Prologue

Done! Finished! Over!

I got fucked up a little in the first sandy go around in the Middle East. Some rag head got lucky with an RPG by blowing up a rock and getting me with some of the shrapnel. Just enough to send me on a med-evac plane to Germany then after some treatment there back to the good ole' U.S. of A. After about nine months of corrective surgeries and rehab, the Marines said they didn't need a cripple so take this monthly disability pay and go away.

The lasting affects of my injuries were not too bad. Some scars and a slight limp only some of the time. When necessary I could still run a little, just not fast. All in all, I was in pretty good shape.

When I finished high school I was working in a grocery store and had another part time job flipping hamburgers. I tried junior college but was bored. My only happiness was riding a beat up old Harley I had bought but a lot of folks were put off by it saying I was going to turn out bad for hanging out with bikers. My mom died of loneliness after my father got killed at work. Before the folks died, my older brother and sister both moved away from our small town to a big city to live and work.

I was restless and thought I would be good in the military so I cleaned up Mom and Dad's estate, split the proceeds of the house and their car with my siblings then enlisted into the Marine corp. I was a good Marine and felt like making it a career until a Muslim quack got lucky.

So here I was, twenty-four years old with my only trade, a hell of a soldier.

With the Vet benefit, I went to a welding school for a year and learned how to meld metals. The school taught every type of welding there was and made sure you were fairly proficient at it before they tried to place you with organizations that needed their graduates.

First chance to show my worth was in Alaska on the pipeline. Seems the seams (I know that's corny but it's kind of cute) on the huge pipes carrying oil from the field leak. They need welders to fix the problem. Big problem is you have to really clean up the area around where you are going to work or you will be the cause of a big boom. I learned how to clean up oil and successfully welded leaky seams for a year.

The work wasn't that hard but you really were isolated as you traveled between what they called base camps then went out to job sites on a large ATV or snow mobile. You could go into town and spend five bucks for a can of beer or fifty for a bottle of hooch or five hundred for a toothless whore. Or, you could just work every day, make the overtime and salt the cash away for the murky future you dreamed of. I didn't know what my future was going to be so I happily worked as much as they would let me. My only restriction was no more than an eighteen-hour day.

After about eighteen months, I really didn't think I could take the cold in the winter or the mosquitoes in summer any more so I asked for a transfer to a warmer climate.

The oil company that had hired me suggested I take a position open on some drilling rigs and wellhead equipment in northern Texas and southern Oklahoma. Seems their welder came to work with a hang over and blew himself up. You really have to work at it to make a really big boom with an acetylene bottle, but it can be done.

I quickly found out that being back in the states was nice. The company had me working twelve or more hours a day, seven days a week. When I was able to check out a local bar or eat somewhere other than the company's chuck wagon meals on wheels, I enjoyed ogling some of the sweet young things in low riding shorts and halters. Actually that's all I did, ogle. I was never at one location long enough to put the moves on any of the local talent.

Chapter 1 »