By Lucy

– are the deadliest to lead. And we lead such sharp lives.

The dog is starting to learn that if he barks, we’ll take him out, which is not the kind of thing we want to be teaching him.

Make breakfast, pack, sit on my computer slightly panicking.

Duff will be there. It will be fine.

Me and Paul talk about Fire House Chronicles, a Youtube channels that specializes in shorts where the one guy plays all the characters. The other part of the humor is the amount of truly stupid situations people get themselves in to. I could imagine Paul doing this, he has a dry sense of humor and a list of dumb stories from his side hustle as a paramedic.

Paul insists I should leave around noon to beat the weather. There is a curious weather phenomenon known as the lake effect. The weather tends to drift from at least Winnipeg to about Upsala, and then it hits the lake-effect vortex and gets a little funky. There was a strong chance that along the conflicting corridor there would be a storm.

It started raining in the evening and had rained all night, so there was a good amount of water on the ground. One of the things people don’t understand about Canada is that it’s not just the snow. Like in the spring, when it’s warm during the day and cold at night, the thawed water pools and then freezes and you have ice everywhere. Or slush, which is more slippery than dry powder snow. Or any combination of the above. This storm was supposed to be rain turning to snow, which would mean a layer of ice hidden under the fresh slushy snow.

Around noon I started packing. I didn’t need much… obviously, I just survived 6 months with a carry-on! I use Margaret’s trick of throwing everything into a laundry hamper. A few sets of clothes. My box of Soylent, what food I had left in the fridge. My tools and boots were already in the trunk. At 12:30 I had Hanuman help me load up the car and away I went.

The road to Dryden is fairly boring. Once you clear the Nor’Easter mountains, it’s mostly just flat and straight. Put the tunes on the radio and the car on cruise control and just vibe. The biggest problem is the tractor-trailer drivers and their many flavours. Like the ones that can barely clear 100 but aggressively pass you, only to slow down to 70 the minute they encounter a slight incline. Or when you encounter an impromptu convoy; 2 or more trucks, one at the front that’s either heavier or too inexperienced to go above 90, and at least one tailgating him. They require a bit of finesse to pass.

As I drove, I thought back to last year. I’d spent a chunk of time feeling ashamed that, in hindsight, I hadn’t gotten a lot done last summer. I basically just flaked out at the Vagabond’s place and played video games. I hadn’t even worked that much; just the two shutdowns, and the job in Saskatchewan. I was being kinder to myself, though. I think I really just needed a summer to do nothing. Especially considering how much everything the next couple of years will be.

There’s a few towns on the way where the speed limit slows down; Upsala, Ignace and Wabigoon First Nations. I don’t bother stopping for a break, just drive for 4 hours straight. I can get the car down to 7L per 100 kilometers and burn only a third of a tank to Dryden, less if I wasn’t on winters.

The road remains dry and the dreaded storm doesn’t materialize.

Ah, to be back in Northwestern Ontario, the land of ruffians and vagabonds, of travelling carpenters, the lonely wanderer wandering lonesomely.

Jeremy’s parents live outside of Dryden proper. I turn down their road; paved, but I’m not sure why anyone bothered. The road is more pothole than asphalt and it’s clearly sinking into the mire around it. The two pipes under the road to let a river flow are sticking up above the road itself and make an impromptu speed bump.

Their driveway is a different story. It’s a muddy mess, two grooves driven into the hardpacked ice and snow. There are two sharp turns in it and at the end, a hill that starts in a puddle, for maximum “I cannot get up enough speed”. Still, I managed James’ parents place, I can do this. My car crawls up the hill at 5 clicks an hour and I’m just praying it doesn’t get stuck and start sliding backwards. What would I do then? Put it into neutral?

I park next to the other car in front of the garage and go knock on the door.

Jeremy’s mother Kathy answers the door. “Ah, you must be Lucy! Come in, come in!” She is average height, average build and has medium brown hair, but a kind voice.

I sort of dislike the house. It’s a split-level bungalow – which I do like – but every wall is the same shade of light gray. The floor is that ashy grey-brown tongue-in-groove laminate, and the furniture is either white, grey or dark brown. I like loud colours and feature walls, not this neutralness.

His grandmother is seated at the table. I sit with them for about 20 minutes as they chat, then grandma Gayle heads out and Kathy shows me my room in the basement. The room is nice; twin-sized bed, side table, a desk that was probably a kitchen table in a past life. The room is rather large, though, and the cement floor makes it feel sort of empty. She gestures to the wall, “That’s the control for the heat down here. It’s a heated floor, too, don’t worry.”

It is? How cheap is hydro out here?

It feel wrong to be here. There’s pictures of Jeremy and his brother on every wall, including a small one in the room I am in. I feel like I am trespassing, an imposter, intruding on his childhood.

I unpack the car. Food in the fridge, clothes downstairs. Soylent downstairs as well… no point in cluttering up the kitchen. Then we have tea and sit on the couch gabbing until Jeremy’s dad gets home from work. His dad is tall and lanky and looks like Jeremy but 30 years older. He works in the lime kiln, so he knows what the mill is like.

“Ah, it’s nice to put a face to the name I’ve heard so much about!” He declares with a big smile.

Is… is he kidding? How much does Jeremy talk about me??

Kathy sets the table for three. I heat up one of my Factor meals and put it on a plate, to be polite. It’s nice to sit at the table and eat dinner for once. Kathy mentions she should probably do keto as well, she’s got health problems of her own. She laughs about her cooking, the nervous, knowing laugh of someone who has never been good at cooking.

After dinner, they settle on the couch. Kathy likes to watch Grey’s Anatomy, so we chat a bit as the sun goes down and the show prattles on. Luna, the aloof tortoiseshell cat, stretches out in front of me, demanding pets, and I rub her back. Jeremy’s parents gasp; usually Luna wouldn’t even let herself be seen on the first day, nevermind pets!

I head out for a quick walk. I kept telling myself I should go for walks in my steel toes, to get my feet used to it again, but I kept putting it off. I don’t feel much like getting in the car to drive anywhere, so I start walking up the road.

There’s a deer at the foot of the drive, a buck. He stops to watch me; probably wondering if I have carrots. Kathy throws her kitchen scraps outside for the deer to clean up. When he ascertains I do not have carrots for him, he turns and disappears into the bush.

It starts raining. It’ll be slick tomorrow, if this keeps up.

Around 9, I head to bed. One advantage of gaining an hour is it makes it easier to go to bed early.

5:30 my alarm goes off. I groan as I drag myself out of bed. Soylent, 2 tablespoons of MCT oil to counteract the carbs for breakfast. Dress, pack lunch.

It’s snowing. The sun is barely peeking over the horizon, refracting through the clouds, bathing the world in moody blue light as I drive to work.

It’s about a fifteen minute drive to work from here, which is perfectly acceptable. I like to get there half an hour early, to make sure I can get a decent parking spot. I pull in to the contractors lot, my little car dwarfed on all side by giant trucks, and grab my stuff out of the trunk. Unlike Thunder Bay’s mill, this one only requires safety glasses to walk in. I’ll also need a hard hat, steel toed boots, hearing protection, and gloves for work.

Usually when you get to the gate, security just waves you through and you hop in a branded truck. This time, they directed me to a conference room at the back. Some other guys filter in and sit down. The guard hands us a stack of papers. Boilerplate waiver of injury and death. By the way the guys are talking, I can tell that I am the only one in this bunch who’s been here before. They quickly clue in to that as well and start peppering me with questions.

By 8:10, all 8 of us are there. We watch a couple of “safety videos”, which are always uselessly vague and preachy. I notice, to my amusement, one of the actors in the video is wearing his hart hat backwards (hard hats have a rim), among other infractions. They have us take a “quiz”, but then they take up the quiz by reading the answers aloud and letting us correct our wrong answers, which begs the question of why?

Then we shuffle back out to the main waiting area and we sit there for half an hour. Most of them go outside to smoke. Why can’t I just walk everyone through the mill? I guess it doesn’t matter, if everyone is busy we’ll just be sitting around the lunch room anyway, but it would be marginally more comfortable.

Finally a white truck drives over and Kentucky jumps out. I get up and lead the pack to the truck, jumping in first.

Since the work day has already started, no one is in the press-board shanty town lunch room when we get there. It hasn’t changed much, if at all. Since it’s been raining, the roof is actively leaking and there’s puddles everywhere. I grab the first seat I spot on the left. I wasn’t sure where Duff was sitting, so I’d just be moving anyway. Everyone else sits with me. I’ve become the head cheerleader.

Within a few minutes, Tyler wanders in. “Hey Lucy, welcome back! Good to see you!”

“Hey Tyler!” I get up and give his hand a hearty shake. We shoot the breeze for a bit, everyone’s eyes on us. He tells me we’re waiting for Lief.

He starts handing out more paperwork packages; income tax statements, remittance back to the union, where you want your pay going. “You just need to fill out the income tax papers, unless anything else has changed.” He says to me.

After Tyler leaves, Steve points to me, “She knows what’s up! I’m sticking with her.”

We fill out the papers. And wait. And wait.

While we wait, you may be wondering… What is working in a pulp mill like?

The mill is a metal behemoth. The clean steel facade and the stacks puffing out pretty clouds of steam say nothing about the grimy, claustrophobic guts. It’s like working inside a mine; no rays of sunlight penetrate the narrow, pipe-lined corridors.

Firstly, the mill makes its own weather, a microclimate. When it’s cold or a low pressure system, the steam dips back to earth in the form of snow, or else it freezes instantly on walkways and railings, rendering them slick. In the summer it coalesces into impromptu sun showers. The wind whistles between the tall steel buildings like downtown skyscrapers.

Inside any one of the buildings, everything is dirty. There are little piles of brown woodchips and sawdust; puddles of fresh, fluffy white pulp, like half-melted snow; or else dried pulp, like a wad of paper towel that were damped and them mushed into a ball; bird poop from the various pigeons and barn swallows making nests in the rafters; and just general dirt and dust.

The whole building is a cacophony of noises. Pipes shuttling hot steam hiss and shudder, engines groan and clank, conveyor belts thud along ponderously, condensers randomly spring to life with a sudden bang! Most pipes are wrapped in thick blankets of insulation, both to prevent heat loss, and to protect the workers from the searingly hot steel, but there are gaps.

Steam is the lifeblood of the mill, the boiler its beating heart. The main boiler of the Dryden mill is the tallest building, right at the front that draws your eye. The boiler there is so big it doesn’t sit on the ground; it hangs from the ceiling on giant springs, so that its shuddering and groaning can be dissipated into the swaying of the building, so it doesn’t shake the foundation to pieces.

Everything is dripping wet. Steam is intentionally vented to control pressure, but there are random leaks all the time from seals that aren’t perfect. Hot water – or if you’re lucky, cold water – leaks from somewhere every ten feet, boring holes into the cement under it and pooling on the ground. The floor itself is a maze of cables and pipes, plus drainage ditches, often steaming with mysterious substances.

You’re always hoping that the condensate being vented into your face has some of the less lethal chemicals, which can include but are not limited to; bleach, quicklime, sodium hydroxide, sodium sulfide, hydrogen sulfide, tall oil, turpentine, and a whole host of other surfactants, emulsifiers, defoamers and degreasers, none of which your lungs like much.

This is not a place designed for humans to occupy. The operators hide in their little air-conditioned cinderblock vaults, venturing out occasionally to turn this valve or that with their cartoonishly large wrenches.

Of course, scaffolders have no such luxury. Our job is nothing less than rolling out the red carpet for them, erecting hoisting beams or platforms for them to stand within a comfortable arms’ reach of their work. We climb up on pipes so big I could probably crawl inside one like John Maclane, under others, wiggling in between tiny spaces that you wouldn’t believe a 6 foot 250 pound man could access, in an attempt to find a flat space to put down a jackstand. We get bruised; cut despite wearing two layers of clothing and “cut-proof” gloves that are made of at least 2 layers of Teflon and leather; burned by the spots where the pipes aren’t insulated; and within half an hour of starting work our faces are red and dripping sweat from the heat.

By the end of even a single period, your body is humming to the point that you stand outside in the snow and not feel the bite of the cold, you’ve drank 2 bottles of water, your coveralls are so dirty they are no longer orange or reflective, and you’re just praying the cloud of dirt that poofed out of the insulation when you accidentally hit it was fibreglass and not asbestos, because one will kill you faster than the other. Your head is pounding because even with earplugs in, it’s so, so loud, you can’t hear each other and so resort to exaggerated mouthing and hand signals for communication. Your nose is numb to the various smells you’ve been breathing in all day, but they cling to you regardless. Your hips hurt from the heavy tool belt digging into it and your shoulders and groin hurt from constantly wearing a harness. Your feet hurt from standing all day in steel toed boots and within a week, the blisters start to heal and large chunks of calluses slough off like you are a snake shedding its skin. Hands too.

People wonder why shutdown jockeys are such a broken bunch, but there has be a chunk missing from your sanity to do this job, and continuing to do it takes the rest. The people with any sense of self-respect or preservation tend to walk away quickly; this is a job that practically demands you have a death wish, because you will get hurt every single day and people will die or become disabled. You’re balancing on metal tubes only 2 inches wide, and fall arrest only goes so far and can still break limbs or cause permanent nerve damage. You’re getting burned by steam and hot pipes, and heat stroke can strike quickly. The safety glasses fit imperfectly and can still be broken or knocked off or scratched. Or you might spit out a gob of blood as your insides dissolve because you accidentally ingested a mouthful of quicklime dust. Most of us drink because Tylenol and ibuprofen quickly stop being enough for the pain and do nothing to help you slow your heart rate at the end of a 12 hour day or quell the pounding headache that is still thudding away as you lay awake in bed. Quite a few turn to harder drugs. There is no real choice in the matter; the job demands more than is humanly possible. Construction is the industry with the highest number of overdose deaths for a reason.

Of course, we do it for the money. Very few jobs let you make 10 grand in a month with basically no qualifications.

At this point Duff toddles in to distract me from my melancholy. “Hey sis!”

“Duff!” I get up and run over. We pause awkwardly. Usually we would hug, but there are too many eyes on us; we shake hands instead.

“Why are you over there?” He asks me.

“I didn’t know where you were sitting!”

He points to his jacket on a chair.

“I didn’t know if there was any others from Winnipeg here! How’s work been today?”

“Pretty good, they got us over in turbogen.”

“Thank god, I spent so much of last year in recaust!” I pause. “Did you come back to get me?”

“No, I came back to get an antacid.” He says, digging in his jacket pocket. “Leif will sort it out soon.”

Once he leaves, I go to sit back with the others. Actually, I decided to show everyone where the bathrooms, changeroom and coveralls are, but then we all sit down together again. No point in moving and sitting all by my lonesome. They have size 46 coveralls, so I only have to roll them up twice, yay.

9:30, break time. Everyone starts filtering in. Eli wanders in with the Vagabond. His coal-black eyes find me immediately, and light up with… surprise. And regret. And something else I can’t discern.

Did he… did he really think I wasn’t coming back?

He turns and says a few words to Eli, and Eli comes over to me. “Hey girlie, how are you?”

“Fine.” I say icily.

“Come sit over here.” He gestures to his table.

“Nope!”

His mouth falls open as he tries to think of a new idea. “Well, fine, be like that!”

I shall. Now that I’m wise to the trick, I’m not falling for it again. The Vagabond’s a grown man, he can come over and apologize to my face.

Leif comes over and tells me to go with Duff, but I mistakenly hadn’t eaten anything. Woops! I feel woozy as I run after him.

We don’t get up to anything vigorous, just pre-loading builds for later. The 80 ton crane in turbogen (the turbine steam generators for the property) is the slowest crane on the property; it takes easily 10 minutes to lift or lower anything, but the other option is hand-bombing everything up the stairs. On our crew is Alex and Randy. Alex is a big bear of a man who has the opposite problem from me, no size of coverall is big enough for him. He’s a nice guy and a good worker, if a little lazy. Randy is just a labourer, but he was retired and he’s clearly been out of the game too long; he doesn’t recognize the hand signals anymore. He’s also a little too enthusiastic, which doesn’t bode well.

Every time I cross paths with Eli, he keeps trying to convince me to sit with them. He also invites me out to dinner, which isn’t odd because we did go to dinner last year, but I’m just so suspicious of his intentions now. Keto is protecting me here; I’d be tempted, but there’s nothing at the P.I. that I could eat, so I decline. The man himself says nothing to me, barely glances in my direction, but I can feel the weight of his attention.

Seated at Duff’s table with us is an African man with a thick accent, named Abraham. When I ask him where he is from, he names his hometown in Africa instead of where he lives in Canada (which is what I meant). He tries to offer me an orange, and when that fails, some carrots. He puts siracha and lime dressing on his vanilla yogurt.

“Why is my hammer rusty?” I ask Duff.

“Cuz you don’t use it enough.” He says sarcastically. “What kind is it?”

“Dewalt.”

“Huh, that is odd.”

My boots are fubared as well. The steel cap over my right big toe is bent down and dangerously close to digging in to the top of my foot. Was it damaged last year and I didn’t notice? Or did it get damaged while I was in NZ?

It’s hot in turbogen. Not as hot as the steam plant, but obviously they use steam to turn the turbines so there’s a fair bit of humidity in the building. It’s still doggedly snowing outside, so every time we have to go back to the lunchroom we freeze in our soaked coveralls.

Eventually 5 o’clock rolls around. Time to change out of our gear, hand in our safety paperwork, and wait in the lunch room to be dismissed.

When we are dismissed, we flow out of the building in an orange tide. Me and the newbies have to stop by the security booth to get our swipe cards. Mine is misspelled and I have to wait while the guard changes it, mostly in case they ask for ID and notice the name doesn’t match, cuz I don’t care what it’s spelled like on my temporary swipe card. One of the guys behind me makes a little 2-syllable chant out of it. I roll my eyes while the guard blushes.

As I reach my car, a little green Smartcar pulls up beside me. Duff unfolds himself from the driver seat. “What happened to your truck?” I ask.

“If I’m not towing the trailer, I use this! I’ve had it for years, it’s much better on fuel.” He pats the roof.

I mean, for sure, I’m just surprised because scaffolders are usually rabid about driving big trucks. Duff has a lot of hidden depth that he chooses to bury further, for some reason.

Anyhow! He pops the trunk and grabs my box out of it, my waylaid order of Soylent. Now I’ll be good for a while.

Off to Nofrills! I need something to snack on, something for less than 20 bucks. Duff is also at Nofrills and we have a good laugh about it. I grab some blue cheese and some jerky with a low carb count. I’m annoyed that the only thing I can find in-store is Jack Links, with its proud “Made in America” label. Last year I found a made-in-Canada jerky with a much lower amount of sugar, but the easiest way to get them was just to order them online and I don’t have that kind of cash.

When I get back to the house, Kathy and Scott have just finished dinner. They invite me to have some; steak and asparagus. Sure, as long as there is no glaze, those are acceptable for keto. The steak is overdone and dry, but I just eat it in small bites and wash it down with lots of tea. Not going to decline a free steak.

Another evening of watching Grey’s Anatomy. My arms and back hurt.

I’m not sure how I feel about this arrangement. Kathy and Scott are lovely, welcoming people, but that makes me feel worse. I feel like a monster, stomping in with my dirty work boots and my dirty clothes, wanting nothing more than to drink whisky until I pass out. I feel like Edward Scissorhands in the middle of placid, pastel suburbia. I’m enjoying the socialization, lest I mope in my room all evening, but I’m not sure how to withdraw when I want to be alone with my thoughts. I don’t want to be rude and I’m not sure how…

I go to bed at a good time, but I wake up early. My back is screaming in pain, and I forgot/ couldn’t afford any pain killers. I’m sure Kathy has some upstairs and she wouldn’t mind me grabbing them, but I feel weird about rifling through someone’s medicine cabinet in the middle of the night. I lay awake for a long time before I can finally drift off.

At 2AM, I wake up to go to the bathroom and lay awake in bed staring at the ceiling for a bit.

At 5AM, I notice a draft in the hallway and the furnace working overtime. The front door has blown open, stuck on a pair of boots. Someone went outside between 2 and 5 and didn’t close it properly. When I go to the kitchen, there’s a note telling me there are eggs bites in the fridge and to help myself. Don’t mind if I do!

I drag my feet Tuesday morning. Bleh.

I get to work at 6:30 like usual, which is before most of the others. The Vagabond gets to work even before I do, eating his usual breakfast apple. Duff’s pretty bad for sleeping in, but even I start to get concerned as the clock ticks on. I keep eyeing the empty chair next to the Vagabond, turning over the idea of sliding in to it. “Ciao bello, ti manco?” I shake my head. Bad idea. Eli keeps glancing my way. I’m not doing a good job at ignoring him.

Duff shows up 5 minutes before time and throws his stuff down before rushing off to the changeroom. He runs back and goes right to the front when Leif starts his morning speech.

“Everyone fit for duty?” He asks, not even glancing at the paper cuz he’s read it a hundred times.

A murmur from the crowd. No one is really going to suddenly stand up and say, “Now that you mention it….”

“They’re dropping off the porta potties today, don’t forget to go christen them.” He says dryly, with a wink.

Some of the crews are getting shuffled around. Eli is getting pulled off the Vagabond’s crew. Swift punishment for failure.

They also pull Alex off ours. The crews were 4 bodies, now it’s 3 each. They want us to cover more ground, work faster.

The biggest job of the day is a hoisting beam we have to make. It’s in an area littered with uncovered steam pipes, pissing out steam and practically glowing hot. We barely have enough clearance to get the stands in and the ledgers around the vertical pipes, nevermind trying to fit 6-14 foot Aluma beams into such a tight space, and now we’ve lost the bear. Leif gave us a few other jobs in the same room, so Duff keeps taking a break by working on the other jobs, which are at least away from the steam pipes.

After lunch, he gives me a job to do by myself. It’s just a step-up, a small platform raised off the ground so the operators aren’t working off a ladder. Because of the valves around it, we end up making it 7 by 7 because you couldn’t fit the stands in for a 4 by 4 or 5 by 5. The build goes mostly fine; Randy keeps trying to help me but mostly gets in my way, because of the usual misplaced sense of chivalry.

Duff doesn’t like the final build. It’s not perfectly level; it is hard to see because there’s no overhead lights in this area and they didn’t give us batteries for the head lamps yet, but I also just wasn’t trying. I glanced at the level and it was within the lines, good enough for me. Mea culpa. He’s also annoyed with the placement of the ladder, which isn’t my fault at all. He didn’t tell me the ladder had to be on a particular side, so I just picked one at random.

He points to the base plate. “We don’t use those in Saskatchewan!”

“We’re not in Saskatchewan, Duff, we’re in Ontario and we use base plates!”

But I know his real annoyance is with his pain. He’s started limping already, but then I suppose he did a month in Winnipeg and a couple of weeks here. Lots of time to burn himself out and the main shut hasn’t even started yet.

The real problem is when we go to finish the hoist beam. Disaster strikes at the last minute. We’ve got 5 of the 6 beams up, but Duff is visibly flagging. Still, you don’t get in a scaffolders’ way at that point; they’re humming on adrenaline and will explode at the slightest provocation. Randy ignores my warnings and hops up onto the scaffold to help with the last beam, and since Duff didn’t want his help or know he was there, Randy ended up basically grabbed the beam and slammed it into his wrist.

Duff turns around and curses a blue streak, before hurling his hammer across the room. He hops off the scaffold and stomps out of the room. Randy gestures for me to follow them, but I don’t really need to watch Duff have a meltdown. There’s ten minutes ’til break anyway. I study the scaffold for 5 minutes, then head off to the lunch room on my own, arriving at the same time as them.

“How’s your wrist?” I ask.

He shows me the torn skin. Not bad. I tap on a ball on the back of his hand. “Got a goose egg from it?”

“No, that’s from a car accident.”

It is? Is it some sort of permanently broken bone? Scar tissue? Herniated tendon? Does it impair you in any way? I opt not to ask these questions. It’s none of my business. I’m not even sure I’ve ever told him I have cancer.

They’ve changed their minds. First it was 4/10’s, then they decided we weren’t working Thursday so they didn’t have to pay us stat pay. Now they’re offering overtime on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Sure, why not? Take Thursday off for the doctor, work Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I call the doctor’s office before they close for the day and put myself down on the list.

I ask Duff for some pain killers. He’s got ibuprofen. Wait, you drink yourself to sleep at night and you use ibuprofen? No wonder you pop antacids every hour. He should be on a ‘script for something… Well, he should be on a couple of ‘scripts.

OW calls again, asking why I hadn’t uploaded the documents. Honestly I’d kinda figured if I couldn’t access the online account, I was SOL and might as well give up. She tells me they fixed it over the weekend and to try again.

I try again. No dice. I call her back and she says she’ll send me an email to reply to with my documents. Sounds swell.

Kathy texts me before the end of the day that my Factor box hasn’t arrived. Well, technically it can be until 8 PM, but I check my email anyway. “Can’t be delivered”. I bet the delivery driver looked at the muddy driveway and didn’t even bother trying. Jerk. Kathy says it’s probably at the QSL, like everything, so I head over there after work.

The Vagabond is the first one out of work, the only one standing by the door as Leif does his usually end-of-the-day speech. He turns and leaves before Leif is done speaking. He’s heard it all before.

QSL right next to the liquor store. I had every intention of trying to wait until at least the shutdown starts proper before getting into the alcohol. I smile when I remember Dylan lives the next street over, “Oh yeah, that’s next to the liquor store.”

He frowned, “If you navigate through town by the liquor store, you might be an alcoholic.”

I know what I am.

Pop into QSL. When I tell the clerk I’m there for a package, she starts rifling through the small packages of clothes. “No no, it’s a big box.” My Factor box is there, yay! It’s too big and heavy for her, oops.

I get back into the car and turn it on, but the draw is powerful. A relief from pain, an easy way to sleep… I turn the car off and hop out.

I’m too broke for this. I decide to buy just a vodka soda, something with no sugar, and if I just get a can then I can’t accidentally drink half a bottle in a night. I go down to the mixer aisle and scan the cans on offer for what seems low carb and yummy.

A flash of orange catches my eye, one of the scaffolders in hi-vis orange. I glance up, already smiling to say hi.

It’s him. Why is he here? He left way before I did, and I stopped at QSL first! His eyes flicker through surprise, longing, self-loathing, before settling on wariness. “Hey.” He rumbles, half-turned away, already prepared for me to brush him off.

“Hi!” I squeak, blushing, unable to help myself. I freeze for a moment, torn; should I say anything more? I hear Andrej in my head, “Don’t go back to your biker boy.” I grab the can I was eyeing – Cottage Springs peach, 2 grams of carbs, 7%, 3.50$ – and flee to the check out, which is clogged with people. I resist the urge to hop impatiently. I feel eyes on the back of my head.

“I think it’s spring!” The cashier says cheerfully when I finally get to the front of the line.

“I think we’ve got one more storm in for us yet.” I respond.

I have tunnel vision as I rush back to the car, my only concern getting out of town as fast as possible before I do something stupid. I’m glad as Dryden fades behind me on the highway.

Too close.

He seems different this year, in a way that is hard to put my finger on. Last year he seemed hard, angry, supremely confident in his correctness. This year he seems tired, almost soft.

I shouldn’t be thinking about this.

Dinner is ham with a garden salad. I’m not much for salad, when my guts are still upset at me. I crack open the vodka soda – just a sip, it’s cold and wet – then make myself a meal of blue cheese and ham. I have a tea with dinner and only return to my soda after I’ve cleaned the dishes away and had a shower. The dishwasher beeps that it’s done and I empty it out, thinking of Simo.

The vodka soda hits me hard. I’m surprised but glad. Knock me out before I can do something stupid.

Wednesday drags. I’m starting to feel stronger, but I also feel wiped out. My feet and legs and back ache. Fitbit tells me to take a rest before I overtrain. Hah!

More bad news. My credit card decided to charge a bunch of interest all at once. Since this put me over my limit, they also charged me a 50$ overage charge, just to kick me while I’m down. The only person awake for me to bitch at is Paul, and he sends me some money to cover it, which is very nice of him!

Tracy showed up finally, which I am grateful for. I was the only woman on-site and I technically still am, cuz Tracy isn’t a carpenter, she just cleans the lunch room, but I’m always glad to see her. She been around and seen it all and she’ll always defend me and is always telling me to push back on the guys and give them hell.

The gloves here are hilariously awful. They look like fancy motorcycle gloves, with armor on the back, but they are too big. Even the smalls are too big for me. One of the guys says he usually wears an extra-large but these ones he wears medium, so it’s not just me. It handicaps me, because I can’t quite get a grip on anything and when it starts to slip, my gloves just fly off my hands!

Duff is getting cranky. I know I’m being sort of loopy but I’m lost on if I should bother trying to explain it to him why I am distracted or if it just seems like an excuse. I know there are others who would pay less attention than me even on their best day.

That being said, around first break his mood is too much for even me. He happened to turn around as I was holding a right angle for reasons other than to hand it to him, because he hadn’t actually called for one yet, and snapped at me for handing it to him improperly. Without letting me explain myself, he decided to punish me, so he wired a right angle to my tool belt. Presumably the intention was to force me to contend with the extra weight, but he foolish attached it above my hammer so I couldn’t draw it, so I spent the rest of the day giving him attitude about it. There’s not much he can say about it; pretty sure hazing is illegal, not to mention against site and company policy, but I wouldn’t want to be removed from Duff’s team. Me and Duff might butt heads, but I’d still rather deal with his nonsense than take my chances with someone else.

We finish up the last couple of builds in turbogen and spend the last hour of our shift hanging out in the lay-down, pretending to work. It’s always awkward when there isn’t enough time to start a new job. My right hip hurts from the 3 extra pounds only on one side of my body, but I stubbornly refuse to say anything about it.

Daario is around and we start chatting about the Kakabeka job, which is 2 to 1 and is supposed to last 2 years. He must be looking to settle down a bit. I tell him what I know, and then I take a chance.

“Daario, do you know what happened to Lanny?”

Rage lights up his face. He grabs his gear and backs up. “Of course I know what happened to him! He’s my brother!” He says angrily, spinning around. As he walks away, he yells over his shoulder, “He killed himself!”

Not the most graceful way to ask. I mean, I betcha my brother couldn’t tell you if I was alive or dead. I certainly couldn’t. But still. All I had to go on was a text from the Vagabond; “Lanny’s dead. Don’t talk to anyone about it”. It was weighing on me; I liked Lanny. He was cheerful and talkative. Why can’t I be sad that we lost a brother?

Randy comes over, “What was that about?”

“I asked him about Lanny.”

“Oh, yeah. Shame about that. Don’t know what happened; I saw him on the Sunday and he seemed fine. Tuesday, he was gone.”

“Do you mind…?”

“Hung himself in the basement.”

That’s… not quite what I was going to ask. But I guess that answers my question, in a sense. There was no final rupture, he was just a sad clown wearing a happy mask.

---

Since I got my doctors appointment all sorted out, I have to decide when to head back to Thunder Bay. The weather says it’s supposed to start sleeting at 6AM Thursday morning, so I’ll head down that night. I go back to Kathy’s place and have some dinner – more leftover ham – and a quick shower. Pack up some meals for the next day. Heading thru moose territory during the spring and at dusk is always a dangerous proposition, but I’ll just take it slow.

The kilometers tick down slowly… slowly…

It’s dark by the time I crawl into Thunder Bay, past ten. Park in the lot, stomp up the stairs, kick open the door. I half expect to be attacked by the dog, or for Hanuman and Emily to be on the couch playing Stardew, but neither happen. They’re flaked out in bed. The dog was picked up at 4PM this afternoon.

“Anything I can have a shot of?” I ask Hanuman. He offers me a bottle of spiced rum. I take two. Probably not keto, but who cares. I turn my computer on, can’t remember why I had to turn my computer on, watch a couple of videos while I eat something, then crawl into bed.

Oh right, I had to select my Factor meals before midnight. Oops.

Wake up, make some eggs for breakfast – good thing I left those here – tea. I’ve got too much cream to use up. I decide to grab some milk from the store and make eggnog.

Off to get gas, then to grocery shop.

Make eggnog, put it in the fridge to chill, eat lunch, try to write, wonder where the time went. I offered to let Jeremy hitch a ride with me so he could spend Easter with his folks – his mother is going to Thunder Bay on Tuesday, so she can drop him off – and he had declined but changed his mind.

At 2 I went to the doctors. When they found out I had come back from New Zealand within a month… I think… they made me put a mask on in case I brought back the measles.

The doctor was brusque and off-putting. She didn’t like me being on creatine (“it’s dangerous and you are perfect the way you are”) told me I was drinking too much water (because my sodium is low, which is more accurately me neglecting to salt my food) and was annoyed that the rash has subsided so she couldn’t see it in person. Her tone changed slightly when she felt the still-swollen lymph nodes. She ordered an ultrasound (different from the ultrasound in the ER) and then she was gone again. I walked out of the building feeling dismissed and like I’d rather die of cancer than deal with another doctor talking down to me.

I went back home, had some lunch, and finished packing up. Hanuman and Emily had disappeared, so I couldn’t even say goodbye. What a wretched day. I know I slept good, but I don’t feel rested at all.

The 4 hour drive with Jeremy was fun. I wasn’t sure if we’d end up sitting in stony silence, listening to my music, but he was fairly chatty. We passed around some ideas for our games and discussed our childhoods.

“Have you talked to Kevin yet?” He says out of nowhere.

“No, leaving for 5 weeks in Dryden didn’t seem like a great time to have a talk like that.” Pause. “I also feel like I should get over the Vagabond first.”

“Just go back to him.”

“Don’t be silly. I promised Da – Andrej I wouldn’t.” I keep slipping and calling Andrej dad for some reason.

“You know you want to. Embrace it.”

“This is not helpful.” I say through gritted teeth.

“I never said I was going to be.” He says, probably intending to be sarcastic.

“Luna let me pet her on the first day.” I say snootily. Luna still won’t let him pet her.

“Alright, no need to go that low, I’m sorry!”

Around Ignace, it starts raining pretty hard. There’s even lighting.

“Your parents keep setting aside food for me for dinner. It’s weird.” He gives me a double take and I backtrack, “I mean, it’s nice, I appreciate it, I just don’t understand it.”

“They’re nice people and good hosts?”

Is that how that works? Is this normal and I am the odd duck? My mother aways acted like she wanted me to start a religion in praise of her deigning to cook for me. My ex-husband could barely be convinced to stop playing Warframe to get something for me while I died of cancer next to him on the couch.

I remember, one day when I came home sick, from shutdown. I texted the Vagabond as a courtesy, but he wasn’t home when I got there. He arrived promptly and stuck his head in my room, where I was laying on my bed. The bed he set up for me, so I wouldn’t be homeless.

“Do you need anything?”

“No no, I stopped by the pharmacy on the way home. I’ll be fine.”

He stuck his tongue out. “You don’t need to be so damn independent.” Then it was as if a lightbulb clicked over his head, and his expression softened. “You really have been abused, haven’t you?”

I couldn’t think of anything to say to that. Am I too independent? I still feel like I rely on people too much. Like I should start declining dinner from Kathy before she thinks I am taking her for granted.

We get to his parent’s place around 6:30. He didn’t tell them he was coming, but his mother doesn’t seem surprised. She tells him she had a feeling he was gonna hitch a ride with me. We have dinner and we all seem to gel really well.

Friday was not fun.

There was a bit of good news; some money finally came in from OW. Not a lot, but some is better than none.

Firstly, they cancelled Saturday and Sunday’s shift. I realized belatedly that I had forgotten to cancel some weekend plans and I was technically no longer working, but I wasn’t adding another 800 kilometers to my poor car. I’ll just stay here.

Secondly, we ended up in the bleach plant, which always smells like harsh chemicals. But around noon, it suddenly occurred to Duff and Randy that I didn’t have a bite pack (emergency respirator) or a half-mask on me. I was annoyed that they made it sound like I was the problem; I’ve worked here for 2 years now and not once has anyone told me I should have one of those on me. I did the walk of shame out to my car to grab my half-mask, but they didn’t have any cartridges that fit, so I just grabbed a bite pack and shoved it in my tool belt so everyone would stop complaining at me. Any kind of leak that would require me to use a bite pack would probably also be a mustard-gas-like chemical that would melt the skin off my face and I know where the full face emergency masks are in the stairwells, I wasn’t totally at risk.

Thirdly, Duff left at 3 to run back to Winnipeg and grab his camper, and as I glanced around the lunchroom I realized that most of the guys had left early to run back home. Which left me with just one team to be on.

I hadn’t decided on a mask to wear. Aloof? Neutral? Angry? Fortunately, the Vagabond was not in the mood for socializing, having spent the morning in the lime “mud” room – the hottest, dirtiest part of the mill, and had to change his coveralls at lunch – and could barely be bothered to give the rest of us orders.

“Where’s our journeyman?” One of the guys asked, as we stood around, lost. We’d put together a couple of pre-loads and tidied the Snake Pit, where we store our gear.

“Hiding.” I answered, when everyone else looked lost.

“Do you know where? Could you get him?”

I shouldn’t have said anything.

I found him out back, fiddling with the saws. The only real carpenter in this place.

“The guys are looking for you.”

“Oh yeah?” He says absently. His tone is perfectly neutral; he’s gotten a better grip on his own emotions. If I didn’t know better, I’d assume there was no history between us at all.

“Yup.” I clap my hands together and turn to look at something in the middle distance. I don’t have such a grip. I’m fighting the urge to provoke him in some way, to see his mask slip. To get him to admit he messed up/ misses me.

I walk back out to the others. He doesn’t follow; he has no interest in being a leader. I shrug. “He’s back there, go talk to him if you want.”

The next hour takes a long time, with no real work to do, and all the time in the world to mull over all the conversations and arguments we never had.

When I get home, I’m spitting mad and my hands are shaking, but it’s better I get it out here in private.

Why resist?

Maybe I should have stayed in New Zealand.