by Fred Stenson
“All of us agree it’s unsafe to work with Dennis. It’s not right to expose us to a guy that’s screwing up all the time. He could get us killed.”
“Dennis isn’t going to get fired. Theo Houle and I have already talked about it. In my opinion, Dennis is no more likely to cause a four-alarm catastrophe than anyone else, including you.”
“That’s complete bullshit!”
“Fact is, Dennis probably became a much better operator when he hit the deck the other day. You also don’t get to pick who you work with, in this business or in any other, unless you own it. If you see him do something questionable, I suggest you tell him. He can learn. We all can.”
“You’re pretty holier-than-thou for someone I couldn’t get ahold of when Fuckwit had his accident.”
“You’re right. I should have been easier to contact.”
“You say I cause problems just like Dennis. Name one thing I’ve done wrong.”
“It’s what you might do that concerns me.”
“I’m not satisfied with this. Not one bit.”
“Okay by me. I don’t really care if you get so hot you catch fire. Could you ask Marion to come in when you leave?”
Marion stuck to her guns for a while, until Bill pointed out she was only being asked to The Pit to up the numbers trying to get Dennis fired. At that, she wilted.
“You earn respect by doing a good job,” he told her, “which you already do. As for Dennis, he knows he’s getting a break. He’ll repeat his safety training. He’ll be listening this time.”
When Huge came in, Bill gave him the same spiel. The big man seemed incapable of reply. It was possible he longed to say it wasn’t his idea, that Clayton had bullied him, but he did the dignified thing and stayed quiet.
Why not head for Edmonton? That casino on the north side? Remember that machine? The one with the Irish jig music? You had those leprechauns dancing.
All the way to Fort Mac, the Voice droned on. Bill knew a mighty tussle lay ahead.
At the other end, in the condo, he did as he had promised himself. He put a steak in the microwave to thaw. He opened a GSM from the Barossa Valley, swished the black wine around the bell of the glass; sipped. He remembered the forest of lights over the casino entrance as he had passed it. The Voice was at its most incessant then. But he had made it by; he had made it home. Now he was settled in and drinking. He got up and put some music on: the big rumbling piano of Chucho Valdés.
The only problem with alcohol was that between the first drink and oblivion came actual drunkenness. While drunk, the part of Bill that fought the Voice lost power. It could get mushy and uncertain—or, worse yet, playful. Next thing, Bill would be inside Mr. Khalid’s sweet-smelling taxi with the Muslim prayer beads swinging from the rear-view, the ninety-nine names of Allah. One look at Bill, the shape he was in, and Mr. Khalid would start for the casino without being told.
Talk as much as you like, he challenged the Voice. You prattle, and I’ll make a nice dinner and watch some hockey. After that I’ll read a book. The Voice stayed silent, saving its energy.
Bill took his time with everything. He made a marinade and got the thawed meat into it. He drew out his biggest cutting board and sliced and chopped vegetables until they were several little hills around the wood. He pretended that the ball of desire building and rubberizing in his chest was not there. More wine.
In what seemed like no time, the cooking and eating were done. The dishes were in the sink. He carried the wine’s sad remnant to the living room, set the bottle and glass on coasters. It was the second intermission of the hockey game. His success at watching it was such that he did not know the score.
Sitting here by yourself? Drinking alone? Is that any kind of answer?
I like my own company.
Tell me another one. You need decibels, man. Lights. I give you one more hour before you’re thinking about the Native woman and your ex-wives. Whimpering about your kids and your dad.
If Bill could work one thirty-day stretch, spending all his nights in the Chateau Borealis, he was pretty sure he could beat this thing, but that was not a discussion Theo Houle would entertain. Back when Bill was new and had asked to spend nights in camp, Theo had argued against it. Why on earth would he want to, when he had a nice condo in Fort Mac? Bill said he didn’t enjoy the drive. Next, Theo argued that the company was cracking down on expenses and would find Bill’s stays in camp unacceptable. New Aladdin had just accepted delivery of a vessel from an Ontario fabricator, two months late and a million over budget. Bill had allowed himself to laugh.
But he did understand Theo’s objection. It was not the expense but that Bill was turning down relative luxury. If the oil sands made sense at all, it was the sense of money and economic privilege. If someone did not obey those laws, the whole thing swayed in the muskeg.
“I’m single” was what Bill told Houle finally. “Besides, isn’t it a benefit to have an engineer in camp at night? Five minutes away as opposed to an hour and a half?”
Bill won that round, but a thirty-day shift in camp would still be out of the question. It was the sort of thing that would pop up like the devil’s prick in an accident investigation: Bill’s weird love of endless work could void their insurance.
He drank off the wine, checked his watch. It was not yet nine. He got his computer out of his briefcase, booted up, and induced a gambling-addiction site to appear.
“If you stop gambling, that is of course a wonderful sign. Terrific progress! Good for you! But if the problem gambler feels he or she has conquered the addiction, look out! Real lasting progress can seldom be made alone. Progress begins with the admission that you are an addict and always will be.”
Bill went to the extra bedroom. Every wall except the one with the bed against it was lined with books. He searched and searched for something to read, but found nothing that would hold his attention tonight. He got a bottle of single malt from the cupboard and sloshed some amber into his wine glass. But alcohol would also not be enough.
He thought of the binder. It was in his truck, where he’d left it after the failed attempt to go to Jeannie’s. He went to his storage cupboard and rooted in the boxes, came back to the living room with a few photo albums. He needed to look at Ella. She had always given him, not strength exactly, but a modest backbone. Loving but unfooled was the look he remembered, a look with the power of a crutch. It held him up but never let him forget he was crippled.
Ella was not in the first two-thirds of the childhood album because she was the one taking pictures. Gangly Jeannie curled around baby Billy on a blanket in the yard. Billy and his sisters squinting into the crazy noonday sun. Jeannie and Donna modelling white dresses: Jeannie’s confirmation and Donna’s First Communion. He flipped the pages quickly, and he and his siblings grew like animated rhubarb. Fattening, thinning, pimpling; acquiring and losing period hairdos.
When Jeannie mastered the Brownie, Ella appeared. Bill’s favourite was a picture of himself at six. His mother stood behind him, her dark summer forearms on either side of his head and her hands flat down his chest. He could still feel her hands if he tried hard.
As he leafed through, he was trying not to see his father. If pictures of Ella beefed him up, pictures of Tom sapped him. Though camera shy, Tom had not totally avoided being photographed. In the picture of Billy and Ella, Tom was on the edge, cut in half, grinning with his missing tooth on display.
Bill closed the album and stared at the wall, still unsatisfied, still squeezed. He turned to the first of the newer albums, and was soon looking at himself standing next to Ginny, his tall, thrillingly beautiful first wife. Their children appeared and sprouted.
The pictures of Martha and Will always hurt him—more even than the last image of Tom before he died, or the pictures to come of Ella as she got old and ill. To look at himself holding a tiny bundle of baby, then leaning down to lead his children by their gummy hands. Though the children didn’t know it and he didn’t either, he was
about to leave them. The pictures after the leaving hurt him too, the barbs set at different angles. Always a fair woman, Ginny sent him photos of the birthday parties he missed, and the Christmas he spent in a blinding desert in Kuwait. While he’d worked in that open-air plant, dizzy with heat, he’d chanted a mantra about money: the stupid sum the American company was paying him to be there. The sun blazed off the steel, and his loneliness made a sound like warping tin.
He kept at it for a long time, staring at each picture and sipping whisky. He finally closed the album on a page of his children as teenagers and pushed the stack to the couch’s end. He considered what the Voice was saying about good old-fashioned revolving oblivion. How good the casino would feel right now, or at least how not-bad.
But, unlike other nights, he continued to fight. He sat and stared; de-focused his eyes and chanted.
He startled awake. He touched his face and found the couch’s nubby surface printed there. There was a ringing sound but it wasn’t either of his telephones. He understood finally that it was the buzzer for the lobby door.
Light was spraying through the plastic blinds. He got up, took a step, and fell. One leg was asleep. Bill was certain the buzzer wasn’t for him but pressed the button anyway, just to make it stop. It was a surprise a couple of minutes later when his doorbell rang. Through the peephole, all he could see was a gooey substance crossing his eye. He jerked the door open and there was Donna.
She had on a parka bigger than herself. Her bare head sat in a ring of fur.
“Stop staring and invite me in. What have you done to your face? You look like that guy in Moby Dick. The one with the tattoos.”
“Queequeg.”
“That one.”
She pushed past him. He tried to hug her on the way by. “Get off. Wait until I’m out of my coat.”
Bill looked at the clock on the stove. One p.m.
“You must have left Calgary in the middle of the night,” he said. “Or did you stay in Edmonton?”
“It’s Elmer. He’s been sick. I have to have a cat sitter. One thing about the great lesbian sisterhood, you can always get a cat sitter. Anyway, I had to leave early and can’t stay long.”
“That doesn’t seem worth it.”
“You’re worth it, Sunshine. Unless you mean I’m not worth it in which case you can F-O.”
He mumbled an apology.
“Oh stop it. Go make coffee while I chance your bachelor bathroom.”
Bill ground beans and loaded up the coffee maker. He was getting down cups when he heard the plastic blinds clatter in the living room.
“This looks bad in here, Billy,” Donna called. “Like some demented drunk surrounded himself with photo albums, drank a bottle of whisky, and passed out.”
“I was trying to stay in.”
“That’s a mortal struggle? What else is there to do? Singles’ night at the Legion?”
He came with the coffee. “Among other things, I was looking at pictures of you.”
“Ugh. You had anemia but I looked like I did.” She swept up the album, found the right page, and looked at herself. “See? I look sick. I look worried.”
“I guess there were reasons.”
“The local shadow of death?” She turned the album around so he could see one of himself, grinning toothlessly. “Why don’t you look worried, then?”
“Too young. Too dumb.”
“Let’s have our coffee in the kitchen. It’s creepy in here.”
They sat across the table.
“What made you decide to come?”
“This is called a visit, Bill. The idea is for you to be glad.”
“I am glad.”
“Okay, here’s what I want to do in the next twenty-four hours. All you ever read about in the papers these days is the tar sands—and Fort McMurray. I want a tour.”
“Mac’s pretty ordinary.”
“Except for nine cars per household.”
“Are you planning to stay here?”
“Of course. What a question.”
“I’ll have to tell the Newfies to find somewhere else to sleep.”
“Okay. That’s good. Not great, but it’s a start.”
Bill had a shower. They went for lunch, then crossed the bridge and drove north on 63. The first stop Bill made was at the oil sands’ tourist attraction: the buffalo paddock. The buffalo were fairly close to the fence, where they had been fed. Used to visitors, they kept grazing the green path.
“I read about this. This is a reclaimed strip mine or something.”
“An old retaining pond, I think. I actually don’t know.”
“An official viewing place anyway.”
“Right.”
“Something nicer to look at than the rest.”
“They leave trees here and there, to mask the strip mines from the highway.”
“Thoughtful.”
When they were driving again, Donna said, “Be honest with me, Billy. Can this really be reclaimed?”
“All the strip-mined areas used to be boreal forest. Wetlands and bogs. You can’t make a boreal forest in under a thousand years.”
“Will they kill the river?”
“If all the land currently leased is developed, they’ll kill the river.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“A friend of mine told me there’s only one water sampling site between the strip mines and Lake Athabasca. It’s true—I looked it up. I think they’re going with the principle that you can’t find what you don’t look for.”
“You sound greener than I remember.”
“Guess I’ve been paying more attention.”
“Why?”
“Personal reasons.”
“That’s the stuff you’re supposed to tell your sister. Will it make you quit?”
“I doubt it. I need to work.”
“You must have lots of money by now.”
“I go through it pretty fast.”
Donna wanted to see Bill’s plant, and the question was if he could get her inside. He phoned ahead and talked to a few people. It was touchy because they only allowed official tours. Finally, he had to phone Houle, who made somewhat of a big deal out of consenting. He was told to go straight to his own control room and office and straight out again.
“She’ll have to wear visitor ID—and a hard hat.”
“She’ll love the hard hat. Thanks.”
“She’s not a reporter or anything?”
“She runs a travel agency.”
Henry’s crew, staring at Donna, were like yokels at a fair, like she had horns. When he introduced her as his sister, it got worse. He never talked about a family so they’d assumed he didn’t have one. He saved Henry Shields for last, after the others had gone back to work.
“Henry’s from our way,” he told her.
“What’s your job, Henry?”
“Make the big guy here look good.”
“Best of luck with that.”
In Bill’s office, Donna let out a happy yell. She had found the framed photos on the desk. “Jeannie and me on the farm! And your kids! You’re so much more human than we think.”
Back on the road, Donna wanted to know about the village across the lake. Bill explained: Native town that happened to be where the geologists found an oil sands deposit shallow enough to mine.
“That sounds a little familiar.”
“It’s not as bad as when we were kids. These plants are better.”
“Still, big ugly plant across the lake. They can’t be happy. Can we go there?”
On the main street, Bill listened to himself describing the village. He sounded defensive and promotional.
“Standard of living here is okay. Most of the people are old but some of their kids and grandkids are in the industry. A few of the houses are nice, like that one.” He pointed at Marie’s.
“What the frig is that?” Donna was looking at the community centre.
He parked in the centre’s lot and explained Dion’s gif
t. Donna laughed at Bill’s Starship Enterprise comparison. While they were talking, Marie Calfoux came out of her house and started shovelling snow. Bill made a U-turn, buzzed down his window, and stopped beside her.
“Hey, Marie.”
“Mr. Ryder. Thought the tar sands had swallowed you.”
“This is my sister, Donna. Donna, Marie Calfoux.”
Marie bent low so she could see Donna. She reached her arm in and they touched mitts. “Your brother’s showing good manners today.”
“He used to have manners. I can’t speak for now.”
Bill said they had to go before all the restaurants in Mac were full. When they were out of the village, Donna punched him hard on the shoulder.
“You’re a madman. That woman is seriously nice—and good looking—and you were barely civil.”
They agreed not to change clothes when they got to Mac. After a fifteen-minute wait, they were seated in Bill’s favourite steakhouse. Donna was chilled and kept her parka on, zipped to the neck.
“Did I mention you look like a severed head on a fur platter?”
“The point is to be warm. I’m not concerned what I look like in Fort McMurray.”
The waiter came, his hands extended toward Donna.
“I don’t want you to hang up my coat. But I want a hot rum toddy very badly.”
Bill ordered a beer. There was a silence after the waiter left.
“You’re making me feel unwelcome again.”
When the drinks came, Donna unzipped her coat halfway. “Jeannie thinks there’s a woman in your life.”
“Jeannie’s wrong.”
“She says you’re doing the sort of things you do when there is.”
Bill ignored her and poured his beer.
Donna persisted. “Not even in the relatively recent past?”
“I guess there was.”
“You guess? There was someone and what? You broke up? It never got started?”
“Both.”
Donna reached across the booth and swatted at him. “You nut! It can’t be both.”
Bill stared into the kitchen, where smoke had burst from the grill.
“There used to be a woman but there never was a woman,” said Donna. “Okay, it’s a riddle.” She climbed out of her parka but kept it behind her on the bench. “You were interested, but you blew it before anything could happen.”
