Bittersweet Sands (12 page)
“It was so cold today, I got nine-inch nipples!”
There's a guy, “Ratboy,” in the next construction trailer from us.
Ratboy went to a bar in Fort McMurray. At the bar he reached under the table and pinched the ass of the long-haired beauty in front of him. Longhair turned out to be a guy, who turned around and proceeded to punch out Ratboy.
Later that night, Ratboy picked up a girl and a case of beer and took her back to her apartment, where her husband quickly relieved Ratboy of the beer and then punched him out.
Hitchhiking back to the construction camp, Ratboy was picked up by a couple of locals who took him down a gravel road, relieved him of his money, and, oh yes, punched him out.
“You know, if I had to live it over...
I'd be living it over the liquor store!”
I'm getting tired Dad, real tired. I'll be glad to get home.
Take care,
Doug.
Day Fifteen
( Jason by the Radio )
“Jason.”
CRACKLE.
“Jason Navotnick, come in.”
CRACKLE.
“Jason Navotnick, come in, please.”
CRACKLE.
“Come in, Jason.”
CRACKLE.
“Are you by the phone, Jason?”
CRACKLE.
“Jason, are you by?”
CRACKLE.
“Jason, are you by?”
CRACKLE.
“Jason, are you by?”
CRACKLE.
“Aww, Jason's not by, but he can be really, really friendly.”
CRACKLE.
( Double Scotch's Issues )
“I brought you in today to talk about these X-rays on your last batch of welds.”
“What of them?” Double Scotch asked defensively. Jason, her foreman, knew that within this small, quiet woman beat the heart of a tigress, a tigress with a bad tooth. Looking into the face of death the foreman plunged in.
It had been Jason's experience that whenever he was faced with giving someone bad news, he wished to God he were giving it to a man. “Hey, buddy, you screwed up your weld test. If you screw up one more time, you will be fired. Deal with it.”
For a foreman, giving bad news to a woman can have one of two consequences: either she'll cry or she'll wait until she gets back to her bunk. Then she'll cry. Either way, the foreman knew for the next couple of days he was going to feel like a puppy beater.
The only married couple in the crew were also welding partners. Scotch and his wife Double Scotch travelled the world welding for six months a year; for the rest of the year, they lay on some exotic beach. They had welded in Broken Hill, Australia, Kimberly, South Africa, and now Fort McMurray, Canada. They made their money in the First World and spent it in the Third World, where it would last the longest.
It was a rock star lifestyle that afforded them money, travel, and adventure. But you had to be very good welders or that lifestyle would come to an abrupt halt. Scotch and Double Scotch were good welders, very good weldersâexcept now.
“Well, the test...,” Jason began, trying to lighten the blow. “It's not baaad. But you were always the best. And these tests are borderline. You see here...” The foreman held up the X-ray of the weld. “There's slag inclusion on top of this horizontal weld here, and here. And right here on top, there's just a touch of lack of fusion. Not much, but it's... there.”
Double Scotch's eyes flickered up at the X-rays, her cheeks glowing.
“It's like you're having a hard time reaching the top of these welds. I've seen your welding before, and you're better than this.”
Double Scotch's hands started to shake. Jason looked at her hands. He hoped to God she wouldn't cry.
“You'll just have to settle down and...”
Double Scotch jumped up, ripped off her leather welding coat, exposing her impossibly small denim shirt, and cupped her breasts. “It's because of these!”
Jason didn't know whether to shit or wind his watch. “Pardon me?”
“It's because of these! These!” She continued to cup her breasts, aiming them at her foreman, making her points.
“Gwen!”
“I told him I didn't want them! I told him they were...”
“Gwennnnn!”
“I told him they would get in the way. But oh no! He said it was like running his hand up the wall to turn off a light switch, and I said...”
“For Chrissakes! Gwen!”
Gwen skidded into the doorway. Double Scotch continued her rant, all the while cupping her breasts. Jason, half-sitting, half-crouching, mostly cowering behind his desk, threw up his hands imploringly between Double Scotch and Gwen.
“I can't get in there close enough! I have to keep my elbows out instead of tucked in. I have to work around them all the time. My arms get tired!”
“Implants?” Gwen said.
“Like two traffic cones!” Double Scotch nearly shouted.
Jason opened his mouth, decided against it, and sat, his head against the wall.
“And when I can get in close, I burn them!”
“Okay,” Jason said. “We'll take you off the delicate stuff and give you some pad welding until you, ah, adjust.”
“I'll never adjust! I'll never adjust! That bastard may like them, but he'll never get to touch them!” Double Scotch exited, slamming the trailer door behind her.
The room was heavy with the tiny woman's bitterness. The foreman and his secretary stared at each other. Then she sniffed, and walked back to her desk. The foreman blinked at the empty doorway. Gwen's voice echoed into the large outer office:
“All men are pigs.”
Day Sixteen
( Lobotomy's Final Phone In )
“Golden and Fliese, Gwen Medea speaking.”
“Hi, Gwen.”
“Hi, Lobotomy.”
“I'm sick.”
“You know, Lobotomy, Tim, you can't just keep on doing this, phoning in sick every second day.”
“But I'm really, really sick.”
“Well, how sick are you?”
“I'm fucking my sister, how sick is that?”
“Tim, that wasn't funny in the seventies and it's not funny now. You come into work now!”
“Oh.”
“Now, Timmy.”
“Okay.”
“Now.”
“Alright, alright, I'll be there. Besides, I don't have a sister.”
“Now.”
“You know, Gwen, you sure are sexy when you're mad.”
“Lobotomy! If you're not on that bus in fifteen minutes, I'll knock out your one good tooth and all that will be left of you will be cocaine and hooker spit!”
Lobotomy gasped.
Gwen slammed the receiver down.
Then giggled.
“I was watching this iron worker try to pick up an eight-hundred-pound piece of scrap.”
Pops paused to open an aluminum lunchbox covered in stickers from several unions and various brands of bananas. What small part of the lunchbox that wasn't covered in logos was covered in grime. His hands dug into the box and extracted an egg salad sandwich. The humid egg-and-onion smell wafted over the two hunched men.
“Did he do it?” Stash asked.
“Well, he got his fingers under it.”
“Too bad. If he crushed his fingers, his nose would never be the same.”
The grizzled man stopped for a moment and focused on Stash. A small smile broke through his dusting of day-old white beard.
“So,” he continued, “as I'm watching him trying to lift this thing, the ironworker foreman is watching too. So I figured I'd hang back and see what happens. After the foreman watches him wrestle for a bit, he walks over to the ironhead and says to the iron worker, âYou can't solve all your problems with brawn. One day, you'll have to break down and use some brains. But I don't think that's possible.' Then the foreman turns and walks away.”
Stash grunted.
“So I wait until the foreman is gone and I walk over to the guy and say, âI think your boss just insulted you.'”
“What'd the iron worker say?”
“Nothing at first. Then he looked where the foreman had gone and said, âYeah.' But he drew it out like âYeeeaaaahh,' like he had just discovered electricity.”
“Never mind,” said Stash. “I was working up north with a guy, and I asked him what time it was. He looked at his watch and said, âWe're gettin' there, we're gettin' there.' Then he walked away.”
The two men munched sandwiches made from the construction camp kitchen. The choice of bread today was white with bland egg or white with bland ham, and a pickle. Spice was used sparingly, but refined sugar was plentiful. The construction workers could always tell who had been in camp the longest because the worker was probably fat. Fat, like no-longer-able-to-see-important-parts-of-his-body fat.
“What've they got you doing?” asked Pops.
“Right at the top of the coker.”
“How's the view?”
“You can see McMurray.”
“You know, the first time I climbed one hundred and ninety feet, I thought somebody was squeezing my nuts. I sweated right through my gloves. My mouth was dry, but every other part was soaked.”
“You piss yourself often?”
“Every time I climb.”
Stash poured himself a coffee from a worn green metal Thermos bottle, the kind of instrument that gets splashed down every week or so with the understanding that hot coffee acts as its own sterilizer.
“How's Baker?” he asked.
“He says he can feel the backs of his hands. Below that, it's all numb, like going to the dentist.”
“Is he off the ventilator?”
“Yeah. They had his head in that hula-hoop deal with screws going into his skull to hold his neck steady.”
“I hear Ralph is taking it hard.”
“Yeah. He was off most of the summer. Didn't leave his house once.”
The men munched in silence.
“See that guy over there? No, the guy in blue.”
“What about him?”
“That's the guy Jason talked about at the Toolbox Talk.”
“What did he do?”
“Tried to line up a twenty-foot steel beam with his finger.”
Both men grunted.
“You tried the carrots? Kinda tasteless.”
Pops, ignoring Stash's carrots, started in on another story. “Down home, there was a guy at a welding shop that was into the casinos for $100,000. The shop he worked at gave the workers $40,000 for each lost finger. I guess the guy figured, three fingers he's outta debt and $20,000 ante for the next game.”
“I know where this is going.”
“So one morning, he walks right up to the metal shear and sticks three fingers under the knife and pulls the lever.”
“What happened?”
“He cut his bloody fingers off! What do you think happened?”
“I know, but what happened after that?”
“The foreman runs over to the shear, picks up the three fingers in some toilet paper, and takes them and the guy to the hospital.”
“You gonna finish those pickles?” asked Stash.
“No, here, take them.”
“So what happened?”
“So they sewed his fingers back on, fired the guy, didn't pay him any money, and his fingers are almost useless. These pickles are really crunchy. Oh, and one of the sharks he borrowed money from? Said that if he didn't pay up, they'd break his legs.”
“Speaking of legs, trade you this drumstick for some of that ham.”
Both men munched in quiet contemplation.
Pops flicked a piece of ham fat from his cheeks, his mind in deep thought. “You don't ever want to have a heart attack in a pig pen,” he said.
“What brought this up? The ham?”
“No, I mean it. If you ever faint in a pigpen, at first the pigs will nudge you with their snouts. If there's no reaction, they'll give you a nip. If there's still no reaction and you don't fight back, the next bite will take a hunk out of you. Once one does it, they all join in. You don't ever want to have a heart attack in a pigpen.”
“I'll try not to,” said Stash.
“You know, my ex thought we are all pigs. You try to have a nice interesting conversation like this, like you an' me are having, and she would get all upset and just stomp out.”
“My wife too.”
“Yeah. They just don't understand.”
( Email Day Seventeen )
To: Dad
From: Doug
Subject: Ft. Mac
Hi.
There's an ironworker here who walks with a limp. What happened was one night a group of riggers in a hotel room were trying to rid the world of alcohol and they got on the subject of how good they were at climbing steel. Each one loudly bested his neighbour in the high rigging contest. Our hero protested that he, and only he, had more strength, more agility, and more stamina than any other construction worker in that hotel room.
“Prove it!” was the shout.
So our hero stripped the sheets from the bed, tied them together and then to the bedpost, and flung the makeshift rope out the window to the pavement three stories below.
“I'll go down this rope, touch the pavement, and climb back up in under ten minutes!”
Then he went out the window.
All would have gone as planned until the crowd that was sitting on the bed jumped off and ran to the window to watch. The bed, released of its weight, shot to the window. The jerk snapped the makeshift rope. The rigger went down the three stories with the rope still in his hands.
He was correct on one point though. He did touch the pavement.
Doug
“Gather round, everybody.”
The crew stood around Acastus outside the trailer.
“Okay, we're handing out your personal H2S monitor. We've had a couple of incidents and until that's resolved, everybody wears one all the time. The only exceptions are the welders who must take it off while they are welding.