Dan, Killer, and I are in the Kum & Go snagging some breakfast before heading off to roustabout on the Shoshone oil field.  My name’s Jimmy, Jimmy Shalinsky, but most people call me Clit.  I got the name because I’m good with the ladies.  You know, smooth.  Dan may have the looks, and Killer may have the size, but I got the talk.  I always was a little on the small side, wiry though. Tough, you know—but I can make it with the ladies.

Killer is putting together some nachos. He mounds the chips, ladles hot nacho cheese, and then uses the tongs to try to fish out some jalapenos, but he gets tired of it so he grabs them with his fingers and plops them on top.  Then he slurps his fingers.

Dan appraises the bowl and says, “I think you can fit some more on there.”

Killer looks at the bowl and then at Dan and grins.  “Fire in the hole,” Killer says.

“I’ll show you fire in the hole,” Dan says, glancing over at the fat lady with the gigantic tits behind the counter.

They always have been a pair.  They played football at Last Chance High School and took us to the Wyoming state finals in Division 4A.  Dan was the quarterback, of course, and Killer was a lineman.  Dan really knew how to motivate the team, so I heard—I was a couple of years behind them—and Killer was just that, a killer on the line.  He broke both legs of this guy from Torrington.  The people from Torrington got all hot and bothered because they said it was a dirty hit—he was nowhere near the ball, they said—but the ref didn’t see it, so, hey, it might as well not’ve happened.

Dan’s still good looking, just like he was in high school.  Fit.  Blonde hair that makes him look like a surfer.  You wouldn’t think he was almost thirty.  I don’t know how he does it—his clothes are always neat and clean, even when we’re working a rig.  Killer, though, has let himself go.  He has this red beard that bushes out above his considerable gut, and he shaves his head but then wears one of the black Nazi hats with the gold braid on the brim and the eagle on the top.

I take my twenty-ounce coffee to the counter to pay.  The fat lady taps the register keys with her cocaine nails and says, “A little go juice?”  She’s got a ring on her finger, and I wonder what ugly bastard would marry her.

“Yeah—I mean, no,” I say, pushing my glasses up my nose.  “What I mean is, I don’t need no go juice.  I’m all go.” I count out two dollar bills and flip them on the counter.

“A runt like you?” Big Tits eyes me up and down.

“Ain’t no correlation,” I say.  “Some guys got third legs, you know.”

She fingers coins out of the drawer and drops them on the counter in front of me.  Two pennies roll off and away.

I don’t move to get them.

“Little shits like you are all hat and no cattle,” she says, “and I’ve had more than my share of no cattle.”  She turns like she’s got something to do.

I don’t know quite what to say, and just as I’m coming up with something, Dan and Killer come up to the counter. In addition to nachos, Killer’s got a sausage with mustard and catsup and a cup of coffee. Dan has a bottle of water.

Dan smiles at Big Tits as he lays a twenty on the counter for Killer’s food.  “The lady ain’t interested in what you’re selling, Clit.”

“She would be if she knew what she’s missing.”  I try to make it sound all happy, like an invitation instead of the lame comeback it is.

Big Tits smiles at Dan.  “Ain’t you Dan McCoy?” she asks. He nods and slaps her with what I call his knock-em-dead, a smile that would make the avenging angel himself offer him Lifesavers.  Then she launches into this long thing about her dad taking her to all his football games.  “My dad was a huge fan,” she says.

“That’s great,” Dan says.  “So, what’s your name?”

“I’m Betsy, but everyone calls me Bet.”

“That’s sure a pretty name, Bet.”

She smiles as she gives Dan his change.

Dan nods just a little as he glances at her hands—he’s thought of something.  “You know what, Bet?  We’re having a party later, a kegger.  Want to come?”

First I’m hearing of it, but that don’t mean anything.

Her eyes widen and then narrow.  She looks at Dan without saying anything.

“Don’t be like that.  There’s a bunch of us—some people your age, too, I think.  What are you?  Twenty?”  Dan plays it well, as he always does.  She’s probably at least twenty-two, and he doesn’t insult her by saying she’s eighteen because when you’re young you always want to be older, but she probably just starting to want to be flattered as younger, so he runs it down the middle.

“Well, I’m married,” Big Tits says, holding her left hand and splaying out her fingers to show her ring.  Then her fleshy shoulders pop up and down, but her eyes stay fixed on his face.

Killer’s standing there.  He grunts and takes his food and goes out to the truck.

Dan leans forward with his elbows on the counter.  He lowers his voice to a growly whisper.  “Well, pretty Bet, don’t you deserve a night out with the girls?”

Her smile tips up at the corners.

Dan continues, “You just tell your husband you need a night out.  What he don’t know, won’t hurt him.”

She shakes her head. “Tom—that’s my husband—ain’t too keen on me going out.”  She hesitates and there’s silence as she considers, but then her shoulders relax.  “But I have my ways to convince him.”  She leans forward too, her face cutting into the usual comfort distance between two people.

I wonder whether she’ll play the bitch card or she’ll have sex with her husband to put him in a good mood.  Then I get an image of those huge tits flopping up and down and up and down and my dick perks up.

Dan’s smile goes from dazzling to fixed—he’s gotten what he wants, and so he loses interest in her.  “You tell your dad that Dan McCoy says hi,” he says as we turn to leave.

“I get off at seven,” she says, her head craning around the tall jerky jar.

Dan doesn’t reply.  We head out to the Dan’s brand new duely.  It’s fire-engine red with a shiny roll-bar and growl pipes.  In the gun rack, Dan keeps what he calls his fuck-stick—just hefty and long enough to fuck some bastard up—and a twenty-two semi-auto for hunting coyotes.

Sitting on the open tailgate is Killer, and he’s got his hand out to a magpie perched on the side.  The bird’s black-and-white-tuxedoed body poses then jerks as it eyes Killer and then pecks at his fingers.  Killer’s small pig eyes are round and open.  When he sees us, he pulls back his hand and his face closes in.  The bird launches into the air.  Killer pushes himself off the tailgate and grabs his nachos.

“Looks like Adam’s in the garden,” Dan says as he walks past him.

Killer doesn’t say anything.  He walks around to my side.  As I’m climbing into the cab, he says, “Clit calls the bitch seat.” What he always says every time.

“Better a bitch than a fucking asshole.”  What I say every time.  Gayboy, I add silently.

Dan and Killer get in.  Dan starts the engine and the radio blares. It’s the news.  I reach to turn it down and Dan slaps my hand.  “Leave it.”  He shifts, backs out, and rods it onto the street while a woman with a deep monotone reports a one car rollover that killed a husband and wife from Colorado and that the rig count is up.  Then the program switches to a slow-talking cattle report.

I glance over at Killer and he’s looking past me at Dan.  Killer shakes his head.

Dan looks at Killer from the corner of his eye and says, “They don’t report, uh, overenthusiastic sex.  Due to the sensitive nature of the subject.”  He flashes a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Lucky for me,” Killer says.

“Besides, it’s old news by now,” Dan says.

“What’re you guys talking about?” I say.

“Mind your own,” Killer says in a deep voice.

So I do.

We’re in the second week of our two weeks on.  Twelve-hour days.  Mostly we work our asses off moving equipment and supplies, cleaning up garbage and spills, painting—shit like that.  It stinks to high heaven, and grit gets into my every crack and cranny.  If my fingers ain’t black from oil, they’re black from getting whacked.  Sometimes it’s so hot you could fry an egg.  Sometimes it snows so hard it’s all you can do to keep your balls from freezing.  Dan’s almost charmed his way from roustabout to roughneck, and he’ll take Killer with him.  I’m hoping he takes me along too.

It’s before seven, so we’ve got time to make it from Last Chance to the pad before our shift starts.  The blacktop skirts along the wide shallow reaches of the Big Sulfur—named for the hotsprings that feeds into it—and in and out of stands of cottonwoods and fields of sugar beets and alfalfa.  This time of year, the vegetation’s turned from bright green to deep green, and soon it’ll be shading to brown where it’s not irrigated.  Or everywhere if we have the drought like last year.  Dan downshifts and turns onto the gravel county road.  We thread up a ravine and onto the dry sagebrush benches that line the river valley.  The air changes.  You can feel it coming through Dan’s cracked window—what was cool and moist turns hot, pungent, and dusty.  The radio says it’ll get up to a hundred and three.  The patchy sagebrush is interspersed with sand dunes.  The drought’s killed off enough of the vegetation that the wind scoops sand out of one place and deposits it in another.  It’s like the earth’s trying reclaim the whole countryside.

“Maybe next year, they’ll hire us on as roughnecks,” I say with an eye toward Dan. “That way, I can buy my own transportation, not have to hitch with you.”  Can’t hurt to give Dan a little more incentive.  What I really want is to save up enough to get my mama into one of those programs where they dry out.  It don’t work to have her in A.A.  She just gets tanked before she attends the meetings till they kick her out.

“Skinny shit like you? No fucking way,” Killer says as he pushes in the cigarette lighter.  He pokes his finger and thumb into his pack of cigarettes and fishes one out, zips the window down, and when the lighter pops he presses the glowing rings to the tip of his cigarette and sucks in the air.  Then he sticks the lighter back into the ashtray.

“Don’t worry about it,” Dan says.  “World’s going to end this year.”

“What?” I say.

“Yeah, those crackpots are saying 2010’s the end of the world.”

I don’t like telling Dan he’s wrong, but I say, “That’s 2012.  The end of the Mayan calendar.”  My mama digs things like that, so I know.

“Well, I’m saying it’s 2010.”  He lets out a burst of air.

I shrug.

We pop up over a hill, the gravel crunching under our tires, and two deer, does, stand broadside in the middle of the road.  Dan stamps down on the brakes and the truck slides to a halt. Billowing dust engulfs us from behind and veils the sun. The doe in front stumbles forward and then high-steps off the gravel.  Once she reaches the borrow ditch, she bounds across the unmown grass and leaps the barbed wire fence on Dan’s side of the truck.  The other smaller doe continues to stand broadside looking at us, like she can’t quite figure out what we are.

I glance at Dan and Killer.  Dan’s head is cocked to one side, but Killer’s eyes have opened up again and he’s leaning forward, his beard detached from his chest.  Dan turns off the radio.  Then he twists sideways toward me, his arms reaching over my left shoulder, and I lean forward to give him room.  He’s pulling the twenty-two out of the gun rack.

“Hey, Killer,” Dan says, “ever had venison backstrap?”

“Yeah,” is all Killer says. He ducks as Dan tips the rifle over our heads and points the muzzle to the floorboards.

“What do you think?”

“We’re going to be late,” Killer says.  I’m sure he knows how lame this sounds.

“A clean kill, and we can be in and out in five minutes,” Dan says. He lifts the rifle across my lap toward Killer.

“We don’t need no backstrap.”

“Ah, come on, Killer.”

“Dan, we don’t need no venison.”

“Sure we do.”

“Well, if we need it so goddamn bad, you shoot it.” Killer’s face is turning red.  He’s always had a quick temper.  I lean away from him toward Dan.

“You’re the killer, Killer. What’s the matter?  You chickenshit?”

“I ain’t chickenshit.”

“Bwock, bwock, bwo-ock,” Dan says.  Holding the stock with his left hand, he reaches past me with his right and slaps Killer on the chest with his palm.

“He don’t want to shoot it,” I say.

“Shut the fuck up,” Killer says to me.  He says to Dan, “You want me to fucking poach a deer?”

“Killer’s decided to go all Greenie treehugger on us, Clit.  He’s a sensitive new-age guy.”

Killer doesn’t say anything for a minute, and Dan doesn’t either, just leans forward holding the gun and staring at Killer.

Eyes on the dash, Killer moves his head back and forth slightly. “Just give me the gun,” Killer says. Dan smiles, showing his teeth, and hands the gun to Killer.  Killer takes it, pushes open the door, steps to the hood, chambers a round, and leans forward, propping the stock to his shoulder and his elbows on the hood.

The bigger doe is long gone, but the smaller doe is in the borrow ditch bounding back and forth along the fenceline trying to get up the courage to jump.  Killer doesn’t wait for her to stop.  One report, then two more in quick succession.  The doe leaps like a rabbit and then falls down onto her front knees and collapses forward then onto her side, her head bent back over her shoulder.

Dan pulls open the glove box and retrieves a big Buck knife.  He pushes open the door and gets out, glances both ways down the road, and then walks quickly over to the kicking doe.  I stay in the truck.  Killer doesn’t even glance Dan’s way.  He clears the cartridge and uses his thumb to keep the next round from entering the chamber.  He comes back to the cab.  He’s careful as he lifts the gun over my head and places it back in the rack.  He gets in and shuts the door.  Dan’s over at the animal.  He doesn’t bleed her out or anything.  He just slices through the hide on the back, peels it away, and then cuts along the backbone and ribs on each side to remove the backstrap, laying the first one on the grass while he cuts the second.  He flips the knife shut, picks up the meat, and comes to the truck.  He opens an empty gunny sack on the tailgate and wraps up the meat and tucks it up next to the cab.  He wipes his hands on his jeans and then comes up and gets in the truck.

“We’ll start a fire out at the pad,” he says.  “Roast them for lunch.”  He starts the truck, glances in his rearview, and then peels out, his bloody palm twirling the steering wheel and his head bobbing like he’s listening to his own inner music.  Killer just stares forward.

We spend the morning cleaning up the pad.  That’s our job for the day.  Our boss—his name is Rick but we call him Rick the Dick—told us to do what’s necessary.  He thinks the inspectors’ll be out next week.  We pick up the sandwich wrappers and soda cans.  We slop paint over rusty metal.  We dump empty fifty-five gallon drums all into one big pile. We smooth out places where oil has spilled and cover them over with more dirt and sand from the reserve pile—they shouldn’t soak through till after the inspectors have come and gone.

Late in the morning while Killer rolls drums and I slop paint, Dan gathers dead sagebrush limbs and some larger pieces of driftwood washed by spring storms into the gully that skirts the pad.  He starts a fire.  Then he continues to work but stops every once in a while to pile wood on the fire, so that it all burns down to orange and white coals.  Around noon, he pours water over the backstraps and lays them over the bed of coals.  Soon the smell of cooking meat makes my stomach growl.

“You bastards ready to eat?” Dan says.

Killer and I go over to the tailgate where he’s cutting off chunks of meat.  We stand around and eat with our fingers.  It’s a bit gritty, but the char of the sagebrush adds to the flavor.  Killer seems to have forgotten where the meat came from, as he doesn’t even hesitate.  Between the three of us, we polish off both hunks.  Killer sits down on the tailgate and licks his fingers.

“This is the best venison I’ve ever had,” I say to no one in particular.

“Clit’s a venison virgin?” Dan says with a buggy look on his face.

I have to think for a minute.  Then I say, “No, I said it was the best, not the first.”

“Yeah?  So Clit’s had venison, but has he had a woman?”

“I’m thinking not,” Killer says.

“I have too,” I say.  It’s none of their fucking business if I have or haven’t.

“So Clit’s not only a virgin, but he’s a liar,” Dan says.

“You guys are so full of shit,” I say.

“Admit it,” Dan says and takes a step toward me.  “Come on, say ‘I’m a lying virgin.’  Come on, say it.”

I take a step backwards.  Killer hops down from where he’s sitting on the tailgate.

“Say it, Clit,” Dan says. “‘I’m a lying virgin.’” He takes another step toward me and Killer walks up beside him.

There’s no way I’m going to say it.  No fucking way.  But Dan’s gone squirrely and Killer’s backing him up—they’re not going to stop until they make me say it.  I’ve seen it before—they’re like a couple of wild dogs once they fix on something.

I glance through the back window at the rifle, but I can’t get to the front of the truck, jerk open the door, pull out the rifle, and jack a shell before they’re on me.  I glance around.

“Say it,” Dan says.  “Say it.”  He and Killer are walking forward and I’m stepping backwards.

“You’re going to fucking say it,” Dan says.

I turn and take off running.  I don’t look back—I know they’re right behind me.  Killer’s enough out of shape I’m not worried about him, but Dan’s got stick and the stamina to back it up.

Ahead of me I see the fire, and poking up from it is a good-sized branch.  As I run past, I lean down and snag it and then take a quick jog right.  Then I spin and huck it hard as I can at Dan’s head.  Dan ducks sideways and the branch sails past him.  I turn to run but then Dan’s on me.  I trip and land on my face and he’s on my back grabbing for my arms.  It knocks the wind out of me and my glasses go flying, but I’m struggling to keep my arms free and pushing against the ground, trying to get to my hands and knees.  He manages to wrench my left arm behind me and up to my shoulder blade.  The pain shoots through it and into my shoulder.  I try to twist sideways to release the pressure, but his weight on my butt keeps me pinned.

“You’re nothing but empty talk, Jimmy,” Dan says, “and the only woman you’ve had is your drunk-ass mother.”

“Fuck you,” I say and jerk hard as I can.

“You’re a worthless piece of shit.  I want you to say it. Say it, you fuckhead.”

I’m not going to say it.  There’s no way I’m going to say it.  If I say it, they’ll let me go, sure. Yesterday, I would’ve.  But not today.  Today, my mama made me eggs for breakfast. She got herself out of bed and made me eggs.  That ought to be worth something.

My arm is released, and I think, okay, but then his grip wraps around my throat.  His hands are warm and moist and the pads of his fingers dig into the soft parts of my neck.  My adam’s apple jams flat. I have to cough but I can’t. At first it’s like when you hold your breath. Not too bad.  I pull my arm from my back, try to push myself up. Dan’s weight’s in the middle of my back, though, can’t do a pushup with that monkey on my back. He rattles me, and my head snaps back and forward, back and forward. There, a smidgen of breath, but then he clamps down again. My lungs strain, try to pull in air.  My heart thumps, thumps, thumps.  Try to muscle it and then wildly squirm and push.  Almost.  He’s leaning forward and I knock him off balance, my body halfway out from under.  But air, air, air.  Fwoop, the senses shut down.

Nothing.

“You kill him?” It’s Killer’s voice coming from above and to the left.

My throat.  It hurts.  I cough.  I cough again.

There’s silence.

I push myself onto my back. My arms ache and my neck and my back where I twisted it.  I crack open my eyes but it’s so bright. I slam them shut and pull my arm over my face.

Killer:  “You fucking lost it, man.” His voice is more urgent, higher, than I’ve ever heard it.

Dan: “Shut up.” He’s to my right.

Killer: “I’ve never seen you that pissed off.”

Dan: “Just shut the fuck up.”

Killer: “No, you really lost it.  You were going to kill him.”

I feel Dan loom over me and I curl to protect my stomach, but he doesn’t touch me and instead I hear the scuffle of dirt as Killer steps back.

“You let that piss-ant get to you,” Killer says softly.

Dan steps over me and I hear an oomph. I crack my eyes in time to see Killer on his ass in the dirt and Dan standing over him.

This has never happened before.  Something’s been broke.  Killer’s always been the hands to Dan’s body.

From beyond us, there’s a distinct whooomp!  I don’t know what it is.  I hear Dan say, “Shit,” and then after a bit he and then Killer walk over toward the sound.

I carefully stretch to see if I’ve busted anything.  Don’t seem to.  I cautiously push myself up and teeter to my feet.  I don’t even look for my glasses—I can see how it is well enough without them.  I walk up behind Dan and Killer but keep my distance.  Dan’s shoulders are back, his head cocked.  Killer’s off to one side and hunkered a bit, his arm across his stomach.

They’re standing in front of the pile of barrels, which is engulfed in flame.  The flames aren’t just orange. They flare up in patches of blue and then green.  They flick and weave.  We stand and watch, but the heat rises and soon we’re forced to take a step back.  The flames continue to climb higher, straighter now, more frantic, grasping up to heaven like the northern lights.

Then, a weird thing.  The barrels start to bulge.  The sides warp and round outwards.  There’s a creaking, metal stress.  I have a split second to think, get the fuck out of here, and then the whole thing explodes.  I see flames engulf Dan and Killer and then they’re on me.  I’m surrounded by flames, I feel the pressure of their blast, but there’s nothing, no pain.  I marvel at this.  I back away, and still the flames cocoon me.  It feels like all the air’s been sucked away—I can’t breathe, I pull and pull but there’s no air, my shirt is burning and my pants are burning and the acrid odor of burned hair reaches my nostrils and something else, like cooked venison, I glance down, my right hand is black but still in the shape of a hand, large pieces of skin hang from my left hand, I wonder what my face looks like, I should be in pain, but I don’t feel anything, I think, you know what, I’m going to die, yep, that’s it, it’s the end people don’t survive something like this wait that fireman who lived but then nobody could look at him not just because his flesh was shapeless like a potato but because he carried himself all stiff and twisted like the flames deformed his insides that house fire in Last Chance where the kid burned to death I’m waiting for the pain to come what happened to his mama? no pain what does that mean? the flames surround me I’m the kid not the fireman fall to knees we’re all gonna

Having grown up on a ranch, Tamara Linse appreciates indoor plumbing.  She lives in Wyoming, where she writes short stories and novels. To support her writing habit, she also edits, freelances, and occasionally teaches.  Her website is http://www.tamaralinse.com.

This first article, basically a rehashed press release if you ask me, gives you the gas company perspective, as well as the web address of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, a group of (wait for it–not government regulators, not community members, not EPA reps) gas companies (oh, we can trust them, big business has never screwed over rural communities) who assure us through their pretty website that everything is A-OK, and boy,  isn’t this a great opportunity for Pennsylvania. Entire article follows:

Gas industry responds to flowback concerns

Published: Wednesday, February 10, 2010 3:54 PM CST, in the Wellsboro (PA) Gazette

The Marcellus Shale Coalition issued the following statement Feb. 4 regarding water use and flowback water management in the development of natural gas from the Marcellus formation:

“Pennsylvanians deserve to get the facts about water management for Marcellus shale development. We need to put an end to the suppositions that could threaten our state’s ability to create jobs and investment here at home.

“Regulations governing the use and management of water needed to drill a Marcellus shale well in Pennsylvania are among the most stringent in the nation, and ensure the protection of the commonwealth’s water resources. Water withdrawals from streams and rivers must be approved, including the withdrawal location and amount of water required for each well, as well as detailed storage and treatment plans.

“The industry currently treats or recycles all of its flowback water. Recycling accounts for approximately 60 percent of the water used to complete Marcellus shale wells, with greater percentages predicted for the future. There are more than a dozen approved water treatment facilities available to treat flowback water, with plans for additional capacity in the future.

“Companies are working with international water quality experts and are funding research and development projects to develop mobile and permanent treatment technologies such as evaporation and crystallization. These efforts will enhance the commonwealth’s overall water treatment capabilities, while bringing more commerce into Pennsylvania. We’re also researching and developing deep underground injection well technology, which is a proven, safe disposal method in other regions of the country.

“Claims about elevated levels of Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) in the Monongahela River from natural gas development have been refuted by studies that attribute a minimal amount of the total TDS levels to Marcellus shale drilling activity. In fact, historical monitoring shows the variability of TDS levels in the Monongahela and other rivers to be a cyclical phenomenon over the past 30 years.

“The industry is committed to the use of Best Management Practices in all aspects of its operations, including significant investment in advanced flowback water treatment capabilities and recycling technologies.”

The Marcellus Shale Coalition is comprised of dozens of drilling and service companies who work in Pennsylvania’s oil and gas industry. Its Web site is www.pamarcellus.com.

It’s a damned good thing the US Supreme Court recently granted ‘personhood’ to corporations. These newly made Adams can now spend all the money they like supporting their favored candidates, and we can look forward to more of this PR tripe even out of election season. This is how the business conglomerate-person speaks, as if it has no personal stake nor responsibility. In vapid, Orwellian PR-speak, it pays lip service to the idea that it supports the people it’s bending over a chair and screwing. For all those quotation marks in this piece, not one is attributed, and therefore no one is responsible for its veracity. Just this newly-made ‘person’: the gas companies.’

capped well, Spring Lake, Bradford County PA

Here’s another perspective from Laura Shin’s blog on http://www.solveclimate.com, dated 9/29/09:

Last week, three spills of potentially carcinogenic hazardous chemicals at a natural gas drilling site in Pennsylvania prompted the state’s environmental protection agency to suspend Cabot Oil & Gas’s operations in the county.

The spills were just a small part of a larger phenomenon — accidents at natural gas drilling sites that have imperiled the drinking water of nearby communities in states from Pennsylvania to Wyoming and that have no governmental oversight.

They call it the “Halliburton Loophole” — an exemption for oil and gas companies to inject hazardous materials directly into or near underground drinking water supplies in a process called hydraulic fracturing.

Hydraulic fracturing, commonly called “fracking,” is used in natural gas wells to push fluid and sand at very high pressure into rock formations to release gas. Fracking fluid can contain chemicals that are hazardous and carcinogenic. Halliburton, a pioneer of the technique, says 35,000 wells are fracked each year.

As more accidents are reported at wells being “fracked” (undergoing hydraulic fracturing), both houses of Congress are considering legislation to close the Halliburton Loophole, so nicknamed not just because Halliburton developed the technique but also because former Halliburton CEO and ex-vice president Dick Cheney urged the creation of the exemption in 2005. More than 160 community and national groups have signed a letter of support for the bills in Congress.

“We think everybody deserves to have their drinking water protected. It’s pretty simple,” says Amy Mall, senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council, who has blogged regularly about fracking accidents. Continue reading.

Some other links of interest:

http://un-naturalgas.org/weblog/tag/hydraulic-fracturing/

http://frackmountain.wordpress.com/2010/02/04/educate-yourself-7-minutes-2/

http://www.donnan.com/Marcellus-Gas_Hickory.htm

I should have known about these folks long ago, yeah? Somewhere along the line I found out about them and forgot until recently, when Charles Dodd White told me about an anthology he’d be editing with Page Seay. More on that at the end of this post. What I found most intriguing was this list of characteristics of Appalachian working-class fiction. Have a look:

Compiled by Larry Smith, BGSU Firelands College/ Bottom Dog Press

(With thanks to Edwina Pendarvis, Laura Bently, Ann Pancake,
Meredith Sue Willis and  Phyllis Wilson Moore for suggestions.
We are looking at adult fiction here. )

General Characteristics of Working-Class Writing and Art; not designed to be criterion but characteristics.

1) The writing is based on lived experience and shows characters as human persons in a lived space, depicting their daily life including their actual physical work.

2) The writing creates space for people to speak and represent themselves, includes speech idioms and dialects, curses and blessings.

3) The writing is communal in nature. The individual “I” is speaking for the collective “We.”

4) Readers can recognize themselves in the writing; it gives validation to their own stories and culture.

5) The writing gives language to human suffering and grief. Economics forces are recognized thus giving validation to deep feelings often ignored by mainstream art.

6) The writing (art) has agency in the world, is useful.

7) The writing includes forces of social and political history and their impact on human relationship.

8) The writing challenges dominant assumptions about aesthetics… It breaks rules or conventions of form in favor of verity of experience.

9) The writing builds consciousness of class oppression….denial of rights, exploitative marketplace, etc. and may lead to rebellion.

10) The writing takes sides…”Which Side Are You On?” it asks and then declares.

[Source: Developed in collaboration with Janet Zandy and her Hands: Physical Labor, Class, and Cultural Work (Rutgers University Press)]

Additional Characteristics of Appalachian Working-Class Writing

1) The writing reveals a deep appreciation of folk habits and customs, family rituals.

Music, alcohol and food are a major part of the life ritual.

2) Family extends back historically and in a neighborly way to community.

3) Themes of sense of place abound; most are not about ‘escaping’ the working-class culture but of going out for education yet returning home to help. “Stayputters,” “grounded,” not mobile. “This is the story of a land shaped by the people, and a people shaped by the land,”-The Appalachians (film)

4) Ethnocentrism is present in families, towns, counties. Distrust comes first till one is revealed as “one of us,” then welcome is extended.

5) Often religion is strong, emotionally and physically intense…fundamental yet often given individual or family interpretation…”Free Willers.”

6) The writing reveals people finding ways of “getting by,” “making do,” “Do-it-yourselfers.”

7) Those living in poverty are not clearly separate from working-class.

8) The writing is marked by an intimate sense of community—though respecting uniqueness of character, it most often portrays an interdependence of relationships including home, family, town, work, and the landscape and natural world.

9) Rebellion comes when family or land is violated, property rights must be respected.

10) Unions play a major role in the life and writing.

11) In the narrative there is a fondness for multiple points of view, either through many narrators

or the use of subnarrators, typically in authentic dialect.

I can’t find much to argue with, as this aptly sums up what kind of work I’d like to see here at FCAC. Check Bottom Dog Press out, buy their books, and shout out to Larry Smith for building that incredibly helpful website.

And as I promised here’s the details again on that anthology.

From Hill to Holler: Stories of Contemporary Appalachia
From Bottom Dog Press Inc.

Huron, OH

http://smithdocs.net

From Hill to Holler is an anthology about what it is to live and struggle in Appalachia today. The short stories included will be sharp, vivid evocations of a place and a culture, fictions that chart new territories between the moutains, its valleys and the people who inhabit them. We don’t want sentimental treatments of Grandaddy’s rocking chair. Think instead of the “mud, the blood and the beer” of the area—realistic, unsparing portrayals. Both Northern and Southern treatments of the Appalachian theme are encouraged. Any style is acceptable, as long as it serves the story and the audience. Send us your top drawer stories.

Editors: Charles Dodd White and Page Seay

This book will be published as part of Bottom Dog Press’s Working Lives Fiction Series

Specifics:

Length: between 3,000 and 6,000 words.

Submissions are open now. The reading will be ongoing.

Deadline: July 1, 2010.

Email submissions only. Send attached .rtf or .doc file to: fromhilltoholler@hotmail.com and make sure the word “Submission” is somewhere in the subject line.

Payment: $50 and two copies

Reprints are acceptable in some cases. Please let us know where it’s been published and if the publication was print or online.

Simultaneous submissions are okay as long as we are notified immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere.

No multiple submissions, please. Pick your best story and send it forward.

She reaches up and back to grasp a sheaf of these ringlets and there is the brisk metallic sound of a spring-loaded hair clip snapping closed. Her arms and hands briefly form a circle. She fingers a brightly chromed nipple ring, throwing back her shoulders, smiles into the mirror, blows me a kiss.

There are colorful and ladylike tattoos, ivy wrapped around a trident on her right shoulder blade, a fish bursting from a multicolored dial on the small of her back where a linen robe is puddled around her hips where she is perched on the little vanity stool.

She glances at me in the mirror as she wets a fingertip and smooths the seam in a joint she just lit, handing it to me, then blotting her lipstick with a tissue in one motion before she glances in the mirror over her shoulder and smiles at our lover lolling naked on the bed in an evening breeze coming in through the screens from the sleeping porch.

It’s a secret woman to woman glance, a brief smile with no nod from one to another whose reproductive and neurological chemistry is synchronized through proximity.

Their skin texture is so similar one can hardly tell the difference with eyes closed in the dark stroking gently and lovingly along the lines of smooth musculature and swooping lady subcutaneous mystery over hips strong enough to birth, fight, flight, bear and kick, climb and run for cover.

I have massaged them daily now for a fortnight after yoga and meditation in the mornings, eyes closed, smoothing in the oil and cocoa butter. I know every ticklish spot and roughened area where straps and elastic take a holiday in their nudity.

We are together, Rosalie, Gwen and I, trying to forget the winter and the approaching end of spring.

We loaded and cleaned the pistols and a shotgun, gassed up the car and got ready for the run for the harbor.

Tomorrow at dawn we will learn what we waited for.

We smile, feeling our pulses quicken. We will do it just the way we planned, the boat, the load, the money, the getaway, as simple as that.

We smile once more. One, another, amid the Spanish moss in the old oaks, we smile once more.

Outlaws, outside the protection of the law, we wait the time.

Jim Parks is a newsman, deckhand, farm hand, ramblin’ man and truck drivin’ man.  Keep him away from the firewater and don’t mess with his food or his woman.

My mind rejects
what my eyes can see. A girl—
using a phone book for a booster seat—
sits at a table in the yard, beside

an abandoned clothes dryer. She’s
carving a birdhouse from an empty milk carton.
A suit of armor and a plastic pineapple
are under a longleaf pine, where drops of rosin

glue sword to fruit. The fields nearby lie fallow,
and in the distance, as far as I can see. There’s
a station that used to sell gas, where two roads
make a T. The road that terminates is

full of potholes. Someone painted one pothole
the same blue as the unclouded sky here.
And on the roof of a rust-red barn—
just past the fallen pile of broken yellow bricks,

the world’s largest CB antenna, (homemade),
and next to the smashed brown dog-igloo—
Jesus Saves / S & H Green Stamps
is faded but legible.

first published in Adagio Verse Quarterly

Helen Losse is the author of Better With Friends (Rank Stranger Press, 2009) and two chapbooks, Gathering the Broken Pieces and Paper Snowflakes and the Poetry Editor of The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. Her recent poetry publications and acceptances include Iodine Poetry Review, Main Street Rag, Heavy Bear, Hobble Creek Review, The Wild Goose Review, and Blue Fifth Review.  Educated at Missouri Southern State and Wake Forest Universities, she lives in Winston-Salem, NC.

Brett, not that I knew his name yet, screamed when he saw me lying there on his couch. His hair stood up like fur. You could tell he’s one of those guys only at ease when he’s got his gel in. He wore a bathrobe that revealed something about him, a quality that would get his ass kicked in the bar, a yearning to be an old man, hunched in terrycloth. I was awake and coughing and I pegged him at thirty-four and I wanted to ask him to close the blinds he was opening but I knew better. His girl came out next, wearing nothing but a t-shirt, her hand on her throat and he had his arm around her right away. I liked them right off the bat, this young old man, this needful social worker type gal.

Because they weren’t the kind of small brains who kicked me out and called the cops, I just started talking a blue streak, telling them about yesterday at the diner, the girls that stiffed me, the bar last night, the way my songs never turned up on the juke box because some college kids kept stuffing it with quarters, the way I drove home with the one eye. They laughed a lot and Brett asked what my songs were and then he dug up CDs and he played me my songs. Something about being here with them did call up a low-lying sadness in me, as if somehow I was supposed to be telling this story at an AA meeting, as if somehow the world wasn’t doing me right, giving me this kind and tolerant couple, my songs playing finally. I’d been drunk. I could have killed somebody. But my songs sounded good and Brett cooked up eggs and bacon and I figured, maybe bad deeds bring good things. Brett and Shelly drank juice out of the same cup and it wasn’t like one was being nice to me to appease the other’s politeness. They both meant it, they were alike, kind, not like the trapped he-she combos I tend to at the diner.

The next day, I saw Brett in the mall with a different gal, clearly his wife. I stopped short. He grabbed his kid’s hand and his face bleached out and the wife was studying some piece of shit jumper in the window and he didn’t say anything to me. I don’t think I ever saw a person look so sad and now I got why he was in such a rush to be old. I kept walking down the corridor toward the food court, dazed, feeling as if suddenly everyone in America was speaking a new language for no reason at all and nobody would so much as teach me a word of it. So much for the future I’d been planning on, so much for the way I had seen it all so clearly. Brett and Shelly, me and the no doubt wonderful man they’d set me up with, the four of us playing board games, sucking back cans of light beer, sometimes in their apartment, sometimes in mine down the hall, stumbling home softly buzzed or sometimes crashing on each other’s couches, our inside joke about how we all met always good for a laugh. I’d felt so at peace when I arrived at the mall, having concluded that my condemnable one-eyed drive had been my little way of testing the gods, daring them to give me something good, something to sober me.  And they had given me kindness in the form of Brett and Shelly. And maybe, I had thought, this is how you bring good folks into your life. When you’re weak, you crawl into their house thinking it’s yours and you lie there like a Christmas present that Santa left in August, because Santa was drunk, driving with one eye open, his sleigh swerving about, shiny wrapped packages falling through the night into neighborhoods, onto gravel.

Caroline Kepnes is a TV writer living in a Los Angeles’ Franklin Village, where it’s all about roasted chicken, used books, cinnamon coffee and late night happy hours. Her stories have appeared in The Barcelona Review, Dogzplot, Eclectica, Eyeshot, Monkey Bicycle, Word Riot and Thieves Jargon. In 2004, she won the Hemingway Resource Center’s Short Fiction Contest. Her biography of Stephen Crane is available on Amazon, though it is intended for little children. She grew up on Cape Cod and started out in New York, covering boy bands for Tiger Beat.

Gas drilling in Appalachia yields a foul byproduct

Map shows the Marcellus Shale formation in the Eastern U.S. (P. Prengaman – AP)

By MARC LEVY and VICKI SMITH

The Associated Press
Tuesday, February 2, 2010; 2:40 PM

HARRISBURG, Pa. — A drilling technique that is beginning to unlock staggering quantities of natural gas underneath Appalachia also yields a troubling byproduct: powerfully briny wastewater that can kill fish and give tap water a foul taste and odor.

With fortunes, water quality and cheap energy hanging in the balance, exploration companies, scientists and entrepreneurs are scrambling for an economical way to recycle the wastewater.

“Everybody and his brother is trying to come up with the 11 herbs and spices,” said Nicholas DeMarco, executive director of the West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association.

Drilling crews across the country have been flocking since late 2008 to the Marcellus Shale, a rock bed the size of Greece that lies about 6,000 feet beneath New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio. Geologists say it could become the most productive natural gas field in the U.S., capable of supplying the entire country’s needs for up to two decades by some estimates.

Before that can happen, the industry is realizing that it must solve the challenge of what to do with its wastewater. As a result, the Marcellus Shale in on its way to being the nation’s first gas field where drilling water is widely reused.

The polluted water comes from a drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” in which millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals are blasted into each well to fracture tightly compacted shale and release trapped natural gas. Read more.

Story 1: “Bent Country” by Sheldon Lee Compton http://friedchickenandcoffee.com/2009/06/30/bent-country-by-sheldon-lee-compton/

Story 2: “Justice Boys” by Sheryl Monks http://friedchickenandcoffee.com/2009/07/24/justice-boys-by-sheryl-monks/

Story 3: “Blind Lemon” by Jim Parks http://friedchickenandcoffee.com/2009/06/04/blind-lemon-by-jim-parks/

Gibby is in the hayloft of the barn looking at the pages he tore out of the Sears and Roebuck catalogue. This morning when he was looking at the Christmas toys and making a wish list, Eli showed him the pages of women wearing brassieres and panties. If you wet your finger and rub, you can see what’s underneath, he said. The thought hadn’t really occurred to Gibby before, but now he can’t stand not knowing what the pretty women look like naked, especially at that mysterious V where boys have something to stick out and girls have something to hide. It makes him feel almost like he has a fever, and kind of queasy inside, but not sick. He has caught glimpses of Arlene naked lots of times, but he has never seen her down there. They all have to take baths in a tin washtub in the kitchen surrounded by the dinette chairs. She has big titties, but it makes him feel nasty to think of seeing Arlene the way other boys see her. Eli says all the senior high boys that ride the school bus talk about Arlene’s titties.

Gibby leans back on some bales of hay and peels down his britches over his tenny shoes. Then he pulls off his underwear. His doodle snags and then pops free, waggling back and forth. It’s as hard as he has ever seen it; even harder than when he wakes up in the morning and has to pee real bad. The hay is itchy on his butt, so he lifts up and pulls his jeans up underneath him.

Eli must have been playing a joke on him. When he licks his finger and rubs between the legs of the women in the catalogue all it does is smear and rub a hole in the page. Eli probably tried it himself in another catalogue and knew it didn’t work. Gibby knows he shouldn’t be squeezing his hard doodle and yanking on it, but it feels good and even though he wants to stop, he can’t stop, he just can’t stop. It’s like something inside is making him do it and he doesn’t know why. Could it be the devil? His Sunday school teacher, Brother Delbert, said you shouldn’t touch your privates except when you’re using the bathroom. He said if you do it might lead to temptation.  He didn’t say what the temptation might be, but it sounded bad. Gibby tried not to touch his doodle. He tried so hard.

But he knows Eli plays with his all the time. He puts his hand around it and goes up and down, up and down, real fast, like he’s milking a cow’s teat. He does it almost every night. Last summer some of Eli’s friends came over after church to go fishing on the creek and instead of fishing they sat on the creek bank and played with their doodles for a long time while talking about seeing girls naked. Ronnie Calhoun even claimed he saw Arlene’s panties on the school bus. Gibby ran home and told Daddy and Arlene about their sinning against Jesus, but they didn’t seem to care. Daddy was reading his bible; he kind of cough-laughed and told him not to worry about it. Arlene was outside swinging in the swing Daddy fixed up on the big oak tree, and singing “How Much is that Doggy in the Window?” She just giggled and said, just wait a year or two and you will be doing the same thing. Gibby said, oh, no, I won’t! Jesus is watching! It made Gibby mad for her to think he would do something Jesus didn’t do, and he said so. How do you know Jesus didn’t do it? she asked him, he was a man, wasn’t he? Uh uh-h-h, Gibby said. He was just Jesus. Well, they hung him on the old rugged cross, she said. So I reckon he felt things the same way a man does.

And now Gibby is doing the thing he said Jesus didn’t do, and he can’t stop. He wants to stop, but he can’t stop. His hand and arm are tired, but he can’t stop. He tries thinking of Jesus, but he can’t stop trying to imagine what is underneath these women’s underwear. How long does he have to keep this up before he is able to stop?

For some reason he isn’t aware of, he gets into a crouch like a catcher in baseball and raises halfway up like he is going after a high pitch. The strain makes him feel different. It reminds him of when he was in the first grade and he used to hang by his arms from the monkey bars on the playground and strain to pull himself up. He would get the most wonderful feeling all through his body. He would hang there with his arms bent until he couldn’t hang anymore and then he would drop to the ground, feeling limp as a used washrag. Maybe the feeling he is feeling now will lead to the feeling he felt back then.

He lowers his grip on his doodle so that he has more skin in his grasp. Then he lengthens the stroke and speeds up his hand. He feels like he is about to collapse when he feels the tingle he remembers from first grade start to spread throughout his body. It feels so good he wants it to last forever, a blessed wildness crawling from somewhere deep inside him and suddenly he is having a glorious fit and he closes his eyes and surrenders to it completely, shuddering, rejoicing, born again. He lets go a final drawn-out moan that sounds like it comes from someone else, and collapses back against the bales, shuddering one last time.

After a few deep breaths, he raises his head from the itchy bale and looks down past his bunched-up shirt at the fountain of salvation he still holds in his hand. Lord have mercy, he says to himself. He realizes now he has accidentally discovered a great secret that will change him forever. A few seconds later his joy turns to dread when he lifts his hand and sees clear, sticky goo on the back of his hand and splattered on his shirt. He puts his hand up to his face and wipes some of the gooey stuff off his cheek. Lord have mercy, he says to himself again, only this time he means the words.

Terrified and praying for forgiveness, he tugs on his britches and runs back to the house, even though his legs are as wobbly as Jell-O. Eli is in the living room watching cartoons, but if he asks him about it, he’ll probably make something up or else make fun of him. Arlene is in the kitchen rolling out dough for biscuits. Even though he is embarrassed, he is too scared to wait until Daddy gets home from helping Mr. Hess with a springing heifer trying to give birth to a stuck calf. When he tells her that he was peeing when all of a sudden he got this strange feeling and some sticky stuff came out of his doodle, her eyes get big and she cups her flour-covered hand over her mouth.

— Is something wrong with me? Gibby says to her.

She nods, but he can tell she’s not serious. — There sure is, she says, wiping the flour on her face with the sleeve of her dress. — You’re a boy. Besides that, you’re just peachy. Don’t try to tell me you were peeing, though. I know better than that. I’ve caught Eli a dozen times. I swear, I think he wants to be caught.

— I promise I won’t ever do it again. I’ll pray to Jesus to help me.

— Shush. You’ll probably be back at it this evenin’. Nothin’ to be ashamed of, but don’t talk about it in your Sunday school class, okay? All boys play with their thing.

— All of ‘em?

— Sure ‘nough.

— But what about this stuff? He holds out his hand.

— Yuk! Get that away from me, Gibby. It’s natural, okay, but so is pee and I don’t want that on me, either. Whenever you do that, clean up good. And don’t go messin’ with any little girls, cause that could be big trouble, you hear me?

— Uh huh. He sighs. — Arlene?

— Uh huh?

— What do girls do, you know, uh, you know, um, to get that feelin’?

Arlene’s face turns red. — You’ll find out one of these days. Now go on and play. I have to get dinner ready. I think Daddy needs to have a talk with you, little brother.

While he stands there, trying to think of how to ask the question that is burning a hole in his conscience, she lights the oven.  — Arlene, that was the best feelin’ I ever felt in my life. How come it’s supposed to be a sin?

— I don’t believe it is a sin, she says. — I wouldn’t worry about it. Just because somebody tells you somethin’ doesn’t mean it’s true; not even if it’s Sunday school teachers. Shoot, they do it, too. Like I said, you’ll probably be back at it by this evenin’. Just don’t wear it out. She sniffs like she is about to sneeze and turns away, changing the subject. — Bout time to gather the eggs, Gibby. Watch out for that rat snake.

Arlene is wrong. He doesn’t wait until evening; he is back at it thirty minutes later. The second time is even better than the first, only this time the sticky stuff is whitish. Wobbly legged, he goes to the chickenhouse and gathers the eggs. The snake is nowhere to be seen.

A. Ray Norsworthy hides out in the Idaho mountains and runs with the wolves. His story collection, Indiahoma: Stories Of Blues And Blessings, is available online at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.  His fiction has appeared in Eclectica, Storyglossia, Night Train III,  Zoetrope All-Story Extra, The Story Garden, and 12 Gauge. Read his interview in the October, 2006 issue of Eclectica and in the January, 2006 issue, his story, All The Way To Grangeville, which was runner-up in the 2006 Million Writers Award contest. Besides Indiahoma, he has written two novels and a number of plays and short stories. The most recent novels are True Revelations: A Love Story of the Apocalypse, and Becoming One: An Exile from Dreamland.

Who woulda guessed?  This is from Brian Cook at Book Publishing News. I wish I knew the original source.

“Books based on life in small town southern Appalachia sell like hotcakes!” stated one publicist.

According to book sales data, from 1998-present, America can’t get enough stories about small town life in Southern Appalachia. Over twenty-five million books about life in the Appalachian mountain regions of America have been sold in the last decade alone. “That’s an incredible statistic,” said one industry spokesman, “I don’t know of another region of the country that can tout such sales figures.”

Interestingly, this phenomenon isn’t a recent development. For many years, life in Southern Appalachia has been a favorite destination for readers of all ages.

Read on.

It’s strange. I have Google alerts set up for various strange and not-so-strange search strings–one for ‘Appalachia’ alone– and this article wasn’t listed among my daily articles, and there’s no back-linking. So, be happy or interested, yes, but don’t believe it until you see a primary source.

New fiction from Ray Norsworthy coming this afternoon or tonight.