fuckability—a common trait of the young. Willem had already been made aware that Jules was ex-navy. He’d been out of the service long enough to grow a shoulder-length mane of wavy strawberry-blond hair. Sun exposure had endowed this with highlights that would have cost five hundred euros to obtain in an Amsterdam salon. PanScan, unsurprisingly, pronounced him the healthiest man on the planet. Once Jules had heaved all his gear into the back of the truck, he offered to buy Willem anything—anything—for sale in the convenience store. Only because he did not wish to cause offense, Willem allowed as how some jerky would go down well. Jerky was a safe bet; it was hard to screw that up, and it seemed paleo.
After Jules had made his jerky run and settled into the position known hereabouts as “shotgun,” Willem said, “Say, Jules, I’m as eager to get to Houston as you are, but if you don’t mind I’m going to drive around town for a minute and sightsee.”
Jules was politely taken aback. “It’s not going to take a whole minute, sir.”
“I know. Just satisfying my curiosity.”
“Suit yourself!” Jules said cheerfully. “Your truck, your rules!”
So Willem drove a short distance inland from the levee and circled the former site of the mine. This was nothing but vacant land, overgrown with scrubby trees where it wasn’t scarred by traces of roads. On its south side there was a tumbledown building, scarcely more than a shack, covered in unpainted plywood gone dark with age and mold. Above its front door was a sign, hand-painted on sheet metal that was now 90 percent rust. But he could make out the letters AZOS MIN. The last vestige in Port Sulphur of Brazos Mining. Recalling the queen’s interest in the name, he pulled in close enough to take a snapshot of the sign.
“Okay then! Let’s get this show on the road, Jules!” Willem proclaimed and gunned the pickup out onto the river road, headed back up toward the Big Easy. Jules cracked open an energy drink, leaned his seat back, and regaled Willem with the tale of how he’d washed up in Port Sulphur. Willem was paying a certain amount of attention to the nav, trying to work out the best place to rendezvous with the rest of the caravan in Texas. So he didn’t catch every
last detail. An ex-girlfriend was involved, naturally. An ownership dispute over a truck. A job on an oil rig that hadn’t gone as planned. It all might have worked out but for the element of random misfortune embodied in the hurricane.
“What do you know about the sulfur industry?” Willem inquired, interrupting Jules’s stream of consciousness about half an hour in. This story had overspilled the bounds of being a mere country song and was well on its way to becoming an album.
“Oh, there ain’t no sulfur in Port Sulphur.”
“I know,” Willem said. “Hence my question.”
“Used to be a mine nearby. They would dig it up. Freeze it. Sell the, what do you call ’em, huge, like, ice cubes.”
“Did you say freeze it?”
“It has a real low melting point. Like, you can melt it on your stove. Like wax almost. So they would just pour it into big, like, ice cube trays, let it set up, stack ’em like blocks at the water’s edge, load ’em on ships goin’ to . . . wherever the hell folks need sulfur.”
“Why’d it stop? Mine ran out?”
“It’s cheaper nowadays to get sulfur from sour crude.”
“So it’s just a by-product of all these refineries.”
“Used to be,” Jules agreed. “Then Alberta got into the act and the bottom dropped out.”
“Because . . . oil from Alberta has a lot of sulfur?”
“Sour as can be,” Jules confirmed. “Or so they say. Never been. Not a lot of work for divers there.”
Willem nodded. “So Port Sulphur needs to get busy diversifying its economy.”
“You work for Shell?” Jules asked. Then, feeling some need to explain himself: “They said you was from Holland.”
“The Netherlands,” Willem corrected him. “I guess you could say I have a professional connection to Royal Dutch Shell.”
“HR? Media Relations?” Jules guessed.
Willem perceived the nature of Jules’s problem. Jules was trying to figure out the riddle of Willem. Not necessarily to be nosy; it’s just that the two of them were going to be in the truck together for quite a few hours, and he was trying to find some basis for
friendly conversation. The only conceivable reason a Dutchman would be in this part of the world would be to work for Shell. And yet Willem didn’t know basic facts about sulfur and its status as a by-product of sour crude oil refinement. The only way that this could make sense was if Willem’s role at Shell was something completely impractical in nature.