B Farmer - Descent

Hysterics aside, it is rare for it to snow above the Arctic Circle. Under normal conditions, it’s just too cold and dry to get any appreciable precipitation. But that winter it was warm – very warm. Now when I say warm, I don’t mean pull out your tiniest thong kind of warm. It’s still cold as Titouan’s icy heart, but it wasn’t too cold to precipitate. Meteorologists marveled at how much snow had fallen and how much was still in the forecast.

Titouan told Avery not to sleep at the COM shack. I personally didn’t care where he slept, so I never made him sleep where he didn’t want to. That and he told me he hated sleeping there and he would quit if I made him. When I asked him what the problem was, he said he didn’t appreciate his bunkmate’s propensity for farting. His exact words were, “A grown man’s affinity for releasing gas should not extend to the subconsciousness of sleep. I should not have to pay for his nocturnal, gaseous incontinence.”

I mean how do you argue with that? Long story short, I knew to walk over to the COM shack rather than the nest where almost everyone else slept.

It was a brief walk over from my office, but the snowfall bizarrely worsened in those short two minutes. I could barely find the entrance it was snowing so hard. The door (the one Avery felt the need to put a “Pull” sign on after Sam pushed on it one too many times) was difficult to open because of the growing pile of drift snow in front of it. I cleared some of the snow away with my boot before trying to open it again. Once I had cleared enough to get inside, I was greeted with several loud bangs.

“Who is there?” Avery asked, sounding like a kid whose nightlight had gone out.

“It’s me.”

“You scared me. I thought you were Titouan.”

I laughed. “No, not Titouan. He’ll be here sooner than later, you can bet on that.”

Even though I knew Avery had electric lanterns, the COM shack was pitch dark. I guess he had been falling over crap looking for them, which leads us to the first thing you should know about Avery. Not only did he tend to be disheveled in appearance, he tended to be equally disorganized. Titouan and I told him to organize his workspace on numerous occasions. He obviously never got around to it.

“What the hell are you doing in here, besides clearly not keeping things organized?”

“Finally,” he said. I heard a click, and then another one. Once he was sure the flashlight wouldn’t turn on, he began to tap it with the palm of his hand. When that didn’t bring about the desired effect, he slammed it against the table. He learned that from me.

“Chill, bud… come on.”

Agitated, he said, “My flashlight always works.”

Avery becomes attached to things. I guess that’s maybe another thing you should know about him. His flashlight used to be black. But at that point, it had been used so much it was silver – or whatever the hell color aluminum is.

“Stop fixating on the damn thing. We’re wasting time here. Time we don’t have.”

My words having, initially at least, fallen on deaf ears, he flicked the switch several more times, before finally giving up. He placed the flashlight gently on the table and began searching in earnest for alternative light sources.

Avery was a jack-of-all-trades guy when it came to electronics and communications. Since Miley ran a lean operation, Avery was a perfect fit, even though Miley himself would’ve most certainly disagreed. Actually, Miley thought he was an “overpaid geek.” But Miley had a ridiculous aversion to anything or anyone he thought didn’t add value to his business. He’d say, “If your hands aren’t in the oil, all you’re doing is costing me money. Not making it.”

“We need to hurry, Avery,” I reiterated.

“None of these are working.”

“Change the batteries.”

A few more bangs and a couple thuds later, a beam of light struck me in the face. “Jesus, Avery.”

“Looks like you have some dried blood on your face. You will probably get an infection.”

I waved him off. I had no intention of regaling him the great battle of the sharp corner.

Of the fifteen or so lanterns, headlamps, and flashlights he found, only six worked. We also found two large floodlights in the storage room that was connected to the COM Shack. Neither had bulbs. Avery said Tom had needed them for something, so he had taken them. It was a moot point, really, as there was no electricity to power them. Still, Titouan was going to look at the totality of Avery’s preparedness, and it wasn’t pretty.

Avery clucked his tongue several times before speaking. “Only one of our newer LED lamps work, and none of the flashlights. Whereas, all of the older incandescent one’s work. It is very strange, William. Very strange.”

I grabbed one of the beaten up flashlights and the batteries for my headlamp before saying, “Knowing Miley he bought the cheapest shit he could find. We’ll worry about this stuff later. We gotta get to work, bud.”

“I ordered the newer LED flashlights and lamps.”

Of course, I knew he had. I had signed off on the requisitions. I was pretending he hadn’t, I guess, to make him seem less incompetent. “We’re making things worse by standing around.”

He began to say something, but I quickly cut him off. He slung his work bag on his shoulder, grabbed as many of the working lamps as he could carry, and stomped off towards the exit.

With the night-shift people not having anything to do because of the power outage, they had started milling around the Patch, trying to figure out what had happened. I heard a mixture of emotions coming from people. Some were happy as hell being out of work, while others were thinking about the end of rotation bonus and blaming Avery more every second there was no production. I quickened my pace.

There are a couple other things you need to know about Avery. One, he’s smart. He had a near perfect score on his SAT. Where you come from that might not be a big deal, but the area in Southern Indiana where we lived wasn’t exactly known for coveting higher learning. The biggest academic pursuit was contemplating who would host the next mud bog.

Two, you’ve seen the prototypical nerd, right? The type with the pocket protector and trousers pulled up so high and tight it would take a Come-Along and a front-end loader to de-wedge the bastards? Well, he’s not exactly like that. He’s more of a mismatched sock, crazy disheveled hair, bad at social cues, X-Files shirt wearing kind of nerd. Let’s say he didn’t always fit in with the people he worked with in the oil fields. If it weren’t for me, I’m pretty sure he’d have suffered his fair share of blackened eyes and bruises because he lacked verbal filters.

It didn’t take long for him to figure out something was wrong with the first generator. “Dang,” he said. He opened the control box panel. “Shine the light here,” he said, pointing a shadow-obscured finger where he needed the light.

Apparently, I was inept at shining a flashlight.

“Just give it to me,” he snapped.

Okay, there’s a third thing you need to know about Avery. He was on his way to finding God by that point. Not your garden variety, worship on Easter and Christmas finding God, have you. Not that easy. He found the Jehovah’s Witness brand of God – or maybe they found him? Either way, as he said on numerous occasions, “Cussing was the antithesis of the exaltation of God.” What’s ironic about him finding God, though, was his startling lack of conversion where his temper was concerned. Sam liked to rile Avery up by citing scripture that admonished his tantrums. Avery would try to ignore him, but I knew (and so did Sam) that it bothered him greatly.