Saltwater Cowboys (12 page)

“Why?” Jack asked.

Bobbi wiped her nose with a dirty scrap of a grey sweater sleeve worn under her yellow rubber suit and nodded. “What you saw today isn't even half of what they've been doing over the last month.”

“Isn't there someone in human resources you could talk to?

“How do you think I get mining jobs, anyway? I don't use Roberta on my resume, I use Bobbi,” she said bitterly and swallowed the last thick chunk of her sandwich. She snorted back the snot in her nose, hocked it up, and spat it on the rocky floor.

As Jack stood up and turned to go, she rested her hand on his arm. “Hey, thanks,” she said warmly and smiled. The softness in her eyes startled Jack; she looked suddenly very beautiful, doe-like, and sincere. Jack nodded and moved away quickly, surprised by the warmth travelling through his stomach and groin.

“No problem, my love,” he said and moved out of the bathroom, looking back to see Bobbi's head cocked to one side in amusement at his dialect.

After lunch, side by side on the stope, Jack asked her where she was from.

“Thunder Bay,” Bobbi said. “My last name is Lake. In Finnish it's Järvi. That's my father's family name. There's a lot of Finns around Lake Superior. I'm making Finnish food, Karelian pastries, which are thin rye crusts filled with rice, tonight for supper. I'll bring some for you tomorrow if you'd like to try something other than fish and chips.”

Jack smiled. “Sure,” he said, “I'll give it a go.”

The next day they sat on a wooden bench near the washroom and shared Finnish food for lunch. The light on their hard hats illuminated the pastry Bobbi broke with her grimy fingers. The dark was thick and impenetrable. It felt like a solid box around them, a box with no sides or no bottom or top. Oppressive and invisible, full of weight and solid gloom, the walls were indistinguishable from the air. Jack felt as if they were sitting in tar.

He didn't like the pastry but felt compelled not to say so. The sharp, sour bread was too tough, not gooey and sweet enough like his wife's white bread.

“Some good,” he said and asked for more.

Bobbi gave him the biggest piece and kept a paltry serving for herself.

“Did you hear Russell this morning?” she asked.

“What was he on about?”

“Giving Wisnoski flak for too many trips to the warehouse. He just doesn't like Wisnoski,” she said.

“Who does?” Jack said and she laughed again. Coffee spurted out of her mouth as Jack imitated Russell's high-pitched voice.

“The man sounds like a whistle,” he said.

“Screechy.”

She finished her lunch and wiped her hands on her workpants. Jack helped her to her feet. She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek.

Jack reddened, dropped her hand, and backed away.

A coquettish smile played across her face as she watched him shuffle away, his foot turning in slightly.

Back on the stope after lunch, Jack stood beside her and loaded his casings. She caught his eye and smiled at him; he returned it with an apprehensive nod. Then he turned away, bewildered.

“Lake,” someone yelled angrily.

Charlie Watson was approaching, the light on his hard hat bright, the glare strong. “What the hell are you trying to do to me?” he demanded.

“What's your problem?” she said, not once taking her eyes off the explosives.

“You stole my overtime shift,” he stammered, spittle snapping out of the corners of his clenched mouth.

Bobbi loaded the casings meticulously and stared straight ahead silently. Watson shifted his weight, waiting for her to respond. He muttered obscenities under his breath.

“Leave her alone, Watson,” Jack said and put down his blasting equipment.

Watson raised a fist. “If you were a man I'd knock you out,” he said and walked away, turning over his shoulder to glare at Bobbi through angry, bunched eyelids.

Bobbi stood motionless and silent, her head held high.

Jack was impressed by her strength; he'd seen it before, in Angela. It was the same type of strength, the determined way they both had in the face of all odds. Angela carried her tiny frame proudly; the strength of her will was all she had to barter with, while Bobbi was as tall and solid as a bamboo stalk. She was a bear. A single swipe of her paw and you were out, whereas Angela was as crafty as a fox, sly and manipulative when she needed to survive.

Jack knew he didn't have their strength or determination. His heart had raced in fear as he'd tried to talk Watson down.

He reached out, put his arm on her neck, and gave it a soft pat of support. Bobbi melted into his touch; tiny teardrops rolled slowly down her face as Jack quickly removed his hand.

“This is the second time you've seen me cry,” she mumbled and laughed.

“McCarthy,” Knox, the foreman, yelled from the edge of the stope, his light beam hitting Bobbi in the face, “back to work.”

“Yes, sir,” they both said and readjusted their safety glasses and hard hats.

Aboveground after the shift, Bobbi trudged up three flights of stairs to the women's washroom in the administration department. The floors were polished and white. The smell of fresh coffee hung sharply in the air. The lights were so bright, Bobbi squinted to shade the brightness her eyes couldn't easily tolerate after eight hours underground. It was three-thirty and the ladies from administration were on a coffee break. They looked at Bobbi, clicked their tongues at her dirty cheeks, and started to whisper. Bobbi caught words like
dirty
and
slut
but was too weary too retort.

In the washroom, another two women were dusting pink powder on their cheeks, backcombing their bangs, feathering their sides, and picking at their short curls with a hot-pink perm picks. Bobbi was tired. She stripped off her mining suit and boots and peeled off her grey cut-off track pants and sweater to reveal a yellow thong and silky yellow bra with bumblebees and honey-pots scattered over the surface. She threw it all in a gym bag and put on tight blue jeans and a turtleneck.

She left the stall and watched the smiles of the two women wither as she opened the door. They swivelled around from the mirror and stared disdainfully at the clumps of mine muck, dirt, and ash she'd left in the stall, all over the toilet seat and floor.

A
week later Pete and Jack stood in front of a shiny new silver-grey 1984 Oldsmobile with a black leather interior.

“Well?” Peter asked.

“It's great.”

“This is the finest car I've ever owned. If they could see me back home, they'd never believe it.”

“Mick must know what he's doing, then,” Jack said cautiously and inched closer to Peter hovering over the open hood, black grease on his hands and wrists.

Jack was silent as they drove through town.

“I gave him an additional twenty thousand dollars to invest in his friend's construction company.”

“Where did you get the money?”

“I borrowed it from the bank. You want to invest too?”

Jack nodded.

“Go to the bank, see about getting a line of credit, and use it to invest.”

“Yeah?”

Peter nodded. “Mick's going to make more investments next week. Get in on it, Jackie.”

W
anda twirled and the fabric rippled like silk in an airy window.

“It's some beautiful, Wanda, my dear,” Angela said dully.

“I couldn't believe it when Peter bought it for me. It's
silk
.”

Angela wondered how Peter could have afforded a silk dress; he made the same as Jack. After mortgage payments, groceries, and bills, how could he have afforded this?

“Did you see our new car? Just like the ones parked on Wild Rose Avenue.”

“That's great,” Angela said and straightened the milk-stained cushion on her couch. “Jack would have to work overtime to pay for the likes of that.”

“Do you need any help?” Wanda asked cautiously and sat down beside Angela. The silk brushed Angela's knees and she longed to reach out and touch the fabric.

Angela shook her head. “No. We're fine; we're not on the sugar lumps yet.”

“Well, let me know before you find yourself melting cubes on your tongue,” Wanda said and winked. She lowered her voice, “I've got more news. We're moving to a house.”

“You're lucky. These mobile homes, my god, they're like living in a tin of canned fish, cramped, cold, and the cheap floors. Waxing these floors just puts an oil slick on them, there's no shine at all. How nice to move into a real home,” Angela said and moved to the kitchen. She lifted the pot off the rice pudding, which had bubbled over, and the gurgling kettle from the hot element and poured the water into a teapot.

“Girls,” she called down the hall, “rice pudding and tea.”

Maggie, Lily, and tiny Susie pattered down the hallway, faces and hands full of watercolour paints. Angela placed three bowls of pudding and three cups of milky tea on the plastic children's table at the foot of the kitchen table. White rice pudding dribbled down over Susie's fat pink lips. Maggie sipped at her milky, sugary tea. Her legs swung under the table and brushed the hem of her navy blue floral dress. Lily innocently put a purple finger in the pudding and swirled it around, her free hand twirling and knotting her flyaway pollen-coloured hair.

Wanda continued to talk loudly about all that they were going to do — and buy — until Susie fell asleep in her arms and it was time to go home and fix Pete's supper. Angela rolled her eyes when she was gone.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Borrowing to invest? No way.”

“People do it all the time.”

“Not with salesmen shacked up at a bunkhouse.”

How could Jack get through to her? Once she made her mind, she'd made up her mind. Nothing he could do or say would change it.

“You don't understand. Peter's been able to save for a house.”

“We have a house.”

“No, a duplex. A house — house.”

Angela sighed and tightened her bun. “This is foolish. Stay away from this altogether. I don't trust people who promise too much too soon.”

Peter had been calling Mick for almost two and a half hours.
The buzzard hasn't picked up
, Peter thought. He felt a sense of things about to go very, very wrong, like the nausea after the smack of water from a belly flop or the numbness from a hand chop to the neck. The stinging sensation that left you feeling like you had rubbery cartilage. That feeling like you were the bullied kid left behind in the pool or crumpled up under the big kid's violent whims.

Mick had missed the third payout. When the first and second payments came, Peter had been ecstatic, half his money back in two months — unheard of. Naturally, when Mick had asked for more, Peter put another ten thousand on his credit card and handed it over.

So where was Mick? The third payment was due. Mick had promised to bring the cheque over to the house last night but hadn't shown up. Wanda and Susie had gone to Mass this morning and Peter had been on the phone all morning, calling and waiting. He'd bitten his thumbnails down past the skin, got them ragged and left the corners pulsing with blood, torn skin down past the cuticle.

Finally Mick picked up his phone.

“Where are you?” Peter asked sharply.

“Sorry, buddy, was on the beer last night. Slept in, be there in half an hour,” Mick said.

Peter hung up and cradled the receiver on his knuckles to steady the twitch in his hands.

Angela set up the coffee table for a game of TV bingo, a live television community bingo game broadcast from the Civic Centre. She had picked up the tickets today from Mr. Papineau's Co-Op grocery store. Beverley Snow, from Roberts Arm, Newfoundland, had rung up her purchases. Beverley had come up with the Albertan boyfriend she'd met while he was fishing in Newfoundland two summers ago and wouldn't leave without her, she told Angela, blushing and gushing, laughing loudly. Beverley was tall and thin and wore tight jeans, hi-top sneakers with hot pink laces, thick ribbons of black kohl around her eyes, and had long, curly black hair with short sides, stiff with hairspray and a high-standing curly tuft on top.

Jack's card was wrinkled and dark with purple ink from his bingo dabber. He was on the hitch with one number to go for the blackout. He could win the five-hundred-dollar prize if his number under the
N
was called. Angela was down to three numbers. They were both sitting on the floor, their cards, six each, taped to the coffee table in front of them. Angela's legs were crossed underneath the coffee table, while Jack's were wide open and bent against his chest. They both wore brown cords and thin turtlenecks. Angela wore a red-and-blue plaid shirt, sleeves rolled up, her hair pulled back in a long ponytail. She eagerly dabbed at another number. She was down to two numbers only, under the
B
and
G
.

“Under the
N,
” the man in the baseball cap said slowly after rolling the steel wheel filled with numbers a few times. He pulled a small pea-green ball from inside, rolled it in his hands, and peered at it. He squinted several times and pulled the ball closer to his eyes then pushed it farther away until he finally found the white number. “
B
… seven,” he said raspily.

Jack winced. “Come on give me an N,” he yelled at the television. The man rolled again, repeated his slow perusal of the ball and once again called, “Under the
N
.”

Jack inhaled. A low ring was heard off screen, and the man paused.

“We have a bingo,” he said to the camera. As he looked away from the wobbly camera, the offscreen assistant recounted the numbers, the man nodded and repeated the numbers she'd shouted over at him.

“We have a winner!” he announced. He paused and cupped his hand around his ear. “Eh? Wanda and Peter Fifield,” he said finally, “are the jackpot winners of this week's Foxville Community Bingo. Congratulations!” he shouted and smiled into the wrong camera.

Jack slammed his dabber onto the coffee table.

Angela looked at him. His legs were sprawled open and his head rested in his folded arms, lying slumped over the table.

“So you didn't win,” she said mockingly. “You didn't win the community TV bingo game.”

Jack slowly raised his head to look her straight in the face.

“You go off the head because you lose a card game, now you are upset because you didn't win the bingo game. Who cares?” she yelled.

“I want to win for you. I want to give you nice things.”

“Jack, we do have nice things, we have enough,” she said and bit her lip, trying not to think about the brand-new copper pot and pan set Wanda told her she'd purchased at the Hudson's Bay Company last week. She spread her arms wide. “We have a roof over our heads. It's small, but we'll manage. We have food in our fridge, we have a new chesterfield, the girls have enough clothes,” she said and rolled up her sleeves to hide the holes in her plaid shirt.

“Really?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said and tried not to think of the queen-size bed Wanda had tagged in the display room of the Hudson's Bay to be delivered later that week, a contrast with the one Wanda had given Angela and Jack when they first arrived, the cracked frame propped up on phonebooks.

A few days later, on a Saturday morning Jack sat in the waiting room at the bank. He had an appointment to see the loans manager. He'd told Angela he was going for a quick walk and slipped out early in the morning. She rolled over in bed, sighed, and batted his warm hands away as he gave her a hug.

A man sat down next to him and offered him a cigarette.

“Mr. McCarthy?”

Jack looked closer at the man. It was Dwayne, the realtor from Calgary.

“Hey, how are ya?”

The realtor smiled and picked at the cellophane around the cigarette package.

“I'll be in the market for a new house soon,” Jack said smugly.

Jack waited for him to be impressed. Dwayne sat silently and twisted his cigarette in the hook of his forefinger. Jack reddened. “I've got some guaranteed investments with a fellow from the mine,” he said brazenly, determined to show him up.

The realtor screwed up his face. “You're doing business with that crook from Calgary? What name does he go by here? Mitch or Mike? Let me tell you something, saltwater cowboy, he's the biggest swindler I've ever come across.”

“He must have left that lifestyle behind. He's made good on all of my payouts,” Peter said. They were standing in Peter's kitchen, strong cups of Irish tea in hand.

Jack couldn't argue with that. He'd seen the way Peter had made good on his investment, spending the spoils on all fine things.

“I just gave him another ten,” Peter said.

“I don't know about this.”

“Go home, it's fine,” Peter said.

With Jack out of the way, Peter got in his truck and drove to the mine site. The bunkers for the temporary workers were lined up in long rows, white aluminum rectangular portable homes with dark green borders around the top and doors. They looked like snow forts. Snowdrifts lay plump as white bread on the rooftops.

Peter knocked and entered the first one he came to. Inside, four big men were playing poker. The room smelled of skunky beer, musty cigarettes, and greasy hair.

“Anyone know where Mick is?” Peter called out.

“He left this morning. Contract was up,” the foreman said, roving eyes on the cards he shuffled with his greasy thumbs.

Peter took a swift step back and was out the door on the icy stairs, head buried in his hands.

Peter sat with his chest slumped and defeated, his face pale and immobile.

“All of it?” Jack asked quietly.

“Yes,” Peter mumbled, sinking lower and lower into Jack's sofa.

“Is he a one-man operation?”

“I guess so — I don't know,” Pete said irritably and shrugged again. He crossed his arms and legs. “I can't pay the mortgage,” he whispered.

“I'll help, don't worry,” Jack said slowly.

“What am I going to tell Wanda? I can't pay the mortgage.”

“Don't worry, I've got your back.”

“I need a drink,” Peter said. “Let's go to the tavern.”

They piled into Pete's dented brown pick-up truck and drove to the Chinook Tavern on Peace River junction. The bar mistress, a squat, rotund woman, sang out a cheery hello as they entered. She scratched her forehead and brushed a coil from her tightly wound short perm behind her ear. She pushed up her smudged glasses — the size of cup bottoms — that sagged on her damp, overheated face. She was the best waitress they had; she could hold four beers per arm, keep them nestled between the fat on her arm and torso. She brought Jack and Peter, two regulars who tipped her well, a Molson Canadian each.

Bobbi and a few men from the mine were already there. Jack sat beside Bobbi, her hair loose, eyelids caressed with peacock-blue shimmery makeup. She was wrapped in a long orange skirt with droopy folds like the petals of a tiger lily. Her tight cream sweater had a fuzzy billowing turtleneck.

They watched hockey and drank for hours until the waitress's mood turned sour. Harried and grouchy — she'd been clearing bottles and picking up broken ones that had fallen to the floor for most of the night — she no longer wanted to tend tables and fetch drinks.

Bobbi kicked her feet underneath her skirt as beer dribbled to the floor from the edges of the tables.

“Oh my goodness,” Bobbi said, “I'm drunk.”

Jack nodded and wiped foam from his lips.

Two of the explosives salesmen, cowboys from Calgary, approached their table.

“Move it,” one said.

“Eh?” Peter responded.

“Give us those seats.”

“Take it easy,” Peter said incredulously.

Jack watched silently, worried eyes roving back and forth between the sour-faced cowboy and Peter as he cradled his beer to his chest.

“We were here first,” the cowboy said.

“I don't believe so. We've been sitting here all night, long before you came in,” Peter said, clearly bewildered by the situation.