The Oil Rig Worker

                                                        The Oil Rig Worker

David was a fighter.  His life wasn’t very easy: he seemed to have to fight for everything he got.  But the outcome was usually positive.  That meant that David ended up with a pretty good life, just not pretty easy.

David’s father was a Methodist missionary.  So David got to spend some of his early years in magic places.  Jungles in Africa.  Deserts in New Mexico.  Snow covered lakes in Yukon.

But David’s father didn’t have David’s affinity with Lady Luck.  In Liberia, when David was five, his father got leprosy.  And yes, the zeitgeist was too strong.  The family left Liberia, and managed to get back to Canada.  David’s father was an intelligent man, and knew the things that were happening to his appearance were changing the way people related to him.  So he got a modest pension from his church, applied for and received a homesteading grant.  They moved to the Kootenays, got a chainsaw and built a log cabin.  David’s mother was really what saved the family.  She wasn’t very good with an axe, but she could sing, wash the whole family’s laundry in a single washbasin, and cook a Sunday dinner on weekday nights.  She still saw her husband as the young man she married so many years ago.

David’s brother and two sisters, both younger, did much better at school than he did.  His brother became a preacher.  One of his sisters became a dentist.  And the other sister, a romantic, married a logger and moved to the coast.

David struggled in high school.  Socially, he was fairly normal, although too shy with girls.  Even in social events, he stuck with his male friends.

By the time the results from his grade 12 finals were sent to his home, he had secured his first job with the oil rigs in Fort MacMurray.  While David’s high school wasn’t his strong suit, working on the oil rig proved to be a better fit.  His direct foreman said he would be interested in hiring him on full time.  David thought that sounded like a more interesting time than summer school for his failed chemistry class.  He expected that his mother would be more upset than his father, but was surprised at the letter he got. 

His father was an intelligent, caring man.  He knew that PK’s (pastor’s kids) often seemed to have trouble during their teen years and early life.  He attributed that to the preachy way that many clergy talked to their children.  So early in life, he decided he wouldn’t do that to his children.    What many people don’t understand about ministers, social workers, medical workers, and any of the myriad of people who help people suffer from a Freudian ego problem of worthiness.  David’s father considered his leprosy as a punishment for what he did to David. 

The letter began: All things that happen in our lives happen for a reason.  Sometimes we don’t understand them, sometimes until many years later.  When you wrote to us that you were not coming home to summer school, we wondered if you were making a life decision, or just a short term one.  Whenever I get upset, I try and pray about it.  Sometimes that means being alone.  I hope you can find peace when you are alone.

Even though it was written by his mother, he knew that was his father.  He could feel hurt in the words.

The first time David had his one week off from the two-weeks-on one-week-off routine, he didn’t go home.  He went to the big city and got a room in one of the large hotels.  He noticed a chambermaid across the hall, pushing a laundry cart.  But it wasn’t just a chambermaid.  It was a girl, like he had never seen before.  He felt warm all over, and kind of tingling.  The kind of feeling he would never share with his drinking buddies.

After he went back to his truck, got his pack and took it up to his room, he had a quick shower and changed into clean clothes.  He hadn’t eaten since lunch, so decided he should go somewhere to eat.  Because of the girl he had seen in the lobby, he thought it would be better to stay in the hotel to eat.  He went into the dining room, and was impressed that the tuxedo clad maître d’ took him to a table facing a window.  The window was overlooking a beautiful park that a rich man, who was the Governor of Canada at the time, gave the to the city.  He was such a kind man that the trophy he gave to the hockey association was named after him.  The Stanley Cup.

Cheryl was a strange girl, her father and brother joshed her.  That she was because she was bubbly, but not ditzy.  In fact, she did considerably better in school than her three brothers. 

In the summer that she was accepted at the University, her life started changing in good directions.  The local university was a rather large one, renowned for the dental school she had her heart set on.  In the same stream of good luck, she landed a job at the fanciest hotel in the city.  Her father teased her that it was only a chambermaid position, but her mother told her she was proud of her.  And the first day at the job, she was asked if she would be interested in working as a waitress in the dining room at night.  Because the chambermaid job didn’t pay that much, and because she liked the idea of working with people, she gladly accepted the second position.  Chambermaiding was from 7:00 till 3:30, and the waitress job didn’t start till 5:15.  That gave her time to go home, shower, change and be back on time.

When the French Onion soup was brought to him in a large flat bowl sitting on a plate with a black cloth on it, he was so taken by it that he stared at the croutons floating in it.  He knew to eat it with the most left spoon on his right side.  His sister taught him about that sort of thing.  Because he was so impressed, he ended staring at the croutons in it for too long.  Cheryl became concerned about the young man staring at the soup.  “Are you alright?”

He sheepishly looked up at her.  When there eyes met, something strange happened.  They both heard the same music.  It was music from a Walt Disney movie they both saw as youngsters, Someday My Prince Will Come.  Cheryl loved music, and sung in the church choir.  David’s idea of music was church - not his strong point - and the radio when he was driving in his truck.  But this music was different.  This music made him want to dance with this waitress, who he was sure he had seen earlier at the chambermaid station when he registered.


Every couple has a magic story to tell about how they met.  David and Cheryl’s song kept them going for the lonely times when David was working out of town, the happy times when Cheryl was in the hospital having their babies, and the peaceful times when they slept in the night.

Trevor was their first son.  He was a redhead - when his baby hair changed colour - in memory of Cheryl’s great grandmother.  Cheryl’s great grandmother’s name was Isadora.  He was quite bright, walking before he ever learned to crawl, and way too serious when he ate. 

Scarlett was a sweetheart, even as a baby.  Lots of people - mostly too old for their own good - say babies are ugly.  They are the same people who think flowers smell bad.  But Scarlett had a beauty that transcended good looks.  When people saw her as a baby and later as a young child, they smiled.

Isadora was the baby.  She ended up being a natural blond, and turned into a caring nurturing little sister.

But life takes on some negative turns now and then.  David started feeling like life was passing him by.  Anyone could see that he was terrible mistaken.  He had a wonderful wife, good children who loved him, and a beautiful home on an acreage.  They had a small chicken coup in their back yard.  They had two horses, three goats, and one Guernsey cow for milk.  Their garden was huge, and their vegetable pantry was full.

What was passing by David?  His work might be much too habit now, but the money still kept paying the bills and even allowing trips.  Twice he had taken his whole family to Maui for vacation.

But the worm that eats away happiness in a person’s mind is notorious for making all the good things look bad.  And David went down very fast.  It was on a flight back home from work.  The airport was in a small town nestled in the coastal mountains.  His truck was waiting patiently in the lot for him as he walked across the pavement.  When he unlocked the driver door, threw his duffel bag across to the passenger side, he fell a pain in the back of his head.  He lost his balance a bit, but managed to get in and hold on to the steering wheel.

Doctors will tell you that “stress” can kill you.  It is a scare tactic that some times works, and sometimes doesn’t.  But what David felt couldn’t exactly be put in the stress catch phrase.  What David felt was that he was dying.  David wasn’t the sort of person who would tell his thoughts to anyone, not even Cheryl.  Cheryl had never even seen a dark side to David’s life, so it is to bad he didn’t go home and talk to her that afternoon.

Actually, he was planing to go directly home.  He knew his home was a safe haven away from a world that didn’t feel like right.

As he drove from the airport through the town, he noticed traffic in the other direction building up.  His side of the rode was empty, which gave him at least a little relief.  By the time he was on the bridge which crossed over the river, then the highway, then cloverleafed onto the highway, a semi coming at him from the other side veered into him and forced him into the guard rail.  The truck was evidently trying to pass a little car.

Because his truck was a 4X4 with large tires, it was rather top heavy.  Since the guard rail was relatively low to the ground, the truck lifted, wobbled, and ending flipping over the rail.  It was a 25 foot drop into the water, roof up, and David didn’t realize what had happened till he was going under water.

Since he had a seatbelt on, he didn’t land on the roof when the truck flipped.  The impact of the vehicle into the water knocked the wind out of David.  And because of the depth of the river, and the current, the truck righted itself as it sunk to the bottom.  Incredibly, it remained airtight.  By the time he got his wind back, he realized he was in a lot of trouble.

He could not imagine any way he could be rescued from the inevitable doom.  Oddly, he was not panicking.  With the miserable way he felt coming home from the Rig, this only seemed apropos.

Since it was only a single seat truck, the cab compartment was not that large.  It started feeling cold around the same time the air started smelling stale.  David was queazy from not eating, and giddy from not getting enough oxygen.  That was when he decided to look up.  He had a sun roof, and it was a clear glass.  He could see the surface, and even in his less than lucid state, noticed that it was calm.  He wondered how that could be since the river was rather turbulent from the bridge.  What he had not realized was that the truck had been carried down stream to a rather large, deep pool on the other side of the highway.
From looking up at the calm surface, he could make out the rather full moon.  He was quite certain that it was daylight when he went over the guard rail.  What he didn’t realize is how long he had been underwater.  Then he heard something.  At first he thought it was a distant wailing, but as it got louder, he identified it as his mother’s singing.  She was singing a gentle religious song, Jesus Love Me.  As the song was identifiable, her image was too.  She was smiling at him.  He felt very calm.  Some things that happen cannot be explained by science, or logic, or The Church.  When David woke up again, he knew one of those things had happened.  He looked around and realized he was in a hospital bed.
His mother asked how he was feeling.  When she saw that same, smiling face, he knew everything was alright.

Cheryl and the kids came by later that same morning.  His wife and three children, yes, even Trevor, hugged him.  He was back, stronger, happier and clearer than he had ever been in his life.

Addendum: What amazed Bert, the Search & Rescue diver who pulled the man out of the truck was that his skin was still pink.  What they knew of the accident report is that the truck went over the rail and into the river at about 5:15.  It was 9:30 as he pulled the man from the truck, put his regulator into his mouth and said a prayer.  The man started breathing, looked at Bert, and smiled.  Without understanding anything about diving protocol, he took the regulator from his own mouth and gave it back to Bert.  Bert didn’t even have time to take a breath, they were at the surface.

Even the doctor in the ER at the hospital was flabbergasted when he saw David.  He had never heard of anyone surviving in the cold water without air for that long.