Work Sucks

On Saturday morning, puddles lay on the steel and it shone with rain that fell during the night. Clouds packed the sky. After emerging from the shack, the crew trudged up the stairs to work, occasionally stopping to peer at the jostling, grey tiles overhead.

“Get your asses in gear!” Lou shouted at them. He turned to Joe and Garth, waiting for the headache ball. “You guys. Trucks came in last night.” He jabbed his thumb behind him, toward two flatbed trucks loaded with steel and parked on the gravel behind the shack.

Perfect, thought Joe, the easiest job on the claim and a double–time day too.

“Charlie and Andy will land the iron for you,” Lou said.

The morning’s work slipped into a relaxed pace, except Joe felt a little uneasy when he looked up at the prowling clouds and the crane’s boom, sticking up like a lightning rod.

The morning went by predictably enough and a little before coffee time, as Andy helped Charlie unhook a beam they had just landed, Joe and Garth stood with the last piece of iron to offload from the truck. Joe was gazing up at the tower, thinking about what he needed to do back up there. Flathead and the punk were working near the top of the tower, the punk feeding Flathead air hose as he walked with the impact wrench along a particularly skinny beam. A hose connector caught on cross piece. The punk tried to twist the line and whip it free as Flathead tugged. Then Flathead slung the wrench off his shoulder and let it fall to the beam with a bang. He turned to the punk. Joe couldn’t make out the words but Flathead’s body language said it all, his free arm waving wildly, his beard jutting out. Joe and Garth turned to each other and grinned.

Then as Joe looked back up at Flathead and the punk fighting over the air hose, lightning flashed and a jagged edge of current struck a column behind Flathead, showering him with sparks and causing toxic orange flame and black smoke to erupt into the air. Flathead let go of the air hose and fell to his belly on the beam. The wrench fell, jerked back up when it reached the end of the hose, and dangled. The punk managed to hang on, his gangly arms and legs wrapped around the steel. The column smouldered.

“You see that?” Joe exclaimed.

“Where’d that come from?” Garth asked.

Hollers rang out through the tower. He Man, perched halfway up, gestured frantically to the ground. Joe and Garth looked to the tower’s concrete footing where what looked like a pile of clothes lay near a column. Joe recognized the greasy welder’s jacket. Shortcut.

“Hey!” he shouted, and leapt off the truck, his heavy rigging belt nearly dragging him down.

Lou ran to Shortcut. When he reached him he fell to his knees, grabbed Shortcut’s shoulders, pulled him from the concrete to his lap. Joe saw it happen slowly as he ran, thumbing the clasp on his rigging belt and letting it fall to the gravel. He jumped onto the concrete foundation, and ran toward them.

Shortcut, lay stiff across Lou’s lap, screaming.

“Hey Shortcut,” Lou coaxed. “You’re okay, partner.”

Shortcut’s eyes rolled up and he seemed to recognize Lou, then he began to twitch, and soon his whole body was jerked around, his head wobbling on his shoulders. The men gathered around.

“Christ, he’s doing the funky chicken!”

“He ain’t going to make it!”

“Call first aid!”

“Hang on! Hang on!”

“Christ, take it easy on the guy!” Joe shouted. He smelled smoke and looked down at the smoldering welding glove on Shortcut’s hand, the glove’s fingers blown away, the skin inside crimson. Joe knelt and ripped open the remains of the glove and tossed it aside.

Shortcut’s twitching and thrashing subsided.

“Arrgh. Fuckin’ ‘ell,” he groaned, and reached over with his right hand and grabbed his forearm. “Ahhh!” He gripped his bicep and his face split in awful frown.

“What if it hits again?”

“Get him outta here!”

Charlie and He Man grabbed a leg, Garth and Joe grabbed an arm, and Lou scrambled to his feet pulling up Shortcut’s shoulders. They lifted his sagging bulk a foot or so from the concrete and ran and stumbled with him, groaning in pain, toward the edge of the building.

“Christ, he ain’t missed many hot lunches.”

“What does the fucker eat?”

They carried him to the edge of the building, slid him off the footing, and carried him across the road and lay him on the gravel in front of the shack. They crouched around the groaning, writhing man looking up from him and trying to read the sky, their faces puzzled. A wind whipped across the jobsite and the darkening clouds churned. Fat raindrops began to fall, scattering pock marks in the dust.

Flathead came running up with the punk trailing behind. “Where did that come from?”

“Fucked if I know, I never seen lightning without rain,” Lou said.

“It’s coming now.”

“I can’t feel my arm!”

They all turned to Shortcut.

“You’re going to first aid, partner,” Charlie said.

“I’ll call them,” Lou said, and scrambled up the steps into the shack.

“What happened?”

“Lightning, Shortcut,” Charlie said.

“Oh, fuck. My arm!”

“Don’t worry, you still got the thing,” Charlie said.

“Did he fall?”

“No, he was on the ground.”

“Lucky.”

Shortcut lurched up and looked down at his arm, then rubbed it furiously.

“Take it easy,” Joe said.

Shortcut looked at him. “You ain’t got hit by lightening.”

“Charlie’s bullshitting. You just turned up the heat on your welding machine.” Joe nodded.

Shortcut frowned in confusion.

“Told you he was a good welder,” Olaf said, softly.

“Good welder always welds hot,” Boris said.