By Lucy

Now we’re in week two of the shutdown, everyone’s starting to get burned out. I’m looking forward to being laid off, or having the weekend off in some fashion. I need a few days to lay in bed and recover.

My lead hand is getting hit hard with it. He’s was here for pre-shut as well, and he’s been increasingly relying on Tucker to do most of the builds. Also, I know it’s just because he’s tired and he doesn’t mean it, but he’s been losing his temper with me for no reason. I was trying to grin and bear it because I’ve been trying to avoid complaining for any reason so they’ll want to keep me, but if he tells them I’m not a good worker it won’t help me anyway. I’m also worried that if they shuffle the teams, I’ll end up on the Vagabond’s team and that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms.

I finally reached the end of my rope and decided risking that is better than staying and being yelled at, so I found an excuse to pop into the office and ask them to move me. The general foreman had his head down on his desk; in despair, to nap, or both.

We all work hard, even the pencil pushers. The other day, he had to go yell at a contractor responsible for cleaning out the tanks because he was in our way. When we came back from break, they had emptied one of the tanks all over our equipment, some kind of grainy substance. I imagine that was not fun to write up.

The combination of anxiety and lack of rest finally caught up to me. I sat down for lunch and could barely force myself to eat half my sandwich. The Vagabond was watching me with concern – obviously he knows my health problems, but wasn’t going to risk saying anything. We’ve been doing this weird dance of trying to avoid seeming too familiar with each other, without planning it. After Eli abandoned us to go outside for a smoke, we usually just sit in silence on our phones, but he’s started actually trying to talk to me.

It was finally warm enough for us to get out of our coveralls for lunch and sit around in civvies. The first thing Eli did was exclaim that I’ve visibly put on muscle in the last two weeks, which is saying something when he barely knows me.

The first thing I noticed is that the Vagabond’s got a new tattoo. It’s quite large and intricate, covering his entire upper arm down to his elbow, where it peeked out from under his t-shirt sleeve. When I commented on it, I expected him to shrug it off or give me only a terse explanation, but he was more than happy to roll up his sleeve and explain it in great detail. Something about showing off his skin seemed flirtatious. I did laugh internally, though, when he explained part of it as symbolizing wisdom and his spirit guide. What’s she screaming at you now, eh? Cuz you don’t seem to be listening!

What he doesn’t say always speaks louder than what he does say. For example, whenever my trip to England is mentioned, he always drops out of the conversation – because of Rich, presumably.

Had an interesting situation. See, usually the mill hires a bunch of temps to do hole watch. When you have someone doing something in what has been designated a “confined space”, you need someone whose job it is to be alert for emergencies, like a fire watch. This year, they’ve just been pulling the engineers from their posts to do hole watch instead, which has been interesting cuz I love learning about the mill. It’s probably also interesting for them to meet us, because we are the unseen ants that scurry around their buildings, making accesses for them. You’re not technically supposed to distract hole watch by talking to them, but in practice, it’s not taken that seriously. If you’ve got two guys in the vessel, and they’re talking to each other and equipment is flying out the hole, you know they are fine.

We got one job because it was a black liquor tank, and the lead hand who was originally on that didn’t want to deal with the smell. The smell of black liquor changes so much depending on where in the process it is – in this case, it reminded me strongly of pickles. Vinegary, perhaps? I ended up talking to the hole watch about books, because of course I did! My entire Amazon list is books! After the job was finished, he walked over and asked me for my number.

Bold, but makes sense. After all, with the mill moving us all around, it was practically guaranteed he’d never run into me again. And I did like talking to him, so I agreed.

When I got back to the lunchroom, Eli asked me how the job had been, and I did an evil thing. I told him about the guy asking for my number, within hearing of the Vagabond, and honestly because I wanted him to overhear it. I’m mad and in pain.

I didn’t dare even glance at him. I knew he wouldn’t be so foolish as to let anything show on his face. And in a way, I didn’t need to. Just like before, I knew what he doesn’t say speaks louder than what he does say.

Eli laughed and made a couple of jokes about it. The Vagabond said nothing.

Well, there’s my answer.

I regretted it afterwards. I hate leaning into petty stuff like jealousy. But I’m hurting so much, sitting at this table day after day, watching him laugh and smile and shoot the breeze like nothing happened last year. Demanding my time, forcing me to keep secrets. I wanted him to hurt, just a little.

My morale continued to spiral throughout the day, and by 3 PM I was done. I had tried to stagger things so that I could spend as much time as possible away from my lead hand grabbing gear, but the laborer they sent with us is 71 and tends to wander. Sometimes he comes back with gear we need, sometimes he comes back with gear we don’t need and no one asked for, sometimes he comes back with nothing and no clear reason why he wandered off. He’s a sweet guy but it was forcing me to be the one to handle gear, and whenever he brought back the wrong thing and I either handed it to my lead hand or told him we didn’t have what he asked for, he’d scream at me and it was just making things worse.

It’s like when you’re a kid and you feel sick because you know there’s a bully at school, except I have cancer and anxiety really will set my stomach off. At last break I went to the bathroom and threw up, then went to the lunchroom and told my lead hand I was heading back to the hotel because I wasn’t feeling well.

Credit to him – he immediately jumped up and offered to drive me. I waved him down. I needed my car to get in, in the morning, and once I was out in the fresh air and away from him, surely I’d feel better.

I’d invited Eli and hole watch guy – Dylan – for burgers later on. He’d sent me a picture of his dinner the other night, so I stopped at the Beer Store and grabbed a couple of cans of the beer he’d been drinking, and some Arizona Hard Tea for me. Then I went to Nofrills and grabbed myself some orange juice and something to settle my stomach, and went to look at the frozen burgers.

Huh.

I forgot… burgers are a lot of effort. You need condiments and vegetables, and I didn’t want to buy an entire bottle of ketchup to make 3 burgers.

Oh, right! There’s an M&M’s in town!

I went there. No luck on build-your-own-burger kits (missed opportunity in this town), but they had some cheese and bacon stuffed burgers, which would be perfect! Eli probably had some condiments, but even if he didn’t, these should be flavourful on their own.

I took the stuff for my stomach and napped for an hour, before hopping in the shower and then sitting on the computer for a bit. At 5:30 Eli was dropped off in the parking lot and I went outside to sit with him while he smoked and had some coffee (the guy is constantly drinking coffee!)

At 6 we went over and fired up the BBQ. The hotel we were in last year had a BBQ for almost every room, but this hotel had a little fenced patio area with one BBQ to share. It was a little nicer in a way – at least we had somewhere outside to sit, with tables and chairs, instead of awkward holding our burgers in our laps outside someone’s room. The BBQ was suffering from being abused, however. The other day Eli set it on fire, although it worked fine now.

As I went back to my room to grab the burger patties and buns, my lead hand and Tucker were in the parking lot, having a smoke. He laughed when he saw me, but my story checked out. I couldn’t take a Gravol at work – it always knocks me right out.

Dylan and Wayne showed up shortly. Eli brought ribs, and Wayne brought sausages, and Dylan had his own beer in tow, so buying beer had been a mistake, because I can’t drink it! But then it’s always good to be prepared. We put the radio on and had a couple of drinks and a good time was had by all!

Everyone panicked when they found out Dylan was one of the mill’s internal employees. Most mill employees at any mill treat us like scum and we usually try to avoid them, so it is an ingrained opinion. They even tell us at orientation to not to piss them off at almost any cost, because they can have us sent off-site in a heartbeat. He was pretty good at calming them down, and I explained it to him after everyone left.

He’s an interesting guy. It’s hard to get a read on him. Since he’s an engineer and we started talking about books, I was expecting him to be a little white-collar for this crowd, but he blended in quite easily, to the point I think everyone assumed he was a scaffolder as well. It helps that Wayne is a classy guy. Dylan showed up on a pedal bike, and had some stories about camping in the bush for days, so he’s outdoorsy. He also had a story about working as a bouncer at a strip club (hence the skill at talking everyone down), which he got when he was invited to a bachelor party for another coworker’s buddy. And they cut a couch in half with bullets and then set it on fire. We got to talking about books again and he admitted he has read 100-odd books in the last year and that he has a list of 35 books to recommend to me, but he didn’t want to scare me off by being too into books.

Dude speaks my language.

He touched my leg a few times and I figured he was pretty into me, but I was glad that instead of just tolerating the other guys and waiting for them to leave so we could be alone, he was actually engaging with them.

Jeez, another nice guy who checks all the boxes. If only I wasn’t hopeless.

After everyone wandered away for the night, I pointed out to him that I’m only in town (theoretically) ’til Friday, and he said that was fine with him. Here for a good time, not a long time.

I ended up giving him the short version of why I was unavailable and he was pretty nice about it. I called it a night and went back to my room.

The door had closed behind me for a second before I broke into hysterical tears.

I had to talk to someone, so I called K. He didn’t really know what to say, but we both agreed I should probably try to go to therapy and deal with some of this. It’s been hard because most free walk-in therapy is on weekdays, but Thunder Bay doesn’t need me back until May 19th. I could probably go next week, assuming I get laid off, and if I don’t I’ll figure something else out.

At work they were handing out “Zero” bars, for having zero accidents severe enough to be classified as a stop-time incident. None of us had ever seen them before and were half-convinced they had literally invented it whole-cloth, but it is a real candy bar.

Work got pretty quiet. Most of the other contractors have finished their jobs, and are packing up, or have packed up and left. Most of the jobs are dismantles, but for whatever reason my crew kept getting picked for the few builds that exist.

I was dismayed when I got in to find out I was still on the same team. Fortunately, the build we were given was next to a door, and the main equipment yard is the nearest laydown, and the day was absolutely gorgeous. Blue skies, 15 above, a nice breeze. So I kept walking to get gear from the yard, chatting with the laborers in the yard, and enjoying the outdoor weather, and managed to get through the day.

They gave us free pizza for lunch, which was the perfect opportunity for everyone to start teasing the Vagabond about pineapple on pizza, even though they didn’t actually order Hawaiian pizza. He grabbed two slices and ate them folded together, like a sandwich. When I commented that he had made a panzerotto (and yes, panzerotto is correct, panzerotti is plural), he corrected me to calzone. He had brought in some frozen gnocchi that he said was “not bad”, and when I teased him that complaining about not-fresh pasta being just fine is such an Italian thing to say, he corrected me again that he said “not bad” and not “just fine”.

Make my point for me, why don’t ya?

They asked for volunteers to switch to nights. Just two days, six PM to six AM, double time. My ears perked up immediately – a way away from my team lead, some nice twelve hour double to round out my last couple of shifts, before the axe falls on Friday. But could I manage it?

The Vagabond walked up and wrote his name down on the list first. Then he turned to me and held out the pen.

I almost changed my mind then. Did I want to spend all night dealing with him? But I shook it off. I couldn’t cut myself at the knees to avoid him. I want the money, other costs be damned.

At three I was the only person who opted to go home early. I am so godamn tired. I napped for three hours, then called K and we played Stardew Valley until midnight, when he had to jump off to go to bed. I wrote for a bit before watching a new movie that I came across randomly, called Miller’s Girl.

Spoiler Alert!

Reviewers have not been kind to this movie. I thought it was good – I think their main problem is the subject matter. The movie is quick to establish that the female is 18, literally in the opening dialogue. Of course, just because something is legal doesn’t make it moral. I do like the trailer establishing itself that she isn’t exactly a lamb being led to slaughter. I love her lines about being a ghost, and the scariest thing in the woods. Exactly what I would say.

Some said the romance isn’t earned, or is rushed. The movie is only an hour and a bit, but I thought it was quite believable, maybe because I’ve lived it. Some shots were kind of silly and possibly only exist to be in the trailer, like the one shot of him leering at her from the front of the class, or when they sit crammed next to each other on a couch. Other than that, I loved it. I thought them constantly quoting books to each other was fantastic, and her narration is sparse and adds to the southern gothic atmosphere.

They tried far too hard to make his wife unlikable so the idea of him having an affair makes more sense. I find that’s a common trap movies fall into, having a hard time meeting the balance of showing us why a couple are together, but also why someone might be going yonder. I also didn’t understand Winnie or her character arc at all.

Some parts are so familiar it’s painful. “I know where the lines are, which is why I know I’ve crossed them.” And the way her being an up-and-coming literary genius justifies them spending a lot of time together while also being the reason they shouldn’t be in a relationship. Like the Vagabond being my mentor, even if he’s never been my direct supervisor. What do you do in that situation? Who surrenders their career for the relationship? It’s wrong, but how do you make it right?

What is the word?

It’s not falling,

that’s too stale.

It’s more deliberate than that.

It’s recognition

of what we really are.

Ghosts.

You do see me.

Spoilers Over!

I went to bed around 5AM. Land of the midnight sun, I wanted to be sound asleep before it started creeping around the curtains that are not big enough for the window.

I woke up around 2 and went to Timmies for coffee and a donut. In the all of 15 minutes it took me to drive a click down the road to the Tim Hortons, go through the drive-through, and back, the cleaning lady changed my towels, sheets and emptied my garbage. Whatever they pay her, it isn’t enough.

I gave Eli a ride in to work. I discovered I was relegated to the porta potties again, because the women’s bathroom broke down in some way. The men’s bathroom was working just fine, mind you. It’s just me who has to wander out to the parking lot in the black of night.

The boiler was ready, so we hopped to it right away.

I was concerned I would end up having to work with the Vagabond, and that bore out like clockwork. The only thing worse than having to smile prettily to him at lunch is having to spend 12 hours with him, straight. Everything was viciously underlined by how well we worked as a team. I know how much he can handle and what it looks like when he’s flagging, and vice versa.

This year, you can tell he’s changed. Last year he was surly and antisocial and that made it even more odd that he kept coming over to talk to me. This year, he’s quite gregarious. All the kids under 30 were tripping over themselves to tell a joke and have him laugh at it, and more than one cast a jealous glance my way for being allowed to sit at his table.

We completed the tear down of five lifts by the end of the shift, as expected. Left all the gear neatly sorted into racks on each floor.

Got home, showered, crawled into bed. Slept ’til one, at which point I woke up on fire. My legs had good ol’ fashioned cramps, and my hands were burning from neuropathy. I ran myself a bath and that calmed everything down to the point that I was able to go back to sleep. I woke up about an hour before work and sat outside with Eli and a Soylent.

There’d been a cop parked outside the hotel for the entire day, and the owners were in and out of a room with heavy duty cleaning supplies and painting supplies. Eli says he saw the cops going through the garbage, so clearly something exciting happened while we were at work. Nothing in the news, though.

I decided I should get the ball rolling on my name change. I walked up to the general foreman, who was loitering around, and asked him how I’d go about changing my name on the paperwork and such.

Without missing a beat, he said “Well, you can email so-and-so, or we can just sort it out on Tuesday.”

What?

Tuesday?

They… they were keeping me for post-shutdown?

“Tuesday?” I repeated, just to make sure I heard him correctly.

“Yeah. We’re giving you guys Monday off since you’ve been working so hard. So be back here 7AM on Tuesday!”

Wow!

I did it!

It is a nice drawing, though.

Work was slow. We finished the boiler and puttered around with small jobs for a bit.

I lost patience with the Vagabond at break. I knew what was going on – here he was, voyeuristically enjoying my laugh and smile and my jokes and stories, at no cost to himself. No apology. No explanation. Just soaking in it, at my expense, and my mask was slipping. He asked me if I was tired, more than once, and I finally got up and went outside because the truth is that I was on the verge of tears. I wanted to slam my hammer down on the table and scream “How can you do this to me? How do you sleep at night?”

I texted him that I was tired – of pretending to not still be pissed off. I watched the sun slip below the horizon and the sky grow dark, waiting for footsteps that never came, because he was never going to apologize.

When I went back in, he made a point of staying away from me for the rest of the shift. At one point he walked past me and said “I got your text.”

That baffled me more than anything. Yeah, I know you got it. You got eyes and I got your number. But he’s never bothered acknowledging any of my angry texts before. It felt like a small admission of guilt.

At 11:30, they had run out of stuff for us to do. They told us we could stay ’til midnight and clock out, or stay ’til 6 on standby.

Earlier, when we had been discussing plans for after work, he and Eli had planned to head out immediately after work. I was debating if I should stay for the entire 12 hour double, or clock out at midnight and catch 40 winks at the hotel before heading home. When I told Eli I was going to head out at midnight, he surprised me by suddenly deciding to get a ride with me. I still can’t decide if I think Eli knows what’s up or if the Vagabond is asking him to keep an eye on me for whatever reason. When I asked him the reason he changed his mind, he said he wanted to make sure I got home safe.

Well, ok then.

We clocked out at midnight and raced back to the motel to pack, leaving the key on the side table.

Eli offered to drive at some point, but between Ignace and Upsala he nodded off, so I drove the entire 4 hours back to Thunder Bay in the middle of the night by myself, functionally. He also tried to insist on me stopping at my place and him walking or catching a bus the rest of the way, but I wasn’t hearing it and dropped him off at his house.

Maybe it’s because he was half asleep, but he offered me his number so that we could hang out, before telling me I’m the most normal girl he’s met. When I questioned why that is, because literally no one has said anything close to that before, he said it’s because I never ask for anything. Then he handed me a hundred dollar bill for gas.

Baffled, I drove home and crawled into bed.

The song from the trailer keeps rattling around my brain. I’m very much looking forward to time off!

Always said I was a good kid,

Always said I had a way with words,