at the latest, and no way for anyone to know you didn’t drive the whole way.”

“But you want to go to San Antonio.”

Shit. Priest had not thought this through; he was making it up as he went along. “Hey, I’ve never been to Lubbock,” he said airily. “That’s where Buddy Holly was born.”

“Who the hell is Buddy Holly?”

Priest sang: “ ‘I love you, Peggy Sue.…’ Buddy Holly died before you were born, Mario. I liked him better than Elvis. And don’t ask me who Elvis was.”

“You’d drive all that way just for me?”

Priest wondered anxiously whether Mario was suspicious or just grateful. “Sure I would,” Priest told him. “As long as you let me smoke your Marlboros.”

Mario shook his head in amazement. “You’re a hell of a guy, Ricky. But I don’t know.”

He was not suspicious, then. But he was apprehensive, and he probably could not be pushed into a decision. Priest masked his frustration with a show of nonchalance. “Well, think about it,” he said.

“If something goes wrong, I don’t want to lose my job.”

“You’re right.” Priest fought down his impatience. “I tell you what, let’s talk later. You going to the bar tonight?”

“Sure.”

“Why don’t you let me know then?”

“Okay, that’s a deal.”

The radio beeped the all-clear signal, and Mario threw the lever that raised the plate off the ground.

“I got to get back to the jug team,” Priest said. “We’ve got a few miles of cable to roll up before nightfall.” He handed back the family photo and opened the door. “I’m telling you, man, if I had a girl that pretty, I wouldn’t leave the goddamn house.” He grinned, then jumped to the ground and slammed the door.

The truck moved off toward the next marker flag as Priest walked away, his cowboy boots kicking up dust.

As he followed the sendero to where his car was parked, he saw Star begin to