Bittersweet Sands (6 page)

Gwen picked up a towel and, except for rubber flip-flops, she walked naked into the bathroom that she shared with her neighbour. When she entered, she locked the other door that opened to her neighbour's apartment. Gwen was on her own; however briefly, she was alone.

The only thing Gwen knew about the woman she shared a bathroom with was that she kept it clean, which was the only thing that Gwen cared about.

Camp managers tried to alternate day-shift and night-shift workers sharing bathrooms. As a general rule, they also tried to separate workers by age to prevent clashes. One thing they always did was to separate the sexes. This part of the camp was for women.

Gwen's shower was quick and efficient. It had been a while since she had spent a long languorous afternoon at a spa.

After drying off, she applied baby powder. Powder dries moisture, and perspiration at thirty below is not fun.

She looked at herself in the mirror, pulling and moving portions of her body to get a better look. No spots, no lumps, no discoloration, and the last doctor's embarrassing probing revealed that she was healthy—skinny, but healthy.

“Heigh-ho, heigh-ho,” she said to herself, grabbing for the clothes she had neatly laid out the night before. Long wool underwear, wool socks, a T-shirt with a turtleneck collar, blue jeans with the belt her brother the cowboy had given her for her birthday, blue denim shirt, and those $300 steel-toed hiking boots she had splurged on for that walking tour of Switzerland two years ago.

Finally, into the carry bag that always went with her she stuffed shiny black nylon snow pants that zipped up the outsides of her legs. They were a must in case she became stranded and had to walk in the minus-thirty-degree temperature.

Gwen knelt. Putting three fingers on one side of the pure white running shoes, she carefully placed her slippers parallel to the sneakers on the other side of her fingers. She opened her cupboard, staring critically at the stack of identical sweaters, then patted them into a perfect square, making sure the edges of the pile lined up. She set the bottle of mouthwash one finger's width away from the toothpaste tube, which in turn was one finger's width away from the toothbrush. Job finished, she stood at the door and surveyed the room. Sniffing, she refolded and rehung the damp towel. She cocked her head for a moment and concluded that it must be just the play between the lights from outside and the bedroom light's shadow that made the towel look like it was hanging off-centre.

Gwen had once brought a measuring tape to her room to centre the clothes. Halfway through measuring everything in her room, she suddenly stopped. Wiping her hands, she threw the tape measure in the drawer. “I must be nuts,” she had muttered to herself.

Gwen had solved the problem by measuring her fingers, and used their width for spacers instead of some cold yellow measuring tape. “It'll have to do,” she muttered. “For now.”

She put on a down-filled parka that had cost her entire paycheque two years ago. She almost cried when she sewed reflector tape on the parka's back to make it construction-site legal—not fire-retardant legal, but enough for a tiny secretary to pass off as legal.

She shook her head, promising herself for the hundredth time to get rid of this stupid wool cap with the annoying red tassel. Her mother had knitted it for her, and she didn't have the heart to tell her that it, well, sucked. It was too thin, and the tassel hung out the backside of the hardhat, looking like a red wool ponytail.

She put on her leather gloves, knowing that the mittens, each the size of a loaf of bread, which she had sewn to the sleeves of her parkas were always attached, hanging on like she was a three-year-old.

In her pocket was the balaclava that she wore if she ever had to walk the three miles to Golden and Fliese's trailer. She had seen too many frostbitten faces and fingers on people who had put fashion before safety.

She turned and looked at the room one last time. With a sniff, she muttered, “It'll have to do.” She repeated her morning mantra as she closed the door and made sure it was fully locked.

It was 6:05 AM when she put on her yellow hard-hat with stickers from a dozen unions and companies and waddled out the door. In the doorway she put on her safety glasses that were mandatory outside every building.

Outside the dormitory, the early morning cold crackled.

Her boots crunched on the hard-packed snow as if they were eating celery. She walked through the black, the vapour from her breath hanging in the air like some long gossamer scarf. Other shapes moved in the dark, but unless they wore very distinctive clothing, she wouldn't recognize them.

The company's one-ton truck stood in a row of identical silent dark vehicles. Gwen liked the way the truck looked. Under the lights of the refinery, the white truck gleamed clean.

She opened the driver's-side door, which groaned with the cold. She slid along the ice-hard driver's seat, her steaming breath hanging in the cab. She felt that this was the coldest time of the day because her pores were still open from the warm shower and she was surrounded by freezing metal. Quickly, she turned the key.

She always felt a small relief when the motor fired.

Gwen waited until the sound of the motor changed from a hard rattle to a rhythmic thump. Every so often, the company would issue a memo restricting excessive idling of motorized equipment and the resulting waste of precious fuel. These memos, usually sent from some sunlit office in a city far to the south, were universally ignored.

She dialed the truck's heater to FLOOR, got out, and, leaving the truck in a nearby parking lot, followed other black shapes to the kitchen.

Gwen glanced at the big wall clock. At 6:15 AM, the camp kitchen was a thousand-person food factory, gushing noise, humidity, and cooking smells. She hung up her overcoat and picked up a damp tray. She joined one of the three lines of workers that inched along, like conveyors pushing their trays along stainless steel rails.

The same creepy kitchen helper smiled at her. She gave him her usual morning grimace. Thankfully, she was kept moving by the twenty people behind her. If some idiot ever stopped the line to ponder the various benefits of bacon over sausages, sure enough, some worker behind would start barking.

Gwen looked for another woman to sit with. No such luck this morning. She sat alone, trying to ignore the conversation of a labourer with a filthy mouth. He wasn't facing her, but the sleaze was meant for her to hear. She burnt her mouth with the coffee in her haste to leave.

Glancing at the large clock above the kitchen doors, she calculated that she had exactly twenty minutes to make the three-mile drive, so she had better make this next unscheduled visit count. She stopped to say a couple of words with an old friend at the security desk, a grizzled ex-RCMP Officer. To an onlooker, they would seem to be two friends exchanging morning pleasantries, unless they saw the old street cop give the filthy-mouthed labourer a hard look over the tiny woman's shoulder.

Gwen gathered her parka and left the steamy dining hall. By now, the idling truck would be warm enough so that her hands would not burn with the cold when she held the steering wheel.

The truck followed a well-worn route. The refinery was constructed in squares or blocks, just like a city. The streets separating the blocks were wide enough for two vehicles to pass, but not much more. She bumped along the laneway so narrow that sometimes passing trucks clicked their side mirrors. Refineries are built to refine and move oil; moving workers from one block to another is a low priority. Trucks don't drive the lanes; they creep.

Gwen stopped behind several yellow schoolbuses unloading men. Masses of dark figures marched into the glow of her truck's headlights and then back into the dark. They walked between the buses and her truck, hundreds of workers surrounding all the vehicles, their breath trailing. The reflective tape on the worker's coveralls flashed like fireflies in a windstorm before they disappeared into the shiny caves of the refinery. She tried to creep forward through the mob. Someone shouted an insult. Gwen almost beeped the horn. Within a minute, the horde melted into the black. The now-empty buses, with Gwen trailing, moved out.

Gwen sighed a small sigh of triumph as she pulled up outside a white trailer right at 6:45. She wrestled with the frozen electrical cord as she plugged the truck into the outlet. The keys to the truck were always left in the ignition in case the foremen needed the vehicle, or it had to be moved in an emergency.

Once, Gwen's company truck was “borrowed,” but the truck couldn't go off-site without passing through closely guarded gates. All it took was one announcement on the radio about a stolen vehicle for the truck to be quickly located.

Gwen's boots crunched loudly on the snow's crust. Out of habit, she glanced over the top of the trailers towards the dawn. There wasn't even a hint of the morning sun in the east this early in the year and this far north.

The buildings had been situated there for decades, but the offices still felt temporary. Gwen mused that it was no wonder critics mistrusted oil companies; every office building within the refinery's fence looked like they were only there until something better came up.

She walked into one of the utilitarian white trailers. Sixty-eight feet long, it was a wide-open box except for the Foreman's tiny office. The space was dominated by a large sheet of plywood that served as a desk where the blueprints lay. Several large work schedules were tacked onto the walls. At one end of that white cavern was Gwen's desk. A room divider separated her from the space where the foremen had their desks.

Pouring her second coffee of the day from a pot a labourer had prepared, Gwen turned on her two-way radio, her computer, and a small AM/FM radio that played songs she didn't recognize. Her chair creaked.

Gwen straightened every paper on her desk, placed her two pens parallel, and double-checked the wastepaper basket to see if it was empty.

The clock read 6:55 AM. Gwen Medea, Secretary Scary, was at her desk.

Day Five
( Toolbox Talk )

Hundreds of pieces of reflective tape flickered yellow in the dark, like a line of distant aluminum cans on a conveyor. Slowly, dark figures attached themselves to each glimmering fluorescent badge. Blue-clad men joined in greater and greater numbers, marching purposely, as if on a conveyor belt, along the paths of the stainless steel alleyways. Assembling in groups of ten or twenty, roughly designated by trades or friendship, they all faced one man. Without a command or a shout, the leader began to direct them in morning stretches.

For several minutes they pulled and stretched, bent and twisted. Apart from occasional grunts, they were silent.

After fifteen minutes, with a thumping of dozens of gloves, the exercises were complete. The men broke into trades for the second ritual of the day, the Toolbox Talk.

Several boilermakers gathered in a heated orange tent where men could work on small projects. The enclosure gave the crew a sense of place, safety, community. Hoardings were erected in the first snow of the fall, and remained there until the last melt of the spring. Some hoardings were semi-permanent, year-round shops incorporating shipping containers where tools and toolboxes could be left in relative safety.

The crew shuffled in, waiting for the foreman.

The apprentice spoke up. “Why do we have to do all those exercises?”

“Because they work,” replied an old welder.

Several of the other welders nodded.

“Okay, guys,” Jason barked, raising his clipboard with today's announcements. “Today's reading is from the Gospel according to Barry Acastus, better known to you scumbag lowlifes as... The Safety Nazi.”

“Let's give a clap for the Safety Nazi!” Pops barked. Three or four men thudded their heavy leather gloves together, once.

“Today's Toolbox Talk is about...” Jason paused for effect. “Safety goggles.”

The men groaned as Jason read from his clipboard.

“As per standing oilfield policy, absolutely no coloured goggles or tinted safety glasses or lenses can be worn inside any building in the refinery or any other building on this site. At no time will this be allowed to take place.”

“Asshole,” someone grunted.

“For those of you who choose to not heed this requirement, disciplinary action will take place with the worker being immediately being...” Jason paused. “Shit. He's got two ‘being's in here.” He showed the closest worker his clipboard.

“Asshole,” someone grunted.

“...Being sent off-site and suspended for one shift without pay. Any subsequent violation of this policy will result in termination of employment.”

“Asshole,” someone grunted.

“Coloured goggles may be worn on the roof area or any outdoor lay-down or fabrication area only. Golden and Fliese's employees and all subcontractors are to diligently follow this directive at all times for the remainder of this project. Field supervision to strictly enforce this policy at all times.”

“Asshole,” several workers grunted in unison.

“Other than ‘asshole,' does anybody have anything to say?” Jason asked, looking up from the clipboard. There was silence in the hoarding. A diesel engine coughed to life close by.

Dougdoug slowly raised his hand.

“Yes?” Jason said.

“I'm kinda new here, but at what point does safety stop and coercion start?”

“Yeah!” several workers spoke up. “That asshole just co-worsted us!”

“He painter-sizes us, like we're dummies!”

Pops was quiet amidst the hubbub, which caught Jason's attention. “Pops? You're the steward.” Jason invited the old man to speak.

“You know,” the old worker said, “back in the day, getting hurt was just part of the job. We really needed safety back then.”

Several of the workers leaned in to hear Pops.

“Now, safety's gotten to be big business. The lawyers all got involved because there's money in it. Be careful what you wish for. Used to be a guy that drank all night and showed up to work the next day was a man. You looked up to a guy that could do that.”