Bittersweet Sands (16 page)
“After that trip, they sold it for scrap. When the guys in the scrap-yard was tearing the
Great Eastern
apart, way down at the bottom they found the skeletons of a boilermaker and his apprentice. They had been accidentally sealed up into the hull when they first made it.”
Jason's face was still. His eyes watched Pops.
“Can you imagine?” Jason said. “You're down there, in the black, and when you go back the way you came, now there's a wall. At first you can't believe it's happened. They can't hear you scream because they're making so much noise with the riveting. You hit the wall with your tools, your fists, anything. But the whole ship is vibrating with noise. You scream and scream. Nobody can hear you. You kneel by that wall, and die in the black. If you're lucky, the compartment is airtight and you die within a couple of hours.”
“If not?” Pops said.
“Have you ever seen a guy who's suffocated?” Jason asked, grimacing.
For a long time, the only sound was the static crackle of the two-way radio. Then the distant rattle of an impact gun filled the trailer.
Jason jumped up so quickly, Pops started. “I'm going to check on the men.”
“Yeah,” Pops said. “Count 'em. Twice.”
( Lonesome Road )
There are landscapes in the memories of my long-agos, points of reference in the graph line of my life. There was that day when the spray of a sunset caught the yellows of a Saskatchewan wheatfield. I stopped the truck just to watch God end the day. Once, after a shutter in McMurray, I was surprised by a herd of bison in a green field south of Cold Lake. The herd lay in the tall blue grass with their heads up like they were rising out of the flax field, going towards the matching grey green thunderheads above. There's that first sight of those broken-toothed Rockies along the horizon west of Calgary. It's the colours and the smells of the land that I remember, only the land.
I hear a song, and memories come flooding back. As the music plays, I would instantly be transported from freezing in this Fort McMurray winter, to driving into the orange sunset down a Saskatchewan gravel road in July, the smell of newly-cut hayfield warm in my nose, the sun on my face, and the prairie wind roaring in my ears, covering the rattle of the crickets, the birds, the truck's radio.
But there are few happy faces in my memories, only memories of the relief of leaving a tension-filled house, and the guilt of being an absent father.
The music would play, and I would get homesick, but I couldn't go home.
“Where you going from here?” the crew would ask.
“Ah, I'll try to grab another shutter in Fort Saskatchewan. I hear there might be a sixty-day shutdown in Regina. Maybe I'll even try to get on with that nuke plant in Ontario. I hear guys are making a hundred thou a year.”
“Where's home?”
“Winnipeg.”
I stay in Winnipeg on the chance I might get invited to one of my kids' homes, where I would see my grandchildren. The last time it happened, a wet-diapered cherub had climbed onto my lap and nestled there for a glorious half hour. I lived for a week with the memory of the smell of that angel's hair.
Jason spoke to the crew as they dressed. “Everybody comes back here at last coffee. If you're not here for last coffee, I'm not paying you for the day. Stay until last coffee, and I'll pay you for the entire shift.”
“Layoff's payoff?” I asked.
“You know you only get a cheque at layoff time if the job's less than a week,” Jason said.
“Worth a shot. Can we take a long coffee break?”
“Don't push it.” Jason smiled.
“Roll back all the welding cables except one. Roll back all the air hoses except one. Bring all the tools down to the tool room. Leave enough tools to close off that last man-way.”
“When's the engineer coming to do the final inspection?” Double Scotch asked.
“After lunch. I told him if he's late, he'll button up that last man-way himself.”
The crew bundled up one last time. They shuffled towards the coker's stairs like a line of dirty blue penguins climbing a black ice floe.
I watched them go and thought,
These scraggly hunched men with their ripped and muddied coveralls
are all that's left. Injuries, violence, and personal disasters so prevalent in construction it's almost trivial. We started with over twenty men three
weeks ago, and we end up with what? Less than enough warm bodies to
make up a good poker game. Typical shutdown.
Tonight they'll go home to their families and for the first week it'll be
like Christmas, and a honeymoon, and winning a lottery all rolled into one.
They'll have screaming monkey sex, dine out like corporate execs, try to rid
the world of alcohol, all for a week.
Then one morning, he and his old lady will wake up, and something will
set one of them off. They'll have a huge screaming match. The kids will cry,
the dog will bark, and the guy will realize that he's only a disruption in their
lives. They don't want him back. That's when he either starts looking for a
steady-Eddie job in town, or he starts filling that duffel bag that never left
the foot of his bed.
He'll pack his duffel bag and go down to the union hall for a job, any
job. Going back to being that distant, perfect father rather than being that
houseguest, hanging around bothering everybody.
He'll accept a job in a new boiler off towards the lakes, or an oil tank
farm north of McMurray. Next morning, when his wife wakes up, the bed
will smell of him, but it'll be empty. She'll get the kids off to school, wash the
sheets, and get back to normal.
The day inched along. The engineer came and went. The cables, airhoses, and tools were packed in toolboxes. The men hung around the heaters on the seventh floor, waiting.
At ten minutes to three, the lunchroom door slammed open. With shouts and laughter, the crew exploded into the lunch trailer, throwing off coveralls, boots. Any gear that belonged to the company was flung into corners, the floor, anywhere.
Men frantically gathered their winter clothes, lunchboxes, personal items, and ran out the door with it all, like a TV game show where housewives try to gather as much money as they can carry in their chubby arms.
“See ya on the next one!”
“I was looking for a job when I found this one!”
“Hey! Give me a ride to town, wouldja?”
“I know the first thing you'll do when you see your old lady, but what's the second thing you'll do?”
“Put my suitcases down!” everyone shouted in unison.
“Whaooo!
“Rick! Goodbye!”
“See ya!”
“See ya, see ya on the next one!”
The last man ran out as the door slammed, shaking the trailer. The trailer, still vibrating from the shouts of the departed men, went silent. After a long time, the sounds of the refinery crept back.
The foreman's voice startled me out of my reverie.
“Rick, it's been good working with you.”
“Thanks, Jay. You too.”
“You can go if you want.”
“I'm in no rush.”
“When you going to slow down, enjoy your pension?”
I rose from the desk and gathered up my winter parka.
“Damned if I know, Jay. Damned if I know.”
The hum from the tires got louder as that Fort McMurray radio station buried itself in snow and static. My eyes squinted into the mid-afternoon sun and the treed horizon, the long shadows a preview of the night.
Going south.
This truck is my home.
I wondered about the men I worked with. One by one, the faces will fade into the slow darkening of past jobs until those men will just be a vague feelingâat best a flicker of scenes, like some jerky silent movie.
If I meet one of my crew within a year, we'll laugh and slap each other on our backs and ask, “Whatever happened to...?”
If I see him after a couple of years, I might be able to remember his first name. I'll introduce myself and smile a weak smile. We'll talk awkwardly, and both of us will be glad when we have to go someplace, away.
Longer than that, the man's name will disappear into that fog of time and travel.
I let up on the gas pedal. I thought, “Why push it? Where do I have to be?”
I thought I might rent a room in that Alberta border town where I stayed once. The house faced into the sun, dug into a bald hill with parallel lines sawed into it by the hooves of generations of cattle. The back room of that apartment had dark curtains and a wide-screen TV, and smelt faintly of bleach over mould. But it was cheap and warm, and the owner was friendly.
But really? This truck is home.
Journeys cleanse you. The longer and more arduous the trip, the more you are purified. The rumble of the engine's cylinders and the wind in the windows washed away the smells, sounds, and feelings of Fort McMurray. Except to fill the tank, I didn't need much of an excuse to just keep right on driving.
This truck is home.
When the Greek gods finished toying with that ancient Jason, they told him to pick up an oar from his ship, the
Argo
, and carry it far inland.
Once he had walked far enough away from the sea he would meet a man on the road who had never seen the ocean. When the passerby asked him what manner of spear he carried, the gods instructed Jason to immediately plant that oar in the ground. From that oar, an olive tree would grow, the oil of which would sustain Jason for the rest of his life.
I'm finished with Fort McMurray, for now. I'm driving south. When I'm at a motel or a gas station and a passer-by casually asks me why I have an electrical cord coming out of my truck's grill, I'll stop.
Also by Rick Ranson
Working North:
DEW Line to Drill Ship
978-1-896300-73-3
In the off hours of jobs in the Arctic, workers have a choice: to gamble, drink, or watch mind-numbing television. Ranson chose to write letters home describing the daily events from his experiences working on drill ships, construction sites, and DEW Line radar stations in the Arctic.
Working North
is a collection of these fascinating stories. The tales told by Ranson include staking out a polar bear, reviving a deserted ship, conflicts with racist coworkers, and welding in the bowels of a sinking ship.
Paddling South: Winnipeg to New Orleans by Canoe
978-1-897126-23-3
In the Fall of 1969, Rick Ranson and John Van Landeghem, both barely out of high school, took on the might of the Red and Mississippi Rivers to paddle a canoe from Winnipeg, Manitoba, to New Orleans, Louisiana. Combining high drama with hilarity, Ranson tells how the duo ducked bullets in St. Louis, avoided a whirlpool, worked on a Mississippi tow boat, sailed a yacht through a barge-congested Cairo, IL, and spent a few days in the Fargo City Jail, all while meeting an eclectic array of unforgettable characters.
Paddling South
tells the incredible tale of how they survived the three month trip on the often treacherous rivers, beset by snow storms, hurricanes, monstrous waves, and unseen dams.
“
His story is incredibly intriguing and entertaining, filled with plenty of entertaining characters. A solid and hilarious story about two friends right out of high school, Paddling South is one of the most entertaining memoirs one could find.
”
~ Midwest Book Review
