Dirty Work

by Anna Maxymiw

  If I were dating someone on staff, this is where they’d most come in handy. Male partners of housekeepers are known to hang around the lodge, covert and hoping Henry doesn’t walk in and see them, to wait for their girlfriend to finish her shift, just to be able to walk her back to her cabin. Whether this is to provide protection from the guests or the bears—or both—I’m not sure. But I don’t have a boyfriend, so aside from the odd housekeeper who filters through the lodge to say goodnight on her way to her bunk, it’s me and the guests.

  Tonight isn’t so bad. The two of them are drinking red eyes, made of tomato juice and beer and steak sauce, and chatting about their catches of the day.

  “What’s different?” I crack open another Coors Light to mix a drink.

  Sometimes, when I least expect it, the guests come up with real gems: existential, philosophical, spiritual jags of genius that tumble out of them at inopportune times. Maybe this will be one of those moments.

  “You Canucks say ‘shit’ a whole lot.”

  Maybe not.

  His words stay with me, though, and I start to notice that when Canadian guests fill the camp, the air is an orchestra of the word in its different forms. And shit is such a good word to say when frustrated. If people hail from smaller towns, they drag it out into two syllables, even three if they’re especially talented. The word starts out susurrant and deceptive, and then ends in a plosive punch. Shee-iit. Of course, the female workers can’t swear around the guests. But the dockhands and guides use the word liberally, because when they do, it’s hilarious somehow. Our best guides are the filthiest, as if their swearing ability is as important as the calluses on their middle fingers from feeling the tension of the fishing line. Testing the way the lures dance and scrape over the rubble at the bottom of the lake through the pads of their fingers. Shee-iit.

  Being one of the new girls, I didn’t want to turn anyone off, so I tamped down my natural inclination to let a swear word rip, ripe and perfect, when I most needed to. I didn’t want Henry or, even worse, a guest to overhear me spewing rudeness in a moment of frustration, and there were so many moments of frustration in the first days. Moments of feeling trapped or stupid or angry with my lot for the summer. But now, as my body starts to learn to function without my brain always guiding it, forging my new muscle memory, and as I learn to joke at the expense of myself alongside the other idiots I work with, I can feel it swelling at the base of my tongue and in the back of my throat. The shit lexicon. The filth vocabulary. The need to let loose like a snapped line, to throw my head back and howl shee-iit at the kitchen sink, at the unfolded laundry, at the dirty toilets, and feel my tension slide away.

  All of us seem to feel it. The shift is slow and insidious—a rude word whispered alone in a guest room here, a bathroom joke that flits through our minds at the breakfast table there—but it’s present now after so many damn days of trying to be polite and upstanding people. Maybe it was the shit on the wall that broke the girls. Maybe it was the thought of cake that upended the boys. Or maybe we were always just dirty-mouthed shitheads. So it lingers, hidden, waiting for the right time to fly out of us and make its point, take over our vocabulary until we can’t quite recognize our old selves.

  * * *

  Robin comes running out of the staff bathroom, her braids flying behind her. Syd and I stare as she barrels toward us.

  “What, man, what?”

  “I clogged the staff toilet!”

  “Your shit was that large?” I ask.

  Robin punches me in the shoulder as Syd starts laughing. “No,” Robin says, “I accidentally flushed the wooden toilet paper roll!”

  “Aw, shee-it.”

  Our lives revolve around that toilet. It’s the only toilet in camp that’s reserved for staff members, that the guests don’t get to sully. The housekeepers go in shifts, sprinting to the bathroom in the morning to try to get first dibs. We’re in trouble.

  Syd, Robin, and I run to the shoreline where the dockhands are working, and we holler one-syllable names on our way down the path—Jack, Pea, Jack, Pea! The two of them are inspecting the boat motors.

  Jack rolls his eyes. “What did you idiots do?”

  His solution is to drain the toilet, take it off of its pipes, and lug it out onto the lawn to examine it. It’s a two-person job at most, but the five of us crowd around our little porcelain demigod. It’s funny to see the thing that our lives revolve around removed from its natural habitat.

  Pea produces a wire hanger, pilfered from a guest room. He bends it and scrapes the dried shit out of the bowl and off the pipes, rolling his eyes in an effort to look blasé, and trying not to laugh. He might be fed up with us, but he’s also not outwardly chiding us. I appreciate that, in this moment. While Pea’s working on the inside of the bowl, Syd’s busy getting in his way as she tries to clean the outside of the bowl using Vim and a handful of paper towel, knowing that the task is insurmountable but trying anyway. Jack goes to extricate the roll from the pipe in the floor of the bathroom, swearing under his breath. The rest of us are doubled over, unable to breathe from how funny we’re finding this entire situation. It’s an absurd combination—Pea cranking a mangled hanger, Syd yelping as she tries to scrub years-old scum. When we reattach the thing and it works again, we all cheer.

  That night, to make Robin feel better—she’s been given the nickname “Flush”—Jack tells a story over dinner that ends with a moral I’ll never forget. Never use lily pads to wipe your ass. Apparently, they’re too slippery. He tells us that he found this out the hard way, the same way he discovered that you should always bring napkins with you on a winter hunting trip, especially if you’ve hiked away from main camp. Especially if you’re alone in the middle of the snow, admiring the gleam of it, and an upset stomach strikes. And especially if you’re wearing skin-tight long johns meant to keep you as warm as possible.

  “Wait, what? Why? What’s the issue?”

  “The shit bubbles up over the waistband of the long johns, Big Rig! Upset stomach! Jesus. Use your goddamn imagination, you’re a fucking writer after all.”

  Someone interjects with a different piece of advice: You’re not a man until you’ve shit your pants twice and had poison ivy on your ballsack. Having never heard that particular maxim before, I start laughing so hard that I put my head on the table. We’re all laughing. The earlier mania of our plumbing chore has transferred to the now. A few of the girls are still serving supper, but with the sunset imminent and the guests finally leaving the dining room, more and more of us filter into the staff dining room, spoons of leftover fruit crisp in our hands, faces lit up with the late light, with the sweet ease of true comfort. We have some happiness from the knowledge that for today, the dirty work is done.

  * * *

  I still don’t know what happens if the septic tank isn’t emptied. Do the wooden doors that cover the tanks explode in a geyser of human waste? It’s not made clear, but we know that nothing good will come of letting it fill up. This means two boys have to pull on their hardiest rubber boots and get the shit-barrow—the wheelbarrow designated only for cake, though I don’t see any specific markings on it that would tell me that—and some shovels. They have to unlatch the tank door and scoop the fermented shit out, shovelful by shovelful, and dump it into the barrow, which is then emptied in a secret spot in the woods. It turns out you either have a cake stomach or you don’t, and all of the veteran male workers make a game of seeing who of the new dockhands will run into the dense weft of the forest to puke their guts out.

  I don’t know why I’m surprised by the disgusting nature of this particular task. Every chore is done differently from the way it might be performed in the city. Every task becomes a little more twisted. When the housekeepers are told to wash the exteriors of all of the old guest Thermoses, we don’t just have to wash them, we have to use pure paint thinner to try to scrub the tape glue off of them. When a dockhand is told to sit at the wood splitter and make kindling, he doesn’t just do it
for an hour, he does it for an entire day, building an igloo of logs around him. By evening, we can’t even see him for the wall of wood. Everything here is warped to where it’s just beyond recognition of what it would be like back home. Everything is a little crazier.

  Human shit takes on an odd consistency when it’s been sitting in a tank for days. The boys tie kerchiefs around their mouths and put earplugs up their nostrils to stop gagging, but sometimes they still, in fact, do. They make brave faces, especially when the housekeepers line up to watch them, as we stand back at a safe distance and gawk out of macabre fascination. The guys make a point of counting how many tampons have been flushed, and then berate the housekeepers for being so careless.

  I don’t know why it’s called cake. From where I’m standing, what they’re dealing with is not even remotely solid enough to resemble a baked good, and—I hate myself for making this observation, hate myself so much—it also isn’t the right consistency for batter because it’s not smooth enough. But the name makes perfect sense in that it doesn’t make sense. It’s an irreverent title for a task that fits in so well with the dire humanity of where we are. The unabashed unpretentiousness that we have all been reduced to, learning to clear away other people’s by-products.

  When the dockhands and guides and housekeepers sit together for lunch, we hear how the rookies measured up in the face of cake. We high-five and shove pizza slices into our mouths with bleached hands—from cleaning toilet bowls, from disinfecting the shit-barrow—as we hear about the tampon count: better than some years, not as good as others. And nobody is teased for having to shovel shit. Instead, our young men are lauded like heroes. Clapped on the shoulders and backs for their bravery. Now they have their war stories. They, too, can join in and have two new rules to live by: never use a lily pad to wipe, and if you don’t get poop on your knuckles while shovelling shit out of a septic tank, you’re not doing it right. And never discount shit, because it’s entirely possible to find the most brilliant slices of glee in the midst of it.

  When we laugh about shit, we know there’s something beyond the mess. We’ve started to shuck our old selves. We’ve left our airs on the shoreline like shadfly moult; on the winding path to the lodge dump; in the barely perceptible space between the girls’ bunks, all of our breathing syncing up like our periods will, all of us drawing one another in and out in the thickest parts of the night.

  And once I’ve started to shed posture and cleanliness—once I start to learn to fold into another person without any self-consciousness, to laugh, open-bellied and with tears on my face, about shit, or shee-it, in all of its forms, liquids and solids, stains and accidents and smears and projectiles—there’s nothing that keeps me from being the richest version of myself I can be.

  NO-WOMAN’S LAND

  “Horseflies always fly to the highest point on a body, you know.”

  I’m washing the outside of the lodge windows, up on a ladder scrubbing like a maniac and sweating like a pig. It’s only the middle of June, but it’s so hot that the other housekeepers are wearing tiny shorts and have rolled up the sleeves of their staff shirts. I’m standing on a rickety ladder and can’t swat at the bugs that’ll inevitably come after my tender city flesh, so I’ve had to layer up: pants tucked into thick socks, heavy lace-up boots, long-sleeve shirt tucked into black gloves, a bulky bug-net hat pulled tight around my face. I’m focused on my task, which is to make sure my windows are streak-free—because if they aren’t, Henry’s going to make me redo them—and half-wondering if I can cool my body temperature using only my mind. This is one of those jobs that make me question everything about my summer so far. It doesn’t seem safe. I don’t have a spotter, there’s no one holding the ladder or passing the bucket up to me, and it’s entirely possible it could get so hot that I faint, fall backward, and hit my head, or fall forward and through one of the panes of glass. This is where Henry is so intent on making the lodge look perfect—which is a Sisyphean task, truly, a losing battle—that he tends to ignore what is best for his staff. Still, I don’t want to be the girl who says no; I don’t want to be the paranoid one.

  I don’t hear Jack’s approach; I jump and wobble, swearing richly in shock. When I look down, he’s standing on the ground behind my ladder.

  “The highest…what?”

  He scrutinizes my outfit. “Jesus Christ, Big Rig. Not a good look, eh?”

  I imagine dumping the bucket of hot water on his face. I’m too grumpy for this: I’m so goddamned damp from the heat, every piece of clothing sticking to me, creating a terrible cocoon. I slither gracelessly down the ladder, clutching at the metal behind me, my heavy boots catching on every step. With inept, gloved hands, I rip the bug hat up so it gathers on the top of my head, black bridal veil revealing my irritated frown, so I can glare at him properly.

  It’s not my fault I look so awful; I’m trying to protect myself from the terrifyingly big horseflies, which I thought were wasps for the first few days because they’re just as large and have similar striped bodies. Horseflies, from what I’ve heard, yank chunks out of you. They take their time to land and bite, and those bites throb like hives. I’ve never heard so many screamed expletives as I have when the housekeepers dart away from the horseflies when doing chores that force them to use their arms and hands for any extended period of time, like pinning up laundry or carrying wood from one lot to another.

  Jack clicks his spit. “Look, here’s a little tip: just put your hand on the top of your head and keep your palm open, and catch them before they sting you.” He grins, his canines flashing in the glare of the sun, and he strides away before I can ask him if this piece of northern wisdom is more horseshit than not. Instead, I picture throwing the bucket at him and watching it bounce off his head. All I can do is dip my rag in the water again, turn back around, and climb up the ladder to resume my awful, relentless task. When I’m absolutely sure he’s gone, I try, for one moment, to rest my hand, palm up, on the top of my head, but my gloves are too heavy: if something alights, I can’t feel it at all.

  I’m in that position a few seconds later when Henry comes into view. He stops to stare at me. Wasn’t he just talking to Pea in his office? I’m always amazed at how quickly he can move around camp, all-seeing and all-hearing, always on high alert and light on his feet. Henry looks up at me with the expression of a disappointed parent, and I drop my hand to my side guiltily.

  “I’m going to go inside and check your windows from there,” he says. “Hopefully there aren’t any streaks.” Or you’ll be redoing everything is the unspoken sentiment hanging on the heated air. I nod, glad he can’t see my mutinous expression under the dark netting. I can feel the horseflies bouncing off of my body; they’re as frustrated as I am. When he leaves, I curse Jack under my breath as loudly as I dare, and swat at the insects in the stupidest action of futility.

  This place is rife with bugs. We’re under attack from enemies we can barely see, let alone battle. Aside from horseflies, this is the first time I’ve experienced real blackflies, and I can’t help but remember that Wade Hemsworth song: “The blackflies, the little blackflies / always the blackfly no matter where you go / I’ll die with the blackfly a-pickin’ my bones / In North Ontar-I-o-I-o, In North Ontar-i-o.” As a kid, I watched that National Film Board short by Christopher Hinton and rolled my eyes at the image of the hapless narrator crawling through the forest, trying to escape the bugs. Now I’m that hapless narrator. I’m the one running to submerge myself in the lake up to my neck to avoid these awful, relentless, multitudinous fuckers. I scratch—or pat frantically, when trying specifically not to scratch—along to the frenzied, jigging tune that’s always playing in my head. Here’s why these bugs are so insidious: when blackflies bite, you don’t necessarily feel it, but you start bleeding, because they slash at the skin of their targets with saw-edged mouthparts rather than just piercing the skin. Blackflies actually take a piece of your meat. Many times I reach up to my ear to scratch or to brush my hair away from t
he nape of my neck and my hand comes away with red, wet fingertips. “Your face is bleeding” becomes a camp refrain. Still, the blood-dotted trail of the blackflies isn’t as annoying to me as the needy whine of mosquitoes, their greedy bodies clustered on the bug nets around our bunks. Between one and the other, I’m constantly scratching at my skin, nails digging into lumps and bumps that turn raw and red with my ministrations.

  And if the real, tangible insects aren’t bad enough, Syd claims she sees “a demon bug” on our cabin wall one morning.

  “Well, what did it look like?” We’re curious, scared.

  “Like a…bug! A beetle! With red eyes.”

  “Glowing red eyes?” I laugh.

  “Shut up, man. It scared the shit out of me.”

  As we giggle, I can’t help but look around at Emma and Robin and Syd. On our breaks, the sun, which turns fat and perfectly ripe only for a few perfect afternoon hours, spreads its fingers even all the way through the dark woods, and miraculously reaches the one dirty window of the back girls cabin. The heat warms up all of the conifers, and that perfect, raw, sugary smell rises and curls around our window screen. We’re all smiling, relaxed, at home, and the soft edges of their three faces reflect the amber light. I can smell the good smells: pine needles; unwashed female bodies; fish-scale musk from inside and outside the boundaries of skin. I can hear the good sounds: our laughs, which have a sweet, dark edge that didn’t exist before we got here; the creak of the bench as we rock back and forth and joke at Syd’s expense; the whisper of the trees and also the silence of the woods behind us. We reach out and touch one another with pheromones; we roll our shoulders at the same time; we’re becoming a cabal.