Dirty Work

by Anna Maxymiw

  All of a sudden there are too many things to concentrate on. Don’t slip on the wet rails. Don’t get your leg trapped under the boat. Don’t stop pulling no matter what because if you stop someone else will have to take on all your weight, and injuries could happen. And now don’t fall, even on the dry, safe shore, because if you do—if I do—I get swarmed. I fail.

  But this is electric. My spine feels straight again. The sky is steel and swirl and silver, the clouds ripe stones about to tumble into one another and split apart over our heads. How could I have ever thought this was only one colour, something flat and unappealing? My palms sweat; my eyes are wide. And then I slither out of my seat, scud down onto the shore in one hurried movement, all limbs, and land in front of them, my hands on my hips. Jack nods.

  “Grab the rope,” Pea says over his shoulder as he walks to the first boat.

  I stand shoulder to shoulder with the boys, staring at the canoes in front of us. I think to myself that from out on the water, from the vantage point of the storm, we all look the same: dressed in the same colour, heads bent the same way, necks tight with anticipation and desperate laughter. I can smell our end-of-day bodies—shadfly moult, briny hair, dust and grime—and as we shift and tighten the ropes in our hands, we feel one another’s muscles slacken and respond like lake waves. I’m at the waterline, my feet on the sacred boys’ ground; my hands are around the boat rope, palms carving a new path. Pete straightens up near the back of the boat, and as he opens his mouth, I twist the rope around my hands. I huddle into Jack and Gus and hope that one day I’ll get to touch the gunwales, maybe get to skitter across the rails, too. I hope that I become nimble, that I don’t fall, that Henry doesn’t come and see me hunkered down with the boys and tell me to piss off back to the upper shore. I hope that I can pull as well as they do, and then Pete starts to count and we breathe together, an intricate braid of bodies, and then we pull.

  NO TO IT ALL

  “Hey, fuckers,” Jack calls. “You want a job to do?”

  Syd and I are sitting at the staff picnic table; I’m trying to read and she’s writing letters home. Both of us are tired as hell, and Jack’s voice is as jarring as a jay’s. I roll my eyes and Syd snorts beside me, refusing to look at him and Pea where they’re hovering over us. Jack knows that Sydney and I aren’t technically supposed to be doing work, not until tomorrow morning, but he also knows that of all the housekeepers, we’re the rudest and the most competitive. We’ll stand up to the guys, even if it draws us into a stupid argument. We don’t take shit from anyone. In fact, the other morning, Syd accidentally stumbled upon and then demanded to join the daily—and until then, secret—5:30 a.m. men’s staff breakfast. Up until that moment, this meal was a ritual for the older male workers. Murphy intimated she should leave. No girls allowed—the unspoken rule. Sydney turned to him, without hesitation, and said, “Murphy, I don’t give a fuck,” drawing out the last word so that the vowel stretched over two rich syllables. She told me that everyone was silent, gaped at her, and then Gus shoved over so she had a space at the table. Now Murphy secretly loves her, and she’ll get early-morning breakfast whenever she wants for the remaining days up here—better-quality bacon, sunny-side-up eggs, and Texas toast.

  Syd flips Jack and Pea the bird, already on the defensive. “What do you want, peckerheads?” I smile behind my book.

  “See that picnic table your fat asses are sitting on?”

  I look down. “Yeah. So what?” I can sense what’s coming, but I’m going to make these peckerheads work for it. Let them say it out loud so we can draw this game out. I’ve lowered the book; my stupid grin is visible, and I can see Pea trying not to smile over Jack’s shoulder.

  “It has to be moved to the staff beach. You lazy housekeepers have nothing to do. Why don’t you do it for me?” Jack is also full-out grinning by now.

  We absolutely, positively don’t have to do this chore. It’s our downtime, and this edict isn’t coming from Henry, so it’s not an actual task. And considering the staff beach is on the other side of the point, we’ll have to drag the table down a few hundred feet of path, and it isn’t a light load. But Jack has prodded at our pride and I don’t want to be seen as lazy. Somehow, I want his approval. And we’re so loopy and giggly-throated, there might be something funny about this.

  Syd and I parrot at the same time: “Oh, damn you.” “It’s our night off!”

  Jack cocks his head. If Henry had asked us, we would have refused, but we know that we’re going to do it. Now it’s just the coquettish dance, the pretending to refuse, the needling to ask us again, the power exchange. It’s an iteration of flirtation, this give-and-take action, the in and out.

  “We don’t have to,” we say, sing-song, flipping the ends of our hair. The coquetry is all the more off-putting because we’re greasy-faced, wearing paint-splattered pants and smudged sunglasses. We stink of sweat and young woman, the best kind of perfume.

  “Prove you’re strong.”

  “Say please.”

  “Fuck no!”

  So we move it. Or at least we try to. The table is so cumbersome we can only pick it up and carry it a few feet at a time. Neither Syd nor I want to be walking backward, so we continually switch places. As we drag it, Jack walks alongside us, half–bent over, jeering at us, egging us on like some twisted bench boss, and we all start laughing so hard that we end up dropping the table over and over again. At one point, I have to sit and put my head in my hands. It’s the kind of laughter that comes from the deepest part of the body, and it’s the kind that can’t be stopped. It explodes up through the mouth and the nose, and trying to catch a breath only stokes it. By the time we get to the edge of the staff beach, Syd and I are bent over, actual tears streaming down our faces. I’m close to pissing my pants, I’m so uncontrollable. We have to leave our load there, and Jack and Pea end up carting the table down the last few steep feet to the sand. They lift it with ease, moving far faster than Sydney and me, and they roll their eyes as they pass us, but the two of us can barely find a moment to care, because we’re literally on the ground, helpless with mirth, like we’re under some sort of spell. We grab at each other’s arms and shoulders, wiping at our faces with the heels of our hands until Jack and Pea come and stand over us.

  “Fucking animals,” Jack says, shaking his head, but I think I can hear a wisp of something other than disgust behind his words—something like respect, or at least tolerance.

  * * *

  Away from Kesagami, Jack and I wouldn’t look twice at each other; we wouldn’t even be friends. He relishes small-town slang, makes homophobic, racist, and misogynist jokes too often for me to count. He hates Toronto; hates any big city for no obvious reason, maybe because he’s scared of them. He has an eerie ability to assess a person and see their fraying seams—and then take advantage by lashing his words into those weak spots until his prey splinters. Most of the girls on staff just roll their eyes at Jack and push past him. I’m the one who lets him in, and he uses this entranceway to wipe his feet and make himself at home.

  The only time Jack is consistently tolerable is when he’s interacting with Tiffany. I like watching him and Tiff speak, because they’re startlingly tender with each other, and I like when someone’s better half throws their usual demeanour into harsh contrast. Tiff humanizes Jack, and if she wasn’t here, he would be unbearable—or maybe he would be in my bed.

  But I don’t want to date Jack. I want to engage him; I want him to challenge me. It’s so rare that I meet someone who will fling my rhetoric back at me without blinking; here is someone who is my verbal match, who won’t hesitate to take me down a peg or three. It’s disgustingly thrilling to be excoriated by him, to have someone to spar with. I just want to spend as much time as I can trading barbs with him, watching the way his mind works, learning the ways he picks people apart and examines them, because I know that once we go back to our respective cities, our friendship will end in that slow, awkward way that happens when two peopl
e have nothing tangible in common.

  Jack’s hooks aren’t barbless. He knows how to inflame, and he knows how to toss out something so devastating that his words stay lodged in your mind for hours, days, weeks after the fact. There are many times throughout the summer he’s done that with all of us—he teases Sydney after she’s had a particularly bad breakout by asking her if she shaves her face with a broken bottle in the mornings, and she’s so hurt that she doesn’t talk to him for days; he insists on continuing to call Robin “Flush,” ever since she clogged that toilet, and she hates it but won’t tell him otherwise—but one afternoon, he crosses a line.

  Syd and I are at the staff table, trying to relax. The sun spreads across our skin; our shins and palms, which used to be creamy and well-tended before this summer, are criss-crossed with scabs and calluses. I pick at my nails. When I put my hand to my face, I smell bleach, cooking oil, and dirt. When I close my eyes and let the wind up under the weight of my hair, let the sun warm my cheeks, I feel human again, despite the grub and grime. True, we’re all reluctant for the summer to end, but at the same time, we can’t wait to get back to our respective homes, private showers, hair salons, fresh milk in our coffees, plush mattresses. Every day of the countdown feels like a tightrope walk. Feeling two emotions at once, every single minute of every waking hour, has me strung tightly, wound up and more fragile as the days march on.

  “Hey,” Jack snaps from the shoreline. Syd and I both open our eyes slowly.

  “What do you want?” Syd’s voice sounds soft. It’s one of those days where we’ve already been pushed around by bossy guests and bossy Henry and bossy Sam, where we’re so bone-aching tired that we’re not even watching the boys, not jeering at them. Sitting on the shoreline is always a gamble on days like these, because the boys could be balm or bombast. We were hoping for balm, but it seems like it’s going to be bombast.

  Jack saunters closer to where we’re sitting. He’s full of swagger; I wonder if it’s been a bad day for him, too, because something about the set of his shoulders and the slant of his lips gives him away. The boys trail him like mindless beasts, glee-eyed and almost drooling with some degenerate group-think. Pack mentality, I think. I hold myself still, like a piece of prey might. I hate myself for it.

  “Every time we pull boats,” Jack says, soft enough to be threatening but loud enough so all his acolytes can hear, “it’s you ugly fuckers sitting there and watching us.”

  So far, I’ve mostly kept my cool this summer, as has Syd. As have most of us. Anger usually lasts for a few bright seconds and then fades quickly. It’s the nature of things at the lodge—angry staff members don’t work well together. We’re normally too tired or too busy to be mad. This time, however, my gut contracts. As I stare down at Jack’s grinning face, I see the way he’s high-fiving the other boys thinking he’s really clever, really strong and brave and hilarious for taking the two of us down on a day we were already feeling small, and a mixture of rage and grief, a prickly, cold kind of heat, spreads from the soles of my feet and my groin and under my arms. Rage at his stupidity and sheer meanness; grief at the fact that we seemingly still haven’t garnered his respect, despite working hard, despite laughing at his jokes, despite trying over and over again. Syd and I hadn’t been doing anything except sitting and talking with each other. This is unprovoked, and it feels like a true attack.

  Jack stands, legs spread, on the shore, his too-wide mouth floating in a sharp smile against the background of the water, and his expression is such a potent mix of pride and ignorance that I want to barf. It’s bad enough when he understands the impact his words have on us; it’s ten times worse when he doesn’t. The other boys huddle in a loose circle, giggling behind their hands like children, all of them watching us to see our reactions.

  Sydney and I look at each other again. In a testament to our closeness and how well we know each other, we stand up at the same time, trying to hide our hands, which are shaking with anger. Without speaking, we pivot jerkily, turning on our heels and picking up our books and pens and papers with fast fingers. I’m rattling around so badly that I move quickly, so as not to let on how upset I am. Showing weakness paints a target on your chest. It’s like dealing with our resident bears: don’t let them see you scared; don’t show them your back for too long. Jack’s voice follows us along the path: Oh, now you’re offended. Oh, now you’re pissed, eh? His jeering fades as we start to run.

  As I round a corner, I bump into Gus, who catches me reflexively. I flail in his arms as he tries to hold me out at arm’s length.

  “What the hell is wrong?”

  All I want to do is collapse into his arms and weep, use him as a pseudo-father figure and be comforted. Instead, I brush past him, my mouth opening and closing after I stammer Jack, boys, Jack, ignoring his genuine concern.

  Later that night, I lie in my bunk, the net pulled tight around my mattress. The other girls are puttering around, passing a bag of candies back and forth. I read and reread the same page in my book, my hands finally steady after hours of breathing deeply and keeping my face in my pillow. I’m confused about what happened today and how to handle it for the rest of the time we have left. My pride wants to keep me from ceding to Jack, but the logical side of my brain tells me that perhaps what he said wasn’t the most offensive thing, and maybe the heat and exhaustion is just getting to me. I know he won’t be the one to apologize—I’ve never seen him say sorry to anyone on staff, ever. Emotions are so blurred that I can’t tell if I’m being reasonable or not, and it disturbs me.

  Suddenly, I look up. Outside of the front window, two green ball caps are bobbing, visible through the dirty screen. Two dockhands or guides, frozen in place in front of our door. My gut squeezes.

  “Sydney—open the door.”

  She looks at me with a piece of candy in her mouth, confused by the urgency in my voice. But I know what needs to be done. If they walk by without knocking, this situation is going to fester. If we force the scene, we may be able to lance the boil.

  She hesitates.

  “Right now.” My voice has such an edge that all the girls in the cabin snap their heads around, trying to squint to see me through the film of the net.

  Sydney flings open the door so hard that it bounces off of the outside wall and the sound is like a gunshot.

  There, standing right outside of our cabin, are Jack and Pea. Their hands are in their pockets. Pea has a patient look on his face. Jack looks as close as I’ve ever seen to sheepish, which is still very far from it.

  “Hi,” Robin says, looking up at them as she flicks through a magazine. Alisa, who is visiting from her cabin, moves from where she’s perched on the bench so that they have space to sit. Sydney blinks, stone-faced. My net covers my face like a veil. I don’t lift it as I raise my palm in a lukewarm greeting.

  They filter in and sit down. Pea sits quietly as Jack starts talking, loud-voiced, about his day. Filler conversation. I stay quiet, too—the ten count, a fighter biding her time. I let him keep swinging frantically. Finally, during a moment when he takes a breath, there’s silence. It sticks to all of us. Jack looks at me, but I know he can’t quite make out my expression because of the white netting. Regardless, I raise my eyebrows at him.

  “So?” I ask.

  “Fuck. Sorry,” he says. There’s a whooshing feeling inside of me, like all of my stress has disappeared. That’s all I wanted; it’s the perfect apology. Then the conversation moves onward as Pea artfully steers us in a different direction and starts talking about perch, and we start passing around bags of sweets and cans of pop. That’s the way of the lodge.

  Pea leaves us around eleven o’clock to get ready for bed, but Jack doesn’t, and time flies as we talk. Emma, Syd, Robin, and I are lying in our bunks, and Alisa is sitting beside Jack, eating dried apricots and trying to chew between shrieks. Jack is explaining irrigation systems. We’ve already covered such topics as the Iroquois Confederation, the slow death of the honeybee, pig shit, Mister
Twister jigs, and René Descartes. It’s late, but the conversation is too good, and we zigzag from one subject to another with only guffaws to bookmark our history.

  “Bullshit! Bullshit!” I call Jack on some grandiose statement, and he hurls a piece of candy at me. Alisa laughs beside him, her contagious hiccupping giggle, and then, suddenly, the door swings open.

  Tiffany doesn’t say anything, only stands in the doorway, framed by the deep velvet dark of the forest behind her, and squints into the brightness of the cabin, looking at our faces, focusing on mine last, and then swinging her head to stare at Jack for one hot, trembling moment. As quickly as she arrived, she turns and leaves, slamming the door behind her with full force.

  “Hey, Tiff.” Alisa’s sunny greeting trails off, and it’s punctuated by the sharp slam of the door. “Wait, what?”

  The mood changes so quickly it’s like the Kesagami weather. Jack stands up, suddenly sober. The rest of the girls don’t know what just happened, but I do. We stay quiet as he turns off the light and leaves. We all roll over in our bunks and try to talk ourselves to sleep, but something feels wrong.

  For the entire next day, Tiffany won’t talk to me, and I know that I’ve become the enemy.

  * * *

  A day later, I stand on the steps of the guideshack, trying to get into the building to drop off Aidan’s laundry, when the door opens and Jack’s standing on the step above me, blocking my way. I didn’t realize he had an on-shore day today. I’m torn between shoving past without acknowledging him, or turning and running away.

  “Fuck.” There’s nothing else to say.

  He shifts his weight, quiet for once.

  “Get out of my way.” I climb up a step and try to bump him to one side with my hips. My arms are full with the laundry basket, and he knows that he has me at a disadvantage.

  “No.”