by Anna Maxymiw
“You don’t know what you’re getting into there, girl,” Gus says from down the table, his eyes still on his plate. He’s an interesting presence. He lives in the guideshack with the younger men, even though there’s about a twenty-year age difference between him and the other guys in that cabin. He jokes alongside them, has the same sense of humour, but is also decidedly an adult because he has five children back in Moose Factory. Gus was one of our guides last year, on our family fishing trip, and he taught me how to cast a heavy beaver-bait lure without snagging it in the trees and laughed at me while I learned to fillet. We have a bond that’s different from the other workers, but, at the same time, it’s a bond that was forged when I was a paying customer. We’ve gone from teasing each other over cans of beer and wrangling pike lures to working on opposite sides of the rigidly enforced gender divide. I wonder how we’re going to rebuild a friendship. He keeps his eyes on his chicken as he chews. I gnaw on one side of my pointer finger.
“Where do I start?” Pea rubs a hand over the lower part of his face, thinking, his eyes inscrutable below the brim of the worn green hat he never takes off.
“Well.”
“Well—” This word is echoed, eerily and perfectly, by every veteran at the table, and I feel the hair on my arms and legs stand up at the uncanniness of it.
Jack rolls his head around on his neck, and I’m certain I hear the vertebrae click. So many people I meet are iterations of others I’ve known, but there’s something about Jack that pulls me in immediately, treacherously. Jack is brand new. The way he speaks, the way he swears, the way he wears people down, relentless and shrill—all of these traits are alien to me, and therefore I’m drawn to him, curious and masochistic.
Jack is smart, nearly too smart for his own good: he’s impertinent and impatient, says things quickly when his mouth doesn’t catch up to the speed his brain is working at. His sense of humour often has the rest of the staff laughing so hard that we can only communicate through tabletop slaps and useless leg kicks. His stories and anecdotes are endless, and he knows how clever he is and that he’s the natural leader. He’s both the fool and the emperor, a rule-maker who will turn on you in a hot second and snitch on you to the boss if you cross him in a way he deems inappropriate, the glue that is going to keep our group together, a contradiction in all ways.
“One time I had to climb the satellite tower on top of the lodge,” Jack says, green eyes unblinking.
“So?”
“Without a safety rope.” He laughs. “Well, no. I had a safety rope, but it didn’t attach me to the roof—it attached the power drill to my belt. Some fucking use, eh?”
“And the lodge roof is tin!” Tiff shakes her head.
“All the housekeepers were sitting in the dining room, like…like, fuckin’ expecting to see me fall off the tower and punch through the roof into the lodge.”
“I wish.” This sentiment is chorused by a few of the housekeepers; it seems that Jack is interminably annoying to many.
“Why were you up there?”
“Hank wanted me to sweep cobwebs away from the satellite dish.” Jack is the only one on staff who uses the pet form of Henry’s name.
“Could you have said no?”
“Of course I fucking could have,” Jack shoots back. I feel like there’s something unspoken here: Of course I could have, but think of the stories I’m able to tell now.
Pea hoots a chuckle through the back of his throat. There’s a beat of silence.
“Oh! What about Trevor and the dump?”
Alisa starts to shake her head, the laughter already burbling from behind her chest bones. “Oh, yeah.” Her giggle, I’ve learned, is the most contagious in camp, a trilling, bubbling bell of a thing. So I start to laugh, marooned, without even knowing where this story is going to go.
“Yeah. One time Trevor had to do dump burn—”
“And he was so good at it, honestly,” Alex says.
“He could get the fire ten, fifteen feet into the air. No one lit garbage on fire like Trev. None of these idiots our year can compare,” Jack continues.
Alex nods. Aidan, at the other end of the table, is either unaware that he’s being insulted or is ignoring them.
Dump burn is the stuff of heroes. At the end of every day, all garbage—especially the food scraps—needs to be set on fire in the dump. This is supposed to deter the bears and myriad other scavengers from gathering too near to the lodge. Every dockhand over the years has had a different way of burning the dump, I hear. Some studious boys in the past knew how to layer the garbage just perfectly, so that the right amounts of oxygen and gasoline were between the strata of food bits and tampons and tissues and toilet paper rolls. Good dump burns are bragged about. And there’s an element of danger to the burn, because when the summer gets crackling and dry, there’s a very real risk of starting a forest fire.
“So he took Tiffany back with him. Because you’re not supposed to do dump burn alone. In case something happens.”
“You know.”
“You know.”
“Well, like, thank god she was there. Because he steps on a two-by-four and it has this brutal rusty nail sticking out of it.”
“Like this long.” Tiff measures with her fingers.
“And he yells and drops the bucket of gasoline, but he bends over as he does, see?” Jack can’t breathe.
“And the gas splashes up into his eyes.”
“So Tiff has to figure out how to work the piss-pack!” A piss-pack is an unwieldy plastic firefighting backpack that holds just shy of twenty litres of water and has a hose that has to be pumped by hand. It’s a useless safety measure up here. No one on staff really knows how to work it properly, and if a forest fire ever caught up with us, it would be just that—like pissing into hellfire.
“And she’s trying to figure it out—”
“—Really, no one ever teaches the housekeepers anything useful! It’s not my fault,” Tiff protests.
“And he’s yelling hurry, hurry because he can’t see, because there’s fuckin’ gas in his eyes!”
The table jiggles from where Pea’s palms are hitting it, his body hunched over as he laughs. Alisa has her head in her hands. There’s a comfortable lull, and people go back to shovelling pie into their faces. I toy with a spoonful of cherry filling until—
“One time I killed a chipmunk by dropping a Rubbermaid box on its head,” Pea says.
“Oh, God.” I drop my spoon and push the bowl away.
“Well, the bastard was chewing through my Rubbermaid box!” There are nods of agreement. “So I stood with my legs on either side of the doorway to my room, and when he ran through them I dropped the box on him.”
“Chipmunk jam.”
I recoil.
“Yeah, all right. I felt terrible. But we had a chipmunk problem that year. Real bad. What was I supposed to do?”
“Oh, speaking of chipmunks.”
“Oh Jesus, don’t.” Jack closes his eyes and puts a hand over his face. Tiff screws up her mouth. I watch, keenly.
“That was the only night Tiff didn’t sleep in Jack’s bunk,” Alex says. “I’ve actually never seen that before. She came back to the front girls cabin. The only night.”
“Well, I’m sorry. He put a dead chipmunk down the front of his pants and pretended it was his penis. I was so angry.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“He put it through his open fly like it was his pecker!”
“All right, all right, shut up.”
“She’s never let him forget it, either.”
“I’ll say.”
There’s another silence as Tiff and Jack relive that moment of their relationship. If Pea weren’t grinning from ear to ear, I’d feel more awkward.
Alisa breaks the quiet. Through a mouthful of dessert she says, “The housekeepers had their own fun, too, eh?”
“Oh, God. There was some weird stuff we did.”
“Remember when Monica stole all of Will�
��s socks? She was a weirdo, right? Every time she did his laundry, she took a pair of his socks and hid them in her drawers. And when we asked her what the hell she was doing, she said—”
There’s a chorus of “—Every man for himself!”
“Remember Lenna and Suze’s tit-punching game?”
“Oh yeah, oh yeah! They created this game where they had to slap each other in the tits as hard as they could. Well, one tit at a time.”
“Hurts more that way.”
“They’d, like, sneak up on each other.”
“Suze liked to get Lenna in the dining room, behind the flue. Where the guests couldn’t see. That way, Lenna couldn’t yell, she had to be quiet.”
Lots of laughter.
“Lenna’s an actress. So the summer she worked here, she served one family and used a different accent every night. Don’t know if they ever noticed.”
I like these stories even better than the stories about the dockhands. These women are goddesses of housekeeping mythology, and I look to them for inspiration.
“Oh, God. Remember Ethan in the linen closet?”
“Oh, gawd. Gaaa-a-wd!”
“Henry sent him to the attic to do some repairs.”
“Can’t send just anybody to the attic. One wrong step and they’d fall through the ceiling! Into the motel hallway!”
“Well, the entrance to the attic is in the housekeeping closet.”
“Where we have to go to get all of our supplies!”
“He waited up there for—God knows how long, actually.”
“I forget who it was—”
“—She came in to get a vacuum and he dropped from the ceiling.” The girls start laughing so hard they can’t even open their eyes, and I can’t help but join in, despite not knowing who they’re talking about.
“Syrup,” Aidan says from farther down the table, interrupting my thoughts.
As I reach for the syrup, my fingers slip, and I knock the bottle over. Kevin is fast enough to cradle it in his palm before it hits the table and spills, and for that I’m grateful. The rest of the staff chuckles as he rights it.
“Easy, big rig,” he croons, the way a man might talk to a frenzied horse.
My mouth falls open. “Big rig?”
Jack erupts, seizing on a moment. “I don’t know about where you’re from, Kev, but men don’t usually call women big rig.” He turns to me. “Isn’t that right, Big Rig?”
I know that the more I protest this nickname, the more the boys will use it. I also don’t entirely mind; part of me relishes the teasing. Again, I look at the pictures of the people above me, people who most certainly teased one another, people who probably had nicknames. Somehow, this makes me feel as if I’ve joined them.
* * *
One evening, I slip away to the shore and, without thinking, perch on the edge of the shipping platform—a lopsided wooden slab for tackle boxes and luggage, held up by empty jerry cans and old barbecue-sauce buckets, wedged at the cusp of land where the dock begins and the shore ends. I want to sit and watch the boys work, and they seem satisfied with that, because no one tells me to piss off, that women aren’t allowed. Their work is fascinating, much more interesting than washing dishes or folding fitted sheets. I could sit here all night, in the funny tornado of male activity; everyone is at ease, dirty, damp from the mist that hangs heavy and sweet in the early-evening air. Without makeup on, and with my hair tucked up under a hat, I could be one of the guys, anyway; the guests don’t even seem to notice a woman in their midst. And being one of the guys makes me feel better: the fear that is a constant presence, a hard little orb nestled in my torso, goes away when I can be as loud and rude as the boys.
I frown as I watch Gus rummaging around in a tackle box that doesn’t seem to be his. He has a pocketknife in one hand and what looks like a guest’s fishing rod in the other.
“What’re you doing?”
Gus grins, not at all ashamed to be caught making mischief. “Watch,” he says, snicking the knife open with a deft one-handed movement.
“That’s his boat for tomorrow,” Jack murmurs beside me, where he’s trying to reseal a bag of black plastic twister lures. I crank around to look at Jack, but he just shakes his head, and focuses on the bait in his hands.
Gus runs his thick fingers down the fishing line, stopping right above where the lure is tied. He takes the knife and runs the blade so, so carefully back and forth across the braid.
“He’s cutting it?”
Gus laughs. “Close.” He’s still focused on his task.
“He’s almost cutting it,” Jack says.
Gus clicks the knife closed and gently puts the rod back beside the others. He grins up at me for a second time. “Tomorrow, when they cast—”
“Oh, you shit,” I inhale, and Gus laughs now, loud and clear and without malice.
“Yeppers,” he says, making a casting motion with his hand, miming something flying through the air.
“Goodbye lure,” Kev hollers from across the rails.
“I hope it’s not their favourite,” I say, shaking my head.
Gus shrugs.
“He’s put rocks into shore-lunch kits before, too,” Jack says, sniffing his fingers. “So the guests have trouble carrying them from the boat. This stink bait smell good?” He waggles his fingers at me, and I jerk back. The guys laugh, but it doesn’t feel mean. It feels like being part of a pack.
The air gets heavier as a mild rain rolls in. I lean my head back and feel the wetness speckle across my brows and eyelids, shivering with the pleasure of it. Kevin offers me his jacket. Standing between my legs, he buttons me into it, the inner cuffs—silk, for warmth—damp around my wrists. I smile at him; he smiles back, shy, pretty, nothing but kind. I want to say thank you, when you’re nice to me I don’t feel as stupid as I normally do, but the words are lodged at the back of my mouth. I don’t want to appear maudlin in front of anyone, don’t need to give these boys a look into my emotions.
Henry appears on the shoreline. He’s holding himself ramrod straight, and his eyes are fixed on me as he moves through the fishermen, greeting the stragglers coming off the lake. He can’t yell because there are guests around. Instead, he walks up to me, smiling a pike-tooth grin, pinning me in place even as some of the boys have already skittered away.
Henry looks at me, but doesn’t address me. Instead, he speaks to Kev.
“Kevin,” he says. “There’s a problem here. Do you know what it is?”
I shrug, answering for Kev.
“It’s this lovely lady sitting right here. Where should she be?”
I don’t answer because I don’t trust myself not to snap back. Aren’t I here, up here, no matter what? Why, in this swath of wilderness, would there be a place I’m not supposed to be? Shouldn’t it be every woman for herself, any port in a storm? Aren’t I supposed to be here, leaning back on my hands, feeling the paint peeling beneath my palms so much that I come away with flecks in my love lines? Watching the physical work of men and wishing I could help?
Apparently, I’m not.
“You don’t have to move right now,” Henry finally says directly to me, as if he’s doing me a favour.
When he leaves, just as quickly as he came, still glad-handing the guests, I slip out of Kevin’s jacket. I’m too humiliated to offer any backchat to the boys who are watching me go. I walk away from the shoreline, back into the forest, to the girls’ cabin, to my bed, to the quieter, smaller female places.
* * *
When it rains, the tin roof of the main building sounds like so many things at once: a solo snare in a drumline or a rollicking of heels and fists in a tantrum state or a toothy monsoon rearing up toward us. I’m getting ready for dinner service when I hear the rain start, and I can tell it’s going to be a thick one, the kind of rain that rails so loudly against the walls and eaves that I won’t be able to hear my guests place their orders even though I’m standing a foot away. But there’s something about rain like this
that makes us twitchy and thrilled. It’s a vestige of childhood, the idea of a puddle day, a rain check.
Once it starts, I’m grateful most guests give only one-word answers to my rote questions: Russian or Italian dressing? Beef medium rare or medium well? Yorkshire pudding or no? Earlier in the summer is when the more dedicated fishermen tend to come up, so conversation with the guests is limited. There are moments when these crotchety men show their hands, when they grin to themselves when thinking about a successful day on the water, when they rub their fingers together while waiting for dinner, remembering the slick feel of fish scales on the skin. There’s joy to be found, and even the grumpiest guests are able to get a taste of it. But the housekeepers aren’t thinking about the guests at the moment. Instead, our eyes are cast on the plateau of the lake beyond the dining room windows, where the water is shifting from bronze to grey, frothing and belching along the sandy shoreline as if violent hands were tatting it, stirring it, beckoning us to watch up close.
When we finish serving dinner, some of the girls make a dash for the cabins, wanting only to step out of proper pants and into sweats and let the inescapable aggravations of the day dissolve under the rhythms on our windows and the smell of fresh water on the breeze. But some of us pull on our jackets, our shells, rain pants and bibs and waders borrowed from the main lodge, abandoned boots pilfered from the back corners of closets and adopted as our own. We don’t know how long the rain will last. There’s a saying up here: Don’t like the weather? Wait fifteen minutes! We can’t risk a delay.
Henry won’t be outside in weather like this. He prefers the lodge, the ability to check and recheck weather systems obsessively on his satellite internet. Right now, he’ll be strolling between the rows of tables in the dining room, leaning down to tell people how fierce the current “system” is, how long it’ll be overhead. These pronouncements are almost always wrong, but the fishermen like being reassured. And because he’s inside, we’re outside. Pea, Jack, Connor, Aidan, and Kev are already sitting on the shipping platform, watching the lightning skitter across the lake, and Alex, Syd, Alisa, and I join.