Jesper lifted the box from my hands and took the food to the table.
I walked to the corner of the room and dumped my bag into the seat that I usually occupied as we waited for the big boss to come in every morning and tell us what the plan was for the day.
The men were busy chowing down when said boss, Big John, came in.
Big John wasn’t his actual name. His actual name was Curtis, but when he’d first started working here, he’d saved a collapsing mine by using his body to stop a support from collapsing totally. He’d saved several people and he’d been coined “Big John” due to the popular song by Jimmy Dean.
Sadly for him, he’d never been called anything else since, and that was apparently twenty-five years ago.
Big John came into the room and walked right to the food, joining in with the rest of the crew.
Me being the only woman, at first I was hesitant with all the men.
But now they treated me like one of the guys, and I was fairly sure that they didn’t even see me as a woman anymore.
I was more of an annoying little sister that was “asexual” in their eyes.
“All right!” Big John said around a mouthful of burrito, white cheese dripping down his bushy beard that he paid no mind to. “Today we’re working in the yard. Probably tomorrow, too. Wednesday we’re moving equipment to the newest site. We’re going to be covering for the sister company starting Thursday.”
Generally, the company that I specifically worked for only did job sites and construction work. Things like that. The sister company was generally only used in conjunction with a billion-dollar luxury log home business. They cut down their own trees—something that had to be done by hand due to the nature of the terrain—milled their own logs. Built the homes. Cleaned up the sites that the homes would be built on.
They were responsible for all the richy rich peoples’ homes from start to finish, and they had the cushier of the jobs.
“Why are we there and not them?” I wondered aloud.
“Because several of that crew refuse to work without better pay. The crew’s out of commission for a few weeks until they can find new operators or come to an agreement.” He looked at the room at large. “If you go to them, I’ll never forgive you.”
The men laughed. “Never, Big John. We only have eyes for you.”
That was a lie, really.
We loved Big John, but the sister crew was the crew to be in.
They had better hours. Better equipment. Better safety measures. We got all the cast-offs. The old equipment that didn’t work as well anymore. The shitty jobs. Working with the new guys.
We pretty much trained the crew, and then they stepped up into the new positions with the other company for better pay and a better work environment.
Not saying that working with my company was bad.
It wasn’t.
But it would be nice to have heated bathrooms like the other crews had, and not have to travel a hundred miles a day to go to work while the other crew got to stay within fifty miles.
A text came through on my phone, and I absently read it without thinking too much into who it was from.
Unknown:
Hey, I think I have your dog. He was dumped at the end of my road, and he’s been living with me ever since.
I screeched in excitement, causing everyone to stop what they were doing and look at me.
“Someone found Brawny!”
Cheers sounded.
Brawny had been like a mascot here.
