During a break, the mentoring teams gather with other senior miners in the lunch area, a relatively quiet place partitioned away from the noise of the mill. It has rows of long tables with plastic chairs, a microwave, a refrigerator, and a counter with a sink.
Hal’s hand rests between Ashley’s shoulder blades while he guides him to a chair at the end of one of the long tables.
Ashley plops into the chair, which collapses, and he falls flat on his back to uproarious laughter.
Hal says, “Well, now how did that happen, Purrfesser? Here, let me get you another chair.” He does so in the most apologetic manner and then asks Ashley, “So, how long are you going to stay a virgin?”
After that, general and relentless Ashley-bashing about his lack of sexual ability lasts for the duration of that break.
In the bathroom afterwards, Ashley sidles up to the urinal beside Lew and says, “I’m not a virgin, you know. I lost it when I was fourteen and I’ve been with at least a dozen different girls since then.”
Lew nods and says, “Let it pass. Don’t show they’re getting to you.”
On the walk back toward the centrifuges in the mill, the next stop on the orientation, Lew thinks about his own limited sexual experience. He’s still with Angie, Ang for short, his one and only grade ten sweetheart. They met in high school in Saskatoon while playing in tournaments for the collectable card game Magic. She too is a “ginger-kid” with freckled forearms like Ted’s, and is lanky and as tall as Lew. The bangs of her shoulder-length russet hair usually hang over her eyebrows. She’s one of the most hilarious people he’s ever known. Her humour is infectious and they always make each other laugh. Even after a fight, they both giggle and chortle their way into bed.
He can’t imagine his life without Ang — can’t see any possible reason to change that.
Back in the company of the two senior miners, Ashley, with a nasally whine, says to Hal, “I’ve been with dozens of girls, you know.”
Lew thinks, so much for my advice.
Hal immediately replies, “Name them.”
Ashley snorts and clears his throat. With a croak in his voice he says, “I’m not telling. It’s none of your business.”
It’s none of your business, Lew thinks. Not their names or even a first name?
Ashley opens his arms in a plea to Ted who, grinning, says, “I’m not hearing any names.”
Lew quickly asks, “Just how big are those centrifuges? They’re fricken huge. What’s their capacity?”
His questions distract the older men from Ashley and get the group back on its orientation track.
After the three days of orientation are complete, they start their first day of actual work.
Hal says with a sneer, “You newbs have a job so simple, even the Purrfesser here can handle it.” He goes on to explain that they are merely to watch a monitor’s display of flow rates of the tailings’ conveyors. Lew and Ashley are not allowed to touch the monitor’s controls. They are only to advise a Senior Miner if the rates drop below, or rise above, the limits clearly posted, in red, on laminated sheets attached to the display.
“Otherwise,” Hal continues, “You watch your assigned tailings trails from the final centrifuges. The tailings spew from the centrifuges’ discharge chutes onto conveyors. Now, these open conveyors only run inside the mill. Just on the other side of the mill wall are the enclosed trunk conveyors that send tailings to the tracked spreader-derricks. I trust, Purrfesser, you remember our two-kilometre drive to the tailings piles the other day?
“Now remember, ‘gunk’ builds up here,” Hal points to the discharge chutes connected to the open conveyors, “and there.” He points to the area where the open inside conveyors flow into the external, enclosed trunk conveyors.
“So remember. Your only job is to ‘de-gunk.’ I don’t want to hear any alarms and I especially don’t want you two running to me or Ted because you let things get out of hand. Got it?”
Ashley’s face falls when he learns Hal wasn’t kidding when he said the most complex piece of machinery they would use was a shovel. He nods, his head tilted downward. Lew gives Hal a thumbs-up.
The whole morning is spent learning how to operate the shovel most efficiently, with the least contact with the constantly moving conveyors. Ashley, clearly bored by his unwanted summer job, complains to Lew, “My life is reduced to a kilometre or so of conveyors and a red digital display.”
Lew considers it a challenge to keep the monitor’s readings at optimum levels. He sprints to the discharge and trunk chutes to clear the gunk when he sees the flow rates fluctuate.
Ted yells at him from the centrifuge platform, “Hey, Goddammit! No running! Fast walk only.”
Subsequently, he fast walks in a pattern from chute to chute and back to the monitor display, always moving, always watching.
Ashley is red-faced before the shift is even halfway done, and he sweats profusely. He leans on his shovel while he watches the flow monitor from under droopy eyelids. Lew begins to watch Ashley’s conveyors also and calls to him when he notices a gunk buildup. Ashley can barely drag himself to the problem areas.
Soon, Lew finds he has doubled his own workload trying to keep Ashley’s flow at optimum too.
Only once does he notice Hal sneering down at them from a centrifuge platform, his body rigid and arms tightly crossed.
He can see those shark-eyes boring into Ashley.
But Hal doesn’t say anything to either of them.
When that first shift ends, Lew is exhausted. He has never been so physically active for such an extended period in his life. On his six kilometer bicycle ride from the mine site to the Motel 6 in the town of Liverwood, where he rents a room with a kitchenette by the month, he has to stop twice to catch his breath and rest his legs.
The next day, Ted tells him to watch only his own readings and his own conveyors. Stiff and sore from that first day of work, he doesn’t argue. Hal consistently hangs around Ashley, which seems to motivate him, seems to improve his attitude, and his efforts are slightly more than half-hearted.
During a break on the third day of work, everyone settles to eat at the rows of long tables. Ted sits next to him. Ashley plops down across the table on an end seat. There are bags under his eyes and a pale, drawn expression on his face. When he flings open the lid of his cooler a brown rat squeals and launches itself out at least three feet vertically.
Ashley screams. Lunging backward, he overturns his chair and crashes into the wall behind him. He screams, “You assholes destroyed my lunch.”
He covers his crotch with both hands and runs from the lunch area.
A moment later, someone yells over the laughter that the rogue rat is still at large.
Crouching in a corner, the rat defecates and hisses at everyone in general and at Lew in particular because he is closest.
Lew reacts immediately. He is mortally afraid of hantavirus and hates rodents, believing all are potential carriers. He dumps the contents of his cooler and slams it bottom-down on the hapless rat, breaking the handle completely off.
He plops back on his chair, hangs his head, and tries to stop shaking. Bright lights flash at the periphery of his vision. Now he feels bad about killing a helpless creature, regardless if it’s a hated rodent, but it’s the rat or me. He tries to take deep, slow breaths.
A couple of miners are civil enough to dispose of the rat’s body and both coolers in black garbage bags stored in the lunch area. A guy wearing dishwashing gloves cleans up the rat’s remnants with lots of dish soap and half a roll of paper towels.
While the cleanup proceeds, Lew senses a figure looming over him and raises his eyes. Hal offers him a garbage bag and says, “To stash your food containers for now.”
Lew nods, lips pressed, and takes the bag.
Hal moves his cooler and thermos to the abandoned end seat and settles in.
Ted says to Hal, “Nice one.”
Mouth full of food, Hal replies, “Found it in a live t
rap over by the maintenance sheds when I parked this morning.”
After taking a long drink directly from his thermos jug, Ted says, “We still on this weekend?”
“You bet,” Hal replies. Facing Lew directly, he says, “Hey, Lulubelle. Do you play poker?”
At first, Lew resists going to the regular weekend poker games. He then wonders if maybe that’s not such a good idea. With Ashley gone two weeks now, replaced by a Senior Miner in his sixties and nearing retirement, he thinks these guys might get bored and may need a new target to harass.
Sitting for lunch in what has become his spot at the end of one of the long tables, he notices that his new cooler is heavier than it was in the morning when he stowed it in the lunch area. Something has definitely been added to the contents.
In the yammer and banter and laughter, no one seems to notice his caution. Hal, across from him, and Ted, beside him, are arguing about some improbable poker scenario.
He gives his cooler a shake and leans forward to listen. He can’t hear anything inside, which doesn’t mean much. Nothing would be audible through all of the surrounding din. Splaying his hands on the sides of the cooler, he attempts to feel for any indication of movement inside. He gives it another shake and turns his right ear towards it to try and listen once again. He glances around. Everyone seems to be in an intense conversation and completely ignoring him. He slides his hands up to the top of the cooler and slowly pushes the handle down. Stretching out his arms so the cooler is as far from his face as possible, he grips the sides of it with his fingers, takes a deep breath, and slowly pushes the lid upward with his thumbs.
“Lulubelle!” Hal yells.
Lew lurches, sliding his chair backwards. The cooler falls off of the end of the table. He grabs his head with both hands and yells, “For Guy Fawkesakes — don’t do that!”
Laughter fills the entire lunch area.
“Yeah, funny,” Lew yells, half-laughing from relief. “Let me find another rat and some duct tape for you guys. You’re obviously bored and need a distraction.”
Ted reaches down for the cooler and slams it back on the table.
“Thanks.” Lew opens his cooler and proceeds to remove his lunch like nothing out of the ordinary has happened. It’s a litre bottle of root beer inside which gives the cooler the extra weight.
He checks the safety seal on the cap. Even though it is still intact, he says, “You guys trying to poison me? Or is this laced with cocaine or another controlled substance?”
Hal says, “The rat trick only works once a summer. We’ll find something more devious if necessary. And that,” he says, pointing a stick of celery at the root beer, “is to help you work your way up to real beer.”
“I’ll drink this for sure,” he says, waving the root beer bottle. “As for real beer, consider it under consideration.”
There’s no possible way he’ll ever drink booze again.
He drank his first beer near the end of grade eight, which is the time kids all over Saskatchewan do that. But it only caused him an acute hangover and the numbness while drunk didn’t break down any inhibitions.
He tried several times in isolated parks and vacant fields and lots in Saskatoon, but booze actually made his inhibitions worse. Specifically, his murophobia, which he’d had his entire life and didn’t know the cause of, rose to paranoid levels so intense he couldn’t even walk into trees or bushes to urinate. He would hear scurrying sounds and feel rodents climbing up his legs. When drunk out of control, his imagination confabulated giant, rabid rats, skulking about on their hind legs like in some low-budget horror movie.
Part way through grade ten, shortly after he started dating Ang, she convinced him to avoid booze totally. She said, “If it makes you sick, why do it? As for me, any booze reminds me of pig shit. And I don’t do pig shit.”
Besides, he didn’t want to end up like his father, Lewis Senior. A binge drinker who somehow scored long-term disability early in his work career, his boozy abuse was all about neglect. Lew Senior missed many school concerts and Christmas plays and was “sick in bed,” even for Lew’s grade eight farewell. But the time that stands out most in his mind is Schindler’s List.
As part of a grade twelve Social Studies project, his class was supposed to watch the movie with a parent, “for guidance,” and then prepare a group report. Ang was in his group.
The high school had procured a number of VHS copies to be signed out and Lew and Ang watched with Lewis Senior. Passing out about a third of the way through, his guidance had consisted of comments like, “Who is this guy? Is this guy real?” and, “Why is a modern movie filmed in black and white?”
The next morning, Ang came to pick up Lew for school and to get release forms signed for the project. Without reading the forms, Lewis Senior asked, “What am I signing here? For what movie, now?”
Ang’s raised eyebrows and exaggerated smile told Lew Junior to grab the signed forms and get them the hell out before an inundation of stupid questions. On the way to school, he wondered aloud what the point was in having a parent present when he didn’t even understand the story? “And what sort of possible guidance does the school think we can get from a hungover parent signing a release form after passing out during the project?”
Ang shrugged and said, “School is generally pointless. But what can you do? It’s all about compliance and marks. Thinking has nothing to do with it.”
Now, here at the mine, Lew thinks, at least the orientation sessions and tests have practical applications. Here, the student gets a modicum of respect from instructors who actually try to teach something, as opposed to making sure rows of desks are perfectly aligned.
His thoughts are interrupted when Ted says, “And considering that consideration, don’t let Hal talk you into shit. Shit only leads to worse shit.”
Hal takes a large and noisy bite of celery and chews with his mouth open while staring directly at Ted.
Although not physically afraid of Hal, Lew is intimidated by the man’s seemingly limitless knowledge. Hal knows way too much about everything and has no qualms about sharing his wealth of information. During an earlier break, Hal compared the salt content of the human body to the shallow, prehistoric sea that once covered part of Saskatchewan. He pulled comparative salt parts per million out of his head. Without pause, he then segued into a pontification on the history of Liverwood Potash Corporation. In one of the areas that would have been a deep part of that prehistoric sea, sat the town of Liverwood.
Hal said, “So when potash was first mined around here in the 60s, local interests, headed by the Asp family, invested in Liverwood Potash. The mine was nationalized by the province in the late 70s, with healthy, healthy profits for the owners,” he added with his sneer. “Then, when all the potash mines were privatized in the 80s, shares were sold back to the Asp family at distressed prices. Then come the 90s and the government of the day changes yet again. Somehow all of the Asp family shares are sold back to the government at market prices making Liverwood Potash the only crown-owned potash mine in the province. Funny the things you can accomplish when you contribute heavily to the main political parties, hey?”
On his next day off, Lew verified Hal’s facts at the Liverwood library.
He didn’t doubt Hal’s voluminous knowledge or his intelligence. Especially considering he had somehow divined what Ashley and Lew both majored in on that very first day at the mine.
Later he asked Ted, “Who would keep all those facts in his head and why?”
Grinning, Ted replied, “Hal’s like the computer from that movie. He knows everything about everything, however useless the information.”
“The super-computer HAL from 2001?” he said.
“You got it,” said Ted. “Hal’s a space odyssey.”
Lew just hopes that there is no intentional, malicious programming in this particular version of Hal: the Hal who chews celery with his mouth open.
“Anyway,” says Hal, “the root beer is an incentive t
o play poker with us this Friday. We need new meat to slaughter. Most of these losers,” he waves his arm in a broad sweep around the room, “ just don’t got the chops. They’re all too cowardly to take us on again.”
The room erupts in general Hal bashing and a floret of broccoli flies in his direction. Without turning his head, Hal grabs the floret in mid-flight with his left hand and pops it into his mouth. Chewing the broccoli, he says, “I heard you say your girlfriend is gone with her parents to see relatives in Manitoba and you have a free weekend.” Swallowing, he continues, “So I know you’ll be bored in five seconds. Come play with us. Give it a try.”
Ted says, “I say again, don’t let him talk you into shit. But if you really want to . . . ” He trails off without finishing.
Lew thinks, Hal’s right. I will be totally bored without Ang. He says, “I think I am convinced. Where and when?”
Lew has heard that poker nights could turn into weekend-long affairs with some people playing for forty-eight hours or more straight through. He has no intention of hanging around Hal’s basement that long.
Walking to Hal’s house from the Motel 6, he gazes up at the mine’s plume reflecting orange in the setting sun. The sky reminds him of nuclear winter and a horror story he once wrote for a high school English course. The teacher had her class complete a fiction submission to a magazine as the major project for the course curriculum. His story was about life underground after a nuclear war where humans fought large rats for the scant food resources. He sent the story to a Canadian science fiction magazine but it was not accepted.
He received his best high school marks in English and picked it as a university major for lack of a better subject. But he’s clearly not a writer of any sort and school can be so brutal with papers and exams and too many books he’s not interested in reading. At least at the mine, when the shift is over, work is over for the day or for the weekend.
He shifts his backpack higher on his shoulders and the two six-packs of Stella Artois clink inside. He has brought the Belgian beer and a sack of pretzels to share. The gift bottle of root beer is stowed, still unopened, at the bottom of the backpack.
Thorn-Field Page 10
