by Hamel, B. B.
That big stranger’s baby. Callie and I finish up an hour later. I hug her goodbye and we exchange numbers. Hopefully I’ll have a friend in this town, someone I can talk to, but I definitely can’t trust her with this news about my pregnancy. Nobody can know about it. I can’t risk ruining this upcoming contract negotiation just because I was too stupid to make Samuel wear a condom.
I’m going to keep going forward. I have no other choice really. I feel like I’m spinning out of control, and there’s nothing keeping me from going completely off the rails.
4
Samuel
I’m more prepared to meet the new president this time around. It’s been a few weeks since that introductory meeting, and although I haven’t heard much from her since then, the town is going insane with gossip.
I’ve heard every kind of rumor. People are saying she’s some kind of floozy from the big city, and that she has a string of ex-husbands. Others claim she killed her father to take over the company. It’s all sorts of small-town bullshit, and I don’t pay it any mind at all. I know there’s plenty of crap like that about me floating around out there. You can’t get away from the gossip in a small town like Wheelville.
Still, I can’t help but wonder about her. Not about the gossip, but about who she really is. I haven’t gotten that body out of my mind since the night we spent together. I’ve tried to forget her, almost went home with one of the girls that calls me “Big” behind my back, but decided against it. I just couldn’t bring myself to fuck some pathetic loser when all I really want is Amelia.
I know what people say about me. That I’m some kind of manwhore and criminal. It’s true that I got into some trouble when I was younger, but I’m not that guy anymore. And I’ve slept around, but that’s none of their fucking business. I fuck what I want when I want, and I can’t help it if I’ve left enough satisfied women in my wake that I’ve picked up this stupid fucking nickname. I can’t help it if it happens to be accurate.
I smile to myself as I walk through the offices, wondering if Amelia’s heard about my name yet. She knows all about how I’m Big, and I bet she still thinks about it. I’m positive she’d be blushing if she heard.
I haven’t mentioned my night with her to anyone, and nobody seems to remember it, or at least they don’t realize that she’s the one I took home that night. I can see why: she doesn’t look anything like she did that night normally. In the office, she’s all dressed up in business clothes, but that night she was letting loose, had her hair down, had an air of sadness about her. In the office though, she’s all business.
I sit down at the conference room table across from Ingram and Amelia. I left Roy behind this time, mostly because I want a chance to talk to these people myself.
“I’m glad you came, Samuel,” Ingram starts out. “We have a lot to discuss.”
“We do,” I say, leaning back in my chair. “But I was hoping I could discuss it with Amelia.”
I smile at him and notice the ripple of annoyance that crosses his face, but he quickly gets rid of it. “I’m here to advise Ms. Evans,” he says to me. “Whatever you say in front of her, you can say in front of me.”
“I’m not so sure that’s true, is it, Amelia?” I stare at her with a wicked smile, and I get a blush out of her.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says softly. “But if you want to talk alone, we can arrange that.”
She looks at Ingram and for a second, I think he might scream. Instead, he just stands up promptly. “Call if you need me,” he says, and he leaves the room.
I grin at her openly once he’s gone. “Didn’t think you’d do it,” I admit to her.
She crosses her arms. “You think I can’t handle you?”
I grin and lean toward her. “I know you can handle me, Amelia.”
She blushes again but meets my gaze. “This is a business meeting,” she reminds me.
“So what? Should we pretend that night didn’t happen?”
“Yes,” she says seriously. “We should.”
“I’m not going to. And I doubt you’re going to, either. How long was it until you could walk straight?”
That gets a rise out of her. “Don’t be so… lewd here, Samuel,” she hisses. “We’re supposed to be talking about the contracts. Is this why you wanted Ingram to leave?”
“Yes,” I admit. “It’s exactly why I wanted him gone. I want to be honest with you.”
“Saying lewd things isn’t honesty, Samuel.” She stares at me, and I get a chill. This woman isn’t some weak girl here to piggyback off her father’s legacy. I can see it in her expression, and it makes me want her even more. “We have a serious job to do.”
“You’re right.” I lean back in my chair. “Why don’t we get started then?”
She nods curtly, opens a binder, and starts talking.
I honestly can’t follow most of what she’s saying. She’s laying out market valuations, company prices, global trends, the sort of shit that I never pay attention to but probably should start now that I’m union head. I try to track her argument, but mostly I get lost watching her lips moving, and thinking about those lips wrapped around my cock.
This is going to be harder than I realized. Amelia is goddamn sexy and I want her so badly it almost fucking hurts, but on top of all that, I don’t know shit about contracts or any of that garbage. This is just some job that got shoved on my plate because nobody else wanted it. So here I am, staring at this sexy fucking woman, wanting to take her right here on this conference room table so badly it almost hurts.
When she finally finishes, I just watch her quietly, trying to digest it all.
“So you see,” she says finally. “We need to work together.”
“Because of,” I reach out and take the binder from her, “global trends?”
She nods a little. “That’s right.”
I toss the binder down onto the table. “I don’t know what global trends have to do with the hardworking folks out there.”
She frowns a little. “I said already, it’s all connected. The performance of the company is connected to the performance of the workers, and—“
“Amelia,” I say, shaking my head and grinning. “I had no clue you were such a nerd.”
That makes her flustered, which was my point. “Nerd? What? I’m just, I’m trying to explain,” she stumbles.
“Listen to me,” I say. “You want to work together. I can get with that. But in the end, we’re at opposite ends here. I want what’s best for my people, and you want what’s best for the company.”
“We can do both,” she says softly.
“I don’t think we can,” I respond. “I think we’re going to have to struggle. Since when have big businesses ever given a shit about the little guy? We’re the definition of the little guy.”
She chews her lip for a second. “You care about them, don’t you?”
I nod once, feeling serious for once. “Yes, I really do.”
“Good,” she says. “I don’t know them. Hell, Samuel, I don’t know this town anymore. I’ve been away for a long time, and this job, this whole company, it was just shoved in my lap. I want to do a good job for everyone, but I’m going to need your help.”
I don’t want to believe her, but I do. There’s something so earnest about what she’s saying, so simple and honest. For my whole life, I’ve hated people like her, people in power. The shareholders, the company’s profits, they’ve always mattered more than the workers. Crazy Tommy was a decent guy, but he was still a rich asshole that gave himself big fat bonuses every single year, while we toiled away in his fucking mine, barely making ends meet. They want to slash our benefits every few years, and we have to constantly fight for everything we have. Even basic things like standard of living raises and workplace safety are a constant concern for us.
Amelia represents those people, the people that have historically kept us down and sucked our fucking blood dry. But she’s not one of them. I can te
ll she’s not, although she might be one day. She’s too new to all this, too clean and pure. She seems like she cares too much.
I don’t want to ruin her, but I want her to see the world for what it is. She knew I was a miner from my fingernails, from the coal dust that’s shoved in there from hours and hours of working down there, coughing up coal and letting it stick to the sweat on my skin. She doesn’t know what it means to be dirty.
But I want to show her. “You really want to help?” I say finally.
“Yes,” she answers.
“Okay then.” I stand up suddenly. “Let me take you on a tour of the mine.”
She looks surprised. “When?”
“Tomorrow,” I say. “Wear something comfortable.”
“Uh,” she says, standing. “What do you mean, comfortable?”
I grin at her. “Not that sexy skirt or those fucking heels that make your ass look fantastic.”
She blushes again but looks annoyed. “Samuel.”
“Just stating a fact. You look more like you want to get fucked than like you want to discuss contracts.”
She shakes her head. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“See you then.”
I turn and leave the conference room. Ingram is lurking nearby, but I don’t even bother looking over at him. I know he’s a lost cause. If he could have his way, he’d cut all our benefits, give us minimum wage, and let us all die down there in the goddamn darkness of the mine.
Amelia might be different, though. I just have to show her the people she supposedly wants to help and the conditions they work in. I want her to see how real all this is. It’s not just numbers on paper, these are living humans with dreams and love and hope.
I’ll open her eyes. And then, if that goes well, I’ll open those pretty legs and get another taste of what I really want.
5
Amelia
We ride in this small trolley along old, weather-beaten tracks. It’s just me and Samuel, although Ingram was angry when I told him that I would be going alone. I wanted to get a taste of this mining thing for real, and not have Ingram whispering in my ear the whole time.
“Wear this,” Samuel says, tossing me a white hardhat as we approach the mine’s entrance.
I put it on my head and connect the chin strap. Samuel nods at me as the trolley slowly moves into the mine, and daylight slowly turns to gloomy dark.
I can feel Samuel standing close to me. “What do you think?” he asks me.
I shake my head. “It’s… terrifying.”
He laughs softly, but he doesn’t disagree. The ceiling is about ten feet above our heads, cut smooth and flat. It’s clearly an unnatural tunnel. The walls are even, although they crumble here and there. Piles of tools and old machines line the tracks as we go deeper and deeper. There aren’t a lot of lights on at the entrance to the mine, and I can’t see all that much. It’s almost eerie, how strange it is going deep into this mountain. The floor’s sloping downwards, and I start to get the feeling of weight all around me.
“Tunnel widens up here,” he says, “but the ceiling drops. You ready?”
“Ready,” I call back to him.
We round a bend, and he’s right, the ceiling drops down. In fact, I have to tilt my head to the side to keep it from brushing against the stone. Samuel’s crouched down, grinning at me, and the trolley keeps moving deeper into the mountain.
I look away from him. We haven’t come across any other people yet. “Where are the workers?” I call back to him.
He shakes his head. “I’m not taking you to any active spots.”
“What?” I ask him. “I thought you wanted me to see them.”
“It’s dangerous,” he says. “I can’t risk you getting hurt.”
I make a face and he grins at me. I let it go, turning back ahead as we wind around another bend. The ceiling mercifully gets higher again, and Samuel stands back up.
Ahead, there’s a larger chamber, and the trolley slows down. We stop in the middle of it and Samuel hops out. I follow him, climbing over the railing, and we walk toward a bunch of things that looks like tractors.
“These are our tools,” he says. “These big fuckers do most of the actual mining.”
“You’re not down here with a pickaxe?” I ask him.
He grins at me. “Nope, absolutely not,” he says. “That’d take too long. We’re all about efficiency at Evans Energy.”
I grin and look back at the big machines. I’ve seen pictures of them before, and some videos that Ingram made me watch, but seeing them in person is a whole new experience. The chamber thins out at the edges, and there are shafts cut in the rock that lead outward. The machines look like they’re parked near each shaft, and I think they could just barely fit through there.
“This way,” Samuel says, leading me away from the machines. I follow him back across the tracks. He heads over to one of the shafts, grabs a flashlight from a little bench shoved back against the wall that’s covered in equipment and soot, and steps forward. I follow him into the dark.
“We don’t use this shaft much anymore,” he says as we walk. “We used to, back before coal started going downhill.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Cuts,” he says simply, and I look away. Evans has laid off a lot of guys in the last ten years, like every other coal company. “Here, look at this.”
We stop in front of a smooth wall and he runs his hand along it. I watch as he crumbles some of the rock and grins at me.
“Coal,” he says.
I laugh. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.” He shrugs. “Nothing special, right?”
He started walking again, but the ceiling starts to get lower here. He has to stoop to keep going, and the ceiling is maybe only a few inches above my head. The shaft itself is maybe ten feet wide, barely enough for us to walk side by side, and I suddenly feel incredibly trapped.
“You guys work in this?” I ask him. “I mean, this is so…”
“Tight?” he asks. “Yeah, it’s always like this. We don’t waste time building big tunnels. This is safer, believe it or not.”
I bite my lip. “I guess that makes sense. You move less rock, so it’s less likely to collapse.”
“That’s right.” He stops and I pull up next to him. “We shouldn’t go much further. This shaft hasn’t been used in a while.”
“So it’s dangerous?”
He grins. “We haven’t had a collapse in a while, but it happens. Come on.” He turns and leads me back toward the main chamber.
As we step in, there’s a low, grinding noise. I can feel vibrations at my feet, and Samuel lights up. “You’re in for a treat,” he says.
A few seconds later, one of the big machines suddenly comes out from one of the nearby shafts, followed by three guys walking behind it. The guys park the machine, and I suddenly recognize Roy from the first meeting. The guys spot us and walk over, grinning.
“Hey, Samuel!” Roy shouts. “The fuck you doing here?”
“Guys,” Samuel says. “This is Amelia Evans.”
The three guys stop in front of us, covered in soot, but smiling. Roy nods at me, and I shake the hand of the other two guys. One’s younger and introduces himself as Vernon, and the other one’s around Roy’s age, soft and pale, named Boone.
“You guys working the new shaft?” Samuel asks.
“Sure are,” Roy says. “What do you think of the mine so far, Amelia?”
“It’s… terrifying,” I say honestly.
All four men laugh. Samuel has a little gleam in his eye.
“You show her the spot yet?” Boone asks Samuel.
He shakes his head. “Not taking her anywhere active.”
Vernon scoffs. “Come on, boss. Let’s show her how it really looks.”
I glance at Samuel, but his face is hard. “I said no.”
Vernon looks away, frowning.
“Come on, Samuel, take me,” I say to him.
He
glances in my direction. “Amelia—”
“I’m the boss here,” I say to him. “And I want to see a real shaft.”
He cracks a little smile but doesn’t say anything. “You sure?” he asks.
“I’m sure.”
“Okay then. Fuck it. Let’s show her how we do it, boys.”
We walk back over to the machine and Vernon gets it started. The guys get it going, walking it back down the shaft, and I follow behind them. Samuel stays next to me as we go deeper and deeper down into the shaft. Samuel has to stoop again, but he keeps pace, probably used to walking through these tight spaces.
I feel completely crushed, but excited. We walk for maybe ten minutes in silence, the only sound is the roar of the machine as it rolls along. Finally, the guys call a halt, and they shut down the tractor.
Samuel grins at me. “Here we are,” he says. “Special, right?”
I look around and shake my head. “Looks like everything else.”
“Listen though.” All the guys go quiet. “Hear it?”
Suddenly, I do. It’s a crackling, like it’s raining inside here, with some snaps mixed in. I move toward the wall, and it gets a little louder.
“What the hell?” I ask.
“That’s the mountain settling all around us,” Samuel says softly. “Sounds like that all the time in these active shafts.”
“Scary as hell,” I say softly, and the guys laugh, but not loudly.
“Fire her up, Vernon,” Samuel says, and moves me back away from the guys and their machines.
I watch as they work, practiced and silent. They communicate with gestures and touches, but mainly they just do their jobs. The tractor cuts forward into the coal and the wall, and the guys help make sure the good parts move down a conveyor belt and into a collection bin. The bin’s mostly full already, so they don’t cut too long. As the machine cuts, Boone works supports up along the ceiling, this mesh-looking steel wire square.
