“Beer, too.”
“Only in cans. Someone will take the cans, but bottles end up as broken glass all over the place. Texas is the litterbug state. Also, gas for our cars, and diesel for our customers’ trucks. We need a tank for off road diesel. Why not dig a bigger hole, and put in all three tanks? Truckers will buy from us if we have an all right price. If we run on a narrow margin, we will sell fuel to half the trucks that load here. A micro deli with a deep fryer. French fries, steak fingers, chicken nuggets, burritos, all of it from the freezer to the fryer to the cash register. Maybe an electric frying pan and we make hamburgers, too. Three feet of counter space, and we got lettuce, tomato, pickles, jalapenos and onions. Squirt bottles of mayo, mustard and ketchup. Ham and cheese sandwich, bologna and cheese, One club type thing, maybe a sub. A hamburger or a cheeseburger. Keep it simple, like Ray Kroc said.”
“This is some good thinking. How would we figure out the layout and all?”
“Well, we want stainless steel counters. Got to have a floor drain. Since we truck water, we want to minimalize dish washing. I guess we get a salesman from a company that supplies that kind of stuff to show us our options. I know how to make a sandwich and I know what a decent workstation looks like, but I don’t know how to buy one.”
“We will figure it out.”
“We also need to let trucks park. Our customers are going to be pretty insistent on that. I have let some of them do it, but I would like you to pick an area and make whatever rules you want, so I know. Also, if we have any kind of convenience store and deli kind of thing, we want all the trucks coming through to stop.”
“Keep the trucks back so you don’t hear them at night. And not near the crushers and piles. We can let anyone park there for the night.”
The conclusion was, Tom had a building built, quite a bit larger than apparent need. The scale station was at one end, and then there was the deli, the register, and the convenience store. On the far side from the driveway he ordered a house for Jeremy and Shelly. Behind that a barn building for a shop, laundry, community room for employees, a gym, and bathroom. Behind the barn would be a picnic area for employees. All the buildings, and the shade roof over the picnic area, would have gutters and downspouts leading to underground cisterns. Tom brought in a kind of silly girl named Denise who was cute, but not much of a thinker. Denise would run the scale and the fuel pumps would run themselves with card readers. Denise could make a sandwich according to the chart on the wall.
The quarry opened for business. There was no fuel yet, and the cistern by the office building had yet to fill, but the bathrooms could flush with water out of pit 1, and you could get rocks and a sandwich. The septic tank output was pumped out to a trench around the building. It was rocked with drain rock from the piles, and covered over with the fines, about 3/8 minus. It was still too cold to plant. They put up a little hothouse and got some flats and cell packs. In February, they planted a lot of Mexican Sunflowers and some black eyed susans as well.
Denise worked out well. She would weigh in a truck and make silly jokes with the driver. She made lots of sandwiches for the refrigerator. The Barkers brought an oil drum of polished rocks that the store sold for $10 a pound. You could hear them rattle in the drum all day. The big sellers, though, were the breakfast things. Denise made scrambled eggs and rolled them up in flour tortillas, and you had it. There were chopped jalapenos, bell peppers, onions and such that could be added. She also made biscuits with eggs, sausage and cheese. You scrambled some eggs, cut a piece to fit the biscuit, and added a sausage patty, put a slice of cheese on it, and you were done. Most of the seating was some picnic tables out under a shade awning made of corrugated steel. An army corps of sparrows made sure there were not uneaten scraps.
Emily came to visit, and she dug out a pit 1 to about 18 feet deep in the middle. She had done most of what Tom wanted when she broke a track. She had to go Dallas to see the track hoe doctor. From there, she went home. The pit was pretty well done. Bringing Emily back to do a little finish work would not have been cheap.
Tom noticed that pit 1 was not losing much water. It rained again, and he had to pump water out of pit 2. He had it routed to the areas above the leach fields. When the weeds sprouted, they got disked. After that, the sunflowers went in. Russian giants and the natives by seed, and the Mexicans from containers. They got watered in by the last of the water from pit 2. Two days later, it rained again. The crew worked around the pond in the middle of pit 2, rocking as usual. After a few days, they pumped 2 again and watered the sunflowers. The sunflowers came up like rockets. The Mexicans, which were supposed to be 3-4 feet high were over 5 feet in two months. They began to put out their first flowers, intense red-orange ones as big as a man’s hand. Tom sent 3 new hands, Lana, who would mostly help Denise, Sammy, a loader guy, and Alex, an old hand who could run the crusher and sorter or whatever. There were also a couple of temporary guys who weeded the sunflower plantings, and left.
Jeremy went to shifts, and told his gang that they could work 12 hours if they wanted. They would push the crusher and sorter hard and build up some piles. Carlos thought that was a great idea. “We put product in a pile then we have money just sitting there.”
“That’s right. Tom wants to invest in rocks.”
They jammed it on, and kept the crusher and sorter going 24/365.
They pumped 2 again, and the sunflowers got really big.
Tom came again with the land yacht. Jeremy got in, and they drove around a little. “You have some nice rock piles.”
“We’re keeping the crusher and sorter going 24/365.”
“That’s fine, but we don’t need to do it. You could let your crew go for Christmas and so. As long as we can sell rocks and store stuff. We promised that.”
“Nobody asked to take off. There has been thought of wet sorting. When the wind is toward the highway, sometimes it will carry dust to the store and the house or all over the highway.”
“We don’t want your house or the store or the employee trailers in dust, and not the highway either. Just stop the sorter in those winds. I’m going to send you a little mini weather service station. The National Weather Service will send you a fax every day with weather predictions, and they can download your data. Carlos will install the stuff. Want a drink?”
“I’m still working.”
“You can have a drink. You like the Cuervo gold?”
“Yeah.”
Tom poured him a glass, much more than a shot. “The store, James.”
“Is his name really James?”
“No. It’s Cmesahi.”
They got to the store, and went in. Tom looked at the tumbled rocks. “Does anyone buy these?”
“They do, and we have a guaranteed buy back if they don’t.”
“Do you sell any?”
“A pound or two a day. Lots of people look. My theory is they make the place more interesting, even if all you do is piddle with them.”
“Why sell them from an oil drum?”
“The Barkers, who buy from Frank, say that they sell better if they look like they are being sold in bulk. They buy 50,000 pounds of rocks every couple of months, and sell them nationwide, so maybe they know something.”
“They sell these tumbled rocks?”
“Not mostly. They buy them from rock shops. They mostly do polished slabs of petrified wood, agate, and such.”
“Do they have good stuff?”
“For lots of money they do.”
“Does Frank find good stuff?”
“Some. You know Dave at Shelly’s rock.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you want some really nice stuff, talk to him.”
“I know Dave. He is my fiancée’s former boyfriend, and he is still her partner in A&D quarry.”
“So you’re going to marry Alice?”
“Yep.”
“Well, everyone likes her. So did you get her a ring that takes a crane to haul around?”
“Alice and I are both against the diamond racket. The engagement ring is water clear garnet. Eight pieces of it making a circle in a gold ring. It has hundreds of tiny blue sapphires along the sides and between the garnets. The wedding ring is a single piece of garnet. The lapidary cut it with something like a diamond hole saw, and cut the inside with a smaller one. The whole thing is polished all the way around. The jeweler made a gold ring that is two little discs of gold that are joined by gold wires that go through the garnet. It also has tiny blue sapphires all around.”
He took a little box out of his shirt pocket, and showed it to Jeremy. The Garnet looked like the red of a sunset, and the sapphires looked like early morning sunlight on new snow.
“That is really nice, Tom.”
“Let’s look at the store.”
He put the box back in his shirt pocket and very carefully buttoned the pocket.
“What is our best sandwich, Jeremy?”
“The club sub for sure.”
Tom took one from the refrigerator and put some mayo on it. “Yeah, this is good.”
They walked around the store. “Most convenience stores are cluttered with crap they are trying to push. I like the more relaxed feeling.”
“So do I, Jeremy. We don’t need to push everything in peoples’ face.”
“The wholesale grocer wants us to send out fliers and push specials.”
“For our benefit?”
“So they say.”
“We are going to compete with Nowhere store, put them out of business?”
“I hope not.”
“Me, too. I want to make money, not keep someone else from making it. I think we need to have our own store because they are too far away. But this map here, mark their location on it. Put their address and phone number on it. Do they have things we don’t?”
“They do in season produce from local gardeners is the main thing.”
“OK, we will not refuse to buy from the neighbors down the street, all two of them, but we will put a little sheet up on the map here saying they have those things. In fact, give me their number.”
“Here it is. Albert, Cathleen and Nick Robertson, Nowhere Store.”
Tom dialed. “Tom Hearns for Albert or Cathleen.”
“This is Albert.”
“Albert, I own the Nowhere Quarry. I would like to clear up what may be a misunderstanding, and maybe reduce your worries a little.”
“I’m listening.”
“I have a store here for my employees and my truckers. It is not intended to take business from you. We do not want to hurt your business. We hope we will benefit you.”
“This town is pretty small for two stores.”
“Well, I would like you to fax me a statement about what you sell, particularly produce, which I mostly do not want to bother with. Put your address and phone number on it, so we can post it on the wall beside our map.”
“Why would you do that?”
“We are not after your business. I want to sell rocks. I am opening a little store because my employees and drivers need it. You do mechanic work?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you could tune up my cars and trucks. Probably my employees’ as well. You have a tow truck, I believe?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then, I have a motor grader, a couple of loaders. They can tow, but how much would you think I would charge for a loader that picks up 12 ½ tons at a time?”
“$400 an hour.”
“At least. So I would say, why don’t you call Albert? Do you do any work on heavy equipment, changing hydraulic hoses and cylinders, hard facing buckets?”
“I do.”
“Well, why would I get some guy to come from New Mexico if you can do it?”
“That would be kind of silly.”
“Right. Keep the work in the family. I want to be your friend, Albert, not your enemy.”
“Same here.”
“Thanks for talking to me. I’ll see you in person sooner or later.”
“Look forward to it.”
They hung up.
“Jeremy, make sure you mark their place on the map, and post the fax they send.”
“Right on.”
“You know you cannot discuss gas prices with him?”
“Why?”
“It could be considered price fixing, and that might be right. I want you to take a pretty aggressive price position on over the road diesel. We don’t need to be low on gas. Cut it close with employee discounts if you like. Public prices should be reasonable is all.
He looked at the proposals from vendors. “Reject everything over six months. I will review the others. We will decide about back stock. Nobody delivers anything that does not go on the shelves. Especially the cooler. We want Coke, Pepsi, Fanta Orange, and Sprite on the fountain, or something like that. Two coffee machines. House blend beans, no ground coffee. No signs advertising tobacco products and no agreements about shelf space. We will sell sodas in 20, 32, and 44 oz, that’s it. No beer in bottles if the same brand can be had in cans. We will not deal with this cell phone accessories seller unless he agrees to put 4 of each product on the peg. Anything that does not go on a peg we will not pay for. We will give it away. We will carry one size of each candy bar. We will take the regular Reese’s peanut butter cups, but not the king sized or the single ones or the mini ones or whatever. They want shelf space. We will not give it out. No special displays that block the aisles. Nothing that does not fit on the shelves. Anyone argues with you, tell him ‘no’.”
They went back to the office to see how things were going so far. They looked at the figures, and Tom was pleased at such a fast start. The phone rang, and Jeremy answered it on speaker. “Nowhere Quarry, Jeremy.”
“This is Clint Rawlins, regional manager for Fluffy Foods.”
“You have some potato chips and all. OK, I know who you are.”
“Jeremy, pursuant to our agreement, you have to stock our whole line of chips and bagged foods.”
“Agreement signed by whom and when?”
“Well, I don’t know exactly.”
“I, sir, did not sign your agreement, and do not have the authority to do so. It happens that Tom Hearns, who does, is here. We do not want your whole line of chips and bagged foods. I asked for potato chips and corn chips. If you do not wish to sell what I asked for, send your driver and take them away.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Tom Hearns. I’ll do you one better. I will feed your chips to the birds and sue your sorry ass. You violated Koefoed’s rule of dog kicking. ‘If you are going to go around kicking dogs, learn what a pitbull looks like first.’ Send your driver, take your chips, and don’t ever set foot on any of my properties again.”
“Mr. Hearns, there is no reason to be hasty.”
“Transfer me to your CEO’s office right now.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Well, I can.”
He hung up, and asked his secretary to call for the CEO of Fluffy Foods. She did, and Tom said, “Tom Hearns calling for Charles Porter.”
“Chuck. Mr. Hearns, I do not believe we have spoken.”
“Well, I have spoken with one of your salesmen, Clint Rawlins, and I have a store manager here with me. Really a quarry manager, but we have a little store. We bought some chips, and Mr. Rawlins tried to tell me that we had agreed to buy some complete line of junk food. We made no such agreement, and since you employ such people, I am hereby terminating any and all agreements that I may have with your company, and feeding the chips to the birds.”
“Let’s not be hasty, Mr. Hearns.”
“We need not be. Do not deliver any product to any store or entity I own. I will not pay for it. That is not hasty, Sir.”
“What would be hasty if that is not?”
“You do not want to know.”
He hung up.
Jeremy smiled. “What would be hasty?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Hypothetically speaking, what would be hasty?”
“Calling Don Giuseppe Marcello and asking him to whack both of them.”
“That does sound pretty hasty.”
“It would be. In the real world, I am going to tell them to take their junk food back.”
“What if they won’t?”
“We’ll feed it to jaybirds who don’t know any better than to eat that crap.”
“Then they sue you.”
“Someone is always suing me, Jeremy. We will film the birds eating their junk food, and if they want to hang out they have to take the route.”
“J.J. Cale.”
“J.J.fucking Cale.”
Denise told Jeremy he had a phone call. “Jeremy, this is Clint. Look, I was mistaken, but I’m in a lot of trouble. Could I have four feet in your store, full credit for stales pulled, you can tell me what to stock or I will figure it out?”
Jeremy came over to Tom. “Fluffy wants 4 feet to sell in.”
“You may approve that if you wish. There will be no floor displays, no hanging strips, just 4 feet of stuff you approve, we can cancel at any time, we do not pay for display, and we do not display any signs. The shelf above the display is ours. I wouldn’t let him, but you may if you like.”
“Did you hear that, Clint?”
“We agree.”
“Bring a 4 footer and we will try it.”
“Thanks, Jeremy.”
* * *
Sammy, Alex, and Lana had trailers to spot, and Carlos took care of that, filling their water tanks with chlorinated water, and connecting them to the drains and electric outlets. Tom called his office and asked that his real estate buyer look at the land south of the quarry. A very low key effort would be made to buy it. It was not worth much now, but if Tom developed the quarry into something, someone else might come and take the frontage, and use it to make a profit on what Tom had built. Also, they might put in businesses Tom did not like, like a ‘gentlemen’s club’ or something.
Tom wanted to take some time off and have a few beers with the crew. Nancy didn’t want to drink, so she took the store. Carlos and the new guys could load trucks and the sorter, most likely. Tom took the rest to the land yacht. The drivers were in back sleeping behind a closed door, and everyone was admonished to be quiet.
“14 Buying in Nowhere”
Tom got a call right away. “Peter Ravel calling for Tom Hearns.”
“Tom.”
“What is this, you want that little piece of land trimmed off my ranch when they built the highway?”
“Yes. Contiguous to me, useless to you.”
“Might be worth some money some day.”
“’Might’, ‘Some’.”
“What did you pay for the 16 sections?”
“55.8.”
“This is highway frontage.”
“Sell me this side, most likely that side will appreciate.”
“I’ll come over and talk.”
He did. They drove around to the crusher and sorter in Peter’s beat up but working truck, the air conditioner running a little against the already growing heat. Peter looked at the piles. “Who is going to buy all that?”
“I’m not sure. But I think rock is a good investment. If environmental regs don’t make it hard, the cost of fuel and equipment will. I am looking to convert a lot of money into rock and see if the rock doesn’t make more money than the money would have.”
They headed back toward the office
“Tom, would you like to have a cut to the chase price from me?”
“Yes. “
“$100 an acre today, warranty deed, no contingencies.”
Tom called in and asked his real estate department to get on it. They could get a title search at 0300 on Christmas morning. They could get a hundred million dollar wire transfer from Zurich when Thanksgiving dinner was being laid out. The legal department turned out documents for real estate sales in Chile, Indonesia, Brazil, Mozambique, Syria or Latvia 24/365, and they could write them in any language you wanted.
Peter had his money within the hour. They went over and told the gang they were going to see something Peter wanted to show him, so they should all take care of their own things for a little bit.
Peter drove them over to his side of the highway. He took Tom to “Hell’s outcrop”. It was an extraordinarily ugly pinnacle.
“We have rock hounded here, but it is too steep and brittle to climb. It has a lot of quartz, and we have found petrified wood and agate. Can you do anything with it?’
“Knock it down, maybe. What do you want to do?”
“You pay all costs, you take it down, we split the net 50-50. You would have to provide equipment, blasting work, the people to rock hound it, everything. Then you would write me a check.”
“We probably want to do that. Let me call our business partners.”
“A&D Quarry at Black Rock, New Mexico.”
“Tom for Alice.”
“Tom! Are you still in Nowhere?”
“I am. I have a business proposition to take down Hell’s Outcrop. We do the work, and we split the net with the owner. I want to know if we can do that.”
“Let me see if I can conference Robbie. He is our geology professor and Apache chief after all.”
Robbie came on and listened. “We might could do that. We would want to be allowed to mark special specimens and play we select one and you select one.”
“Are we talking Indian artifacts?”
“No. The tribe collects unusual mineral specimens. We have a museum and some private collections.”
Peter said, “Probably we would not play the lottery. If someone values a specimen at such, then the tribe wants it, I am happy for you to have it. I could take my half in cash. I want some stuff to put around the house, but not stuff that has to be insured.”
* * *
Experts evaluated, warriors were let down by Tom’s helicopter to take specimens and photographs. It looked like a pretty ordinary quartz inclusion. Some people said they knew how these formed. Robbie said he did not and neither did they. Les panned some gravel from the base, and found miniscule gold. Not enough to be worthy of separating.
Robbie and the big chiefs called a conference, which was held at a Holiday Inn. Tom took the post of chairman since nobody else wanted to.
“We’re going to consider whether my corporation and the Apache nation should knock down Hell’s Outcrop.”
Tom gave the floor to Professor Robert Two Trees.
“We are looking at an eroded recent inclusion, which no sedimentation has occurred upon. There will be no artifacts. Fossils are extremely unlikely, and the tribe has been promised a one for you and one for us selection on specimens, which also, the landowner is not much interested in, so we could buy him out of his.”
George Lincoln spoke. “This is a nice bunch of minerals. I can bust the bottom out of the East side, and let it fall over, and y’all can pick some nice rocks from it. The warriors went to the top by helicopter, and if you think about Apache warriors going by helicopter to the top of an outcrop, you know it’s unstable.”
Red horse spoke. “We have not been a people who rearrange the earth.”
Dave said, “Not historically, but in recent times, you have been. At one time, if I had gone among the Apache, I might have ended upside down over a fire. But I do not fear the Apache, because you are not my enemies. Today, Apaches search for fossils, and drive pickup trucks, and some of you even drive the most powerful mining machines that have ever been on this earth.
“This is not destroying something nice. It’s an ugly outcrop with some nice things inside. We panned some of the gravel, and it is too poor for you to make any money on. If there was water you might get a little bit out of it, but you would be spending work that could have spent on something worth while. We’re selling lots of Apache goods at Black Rock, and some of the tribe are making some good money. Well, if you want opportunity, here it is.”
The Apache took a day off to discuss it among themselves, and came back saying to shoot it. Lincoln Seismographic took two days to drill in under the outcrop and set it all up. With everyone out of the way, it took 120 seconds to shoot it. The East side charges sequenced, and pushed a thousand yards of rock and dirt out from under the outcrop. The West side charges then fired, and lifted the west side of the outcrop, and pushed it over. In an immense cloud of dust, the outcrop ended its 200 million year history, and became an enormous pile of shattered rock. Rather than sort or crush, the group picked over the whole place by hand. They found lots of nice stuff, and threw much more cruddy stuff into piles the loaders carried away. Deep in the pile of junk, where Jeremy, Carlos, and Cattie told everyone not to go, they found crystal quartz.
Tom told everyone that if they went in that loose pile, they would be fired, and if they did what they were told, they would get bonuses. That helped, and the loaders pulled the stuff out of the pile. Tom had a pit dug near the pile to take the water that came off the pile in the event of rain..
As the pile came down, some very nice mineral specimens came out. Robby sold most of them for the partnership’s benefit. As the fates might have had it, Shelly was filming the loaders working the edge of the pile when the center collapsed. Perhaps Marissica, the Red Fate, had decided to do something nice for Tom and his workers, but however it worked, nobody was on the pile when it happened. Thousands of tons of rock surged out, and pushed the loaders back. The immense force it took to collapse the center of the pile, and push those enormous loaders back like Tonka Toys, is hard to imagine. In a tenth of a second, a spout of dust came from the center of the pile. The rock pile widened in a fraction of a second, and the loaders were thrown back.
Nobody was hurt, and none of the equipment was damaged. Dave got all the white people together in the land yacht, and made a pot of tea. He insisted that everyone drink some, it did not matter how much. “Thank you, Marissica.” He said. They went back to work. Dave took the pot of tea outside, and the Apache all drank. They didn’t like the land yacht but they had no question about paying homage to the Gods.
They picked through the rocks, and used one of the loaders as a garbage can. Each time it took the rejects to the crusher, they had it spill a new bunch of stuff on the ground away from the still unstable pile.
They soon got into some real good rocks, and Robbie sat down with Nancy to figure costs and all. Lots of the costs were up front, like Lincoln shooting the original pile, but Robbie and Dave pushed into the center a little to bring out a little more of the payoff sooner, and got some cash moving. The Barkers came and bought lots of quartz specimens. They also took some agate that was not really all that good, but salable. Les Barker panned some more samples, and said they should put a dredge and separator on the settling pond. They did that, and ran the output to an area that drained into the pond. As if Mother Nature had endorsed this idea, it rained again, and put a good deal of water in the pond next to the job. Tom put an old single screen sorter on the job. The settling pond filled with sludge, but the separator kept putting it back. They pushed up a dam of the sand and gravel, and that slowed the mud, and captured more of it.. They kept the water going around and around as long as they had it. When the rains seemed to be over, they just left all the little stuff and sold the big rocks. Tom let the Apache keep some pretty nice specimens and valued them far below what they would have sold for. Peter was happy to let them have some stuff. He got some real nice crystals to put in his ranch house, and some skillfully tanned hides and such. The ladies made him some moccasins. Peter’s wife Margaret, thought she didn’t want a vest or something like that until she saw them. The Barkers took a slab of low grade green-black jade and a pedestal of quartz, and made a standing pedestal of it for the Ravels. When it had been fork lifted to the door, rolled to its place in the living room on dowels, and put in its spot, they took the furniture blankets off it, and revealed a 4’ tall post of quartz covered with crystals. The Barkers published the way it was done in Lapidary Journal. They drilled and countersunk the jade platform, and then drilled up into the quartz from their carefully sq