1.12 Pay Zone
The conference table ran the length of the room on the second floor of Breckenridge Wellhead Services, the wood dark and polished, the chairs pushed in tight along both sides. The windows behind the head of the table looked out over the yard where service trucks sat in rows on the asphalt, the company logo stenciled on the doors, pipe racks running along the fence line, the derricks on the horizon visible past the chain-link where the basin opened up flat and wide to the east.
Holt sat at the head with a glass of water in front of him, his hands folded together on the table, his sleeves rolled to the forearms, his weight settled back in the chair. Four men sat along the sides. Tom Hackley, his operations VP, a thick man with a sunburn line across his forehead where the hardhat sat, his hands wrapped around a styrofoam cup. Ray Canales, head of sales, a folder open in front of him with printed spreadsheets, a pen resting in the crease. Dennis Moyer, his CFO, a laptop turned toward him with columns of numbers on the screen, his reading glasses low on his nose. Kyle Briggs, his field superintendent, still in his boots and FR coveralls from a site visit that morning, dust on his sleeves and the knees of the fabric, a streak of drilling mud dried on the back of one hand.
The coffee pot sat on the credenza behind them, the burner light still on, styrofoam cups lined up next to it in a row.
Holt nodded to Ray. “Go ahead.”
Ray flipped a page in his folder, his finger running down the column on the left side of the spreadsheet. “We locked in the Diamondback contract through next March. Sixty wells, full completion services. They tried to bring the rate down on the wireline work but I held at what we quoted.”
Holt nodded. “Good. What about Pioneer?”
“Pioneer’s still shopping around. They got three bids in front of them and we’re the most expensive.”
“We’re also the only ones who’ve never shut down a job for a safety incident. Make sure they know that.”
Ray nodded, picked up his pen and wrote something in the margin of the spreadsheet, the pen pressing hard enough to dent the page beneath it.
Dennis turned the laptop toward Holt, the screen catching the light from the window, the columns of numbers small and tight on the display. “Revenue’s up eleven percent over the same quarter last year. Margins are holding. Only issue is the fleet. We’re running the trucks hard and we’ve got four units down for maintenance right now.”
Holt looked at Kyle. “What’s the turnaround on those?”
Kyle shifted in his chair, his hands on his knees, the dust from his coveralls sitting in the creases of the fabric. “Two of them are parts issues. Waiting on transmissions out of Houston. Other two should be back on the road by Friday.”
“Get Houston on the phone today and tell them if those parts aren’t here by Wednesday we’re sourcing them somewhere else. I’m not losing rig time because somebody in a warehouse can’t find a shipping label.”
Kyle nodded once and leaned back in his chair.
Holt looked back at the table, his eyes moving across the four of them. “Gentlemen, we’re in the best position we’ve been in in five years. The basin’s hot, we’ve got the crews, we’ve got the contracts. I don’t want us getting comfortable.”
He picked up his water, took a sip and set it back down, the glass clicking against the wood. “Tom, how many guys did we hire this quarter?”
Tom set his coffee cup on the table, his thumb pressing into the rim. “Fourteen. Six roughnecks, four CDL drivers, two mechanics, two hands for the cement crew.”
“Any of those local?”
“Most of them. A few from Midland, couple from Monahans.”
Holt nodded, his fingers lacing together on the table in front of him. “Good. I like hiring local. These families spend their money here, their kids go to school here, they’re part of the community.”
He looked out the window at the yard, the trucks sitting in their rows, the heat already bending the air above the asphalt, a man in coveralls walking between two of the units with a clipboard in his hand. The derricks stood on the horizon beyond the fence, the pump jacks nodding in the distance, the basin stretching out past them to a line of sky.
“Ray, when you close Pioneer, I want you to bring their operations manager out to the yard. Let him see the fleet, meet the crews, shake some hands. Don’t sell him on numbers. Sell him on the fact that when his well has a problem at two in the morning, the man who answers the phone lives fifteen minutes away and his kid plays ball with his kid.”
Ray closed the folder in front of him, his hand resting flat on the cover.
Holt settled back in his chair, his hands coming together in front of him, the tips of his fingers pressing against each other. “Alright. Dennis, get me a full P&L by Friday. Tom, I want an updated crew roster with addresses. Kyle, get my trucks running.”
He stood, buttoned one button on his jacket, the fabric pulling smooth across his chest. “Appreciate y’all’s time, gentlemen.”
The men pushed back from the table, chairs scraping the carpet, folders closing, Kyle’s boots heavy on the floor as he stood. Holt walked to the window, his hands sliding into his pockets, and looked out at the yard. The trucks. The fence. The derricks beyond it. The man with the clipboard had stopped between two units and was writing something down, his pen moving across the page.
The shed sat at the back of the Verrets’ yard behind the garage, the door propped open a few inches to let the extension cord snake through the gap and across the grass to the outlet on the back of the house. Inside, foam panels lined the walls in mismatched squares, some black, some gray, the adhesive showing at the edges where the glue had dried white against the wood. A desk pushed against the far wall held a laptop, a pair of monitor speakers, a MIDI keyboard with a few of the keys discolored from use, and a mic on a stand in the corner with a pop filter rigged to the arm with a bent coat hanger. A single bulb hung from the ceiling on a cord, the light yellow and flat, the heat from it adding to the heat already sitting in the space.
Saint sat on a folding chair near the door with a plate balanced on his knee, mac and cheese, two pieces of chicken, rice and a dinner roll, the food still warm from the kitchen. He worked through the chicken with his fingers, pulling the meat off the bone between bites, setting the bone down on the edge of the plate and picking up the next piece. A second plate sat on the edge of the desk behind him, covered with a paper towel, the plate bowed under more food than his own. Three pieces of chicken, a bigger pile of rice, two rolls.
Brynn sat on the floor next to Saint’s chair with her back against the foam-lined wall, her shoulder an inch from his leg, her knees pulled up, her arms resting across them.
Remy sat at the desk with his laptop open, scrolling through a folder of beat files, the filenames running down the screen in a column of numbers and abbreviations. His headphones hung around his neck, the cushions resting against his collarbones. He clicked on one and the track came through the monitor speakers, filling the small room, the foam on the walls absorbing the highs and letting the low end sit heavy in the space. A slow build, the drums sitting back behind a piano loop, a bass line running underneath it, the whole thing dark and open.
Brynn listened, her head tilting. “The piano’s too high. It’s fighting where my voice would sit.”
Remy nodded. “I can bring it down. Or I could swap it for something else. What are you thinking?”
“Something lower. Like a pad or a synth that just holds underneath. The drums are right. The bass is right. The top is wrong.”
Remy leaned forward and typed a note into his phone, his thumbs moving fast across the screen. “I got you.”
He clicked to the next one. The drums punched in first, a sample buried under them, something filtered and chopped, the mood heavier, the bass distorted and pushing against the speakers. The foam panels on the wall behind the monitors vibrated once at the edges where the adhesive had loosened.
Brynn shook her head before it got past the first eight bars. “No.”
“You don’t even want to hear the rest?”
“It’s a rap beat. I can’t sing on that.”
Remy nodded, clicked past it. The next one opened with just the bass, low and heavy, a single note held long enough that the room seemed to settle around it. A melody sat underneath, barely there, something that hummed more than it played, the sound of it close to a voice but processed past recognition. The drums came in after eight bars, loose, patient, the kick sitting behind the bass instead of on top of it.
Brynn’s fingers started tapping on her knee, her index and middle finger alternating against the denim. She let the whole thing play through. When it ended she said, “Play it again.”
Remy clicked back and played it from the top. Brynn closed her eyes, her lips moving slightly, her thumb pressing a rhythm against her skin. Saint set his plate on the floor beside his chair and leaned back, his arms crossing over his chest, watching her face, the movement of her mouth, her fingers still working against her knee. The track played through a second time, the bass filling the shed, the bulb above them swaying once on its cord.
Brynn opened her eyes. “That’s the closest to what I hear in my head. The way it builds slow and then the drums come in late. I want that feel. Like you’re waiting for something and then it comes in quiet.”
Remy nodded, leaning back in his chair, the springs creaking under his weight. “I can build on that. Layer something darker on the low end, give the chorus room to hit harder, maybe add a 808 that drops in on —”
Brynn shook her head. “Don’t add too much to it.”
“I’m not talking about a lot. Just some texture. You gotta give the chorus something or it’s just gonna feel flat.”
Brynn’s arms tightened across her knees. She looked down at the floor, the concrete between her feet, her mouth closing. Remy started to say something else and Saint set the chicken bone down on the edge of his plate.
“She said don’t add too much to it, bruh. Her voice gonna carry it. You just gotta stay out the fucking way.”
Remy looked at Saint, then back at Brynn, his hands coming up off the desk. “I hear you. I’m just saying from a production standpoint —”
“And she’s saying from a singing standpoint, nigga. Who singing it?”
Remy nodded, leaning back from the laptop, his hands settling on his thighs. “Alright. Your call.”
Brynn’s shoulder pressed slightly closer to Saint’s leg, the foam on the wall compressing behind her back. She lifted her head, looking at Remy.
“Can you make it longer? Like, let the beginning sit for longer before the drums come in. I want more room at the front to just be in it before anything else happens.”
Remy nodded, typing into his phone again, his thumb scrolling back to the note he’d started earlier. “Yeah, I can stretch that intro out. How long you thinking?”
“As long as it needs to be.”
Remy grinned. “You sound like a producer.”
Brynn looked at him, her face level. “I just know what I want it to feel like.”
“That’s the same thing.”
He scrolled to the next file and clicked it. This one had a guitar sample in it, something acoustic and clean sitting under a trap hi-hat pattern, the two elements running side by, the guitar warm against the cold of the hi-hats. Brynn listened, her head tilting to the other side, her weight shifting against the wall.
“That meshes but it doesn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“The guitar is right for me but the drums are wrong. They’re too fast. If you slowed the drums down and dirtied up the guitar a little it’d be something.”
“Dirtied up how?”
“Like it’s coming through a bad amp. Or like it was recorded in a room and you can hear the room.”
Remy leaned forward, his elbows on the desk, his eyes brightening. “That I can do.”
Saint reached behind him, picked the second plate up off the desk and held it out toward Brynn. She looked at it, the food piled on it, the grease darkening the paper towel. She took it from his hand and set it on her lap, the plate warm against her thighs. She pulled a piece of chicken off with her fingers, tearing a small strip of meat from the breast, and ate it while Remy played the guitar track back a second time.
The grill sat at the edge of the patio in Gracie’s backyard, the smoke climbing slow into the still air above the fence, the brisket sitting dark and crusted on the grate, the fat popping where it dripped into the coals. Don stood over it with a pair of tongs in one hand and a Coke in the other, turning the meat, his free arm hanging at his side, his cap pulled low against the sun.
Beau sat on one side of the table with a paper plate in front of him, a half rack of ribs, coleslaw and a roll, the sauce smeared across his fingers and the edge of the plate. A beer sat in his hand, another empty on the bench beside him, the label peeling in the heat. Gracie sat next to him with her thigh against his, picking at a piece of chicken on her plate, pulling the skin off in strips and setting it on the edge. Her mother, Sheri, sat across from them with a glass of iced tea in front of her, her back straight, her eyes moving to the beer in Beau’s hand every few seconds, her mouth pressed flat. Gracie’s younger sister, Maddie, sat at the far end of the table with earbuds in, scrolling through her phone, a plate of food untouched in front of her, the roll still sitting on top of the coleslaw where Sheri had set it.
Beau finished the beer, tipped the bottle back until the last of it ran into his mouth, set the empty on the bench next to the first one. The glass clicked against glass. He reached into the cooler beside the table, the ice shifting under his hand, and came up with another, popping the cap off with the edge of the table. Sheri watched him crack it open, the foam rising to the lip and settling. She picked up her tea and took a sip, her eyes going to Gracie for a second then back to the glass.
Don set the tongs down on the edge of the grill, wiped his hands on the towel hanging from his belt loop and walked over to the table. He sat down at the end across from Maddie, his weight settling onto the bench, his hands folded in front of him. He looked at Beau.
“So Beau, Gracie tells me you’re heading into your senior year. You got any plans figured out for after?”
Beau took a sip from the new beer. “No, sir. I’m still working on it.”
Don nodded. “You been talking to any schools?”
“I got some interest. A few schools came to the house.”
“That’s good. You know what you’d study?”
Beau shrugged, his thumb picking at the label on the bottle, the paper tearing in wet strips under his nail. “I think I’m going to play it by ear. Just take a year to figure things out.”
Sheri’s glass hit the table a little harder than it needed to, the tea sloshing once against the inside of the rim. Don looked at her. She kept her eyes on the glass, her fingers pressing flat against the sides.
Gracie cut in, her hand finding Beau’s knee under the table. “He’s going to some camps this summer. He’s going to get his name in front of coaches and he’s going to get a scholarship.”
Don nodded. “That’s a solid plan.”
Sheri set her hands flat on the table, her eyes on Gracie. “Baby, a plan is when you know where you’re going and what you’re doing to get there. Figuring it out as you go is not a plan.”
Gracie’s hand tightened on Beau’s knee, her fingers pressing into the denim. “He’s working on it, Mom.”
“He’s been working on it.” She threw her hands up then pointed to him. “And why is he downing beers in my backyard like this is normal at two in the afternoon?”
Beau’s jaw tightened. His hand stilled on the beer, his thumb pressed flat against the label. The grill popped behind them, a piece of fat hitting the coals, the smoke thickening for a second before the breeze pulled it apart.
Gracie said, “Mom, stop.”
Sheri shook her head, her voice dropping lower, her hands still flat on the table. “Gracie, I’ve held my tongue for a long time because I know you think you love him. But I’m watching you pour yourself into a boy who doesn’t have a plan, doesn’t have direction, and is dragging you down with him. You’ve got schools looking at you. And you’re spending every minute worrying about whether he’s going to figure his damn life out.”
Gracie’s hand came off Beau’s knee. She leaned forward across the table, her palms pressing into the wood. “He’s not dragging me down. And he’s just drinking. It’s Odessa. Everyone drinks. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know enough.”
“You don’t know shit, Mom.”
Don said, “Gracie.”
Sheri said, “You watch your mouth.”
“Then stop talking about him like he’s not sitting right here.”
Maddie pulled one earbud out, her eyes lifting from the phone, her body going still at the end of the table. She looked at Gracie, then at Sheri, then put the earbud back in and looked down at the screen.
Beau set the beer down on the bench. He picked up the half rack of ribs off his plate with one hand, grabbed the beer with the other, and stood up from the table. The bench rocked once behind his legs.
Gracie looked up at him, her face shifting. “Beau, sit down.”
He walked across the yard toward the gate, the ribs in one hand, the beer in the other, his shoulders squared, his jaw set, the grass flat and dry under his boots. The gate latch lifted under his elbow.
Gracie pushed back from the table. “Beau. Beau, come back. Please” She turned on her mother. “Are you happy now? Is that what you wanted?”
“I want you to open your eyes before you end up pregnant and tied to him.”
“Oh my God, Mom. You’re always fucking starting shit.”
Don said, “That’s enough. Both of you.”
Beau pushed through the gate and walked to his truck parked along the curb, the street quiet around him, the smoke from the backyard drifting over the roofline. He opened the door, climbed in, set the beer between his legs and the ribs on the seat beside him, the sauce leaving a dark print on the vinyl. He started the truck, put it in drive and pulled away from the curb, picking up a rib with one hand, steering with the other, his jaw working through the meat as Gracie’s voice carried once from the backyard and faded behind him.
The overhead light in the kitchen threw a yellow ring across the table and the linoleum beneath it, the edges of the ring fading where they met the cabinets and the wall. Three envelopes sat torn open and pushed to the side near the salt shaker, the return addresses printed with the state seal, the paper cheap and already creasing where it had been folded. The bills from their foster care checks were laid out in front of them on the table, each stack different, each one arranged differently by the hands that had opened it.
Dani counted hers first, her fingers moving through the stack, separating it into piles by denomination, her lips pressing together as she did the math in her head, her eyes tracking each bill as it moved from one pile to the next. Keen had his spread flat in front of him, smoothing the bills with his palm against the table, straightening the edges, his knee bouncing under the surface hard enough to rattle the salt shaker. Saint’s stack sat in a loose pile by his elbow, smaller than the other two, the bills folded over on themselves, uncounted.
In the living room Colton sat on the floor with his back against the couch, the TV playing cartoons, the volume low, the colors from the screen moving across his face and the carpet around him. His knees were pulled up, his arms wrapped around them, his eyes on the screen.
Dani finished counting and pushed a portion into the center of the table, the bills sliding across the wood. She pulled the rest back toward her, folded it once, pressed the fold flat between her fingers. “That’s my part.” She tucked the fold into the front pocket of her jeans. “I need the rest.”
Keen pushed some of his into the center, then slid a few bills back toward his edge of the table. “I gotta get minutes on my phone.” He pulled another bill back, his thumb pressing it flat against the wood. “And I told this girl I’d take her to the movies.”
Dani looked at him, her arms crossing on the table. “You putting in or you taking shit out?”
“I’m putting in. I just got shit I need.”
Saint pushed his portion into the center without separating anything first, the bills sliding across the table into the pile, leaving a thin fold by his elbow. He leaned back in his chair, his hand resting on the table next to what was left.
Dani counted the center pile, her fingers quick, her mouth moving, the numbers running silent behind her teeth. She finished, tapped the pile once with her finger and shook her head. “This ain’t gonna get us much. Keen, I feel like you fucking shorting us.”
Keen looked over his shoulder at Colton in the living room, the boy’s shape outlined against the light from the television. “Yo, Colton. Where your check at?”
Colton kept his eyes on the screen, his chin resting on his knees. “Gary kept it for me. He said I’d lose it.”
“Gary ain’t here. Go get it out his office.”
Colton looked over at them from the floor, his eyes moving across the three of them at the table, the bills spread between them. His arms tightened around his knees.
Dani shook her head. “He don’t have to. We ain’t going nowhere with his young ass anyway.”
Keen sucked his teeth, leaning back in his chair, the front legs lifting off the linoleum. “The fuck he does. All of us chip in. That’s how it fucking works. I’m not trying to eat fucking beans every weekend because he got $200 in that office.”
Saint shook his head. “Let him keep his shit, Keen.”
Keen looked at Saint, his chair dropping back to four legs. “Bro, I’m not trying to take the kid’s money. I’m saying everybody puts in. It don’t make no sense if he don’t because then we gonna have to beat his ass if he go in our shit.”
Colton pushed himself up off the floor, his hands pressing against the carpet, his legs straightening under him. “Is it unlocked?”
Keen nodded toward the hallway, the dark of it visible past the kitchen doorway. “If it ain’t, pick it. It’s just one of them little ones on the knob. Get a bobby pin out Dani room”
Saint said, “Don’t fucking do that shit.”
Dani looked at Colton, her voice level, her hands flat on the table. “Go sit back down.”
Colton stood in the gap between the living room and the kitchen, the television light behind him, the yellow light of the kitchen in front, his body caught between the two. His eyes went from Dani to Keen to Saint, his weight shifting from one foot to the other, his hands hanging at his sides.
Keen stood up from the table, his chair scraping hard across the linoleum, his hands flat on the surface, his arms locked. “Man, why y’all making this shit harder than it gotta be? I’m not asking for his whole fucking check. I’m saying that little motherfucker need to fucking chip in like everyone fucking else.”
His voice climbed on the last word and Colton’s eyes went wide. He gasped, turned and ran down the hallway, his bare feet slapping the floor, his bedroom door slamming shut behind him, the sound cracking through the house and settling into the walls. The cartoon played on in the empty living room, a character’s voice high and bright against the quiet that followed.
Dani reached across the table and hit Keen in the chest with her fist. “Go fucking apologize. Right now. You scared the shit out of him.”
Keen rubbed his chest where she’d hit him, his jaw working, his eyes going to Saint. “Back me up, bro. I ain’t even do nothing.”
Saint held his hands up. He let them drop, reached over to the pile in the middle and peeled a bill off, bringing it back to his pile by his elbow.
“I’m gonna take Brynn out somewhere.”
Keen and Dani stared at him. Saint leaned back in his chair and looked at the center of the table, the bills sitting in their pile under the yellow light, the torn envelopes beside them, the salt shaker standing at the edge.
There was nothing in the chapters beforehand to make y'all think Saint would break and enter to steal a PS5. He stole some colored pencils and a couple loaves of bread and y'all were like "Yeah breaking into someone shit for a PS5 makes sense." Why is that? 
(ayo if needed)