Bittersweet Sands Read Online Free Page A

threatens to fire us by quitting time wins.”
    I spoke to the man in black. “What’s he up to?”
    â€œThirty-eight.”
    â€œThirty-eight threats in four hours?” I grinned.
    â€œShit, I ain’t even close!” Stash looked crestfallen.
    I smiled. “Let’s start a new round. Talk to the other guys. I’m in for ten. Start them off at thirty-nine.”
    The three of us spread out among the bored workers lounging along the halls and in the smoking rooms of the building. Names, guesses, and a hat were passed, resulting in a sizeable collection. Pops spent the rest of the day looking as if he were carrying a roll of toilet paper in his shirt pocket.
    When the session resumed, the class was transformed. Gone were the glassy-eyed stares. Barry Acastus, forever known as the Safety Nazi, was amazed at his sudden command of these men. Never had he taught such an attentive class. He must have thought that he had found the secret: threaten to fire one sleepy worker, and the rest were his.
    He laid it on. The more he bore down, the more he commanded us, the more we leaned forward. He ended the class with beads of sweat on his brow, a hoarse voice, and the pride of a job well done. The class almost cheered.
    The new apprentice, Dougdoug, won with a guess of sixty-two threats to be fired.
    â€œA personal best,” Pops said.
    * * *
    The classroom portion of the orientation finally came to a close. Now it was time for the tour of the refinery. The entire orientation class clumped onto a line of yellow schoolbuses. The refinery was so large, buses regularly circle the plant to pick up and drop off workers. It takes forty-five minutes for the busses to do a complete lap.
    Barry Acastus, The Safety Nazi, stood at the front of the bus, describing the vessels and their functions as they drove past. At one point, he lowered his head and spoke to the Teamster. The bus driver gave him a questioning glance.
    â€œDo it,” said Acastus.
    The driver left the refinery proper. The structures and the piping became smaller and finally receded into the horizon. The passengers looked at each other and then out at the frozen land. After fifteen minutes bumping down the gravel road, the bus slowed.
    â€œThis’ll be good,” Acastus said to the driver.
    The buses creaked to a stop. All around them was a white sand moonscape, sterile, empty as any Arctic winter. As far as the horizon and in every direction, regular mounds of talcum powder white sand gleamed. This was the dumping ground where the used sand from the extraction process was discarded back onto the land. The men who had brought sunglasses hastily donned them.
    In the middle of that whitewashed sterility, a three-acre mound shaped like an apple core rose ten feet from the white sand. On top of the miniature mesa, seven hungry trees fought a losing battle to eke out a life in the crackling cold.
    â€œYou see that?” Acastus asked softly. “A lot of people think that the company has no regard for the local population. But you see that? That’s an Indian burial ground. The company refuses to mine under there. That proves the company is sensitive to the wishes of the locals.”
    â€œJesus,” a voice said.
    The yellow schoolbus went silent and stayed that way all the way back to the refinery.

Day Two

( Selling Time in Fort McMurray )
    Fort McMurray is more than giant machines and steam and catacombs of shiny pipes that turn like snakes making love to stairs. Fort McMurray is more than anemic pine trees dying from the roots up, and bewildered moose that regularly stumble out of the woods and right into the middle of refineries. Fort McMurray is more than pick-up trucks with marker flags and dirty chrome convenience stores and parking lots carved out of half-starved forests.
    Fort McMurray is that dream of making enough money to become more than what you are. There you can walk taller, talk louder, work harder, get