Dirty Work

by Anna Maxymiw

  I look at Emma and Alisa across the table. We stare at one another from under our eyelashes, trying to communicate without saying a word. I want this, I pulse to them. I really want this. Emma’s mouth twitches; Alisa bobs her head. I look up to the young men who are standing around us, waiting.

  “Do you have rye?” Emma asks.

  Within two minutes, the three of us are holding rich, strong drinks, and we’re being dealt hands of euchre. I assess the young men: Hunter, the rude one, with pierced ears and an abrasive sense of humour. Josh, the quiet one with the out-of-place V-neck T-shirt. Graham, the nice one, smoking pot out of the window. Nate, the one with the face—and body—of an Abercrombie & Fitch model. Jasper, the one all the girls swoon over, quiet and kind and good-looking. Trent, the stocky, handsome one.

  Trent catches me looking and waggles his tongue at me. “I’m calling you as my partner, Red.”

  The night is too short, the time too slippery. We end up staying in their cabin for hours, drinking rye and rum and learning the nuances of euchre. I start to learn their tells and tics. Trent and I become good at bluffing. When Hunter and Alisa bellow pick it up and Trent doesn’t want the suit to be trump, he clicks his neck from side to side and leans back in his chair with a satisfied smile on his face.

  “Aw, yeah. Just what we wanted, eh, Anna?”

  “Real good, that suit.”

  “Fucking great!”

  * * *

  We see everything, know everything, gossip about everything. Words carry across the lake, so the housekeepers on shore can hear guides coming in and identify them by the swear words they use. If housekeepers are folding sheets in the laundry room, and other girls are making beds in the lodge rooms above, we can chat to each other through the floor. This whole lodge sometimes becomes all about finding spaces to fuck around in, or fuck in, or at least a place in which to tell each other a secret. It can drive a person crazy; I miss having a door to close and lock, a bed that no one can see, a shower that isn’t in a shared room. It wears on a person, having every word and action spread out like a feast for others to pick at. The always-togetherness. The eyes constantly watching.

  Some of us problem-solve by burrowing away. We use our sleeping bags as shields and try to ignore our damp early-morning dreams when we wake up sticky and disoriented. We nap during our breaks, chase sleep relentlessly, wake up to haul groceries or change the load of laundry over before disappearing again.

  Manual labour also diverts: it tricks the brain into forgetting about other evolutionary needs. Because of this, I offer to unclog the scariest of blocked toilets, take pleasure in hearing the sound of pipes sighing in relief. One afternoon, Sydney spends hours cleaning a shower stall with steel wool and Comet powder, sitting on a stool in the bathhouse by herself and scrubbing with frightening determination—she doesn’t even let up when I come in to dance a jig and try to distract her. Connor builds a seven-by-seven pyramid of empty oil drums, a structure so tall it rivals the black spruce that serve as its backdrop. Our bodies ache for days after each new project, and we complain to one another, but secretly, we relish the hard work and the distraction.

  And sometimes we react by directing our frustration outward, torturing others. During a lake shower one afternoon, I spot Pea and Kevin on shore and flash them. Bodies are part of the fauna here, and all of my roommates have already seen my bits during our morning scrambles. Most of the men have probably seen large swaths of my body, too, because shirts get displaced or sometimes halfway pulled off while lifting loads of lumber, and I’m careless with my skin the way a woman who grows up without young men pursuing her is. I forget sometimes that the men I’m working alongside have sex drives, fantasies, might look at me like a woman and not a girl—and certainly not as a tomboy, one of their own.

  Pea notices my naked chest and gives me the thumbs-up. My breasts are so white that he’s probably momentarily blinded—if he can even see that far, because I’m a good distance out from the shore. Kev, on the other hand, misses the moment, because he’s looking down at the sand for animal tracks.

  With no outlet, the crazy energy buzzes up and down our legs and necks, vibrates against the backs of our throats, turns into fingers that don’t stop trembling and a body that is always tense. I wonder if we’re actually meant to embrace the arousal. To hold it close and try to bridle it, slip a bit in its mouth, make it work for us and not against us. Maybe the constant tautness is necessary; maybe it’s the oil that keeps us lubricated and rumbling along in our rote day-to-day chores; maybe it’s the one pure thing that circulates through our exhausted systems. I think it might be the force that keeps us from collapsing.

  It’s one of the reasons I take the front path, along the waterfront, rather than the quiet back path when I’m carting linens to and from the laundry room. Walking the shore means walking by the guys; it means either jeers or catcalls, depending on the day.

  “Oh, Big Rig,” sung in drawn-out scale.

  “Hey, Big Rig,” rolled around in a mouth.

  “Hey, Anna,” Gus yells from where he’s sitting in his boat. “Do you know that we had a vote on which of the housekeepers has the best ass? And you won.”

  “Oh, wow, what an honour,” I say, as deadpan as I can manage. “You’re old enough to be my father, you know.”

  There’s a burst of laughter as I flip them the middle finger, but I’m smiling behind it and they know I’m not angry. I’ll take this over the insults that rip from their mouths on a night when Henry has been short with them and they are in turn short with the girls, rough with the boats, jerky with the motors, loud with the dock box.

  “I have laundry to do,” I call. There’s a load of towels in the washer that desperately needs to be transferred to a dryer, so I scythe in between the trees and choose the concrete path that leads past the windows of the lodge bar.

  The shick-shick-shick of rain pants in motion announces his presence before the duck-call voice does.

  “Oh fucking Jesus,” I say under my breath, turning around to foil whatever Jack has planned. He has a look on his face, the same expression we see when he starts to unbutton his pants, or through our cabin window when he hurls rocks onto our roof.

  “I want a piggyback ride,” he drawls, clicking his teeth together. He knows exactly how to goad me. He knows that if he asks—tells—me the right way, I won’t say no. “I’ve seen you with a wheelbarrow. You’re strong, right?”

  “Yeah, okay,” I say, half-joking, turning around.

  I can feel the moment the air shifts between us as he takes a running start. I don’t have time to fend him off. All I can do is brace, and all of a sudden he’s on me, so heavy I stumble backward, and the two of us hang in a second of absolute silence, trying not to fall together. My legs are bent and shaking under the weight, our four arms outstretched for ballast, like a multi-limbed boreal god. Beast with two backs, my mind suddenly offers, and I fight the urge to shudder.

  “Christ,” I hiss. It’s easy to forget, when Jack needles, that he’s older than me, broader than me. That, underneath the boyish trappings and irritating jokes, he’s a man. He presses his chest to my back; his chin is hooked over my shoulder, his wide, belligerent mouth damp on my ear.

  “Bet you can’t carry me all the way to the lodge, Big Rig. Why do we call you Big Rig if you’re not strong enough to even do that?” He punctuates his point by wrapping his legs around me, slotting his lean calves onto the shelf of my hips.

  “Fucking hell, you’re heavy,” I say. And then I start to walk.

  All the wheelbarrowing in the world couldn’t have prepared me for the weight of a man on my back, his thighs digging into my waist as he tightens his forearms around my shoulders. I take it one staggering step at a time, focusing on the in and out of my breath, which is syncing up with the strangely comforting one-two of his. We’re one snarky entity, two dumb humans pressing against each other. I’m too winded to be rude, and he seems to be too focused on not toppling over to snarl
cruelty into my ear.

  I pause for a moment, re-hitching his body on my back. He tightens around me like a parasite.

  “Jesus Christ, Big Rig, use those birthing hips of yours!”

  I dig my fingers into the meat of his calves as a response, and he hisses, and then we both laugh as if we’re surprised, and I stumble by the lodge window where, unbeknownst to me, Tiffany has watched the whole exchange.

  * * *

  Nine weeks with no sexual activity didn’t sound bad when I took the job. It’s easy to eschew physical gratification and keep work relationships running smoothly for the sake of the lodge. Who wants to experience a breakup or a meltdown up here? Who wants to come face to face with a pissed-off lover every hour of every day? Better to pull up your bootstraps and keep your clothes securely in place, at least for sixty-seven days.

  But that buzz, which at first I thought was some side effect of lack of sleep, starts to shift; it spreads its wide palm over the span of my head, cupping my skull with strange warmth. It becomes a hum in my gut; a quiet ringing in my ears that I only notice when I lie down at night; an elevated heart rate that seems to keep me propelled and manic. I think, at first, that it’s fear, that emotion that’s linked to my uncertainty, the inability to let my guard down for so many reasons.

  But it’s not fear. The buzz amplifies with every shower taken in the women’s section of the bathhouse, where the outdoor urinals are visible from the windows, where men taking a piss could peek in at us if the curtains aren’t drawn properly. It intensifies when I realize that I’m a bit in love with each of the young men on staff, and some of the guests, even some of the fishermen who are far too old for me, white-haired and fatherly. It grows stronger when I realize that even makeup-free and grubby, I’m still, peculiarly, wanted. Sweaty, filthy, or three days without a shower or a hairbrush—it doesn’t seem to matter.

  This is a strange kind of power I haven’t experienced before. Normally, I feel colt-legged and awkward. My dating life has been patchy and mostly painful, and I’m used to being alone. In fact, I mainly enjoy it. But here, something about my uninhibited rudeness, my brusqueness and bare face, makes me someone worth pursuing.

  I’m the strongest, rawest version of myself. Without the anxiety that comes from commuting, flirting, trying to be the coquette, putting on blush and lipstick and doing my hair, I have become myself. I’m thoroughly wanted. And I also thoroughly want, spooling in that raw feeling and looping it back around the people who created it. Arousal becomes unharnessed. There’s freedom in being uncaring and in being a little bit wild. It’s less clichéd than feeling simply sexy. It’s not the same as being turned on. Instead, it’s related to the raw environment around me. There’s a filthiness to having a limited sexuality in a limitless place. It’s something primal, related to love.

  * * *

  Emma, Alisa, and I go back to Cabin 4 every night the Beaulieu party stays at the lodge. It becomes an amazing secret. The other staff members know we’re up to something, since we’re not spending time in the guideshack, and we show up to breakfast tired-eyed and grinning like fools, but they can’t quite figure it out.

  One night, all nine of us wear hats that we’ve found in the cabin and in mouldy closets around the lodge: bucket hats, trucker hats, bug-net hats, rain hats. The next night, we play Supertramp as loud as we can, and take turns proving our bravery by touching the electric bug zapper Jasper has brought with him. The following night, we invent a card game called Tequila for Breakfast, a frenetic mashup of the games Signal and Spoons. One night, Emma and I stagger to bed at 2 a.m., and Alisa stays up to watch the sunrise with the six guys, shoulder to shoulder on the rocky shore lip, wide-eyed and beautiful in the burnished early light.

  Most of all, we marvel that they never make us feel uncomfortable. Despite the raunchy, twentysomething sexual tension strung tight between our bodies like rope, the guys never make any moves. They don’t bug us, even when we’re drunk out of our skulls and our defences are lowered. In our cabins, late at night, the girls rank the Beaulieu boys in terms of who we’d have sex with and who we’d pass on. We make the crudest remarks about their bodies and their mouths and their fingers. They probably do the same about us. But when we’re all together, we give wobbly, giggling high-fives across the table. We’re allies, not competitors. We’re friends, not pursuers and prey.

  It’s as if the Beaulieu boys have been brought to the lodge to make us happy again. We were beginning to get sad and tired. And then these six young men tumbled into our lives, and fed us their fathers’ booze, and made us feel human. They don’t take us for granted, even though we make their beds every morning and serve them dinners every night. During working hours, we all keep our distance, aside from a few well-placed pinches and sly grins, but when night settles, I run down the back path to their cabin, my red hair flying behind me. I burst through their door and fling myself onto their bunks, ready for another round of euchre. I’m not just a waitress, not just a housekeeper, not just a servant—I’m a friend.

  On their last night in camp, the entire Beaulieu group has a wild party. They’ve printed T-shirts for themselves—beige, baggy things with a picture of a fish (a salmon, incongruously) on the front and a saying on the back: A woman who has never seen her husband fishing doesn’t know what a patient man she married. Doug, the leader of the pack, gives each of the girls a shirt. When he hands one to me, I feel my eyes fill; I look down at the fabric so that I don’t get teased. Later, when it gets dark, every person at the lodge—staff members, manager, guests—goes down to the dock, wearing our new clothes, and we watch Doug set off the feeble fireworks he’s brought with him. As each red and green starburst goes off, as the crowd oohs and aahs appropriately, Emma and Alisa and I move closer to the Beaulieu boys, and the nine of us find one another’s hands. In the dark, with all eyes looking up to the sky and our fingers interlaced, I feel strong again.

  When their group leaves on a hungover grey morning, we fly into their arms before they get on the plane, even though Henry’s watching us. Those six Beaulieu boys pick us up, one at a time, me and Emma and Alisa, and they spin us around, murmuring platitudes in our ears, telling us how good we are, how strong we are, how they’ll never forget us or this summer or this lake or those card games. We try not to cry into their necks. We bow our heads so Henry doesn’t see the way our eyes glitter. We promise to stay in touch, but somehow, I know that I’ll never see those beautiful boys again.

  * * *

  The next day, I sit at the picnic table and look down at the guys pulling boats for the umpteenth time this summer. They’re the same as always—rude and rough, loud and joking, shoving each other and yelling half-insults in my direction. I’m trying to read, but all I’ve done for the past ten minutes is trace and retrace the same paragraph with my eyes. My six new friends have left, and I feel dull and forgotten. The mottled, colourless sky doesn’t help my mood. The final two weeks of the summer seem to stretch out in front of me, matte and humourless, and I wonder how, without nightly euchre games, without strong rye and swing dancing between the bunks of Cabin 4, I’ll slog through.

  There’s a shout a few feet away from me, and my attention moves from the book in my lap to the way the boys have straightened up and are looking out at the horizon, their hands raised. I squint to see what they’re motioning to when the air pricks with static; the hair on my arms tilts to the side and then stands straight up. I’ve never felt something as immediate. Something slippery and animal inside of my body curls up, my guts aware of the impending change in weather before my brain is. My gaze snaps from the horizon back to the boys, and in that one eerie moment, they all slant their heads at the same time, as though hearing something I can’t.

  I’ve never seen the boats pulled in storm weather. I’ve heard talk about it, how guests sometimes get roped into helping if they’re around and if the dock is short-staffed because guides are still coming in off the lake. But caught out of the cabin, this is the first t
ime I’ll see it for myself. The rising wind ruffling the hair around Wade’s nape. The slight colour of panic in Aidan’s eyes.

  The boys file into a line, hustling toward the first boat. And then they stop, right below my legs.

  Jack peers up, looking at me. The rest of the boys stand behind him, legs akimbo. I shift, widen my thighs—let him ask for it, that raw part of my brain entreats. The boys’ eyes are volatile in the dim light. Rain is coming fast. Even I can tell; I can smell the storm on the shoulder bones of the thick wind that is curling my hair around my head. The meat of my mouth swells with the rising electricity in the air. The other girls are spending their night off in their cabins, wrapped around magazines and headphones, but I remain outside, stubborn. Tomboy, rebel, fool. Explorer.

  Jack rolls his tongue around. I see it through the skin of his cheeks.

  Ask for it, ask for it, beg.

  “Wanna help?”

  The shore is bare; I’m the only one around. Where are the guests? Caught out? Back in their rooms? I didn’t notice them come in, didn’t notice them walk by. What have I been doing?

  Yes. I want to. I want to help.

  “There’s only one rule for boat pull,” Jack continues. “Don’t fall.”

  “If you fall,” Aidan repeats for Jack, speaking to me like I’m an idiot, “we hump you.” He speaks gleefully, his face speckled with wet clay from the waterline, and the storm starts to unfurl itself behind his head, moving across the lake. I can see the lightning from where I’m standing on the far shore. I forgot about that crude boat-pull ritual—if someone is clumsy enough to trip and fall while pulling, the other boys shriek and pile on top of the victim, thrusting their hips. Humping. I roll my tongue in my mouth, too, tasting the request. Jack stares. Aidan laughs, a harsh sound like the wind, and Gus joins in.