Quiet Please - The Thing on the Fourble Board

Access to affordable credit helps me pay my employees, but I don't really need it.

Infliction is killing me! Who cares? Big retailers are making record profit!

That's why we support the German Marshall credit card bill!

See? Things in credit unions help small businesses make payroll.

This bill would cut the vital resources they need.

While increasing megastore profits, they deserve it.

Don't they?

Access to affordable credit helps me pay my employees, but I don't really need it.

Infliction is killing me! Who cares? Big retailers are making record profit!

That's why we support the German Marshall credit card bill!

See? Things in credit unions help small businesses make payroll.

This bill would cut the vital resources they need.

While increasing megastore profits, they deserve it.

Don't they?

Tell Congress stop the German Marshall money grab for corporate megastores, paid for by the electronic payments coalition.

You're a jamming your favorite song, and while you aren't missing a beat, you could be missing a signal from your body.

It's an SOS from your kidneys, and it doesn't sound like music at all. It's silent.

High blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and other risk factors can quietly stress the kidneys, leading to negative impacts on the heart.

That's why you should ask your doctor about a simple urine test called U-A-C-R.

Most miss the signal for hidden kidney disease and related heart risk. You shouldn't.

Visit www.detectbsos.com today to learn more.

Quiet, please!

The mutual broadcasting system presents Quiet Please, which is written and directed by Willis Cooper, and which features Ernest Chapel.

Quiet, please, for tonight is called the Thing on the Purple Board.

Maybe I'm a rough neck.

Well, I was a rough neck. I mean, twenty years ago, a little too old, too slow now.

Besides, I got a dollar now. I don't have to be a rough neck, you see.

Married, got a nice home. Had to meet my wife. Hey, Mike!

Her name's Maxine, but she likes to be called Mike.

Mike!

I guess she's busy on the kitchen someplace. Besides, she doesn't hear very well.

Shame too, she's so pretty and everything.

Well, you'll meet her.

Sit down.

I was saying I was a rough neck.

Well, no, that doesn't mean exactly what you think it means. A rough neck is an oil field worker, specifically a guy that drilling crew.

Calling rough neck's like you call a section hand on the railroad, a gandy dancer, a garage, and a grease monkey.

Same time you work around the drilling crew for a while, you're going to be a rough neck in every sense of the word, boy.

A derrick floor or a four-bulb board is no place for a guy with a bow tie.

Because now, when you have to fool around with drilling holes that go farther down the ground, that it isn't the top of pike's peak down the sea level, and sure they do.

The time I was a rough neck, we got this one well down to 70, 313 feet. That was a record.

But last May, pure oil brought one in out in the turn of valley in Wyoming at 14,309 feet.

That friend is almost three miles. Quite a hole that, huh?

Sure, I don't think there's an oil man in the world that don't wonder one time or another what's down there, besides rock and oil and gas.

Boyle is made out of trees that died 20 million years ago.

Boyle is made out of dinosaur bones, oil that's maybe made out of the flesh and blood of men, maybe, that beat each other the death of a stone axe, a saber tooth tiger for lunch.

Hey, get to wondering.

You look at the cores that come up from way down there, and sometimes the little shells.

Trillabife, mostly, that was alive when Manhattan Island, where New York is, was under half a mile ice.

We found some once me in Billy Grungwald and something found us.

I'll tell you about it.

We're down to around 5,400 feet. We'd set casing. We began to get water, so we hadn't stopped drilling and cement off.

We see, when water begins to see from the hole, you put your drill pipe.

Then you let down a cementing shoe inside the casing, and you plug up the bottom of the hole, casing it all with quick, hardening water-proof cement.

Then when it's hard, you drill through the cement, go on down, and the cement outside the casing of the bottom keeps the water out.

Well, we had the drill pipe all pulled and cracked. The cement was setting sea, so we were shut down, waiting for it to harden.

We've been pouring just before.

You see, a cord drill is hollow, and as the bit digs down, it stops the drilling up inside it, so when you pull it out, you've got a sample of the kind of stuff you're going through.

And a geologist can tell a lot from that.

So there's nobody around the rig except me that night, the rest of the crew is going into town.

I was toasting some pork chops over the forge for myself, but I heard a car pulling up.

Look out, it's Billy Groenwald, a geologist, and I give him a hello.

I believe I'm going to have a pork chop.

Alright, porky.

Where's everybody?

I went to town, I'm the whole crew.

I had three blow-offs between here and Oxford.

I wondered where you was, Ted said you'd been here about three.

No, I would have been except for my tough luck.

Oh, I'm dead.

Hungry?

Stard.

Yeah, I got six.

Seven pork chops.

Bread.

And some coffee kind of.

Wow.

Yeah, I got a bottle in the car.

That's what he's going to have of banquet.

Where's that core?

That's what I came up here to look at.

Back there in the bench.

Look at it, I've just suffered.

Hey.

What?

Didn't you say you were all alone here?

Uh-huh.

I thought I heard somebody talking.

I don't see anybody.

Keep an eye on that pork chop.

You won't have any supper.

Yeah, I'm watching it.

Yeah, let me put the coffee on.

Like so.

When did you finish cementing?

It's morning.

Last tower only made about ten feet of holes.

So Ted shut down before we could flood it out of house and home.

Funny about that water.

Well, to be any at that level according to my featuring.

Well, there is.

Is it salt?

Sure, right out of the bottom of the ocean.

That's funny.

Well, maybe I'll be able to tell something from the core.

Yeah, I hope so.

Now, last core I looked at at a swarm we were getting into shale.

It seemed not yet.

From the cuttings.

That's funny.

Here, your pork choc's done.

Yeah, take some bread.

Yeah, thanks.

Oh, man.

Good time.

And put on another I had too already for you to come.

Yeah, much obliged.

Yeah, you know, you never can tell what's down there.

You get it all mapped and flooded out all the straight out.

And all you know is what comes out of the hole.

Yeah, I like to get down there sometimes.

I was little enough.

Never get you down a little.

Yeah, you'd fit.

It's skinny.

I'll stay up here and look at the cores, bud.

Where is that one?

Behind you.

Over there.

Well, I'll have a look at it.

I want you where you finish your supper.

I'm just going to look at it.

Put on another pork choc form.

Okay.

What's the matter?

Wait a minute, Porky.

What?

Listen.

What's eating you?

If you know how to swerve someone up there in that horrible board.

Ah, you're crazy.

There's nobody up there.

You're going to get those stanzas real fine.

Ah, they're just rat crooked.

Come on back and eat your pork choc.

Yeah.

Yeah, I guess so.

Only I have what's just so jittery about Billy.

Come on, eat your sandwich.

Here.

Yeah, well, thanks, Porky.

I don't know why.

I'm just naturally that way, I guess.

I'm always scared of the dark.

I'm scared.

I think to be a baby, but I can't help it.

Scared of the dark?

Honest?

Stupid, ain't it?

Oh, I don't know.

Everybody's scared of something.

Me?

Spider to scare the tarot or the me?

Black widows.

Oh.

I know how you feel, Billy.

There are another light over here?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Here.

Yeah.

Oh.

That's better.

Hey, listen, Porky.

Go out to the car and look at the left-hand door park and bring back that bottle.

Yeah?

That's what I need.

Okay, kid.

Okay!

So I picked up a flashlight and I turned around and went outside and found the car.

And I got the bottle.

And the floor of the Derek was all lit up.

And when I saw a beam of light suddenly flashed up toward the four-ball board, my lap.

Billy grew involved in his ideas.

Sure, I looked up.

There wasn't a darn thing up there except the drill pipe wrecked against the fingerboard.

Oh, this, uh, four-ball board.

Well, you've seen oiled Derek, sir.

Pictures of him.

You know that little platform that runs around the outside of the Derek about halfway up?

Well, that's the four-ball board.

When you see drill pipe comes in lengths and you handle them with several lengths screwed together

so it's the same time getting them in not the hole.

Two lengths as a double-three as a triple-four as a formal.

When you pull a pipe, you heist it up inside the Derek or the traveling block

and it moves up and down from the crown block at the top of the Derek.

Then when a four-baller pipe is pulled out, it's held in the rotary table.

You break the joint with tongs like a great big stilts and wrenches see.

Snub a cable that's fastened to the handle over the cat head on the draw works

and that breaks the joint.

Then you have all the tongs on the pipe.

Give the rotary table a few turns, don't screw it.

You heist away with the traveling block and swing it over against the fingerboard,

lean it against the Derek.

The guy up on the four-ball board takes off the traveling block.

You do it all over again.

You've got all the pipe out, you see?

Well, there wasn't anybody up on the four-ball board

except a screech howling it flew away.

So Billy turned his light off and I come on inside.

And just as I come up the steps, he let out a yell.

What's the matter?

What's the matter, Billy?

Hey, come here, look here.

But what's it, look, 40?

Mike, where did you find that?

Now listen, 40, I give you my word.

That was embedded in the core.

Why, it couldn't be.

I think it was.

Look where I dug it out.

Do you know what?

That rock there comes from a mile underground

and it's been a mile underground for a million years.

And look at this.

And I did look.

And what he was holding was a gold ring.

And it was all carved and still agreed just like jewelry.

And there wasn't any kidding about it.

It was real.

No, no, no, wait a minute.

Hang on, I ain't done.

I spoke to the core rock that looked like a kind of

petrified salami or something.

And then it was my turn to putting a jump out of my pants

because right alongside the place where Billy dug out the ring

was a mud covered but very unmistakable finger.

I picked it up and it was cold and it was heavy.

And it was solid rock, at least it felt like solid rock.

And I looked at Billy and Billy looked at me.

He started to rub the mud off his ear, stone finger.

And as he rubbed it, he began to disappear.

No, he could be of still fear, but when the mud was gone,

neither one of us could see it.

He dropped it to the Derek Floor.

It went clogged and we couldn't find it any place.

So you know what we're done?

We took that bottle and we took it and finished it.

Billy and me, we finished it in one slug of piezen.

I got up, Janet tasted just like so much well water to me.

And then we sat down on the Derek Floor and we looked at each other.

We didn't say a word.

My eyes got heavier and heavier.

The last thing I remember was I heard some kind of noise the scene

had been coming up from now on a four ball board 80 feet above us.

I shut my eyes a minute and I just wanted to see it.

And I had awful dreams.

Black widow, spiders crawling all over me with gold rings on their legs.

Things I could hear but I couldn't see up on the floor of the board.

Billy Groenwall climbing up the ladder outside the Derek and the Moonlight.

Face is looking at me.

I couldn't figure out who they were.

Then I was waked up by a horrible scream.

The crash came inside me that shook the whole Derek.

I opened my eyes to see Billy Groenwall lying on the floor two feet away

with a broken neck.

And his left hand, when he put the gold ring on the little finger of his left hand

and the way his arms were spread out, his left little finger and the ring were gone.

A friend I got out of there.

I ran down to where Billy left his car and I got in.

I stepped on the starter.

I couldn't get it to go and then I remembered after I'm putting a run down the battery

that Billy had taken a key.

I wasn't going up there and go through a dead man's clothes to get it.

So I sat there in the car and shivered all by myself until they lied to me.

And then Ted and the crew came.

Afterwards a state cop and everybody in the world was asking me questions.

Did you and Billy have a fight, Poggy?

We didn't, Ted.

But you had been drinking.

We only had that little pike, Ted.

Well, what was he doing up in the foldable board?

Did you threaten him and did you run up there to get away from him?

The cop don't be a sharp Billy Groenwall and I were good friends.

Then why'd you push him off the foldable board?

I didn't, I tell you.

I was not there.

What did he go there for?

I don't know.

I was asleep.

How do you know he was up there?

I didn't say why you said so.

Besides, how would he break his neck if he didn't fall from way up there?

Well, look officer.

I think it was just another accident.

I mean, we haven't got anything on Porky.

And personally, I don't believe he did it.

Well, it's Marty Mysterious.

I'm not sure it is.

But we got work to do.

Now how about it?

That's someone's hard down there.

I want to start drilling again and I'm sure I'll handle it.

Would you like Poggy stay here till I run him me pipe again?

Well, then you can take him and ask him questions until you're blew in the face.

Well, okay.

Let's get rolling.

They got steam off Harvey.

I know, sir.

All right, Poggy.

You go from the form award.

What?

Not me, Ted.

Oh, I don't be such a boob.

There's no way of there to show you all the board.

And you can put a safety line around you if you want to.

And besides, you're getting paid to do what you're told.

I must do what's time already.

I'll get going.

So, okay, I go up on the fobobort.

And you can better take a good gander around before I did anything else.

Now I couldn't see a thing.

So I signaled to the jitter to let down the travelling block and he did.

Came sailing down from up above.

I was just reaching for it to pick up the first fob of the drill pipe.

Give a big jerk on the cable broke.

They dropped and nearly pulled me off the fobobort.

Handed landed.

Highlands hopped, Ted.

And if you have any idea what a guy looks like if there are two tons of metal land on him,

then maybe feed up.

Yeah, you keep your ideas to yourself.

Well, that was enough to accidents in the road.

The whole crew quit.

It wasn't going to wait for a third.

And it was Ted's money that was paying off.

There wasn't any more.

As far as I know, the abandoned dark is still there.

And that was 20 years ago.

Oh, I forgot to tell you something.

That travelling block was right in front of my face when it broke loose.

It was hanging by steel cable, three quarter and steel cable.

And I saw that cable break right before my eyes.

It looked just like a piece of string when you snap it, putting your fingers.

I could almost see the fingers.

You know what?

There was something up there on the four-bull board with me.

And so a couple of days later I came back.

I don't know if there's anything in the world as desolate as dismal.

As dead looking as an abandoned oil well rigged.

There it stands like a skeleton off on a deserted side road

and a very yellow hill surrounding it.

And it's the deadest thing you ever saw.

I sat in my car for a long time looking at it.

Everything was just the way we'd left it.

I looked into the floor of the smash travelling block

was there alongside the rotary table.

It was a little motorist steam from the boiler.

That was all.

Then I heard a tinkle of something as it hit the ground alongside me.

I looked around. There wasn't a shoulder in sight.

But at my feet was a gold ring

that Billy Groenwald and I had found in the core of rock

that came from a mile underground

and from a million years ago in time.

And I heard a little sound.

A sound of a kid crying.

And there wasn't any kid up there.

And I heard it again and it came from above my head.

And I took out my revolver.

I loaded it carefully.

I started up the ladder to the Forbobort.

Now I wasn't anything up there.

Anything I could see.

There was a voice crack.

The voice of the loose ship.

And there was a movement behind the rack of drill pipes.

And I saw the pipe move and I yelled,

come out of there, whoever you are.

Come out or I'll spare shooting.

And the standard pipe shivered.

And I thought, what can it be that can handle?

I'd have you pipe like Jack's claws.

And then there was a crash.

The whole standard pipe fell over and I just got out of the way in time.

And I was alone on the Forbobort board with the thing.

And I couldn't see it.

I felt a platform temple under my feet again as something moved toward me.

I fired two or three shots.

And nothing happened.

I started backwards.

I knew it was following me because I could hear it mowing like a cat.

My feet tripped over something.

I thought it was a big can of red lead that somebody left up there.

Without thinking I picked it up and I threw it at the sound and it splashed.

And there it was.

And I wish I...

I wish...

The things that were real girl fighting.

And I, with hunger and terror,

hands like a human being,

and a finger missing from the left hand.

And a body.

I don't tell you about that.

I told you I'm scared as spiders.

But I knew where it came from.

It had come from the poles of the earth,

coming riding up on the drill pipe as we acted out of the well.

Come to an alien world and was lost.

It stood there dripping with red paint,

blood red from head to foot like some horrible dream.

And it put its hand on my arm.

Its hand was stone,

living moving stone.

And it looked in my eyes

and moored like a lost kitten.

20 years ago,

I discovered many things about it,

what it used for food,

that it was deaf,

that it was invisible,

and couldn't see people when it was invisible.

That if you sprayed it with mud or paint,

or grease paint,

make up,

then it could see people.

And believe me, I didn't want to see its body.

I can see that in my nightmares.

But it's face.

I can't help wanting to see that.

But that's a little girl face.

I'm afraid maybe I've fallen.

But it's very beautiful.

And when it's well made up,

it's making it up rubbed,

and grease paint on a stone face

that looks at your smiles

and it makes sounds like a lost kitten yet.

I can disguise the body in long dresses.

She can't hear very well

and when she's hungry,

I have to stay out of her way.

I found out what she likes to eat, remember?

No, no, sit still.

Sit still, do.

Sit still, or I'll have to shoot you.

I want you to meet my wife,

or rather,

my wife wants to meet you.

Mike.

Mike.

There she is.

Come on in, dear.

The title of tonight's Quiet Please Story

is The Thing on the Forble Board.

It was written and directed by Willis Cooper

and featured Ernest Chaffel.

And then, Sutter played Billy Greenwald.

Adam Alley was Ted.

And Cecil Roy

was also a member of the cast.

As usual, music for Quiet Please is played by Albert Berman.

Sound?

Sound by our good friend, Albert April.

Now, if it were about next week,

here is our writer directed Willis Cooper.

Well, I'm reasonably sure that all the characters

in tonight's stories were completely fictional,

at least I have for one hope so.

Next week, the story is called Presto Changel.

I'm sure.

And so, until next week at the same time,

I am Quietly Yours.

Ernest Chaffel.

This program is heard in Canada

through the facilities of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

This is the mutual broadcasting system.