Edmonton

One day I woke up in a shady motel near the North Saskatchewan River. The room was pitch black when I placed my feet on the cold floor and stood up beside the mattress, stretching my arms up as high as I could in the dark. There was a sharp pain in my lower back from the demolition job and it had caused me a great deal of discomfort for two days. I slowly limped towards the curtains and I snuck my head behind the dirty thick fabric to see what the day would bring as the sun brightened the city of Edmonton. The faded white and brown L shaped motor inn was in a dangerous part of town that sat next to a busy highway. It looked like a place where the men came here to bang other husband’s wives and made false promises that they could not keep. In the end, one of them will get caught or murdered. It had reminded me of various scenes from Hollywood films. The agreement of the lodgement was supposed to be temporary, according to the boss. He was known to be a tight ass with spending the staff’s budget and accommodation. We never relocated during our stay.

The season began to change from winter to spring when we had arrived in Edmonton and the snow had melted into dirty slushy water. The road was slick when Carl steered the company truck to the job site in Ogilvie Ridge. Carl was our foreman. He was forty-five years old and grew up in Halifax with his two younger brothers. All three of them developed a craftsmen’s skill; carpentry, plumbing, and welding. His appearance labeled him in a dead beat; A Tradie. I never witness Carl bending his knees to perform any actual physical work. He would arrive at a site, study the blueprints and wave his arms in the mid-air when he spoke. After the rendezvous, he would drive off somewhere in his unstained collar shirt and disappeared for a few good hours. He was polite and courteous with me. The relationship between us was neutral and I did whatever he would ask of me.

Big Dan sat in the passenger’s seat as usual. He was heavyset from Prince George. He was a real sonofabitch and openly admitted that he felt good about it. He got a real kick out of mild racism, picking on any ethnicity at any time, even his own. He would imitate Sinatra and sang a made-up song about Edmonton, "This dump of a town is bleak, disjoined aanndd sooo damnnn depressing." No living soul wanted to work with Big Dan.

Unfortunately, he was jacked up with a variety of trades and knowledge. It did not take long to learn that the bastard had been married four times. It was clear evidence that bad boys win the girls but the girls never stick around to love them for long. In the back seat, there was Jorge, an immigrant from Portugal who sat quietly behind Carl in his clean overalls, staring out the window aimlessly. Jorge was the company’s most reliable carpenter. He was fast and accurate with a clean cut. He rarely spoke to the crew members and had shown no interest in engaging in any form of social activities. The unlucky one who got cramped behind Big Nazi Dan; The Aussie backpacker who ran out of money and became desperate to earn a quick buck in a dysfunctional team.

All four craftsmen sat in the truck and listened to the man behind the radio as we drank Canada’s favourite coffee; Tim Hortons.

One hardly exchanged words to the other in the mornings, not until we arrived at the client’s house that stood half-naked on a tiny hill and with our coffee cups were emptied. Carl would open the listes de tâches, as the men stood silently on the muddy ground, fidgeting with their mobile phones and waited for his instructions. First, he ordered Jorge to finish the window frames in the main house before moving onto the next task. He drew an invisible square with two hands in the mid open air. "Nenhum problema, Senhor" said Jorge and he broke away from the group. "All right, now Aussie," Carl said to me, "Two guys from the job agency are going to work with you today. In the meantime, help one of these gentlemen until they arrive and come to me once they get here." Big Dan was forced to work with the other contractors. He was frustrated by the pressure he received from Carl, "No jerking around with the contractors", Carl paused for a split second, lifted his hat back and his forehead was exposed and began moving his right hand when he spoke, "Dan, we need them to work with us and we must finish renovating this house. Don’t piss anybody off today, please!" Dan rolled his eyes and turned away. He murmured something to himself when he walked to the back of the truck, grabbed his tool bag and entered into the house. I lit up a cigarette and turned my head to exhale the smoke. From a short distance, I saw two young men walking towards the site. I tapped the foreman on the side of his shoulder and pointed at the two of them.

When they got closer, one of them had the ugliest teeth I had ever seen; like a mouth of broken black rocks. He was slightly taller than the other one. Although, both of them were just sticks and bones in their late twenties. The shorter one had red spots on his arms as if he had been scratching. The tall guy went to shake hands with me, I turned my hand into a fist and gave them both a fist bump. They asked me for a smoke and I gave them one each. Carl leads the three of us into the small guest house and laid out the task. "These walls must be taken down today and the wooden floor has to be ripped up too" He pointed to the walls in the lounge room and tapped the floor with the sole of his boot. The foreman looked at me and said, "Aussie, make sure you place the column post when you take down the walls" I nodded and went out of the truck to retrieve them. Carl pulled me aside on my third trip to the truck and said to keep an eye on them. He believed that they were junkies; crack addicts, judging from their appearance. I told him not to stress and unloaded the rest of the tools from the truck before he drove off.

Once the three of us were in a room, we removed the trims with the wonder bar before we attacked the walls. I marked a big x with a pencil on the locations as a reference where to place the column post to prevent the ceiling from collapsing. Mr Rottenteeth and I knocked through the thick drywall with our hammers. It felt good to swing and slam it against the wall; pent up anger and sexual frustration. The drywall broke into different shapes and sizes as they fell to the ground. Mr Spotty picked up the broken debris and threw them into the waste container. After that, he carried the heavy load outside to dump the waste into the huge yellow skip bin. I could smell the wood burning as the metal blade of the reciprocating saw cut through the old wood. After the walls were completed and the post was standing strong, we decided that we earned a ten-minute smoke break. Mr Spotty did not look too well. His eyes were red, bloodshot red, and his skin had a pale tone. He looked drained and tired after three hours of physical work. I told him not to overdo and he scratched his arm before he had convinced me that he was fine.

When we returned to the guest house after the break and each of us took a floor scraper from the toolbox. We worked independently in different rooms. Carl had returned and was impressed with our performance until he walked around the house and found Mr Spotty on the floor. "Aussie! Get in here quick!" I heard a voice in a tone that I had never heard Carl use. When I walked into the room, my mind went bleak for a few seconds and could not believe what I was witnessing. Mr Spotty was on the ground, shaking drastically with white foam erupting from his mouth. It was like lava exploding from a volcano, but cold and white. It had spread out onto the floor. I had never seen so much foam in my life. When realty came back to me, I went to turn Mr Spotty body to his side and stuck my index and middle fingers in his mouth to be sure that he was not choking on his tongue. Mr Rottenteeth panicked when he entered into the room. Carl was on his phone to emergency and order Rottenteeth to leave as he pointed to the door. Mr Spotty kept on waging like a fish out of water when Carl and I tried to hold him down until the ambulance had arrived.

"You should have let him rot." Big Dan said coldly in the truck as we were on our way back to the motel that late afternoon. Nobody reacted to his comment. Jorge was playing with his phone and Carl kept his eyes on the road. I was too tired to start an argument with Big Dan. "Meet at six," Carl said before everyone got out of the vehicle and vanished into their rooms. Later that night, I sat outside my room in the chilly air with a beer in my hand, staring out over the highway, Poor Carl I thought to myself. He had other issue's to deal with apart from Big Dan and I hoped that Mr Spotty had found his way back to earth. A woman in a tight dress to impress walked up to me, "Hey sugar, what are you doin?" She said in a flirty way. I knew what she wanted by the look of her. "Not much beautiful, just a rough day at work," I said to her. She asked about my accent. "Maybe I can help you relax sugar," she said smoothly as she had bent lower to meet my gaze with a smile. She had blue Almond-shaped eyes, a straight nose and rosy cheeks from the cold air. My soft heart began to pump harder and I felt a rush over me but I declined her offer. "Ok sugar, if you change your mind, I am in room six," She said and walk off, swinging her hips sideways. I took a good swing of my beer and tried to let my mind wander, but I couldn’t help staring at the door to room six...

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