“No. She doesn’t even think like that. Don’t try this at home.”
“I was going to ask you about some of that sort of thing.”
“You were going to ask me something else. Something only you can decide. Do you want to give up your job, and disconnect yourself from your home, and come with me into the stratosphere? I’m not discussing that with you until you catch a fish over 100 pounds.”
“Off the California coast?”
“No. We’re going for halibut in the Bering Sea.”
Annabel said, “That was not what you said.”
“I can take you back to Texas if you like.”
“I want to see the Bering Sea.”
“Of course you do. Kevin, Juan?”
“Bering sea.”
“Bering sea.”
“Now I have another idea.”
“Tell us.”
“Where I really want to go.”
“Where is that?”
“Colorado. An open pit mine. Copper.”
“I don’t know anything about copper mining. I know copper is reddish.”
“A mine in Colorado went bankrupt because of bad management. I want Juan to take over your house business, and I have someone else for the quarry. I want you and Annabel to move to Colorado and manage an open pit mine. I have it on option for two million.”
“I think you should keep your two million.”
“That’s the option. I already spent that. The buy price is 60.”
“That’s insane. I don’t know anything about copper mining.”
“That was the problem before. I know finance, and I know this mine can make money, but I need a manager I can trust. Not a copper manager, just someone who will do his best.”
“I would need a few years to learn the business, and five to ten guys I knew from past jobs. Operators, mechanics, accountants.”
Tom asked, “What sort of support crew did Syd have when she jumped off the South Tower?”
“Syd is psychotic. She’s very nice, and I’m glad she made it, but.”
“Look at it like this. I roll these dice here, and if they come up snake eyes, I lose two million. But if they come up boxcars, I make a billion. The price of copper is going to go up. I have operators, mechanics and accountants. I need a manager. Most managers are incompetent, or do not even try. Most of them are crooks. The few who have proved out want massive salaries, and many of them are not really that good. Do you guys want to manage one of the biggest open pit mines in the world, or do you want to cut bait?
“We want to start by cutting bait, do some fishing, and then talk about mining.”
They went to meet the Clarissa Marlene, originally built as a 295 foot 22 thousand horsepower midwater trawler. They had a chance to fish halibut, but they were on a research vessel that got to do some sport and some commercial fishing, operating by special dispensation of the legislature. Nobody was jealous of her privileges, which she exercised at a substantial economic loss. Clari could take kids fishing without them having to buy fishing licenses, help out on search and rescue missions, and take fish and game biologists hither and yon to do whatever they were doing.
On this trip, she caught a lot of halibut, and took them to a processing plant, from which they would be shipped wherever Tom shipped them. She bought local stuff like bear jackets and scrimshaw. Then, off she went to Seattle, unloading her passengers, this time into a Gulfstream, and took on a bunch of kids who were going to fish the Washington coast. The kids were provided by the Scouts, the Shriners, and Make a Wish.
Chapter 8 Taking a look
They got in a chopper to look at the mine.
The chopper took them over a scene of devastation. Machines sat mired in mud. The roads were trashed. Rubbish lay all over the area. The chopper set down next to the office. The doors were blowing in the wind, papers were strewn all around. Rat manure was all over the floor. Post Apocalyptic said it.
“I’ve seen movies like this, Tom.”
“So have I. Putting this place in business is going to take more than a middle manager. It’s going to take will. It’s not going to need an experienced manager, it’s going to need Winston Churchill. It’s going to take the will of someone like little Syd, but with much better judgment. I have looked, and you are my best proposition. This is a high risk task. I have done the top management homework. There is a lot of copper here.”
Kevin looked at Juan. “What do you think?”
“I can run your business at home, but I wouldn’t take on this job for all the alligators in Louisiana.”
“Annabel?”
“Turn the volume all the way up, and put on Jimi Hendrix, because it’s time to rock and roll!”
Tom asked, “Can you do it for a hundred thousand a year and 10%?”
“Only if you buy the CDs.”
Tom put a gold brick on the table. “That’s your sign on bonus. What do you want right now?”
“Six little pickups. An operator crew. 5 mechanics. An M-88 to tow these disabled vehicles. A top grade accountant. Are we going to start the books new? I need a cargo container for the old paperwork. 5 new computers on a LAN. The old ones might be good for something. A drill map showing where the ore is. A geologist specializing in copper ore. 5 secretaries who are smarter than the executives they used to work for. A helicopter.”
“Think a D12 would do instead of the M-88?”
“I suppose.”
“We have a 12 but your mechanics will need to fix it.”
They moved into the big trailer by the office. Annabel picked up the gold brick. “What do we have this for?”
“For agreeing to do the job. That piece of metal is worth at least $50 thousand.”
“Get on.” She looked at the price of gold on the net, and put the brick on her postal scale. She used the calculator on the computer. “Eighty four.”
“We’re 50% partners on this, honey, so you just made $42 thousand.”
They cleaned up the office and wondered it they had been forgotten. Soon, that idea went away, as mechanics, secretaries and maids arrived. The mechanics went to work on the D12, and it was running in a few hours. A locomotive brought a small train of 11 bottom dumpers. The geologist consulted the map, and told them where to dig first, and looked over the ore before it went into the cars. The secretaries put all the old junk in the cargo container.
Kevin had the ore dug from where it should be. The dragline would not start, so he had that dealt with. Operators fanned out to bring the equipment that was not being used in near the office. All the trucks were brought in and parked by the office, with their status marked on the wall. The good ore got piled up, and the junk got put aside.
Since he was being told he had good ore, he asked for 30 cars next time. He filled those, and got an advice from the refining company that the first shipment had been fine quality. He soon learned that good ore was the bright green grainy stuff. He looked over the map with the geologist, and they drove around looking at ore. Soon, Kevin could tell ‘Hmm’ from ‘Huh’ or ‘Oh.” and ‘Yeah’ from ‘Will ya lookat dat!’.
After a month, he was calling for redrills where he thought the vein was running. In three months, he was betting the geologist that the vein would run under the ledge and follow the fault, not roll like it did on the last one. The geologist won most of the time. He told them they had to remember they were mining a ‘top mineral’ and that the ore would not go into the deep basic rock. Deep being a thousand feet.
After six months, Kevin knew a lot about copper mining. After a year, he learned the hardest part of it. The mine was played out. In 13 months, Kevin had extracted $2.2 billion in copper.
Tom came out, and explained that in a rational world, the pit would be used to dispose of rubbish, and top covered with the overburden. A creek could be diverted to it, and it would become a pretty lake. Instead, it would be an ugly hole in the ground, because you couldn’t do it nice when everyone else was doing it ugly. Laws requiring it to be done right would cost the industry a penny a ton or something. So that was that.
Kevin suggested that they could be liable for unsafe conditions, and also that even if they were not, kids could drown in the collected rain. Tom agreed, and Kevin got Lincoln seismographic in to blast the steep walls down. The big excavators and such cut creek channels into the pits to make them fill. Kevin got some local contractors to have unemployed people seed in native trees and such. He took a chance with some of the most desirable species like black walnut. Every worker had a number on his vest, and they did not know it, but high altitude aircraft caught people who threw away the seeds and such things. When the entire replant was done, the information became known. The hard ground after replaning actually was helpful to the good workers, who cut firewood, keeping 90% of what came in.
Kevin and Annabel spent the next six months clearing up, pushing the big rocks into the hole with the D12, and supervising the crew that was taking the big machines apart so they would fit on rail cars or trucks. The snowmelt would fill the pits. They went home with a truck hauling a D7. Annabel had a Class A CDL, and thought nothing of driving a big truck.
Kevin announced another barbecue, and some people came, but not like the old days. Juan sat by the pond with them. “Sally is a pretty good chief. You are a guy who once was, is all. No big deal. Your real friends will come back. You’ve sorted is all. Like that gravel sorter, all the junk goes up a conveyor.”
Eddie came over. “Is that your truck?”
“We own a bunch of stuff. I think it is. Annabel, don’t we own one of the semis?”
“You do, I think it is that one. Isn’t the 7 yours?”
“I thought mine was a six.”
“Well, Eddie, I guess that shows you how messed up we are. Tom is bringing equipment here and then it will go to the quarry or maybe to us. Annabel for sure owns the drill.”
“No. I didn’t want the seven thousand.”
“The 4200. That’s yours, but it’s at the auction.”
“You’re right.”
Eddie tried again. “So did you guys make a lot of money?”
Kevin answered. “Oh yeah. About a million each, depending what our equipment is worth. Tom promised us bonuses, and then he wanted to renegotiate, and sell us equipment instead, which is probably worth twice as much.”
“Kevin has a 900 series loader, like the big one at the quarry.”
“What is that worth, Kevin?”
“I think 150 or a little more.”
“Are you guys just playing?
Annabel said, “No, Eddie. The vein played out, and we split up the equipment and that’s it. A bunch of it belongs to Tom but he brought it here.”
A truck came in with two little pickups and a small backhoe/loader.
“Those are mine, Eddie.”
“The Toyotas and the Kubota?”
“Yeah.”
Another truck came in with a trackhoe on it.
Annabel jumped. “That’s my excavator.”
Annabel got her excavator off the truck and drove it over to the pond. Nobody seemed to want to look at it.
The barbecue didn’t last as they once had. People knew Kevin, but he was not the latest personality any more. The equipment, even Tom’s D12, didn’t attract a lot of attention.
In the morning, Kevin met with Scott, the new quarry manager. Everything looked fine. The equipment was all neatly parked. Scott wanted to do a lot of things with all these nice toys. That all had to wait a bit while Tom, Kevin and Annabel worked out agreements on what they would all charge each other for engine hours. Certainly the negotiations would not be difficult among people who gave each other pickup trucks, but it would have to be figured out. Alice raised her scepter, and ruled that the 12 would do such grading as needed to take the job to completion regardless of who owned the land. Most of the project was on Kevin’s land but not all of it. Completion was a series of lakes, actually already dug, and filling much of the quarried land back up to grade. The land had been quarried on the assumption that after the rock got taken out, the less useful fines would be replaced and more would come down from the foothills to help. This was all possible, but it was hindering Alice’s plan, which now included not only the originally planned mesquite and pecan, but also more lakes going toward the foothills in a graceful arc. The fill existed, and would be used, but Tom’s purchasing had been so aggressive that they owned now the whole first rank of foothills and therefore, also a creek that ran almost year round in a wet year, which they would divert, creating a really large lake. The normal drainage went into what Kevin called “A place reserved for a river that does not have a river in it.”
They laid out some computers on the coffee table in Kevin’s house. Tom showed them the grades, and explained that the foothills on Tom’s side were going down.
Alice did not bat an eye. Neither did Kevin or Annabel. Juan said “Don’t tell Rosa about this. She will get all upset. It will be too much for her.”
Rosa was safely off at her sister’s house because she thought Kevin and Annabel would want to be alone. Scott’s wife Julie was running the barbeque, not that it was all that hard to do. The crowd might get a little loud, but that would be it.
“How much land is that, Tom?”
“A thousand acres at an elevation of 300 feet average. 300,000 acre feet. The lake will be about a section, average depth around 100 feet, so 64,000 acre feet. We need the 46k or so for fill, so another 200,000 acre feet. 300k yards, about half a million tons. Five aircraft carriers. Not that much.”
Alice said, “This will be a flood control and water reservoir for hundreds of years. We can get all the rock here we want. Another half a million tons just makes a bigger reservoir.”
Scott asked, “We won’t be doing anything harmful?”
“We’ll be doing something people will be happy about 100 years from now, when they turn the tap and water comes out. Let’s talk about the elephant in the room. The new plant will cost 100 or so. After that, the metal goes out as Kevin 8%, Annabel 8%, Scott 4%, Juan 6%, and the rest we will keep, but for some reclamation, salary to whoever of us separates the metal, and other things we may spend it on. Nobody outside of here knows about the metal, and we need to keep it that way. When we close the quarry, we can tell and we have some nuggets and crap I am keeping for that. Juan, these go to the midnight blue pickup that says “Rabbit Quarry” on the doors. It is for company use only. Otherwise you would pay taxes for using it. This credit card is for quarry use, so be ready to explain any charge on it to the IRS. Gas for the corporate truck, or whatever. Scott, you already have a corporate truck.”
He slid a document to Scott. “This is a special fund that can only be used for your daughter’s education it’s hers at 30 if she never goes to college. Maybe she can use it to buy something with a big diesel motor in it. If there are no questions, Alice has you next.”
Alice said, “One thing I insist on is nice completions. We do not destroy the land, and if the people who call themselves environmentalists want to say we do, they can, but they are wrong. We are at a point of transition on this job, because we were sort of ready to complete, and then we got more land, and now it looks like we can put in a real nice park. We are trying to sell the Colorado mine to the fed for a national forest. It’s a little rough, but people want to hunt and fish and camp there.
Here we will finish the lower part according to a plan we drew up years back. The upper part, the reservoir and all, is not for sure. We can dig it all, and we will, but we don’t know what they will think when we are done. We have been taking the ground down to ten or twenty feet and pulling the rocks, and then filling with our fines. We will try to make it come out even when we take the foothills down. We will try to buy the next line of foothills, on this side at least, and cut roads up there for some real exciting housing sites. They will not be cheap, and will not solve the housing problem in America, but we will charge lots of money for them.”
“Kevin has started a little project for people who have almost nothing, with this leased land at the dump. I hope we can expand that into a model of a place where you can get a little piece of land, and not have to give all your money to a landlord, have a place to park your cars and trucks, and know you will be let alone. Tom has a place to park his D12. Why shouldn’t Joe’s trash hauling have a place to park a pickup? Why should guys who work for a living have nowhere to put building materials or whatever so they can have a chance, too?”
Kevin said, “As long as we are all here, does anyone have any problem we should address?”
Nobody did, so they went back to the barbecue. It was getting quiet, but when Kevin pointed that out to the quarry crew. They still had Cattie, who was still hiding from Alice, and:
Joel Ash
Ned Williams
Kent Blasic, and a new guy from Nowhere, Alvin Reed, A guitar player who had somehow not quite made it despite a lot of talent Alvin had been through more hard knocks that a rock that couldn’t make it out of the crusher. He was a tall, solidly built guy who could make a guitar talk. He sat by the pond talking to a pretty Hispanic girl who may have been interested.
Scott asked Alvin to play a little. He went to his trailer and got the guitar and the little amp and speaker. He came back, and started playing some Hank, Willie and Waylon. Kevin told him this was not a real Texas crowd, a little Eric Clapton would go down fine.
Alvin played J.J.Cale’s “Cocaine” with a gentle sound, more mellow than the Cale or Clapton versions. He played Santana’s ‘Samba Pa Ti’, ‘La Bamba, and Cale’s ‘Downtown LA’ and ‘Call me the Breeze.’ He took a break and went out to water the mesquites, and ate some shrimp and oysters. The cell phone network picked up the news, and before he could sit back in his chair, there were a lot more people.
He played Bob Marley, Dire Straits, Johnnie Nash, and Juice Newton. He wanted another break, and Juan asked if he could use the guitar. Musicians usually think of an instrument as something that cannot even be carried in a case to the tour bus by a roadie, while quarrymen think loaning out a 2 million dollar dragline crane is like letting someone borrow your Skilsaw. In any event, Alvin took the quarryman’s view that it was just a $500 piece of hardware that isn’t actually very easy to damage anyway, unless you do it on purpose. An aside to everyone who ever trashed their instruments, Jimi did it, for you to do it is imitation and useless destruction. You’re not fooling anyone. Just hand it down off the stage to a fan and get a little respect for it.
Juan played a number of Spanish ballads, and the young guys started asking for something faster. Juan could have told them that you play fast tunes first, and slower ones later, and romance comes from that, but he did not. He played fast tunes. Since he saw no reason not to play Flamenco on an electric guitar, he did it. Kevin was awestruck at how fast he could work the frets. When he was done, everyone was eager to tell him how great it all sounded.
Alvin came back. “I’m going to play my own stuff for another 30 minutes, and they you guys are going to have to talk to each other because I’m gonna put the guitar away.”
He turned down the amp, and played songs about love found and lost, the struggle of living, and all that sort of thing. He played and sang quietly, not trying to impress anyone. His songs had a sort of roughness to them, a feeling that could have been taken for unfinished work. They were honest and real, with none of the rough edges taken off them. It was some kind of rock, blues, jazz, and something else.
When he was done, he rushed to put away his equipment.
Tom sat by Kevin. “Did you hear what I did?”
“Sure did. He lacks the commercial slick. You could sell him with a bass and a drummer, and a little engineering.”
“Could I sell him without all that?
“Put him on TV or something. You could sell me playing a kazoo.”
“Be serious. Could he be sold as is?”
“Maybe. They have web sites where you can listen to songs and decide if you want to buy. But mostly people are already looking for a name.”
“So you don’t see how.”
“I knew about music I would be a rock star.”
“Talent got anything to do with it?”
“Not much. For Clapton or Cale, or Carlos Santana, sure. For lots of bands, I don’t think it does.”
“How much of the economy do you think is a meritocracy?”
“Almost none. You reward people for good work, I work for you, so I’m all right. I don’t know how you do it. I’ve been in small business, and I could never sell a better product at a lower price.”
“I’m going to give politicians money to get re-elected, and they will let me build that reservoir.”
“So the system is corrupt. I knew that. But my vote does not count, so all I can hope for is, we build a nice reservoir and I make a living, and you make whatever you make.”
“I keep thinking someone will have a better idea.”
“They did, in ancient Greece, but democracy has been defeated every time it has appeared.”
“Should we keep trying, Kevin?”
“You bet. And we should also do what we need to to make good things happen. We can’t blame the system no matter how bad it is, if we don’t try in spite of it. You turned one quarry into a nice national park. The one in Colorado will be nicer with the lakes than it was before. Mother nature will fix up the details.”
“Will good prevail over evil?”
“Eventually, yes. People know good. Evil will always have a hold, but it can’t really make people believe like good does. People know it for what it is. Look at all the good things that have been done through history. Evil men make wars, but then good keeps coming back. Evil is like a disease. Things are a lot better today for the people coming along, because of the good people who went before. We don’t die from polio very often any more. Most poor people are getting medical care they need. It’s all messed up, but it’s sort of working.”
“What can I do, as one of the money and power elite?”
“Your wife is a visionary. Make parks. If you can see the way to do it, put high speed rail over the American Hemisphere. You can change things, Tom, if you keep your spirits up. You know what can and can’t be done. I can’t tell you. You know, if I was Aristotle, I couldn’t tell Alexander what to do. What he did was conquer the known world before he was 30, and 10 years later, his empire was disintegrated. All he accomplished was to get a lot of people killed.”
“Not my vision.”
“Think about that trans American railway. Think out if it would make economic sense. Could it really be done?”
“It might be. I might run some numbers with Alice.”
Sally came along. “Can I talk to Kevin, or is this something important?”
Tom said, “I think we’re done for now. I appreciate that everyone wants Kevin’s time today.”
They went along the pond, got a couple of beers, and walked out into the dark.
“Do you want your job back, Kevin?”
“It’s yours, now.”
“You were in a bad incident, and left, but.”
“I killed a couple of shitbags. We’re Marines Sally. If I can’t handle that, it brings everything about me into question.”
“They killed your dog, who was kind of a partner. That’s what it is about, eh?”
“It’s a big part of it.”
“You went into the Café, and it was all kind of chilled?”
“I’m not their Chief any more.”
“That isn’t it, Cowboy. They feel like you let them down.”
“I don’t know how you have done here, Sally, but you have a great record. I’m sure you were real good.”
“I kick ass and take names. I investigate. I’m real good on electronic stuff, better than you. And I write better than you, too.”
“Well, then you have the job.”
“Lion hearted, it isn’t your courage they admire. You are a great investigator, and you don’t even know it because it comes to you naturally. You knew everyone in town, and when something happened, you knew who had done it. I look at these reports, and they are full of Chief Rayburn thought it would be Steve suspect who did it, he went to Steve’s house, and Mr. Suspect confessed standing in the doorway.”
“You get to know.”
“I don’t, Kevin. I work for every one of them, and you solve three crimes before lunch and tell your officers to have a good day on the street.”
“Didn’t you run last time? You’re chief.”
“No. The council asked the voters to confirm me as assistant chief, and acting chief.”
“Well, we can clean that up.”
“I don’t think I should be Chief.”
“Let’s talk to Tom.”
They sat with Tom eating oysters with champagne. “Tom, to put it plain, Sally doesn’t think she should be Chief of Police. She is eminently qualified, and has held offices far above mine.”
“An assistant chief in a city department may pay more than Chief here, Kevin, but it is not an equivalent job.”
Tom looked at Sally. “You don’t get perfection in a small town in Texas, Sally. Kevin made over a million dollars last year as a manager of a huge mine in Colorado. I am now looking at putting him in charge of a project where we would make a port out of a rocky coastline overseas. We would blast a port out of solid rock and take the spoils out into the sea and build a breakwater from them. Kevin and Annabel would make, well, not less than $20 million in two years.”
“Rabbit can’t pay that, of course.”
“Rabbit might want to get happy with a lady who runs a good, clean department and is good at catching bad guys.”
Sally said “Maybe so.”
Chapter 9 Considering Things
Kevin, Annabel, and Alice took a tour of the premises.
Kevin admired the ponds. Annabel admired the tamales and Dos Equis. Alice looked at the horizons.
“We need to fill here about ten feet. When you look at it on the computer you will see how low it is.”
“Most of your tree areas are pretty low?” Kevin asked.
“They are. We plan to work our way out from the highway and take the fines from the foothills and use them to fill. The trucks can pick up from wherever.”
“If it rains again, we will not be able to drive in there.”
“Which won’t matter too much, because trees will not sprout out anyway. But we will need to dig the reservoir.”
“So we dig it. This road needs another 18” of 6” minus, and you know that. The crane needs hardstand, so we put down another 4 feet for it. Maybe 6, it’s a big mother. You know all this.”
“We started into this hiring poor people to do big jobs, and we have found that y’all can do better work than guys who graduated from Yale with a degree in rock quarrying. Also, you won’t steal lie, cheat. OK, I love you Kevin. But we need a manager who will tell them to get the drag the hell out of there before it bogs, and he wants 100 yards of 6” minus in the right now.”
“Tell him to put down 6 feet of crap for Mamacito to stand on. This is so hard?”
“It is, because they don’t see, when Mama starts tilting, they don’t know to get her out of there.”
“If they can’t work in the mud, then just secure the equipment and start again in the next dry time. They’re Texans. They don’t know much about mud or grades. They had better not let her capsize. If she was halfway over, we have your 12, my 988, and both of yours, we would chain up on the tower, pull her aright, and then walk her onto solid ground. I think we could do it.”