Provider's Son

by Lee Stringer

  “No, you likes the wacky-baccy too much to like being drunk.”

  Sinead blushed.

  “You think I dont know?” he said.

  “Thats different.”

  “How is it different? You was probably toking up before you came to dinner for all I knows.”

  “Are you crazy? I was never into it that heavy, Dad. Besides, if I got caught out here Id lose my job.”

  “Im just saying. To go getting on me nerves for drinking when you likes the dope just as much.”

  “I shouldnt have said anything.”

  “I cant understand why youd be so pissed off at your mother anyway, when youre just like her.”

  “Lets change the subject, shall we?”

  Levi shrugged and dug into his supper.

  “So where do your boyfriend live?” Levi said.

  “Hes not off work yet. They work twelve-hour shifts.”

  “He works here? Your mother said you was dating a artist.”

  “He is. But he works here with Security too.”

  “Security. Do he work at the front gate?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think I already met him then.”

  “Really? Did you tell him who you were? I told him your name and that you were coming in.”

  “Yeah. I told him my name. He seemed to recognize it too, come to think of it.”

  “What did you say to him?”

  “I told him he was gone off hes head.”

  Sinead was obviously confused, so Levi told her what had happened at the security gate. She thought it was hilarious.

  “He certainly sticks to the rules, dont he,” Levi said.

  “When hes in the mood.”

  “He looked different than on the picture. Is he so serious as he seems?”

  “Not really.”

  “But hes still a artist. What is he, a painter?”

  “No. Carving. Hes getting well known too, in Edmonton. Hoping to be able to do it full time eventually. You should see some of his work. Itll blow you away.”

  “Yes by. Certainly all them Indians is good at carving.”

  Sinead laughed and shook her head. “Oh Dad.”

  “What? They is.”

  “Please dont say that to him. I told him you were into woodworking. He didnt seem to be that interested until I showed him some of the pictures Mom has of your rocking chairs on Facebook. I guess he didnt realize what a real rocking chair could look like. He was blown away.”

  “Facebook. The man who come up with that should be shot.”

  Sinead explained to him how all his rocking chairs had been in a picture gallery on her mother’s page. He asked if it was still there because it gave him hope. Maybe he shouldnt give up quite yet. Without trying to sound desperate he asked Sinead if she would show it to him after they were finished supper. He couldn’t go to her room because she was in the women’s dorm where no men were allowed. She had to bring her computer to his room.

  “How long have them pictures been there?”

  “A year for sure. I thought you knew about it.”

  “I remembers her mentioning something about it,” Levi said, “but I never did see it.”

  A Wolf in the Clearing

  The first day on the job and Levi was so nervous that he could not eat breakfast. Instead he went to the Lunch Room and packed his bag with cookies, sandwiches, fruit, vegetables, and juice boxes. He was going to grab a coffee at Tim Hortons but the lineup was so long he feared he might miss the bus.

  He couldn’t believe his bad luck. Literally thousands of Newfoundlanders worked in the oil sands and not a man here did he recognize. There were a few young faces that looked familiar, probably sons of men he knew, but no one he could strike up a conversation with.

  Four yellow school buses arrived and picked up Levi and the couple of hundred men that were waiting. Levi found a seat and a beautiful young woman sat beside him. He wondered if she might be a secretary, but her brown coveralls proved that wrong. He supposed he should not be surprised that a woman was working as a tradesman these days, but a woman so beautiful... He didn’t mind, however, he didn’t mind at all.

  He was too nervous to really take in the land and forest as they made their way to site, but he still noticed the difference in the trees. The firs in Newfoundland were short, broad, and thick with limbs. Unlike these, which at forty feet were at least a third taller, with scattered limbs no more than two or three feet long. He wondered why they grew that way. Then he saw, in a small clearing, a wolf, no more than forty feet from the side of the road. It was white and grey, and looked about the size of a large German Shepherd, although it was hard to tell with nothing to scale it by except trees in the background. Seeing a wolf in the wild for the first time was amazing enough, but the way it was sitting there, watching the bus go by, it looked like a dog waiting for its master. But this canine had no master, and never would. It watched a bus full of primates pass by in a machine it was probably used to seeing and hearing in the distance since it was a pup.

  When Levi walked into the six-wide trailer for the Toolbox Meeting he was lost. He managed to find a seat at a table where three Asians were sitting, and he sat down with a cup of coffee and nibbled on one of the cookies he brought. The room was filled with the rumble of men chatting and laughing. Then Sinead showed up, and as she came to his table he saw dozens of eyes glancing and ogling her body. It irritated him to think what was running through their minds, because he knew what went through his when he saw an attractive young woman.

  “You made it,” she said.

  “I made it. Dont know how long Im going to last though.”

  “Youll be fine once you get with your crew and whatnot.”

  “I hope so.”

  A half hour later the morning safety Toolbox Meeting began. Sinead went to stand with the general foremen, supervisors, superintendants, and other safety crew along the wall just before the meeting started. He was proud of her, the way she stood there confidently, joking with one of the men next to her. There were only three women among the fifteen or so along the wall, and she had guts enough to be one of them.

  First, one of the general foremen walked the floor and discussed various important safety issues of the day. He was young and nervous, but he managed to get through it. Then he called on each person standing against the wall, to see if they had anything to add. When he got to Sinead she nodded and stepped out. She spoke about how the bird’s nest they had found the previous day was empty, one left over from the year before. Apparently when a bird’s nest was found on site it was not allowed to be removed, and a squared off section of up to ten meters had to be made around it until the eggs hatched. It was funny. Thousands of acres of wilderness had been flattened in the making of this project, and here they were worried about a bird’s nest? “All politics,” as his father used to say.

  Last was the superintendent. He walked back and forth in the center of the room with an air of self-importance that Levi loathed. This whole idea of a hierarchy of dozens of men from the CEO right down to a lead-hand was hard for Levi to accept. He had never been a fan of authority, and it made him nervous. He was pleased to hear, however, that at least half of the foremen and general foremen had a Newfoundland accent, along with the majority of the room.

  To Levi’s surprise the meeting went on for almost a half hour, by the time everyone had spoken, and a few people had asked questions. Most of the men got up to leave but the welders and their helpers stayed at their tables. They would have yet another meeting with their supervisor. This was when Levi was assigned to work with a rig welder named Patrick. He was a squat, blocky man with arms so long it made him look like an ape.

  “Youre getting into this racket late in life,” Patrick said after the meeting was over and they headed out to his truck. He had an English accent and Levi was intrigued by it. Levi’s great great grandfather Josiah Conley had been from England. Josiah had been a fisherman, as was every generation after him. Levi explai
ned that he had been a fisherman all his life, but he had done all the welding when it was needed on the boat.

  “Still, itll be four or five years before you get your red seal at this.”

  “I dont care. Im browned off with fishing.”

  Patrick chuckled. “’Browned off.’ I havent heard that since I was back home.”

  “Why did you come across the pond anyway?”

  “Work. Everything went down the shitter in the eighties under Thatcher. I was in the union and they treated us like criminals. Decided to get the fuck out. Moved to Toronto. Been there ever since.”

  They parked the truck near the racks and Patrick began to fill out a Safety First Card, or SFC as they were called. In this SFC they had to note all the steps of the job they were about to start, the hazards, and the precautions they would take to make the job as safe as possible. One that was listed on the SFC was a fire extinguisher.

  “You mean we got to drag around a fire extinguisher up through those racks?” Levi said. “Whats going to catch fire? Sure its all steel and aluminum.”

  Patrick scoffed. “Dont think about logic when it comes to Safety. The last site I was on some guy cut himself with a cutting disk, so Safety banned cutting disks! We had to cut steel with one-eighth grinding disks! Fucking wankers.”

  “That Safety girl, Sinead, is my daughter.”

  Patrick stared at him.

  “Oh fuck sakes, man, why didnt you tell me before I shoved my foot down my throat? Right to the ankle.”

  “Its alright by.”

  “We bitch and complain but theyre just doing their job.”

  “Its alright.”

  After they finished the SFC Patrick drove around the site looking for their foreman, who was by now doing the morning stretches with his team of pipefitters. The welders worked hand in hand with the pipefitters, usually one welder and his helper to a pair of fitters. They were teamed up with two twenty-something country boys from Saskatchewan.

  The four of them went to their job site, a six inch pipe located above an eight by eight scaffold deck, sixty feet off the ground. As Levi helped Patrick hoist up the bag of tools, tiger torch, fire extinguisher, and welding leads, he wondered what in the name of God he had gotten himself into. The wind, minus-twenty degree Celsius, whistled through the racks and down Levi’s neck, out through the leg of his pants, and back up through again. Yet, Levi was told that minus twenty was literally half as cold as it sometimes got in the dead of winter.

  The laughing and shouting of men could be heard echoing about the steel scaffolding, girders and cement walls, the cage holding the endless pipe, cold machinery, and round vessels that would soon be brought to life. This was phase three of the project. Another year and it all would be awakened, to be fed the pitch-like earth to be digested into crude oil, currently fetching 110 US dollars a barrel. The air would begin to stink when the plant started processing, but just like the fishplant in Gadus, stink meant money.

  They all took part in putting together the spool of pipe. The glow from the welding rods was so bright it would light up the scaffold deck even though it was broad daylight, casting their shadows against the tangle of beams, pipes, and scaffolding that surrounded them. Patrick offered Levi the chance to weld the tacks. After that Levi simply stood in the freezing cold handing welding rods to Patrick, a man who was soon about to retire from a racket Levi was just getting started in. As a pressure pipe rig welder Patrick was making over one hundred dollars an hour, and probably grossed over two hundred thousand a year. This was a promising future, but by the time Levi was ready to rig up himself he would be approaching sixty. Not that there weren’t rig welders on site over sixty. Men who went through bad investments, bad divorces, or simply handled their money like children.

  When Patrick started welding a pipe he didn’t stop until it was finished, unless it was break time. But if there wasn’t more work assigned to the pipefitters they might stay there chatting for hours. Levi was amazed by this. Even when the foreman came along no one moved. They simply looked at him and grinned.

  “Hows she coming along bys?” the foreman said.

  “Good,” Patrick said.

  “Right on,” the foreman said, and headed back down the scaffolding ladder.

  “He dont care wer not doing fuck all?” Levi said.

  “The weld is done,” Patrick said.

  “Youre going to have to get used to the pace around here,” one of the fitters said, laughing.

  “Yeah, you dont want to work yourself out of a job do you?” the other fitter said.

  “I guess not,” Levi said.

  The next job was at the very top of a stack, one hundred and fifty feet up. It was a simple weld, no pipe, just a few guides. To get the tools there Patrick climbed up first and Levi stayed on the bottom to tie on the tool bags to the gin wheel. Patrick would haul one and Levi would tie the next one. When all the tools and welding leads were hoisted Levi had to make the climb.

  Ten feet. Twenty. Thirty. Stop.

  Levi got off onto a deck and looked up. He still had another one hundred and twenty or so to go. Each ladder went thirty feet, and then there was a deck to take a break.

  Forty. Fifty. Sixty feet. Stop. Levi’s heart was racing. He would not look down. Climbing up through the scaffolding or the side of the racks was bad, but there was something about climbing up the side of a cylindrical vessel that was much worse. The sides curved away so that the ground below was much more visible. It gave the illusion that the climb wasn’t completely vertical, as if the ladder was leaning back towards the ground.

  Seventy. Eighty. Levi desperately clung to the rungs of the ladder.

  The time between when one hand let go and grabbed on to the next rung felt three times as long as it should have. He was constantly worrying that his gloved hand would slip from the rung while the other hand was continuing to the next one. Would it be possible to catch himself on one of the scaffold braces if he fell? How far could a man fall and still catch his weight with his hands? A foot maybe? The wind blew stronger at this height. Yet to his left two men were assembling a scaffold and chatting about their motorcycles as nonchalantly as if they were only six feet off the ground.

  Ninety feet. Stop. Only one ladder, thirty more feet to go.

  He closed his eyes and went up the ladder.

  One hundred and twenty feet. Done.

  When Levi stepped off the ladder onto the deck Patrick was already setting up his work site to get ready to weld. He didn’t notice the paleness of Levi’s face, who wondered if this was a normal first reaction to climbing this height for the first time, or if the fear would persist. And if it did persist, how long it would last? As the minutes passed, however, Levi wasn’t feeling any better. To try and calm himself he stared off in the distance and watched the gigantic Euclid dumptrucks lumbering across the mines. A double-cab Ford F-150 pulled up alongside one that was parked, and it was only as long as the diameter of one tire of the Euclid. He found himself calming somewhat, but he couldn’t stare at trucks all day, and as soon as he took his mind off of them and looked away the panic began rushing back in. Yet the thought of telling Patrick that he was too afraid to stay, and actually turning around and climbing back down the ladder, was unthinkable. He would almost rather fall off.

  For the next two hours until the following break he stood there watching and handing along welding rods, grinders, and the chipping hammer. The problem was that he was too nervous to actually learn anything. His first day and he was already considering that he had made a big mistake. And to make matters worse, between breaks until the end of his shift, he would have to make the climb at least seven more times that day.

  When Levi stepped off the ladder for the last time that day his relief was difficult to hide. On the way back to camp he looked for the wolf he had seen in the clearing, but it had disappeared into the wilderness.

  The Scaffolder’s Father

  The hours passed slowly but the days gathered quickly, an
d, if anything, the heights got harder instead of easier. What bothered Levi most was that his short-term memory was useless when he was nervous. And when he was at heights, which was half the time in this job, he was always nervous. Even when Patrick let him tack welds Levi found himself sticking on the rod way more than he normally would. It was so frustrating that he would feel like throwing the rod oven over the scaffold.

  This day had not been going well from the start. He barely caught the bus because his alarm clock didn’t go off. The only kind of alarm clock that was available in the convenience store was digital, instead of a “real one” as he thought of the windups. He didn’t trust digital clocks because he didn’t trust himself setting them. He didn’t eat breakfast because he had not been able to ever since he started the job. And even when he got on the bus he tripped up in somebody’s foot and fell down in the aisle. As soon as everyone saw he had not hurt himself, at least half of them laughed out loud.

  Every climb up the ladder felt like the first, if not worse than the first. It was pure force of pride that was enabling him to do it. Why wasn’t it getting better? Didn’t facing fears make them easier?

  It was lightly snowing. Work didn’t stop for snow, unless it was a blizzard, because the scaffolders always had hoardings built for those who needed it. A scaffolder had to wear a safety harness at all times, but a man could only move so far with a harness before he had to tie-off somewhere else. Occasionally, if a man was particularly busy, or in an awkward position where the lanyard kept getting in the way, he would glance about for a safety rep, and if the coast was clear, do a quick job without tying off.

  Levi was at about sixty feet, handing welding rods to Patrick, who was welding a pipe support onto a beam. It was after first break, and Levi stared in a half daze at a young scaffolder who was assembling toe boards with his older partner. Being in each other’s work area, both groups had signed on each other’s Safety First Card’s earlier.

  Patrick finished burning the last rod on the weld and told Levi he needed to take a leak.