The Hollow Men - Episode 8
The story of Fifi Murphy comes to a sad end, things change and Drew comes up with an initial plan for "getting out while the getting is good."
Last week in Episode 7 of The Hollow Men Fifi Murphy is still missing, Drew resigns from SouthWestern Tank to work full time at VP Tanks, and Rick and Drew come up with a metaphor to explain their business.
If you’re the type that likes to read things from the very beginning feel free to start with The Cold Days of Summer, the first collection of not quite true tales of Texas. Each episode of The Cold Days of Summer and The Hollow Men contains a link to the previous and next episode so you can easily move through all of the episodes.
Things change
During the first months of VP Tanks a lot of other things were going on. In fact, the month of December, 1978 was chock full of craziness and changes.
I was nearly 21 years old, Elizabeth was 17 and was now a young woman. Not that I noticed, she was my sister. She was a junior at Permian and was far more involved than I had been. She had already been selected to be a cheerleader and was busy going to the Permian basketball games. She was also a member of the National Honor Society. I don't know if she had ever made anything lower than a B in school and she didn't make many of those. The number of clubs and organizations she belonged to was beyond my comprehension. Let's just say she was involved. Let's just say she was popular. Let's just say she was busy. Let's just say she was everything I hadn't been. She was even the treasurer of the student council. Teachers had a hard time believing that she was my little sister as we were so different.
It was strange to hear about her days at Permian, strange for my parents who had become quite used to my grunts when they asked about my days at Permian. With Elizabeth such a question would take a good fifteen minutes for her to fully answer and she provided much more detail than I needed or cared to know.
It was also strange to hear Rick say one day “She's going to break some hearts.”
“Huh?”
“Elizabeth. She's grown into a rather pretty girl.”
“That's my sister you're talking about.”
“I know, and I've got no plans, don't worry about that, but, still, she's a looker.”
I didn't know how I felt about that but there was nothing I could do about it so I just let it go. However, I did plan to keep an eye on things, after all, she was my little sister.
J.T. and Sue dropped the next big change on all of us. It was another wild night in Odessa. For Rick, Art and myself it started off at Art's. The bottle of El Guitarra tequila now had a place of honor on Art's bookshelf. It was there to remind us sometimes, if you drink too much, one's senses could easily be fooled. I was tempted to put right beside the bottle one of those evil ham sandwiches from Woody's.
This was the first weekend of the Christmas break for most colleges across Texas so we expected a few folks from out of town to drop by before too long. Things did work as we expected because about 8:45 someone knocked at the door. I was closest to the door so I jumped up to see who it was.
Jack, Jason, Mark and Kate all walked in, fresh from the road. It had been a three car caravan. Jack and Kate leading the way, followed by Mark with Jason bringing up the rear. Kate, Mark and Jason were back for the entire Christmas break while Jack was back home just for the weekend. He was expected to be back at work Monday afternoon in Austin and planned to work as many hours as possible through Christmas Eve then come back to Odessa for a few days. Everyone had a good semester, turns out my friends were turning into true students. Even better, they brought plenty of beer.
Around 9:30 the door busted open and Sue came running into the apartment, waving her right hand in front of her.
“We're engaged!”
J.T. had proposed to Sue that Thursday after the last final exam for the semester. He had bought her a small, but, according to Kate, a very pretty engagement ring. She said yes and they were engaged. They planned to get married in July of 1979.
The rest of the night went for us as many did in Odessa. Some of us drank too much, some of us said too much, some of us regretted some part of the drinking and the words said the next morning. I regretted the drinking because at 7:00 am Saturday morning both Rick and I were at work. Rick followed up on several deals in the works, I updated some drawings for our customers. At 11:00 am we both decided the day was done and closed up shop a little early. It was a crisp December day, bright sun, with the high in the high 40's. Luckily, there wasn't much wind so we drove out to Golden Acres for an afternoon of golf. Since it was a little cold we stopped off at Pinkie's and bought a couple of flasks of Jack Daniels to hopefully keep us warm during our round.
A few days later Andrea came back into town. She called me at the office, we talked for a few minutes and agreed to go out the next Friday night.
It was a strange evening. While we had gotten along incredibly throughout the summer and I had written her very week during the fall, something was different. It seemed that ever since Rick and I decided to form VP Tanks she started distancing herself from me. I had received a letter from her in October, she went skiing in Colorado for Thanksgiving so I didn't see her then, then I received one letter from her in December before the semester was over that seemed, well, a little formal, sort of like a letter to an old friend. The evening went the same way, just strange. I originally planned to start out the evening over at Art's, I thought it would be a good chance for everyone to catch up as Andrea hadn't seen many of my friends in a long time, but she suggested we just go out for dinner. That's what we did and during one of the most awkward, uncomfortably quiet dinners I've ever been to I began to realize that not only things were strange and different between me and her, they were probably over. We never said that but when it came time to say good night we didn't say anything else either. She walked into her house, I walked back to my truck, drove over to the nearest 7-11, saw it was 11:45 pm, walked in, bought a six pack of Coors, drove over to Boulder Park, and drank my six pack in the dark on a picnic table in the middle of the park. Next day I went into work for a couple of hours. Rick asked where I had been the night before, I told him a little, he seemed to realize I didn't want to talk any more about so he regaled me with the wildness of his night. My decision that evening was easy, I didn't spend any time wondering about what had happened, I made sure that Saturday night was a wild one and I paid for it Sunday morning with a head splitting hangover.
The rest of the Christmas break went in much the same manner. I drank too much, had a hangover way too many mornings. The days and nights were achingly cold and I didn't see Andrea at all. In January she went back to West Texas State University and about midway through the month I wrote her a letter. I didn't talk about what had or hadn’t happened. I just talked about work and golf. I didn't get a response from Andrea until February.
Andrea's letter started off much like mine. She didn't talk about what or didn’t happened on our last date. She was taking 15 hours for the Spring semester. If she kept things up at this pace she could graduate the following fall, a semester ahead of the traditional four year schedule. She talked about how cold it was in Canyon, but how she loved the snow, and then, the bomb dropped. In the last paragraph of her letter she mentioned Michael.
Through her letters over the rest of the semester the pieces started falling together. She had starting dating Michael in the fall, around mid October. He had shown the first interest, they were in a couple of classes together and had started studying together over coffee. Things had progressed and he asked her out. Michael was a serious boy, he had plans for what was going to happen after graduation and he included her in his plans. Soon his plans became their plans.
In April she wrote again. Michael had proposed. She had accepted. It was over.
How do you deal with such an event? I don't know what you would do, but I got good and drunk.
A plan for getting out while the getting is good
Uncle Bill's words and my worrying had me thinking about an exit plan of some sort, but when Matt said something similar I knew I needed to think more. We needed a way to get out when things got crazy, a way to get out with as much as we could.
The first challenge was identifying what to measure or track. I wanted something that would give me a hint that things were heading south for the oil industry and the Permian Basin in particular. I came up with a couple of ideas or things to look for. One was to track the weekly rig count and another was to track the price of oil.
The rig count made sense. For the last several years it had been going up week by week. My thought was if the rig count went down and stayed down for an entire quarter, that was a sign something was going on. Then I looked at the price of a barrel of oil, just like the rig count it had been on a steady increase over the last few years. I went with the same idea as the rig count, if the price of oil dropped for a quarter, maybe it was time to get out.
Next step was to look at historical data on rig counts and the price of oil and see if there was any correlation between the two and the boom and bust cycles of the Permian Basin. Turns out there was a fairly decent correlation. I was onto something. But what I really needed was an expert, someone that knew the ins and outs of the finance end of the oil industry. and I knew one, my Uncle Bill. He had been in the banking business for a long time, had seen more than one boom/bust cycle and if anyone knew of or had an idea about when stuff was going to get crazy, it was him.
One Saturday afternoon I drove over to Uncle Bill's house. Aunt Sherry was in the kitchen preparing dinner and Uncle Bill was in the garage working on his lawn mower. I went out to the garage and in between him trying to fix the mower and me trying to hand him the right tools even when he insisted he wanted the wrong one we talked. I told him my ideas about tracking the rig count and the price of oil as way to recognize the start of a downturn in the oil industry.
"Aren't you worried that you're tracking something that has already happened? Don't you think the downturn in the rig count and the price of oil would be an indicator that things have already turned bad? Instead of being able to get out before the fall it sounds like you would be getting out after the fall?"
All good questions, but I had studied the data and had thought through some of this.
"I went back and looked at the last few years worth of data on both rig counts and the price of oil. I don't think the boom will end in a single month. I think for awhile, who knows, maybe a few years, things will stay good. Then things will stabilize, for a while the rig count and the price of oil will stabilize, then the real down turn will start. I think there will be plenty of warning before it gets bad.
"Ever since I started at SouthWestern Tank, hell, probably for a year or two before, people have acted like the good times will never end. Right now people are acting like the price of oil will double in a year, no one is acting like the price will drop. You've said that yourself, Uncle Bill."
"Drew, okay, you have a point, but what does that mean for you and Rick?"
"It means we have a buffer. Before I left SouthWestern in December we were running on a twenty to thirty day buffer, we had enough work lined up and sold to keep us busy for up to a month. SouthWestern now has a 45 day buffer. That's at least two months of safety. I think the buffer is going to grow before it shrinks. If we watch the buffer and play it, then we have a safety net."
Uncle Bill stopped working on his lawn mower and looked at me.
"That's interesting, a work buffer. Tell me more about that and how that would work with the rig count and the price of oil."
Before I did, I had a question for him. "What's wrong with your lawn mower?"
"I don't know, it's just been catchy, runs rough, almost like it's coughing."
I took the wrench from his hand and put it down on his workbench. "Let me look at it. This is one of those fancy self-propelled models, isn't it?"
I had never seen Uncle Bill look sheepish before. "Yes, it is. Don't go telling your Dad that, all right? He would never let me down about having a fancy self-propelled lawn mower."
I laughed at that. To my Dad's point of view, mowing the lawn was all about the work, and it wasn't right to have the machine do more than spin the blade and there were times I wonder if my Dad thought that was being too lazy. To him mowing the lawn was all about how much you sweated. If you didn't near pass out from heat exhaustion, then, well, hell, you weren't mowing the lawn.
The lawn mower was on the floor of the garage. I disconnected the spark plug, lifted the lawn mower up, put it on his workbench, and looked it over, just running my hands over it, getting a feel for how all the pieces went together. I did that for a minute or two, twisting knobs and pulling cables until Uncle Bill couldn't handle it any more.
"Drew, I've never understood how your Dad could make things work, but you've got his style. More than once he told me you got to spend a few minutes just getting familiar with whatever you're working on. Always seemed crazy to me."
"My dad's right. That's what I'm doing, just seeing how everything works together, or in this case, how it doesn't." I tilted the lawn mower on two wheels so I could look at the blade and how the self-propelled mechanism worked. I ran my hand up above the blade and found a belt running from the axle of the blade to another gear. Though I couldn't see anything I could feel how the belt wasn't sitting cleanly on the gear.
"Does the self-propelled part work sometimes and sometimes not? Does the lawn mower ever jump on you?"
Uncle Bill nodded yes to both questions. I reseated the belt on the gear and set the lawn mower back on all four wheels. I checked the air filter, it was filthy so I shook who knows how much dust and grass off of it. I looked everything else over, tightened a few bolts, and then satisfied with things I picked the lawn mower back up and put it on the floor of the garage, reconnected the spark plug and checked the gas and oil.
"Mind if I start her up?"
"No, go ahead."
I reached down, grabbed the crank with one hand and with the other on the handle, gave a hard pull. She coughed once and died. I tried again, and this time she started right up. She still sounded a little rough, but was running smooth. I then slowly depressed the lever to engage the self-propelled part of the mower and it moved smoothly forward. I let go of the gas feed and the mower died quietly.
"I think you're okay, at least for now. Hmm, what were we talking about..."
"Work buffers."
"Yeah, that's right. Seems as long as there's a good work buffer, we're safe, we've got time. It's when the work buffer starts shrinking, that's when to start worrying, it might be a hint of supply exceeding demand, it might be a sign of a surplus."
I thought about that for a minute. "I think I have a third measure - work buffer. Yeah, that one will be useful."
"Drew, I think you're right. Between the three of those I think you'll have a fairly good handle on where things are and, hopefully, where they are going. Tell you what, you start tracking all three, then you, me and Rick, let's get together once a month or so to look at the numbers and see if we can figure out what they're telling us."
I liked the idea. We would use numbers to help us develop our intuition.
Uncle Bill walked over and placed his hand on my shoulder. "You are your father's son. Don't think I ever could understand how he could fix things, but looks like you've got his knack. Thanks for fixing my lawn mower. Why don't you stay for dinner? Sherry always fixes too much for the two of us and I think she's fixing meatloaf."
That caught my attention, Aunt Sherry's meatloaf was the stuff of legends. I never turned down an opportunity like that.
She vanished, part 3
While our life’s were moving along in directions expected and not expected, the Fifi Murphy disappearance came to an end.
One night, late in January 1979 I woke up in the field and I was not alone. The location seemed familiar so that was good but there was someone waiting for me, someone I didn’t know, but I knew of.
A young man with long blonde hair parted down the middle and who looked more than a little strung out asked “Where the hell is this?”
I looked at him and recognized the Steve that talked to Mike Garret at Quarter Beer night last July.
“As far as I know this isn’t hell, though I’m not sure what it is.” was my answer.
Steve didn’t seem pleased by my answer. “Well, shit, that’s no help. I might have had a little too much last night, if you know what I mean, and would like to know where the hell I am!”
“Can’t answer your question, but I can take you to someone who might be able to.” I pointed off to my right where there was a glow in the sky. “There’s a town in that direction and a friend of mine is usually waiting for me on the way.”
“Hell, let’s get going. I don’t like this place. Something’s weird about it and the sooner I can find a way our of here the better.”
We walked towards the glow. As we walked Steve filled the air with his words, most of them which I let drift right past me. I remembered Mike didn’t care for Steve and if Mike didn’t like someone that meant something.
I learned his name was Steve Fife and that his life had been a nightmare since his girl friend Fifi disappeared last summer. I learned that people were turning on him, that he didn’t trust anyone and that he talked too damn much.
We kept walking, he kept talking.
“Shit, you don’t talk much, do you?” he said after too many words about how his life seemed to be falling apart. Then there was a blessed pause in which no words were spoken.
“Are you going to say anything?”
“Been waiting for you to shut up long enough to get a word in.”
Steve didn’t care for that and said “Shit, dude, I’m just trying to keep the conversation going. Not getting any help from you.”
“Steve, we haven’t been having a conversation. You’ve been talking and I’ve been trying to not listen.”
“Look, man, I didn’t ask to be here.”
“Neither did I.”
Up ahead I saw a familiar oak and three shapes under it, two that were familiar and one that was nothing but a standing shadow.
I looked at Steve and said “If there’s any answers for you, we’re about to find out.”
I walked towards the oak but when I reached about fifty feet from the tree I was stopped, almost like I had walked into a wall.
The standing shadow held her palm out towards us, as if motioning us to stop. Since I had walked into a wall I could not see, I had stopped. I glanced back at Steve and saw that he also had come to a stop. He no longer looked angry or confused, he looked scared.
I looked back over to the oak tree. The standing shadow still had her palm out. Sitting next to her was Socks and standing next to Sock was my dead friend Tommy. He had his arms crossed and looked disgusted and a bit angry, two are emotions for him.
The standing shadow turned her palm and pointed at us. I felt a wave of anger and fear flow from her towards me but it swept right past me.
Steve said “That shadow doesn’t like you.”
I knew he was wrong, the anger and fear wasn’t for me, it was for Steve.
“Steve, you got that wrong. I have never felt anger or fear in this place. She’s pointing at you.”
“She? What do you mean by she? It’s a damn shadow, there’s nothing there but a shadow.”
It was Tommy who spoke this time. “Steve, she’s more than a shadow. She’s Fifi.”
“Shit, no, it can’t be. She’s…, she’s. No, it can’t be her.”
Steve looked like he was seeing a ghost. That’s when it hit me. Maybe he was seeing a ghost.
Tommy spoke with vile in his voice “Steve, you didn’t finish your sentence. Let me finish it for you. Fifi’s dead. That’s why she’s here. What I want to know now is what you are doing here. I know this, you don’t belong here, you never will.”
With fear in his eyes, Steve looked at the shadow, at Tommy, at me.
“No, no, it can’t be. No!” And, then Steve faded away from sight.
The fear and anger in the air went away with Steve. The standing shadow shuddered and faded away but what was left behind in her passing was a sense of peace.
Looking at Tommy I said “Shit, what was that about?”
Tommy shook his head and said in a quiet voice “I have my ideas but I also have my doubts. I do think things are coming to a head.”
The field went black. I woke up. It was 3:00 am. Kaiser was sound asleep at the foot of my bed. I turned my radio on, tuned it to KOCV and waited for sleep to find me again.
On February 8, 1979, Fifi Murphy’s body was found in a shallow grave in Crane County. Steve Fife, Fifi’s boyfriend at the time of her disappearance, led Odessa police to the grave site.
The photo of Steve Fife in the paper was a photo of the person who was waiting for me in the field.
On February 13, 1979 Steve Fife was indicted for the murder of Fifi Murphy and his bond was set at $100,000.
Next week in Episode 9 the concept of mordida.