Lawrence said. “No one ever pays for anything. The people that should pay don’t pay. And the more people like you interfere, the more we’re the ones paying.”
I thought of Helen, how eager she’d been to tell me and Lily we should take our case to the Supreme Court. The rage I’d felt at her I hadn’t bothered to explain, not even to myself. Still, I said, “He won’t get away with this.”
“You’re the reason he’s here at all,” Marie said.
Lawrence said, “It only gets worse from here. We’re going home. We can pick this up again somewhere else.”
Behind us, Cameron was laughing. He pushed his hand against the blood on his face, one of his eyes wouldn’t open, but he had climbed back up into the excavator to watch us. “You clocking out, Tiger Lily?” he asked.
“We can fight this bastard,” I told them. “There’s a camera in the trailer. It caught everything on tape.”
“Makes more sense to fight the zombies,” Marie said.
I called Shane, and he showed up quick, looking stressed out.
“What happened?” he asked. Not me or Marie, not Lawrence. He asked Cameron.
“She’s such a fucking slut,” Cameron said, thumbing toward Marie. “Hardly walks away to pee. I could tell you the color of her panties. She’s probably fucking Big Chief over here, and the fucking dyke, too.” He raised his voice to me again. “You think I don’t know, just ’cause you have long hair? I can tell. I have amazing gaydar. And I’m very accepting.”
“You’re crazy, Cameron,” Shane said. “You’re fucking crazy. You can’t talk like that. Get the hell out of here.” But Cameron stayed where he was.
“You okay?” Shane asked Marie. He tried to help her up, but she shrugged him off. She laced up her boots and got unsteadily to her feet, leaning on Lawrence.
“He hit her with the bucket. I saw it,” I said.
“Fucking dyke attacked me with a wrench,” Cameron said.
“Cameron, you asshole,” Shane said. “What the hell is your problem? I told you to go the fuck home.” Cameron just kept smiling.
“I told you, Shane. I ain’t no oiler,” Marie said. “I should be sitting up in that seat.”
“This is not about that,” Shane said. “You know how these guys are, fragile egos, think with their dicks. In the future, do you think you could go farther away to pee?”
“Oh please,” I said. “Shane, you don’t provide porta johns. Fucking Cameron pees on any rock, pees on the fucking pipeline, for god’s sake.”
“Practically pees on me,” Marie said.
“Well, like I said,” Shane said, “it’s Cameron’s fault. He got out of hand. He’s got mental problems. Don’t worry. He’s off the job.”
“We can report this,” I said.
“We?” Marie said. “There’s no we.”
“We’ve got to fight back,” I said.
“Oh, I’ll fight back, all right,” Marie said. “But not with you. I can take care of myself, foreman. You need to pull your head out of your ass.” Lawrence helped her to the truck. They didn’t look back. I watched them drive away. Cameron still sat in the excavator, chuckling high and reedy in his throat.
“Go home, Cameron,” Shane said wearily. “Please just go home, okay? I’ll call you.”
When it was just Shane and me I said, “I’m still reporting this.”
“Who are you going to report it to?” asked Shane.
“I saw what happened,” I said. “Including sexual harassment, assault, everything. He’s not getting away with it.”
“Be careful, Karen,” Shane said. “There’s two sides to every story. Remember, you hit him in the face with a pipe wrench. Drew blood. Not that I don’t admire it.”
“You want to see what that asshole did? I’ll replay the tape,” I said, but when I dragged Shane back into the trailer, there was nothing to replay but snow, though I pressed and pressed buttons, rewound and rewound again. Shane stood behind me in the doorway.
“You motherfucker.” I turned on him. “You fucking coward.”
“It’s not me,” Shane said. “It’s the system.”
But I wasn’t finished. “You think I don’t remember?” I said. “When Rudy was lying out under that ash tree, near death, you just stood there. You couldn’t do a thing but leave the county, left Helen on her own with barely anything just as winter was setting in. And she’d been depending on you. This here’s the same shit, only it’s way fucking worse.”
“You don’t know Helen like I do,” he said. “You don’t know what it was like to live with that woman.”
“Oh, I do,” I said. “I do know what it’s like to live