Page 58 of The Quarterback
Nick stood and shook his hand, then introduced Colton. “Colton Hall, my— My right hand.”
The pilot, a Hispanic, middle-aged man with a seventies mustache, long sideburns, and mirror-shine aviators, grinned. He was one of those guys who was born cool, and he knew it. “Pleased to meet you, Right-Hand Man.”
Colton snapped a photo of Nick climbing into Kimbrough’s sleek executive chopper, and then he took a selfie of them together with their sunglasses and headsets on. He recorded the takeoff and the smooth glide out of Lubbock before the turn toward the desolate, dust-strewn plains of Central Texas.
Kimbrough was waiting for them at the rig’s landing pad, all smiles and sideways hugs. He was still gentle with Colton, but he shouted about how pleased he was to see Colton without his sling on. He gave them a tour of the rig and the site, patient when Colton started asking questions: Why was there oil out here? Why so much?
“We’re standing on top of buried beaches, Colton,” Kimbrough said. “Hundreds of millions of years ago, most of Texas was underwater. Eventually, all that water moved on to other places, and then the land changed and grew, and now those ancient beaches are buried beneath our feet. Some are only a few thousand feet deep.” He smiled. “So close it feels like you can dig your arm into the ground up to the elbow and run your fingers through all that old sand. Other beaches, and other parts of the ancient seafloor, are much farther down. Tens of thousands of feet. Ancient beaches and ocean beds are the best places to start looking for the signs.”
“What signs?”
“Dead things. Decayed things that passed on all those years ago. Back then, all those things would have been buried at the bottom of the sea, and over time, the weight of the world moving on top of them created a damn hot pressure cooker. All those hydrogens and carbons reassembled into oil and gas, trapped by the earth, until one day a man like me comes and taps into the ground, trying to find all those secret mysteries. Bring up fossils from the Jurassic, trapped sea water from the Lower Cretaceous. And oil.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a sealed test tube filled with a dark, honey-slick substance, smooth and viscous. He handed it to Colton. “That’s what I’ve brought up from my wells here. You’re holding millions of years of time in your hands.” He grinned.
Colton turned the vial over and over, watching the oil slide and coalesce inside the glass. “This is amazing.” He tried to hand it back, but Kimbrough said no, that it was a gift from him to them both.
“Now, let’s get this network turned on, so it’s not awkward as hell for you two to be standing there with my oil in your hands and nothing for me.” Kimbrough winked.
Time to see whether eighteen months of Nick’s dedicated effort—and two months of Colton’s assistance—was going to work. Nick sent the start code to the towers, and then all three of them hovered over Kimbrough Oil Mobile phones like the ones Nick had shipped out to the rigs.
He stood so close to Nick he was inside Nick’s shadow. Kimbrough’s eyes darted to him, and he almost took a half step back, but—no. He stayed close enough to feel the rustle of Nick’s shirt against Colton’s chest. Close enough to feel Nick’s nerves, see his pulse hammering in the curve of his neck.
“It will work,” he’d said to Nick on the chopper as they were coming in and watching Kimbrough wave to them, one big hand holding down his cowboy hat. “It will work perfectly.”
He held his breath and stared at the phone in Nick’s hand—never mind that he was holding one as well—watching the little cell tower icon dance and flip and spin, searching, searching, searching for signal.
And then it connected.Kimbrough Oil Mobileflashed across the top bar, the name of the world’s newest cellular network.
Kimbrough whooped, slapped Nick on the back, and immediately called his wife. “Hon? Goddamn, guess what I’m calling you on? My own cellular network!”
Nick had his laptop open and was tracing the flow of calls and data across the new network and all the cell towers they’d installed. Colton hovered over his shoulder, watching lines of code fly by: calls initializing and terminating, web browsers opening. Data packets flying in and out of the network. On the rig, guys were grinning down at their new phones, and he heard one guy call out to another, “Dude, you can even get porn in high def!”
He wanted to kiss Nick, but he settled for laying his hand on the small of Nick’s back. “You did it,” he whispered. “It’s perfect.”
Nick beamed.
Kimbrough was ecstatic, and the second call he made was to 9-1-1 to test the connection. “No emergency, darlin’,” he said to the operator. “I’m just damn pleased the connection went through nice and strong.” He made call after call after call, from his wife to the rest of the company officers to each member of his board of directors.
After, they piled back into the chopper with Jose, where a chilled bottle of champagne in an ice bucket and three flutes waited for them. They toasted as the chopper took off, sipping Dom Perignon while they crossed the Permian Basin.
He sneaked a squeeze of Nick’s hand while Kimbrough was looking out the window, pointing out anticlines in the basin that meant something to petroleum geologists and oil explorers but looked like hills and prairie to Colton. Nick threaded their fingers together and squeezed back, and they held on maybe a second too long, because Kimbrough’s eyes knifed to where their thighs were pressed together and hiding their grasp before he launched into another story about digging wells and searching for oil gushers out in the barren wilds of Texas.
They spent the afternoon flying to each of the rigs to test the signal strength and shake hands. The workers were already streaming music and downloading videos, and when Kimbrough asked Nick what website was visited the most so far, Nick had to clear his throat before he said, “Ah, Pornhub, it looks like.”
Kimbrough roared. “Well, you certainly are going to improve morale around here, Nick. Goddamn, this is fine work. Goddamn.”
Nick was all beaming smiles when they dropped Kimbrough off at the first rig, and then they flew on back to Lubbock, relaxed and loose in the back of Kimbrough’s chopper. Colton waited until Jose seemed otherwise occupied, then cupped Nick’s cheek and drew him close for a quick kiss. Nick grabbed his waist and kissed him back, hard and fast.
At the airport, they had a few hours to kill before their flight back to Austin, and he bought Nick another glass of champagne at The Only Bar in Lubbock Airport. They laughed at the name as they played footsie beneath the cover of the high top, making eyes at each other over their champagne glasses.
Sunshine, an early morning, and two glasses of bubbly before the rumble and hum of a flight were enough to lull Colton to sleep. He’d always had an easy time sleeping on team buses and long road trips, drifting off to the roar of the engine and the hum of the road. Planes were even easier, and before they’d reached cruising altitude, his eyes were slipping closed.
He popped awake to the feeling of eyes on him. He inhaled, shifted in his seat, looked to his left—
Nick was there, staring at him, a soft smile on his face. “Hey,” he said. “We’re going to land in about twenty minutes.”
Colton stretched, one arm over his head, the other out in front of him. It still twanged to raise his right arm too high. “Did you get any sleep?”
Nick shook his head. “I was watching you.”
