The Jacks at Dusk
Brian wiped the sweat from his brow for the hundredth time that afternoon. The Trinidad sun was a merciless, white-hot coin in a bleached sky, and it beat down on the corrugated roof of the pump jack control shack with a ferocity that made the metal creak and groan. He’d been an "energy expat" for twelve years now. First in Nigeria, then Kazakhstan, and now here, on the southern coast of Trinidad. He was a troubleshooter, a fixer of things that broke in the most inconvenient places. But the most stubborn thing he’d ever encountered wasn't a piece of machinery; it was the story he was trying to write. Inside the air-conditioned comfort of his corporate apartment in Port of Spain, he felt like a fraud. He’d stare at a blank screen, the cursor blinking like a mocking metronome. His expat package covered everything, a luxury car, a house with a pool, a cook, and a housekeeper. He had everything except a sense of purpose. The company sent him to "optimize" the old we...