the motel office and I never once went inside. I didn’t know what the hell to do about the pipeline, but I knew Lily would tell me I should pack up and leave. And when it came down to it, I wasn’t prepared. I wasn’t prepared to pack up and leave. Not yet.
Why should I? If the pipeline was time-sensitive, well then so was the ninety-day review. So was my mission of making money fast. And anyway, one look at that map and it was clear that they’d already put the line through everyone else’s homes, so who was I to protest? I wasn’t going to give up a decent job, my one good chance to get Perley back, just to stage a futile fight against the company, which I probably wouldn’t win. Like I said, I Googled it, goddammit. Alone in that trailer all day, I Googled it and I found out that people all over the continent were fighting these pipelines, Indians were, white people were, hell, even Hollywood celebrities were. But they weren’t winning.
And now here Marie and Lawrence were, asking me to do them a favor, to go against protocol when they still barely gave me the time of day, treated me like I was their own personal General fucking Custer or some shit, wouldn’t even tell me where Jay was or when he was coming back.
If I couldn’t win against the pipeline, I wanted to win something. I had a strategy. If I kept my job, I could win my family back. Wait and see.
So Marie climbed into the excavator, Lawrence grabbed a shovel, and I went into my private trailer and called Shane. I told him, We’re shorthanded over here. But I’m just letting you know. Don’t worry about us. We’ll make do until Jay comes back. We don’t need anyone else.
By lunchtime, the new guy was there.
Cameron. Long blond hair, tattoos crawling up his neck, handsome like a ferret. The three of us just stared up from our bologna while he introduced himself. “This must be a mistake,” I said. “We don’t need anyone else.”
“No mistake,” he said, gray eyes flickering past me to rest on Marie. He gave her a long appraising look, but she just scowled back. He said, “Never fear, Tiger Lily. Let me show you what I can do with this baby.” Then he strode right past where we were eating to swing himself up into the cab of the excavator.
“What the hell is that?” Marie asked, throwing down her sandwich. She got to her feet, and Lawrence and I followed.
“Looks like the foreman here called Shane,” Lawrence said.
“You called Shane?” asked Marie.
“Shane would have found out anyway,” I said.
“I guess now we’ll never know if he would have or not,” Lawrence said.
“This is my job we’re talking about,” I said. “I’m not here to make friends. I’m here to make money and go home.”
“You want to do your fucking job, foreman?” Marie said. “Tell that bag of dicks to get out of my excavator.”
But when I did, Cameron said nice and loud, “Shane told me I’m up in the seat.”
“Like hell,” Marie said. “That’s my machine.”
“Princess, it’s the company’s machine,” Cameron said. “None of this belongs to me or to you.”
“Well, foreman, what do you say?” Lawrence asked me.
“She ain’t the foreman,” Cameron said. “She’s just Shane’s old girlfriend or something is what, even though she’s ugly. But I ain’t picky.”
“Everyone just wait a minute,” I said. I went into the trailer and called Shane. “What’s the idea?” I said. “I tell you we don’t need anyone else, and you send us the biggest asshole in the state?”
“Calm down,” Shane said. “Cameron’s a character, all right, but he’s harmless.”
“You’d better come down here,” I said.
Ten minutes later, Shane’s SUV pulled through the gate. He got out with a nervous grin, his wavy hair all brushed. “Folks, please,” he said, “just work it out.”
“I ain’t no oiler,” Marie said.
“Marie, you’ve got to understand,” he said. “Cameron’s experienced. I switched him off another crew to fill in short notice. He’s been up in the cab. Can’t very well put him on the ground. He’s doing us a favor.”
Cameron sat smiling in the operator’s seat, waiting it out.
Shane turned on me, and now his gold teeth were nowhere to be seen. “Karen,” he said. “You told me you were shorthanded, so I sent someone to fill in. Now you expect me to come down here and deal with some petty conflict?