Greenlights

by Matthew McConaughey

Dad had worked his way up from a Texaco gas station manager, to pipe hauler, to pipe salesman in a local company called Gensco. He was a damn good pipe salesman. He got Mike a job selling pipe at Gensco as well. My brother became a great pipe salesman, and quickly. In less than a year, at twenty-two years of age, Mike was the top salesman in the company. The boss put him on their biggest account: a buyer named Don Knowles. Dad was truly proud of Mike, but Mike was still his son. We had an old wooden barn in the back of our house by the dirt alleyway where Dad kept an unloaded eighteen-wheeler from his pipe-hauling days. It was a Saturday night. “Let’s drink some beer and throw knives in the barn tonight, son,” Dad told Mike. “Sure, Pop, see you there around sundown.” Around ten o’clock, and after quite a few beers, Dad finally bellied up, “Let’s go roll some pipe like we used to, son, it’s been a while.” “Rollin pipe” is when you take an unloaded eighteen-wheeler to someone else’s pipe yard, load their pipe on it, drive away, and steal it. Dad and Mike used to do it on certain Saturday nights back when Dad was hauling. “Whose pipe you wanna roll, Pop?” Dad squared off at Mike and said, “Don Knowles.” Oh shit. “Nah, Dad, I’m not doin that. I just got Don Knowles’s account, you know that.”