The Working Man

My life had taken a turn. I was no longer a student. I was a working man. That first year would be a long one. Until then, life had a certain rhythm. I’d move to where I was attending school, I would attend classes from Monday to Friday, and party Friday and Saturday nights. Recover Sundays. There was homework, there were essays, midterms and winter Finals. Then Christmas Break. There was an altogether new course load after Christmas Break, there was Reading Week, and more long weekends. And of course, there was homework, essays, mid-terms and Finals. Then summer employment. The next year the cycle began anew. Now, there were workweeks and weekends, with little variation. Each workweek varied, but after a month, I’d look back and not see any markers that set one week apart from another. And that first year I had only one week’s holiday, the other paid out. I would not see four weeks’ holiday for another five years. That year seemed especially long for that.

I look back on it and see little.

I remember those first six weeks of common-core training. I remember its completion and my joining my crew on a night shift. I was attached to George Miller’s crew, and although George was no longer shifting it, he set me up in a car pool.

Rick Croussette picked me up at 11pm, and owing to its being graveyard, the guys weren’t especially talkative. There was a faint smell of the weekend spent much as mine was, in a bar. Hi’s, were exchanged, and not much more. Almost everyone slept. A couple muffled conversations were whispered, lost beneath the drone of snores.

We spilled out, I found my wicket, and Fern Carriere welcomed me to the crew. He introduced me to Big Jim Imoff, an old salt in his early 50s, my partner for the shift, and for the next little while. Jim was big, hence the nickname. He wasn’t tall, no more than an inch or two taller than me, but Jim had more than a couple pounds on him. Jim was not a particularly talkative sort with strangers. Not particularly good at planning out his shift. Not particularly communitive as to what we were about, either. It wasn’t until we were a couple hours into our eight-hour shift that I knew what we were doing and why. Jim had to collect his tools, and Jim, being a curious sort, had to stop off at almost every job in-between where he’d pack-ratted his tools and where we were working. I stood around while he chatted my crewmates up, no clue what they were doing, too exhausted to absorb much, somewhat lost as I’d never worked in 1 Mine yet, and was still gaining my bearings. When we finally got to our worksite, Jim remained seated on the tractor, contemplating a pitted, cracked half-wall leading into a doored chamber, next to a conveyor system. He sat still for a while massaging his chin with a dirty glove, deliberated with himself for some time as to how to carry out our task. I watched. I waited for instructions. None were forthcoming.

“Jim,” I asked, “what are we doing?”

We were there to take down the inconvenient concrete half wall. I looked at the wall. It was a sturdy one by the look of it, about a foot and a half thick, reinforced with rebar. The prior shift had been at it before us. There were drill holes and collar-marks peppering the broad side, numerous sledge impacts scarring its now rounded edge. There was a ring of bit-sized holes punched through it, most following the rock wall it was boarded on, and more than a few following the floor, half stopped short by the rebar reinforcing it. At the open end, there were a couple more small holes through it, only one large enough to pass a chain through, the other blocked by a partially exposed rebar.

I asked Jim what he thought we should do. He rambled on about drilling more holes, and then how it would break apart when we hit it with a sledgehammer. Considering how it had held up to the assault thus far, I had my doubts as to what our chances of success were. I asked him if it needed to be in pieces. He shrugged, not committing to it, either way. He didn’t know. He’d been told to demolish the wall, not how to go about it.

We dismounted and Jim set about setting up and drilling. I watched him for a while. Each attempted hole was stopped short by yet another rebar. After each attempt, we took turns battering the wall with the sledge. More chips and bruises joined those already there, but not one new crack formed. But with each new blow, the wall shivered and shook. I noticed hairline cracks along the floor. We beat on the wall some more, to no effect other than to tire ourselves out.

After an hour of this, exhausted by our repeated and ineffectual blows, and dead tired from lack of sleep, I’d had enough. Jim had not, apparently, but Jim was a lot stronger than I was.

I smoked, he didn’t, but he was open to taking as many breaks as I needed. I asked him how the wall was built. He told me with concrete and rebar. That much was obvious.

“Is it anchored to the floor?” I asked, pointing out the cracks at the floor. He didn’t remember, but he didn’t think so.

“Do you think it’ll break apart if we pulled on it with the tractor?”

We weren’t going to bust the wall up anytime soon, so Jim agreed. He backed the tractor up to the wall, we tied the chain up to it, and taking up the slack gently, the tractor then snapped the wall off the wall and floor in one piece, all the holes in it undisturbed. Not one rebar had been anchored in the wall or floor.

“Good idea, partner,” Jim beamed.

I worked with Jim for about a month before Fern passed me onto another. Jim was a nice guy. I liked Jim, but I would never accuse Jim of being bright. I wouldn’t call him stupid, either. Bull-headed? Yes. Open to suggestion after a time? That too. Before long, I was expressing my opinion earlier on than I had, and somehow, the Code 2 mine-helper began to direct and, as time passed, lead my Code 6 partner. I never liked bull-work.

Three months after starting work at Kidd, my probation period over, I was Code 3. Four months later, I was Code 4.

Where I would remain for another 12 years.