Dirty Work

by Anna Maxymiw

  THE BURN

  With only three days left until we leave, the chores have gotten thicker and weirder. Dishes I’ve never seen before are pulled out of storage and washed and put back into storage and then pulled out and washed again when Sam forgets whether he’s cleaned them or not. Dirt we never noticed up until now—in the corners of guest bathrooms, on the handles of lunchboxes, on the rungs of racks used to store the lodge’s Thermoses—is pointed out and added to our list of things to scrub and wash and bleach, and scrub and wash and bleach again. Food that has stayed in the freezer all summer is defrosted and mismatched meals are presented to us: pitchers of stale Kool-Aid paired with bowls of iceberg lettuce and mushy bananas; bowls of rib sauce put out alongside macaroni salad and freezies on the side; apples piled high on a plate alongside platters of ground beef and wrapped slices of Kraft Singles cheese. We eat all of it with shrugs—in this final maniacal countdown, we’re hungry for everything.

  And behind it all, underneath it all, we keep the literal home fires burning. Dump burn goes from a kind of unsafe activity to an incredibly unsafe activity: instead of burning just food waste and bathroom-bin trash, the guys have started to burn old wood, garbage from the lodge attic and basement, cardboard boxes, linens that can’t be salvaged. Books, hats, rags, mats, any and all detritus the guys can get their hands on. I don’t know if this happens every season, but it seems that anything that can’t be stored properly—or even some of the stuff that can be—is chucked into a wheelbarrow and trolleyed to the dump.

  While lugging firewood to one of our kindling piles, I run into Jack on the back path. I crinkle my forehead; he’s sort of hunched over, and there’s something imminently suspicious about him, more so than usual. As I pause, Aidan comes cackling around a corner with a bucket, Connor at his heels. They dig their feet into the dirt when they see me, stopping on a dime, and something in the bucket sloshes.

  “What’re you doing?” I ask, shifting the wood in my arms.

  Jack clicks his tongue. He doesn’t castigate me, so I’m both wary and intrigued. What has distracted him so much that he’s put aside his irritation with me?

  “Wanna see dump burn, Big Rig?”

  It’s rare for a housekeeper to be invited to see the burn, and I feel a bit as if I’ve been inducted into some clandestine boys’ club. I don’t want to leave without having witnessed it. Besides, the return of my nickname makes something inside of me melt.

  I look at Jack’s strange spraddle-legged gait. “Why are you walking funny?” He reaches behind him and knocks on something that makes a wooden sound. There’s something shoved down the back of his pants. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”

  Beside me, Aidan hits the bucket against his shins as he starts to walk, and I realize it’s gasoline that they’re carrying. The smell is suddenly strong in the air.

  “Just you wait,” Jack answers.

  * * *

  It’s been a tense few days. The Moose Cree guests have been polite—some of the better tables I’ve served, interested in making conversation and quick to say please and thank you—but they’re a large group, and that means lots of work. They’re also here for a work retreat, so they’re not always out on the lake. Instead, they spend their mornings in the lodge, going over documents and doing presentations, so we have to do our cleaning around them, which means we have to be quiet and straight-laced, which means that we’re practically quivering with pent-up energy that we would normally be able to exorcise. We’ve had to be well-behaved, serious under Henry’s hawk eyes—and that feels wrong. We feel loose and rude, ready to go and also not ready, like all our feelings are rattling around inside our heads and bumping up against our skin with no place to go.

  There’s something else at play, something about race and power dynamics that no one is talking about. When Alex recognizes one of the former Moose Cree grand chiefs at one of the dinner tables, she exhales a sigh of relief that his wife isn’t with him.

  “Why? Do you know them?”

  “They were up here a few years ago,” Alex says, trying to get a stubborn stain off of a coffee carafe. We’re standing in the dishpit, talking in hushed tones. “His wife was…hard to serve.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She kept sending her food back, and being kind of rude to me. Eventually, he pulled me aside when she was in the bathroom and said, ‘I’m sorry about her, but she just really doesn’t like the white man.’”

  I blink at Alex, who is still focusing on the carafe spout. “What?”

  “I mean, fair,” she says. She’s not angry, or offended, only recounting the situation. I can’t imagine what I would have done if I had been in her place. What would I have stuttered out as a reply?

  “What did you say?”

  “I don’t remember,” she says, picking up a piece of steel wool. “I think I apologized, too.”

  The whole situation is an ouroboros—we, white employees, spending our summer on land that decidedly does not belong to us and never has, but is now in the process of being purchased by the people who I think should have had rights to it all along. No one is talking about race or privilege or tensions, but they’re simmering under the surface. This shows itself when Henry is talking to the group about fish quotas for shore lunch, and one of the Indigenous women says, “Well, it’s my lake; I can take whatever I want from it,” and all of the housekeepers kind of titter to ourselves behind our hands, because Henry has no response for that, and neither do we.

  Something is also going on with Gus. He’s been making the housekeepers’ lives more difficult than usual at dinner. Because he’s from Moose Factory, and knows the Moose Cree First Nation group, he’s been their guide for the afternoons when they do go fishing. But he’s been bringing them back later and later each night. I can’t tell if that’s because the guests want to stay out for as long as they can, or if it’s because he hasn’t told them about the cut-off for dinner service, but it’s making us all pretty anxious. Guests are told to be back in the dining room by 8 p.m. every night, at the very latest, and, in general, most of our guests this summer have followed this rule. But some of our current guests have been coming in at 8:30, or even nine, which has a domino effect. The later the housekeepers serve, the later we get out of the kitchen. The longer we’re in the kitchen, the meaner we get. The later Gus comes in off the lake, the less time he has to help the dockhands and other guides with some of the bigger chores that need to be done before our final day—one of the biggest of them being taking the boats out to the narrows and storing them on the racks out there for the off-season. So something doesn’t feel right. I can’t tell if it’s because Gus is with people he knows from home, so he’s already checked out for the summer, thinking about his real life back in Moose Factory, or if it’s because there’s something else percolating.

  I’m not even sure he likes the group he’s guiding: the morning they flew into camp, I was making coffee in the kitchen, and Gus sauntered in to grab a handful of muffins.

  “You watch out,” he said around a mouthful.

  “What?”

  “These women, in this group—you can’t trust them. You watch out, girl. They love to talk about people behind their backs,” he said, shoving another muffin into his mouth. He drags out the word love like a series of round vowels. “Just keep your nose clean.”

  So I can’t tell where he’s at, or what he’s thinking, if he’s feeling split between two semblances of home. All I know is that it feels as if there’s a big storm brewing, something spreading out over the horizon. I can sense it in the air, but I’m hoping it clears before it reaches camp.

  * * *

  “Okay. One thing you need to know about the burn—if you hear popping sounds, duck.”

  Aidan and Connor are walking around the periphery of the dump, sloshing gasoline onto the garbage.

  “What? Why?”

  Connor calls from across the pit. “Popping means someone”—and here he looks at Aidan, who is
merrily unaware—“didn’t go through the garbage, and there’re still batteries and bottles in there.” He points to the trash.

  “What?”

  “Missiles, Big Rig.” Jack makes an exploding sound with his mouth. Pew.

  “Duck?”

  “Gee fucking whiz, you stupid or what? Just find a tree to hide behind or something.”

  I look around. “Where are the bears at?”

  “Hiding. They’re probably watching us from the trees. I bet there are two or three near us right now.”

  Aidan finishes dispersing the gasoline, and the four of us stand elbow to elbow at the spot where the path meets the dump. Far back enough to prevent our eyebrows from getting singed off, maybe. Definitely not far back enough to dodge an exploding battery.

  Jack pulls a bible out of his pants.

  “Oh, God,” I say.

  “Exactly! Dum-ta-dum-ta-dum!”

  “Where’d you find that?”

  “You don’t need to know. Who has matches?” He dips the corner of the book into some of the remaining gas. I take a step back. Beside me, Connor is laughing silently; I can feel his body shaking. Aidan looks like a child, so impressed with Jack and his transgressive choice of kindling. I just stare, transfixed, horrified.

  Jack lights the bible, and yodels some verses as he pretends to read. He’s unapologetic, his eyes wild in the pre-dusk light. There’s gasoline everywhere—on our hands, on the book, on the lip of the bucket. We’re all incendiary, dangerous. Jack catches my gaze over the book. Here we are, aflame; here we are, ready to throw the match to the gasoline.

  This is another stupid, wonderful thing to add to my memories, to catalogue about these past two months, the things we’ve done together, the things that’ll stay with me, vivid in my mind no matter how much time passes. If I get lonely, back in the city, I will be able to open that book, flip through the memories like an album, to pick out whatever I need to remember to make me feel better. On a shore day so rainy my eyelashes collect drops of water like dew, Jack teaching me to do headstands against the lodge sign—my boots are too heavy, and I fall again and again until he eventually has to grab my feet and hoist them up, and I caw triumphantly as he rolls his eyes as Max, the older guide, sits at the picnic table, clapping his hands softly. Wade and Aubrey going out for a canoe ride, to the part of the lake where the sun is the biggest and the water quietest, and the two of them talking to each other, releasing stress through the rhythmic dip and flash of the paddles. Robin taking sweet naps in the boys’ cabin because they keep their fire low and glowing all day, male hands much better at stoking the coals than us impetuous girls, and Connor and Aidan and Wade never saying boo or kicking her out, only stepping quietly around her to get in and out of the front door. Kevin offering his bunk to tired housekeepers as a place to catch some sleep during the day, keeping his sheets clean and fresh, and me collapsing onto his mattress, tearfully grateful. Pea and I spending a quiet hour together, sewing our socks and pants in the darkened guideshack, the silence calming, with no need to fill the gap with small talk. Jack holding a dying cedar waxwing in his gloved hands. Eight girls swimming into the dusk, sliding under the water with eyes closed.

  “Big Rig, pay attention.”

  The fire spreads down the spine of the open book, lipping at Jack’s dirty fingers. Connor and Aidan bellow at him to hurry, hurry, and he finally throws the bible in a lit arc, yelling “Ye shall burn” at the top of his lungs, turning back to face us as orange explodes behind him.

  Everything in front of us lights up with a dull thrum. The sound is like a deep exhalation, and I feel it stir the hair around my face. Black smoke curls up to the tops of the pine trees.

  Aidan howls to the sky. “Good one!”

  “Yeah, good one!”

  Dump burn doesn’t have to be this wild or dangerous. I’m sure Henry would have something to say about this mess, but since the burn falls solely to the employees, our boss really has nothing to do with it. And so, away from prying eyes, back in the forest, heroes are made when the fires are stoked. This is how dockhands ensure their names are passed on through generations of Kesagami workers.

  The garbage starts to burn with a thick stench, and then I hear it—pop, pop, pop-pop-pop.

  Connor turns to Aidan with a scandalized look. “Aidan!”

  “Oopsies,” Aidan drawls.

  “Goddamn. Shield your eyes.”

  I do, putting a hand up in front of my face. As the fire burns, Aidan uses a rake to push the edges of the garbage into the hot centre. Dirty embers, overwhelming heat, and the ripe smell of burning trash fill our nostrils. I’m breathing in our hard work, the discarded cleaning rags, paper towels, the old mop heads, the used sponges and tampons, dishrags, and coffee grounds. It brings tears to my eyes for so many reasons.

  I look around and try to stare between the thick trees, and then Connor makes a surprised sound and points up. I follow the trajectory of his finger. Above us, the little female bear clings to a slender tree branch, watching us. I can tell she’s inquisitive—kind of frightened, kind of curious. I smile. She’s probably been chased up the tree by the older male bears and the fear of the fire. I’m not scared. I incline my head at her as we filter off to the main camp. Behind me, the fire claws at the edges of the dirt, trying to extend its reach.

  * * *

  On our final night in camp, the dockhands and guides and housekeepers congregate in the guideshack. The final full day of work whizzed by, and this last night feels rushed, as if we’ve been shoved together by unseen hands and ordered to sort out emotions quickly. As I look around at all of the exhausted faces, I realize that we’re nowhere near anything like closure. The girls look browbeaten; the boys look tense. There’s a disconnect, and sitting in silence, too tired to talk, won’t help that.

  It doesn’t seem real that we’re leaving tomorrow. It’s come too fast, roared up on us like some predator that was lying in wait. I’m here, it hisses. I’m here—goading us, scaring us. Didn’t we want to go back home, to the places that we love? We did, or we thought we did. But home has changed meaning now—it’s more than just bricks and mortar or a familiar bed or stairs that you can walk in the dark and corners and crannies you know like the back of your hand. It’s where and how you make it; it’s work and it’s hard and it doesn’t always make sense, where your love lies and how you start to understand home and belonging and being part of something, but it happens whether you want it to or not and all you can do is let yourself be swept up in it.

  I wanted our last night at the lodge to be sentimental: a final evening of huddling together in the guideshack, sitting on the bunks and wearing borrowed sweaters; maybe even some stargazing. I wanted all of us to stay up as late as possible. I pictured us sitting and watching the dark horizon of the lake until the sun came up. Something to temper my anxiety about separating from one another after so many days of sheer togetherness. Something to reassure me that no matter what happens in the future, I would always have this strange, strong bond. After this crazy week, our muscles aching and our brains buzzing, we deserve a star shower, a rest, some shoulder-to-shoulder quiet.

  Instead, we’re slumped over, tired in the way that stretches patience tight like a twanging string. We sit without speaking, without moving, staring into the stove with a dull-eyed acceptance. I lean into Aubrey and Alisa, wanting just to close my eyes and rest, to feel the solid warmth of these other women and not think about tomorrow.

  Then I hear the front door open and some unfamiliar voices. I crack open an eye to see Gus with two Moose Cree guests. All of the staff freeze in place. Guests in the guideshack are a rare occurrence. If we do bring guests to the staff cabins, it’s usually because they’re young, or they’re exceptionally cool, or they’ve been coming here for years and want to thank us for our work in person for a brief moment. It’s far more common for the staff members to hang out in the guest cabins. It’s more neutral ground. Fewer personal effects; less room for trouble. Having
guests in the guideshack is a recipe for disaster.

  Gus has a string of freshly caught walleye in his hand. From across the room, I see Jack’s head snap up. His eyes glow in the stove light like a predator at dusk. I feel a shudder down my spine, can’t quite figure out why or what’s going to happen, but already the air has started to thicken with something about to be unleashed.

  Gus is laughing, and his two guests sit down on the small benches around the cabin stove. The staff move off. The boys look at one another with narrowed eyes as they give up their seats; the girls break formation and go and perch on the bunks, in the rooms and out of sight. I don’t know what he’s going to do with those fish, but the guys sure do. All of the players move into position slowly and surely, setting up the scene: Pea comes to the doorway of his room, shielding the girls behind him with his broad body; Jack leaves Tiffany on his bunk and stands up, keeping his sharp green eyes on the walleye; Kevin hovers in the background. Around me, the girls chat in that mellifluous female way—trying to defuse the situation by keeping conversation flowing like a stream while pretending that nothing’s going on—but everyone can see Pea’s rigid posture, the way his shoulder muscles flex slightly under the faded green cotton of his shirt.

  If Gus senses that something is amiss, he doesn’t give a shit. He flips an old bucket over, lays a plank of wood overtop of it, and starts to fillet.

  I don’t know much about fillet etiquette, when or where to carve up a walleye. I’ve only done it in the wild open, on an upturned bucket on a boat on shore, on a shitty paddle at a shore lunch. Throughout the summer, there were a few nights when the boys sneaked fresh-caught fish into camp and fried up a late-night makeshift shore lunch in a tiny cooker behind the guideshack. Those were good nights, defined by the hot flake of walleye meat across our tongues, and the roofs of our mouths getting sweetly burned by beer batter and canola oil. But the fish always came into the cabin filleted or cooked. The dirty work was done outside.