Turning onto Hal’s street, he takes one last look at the plume. He just might skip school for a couple of years and work at the mine until he decides on another major. Or maybe he’ll work in the mine until Ang graduates U of S from Veterinary Medicine and then he could be a kept man and learn to write horror stories. She’d totally let me get away with that. As if.
Reaching Hal’s modest, older bungalow close to the centre of town, he remembers that he was told to go around back. There, other miners are clustered around a picnic table in the backyard smoking cigarettes and cigars.
He’s met with, “Hey, Lulubelle,” and, “Lulubelle made it.”
“Hey, guys,” he replies. He opens his backpack and pulls out one of the six-packs. “Where can I put this? Consider it a bribe to let me win.”
There are a few guffaws. Someone reaches out a hand and says, “You can put one right here.”
He passes over a couple of bottles and someone with a bottle opener on his jackknife passes that tool around. He is told to stow the rest of his beer in the fridge in the basement.
He yanks open the wooden screen door without knocking, steps onto the worn brown carpet of the landing, and descends the wooden stairs. Hal’s basement is partially finished, with drywall painted only with a faded undercoat. The cement floor is painted grey with varied throw-rugs covering most of the area. Single shade lamps suspended from the open floor joists illumine six round tables. Four of the tables are occupied.
He notices that he’s the only summer student or temporary employee and is definitely the youngest person there. He puts his remaining beer and root beer in the refrigerator and sets his pretzels with other snacks on an old kitchen table beside the fridge.
The players are too intent on their games to notice him.
Ted and Hal are at one of the tables with two other men he does not know. Judging from their heavily bearded faces and mullets, he doubts that they’re miners. Making his way to that table, he discreetly stops a step away, with Ted on his left and Hal on his right. The game is Texas Hold’em and he can see each of their hole cards when they lift them. He makes absolutely sure he does not kibitz and stands silently and without expression. However, he can’t stop his eyes from going wide when he sees the number of hundred dollar chips in the pot.
Intending to lose a limit of twenty, he’ll last only for the first bet. It will be a short night.
Hal yells, “Cocksucker. I’m out.” He flings his cards down, stands up and stomps past Lew.
Betting continues until Ted is finally called. He grins and says, “Straight flush, genitals.”
The other men shake their heads and one repeats Hal’s epithet.
The other says, “That calls for a smoke break.”
Both of the men stand up and head for the stairs.
Ted gathers his chips with both hands and yells, “Thank youuuu.” His grin breaks the tension of the moment. He turns in his chair and says, “Lulubelle. You’re here.”
“Hey,” Lew replies. “Looks like I’m just watching. I can’t afford those stakes.”
Ted stands and stretches his thick arms straight up, almost touching the ceiling. “We wouldn’t do that to you,” he says and slaps him on the back. “Fish have to work their way up to the shark tank. Small stakes are over there.” He points at one of the vacant tables. “As soon as those ass-clowns outside finish their smokes, you newbs can start. And remember, don’t go over your limit.”
“I don’t intend to. Uh, Stella in the fridge, for anyone who’s interested. Can I grab you one?”
“You bet,” says Hal, sitting down again and re-stacking his remaining chips.
“Ted? Stella? Or does your drink need a top up?” Lew points at Ted’s half-full glass of dark liquid.
Ted’s grin has disappeared. He replies, “Sure, grab me my pussy-man Coke if you’re heading for the fridge.”
Lew shakes his head. “‘Pussy-man Coke’?”
“Diet, caffeine free,” says Hal with that half sneer. “Only a pussy-man would drink that carcinogenic, tasteless, slough water.”
“Sore loser,” Ted says with a laugh.
“I get it,” says Lew. “Stay sober while playing.”
“Don’t bet on it, Lulubelle,” Hal says. “You’re not the only one with an aversion to booze.”
“You don’t drink?” Lew says to Ted, surprised.
“One addiction at a time.” Ted turns abruptly and heads for an interior door.
Hal says, “Yeah, that’s the pisser, Lulubelle. You don’t need to watch to see if he gets there okay. I’m gasping here. Where’s that Stella?”
Lew takes Ted’s glass to the fridge, tops it off, and grabs a beer for Hal, the root beer for himself. By the time he returns, the smokers are trundling downstairs.
He joins a table of relatively younger men, all from the mine and all in their mid-twenties. Each hand is dealer’s choice and Lew always calls five card draw. He manages this game fairly well and plays for a good few hours on his initial fifty-dollar buy in. So much for only twenty bucks, he thinks.
Betting conservatively and never bluffing, he has a few big wins. However, his play pattern is too predictable and the pots become successively smaller every time he has a good hand. It’s midnight when he reaches his limit. A fifty down the toilet. But he has had a reasonably good time holding his own against his peers.
There is only one other active table left and he wanders over. Ted and Hal are still seated with the two bearded strangers. Another miner and a third bearded stranger are also at the table, making the game a six-hander.
Lew sees fifty and hundred dollar bills in the mix of high-priced chips. The tension at this table is almost tangible. He absolutely does not want to chance even a glance at anyone’s hole cards, so he keeps two paces back this time. With such high stakes, he would risk life and limb if he interfered in this game. Even the slightest facial tick could prove dangerous, especially considering that the bearded strangers remind him of badass bikers from those ’60s and ’70s Roger Corman movies he and Ang watch on retro nights.
Two older miners on the opposite side of the table are also watching the game from a distance, absolutely poker-faced.
Ted takes the pot with another straight flush.
Hal slams his open palms on the table, making chips jump. “You fucker. Two straight flushes in one night? I should kill you with a butter knife so I can stab you a gazillion times. You busted me, you fuck.”
With that, Hal storms away. He bangs around in the fridge a moment. Grabbing another bottle of Stella, he stomps upstairs.
Ted and the other players re-stack their chips and one of the bearded strangers calls seven-card stud. They don’t talk or joke or even look at one another.
One of the watching miners across the table leaves without a word. The second circles the table and whispers to Lew, “Pretty intense, hey? I’ll bet you weren’t expecting this.”
Lew replies, “Their expressions definitely suggest they could stab each other.”
“No stabbings to date,” the miner mumbles and then shushes Lew when betting starts.
Ted loses that round and the next deal starts immediately.
Lew whispers, “Who are those other dudes?”
“Professional moochers, occasional bouncers, and sometime card sharps. That big mother is a drug dealer.”
Lew doesn’t know to which “big mother” the miner refers, with all the players about the same size as Ted.
“They all hang out at the Steak House, you know that brown brick ex-hotel corner of Main and Railway?”
Lew nods. Ted’s straight flushes must be luck then. No one in their right mind would dare cheat against a badass biker, let alone a drug dealer. He whispers, “This high-stakes stuff is too serious for me. I’m gone. See you at work.”
He grabs his backpack. At the top of the stairs he peers into the kitchen to say thanks to Hal, but the host is nowhere to be seen. With the backyard totally deserted, he heads for home.
The intensity of those last rounds has soured the overall relaxed feeling he had built over the course of the night. He has never seen Hal that hostile before. There’s always a malignant intensity about Hal but that near violence is definitely something he could do without.
While walking in the silent, windless night, with the mine’s plume reflecting white in the moonlight and obscuring the bright stars in that part of the sky, he wonders how long Hal will remain angry.
He also wonders how long Ted’s luck will hold out.
Monday, before the start of the four-to-midnight shift, Lew drinks coffee with Hal in their usual spot at the long table.
Hal is regaling him with his brilliant play during Friday’s poker game. Lew is not listening because he is wondering where Ted is. Ted is usually on site long before he is.
Maybe Ted played all weekend? Did his luck hold? Or did he lose big time? And if he did lose big, how big?
He can’t get those humongous stakes out of his mind.
Hal abruptly stops yammering and watches past Lew’s shoulder. His eyes wide, he actually chews on his lower lip, brow uncharacteristically smooth.
Lew turns in his chair to see Ted shuffling towards them, carefully watching his feet, his hardhat way back on his head. He sits with a cursory, “Hi guys,” and proceeds to drink directly from his thermos jug. The smell of strong coffee permeates the air.
Hal says, “Remember, coffee’s a diuretic.”
“Two litres of water before I left the trailer. Two more litres in the car waiting for my break. Don’t worry, I’ll stay hydrated, doc. Right now I need caffeine.” There are dark bags under Ted’s eyes. His eyelids droop and his face is haggard and pale. He sets his thermos down and turns to face Lew. “How was the rest of your weekend?”
Lew hopes his expression doesn’t show the alarm he’s feeling when he says, “Boring as feces. Exactly like you two predicted. I spent most of the weekend studying mine procedures like you told me to.”
Before either of them reply, he takes the plunge, and says to Ted, “You don’t look at all well. If you’re sick you should stay home. At least that’s what you both always tell me.”
Hal says, “We’re the mentors. We make the rules. We therefore can break the rules. Mind your place, Lulubelle, until you replace one or both of us.”
Feeling momentarily complimented at the thought of replacing either man, Lew says, “Yes, boss.”
Hal says to Ted, “And you’d better eat something before work.”
Ted opens his cooler and removes a sandwich of rigid white bread and a single, nondescript cold cut.
“You grabbing extra shifts?” Hal asks.
“What else is new? You too?”
“Of course. I still got a mortgage.”
Lew asks, “How come there’s so much overtime available?”
Hal says, “It’s simple. The Ministry of Mines tells Liverwood exec’s that we gotta fill those new Asian contracts. The exec’s go, ‘duh, okay, let’s get ‘er done.’ ‘Get ‘er done,’ regardless of consequences. So somebody asks, ‘what about maximum work-hour legislation?’ To which the Ministry of Jobs and Employment says, ‘duh, Mines says we gotta fill them contracts so we won’t enforce the max work-hour standards.’ And it’s a done deal. Consequently, us toilers of the deep roll in the bucks. Somebody’s gotta take them to court to stop them and I definitely ain’t because I like rolling in the bucks.”
Lew says, “So, why does the union allow maximum work hours to be ignored?”
Hal says with his typical sneer, “Whaddya think?”
Ted says, “The union takes a percentage of our total salaries. I don’t know if that actually has anything to do with it. I’m just saying.”
Hal flicks his finger against the side of his nose.
Ted jumps down past the last two steps of the metal ladder on the centrifuge platform. His legs buckle and he falls to a sitting position.
Dropping his shovel, Lew runs toward the older man, who removes his hardhat, sways, and flops flat on his back.
Lew arrives and flings his own hardhat, goggles, and ear plugs aside just in time to hear Ted say, “Goddammit.” He does not think. His first aid training during orientation possesses all of his faculties. Checking extremities for breaks first, he next firmly squeezes Ted’s thighs and asks if Ted can feel the pressure.
“Of course I can,” Ted says. “I just slipped down these damn stairs.”
“Don’t move ’til I’m done,” Lew says. He firmly but gently grips Ted’s head and slowly turns it left and then right, all the while watching for the slightest grimace of pain.
“I’m fine, I tell you,” Ted says. “No stars, no flashes. No pain anywhere. Move. I’m getting up.”
From behind him a voice says, “Do what he says, Lulubelle.”
Hal leans over them, face pale and taunt. He holds a first aid kit.
Lew’s amazed at Ted’s speed and agility. The large man is up in an instant.
“You good, buddy?” Hal says, grabbing Ted’s neck.
Slapping his arm aside, Ted says, “Fine. Nothing broken. Now stop being dawdling old wet-nurses. We’re not slowing production for a slip on the stairs.”
Ted’s face is plainly more pale, his eyelids still droop; his hardhat sits askew when he puts it back on his head.
“So, how do we report this?” Lew asks.
“We don’t,” Ted says. “I just told you we’re not slowing production for a lousy pratfall. Back to work.”
Lew is about to spout ingrained safety protocols when a sharp squeeze to his deltoid muscle makes him flinch.
Hal says, “As one of the senior miners here, I determine if we report it or not. And I say we don’t. Do you concur, other senior miner currently present on the scene?”
Ted nods in agreement and says, “Absolutely.”
The old miner who replaced Ashley approaches, listens, then simply turns away and walks back to his conveyors without a word.
“Besides,” Hal continues, “it takes personnel eight months to do a lousy work-accommodation evaluation. And that only gets started after you open a Worker’s Comp complaint. They don’t care about production or workers and it’ll take them a decade to process the paperwork. And we need to work. So to your shovel, Lulubelle.”
Ted says, “It’s all good. Now seriously, back to work.”
Retrieving his safety gear, Lew watches the two older men shuffle away, their heads tilted toward one another in intense conversation.
When the shift ends, Ted tells Lew that he and Hal are taking the next midnight-to-eight shift.
“Should I stay and take an extra shift with you guys?” he asks.
“Be great to have you,” Ted replies, “But more senior guys already filled any available slots. Relax while you can. See you tomorrow afternoon.”
He starts to walk away, hesitates and then says, “Ted?” Waiting for the older man to turn, he crosses the Rubicon and boldly asks, “Are you really okay to pull a double?”
Ted rests both his hands on Lew’s shoulders. He says, “I’m sure I need another shift. Thanks for your concern but don’t worry about me. Go home and get some sleep.”
Riding his bicycle to the Motel 6, Lew worries that Ted looked too pale and had the blank stare of a horror movie zombie when they parted company. How much sleep did the guy really get over the weekend? This is like that sleepless, final exam time. God, I hate finals. I’m really glad I don’t have to deal with that shit. At the moment, anyway.
The night is cool and windless and the near-full gibbous moon is bright enough to create shadows and partially light the road. It’s bright enough to see thistle and other weeds crowding up from the ditch. The silence, now that the miners’ cars of that last shift have all passed, enhances Lew’s sense of peace and he wonders how much he’s going to miss Ted, and maybe Hal just a little bit, when the fall semester starts and he’s back on campus.
He recalls Ted telling him, after his one and only t
rip underground during orientation, that the deeper you go, the older the rock. Those underground strata have been there for millions of years. What constancy. As constant as Ted has been in his life these scant few weeks. What’s he going to do without Ted? He’s the antithesis of school teachers and even university professors. No question is too stupid, no matter how many times it’s asked. No answer is ever condescending or sarcastic, no matter how many times it’s given. How many times has Ted shown him exactly how to use that shovel with the least strain on the back?
Once, during a break when they sat alone at the long table, he said to Ted, “I want to thank you for all your guidance.”
“That’s what I’m here for.”
“You spend so much time watching over me, I wonder where you find time to do your own work.” He couldn’t bring himself to ask specifically why Ted spent so much time with him. He hoped the older man got the gist of his question without being offended.
Ted did get it and wasn’t offended. He said, “It’s all part of the process. Safety is number one priority. Watching over you newbs is built into my schedule. Besides, Lulubelle,” using the nickname with a kindly tone of voice, “you remind me of me. I see oodles of potential if you decide to stay. And I’m not just saying that because we’re supposed to encourage you to stay, after investing all those resources training you.”
“Thanks for that,” Lew said, feeling his face flush.
“Nothing to be embarrassed about. I was mentored by old man Treadwell, my daughter’s surrogate granddad, so the least I can do is pass on his sage advice to the up and comers. He got me in the mill while he stayed underground the whole time he was here. You’ll do the same when your time comes. Besides, it’s nice to work with someone who’s interested and wants to do a good job. You’ve outlasted more than half of those linebackers that started with you. And that Ashley dude. Not only was he as useless as a sack of broken doorknobs, he was terrified of everything. The service lift, the machines, even the noise in the mill.”
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