During the summer of 1969, having just graduated from Northeast Louisiana State College with a degree in geology, I got a job as a mudlogger with Core Lab.  I had already been on deep wells in Laurel, Mississippi and Westlaco, Texas.  August found me near Mt. Pleasant, Texas, in a horse pasture, on my third wildcat of the summer.

I lived in a little one-room apartment in Lone Star, a Texas steel mill town, and worked from 7 at night until 7 in the morning, 7 days a week, until the 13,500’ Smackover test reached total depth.  During this time, I witnessed a shoot-out, a stabbing and numerous fights on the rig.  It was my welcome to the East Texas oil patch.

What I learned from this experience was that East Texas roughnecks were a hard-working, hard-drinking bunch.  Every night, when drilling was going smoothly, they would invade my air-conditioned logging trailer to play poker and tell stories.  One of the stories they told me was about Dad Joiner and the discovery of the East Texas Field.  True or false, it varies somewhat from official accounts.  As memory serves me, here is the story told by those wild East Texas roughnecks more than 36 years ago.

Already 66 years old, Dad Joiner was a broken-down wildcatter when he moved from Dallas to East Texas in 1926.  An educated man, he’d practiced law in Alabama and served in the legislature there.  It wasn’t enough for him.  Like many others, he was drawn by the lure of Oklahoma black gold and the whispered promise of riches beyond his wildest dreams.  Answering the siren call, he made and lost two fortunes during his 28 years in the Sooner State.

Joiner was an oil promoter, a breed spawned by “oil fever,” a disease for which, even today, there is no known cure.  Having seen the blow-outs in Cushing and heard of the 25,000 BOPD uncontained flows in Oklahoma City, investors, greedy for instant wealth, fairly threw their money at often unscrupulous oil promoters, rife with promises of easy money.  Many of the early Oklahoma oil discoveries were funded by these investors, even though most never realized a penny from their investments.

Some of the reports of Dad Joiner portray him as a principled visionary, a man with divine knowledge of the infinite riches located in the subsurface of East Texas and determined to find them.  The truth is quite different.  Joiner went to East Texas because of one thing — cheap leases.

17 dry holes had already reached total depth in the area and most legitimate oil companies had long since abandoned East Texas for more promising regions.  Taking advantage of unsubstantiated, earlier-generated reports of possible oil in the Woodbine Sandstone, Joiner used this sparse information to raise enough money to lease a large block of acreage from Daisy Bradford.  With these leases, he parlayed the drilling of a wildcat well on the block.

Oil rigs were primitive affairs in the late twenties.  They shut down drilling at dark, sometimes after penetrating only a few feet during the day.  At night, Dad Joiner would hold court at a saloon, drinking whiskey and playing poker with the locals.  He also used this time to raise money for his ongoing venture.

After drilling two dry holes, Joiner’s money was beginning to “dry up.”  In the manner of all good oil promoters, both before and after him, he devised a way to raise enough money to drill a third well, and help fund his high-rolling lifestyle.  What he did is now called checkerboarding.

Simply put, he subdivided his block of leases like the squares on a checkerboard.  He kept the red blocks and sold the black ones.  When money got tight, he would subdivide the blocks even further.  Through his continued promotion, he raised enough money to drill a third well by May, 1929.

In October, 1930, the Daisy Bradford Number 1 struck oil and became the discovery well for the largest oil field in the world.  Dad, also in the manner of many oil promoters, had over-sold the well.  What does this mean?  It means that he sold the interests in the well two or three times.  Lawsuits against him began soon after oil was discovered in the Woodbine Sandstone at the Daisy Bradford Number 1.  Supposedly, he had sold the offset leases to oilman H.L. Hunt shortly before the Daisy Bradford discovery.

The roughnecks that played poker nightly in my logging trailer told a different story.  Hunt was also an oil promoter and poker player  – one that would be a card playing legend, even in today's high stakes Texas hold-em era.  He won Joiner’s offset leases in a poker game - at least according to my roughneck friends - and the rest is history.

Don’t mourn Dad Joiner.  Even though he died a pauper, he lived one of the most interesting lives of anyone I know.  And despite his lack of altruism, he inadvertently discovered a legitimate super-giant oil field, one that may ultimately produce 8 billion barrels of oil.

History is the foundation of what we know today, and it’s important to understand what happened in the past.  Sometimes, however, words on the printed page are but a shadow of reality.  A month in a steamy, East Texas horse pasture taught me that.

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Mick is one of my closest and dearest friends.  I met him when I went to work for Cities Service Oil Company and we both knew each other during our first wives.  I went skiing the first time with Mick, had fun with him and I’ve fought with him, just like a brother.  When he asked me to be the best man at his wedding, I naturally said yes.

Mick and Ginette had been a number for quite a while and the time had finally arrived for them to marry.  I was to be Mick’s best man and Anne was Ginette’s first lady.  Mick and Gin lived near our house, in a condo in Hefner Village.  When the day came for the wedding, Anne and I made our way to their condo and knocked on the door.  Gin met us with a smile.

“Mick’s running late and still at work,” she said.  “I’ll get you something to drink.”

Anne and I were both dressed for a wedding and I felt uncomfortable waiting for Mick as I drank beer in my suit and tie.  An hour passed with no word from Mick.  This was in the days before the cell phone and there was no way for Gin to call him.  When another hour passed, Gin began to cry.

“I knew he would never marry me.  He’s probably out drinking with his buddies, not even worried about getting married.  Tomorrow he’ll have some lame excuse.”

“He’ll be here,” I said.

“How do you know?” Gin asked.

“Because I know Mick,” I said with my tongue firmly in cheek.

Anne put her hands on Gin’s shoulders to console her, a task that became even harder as yet another hour passed.  Finally, we heard the key in the front door and Mick stumbled in.  Yes, he had been drinking and he had a resolute expression on his face.

“Sorry guys,” he said.  “I just had to think about awhile.”

“And what did you decide?” I asked.

“I don’t think we’re ready for marriage yet.  I’m calling it off.”

By this time, I was mad.  “The hell you are,” I said.  “Get your suit on.  I’ll call the limo and tell them you finally showed up.”

“Eric –“

“Don’t Eric me.  Get your suit on.  We’ve been waiting almost three hours and by God you’re going to get married, and I mean tonight.  I’m not taking no for an answer.”

I must have been persuasive because Mick returned from the bedroom dressed in suit and tie – just in time as the limo driver was knocking on the door.

Mick had found a marriage chapel, really the home of Reverend Sweeney, in an older neighborhood of Oklahoma City.  The good reverend answered the door on the first knock.

“Sorry we’re late,” I said.  “We had a few problems.”

“Quite all right,” he said.

Reverend Sweeney led us to the back yard where he had a rose garden and an arbor decorated with flowers.  Oh, and it was a full moon that night.  As late as we were, it was at its zenith and beautifully full.  Mick and Gin exchanged vows and sealed the ceremony with a kiss.  After we filled out the necessary paperwork in Reverend Sweeney’s kitchen, we returned to the limo waiting out front.

The driver took us to Junior’s, a restaurant where all good oilies always go to celebrate something good, even today.  It was Friday night, Junior’s filled to capacity.  Junior’s was known as much for its strong drinks as for its wonderful food, and Anne, Gin and I soon caught up with Mick’s state of inebriation.

Later, after celebrating with two rounds of brandy ices, Mick stood, tapped his glass with a spoon until he had garnered everyone in the crowded restaurant’s attention.  When the room went quiet, he said something like, “I love this beautiful woman and want everyone to know.”

Seeing the confused looks on everyone’s faces, I stood and said, “This is Mick and Gin.  They are very much in love and just got married about an hour ago.”

The entire restaurant exploded with a round of applause and cheers.

I felt bad about badgering Mick into marrying Gin and told Anne as much when we finally returned home that night.

“He’s a grown man and is perfectly capable of making his own decisions.  He must have wanted to marry Gin or nothing you said could have made him do it.  You just sort of nudged him in the right direction.”

True words as Mick and Gin have now been married, through thick and thin, for more than twenty years, and have two wonderful children, Ashlee and Will, to show for the union.

Do I take the credit?  Let’s put it this way.  I’ve been a best man four times during my life and all four marriages are still going strong.

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Interesting article.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=a3d3VXW5vPNo&refer=energy

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I had just started a new job in 1976 and was undergoing a divorce from my first wife.  With the divorce finally finalized, I found myself truly free for the first time in seven years.  I was already drinking and partying too much, so the only thing left for me was to buy a motorcycle.  When Dave, a fellow geologist and my closest friend, told me he was going to put an ad for his motorcycle in the newspaper, I naturally asked him how much he wanted for it.

"Five hundred bucks," he told me.

"I'll take it, but you'll have to teach me how to drive it."  I'd never been on a motorcycle.

A lesser friend would have told me to go jump in the lake.  Dave, in fact, did grumble a bit but in the end he promised to teach me how to ride a motorcycle, even if I didn't buy his motorcycle.  That Saturday, he drove it to my house and gave me my first lesson.  The bike was a 500cc Triumph dirt bike.  I know!  There's no such thing anymore and the bike would probably be worth ten grand these days if you could even find one.  Anyway, Dave showed me the ropes and perservered until I finally got the hang of it.

I began riding the bike to work but soon found its knobby tires were more suited for off-road than freeway.  I also soon learned that my ex-girlfriend was a better rider than me.  I found this out as the reluctant passenger on back as she demonstrated how to race around a corner while nearly kissing the pavement.  I traded the little dirt bike for a 750cc Triumph Bonneville street bike, quickly discovering the gears and brakes are on opposite sides than those on the dirt bike.  Again, my bud Dave helped me transition through the difficulty.

My ex and I were unable to sell our house immediately so we took turns living in it until it was sold.  One night, we had an impromptu party that included many of my new friends and many of hers.  Don't ask me to explain!  We were incompatible and didn't hate each other.  I soon began getting requests to take people for rides on the Bonneville.

The long trip around the block would begin as uneventful but ended the same way a half dozen times.  The grass on the front lawn was wet and everytime I jumped the curb and hit the grass, I would lose control and we would slide across the wet yards on our rear ends.  Did I mention that we were all drinking?

No one was hurt and the Bonneville suffered only a few superficial scratches.  I have a picture of the Bonneville around somewhere but only a memory exists - not even a tiny scar - of my first motorcycle.  It's a shame because that cycle and friends like Dave helped me through a very rocky patch in my life.

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Frequent readers of this column know how superstitious I am.  Business took me to rural Oklahoma today and something I saw there gave me an instant case of the creeps.  Here’s a little background info:

My business partner, fellow author r. r. bryan and I recently bought an old oil well in with the intent of recompleting in a new zone.  Being oil promoters as well as writers, we turned a percentage to a man we know in Dallas named Pat O’Neil.

Today, I was in the county on other business.  A few miles from the well in question, I came across an old sign so I stopped to take a picture.  I was blown away when I read the inscription and this is what it said:

This land was founded by Jacob Derr in the land run on September 16, 1893.  Others making the land run of 1893 were C.B. Kirk to the southwest and the west, H.C. Swingle to the east, W.R. Whitaker to the northwest, B. Lowman to the northeast.  Pat O’Neil to the southeast.

I know, the name is fairly common and it could just be a coincidence.  Maybe, but I can think of at least two more possible explanations that involve reincarnation and the supernatural.  On the other hand, I am a fiction writer with a well developed imagination.  I’m posting the picture at the bottom of the page and fiction writer or not, I think you will agree that it’s still kind of creepy, and you can draw your own conclusions.

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If it’s not one thing, it’s another.

Oil prices up on word US ship fired on boats in Persian Gulf: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance.

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My deceased wife Anne, like myself, was a boxing fan.  When she was alive we often hosted fight parties for many championship boxing events.  There was always lots of beer and our friend Ray, immortalized in my story Chicken Fries would always bring brownies.

Dave, my buddy who sold me my first motorcycle would bring his famous sausage balls.  Later, when times were tight, just Anne, Dave and I would get together for a fight.  One fighter we never missed was Mike Tyson.

Tyson, at the time, was still young and going through opponents like an Oklahoma tornado.  When he was scheduled to fight a no-name boxer, Buster Douglas, no one wanted to watch the likely one-round event except the three of us.

I don’t remember much about the evening, or the fight, except that Buster Douglas connected with Tyson’s jaw and knocked him clean out.  I also remember Dave’s sausage balls.  This week, Dave was kind enough to send me his sausage ball recipe.  Here it is and I hope that you enjoy them as much as I did.

Basic:

3 cups biscuit mix (Bisquick or similar type mix)

1 lb. bulk sausage

½ lb. grated Cheddar cheese

Combine the sausage and cheese first, then add the Bisquick mix until the mixture will hold together, mix thoroughly with hands (or spoon, easier with hands), mixing is easier if the sausage is warmed slightly in a microwave first.  The amount of Bisquick mix used to hold the whole thing together will change as you change the type of sausage used.  Now, form mixture into balls (about a ping-pong ball size), a perfect ball shape is not important, in fact it is better if formed into odd shaped imperfect balls.  You can freeze you balls for baking later or bake now.  I like to bake now and freeze for heating later in microwave.

Place balls on non-greased bake/cookie sheet and bake in over at 350 degrees for 15 minutes, but check after 12 minutes.

That is the basic recipe, now for the Cajun version:

Cajun Version - Sausage Balls

3 cups biscuit mix (Bisquick or similar type mix)

1 lb. bulk sausage  (sausage can be any type you like, as long as it can be broken up and mixed with the other ingredients, I sometimes use hot sausage)

½ lb. grated Cheddar cheese  (extra sharp cheddar cheese is the best to use)

From now on, you are on your own to add what ever floats your boat, some of my favorites are:

1 nice sized onion - chopped

Several cloves of garlic - chopped

I have been known to put several drops of Tabasco sauce on each ball before cooking.  It leaves a very nice red color on each ball and adds a good kick.  Note:  If while mixing, you are having drinks, or whatever, the Tabasco sauce goes on the Sausage Balls, enough said.

Then mix and bake as above.

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Here’s a pic I thought you might like.

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We all have benchmarks in our lives that we recognize as signs of our moving in a positive direction.  For me, it has always been owning, or at least leasing, a hot tub.  I bought my first redwood hot tub in 1979, just before marrying Anne.  Since then, I’ve had four more, including the one that I have now.

Following the oil bust in the early eighties, the fortunes of Anne and I took an abrupt downward turn.  We lost out house on Ski Island and our three rent houses (yes, I know, we were over-consumers at the time).

The hardest part of curbing your lifestyle is finding a quick way of halting your monthly expenditures.  I’m talking about the house payment on your mansion and monthly car payments for your Mercedes and Jaguar (I know, I’m not eliciting much sympathy here!).

Anne and I reined in our lifestyle, still managing to maintain a comfortable existence until 1995.  The oil biz was hurting.  No one was buying prospects or drilling wells.  We found a little rent house and had just enough money left after the first month’s rent, deposits and everything to rent a U-Haul truck.

My nephew Kevin helped me move and we single-handedly transported years of our lives from a five thousand square foot house to a fifteen hundred foot house.  Well, not totally alone.  Later that night, I finally called my Brother Jack and Anne’s brother David to help us with the last load.  To say we were exhausted is an understatement.  To this day, I don’t think Kevin knows how much he helped me.

Anne and I lived in the rent house for two years - past the time we learned that she had lung cancer.  I finally sold a prospect and made a down payment with it on the house I still live in.  Anne died about six months later.

The house had a swimming pool but no hot tub.  The oil business dragged on for several more years and I scrapped by, making the house payments, buying groceries and little else.  I still wanted a hot tub and the entire time I plotted how I might acquire one.

Three years after Anne passed away, I saw an ad for an eight-foot octagonal hot tub in the Daily Oklahoman.  The party was asking two hundred and twenty five dollars.  I had the money, called and purchased the shell.  Three days later, the owner brought it to me and dumped it unceremoniously in my back yard.  It remained in the same spot, through more hard times in the oil biz, for three more years.

I did figure out where I wanted to put it and I began digging a hole in the ground, beside the oak tree where I had buried my nineteen year old cat Chani when she finally died.  The hole was long dug, half filled with rain water, and I still didn’t have the money to set the hot tub, much less get it plumbed and ready to use.

Two years ago, my financial fortunes took a turn for the better and I finally got the hot tub plumbed and working.  I took my first dip on the night of my birthday and surely it was a birthday present from someone that had gone before me.

Last week, my step-son Shane built a gazebo to enclose the outdoor hot tub and today I mucked it out after a winter of non-use.  This house is my little piece of Eden, Marilyn and I Adam and Eve.  If there’s a snake out there with an apple, well, hey, give me a bite.

When I finish writing the last words of this treatise, I’m going outside and give the hot tub a spring test.

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Here’s a pic of the Dukester in the garden.

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When I worked for Cities Service Oil Company my primary duty was sitting (staying on location, describing samples and calling for drill stem tests) drilling wells, mostly in Kansas.  After months of learning from other geologists, I was allowed to sit a well in Comanche County, Kansas all alone.  My first solo experience was quite traumatic.

The well was a wildcat (more than a mile from established production) scheduled to drill into the Arbuckle Dolomite, a very old carbonate that sometimes produces lots of oil and gas.  At Cities, the technique for describing and drilling a prospect was well defined but had many flaws.

The powers-that-be considered Cities a technologically advanced company and would not drill a wildcat without seismic control.  The geologist would locate an anomaly by doing subsurface mapping.  He would then propose a well and management would either agree or can the prospect.  If they agreed, the geophysicists would get involved and have a seismic survey conducted over the prospect.  If the geophysics agreed with the geology, then Cities would drill a well there.

When I started working for Cities, the Mid-continent Division had not had a discovery in more than ten years.  Part of the reason, I soon learned, is that seismic surveys never work perfectly.  My opinion is that they rarely work, at least in Kansas.  There are many reasons for this, most too technical to delve into in the space of a few hundred words.  I had an inkling of this fact the first well that I sat alone because I had already had discussions with other disillusioned company geologists.

Every well is different and only a trained wellsite specialist can tell you exactly where you are in the hole, and if you are running structurally high (very good) or structurally low (very bad).  There is a marker zone, the Heebner Shale, in Kansas that is almost always used to determine how you are running.  When we reached the Heebner, I knew exactly where I was in the hole and called my boss to report the information.

“You must be mistaken,” Don W. told me.  “If what you say is true you would be running fifty feet low.  The seismic map says you should be running fifty feet high so you obviously have a hundred foot error.”

I tried to argue with him, explain that I knew where we were and that we really were running fifty feet low.

“You’ve missed a correlation point.  Go up the hole a hundred feet and try again.  You’ll find your mistake.”

From that point, my daily report was in La La Land.  I knew where we were but my boss was becoming increasing confused to the point that he called me an idiot and threatened to send out a more experienced geologist to correct my obvious mistake.  At one point, he almost had me convinced that I didn’t know what I was doing.

We finally reached total depth and when I looked at the electric log I knew that I had been correct all along.  By this time we were almost seventy feet low to the nearest correlation point.  There was no email in those days or any way to quickly transmit the logs to Oklahoma City for the honchos to view.  It was four in the morning when I looked at the last log and realized that we had a dry hole.  In a near state of despair, I called Don, my boss.

“Calm down, Eric.  Everything will be okay.  Is there any possibility that you are miscorrelating the log?”

There wasn’t, but it hurt my feelings that he was still blaming the failure of the well on me – at least that’s the way I felt at the time.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

“Bring the logs to the office.  We’ll have a meeting first thing in the morning.”

Management cared little about their minions.  Another geologist, a close friend of mine, had rear-ended a parked semi on the side of the road as he headed for a remote well site in the wee hours of the morning.  He didn’t survive.  It didn’t matter that I had been awake for almost twenty-four hours.  I had my orders – drive all night and present the logs for management’s inspection the following morning.

I drove into Oklahoma as the sun was arising and made it to the corporate offices before nine the next morning.  Three of my bosses studied the logs, frowned and scratched their heads, finally dismissing me without so much as a thank you or well done.  Later that day, Fred, the older geologist that had taught me almost everything I knew, came to my office.

“Don’t worry about it.  It’s not even your prospect.”

“I just can’t believe that management trusts a tool that almost never works over the word of their geologists.”

A big grin spread over Fred’s face.  “Welcome to life as a geologist,” he said.  “When you drill a discovery, someone else takes the credit but you get all the blame for every dry hole.”

“But Fred, seismic sucks.  How can management continue to believe in it?”

“Eric, a geologist is nothing but a justifier, someone or something that gives the okay for a company to dump millions of dollars into the ground.  You don’t really know any more than the seismic tool whether or not there is oil where you are planning to drill.  We use the best science we have but once you are a foot below the surface of the earth - and you can take this to the bank - it’s all Mother Nature, and she doesn’t give up her secrets easily.”

Fred was correct.  I have drilled many dry holes in my career and I’ve worked with lots of people and many companies that have had their discoveries.  And sometimes when I wake up at night and stare into the darkness, I can hear old Mother Nature giggling to herself.

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A very interesting comparison between the price of Btu equivalents for natural gas and heating oil.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=axvw3.6H8Kqo&refer=energy

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Here is an interesting discussion in This Week in Petroleum concerning the prices of oil and natural gas.

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/twip/twip.asp

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Harvey, my first father-in-law, was a fur buyer.  I was just back from Vietnam, scheduled to start graduate school the next spring.  Still, Harvey apparently mistrusted my intentions and assumed that I intended to be a perennial student, and somehow on the dole – his dole.  The thought was the furthest from my mind, but it seems to be the opinion he and all my other relatives had at the time.  He was worried about it enough that he even tried to teach me how to grade fur.

Harvey had a shed where he kept his furs before transporting them downtown to the French Market where he ultimately sold them.

“This is a rat fur,” he said, pointing to a muskrat skin.  “I pay a dollar for a regular pelt and a little more for a grade A pelt.  Know how I tell the difference?”

I didn’t have a clue.  The pelts were turned inside out and he stuck his hand inside one, showing me what to do.

“I pass my hand over the fur to see if there are any bald or thin spots.  If there are, the fur isn’t worth as much.  I always give at least a dollar a pelt or else the trappers would take their furs some place else.  If they bring me a hundred rats, I give them at least a hundred dollars.  Everything over that amount is a bonus.  You understand?”

I nodded to indicate that I did, but I really didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.

Gail and I had intended to live with Harvey and Lilly for three months, and then three months with my parents before moving to Fayetteville just before the beginning spring semester.  It didn’t happen that way.  After about a week, they began treating us like bad breath.  My sister-in-law even called and offered to pay my way through a real estate course so that Gail and I would stop sponging off their parents.  I’m fairly dense, but I was starting to get the hint.  That night I had a talk with Gail.

“I can’t take much more of this,” I said.  “Your parents obviously don’t want us here.”

“But what will we do?”

“Leave here and spend the rest of the time with my parents.  I think they are more understanding.”

Next day we packed and drove to Vivian, Lillie crying but not begging us to stay.  After a week at my parent’s house, we got another rude awakening.  They too began treating us like, well like blood-sucking leeches.  After just a few days, we packed our bags again and left for Fayetteville.

For the first time in my life I learned that families are strange, really strange.  The may love you but they don’t want you living with them, or for you to give the rest of the family the impression that you are living off of them.

It was a good lesson but it leaves me with one question – why can’t I  get rid of my own kids as easily?

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I wrote this short story for Earth Day many years ago and I think you will agree that it gives a whole new meaning to the slogan “Go Green.” 

EARTHEN REMAINS

By Eric Wilder

The odor of salt and dead fish permeated air near the ocean’s edge.  A gull flying overhead screeched, and then plummeted into the water.  Its rigid body wafted in the water, then floundered in foamy surf before joining floating garbage already on the beach.

            Mahatma sat in the mud of the nearby salt marsh staring at yellowed saw grass withering in the sun.  He touched his neck and felt the sting of ripe blisters.  The ocean’s stench made him cough, and then gag.  His lungs expanded and he almost fainted in the thin atmosphere nearly depleted of oxygen.

            He glanced at the cloudless sky streaked with orange and yellow patterns.  The purple remnant of a recent chemical disaster billowed in the distance like a noiseless Technicolor explosion.  Summoning the remainder of his dwindling strength, he dragged himself up out of the mud.  Feeling like a beaten man, he knew if he didn’t move that he would soon join the bone piles bleaching in the sun.  Even though frail and light as a wisp of water vapor, he still sank into the stinking mud as he hobbled toward higher ground on spindly legs assisted by his antique oak walking stick.

            Mahatma had lived a long and depressing life, and had come to the ocean’s edge to die.  He had planned to wade into salty surf and let the steady undertow take him out to sea.  Instead, the force of waves continued to push him back toward the bank and he found himself lying in the mud, exhausted.  Hours later, he remained alive.

            Mahatma felt like a supreme loser.  He couldn’t even muster the strength to kill himself.  Still, he hadn’t lived to the comparative old age of eighteen by being a weakling.  He took the day’s events as a life sign and smiled to himself as he hobbled toward low-lying foothills bordering the salt marsh.

            Mahatma had pledged to kill himself before ever becoming so weak that he would succumb to tongue swelling thirst or stomach wrenching hunger.  Now, the ordeal in the surf had left him so weak he didn’t know if he had the strength to reach the Great Dump, or the power to dig for nourishment even if he did.

            He passed the decaying bodies of a fish and a large bird, and nudged the gull with his toe, seriously contemplating eating it.  The nearby bloated body of a dead rat, bloody saliva dribbling from its mouth, warned him it would be a poisonous and deadly mistake.  Singh, his lifelong companion, had consumed a dead fish from the Great Sea.  Mahatma had watched helplessly and in horror as he died an excruciatingly painful death.

            Twelve hours spent in direct sunlight had reopened many of the sores and blisters on his bare head.  Bloody pus oozed down his face and into his eyes.  He rubbed them with the back of his arm.  Getting little relief, he finally gave up, and like his life he simply endured the murky discomfort.  Knots on his neck and arms had grown.  If he lived to be twenty, there would be nothing left of him by one great tumor.  Despite himself, the thought made him laugh.

            Many times during Mahatma’s tortured journey he thought he would join the fish, rat, and bird.  It didn’t matter.  He persevered, eventually reaching the Great Dump’s western flank.  The giant feature stretched for hundreds of miles in every direction.  Once a veritable storehouse of nourishment, the Great Dump had declined - picked over many times in the last fifty years by countless hungry foragers.  Still, Mahatma somehow knew that undiscovered pearls remained.

            Not knowing why, he chose a spot on the scattered garbage heap and began digging with his walking stick.  Two feet below its desiccated surface he found a treasure - a dozen unopened six ounce cans.  Removing the tiny can opener suspended from a chain around his neck, he opened one.

            Mahatma had no idea what the can contained so he dabbed his finger into the pasty concoction and touched it to his tongue.  The taste was like nothing he had ever experienced and he could think of but a single word - wonderful.  He allowed himself to eat only a small portion of the can’s contents, covering the rest with a plastic baggy and storing it in his gunny sack.

            An hour or so of sunlight remained before darkness and Mahatma knew he should stay no longer at the dig.  Thanking his lucky stars for his good fortune, he headed toward a sheltering ledge in the distance.  Halfway there, he realized his good luck had ebbed away.  Three withered men traveling together had spotted him and were already closing in for the kill.

            Strengthened by the food from the can, he hurried away in the opposite direction with a worried but steady gait.  The men followed after him but two were weak and quickly fell behind.  The largest man of the group was not so weak and began shortening the distance between them.  Mahatma could probably fight off one of the assailants, but knew he had no chance against all three men at once.  When he glanced around, he saw the big pursuer was rapidly closing the distance between them.  Finally, he raised his walking stick over his head and turned to face the man chasing after him.

            Mahatma had never met another ozomute as large as himself - possibly the reason for his longevity.  The man he now faced was larger, a head taller and ten pounds heavier.  He was also grossly deformed.  Mahatma had never seen anyone so large or so ugly and the steely taste of fear filled his mouth and swept over his lips and tongue.

            “What is it you want?” Mahatma demanded.

            The man didn’t answer but his piggish eyes narrowed even further.  Pulling a long knife from his belt, he stepped toward Mahatma.  What was worse, the other two men, not quite as ugly as the one staring at him, were catching up to them.  With no time to waste, Mahatma attacked the big man, landing a glancing blow to his head.  Before jumping back from the non-lethal blow, the man slashed Mahatma with his knife.

            Wounded, Mahatma swung away with his cane, laying himself open for another vicious slash to the arm.  Sensing his dilemma, he backed away, tripping in a pothole as he did.  The ugly ozomute, smelling blood, raised his blade and lunged at him.  With little time to react, Mahatma shoved his cane between the man’s spindly legs and gave it a violent twist.  Screaming as his leg snapped like a dry stick, the ugly ozomute fell backward in a moaning heap, the other leg also breaking beneath his falling weight.

            “Help me,” the man pleaded.

            Mahatma stared at the helpless man, guilt cleaving his soul.  At that moment, guilt played no role in his decision to turn and run.  The other two men closing on their position had already decided that for him.  Listening for footsteps and expecting a knife in the back, he experienced neither.  Glancing around, he saw why.

            The man’s two companions had sliced his throat with his own knife and were now squatting on the ground beside him, happily devouring him.  Feeling repulsed, Mahatma started again for the distant sheltering ledge.

            Deadened darkness engulfed the Great Dump as Mahatma finally reached the overhang.  Falling exhausted to the ground, he lay there without moving, listening for sounds of danger.  He heard none and soon sank into a listless stupor, too bone-weary to sleep.  Gazing at distant celestial bodies barely visible through swirling dust, he lay there, until sounds disturbed his thoughts.  He gazed around, looking nervously for the two men.

            Again the sound - a whimpering cry of pain.

            Mahatma raised himself to his feet and began searching the expanse of bare rock beneath the overhang.  Dim vestiges of light caught his eyes.  Blinking away the gloom, he looked again.  Something or someone had enlarged a hole beneath the overhang and he saw the flickering of light coming from it.  Bending forward for a closer look, he gazed into the hole.

            None of his experience prepared Mahatma for what he saw.  Sitting with her back to the earthen wall beside a small fire was a frail female, one of less than a dozen, including his own mother that he had ever seen.  Even more amazing, she clutched a tiny infant to her shriveled breast.  He stepped through the stooped portal and stared.

            Recoiling in fear when she finally saw him, the woman placed the infant behind her and grabbed a knife hidden beneath her garments.  Mahatma held up a placating palm and shook his head.

            “I won’t harm you or your child,” he said softly.

            His words didn’t matter.  Abject horror had washed across the woman’s face and she began to shake so violently that she could hardly hold the knife.  When she finally spoke, her words quivered with emotion.

            “Then why are you here?”

            “The light made me curious.”

            “If that is all, then leave us now.”

            Mahatma nodded.  Stooping, he started back out of the portal but the woman shrieked and grabbed her chest before he could make his exit.  He watched as she slumped over in the dirt, apparently too weak to support herself.  When Mahatma tried to assist her, she slashed at him with her knife.  Grabbing her wrist, he took it away from her.

            “Do what you want with me but spare my child,” she pleaded.

            Mahatma raised her, cradling her head against his chest.  “When did you eat last?”

            The woman didn’t answer but continued to convulse in his arms.  As she did, he studied the emaciated female.  Like him, she was bald - almost.  A single golden lock occupied the top of her head.  Her eyes were pale blue, a color he had never seen before in another ozomute.  Her right foot lay cocked at an absurd angle.  Broken, he knew without asking.

            Propping her against the wall, he removed the gunny sack from his shoulder.  He placed a glob of food on his finger from the open can and gently poked it into her mouth, holding it there until the food dissolved, and then for a moment longer because the touch of her lips sent inexplicable waves of pure pleasure through his finger and entire body.  He continued until she had consumed the can’s entire contents.

            “My baby,” she said.

            The infant lay asleep beside her.  Mahatma touched it, then picked it up and handed it to its mother.  Soon, the last flickering ember of the small fire died away and he went to sleep against the cave wall.