What They Wanted

by Donna Morrissey

  Within ten minutes of Trapp’s sitting down, all hands had cleared out and I was back to the window again, watching as Chris climbed into Ben’s truck.

  “He’ll be fine,” said Cook, clearing off a spot at the table. She sat, lighting a smoke, her lungs mewling like kittens. “Take them lunch. See for yourself.”

  I looked to her questioningly. “I thought we weren’t allowed on the rig.”

  “I take it anyway—their lunch. Long as you leave again. Night crew make their own lunch.”

  The night crew were now pulling up outside. Getting tiredly out of their trucks, they headed to the bunkhouses—to shower before breakfast, said Cook. “Mix some batter, Suzie— Sylvie, is it—while I finish my smoke.”She patted her chest. “I always take them lunch—can’t this past while—no wind. Can’t make the walk.”

  Turning up the heat beneath the bacon and mixing up batter, I listened attentively as she carried on talking about Ben and the boys going to town after work, drinking too much and gone all night—scarcely getting back in time for their morning shift.

  “So I take them a big lunch. I’m their pal then—they like it when I take them a big lunch.” She rattled out a laugh, her little green eyes dawdling over my face. “They don’t want pretty girls then—they got Cook bringing them sandwiches.” She stubbed out her butt. “So now you take it. Don’t go out on the floor, go straight to the doghouse. See the red shed on the rig—by them stairs? That’s the doghouse. Walk up them stairs, turn in the door. Put it on the table and come straight back. That’s what you do. Put it on the table and come straight back. He won’t say nothing he catches you— Pushie won’t. Just come straight back—”

  “Pushie. Don’t quite suit him, somehow,” I said, hoping for a bit of insight.

  “Always takes care of me. Poor Mare. Been gone twenty years. Pushie never forgets I’m Mare’s sister.” Cook wiped at her nose with a bit of balled-up tissue. “Yes sir, always takes care of me. Batter started yet?—second shift’s coming.”

  It was warmish and sunny when I struck across the clearing come noon with a hefty basket of fruit and sandwiches dangling from my arm. I was about thirty feet from the cookhouse when I started sinking in mud—thick, heavy mud that lay like wet cement beneath a scanty covering of grass and weed. Damn, not for the first time my feet were becoming entombed in Alberta mud. I backtracked to drier ground, feeling the wet seep through my sneakers.

  The cookhouse door opened and Cook heaved out a pair of rubbers. “Won’t get far that way,” she called out. “They lost tractors in that.”

  Kicking aside my ruined sneakers, I donned Cook’s boots and started out again, this time keeping closer to the tire tracks arcing around the clearing. The roaring steel mammoth both drew and repulsed me as I neared it. I stepped gingerly up the muddied, red-painted steps and then crept anxiously into its innards, the floors shaking and rumbling beneath my feet. The doghouse wasn’t much bigger than a porch. Laying the food on a table as Cook had instructed, I huddled before its glass front, peering out at the men.

  I saw how, as Ben said, the unrelenting roar of the wenches, the pumps, the screaming jimmies created a sphere of isolation around each man, keeping them from sharing a joke, a thought, or a comment, setting each man off to himself, prowling restlessly about his small corner. I could see how silly encounters or exchanges from the day before would get too much gnawing time, throwing faces into scorn whether the bone was with or without marrow. I watched them cringe before Push as he thrashed about, out-yelling the jimmies in his constant calls for their diligence in the working of his rig. All this for twelve hours straight, twelve days straight, being hailed, broiled, or rained upon beneath merciless skies, constantly dodging moving hunks of metal and iron and chain—I started understanding the men’s glum faces and frayed nerves.

  Standing centre in their misery, drawing their attention as a metal rod draws lightning, was the ill-concealed tension between Trapp and Push. Through the following days I watched as they held silent vigils, staring at each other across the screaming, shaking rig floor; across the short span of the cookhouse; across the steering wheels of their trucks as they passed each other to and from the bunkhouse. They pricked at each other like needles into a wound. And ensuring the daily flow of bad blood was Skin and his ceaseless scratchy snickers, pinching his nose behind Trapp’s back each time he walked past, letting no man there forget his bath in the piss and shit of the sump hole.

  Thankfully, Push never took supper with the boys—always waits till last, said Cook. Still, the tension he created through his frenzied, driven movements on the rig tracked the men back to the cookhouse during the evenings as they sat heavily around the table, their heads hung over their plates, too cross and wearied to talk. Trapp fed its presence with sharp glances that cut through the thoughts of each man present. He stalked each movement of their forks, their knives, from their plates to their mouths. He watched like someone hungry for some word or sign of ridicule. Even the chatty Frederick was looking a mite strained towards Trapp. Mostly, the only one talking was Ben.

  “Long day, long day,” he’d moan through absurdly long stretches and yawns, filling dead air with chatter:“How’s your gravy, Pabs, gonna rain tomorrow, think it’s gonna rain tomorrow, gawd-damned rain, how far down the hole are we, Frederick—hey bud, pass the gravy, man, pass the gravy, anything left in it—more gravy, Cook—damn, these are good spuds, anybody want the last of these spuds?”

  Like a fisherman, I often thought, casting out chatter like a net, hoping to haul attention off Trapp and onto himself. Always that protectiveness towards Trapp. With his infectious smile and abrupt chuckles, he made a good diversion from the intense, silent Trapp, and oftentimes the despondent crew responded to his chatter with murmurs and nods, sometimes showing the whites of their teeth in a laugh over the rims of their bowls.

  I too received a fair bit of attention from Ben—and Chris— during those first days. They’d keep glancing my way through the interminably long supper hours, tallying my smirks and grins, a little apprehensive, I often thought, that I might toss down my cloth at any second and beg a ride back to town. I wondered, too, whether or not I’d stay, given my persistent moodiness. It was enhanced by the constant strain of the crew, no doubt, but also by interrupted sleep—what with the distant roar of the rig, the trucks motoring back and forth from the rig to the camp, doors slamming, voices calling, thumps resounding in the kitchen from the night crew making sandwiches and sometimes pots of soup.

  The phone call home changed all that.

  It was a satellite phone, sitting in a wooden box in the engineer’s quarters. There’d been a problem with the antenna since the day we arrived, and with no other phone at camp, Chris and I were frantic to call home. Father would be released from the hospital by now, and aside from our worries about his health, Chris was dreading Father’s learning about the boat.

  His face was drawn as he waited for the operator to put him through. I stood fidgeting beside him. No doubt every time the phone had rung the past few days they were all expecting it to be Chris. I could see them, Gran in her rocking chair, knitting in the dim light of her oil lamp, for it would be evening back home. I could see Kyle searching through the cookie jar for ginger snaps. And Mother fussing over Dad, who’d be brooding at the window. That first year in university they always made a fuss whenever I called home, the phone being passed around, everybody taking a minute to talk, and Gran being the last, talking loudly as though her voice must carry itself the eight hundred miles to St. John’s.

  Chris leaned forward now, his face easing, calling out hellos to Kyle, who had answered the phone. He was tapping his foot, nervous and excited, telling about his rousty job, the money, listening in turn and passing brotherly jollies to the newsy bits Kyle was passing along. Then Gran was on the phone, and I leaned over Chris’s shoulder, the both of us calling out greetings, sharing the earpiece and smiling at her terse, quavering voice growing louder and louder as she kept
asking after us. We laughed outright when she passed the phone back to Kyle impatiently, saying she couldn’t hear a thing.

  Then Father’s voice, loud and coarse. “Chris, Sylvie, who is it—Chris?”

  “Hey! Hey, Dad,” said Chris, and I gave over the phone, a comforting hand on his shoulder as his face tightened and he drummed his fingers nervously on his knee, listening to Father. Within the minute he was looking more self-assured, his smile returning as he repeated some of Father’s words back to me,

  “Feeling better—looking for his gun—Mother hid it, and good she hid it,” Chris exclaimed. “Sis said that—she said you’d be on your feet in no time—didn’t you say that, Sis?” He looked at me and was instantly back to Father, his face looking drawn again, and I bent my ear to the receiver, listening to Father’s voice, so much stronger, so much hardier than when I’d last heard it. He was chiding Chris for all this talk about a new boat, when he wouldn’t be needing a new boat now, for his brother, Jake, had given him his old one, which was good as new with a coat of paint—

  “Tell him to haul that rotting corpse away from the wharf,” Chris cut in, and he rocked back on the legs of his chair, telling Father in overly loud tones that he was buying a new boat in the fall and driving it home in a new truck, “and big Sis will be sitting aboard with me,” he announced with a wink my way, rocking in his chair and drumming his fingers, nodding to whatever was being said on the other end.

  “And no arguing with Mother,” he ordered, “do as she says, and Kyle can handle everything else till I gets back, couple of months I’ll be back, take you for a cruise in the new boat, one with a cabin—”

  I kicked Chris’s foot, cautioning him against his bravado, and yet admiring the new confidence growing in his voice.

  “… Yeah, it took some getting used to, the noise and all— but I’m there, I’m there,” he said, glancing towards the roar of the rig. “Ben’s been good, he’s been real good showing me around—is that Mother? Put her on, put her on, and don’t forget …”

  And then his voice fell soft. “Hey, Ma, it’s your boy.” He splayed back his shoulders in a good long stretch. “No, no, no, I’m not starving, I’m not eat up by flies—getting a few blackheads, is all—yeah, blackheads—on my forehead—from not scrubbing the grease off, Sis says—don’t worry, it’s good, it’s good—noooo …” He guffawed at her fretting, then squirmed, rolling his eyes impatiently at me as he listened, and yet his tone softened more as he assured her again, “I’m fine, just fine—no, no drinking, no dope—what’s that—dope? How do you know about dope—are you—are you and Father—” He guffawed again, relaxing fully in his chair now, taunting Mother, scolding her. “Getting fat as a bear I am, Sis’s a good cook, did you know that? Ye-es, she’s got me and Ben stuffed with pancakes and spuds, I expect Ben’s gonna propose to her any day—oooff!” He bent over with a grunt as I elbowed his gut, and after a few more assurances and jiving words about her nerves he passed me the phone, chuckling, “Here, tell her, Sis—tell her I’m not getting eat by bears or run over by trains.”

  “Sylvie? Sylvie.” Mother’s voice dropped as I greeted her, and I could see through the distance into the house, at her turning her back to Father, Gran, and Kyle and walking with the phone as far as she could into the kitchen so’s to speak more privately.

  “I haven’t told your father—about the money—it’s too much, too much, we don’t need that much—” Her voice trembled with gratitude as she kept whispering, “We won’t use it all, we’ll keep some of it for when you comes home, my, Sylvie, you must’ve worked hard to save all that money, and now having to give it to us.” And her voice trembled again, filling my heart, penetrating into deeper chambers where too much feeling had been pumped throughout the years and now surged upwards, clogging my throat.

  Chris looked alarmed as I threatened Mother with hanging up, my voice starting to tremble along with hers. She made a tutting sound. “We won’t use all of it then, we’ll keep some for when you comes back—and so you’re working on the rig too—but I thought you had a good job?”

  “He’s a bigger baby than I thought,” I said lightly, “wouldn’t go to work without me there—to scrub his underwear,” I added with a laugh. “Seriously though, it’s not where I wanna be, but I’ll see it through till the fall. Probably drive home with Chris—in his new truck.” I made a face at my brother, and Mother must’ve felt it for she gave a little laugh. “And Dad’s good then, he’s good?”

  “He’s good, but he’s got the rest of us wore out trying to keep him off his feet.” Her voice grew louder now, as though she’d turned back to the room and was talking more to Father than to me. “And he’s fine then—Chris is fine?” she asked, then tutted at her own foolishness, her inability to keep from asking about Chris, even though she was trying so hard to keep her thoughts on me out of gratitude for the money, out of gratitude for the moment, the bigness of the moment, with Father getting well again, and that Chris was fine, he sounded just fine, and I, Sylvie, was right there, working alongside him on the rig—my, what a relief that was, and he was working alongside Ben too—

  Her voice caught on a tremor as though she’d had a big cry.

  “Mom?”

  “Ohh, I’m just being foolish. Hang up now and save your money, let me say goodbye to Chris, and then you say goodbye to your father—goodbye now, and you be good, you watch out now,” and her voice strengthened as though whatever had set her crying was once again settling back down.

  “HOT CUPPA TEA and thick buttered toast makes a strong heart for any kind of day” was Gran’s morning mantra, and one I chanted repeatedly the following couple of mornings as I dragged myself out of bed, scuttled down the hall, ran cold tap water onto my face, bunching my hair into a ponytail. I’d never been early to rise. In my schooldays I’d been coaxed into morning by Gran gently scratching my back, luring me from bed into the kitchen with buttery smells, sitting me before the stove, feet on the oven door for warmth, loading up my lap with tarty jammed toast and mugs of tea. And in my four years of university I’d scarcely met with a morning class—I even switched once out of a cherished psychology course to an anthropological nightmare focusing on eighteenth-century land claims in the Andes just so’s to escape cold floors and early, chatty risers. So the crowded, noisy camp mornings were a trial I hadn’t considered when tossing my apron at Cork and chasing a muddied truck into the bush.

  Yet, fuelled by the chat back home, I darted happily about the now-familiar kitchen. I had the kettle and dampers humming and Cook huffing to keep time as I cooked and cleaned twelve hours straight for the two work crews— thirteen hours, were I to count those swiped moments dawdling over tea and toast with Chris and Ben before the others arrived. For it had become a ritual, those early-morning mugs of tea and toast, bookended by their nightly cribbage games and shots of whisky before bed.

  “C’mon, Sis, have a drink, have a drink,” coaxed Chris as we started our second week into the job. He was bickering with Ben through their first game of the evening. Sitting with them was Cook, nursing a hot toddy. Her cough had been good this past while, but was starting up again. She complained in quick, winded sentences of the tickle in her throat, her lightheadedness from puffing so hard for breath.

  As I was finishing the supper dishes I was drawn to the window, my attention caught by a light, jangly guitar tune coming from the bunkhouse. Pushing aside the screen, I looked out into the darkening evening. A reddish glow burned from the bunkhouse steps. Behind it Trapp’s tawny head took shape. A light switched on over the doorway, sending Trapp to his feet, a mickey of whisky clutched by the neck, the cigarette flung from his mouth. Instantly the light went off and he stood for a second, then sank back into the shadow of the bunkhouse.

  Aside from breakfast and supper, Trapp never entered the cookhouse. “Nothing to do with you,” Ben assured me when I’d asked about it. “He’s always off to himself, just ignore him, is all.”

  “But he seems hostil
e towards me,” I’d persisted, “like I’ve done something to him—or something—what’s going on with him?”

  “Nothing, nothing, slow down, don’t think about him, just ignore him, got to do with me, not you,” he ended with a finality that prevented any further questions.

  Trapp’s butt burned a brighter red and then arced through the air as he tossed it. I thought to say something to Ben, but was interrupted by the roar of Push’s truck tearing across the clearing, the slamming of his truck door, the loud hork as he started up the cookhouse steps. He reamed in and tottered on his feet, his metallic eyes bleary with drink. They widened onto mine and instantly he lurched backwards as though he’d bungled into the girls’ washroom.

  “How you doing, hard-nuts,” greeted Ben. He kicked out a chair, tossing a wink at me as Push staggered forward, reeking of booze, and clutched the back of the chair. “What’s happenin, bud, want some grub—sit down, have some grub.”

  Push slumped onto the chair, leaning towards Cook as she rattled off a cough and lopped her hot toddy over the front of her blouse. “You sick?” he asked, trying for a softness he couldn’t quite reach.

  “Bit of a cough,” said Cook, “bit of a cough.”

  “Take an early night,” I coaxed, offering to mix her another toddy.

  She gave me a grateful look, and shaking her head, said her good nights and ambled off to bed. Push slouched forward, looking to Ben, who was whistling a ditty and dealing out cards. Then he turned to Chris, his chin near grazing the table.

  “How’s your first week, Betty?” he asked, his speech thick.

  “Betty!” Chris’s eyes popped. “Sic him, Sis.”

  “You keeping her greased good?” rasped Push. He bobbed his head towards Ben. “You tell him that, eh—you tell him to keep her greased good—so parts move.”

  “Want some grub—have some grub,” said Ben, and resumed his whistling.

  “Rig pigs,” grunted Push, abruptly, “all they do is eat.” He turned back to Chris. “Parts don’t move right—she burns. The rig burns. You keep her greased. First thing that burns is skin— thin skin, like this here”—he grabbed the bit of cartilage separating his nostrils, pinching it—“and eyelids. Ears. That’s what goes first—when a rig blows. Cauliflower ears. Seen a few cauliflower ears working rigs.”