Creative Nonfiction: The Saskatchewan Job

By Steve Passey

 

It started with a successful tender and ended with a heroic dose of mushrooms and an awkward sprawl off of a cliff.

Providence Electrical (Ltd.) contracted to install all electrical for a new seed-cleaning plant in rural Saskatchewan. Not exactly a camp job, but the nearest hotel was in Relic, twenty kilometers from the job-site. They sent eight guys out: The project manager, who was a master electrician, two journeymen, and the rest apprentices or laborers. They were low tender, plus they’d built for the customer before, plus it was out in bum-fuck Saskatchewan close to nothing. Relic didn’t even have a liquor store – just off-sales from the hotel bar. 

First day on the job, the site supervisor for the general contractor, a man named Knut, figured out that not all of the electrical crew sent by Providence were journeyman. 

You’re fired, said Knut, making a statement. I want journeyman. Not apprentices or, he spat, jabronis.

Max, the master Electrician, demurred. Calls were made. A statement came back:  Providence was not fired. 

Max brought the boys into the job shack to meet with Knut. 

Max spoke first: From now on everyone refers to the site supervisor here – and he pointed at Knut – by his given name: Cunt. 

It didn’t get better from there.

Knut would demand changes.

Max would tell Knut to put it in writing and Max would get it back to the office and they’d quote terms. 

Just do it, Knut would say. 

You know how this works, Cunt, Max would say. Put in your req’s and we’ll price it and then your boss can sign off or not. If it’s not in the specs it’s an extra. No free extras.

Knut tried to fire the laborers one at a time. He started with Donny, a quiet Mormon kid. Donny was not beloved by the others in the electrical crew because he did not drink and had never been heard to curse. His hotel room had no sink – or rather, the sink in it had no running water. Ankhit, the proprietor, apologized, and told Donny he’d have to use one of the other guy’s sinks until Ankhit could replace it. 

When will that be, Donny asked?

I don’t know, said Ankhit, cheerfully.

None of the other guys would let Donny use their sink. He had to use one in the public restroom downstairs. The toilet in that restroom was overflowing. 

When Knut fired Donny, Donny went and told Max. Max took Donny into see Knut. 

Cunt, he said, you stupid motherfucker, you can’t fire my guys. Donny, if Cunt ever fires you again you have my permission to kill him. In fact, you have to kill him. It’s your job now. Don’t Book-of-Mormon me any shit. Just kill him. 

The rancor spread in every direction. Knut hated everyone, everyone hated Knut. Max hated head office for putting him in this position.  Max was paid a percentage of the fees Providence was paid on the project and an early completion/margin bonus. He could see the vapors of that bonus in the air. He felt like he’d been set up to fail. 

Max made sure he called his boss ever day at six in the evening because he was pretty sure that when the man would be sitting down to supper with his family and he knew his boss always used the speaker on his cell phone. The man had two children under six. So, Max would call and say: You gotta get (the General) to fire Cunt.

We’ve already tried, the boss would say, without ever saying anything about Max’s language. You have to make this work. 

The crew drank a lot. Ankhit never had it so good. Their per diem was $140/day and the rooms $25. They’d finish a day on site and drive back to the hotel and drink and watch tv until they fell asleep. Some days they ate, some days they didn’t. On days they didn’t eat, most smoked or vaped shitty government weed. Everyone except for Donny, really. 

Max? Max smoked the most of all of them.  

It's how I stay sane, he said, and then, this isn’t even close to the worst job I’ve ever been on.

They did get weekends off. They’d go back home but it was an eight-hour drive back Friday after three pm and they’d have to turn it around Sunday night and drive the same eight hours back across the flatlands, past the well-ordered Hutterite colonies, past vast fields of Canola, and descend back into Bumfuck, nowhere, and the misery of the week. 

Gerrit, the quiet journeyman electrician, would look at the Canola and say how he remembered his grandfather telling him that in 1980’s with interest rates so high that when the canola got this high, they’d pray for hail. It was the only way his Grandad could see getting his costs back. 

Hail takes the crop, or the bank takes the farm, Grandad said. 

What was your Grandad’s name, Max asked? 

Knut, Gerrit said, and they all laughed.  

Actually, it was Randy, he said, but by then the other guys in the van had turned to talk of the most inventive, medieval ways to kill Knut and whether or not any of Knut’s family members (if he had any) should be killed with him, and should he be made to watch.

There came a Monday when Max told the boys he wouldn’t be at the site with the rest of them. Quarterly meetings, he said. I’ll be there Wednesday. If Cunt says anything to you, you call me.

At the meetings Max was told they were behind on the Saskatchewan job. You have to step it up, they told Max.  

I can’t get any guys, Max said, no one wants to come out, and the site supervisor is a fucking problem. 

We understand, they said, but still, you have to make it work. We do a lot of work for these guys. This is just one job in Saskatchewan. 

This is the worst job I have ever been on, Max said. Ever.

For Christ’s sake don’t tell the guys that, they said. You’ll never get anyone.

Donny had asked not to go out to the site again and management had moved him to another project. The other guys saw this and all of them, the two journeymen and the laborers, asked for the same. 

Sunday night the crew, minus Max and Donny, had driven on out to Relic. Evan and Mike, two labors, went in Evan’s truck and not the company van. Evan was from the Blood Reserve and proud of it.  He got gas at the Thunderbird, where there were no provincial or federal taxes. 

Half of what you poor, sad, people pay, he said.

He and Mike smoked a couple of joints on the way out.  

You aren’t bad for a white boy, Evan told Mike. 

But that’s just it, said Mike, I ain’t a white boy. I’m Metis.

Metis? Evan asked, Bullshit. I call bullshit. 

No lie, said Mike. My mother’s from a reserve in Manitoba. She still votes in the elections. I got my card man. 

Where your Indian come from, Evan asked. 

Assiniboine Cree, said Mike, and a couple of other different tribes, all one nation.

Goddamn, said Evan. Brother, I knew you had some crazy in you.

Monday Knut came to Gerrit, one of the journeymen. Gerrit was a quiet, competent guy, a man who like being an electrician and that was all. 

Can I see your phone for a minute, Knut asked? 

Gerrit handed over his phone. 

Knut took it and said, you fucks are all day on your phones. I’m locking it up in my shack. Now get some work done. 

Gerrit chased Knut all the way back to the shack. Knut locked himself in the shack and wouldn’t come out. The other electricians all came over and gathered around and Gerrit told them what happened. The structural guys came over too – they had the same kind of issues with Knut. 

Knut would not come out. 

Get back on the job or I’m calling the cops, he shouted from behind the locked door.

The structural steel guys went back to work. They had their phones.

Gerrit and the electricians got in the van and went back to the hotel in Rustic, and then called Max and told him what had happened.

I’ll be there tomorrow, Max said. 

Max called the General and told them he was going to kill Knut unless Gerrit got his phone back. The General said they’d call Knut. Max iterated that he was going to kill Knut, and again, the general said they’d call Knut.

Of Max’s long and lonely drive to Rustic the next day, not much can be said. He drove at 120km/h on 90km/h roads past the same canola, colony farms, and gravel turnoffs where, a century before, Doukhobor wives in groups of sixes, twelves or even twenties had pulled the plows steered by their dour, bearded husbands because they had no animals and were not afraid of back-breaking labor. Better to pull the plow than endure the Tsar’s conscriptions. They were all gone now, the Doukhobors had moved to British Columbia to see some trees and once, in an anarchic fit, blow up a railroad with purloined explosives. All that remained here was flat and featureless land and a great purity of blue sky. 

When he got to the hotel the whole crew was drinking beer and watching TV with Ankhit. Max produced a quantity of strong-smelling marijuana and one-by-one, they all lit up – including Ankhit, who was pleased to be included. After a few hits Ankhit said that he would smoke a little of this weed every day, if he could, and gave everyone one free beer, so Max gave him the website he ordered from. 

Namaskar, Ankhit said. 

Ankhit fell asleep just as the sun went down. Wordlessly, Max walked out to the van with the crew following him and sat in the driver’s seat of the company van. Once they were all in, he drove them out to the site. Fortunately – or not – Knut was not in the trailer. They broke in and with shovels, hammers, and their steel-toed boots they visited rough justice upon the inanimate shack and broke every item in it. Every window and every wall and the laptop Knut could more or less – mostly less – use. They left nothing. Somewhere, in their wordless fury, they even destroyed Gerrit’s cell phone, smashing it into fragments not one of which held the same shape, then treading on those fragments with their boot heels until they were indistinguishable from the dirt those old Doukhobors had turned by strength of wife and steel of plow. 

They drove back to the hotel and, finding Ankhit still asleep, went to Donny’s old room and broke in. They broke the lamp and the tv set and smashed the porcelain of the toilet and cut the linens with jackknives. They threw anything they could out the window into the parking lot.

Back in Max’s room they lit up again.  

That thing in Donny’s room was for Donny, not against him, Max said. 

It was the first time anyone had spoken since Max first got there. 

Fuck yes it was, said Evan. 

This is some good shit hey, Max said, referring to the weed he’d brought. Northern Lights. I got it online. This isn’t some shit government weed. It’s the only weed I’ve ever gotten a contact high from. This is the real deal. 

Fuck yes, it is, said Evan.

High and quiet they drifted back to their rooms. Gerrit came over to Mike’s with a piece of paper with all sorts of number’s written on it. 

Here, he said. I want you to have these, in case anything happens to me.
What are they, Mike asked? 

My checking account number, my savings account number, and my crypto wallet. 

Crypto wallet, Mike asked?

Yeah, Gerrit said. I have fractional ownership of some crypto. I bet there is $3,500 in there, or close to it. 

I can’t take this, Mike said. It ain’t gonna be like that, Gerrit. You’re harshing my mellow.

Keep it, Gerrit said. This job … oh man. This job. 

When Gerrit went back to his room Mike tore the paper into tiny shreds and called his girlfriend. When she picked up, he said only that things got a bit out of hand out here on the Saskatchewan job, and they talked for an hour before he fell asleep with her still on the other end of the phone.

The next day they went out to the site. The RCMP were there with Knut. 

No one said anything, but Knut and the officer came over. 

Looks like some boys from the Red Pheasant reservation broke into my shack, said Knut. Fucked it up. Tell your guy Gerrit that they stole his phone. He should see if he has insurance or Apple care or whatever from wherever he got it.

That was all that came of that. 

Evan told Mike that he knew some guys from Red Pheasant and that it was 200+ clicks away and ain’t none of them driving that far to fuck with Knut no matter what and that Knut was a motherfucker.

True that, Mike said, but we just got away with actual crime.  

Have you ever been to a Powwow, my Metis brother, Evan asked Mike.  

No, Mike said. Never.

So, you’re still a virgin then, Evan said. 

Dude, I live with my girlfriend, Mike said.

That’s not what I am talking about, said Evan. That’s just humping. You have never known love until you have found it at a powwow. It’s best time you’ll ever have. That’s where I met the cousins from Red Pheasant. There are spirits there, you know. The sprits of our people. Yours, mine, all of us. It’s all about love, man, love. That’s where babies are made.

Maybe next year, Mike said.

They bumped fists and went back out to run pipe and cable. 

On the weekend Mike phoned Max’s boss and said he wasn’t going out to the Saskatchewan Job again. No matter what. 

C’mon Mike, the boss said. Your Per Diem is $140/day. One-fucking-forty. C’mon.

Mike told the boss about Gerrit’s note and how everyone else in the company had at least one divorce, one stint in rehab, and a bankruptcy by age forty-five.  No one sees their kids. 

Welcome to trades, son, the boss said. They both laughed, but the end of it was Mike wouldn’t go back out to Saskatchewan and they didn’t make him. 

Max called Mike to try and get him to go but Mike just iterated what he’d said to the boss and asked Max why didn’t the general just can Knut. 

It isn’t just us, he said. Everyone on the site hates the guy. 

Max said that near as he could figure it was two things: Firstly, Knut had worked for the general before. He was actually retired, he’d bought a farm out that way, and they just offered him the site supervisor position because he was there and for Knut’s part he must have figured why not, because he was there. Secondly – and more importantly – Max said, Knut had tried to bring in his son as the electrician. Max said he’d been told the guy was a journeyman, and, being from Bumfuck, Saskatchewan, only had an apprentice. Two-man shop. Not enough manpower the general said, but Knut was pissed. Maybe Knut thought he’d get his nephew to charge him out as a laborer and pad his take. 

We should have been on the same team, Max said. He and I are paid the same way: A percentage of the job and a bonus for early completion. Who knows, Max said? Maybe Knut was only ever a steaming piece of dogshit and that was the all of it. Most site supervisors are.

Eventually, on an unremarkable day, they were done, and no one went back to the land of the Doukhobor wives. The refuse the sparkies had thrown out of Donny’s old room still lay on the grass beneath his window or on the pavement of the parking lot where it had landed. 

They fired Gerrit a month or so after the Saskatchewan job. He’d become unreliable in particular a sense; his work had regressed. He had become strange in conversation too, by turns silent and unresponsive and then ominous, speaking of biblical prophecies and the end of times. No one wanted to work with him.

A couple of months after the job had ended Mike got a call from Gerrit - who had replaced his phone – on a Sunday morning.

Can you pick me up, Gerrit asked? I’m in the Toys’R’Us parking lot across from the police station. I need a ride home. 

Mike went and picked him up. 

How’s things, Gerrit, Mike asked when Gerrit got in. 

Garret looked thinner than when Mike had last seen him. Wiry, unkempt. He was wearing a filthy t-shirt. 

What are you doing at a toy store, Mike asked?

Well, Gerrit said, I was at the police station. Yeah, I was in the drunk tank. 

He didn’t look at Mike when he spoke to him.

Seriously, Mike said. For real?  

Yeah, Gerrit said. I got a DUI last night. I was at Lucky’s and I’d had a few. Basically, the cops parked outside and when I left, they followed me home. Busted me in my Driveway. Fuckers. Evil, evil fuckers. I bet it was Max that put ‘em up to it. Or Knut. So, they charged me and kept me in the tank until I was sober enough to go.  

Mike said he was sorry, sorry to hear that. All of it. 

Not your fault, Gerrit said. 

When they got to Gerrit’s place Gerrit motioned to his filthy t-shirt before he got out. 

Do you want this, he asked? It’s a homeless man’s t-shirt.

Say what, Mike asked? 

Yeah, Gerrit said. In the tank there was this homeless dude. Drunker than me. Drunker than I’ve ever been. Real chill dude. Spiritual in way. We talked about all sorts of shit. He’d died on Fentanyl three times, he told me, and been revived each time with one of those Naloxone kits. He said coming back to life was the worst thing that could ever happen to a person. This is his shirt. I was wearing one of my Providence Electrical Ltd. hoodies and offered to trade him. So, if you see a homeless dude in one of our hoodies, that’s my boy. Be kind. 

I will, said Mike, and with that Gerrit was gone, but he left the t-shirt on the passenger seat. 

Mike drove out to the shop and put the shirt in a dumpster.

For you, Gerrit, he said, not against you. 

How is Gerrit, his girlfriend asked, when Mike got home?

Mike just shrugged. 

Everyone who worked on that Saskatchewan job has gone crazy, eventually, he said, but she wasn’t listening.

A few months after that Mike got a text from Gerrit. It was a link to an Instagram page called Stupid Canadians or something like that. Someone else had taken the video. In it was Garret standing at the top of a cliff over a small lake. He looked back at the camera and then half-jumped/half-fell into the cold water many tens of feet below. He looked up at the camera the whole time, his expression neither euphoric or terrified. He looked like a guy wondering what had happened or wondering what might happen, his thoughts between what was past and what might come next, as if he’d jumped because he thought only why not?  

Gerrit sent a quick text after the link saying only that he’d done seven grams of mushrooms before jumping. 

You’re my boy, Mike texted back. Be well.

 

 

 

 

 

Steve Passey is originally from Southern Alberta. He is the author of the short-story collections Forty-Five Minutes of Unstoppable Rock (Tortoise Books, 2017), the novella Starseed (Seventh Terrace), and many other individual things. He is a Pushcart and Best of the Net Nominee and is part of the Editorial Collective at The Black Dog Review.