The God Of Labour And Steel
I’ve been awake for 26 hours. As soon as my head hits the pillow, I can feel my consciousness drifting off into foreign lands. I’m weightless and ready to hit pause on my life and on the world for a few hours. But it isn’t to be. The God of labour and steel has other plans.
My phone vibrates on the nightstand beside my bed. Before this job, that noise did nothing but pique my curiosity as to who was calling. But at this point, the sound of vibration on hollow wood has the power to turn my blood into ice, and make me want to dash to the bathroom down the hall to empty my guts.
For a brief moment, a tiny speck in time, I can almost convince myself that it could be my parents or my brother, or a spam caller, anyone in the world except the crew office. But no one calls me. Especially at this hour of the night. I know exactly who it is.
“You’re working 326 at 0300 hours.” The voice says.
“Alright” is all I can manage before ending the call.
My wife is sleeping, and my newborn son is in his bassinet beside her. I whisper that I have to work. She stirs, and mumbles something before her soft snores return.
I lean over and kiss her forehead, then I will myself out of bed and grab my pile of work clothes that’s sitting on the floor in front of the bedroom closet.
Before I leave the room, I walk over to the bassinet and spend a couple of minutes staring at my baby’s face. My hands rest gently on his chest, as he breathes softly.
“Sorry, I won’t see you in the morning, buddy. But I’ll make it back as soon as I can.”
I kiss his forehead, then get changed, and I’m out the door.
On the news, they keep reiterating how people need to stay inside. Stay inside and bundle up. Do not hit the highway, they urge. The drifts from the mountains are creating blinding conditions on the 11.
I turn the radio off. I’m already on the 11. I don’t need to hear about how I shouldn’t be, because anyone who is on this death trap certainly isn’t doing it for kicks.
The drive is just over an hour in summer afternoon conditions. In this, it takes me well over two. Anything past 65 km/h lights up my dashboard like a Christmas tree.
I need to pull over twice. Once because the drifts are giving me vertigo, and I can’t tell if I’m on the road or not. The other because I have the heat cranked, which is serving as a bleak reminder of the last time I slept, turning my eyelids into concrete.
After a gruelling, anxiety ridden couple of hours, I see the sign for my exit, and my heart descends out of my throat for the time being.
I coast through the deserted streets of a broken town before reaching the rail yard. The engine sits idling on the shop track, shooting fumes into the clear mid-winter air. It’s large steel frame reminding me of why I’m here and what I do for a living.
For a few minutes, my fingers won’t pull the door handle. The wind off the river is howling like an angry, vengeful God. It’s one of those evenings where any exposed skin will be blackened within minutes. There are no buildings in this yard to block the wind. There’s only you, the empty freight, and the water.
Eventually, the “Fuck It, let’s get it over with” part of my brain takes control, and the wind welcomes me with a nice, long embrace. I walk to the shop to put on my overalls, boots, and all the winter gear I can to keep me from succumbing to the cold, but not restrict my mobility.
This shift is coming right off of the death of a new hire a couple hours south for this exact reason. A single father of two looking to make some money, ends up getting the life squeezed out of him between an engine and a boxcar. The result of a nice, thick warm jacket, and a delayed reaction.
The supervisor calls and says he needs the trains headed west to Quebec to be perfectly arranged for the crew coming in the morning, because if it’s not, they aren’t picking it up. And that’s a problem for him, which, in turn, is a problem for me.
I laugh at this despite myself, and hang up. Fucking asshole. I didn’t know there was an option to just not do the work. If that was on the table, then why was I here and not laying next to my wife and newborn son in the comfort of my bed?
The switch lists come out of the printer, letting me know where every car is in the yard. I grab them, fold them and stuff them in the back pocket of my overalls. Once I’m up the decrepit stairs and in the yard, I take them back out as the wind tries to blow them a mile into Hillside.
My work gloves do a grand total of fuck all to keep my fingers from freezing. Within minutes, I’m sliding them out and squeezing my fists like there’s a stress ball inside the thin cotton.
The cold is making icicles out of my facial hair, and I’m stuck with Billy as an engineer, who mumbles so much that I need to grab my radio and lift my tuque to hear him every time he talks, which is a lot. Eventually, both of my ears succumb to frostbite.
“Bring it back, Billy. 2 cars, 1 car, half a car, 15 feet, 10 feet, 5 feet and stop and stretch,” I say to the engineer as he couples a tank car onto a boxcar. “Set and centred.”
This is transmitted so that I can place my body in between the freight without worrying about a painful end to a short life.
Billy mumbles something, and I hope that means I’m good to go, because I already lost the patience to say “What?” fifteen times after each transmission.
Once I’m in between the cars, I need to turn a valve to shut off the air that’s running through the train, and get down on my knees to separate the hose bags which connects the air.
The only issue is that in my exhaustion and throbbing pain, I forget to turn the valve. This is a problem.
When I make the separation, the pressure sends them flailing out of control like a firehose gone rogue. I cover my face to keep the steel glad hands from taking out my eye, or driving my teeth down my throat, and instead the steel smashes against the middle knuckle on my right hand. It’s a clean break.
After a few minutes of yelling profanities and cursing my life. I lay flat on my back in the snow. A defeated man.
The night sky is clear. There isn’t a single cloud blocking the galaxy of stars. Under different circumstances, I think, it would be beautiful.
I mange to finish the shift, and by the time I get home, it’s the following afternoon. My little boy is up, and I haven’t held him or played with him in a couple of days. But Christ, I’m tired. It’s been close to 40 hours now without sleep.
My wife tells me to go to bed. I know they’re calling in 8 hours to tell me to brave the storm yet again. To hit reset on everything I’d just done. There’s no doubt about that in my mind.
I sit with my little guy, bouncing him on my knee. Telling him how much I missed him and how much I love him. At that moment, staring into his sky-blue eyes, like an epiphany, I know the job will eventually kill me.
I think about that father who died trying to provide for his kids. And I say not me. No, sir.
.
It wasn’t long after that I said Sayo-fucking-nara to that place and that life.