"The fucking fucker’s fucked."

"Excuse me?"

"Tramline motor. Quit twenty minutes ago."

Grey light pressed against the window as talk stopped at other tables in the mess. I went quiet too because I feared asking the man a stupid question. Instead I watched him put his hardhat and styrofoam cup on my table, then wipe his brow with the sleeve of his coveralls. Grease smeared his forehead; long, flat, black hair made his whole head seem oiled. Blinking sweat from his eyes, he looked half-human, half-engine-part.

"You’re the new hire," he said, eyeing my silver earrings. "Security."

"I’m waiting for Bren O’Hearne."

The man scowled and ripped off part of his cup’s lid.

"You can’t throw a boot in this town without hittin’ that Newfie prick."

I bit into my toast and chewed.

"That cuntstruck bastard stole my girl. Belly. That’s her be-hind the counter."

I turned but couldn’t see a woman. Though I remembered one.

"Is he still with her?" I said.

"He quit her pretty quick. She even came crawling back to me, but I sure-as-Christ wouldn’t take her. Y’need some pride in this hole."

The man tore open three packets from the table’s bowl and dumped the sugar into his coffee. He muttered something.

"Downtime," he said, louder. "We don’t fix that motor by noon, they’ll be sending men home for sure."

"Do they still get paid?"

"First five days. Don’t know if that applies to you though." The man slurped his coffee. "Your boss might need you in case things get weird. Fights, B and Es, sabotage. Or he might just send you back to where you’re from."

My stomach tightened.

The man’s mouth twitched at the sound of footsteps. After glancing behind him, he picked up his hardhat and left.

"Walter Schwende?" A tall man with blue eyes sat down. Stubble and sunburnt cheeks gave him a cowboyish look. His eyes travelled from my earrings to the rows of coveralled men, their heads bent and their forks moving up and down. A few men glanced our way.

"I bet Fratzie had some choice words for me."

"If you’re Bren, one or two."

Bren shook his head. "That’s the town of Clayton right there. I’ll be glad to get out."

"You’re leaving?"

"In about 356 hours – not that I’m counting." Bren spread his hands and tapped the table. "Guess you flew into Watson Lake last night. Where you from – Vancouver?"

"Toronto. Scarborough, actually." I picked at my cold eggs.

"An Upper Canadian," Bren said. He stuck out his hand. "Welcome."

The clamminess of his palm surprised me.

He was rubbing the crowned heart tattoo on his arm when a female voice ignited laughs nearby. The woman who’d served me walked towards us, trays stacked in her arms. Fratzie’s stolen ex.

"How are ya, Belly?" Bren said.

"Better than most – as you know." She looked me over. "You’re the new S/G."

I read the lettering on her baseball cap: Sahara Marina.

Bren thrust a thumb in her direction. "That woman can do things with six inches of cock that a monkey couldn’t do with forty feet of rope."

I pushed aside my plate. Bren stared at the bread crusts and bacon fat.

"Any women here my age?" I asked, scanning the room. Beyond the window the grey light had thinned, silhouetting the shapes of trees and shingled buildings.

Bren looked at me. "Sprightly things are rare. So are single ladies. We’ve got seven. But you better be careful. Around here, there’s a lot of scuffling for a honey. Just last week some hardhat shot a guy in the stomach for taking his girl."

"But did she willingly go with the guy?"

"That doesn’t matter."

I said nothing. I was already wondering how long I’d last. Bren frowned at my silence, and I asked about the motor problem.

"Downtime’s serious," he said. "Apart from an accident that causes injury or death, she’s the worst thing that can hit a mine. When the mine or mill aren’t fully operational, the owners lose up to a million a day."

"And the workers?"

"Some become cases. Head cases."

A man approached and said we were wanted at the security gate. Bren stood up.

"The chief awaits."

• • •

We walked along a gravel road curving towards the edge of town and I still felt anxious. At the rec centre we met a crew sodding the front lawn. Bren introduced me to Keri, a native girl with short hair, a purple halter top and a space between her front teeth. She stopped rolling out sections of grass to stare at me and smile. I smiled goofily back and mumbled a few things about myself. Bren touched my arm and we left.

As we neared the mill site, large glossy ravens lifted and fell around us, their caws and thuffs seeming to deepen the creases in Bren’s face. Pickups rumbled and engines revved in the distance. An eighteen-wheel truck rattled past the security gate and to-wards the town limits; the driver shouted Bren’s name and drew a hand across his neck. I looked at Bren but he glanced away, fixing his eyes on the smoke rising from a mill-site building, the white plumes twisting into a sky of washed-out blue.

A short man stood between the hut and the security gate. He looked like authority: the epauletted shirt and creased pants, the perfectly parted grey hair, the eyes brown and dull.

Bren spoke. "Ron Tenet, Walter Schwende. Our new S/G."

Ron raked his eyes over me. "You’re a day late."

"In Vancouver they said to report for work on May 27th."

"I’ll try to forget your first mistake, Mr. Schwende. But I’m wondering one thing – why here? You could get beat up back East just as easy."

Bren led me away after telling Ron we’d be touring the mill site.

Clumps of pale green asbestos stuck to our boots as we walked between long buildings with ribbed roofs. When passing workers saw Bren, most looked away.

"Welcome to Pleasantville," he said.

"What makes Ron like that?"

Bren nudged me with an elbow. "Look around."

What happened next made me stop. Lunch buckets in hand, men streamed out of buildings and pulled off their hardhats, some men flinging them onto the ground. At least two hundred workers converged on the security gate and the road to town. No one looked our way, though I saw some empty stares and wet cheeks, heard men swear at the ground or to each other. I turned to Bren. I didn’t understand the grin on his face, the ends of his mouth tugged upward as if he couldn’t control them.

• • •