Bittersweet Sands (3 page)

There'd be nothing wrong with Highway 63 if it only connected two isolated farming towns. If farmers were the only traffic Highway 63 had, it would be a showpiece. But that road doesn't just connect two sleepy towns in northern Alberta. Highway 63, and to a lesser extent Highway 85, funnel all the traffic from an oilfield the size of Florida into a couple of narrow two-lane highways out into to the outside world.

I drove, and drove, through forests of skinny trees with tufts on top of them, like pubic hair on a stick. Woods and vague outlines of lonely farmhouses were the only scenery, black on grey.

Hours I drove. I moved my arms, surprised at their stiffness. I wiggled my toes and looked at my hands on the steering wheel. They were hands that pulled things, held things, and every once in a while punched things. The skin of my hands is covered in welding scars. Once, on a boring afternoon waiting for equipment that never arrived, with the sun hitting my hands and making shadows of the veins, bones, and hair, I had idly tried to count my scars. I gave up when it became obvious that, like craters on the moon, my scars came in so many different sizes that counting them all was impossible.

At first I thought, It's an illusion, but an orange glow defined the night's horizon. I'd seen them before, those domes of orange in the night marking out small towns along the Yellowhead Highway like popcorn on a string.

I had driven through those small towns, catching flashes of people sitting in their living rooms. I wondered what they were thinking. Probably wondering where that loud truck was going. In Grasslands, a couple walked together, holding heavy-gloved hands. I passed back into the night, my eyes adjusting to the lonely black.

But this glow was different. The whole horizon shone like a giant prairie stubble fire, and I was driving into the middle of it.

I shivered. I was doing something, going somewhere. I was entering McMurray proper.

I passed a WELCOME TO sign, and a turnout that I'd never stopped at. There's that hill that always pops my ears, a street sign, a red light. The hospital on the right is massive, its sheer size a warning.

After hours of forest, my truck was suddenly driving through lights and stainless steel highrises.

I stopped at a stoplight, my truck idling, my body shaking from the road. I had driven through the black and come out into brittle lights so vibrant that the buildings shimmered orange.

In Fort McMurray, half-ton trucks drive faster. People walk upright with clear eyes towards some near objective. They are younger, stronger, in a hurry.

Energy squeezes from the cold air blanketing the city. People don't lounge in the oilsands; there's a Monday-morning urgency to their movements.

The work goes on. Winter isn't the pause it is in the south. Snow is bulldozed, huts are erected, creased orange tarps climb to amazing heights to cover the sides of stainless steel towers. Lights in formation pierce the black and orange so the refineries look like Halloween decorations gone mad. Padded workers disappear into their bright orange tents, reappearing only to shuffle penguin-like into other huts.

The work goes on. The still, eternal cold torments Fort McMurray and the refineries, warping sounds, shattering pipes, cracking engines.

The work goes on.

I held the sticky steering wheel and looked over the neon city, an orange nebula in the middle of a silent forest black as tar.

I had arrived.

DAY ONE
( Orientation )

I'll say this about the asshole: he was neat. He stood in front of our class, a turd in an ironed shirt. He looked down his nose at us grubby workers who were obviously beneath his station—a pretty good trick for someone five feet tall with an ass that waddled like a duck.

“You're late! Indoctrination starts at nine AM sharp. Come to the next one.” The small man walked towards the criminal coming through the door.

“And the next one starts...?” the offender asked.

“Thursday.”

“That's two days.”

The intruder had the look of someone who either worked out or worked hard. He was about forty years old, but he didn't have the soft chin like the rest of us. His construction denims were standard but one cut above. The man beside me smiled, nodded towards the criminal, and whispered a soft, singsong warning: “Don't fuck with him.”

The instructor's sneer showed that he knew how much a two-day wait in a Fort McMurray hotel would cost. He raised his hand, as if flicking away an imaginary mosquito, and indicated the door. “Be on time next time.”

Instructor and intruder stared at each other, each issuing a silent challenge, authority against near-violence. The room went still.

The instructor broke the impasse. “Out.”

The intruder looked around the room.

“Everybody who's working for Golden and Fliese, come with me. Out!”

It wasn't a request. The entire room rose. The instructor spun towards the intruder. “You can't leave!” he shouted at the backs of several workers. He turned toward the intruder. “You! Who's your supervisor?”

“He is!” most of the workers yelled, grinning as they stomped out of the room.

Several men thumped down to the reception area. Heads poked out of office doors. The safety coordinator, with blue eyes and a face like a basset hound, emerged from the boardroom carrying a half-finished cup of coffee. “What's up?” he asked, gesturing with his coffee mug toward the departing workers.

“This guy just ordered everybody out,” the instructor said.

The coordinator turned to the intruder. “Zat true, Navotnick?”

The instructor started, shocked that the supervisor knew the name of this piece of scruff. “He was late. The rule is—”

“I know the rules,” the bemused coordinator said. ”I wrote them, Brian.”

“Barry,” the small man corrected.

The man who had caused the interruption continued. “Without supervision, you'd have a crew of guys getting paid to wander all over the site. Might as well keep them together in a hotel.”

“And send us the bill,” the coordinator muttered.

“And send you the bill.” The man's eyes bore into the small dark man.

The coordinator turned to the men, his face like a mudslide. “Go back and sit down.” He spoke like a tired old man shooing his grandchildren off to bed. “Sit down, sit down.” To the instructor, choosing his words carefully, he said, “I'm the reason he's late, Brian. He and I had some, ah, points to go over before he could get back on the site.”

Barry's neck turned red.

The coordinator grunted. With a tired smile, he continued to wave the remaining class back into the auditorium. He crooked his finger to the instructor. “Acastus? May we have a word?”

“Yes.” The instructor almost saluted.

“You could have handled that with a little more... tact, you know, Brian.”

“Barry.”

“Barry.” The coordinator nodded, eyes bluer.

“But he didn't—”

“Ah!”

“—wasn't—”

“Ah!”

“But—”

The older man's eyes became an even deeper blue. He gestured toward the small man with his mug, and a large dollop of coffee splattered onto the white linoleum and Barry Acastus' pants. The man's voice rumbled down the hall and into the auditorium.

“We're not running a gulag, Brian. Barry. Stop being a Nazi.”

In their seats, men grinned.

* * *

The day dragged on. The auditorium was hot. The workers had overdressed, the voice of Barry Acastus, the instructor, droned, heads nodded.

“If you cross a red plastic tape barrier, denoting a ‘hot' work area, and you don't have permission to be there, you will be terminated. Instantly.”

For the twentieth time in an hour, I shifted in my chair. I always attributed my hatred of high school to my hatred of sitting. The only thing that kept me awake through this torture was the pain from my tailbone.

“If you come to work impaired, you will be terminated.”

I watched a man across from me yawn, and I yawned back. All over the room, men looked like they were nodding in quiet agreement to imaginary friends.

“There is zero tolerance of discrimination, whether it be sex, race, colour, creed, religion, or sexual preference. If you engage in such activities, you will be terminated.”

Acastus stopped. Men on the edge of sleep snapped awake and became wary. Acastus stared at a worker whose head was back, mouth open. He was just beginning a long, slow, nasal snore. The worker next to the sleeping man nudged him.

“Taxi!” the man's neighbour whispered hoarsely.

Taxi noisily wiped his face and stared around, bewildered.

“If you can't stay awake,” Acastus snapped, “you'll have to leave. And... you'll have to wait until Thursday to come back.”

The crowd awoke. Acastus stared down the now-attentive Taxi.

“Are you going to stay awake?”

The man nodded sullenly.

Acastus looked around the room, like a gladiator about to dispatch a foe demanding the crowd view his power.

“Are you?”

“I'll stay fucken awake,” Taxi said.

“That's better.”

From the back of the crowd came a stage whisper which both captured the feeling of the attendees, and forever branded Safety Officer Barry Acastus: “This Safety Nazi don't ever learn, do he?”

Only two men in the audience sat watching the instructor. They hung on his every word. Periodically their heads would nod together, as they engaged in a short but animated conversation. My attention shifted from the droning in front of me to the conversation behind.

“That doesn't count.”

“Yes it does!”

“It don't.”

I turned and looked at the two. An older worker with deep lines in his face and a tuft of pure white hair was talking with a man dressed from head to toe in scruffy black coveralls.

“What's up?” I asked.

“Wait till coffee,” said the man in black with a grin.

Twenty minutes later at the coffee machine, the two workers approached me.

“So, Pops,” I asked the older worker, “what's the deal?”

The Johnny Cash wannabe interjected. “We've had this asshole before. All this Safety Nazi does is just threaten. That's his only M.O. While he's telling us about the company's harassment policy, he's harassing us.”

“I noticed,” I said.

“We each put ten dollars in a hat,” Pops said, “and the one that gets closest to how many times he threatens to fire us by quitting time wins.”

I spoke to the man in black. “What's he up to?”

“Thirty-eight.”

“Thirty-eight threats in four hours?” I grinned.

“Shit, I ain't even close!” Stash looked crestfallen.

I smiled. “Let's start a new round. Talk to the other guys. I'm in for ten. Start them off at thirty-nine.”

The three of us spread out among the bored workers lounging along the halls and in the smoking rooms of the building. Names, guesses, and a hat were passed, resulting in a sizeable collection. Pops spent the rest of the day looking as if he were carrying a roll of toilet paper in his shirt pocket.

When the session resumed, the class was transformed. Gone were the glassy-eyed stares. Barry Acastus, forever known as the Safety Nazi, was amazed at his sudden command of these men. Never had he taught such an attentive class. He must have thought that he had found the secret: threaten to fire one sleepy worker, and the rest were his.

He laid it on. The more he bore down, the more he commanded us, the more we leaned forward. He ended the class with beads of sweat on his brow, a hoarse voice, and the pride of a job well done. The class almost cheered.

The new apprentice, Dougdoug, won with a guess of sixty-two threats to be fired.

“A personal best,” Pops said.

* * *

The classroom portion of the orientation finally came to a close. Now it was time for the tour of the refinery. The entire orientation class clumped onto a line of yellow schoolbuses. The refinery was so large, buses regularly circle the plant to pick up and drop off workers. It takes forty-five minutes for the busses to do a complete lap.

Barry Acastus, The Safety Nazi, stood at the front of the bus, describing the vessels and their functions as they drove past. At one point, he lowered his head and spoke to the Teamster. The bus driver gave him a questioning glance.

“Do it,” said Acastus.

The driver left the refinery proper. The structures and the piping became smaller and finally receded into the horizon. The passengers looked at each other and then out at the frozen land. After fifteen minutes bumping down the gravel road, the bus slowed.

“This'll be good,” Acastus said to the driver.

The buses creaked to a stop. All around them was a white sand moonscape, sterile, empty as any Arctic winter. As far as the horizon and in every direction, regular mounds of talcum powder white sand gleamed. This was the dumping ground where the used sand from the extraction process was discarded back onto the land. The men who had brought sunglasses hastily donned them.

In the middle of that whitewashed sterility, a three-acre mound shaped like an apple core rose ten feet from the white sand. On top of the miniature mesa, seven hungry trees fought a losing battle to eke out a life in the crackling cold.

“You see that?” Acastus asked softly. “A lot of people think that the company has no regard for the local population. But you see that? That's an Indian burial ground. The company refuses to mine under there. That proves the company is sensitive to the wishes of the locals.”

“Jesus,” a voice said.

The yellow schoolbus went silent and stayed that way all the way back to the refinery.

Day Two
( Selling Time in Fort McMurray )

Fort McMurray is more than giant machines and steam and catacombs of shiny pipes that turn like snakes making love to stairs. Fort McMurray is more than anemic pine trees dying from the roots up, and bewildered moose that regularly stumble out of the woods and right into the middle of refineries. Fort McMurray is more than pick-up trucks with marker flags and dirty chrome convenience stores and parking lots carved out of half-starved forests.