Dirt Work (24 page)

Mostly, we bit our tongues and let Ralph rant. We knew the cycle. The intensity would pass, and we'd backslide into disrepair, work trumping loose buttons and fraying cuffs. Flagrant shabbiness would go unnoticed for weeks, long enough for us to think that once again, it was no big deal. Then, when the shirts looked more black than gray and “someone” complained, Ralph would lash out. My Carhartts with the duct-tape-patched crotch got the axe. Nic's red hat, against uniform policy, had to stay in the locker. The rules seemed to comfort Ralph somehow, as if shaking a finger made him bigger. The problem is, asking manual laborers to look clean and act right is a losing battle, and everybody knows it. We even have Virgil on our side: “All things by nature,” he wrote in 30 BCE, “are ready to get worse.” It's okay, Ralph. Entropy is not just a trails problem. It's a law of the universe, and you're in good company, centuries of zealots and philosophers, preachers, and generals, all questing after impossible order, thumping their desks, drawing clear lines, watching them fade as soon as the troops leave the door.

The west-end gypsy camp is a little city: five wall tents on wooden platforms, windows with bug screens stapled to the frames. In the center of the tents, a Conex kitchen plumbed for hot, running water, full of dishes and silverware and a rickety table and stacks of old magazines. Out front between the Conex and the road is a single-stall shed with an on-demand hot shower, heated by propane. Four out of five of us on the crew that first year lived in dry cabins, so to us, the “work camp” was a luxury. Our spend-it-or-lose-it per diem ensured we ate well, too—steaks, scallops, bacon, asparagus, a contraband keg of beer.

Camp is tucked into a small aspen grove, hidden from tourists at the Wonder Lake campground, even out of earshot of Phyllis and Harry, the elderly volunteer hosts who baked us cookies every hitch. If we were at camp, we were inside the Conex because the bugs were too brutal for sitting at the picnic table, so the view was not a focus. But on a clear day, from out the window above the kitchen sink you could see a stretch of the range and the summit of Denali, white as cloud.

One morning when Owens and I walked into the Conex, Jack stood at the kitchen sink; not looking at us, he waved out the window with a campy smile and channeled the Asian accent that floods the park in late summer: “Herro Denari!” he crowed. Something about that phrase, both gently mocking and so earnest, it stuck. One of us faced the window like an acolyte toward Mecca and said it every morning that summer, whether Denali was visible or not. What better greeting to the day, the peak, the crew? If I ever summit that mountain, as I hope someday to do, I have promised Jack that I'll yell, “Herro Denari!” from 20,320 feet at the top of my lungs.

I notice laborers wherever I go. I watch them on the side of the road in Beijing, in Peru, in Mongolia, whaling double jacks at cracked asphalt, driving ancient loaders rejected from American work sites, hauling wet concrete up flights of stairs in burlap sacks. At weddings and funerals, on subways, in airports, I study the guys who keep things oiled, notice the brand of tools they use (Makita, DeWalt), if their skid steers are on wheels or tracks, do they use gloves, wear back braces, drink sodas at lunch or water.

On a retreat I attended at a meditation center, three men spent the weekend cutting and laying new brick in a cement stairway. I walked by them every day and felt the pull toward fraternity, the urge to flash a signal that, though I didn't look like a laborer (blond and slight, cotton skirt and flip-flops, clean), I was in their tribe. I imagined asking the backhoe driver an inside question: “What's the GVW on that?” Or, pickup-line style, “Hey, nice masonry.” It's embarrassing, the desire to force community; too much ego in it, a wanting-to-be-known that feels vulnerable and grasping. If someone said those things to me out of the blue on a work site, I'd curl my lip. No one gets into the club that easily. Self-consciousness trumps the wish for connection, and I never ask.

But at the end of that weekend, my last time climbing the staircase from the meditation hall, I overheard the boss hold up a Skil saw and ask his young apprentice, “You know what kind of saw this is?”

“A Skil saw,” he said.

“Yeah, but do you know what kind?” the boss persisted. The kid looked stumped. As I walked by, I muttered the answer I knew he was looking for—
worm drive
—and kept walking. The boss did a double take.

“Hey! You stole my thunder!” he called, his surprise trailing me up the rest of the stairs. I had stepped, for a moment, into his circle. Toenails painted, yes, small shoulders, yes, but see—the ragged nails, tendons rigid on forearms, the calloused feet? Though nothing had changed, suddenly, I felt known. It's because I can be quick to judge that I savor such upending of expectation. I relish the surprise—
She's a laborer?—
because I also need constant reminding to look closer. The Euro tourist is a fly fisherman. That lady in the Nebraska RV loves Proust. This redneck was a conscientious objector during Vietnam. “Worm drive” becomes an internal code word, the mantra I use to remind myself:
Don't assume anything.

To labor is to work, toil, slave, exert, bust ass, slog, sweat, travail, struggle, strive, plug away, get 'er done.

Labor is a knot, a hard lump of meaning woven from a hundred strands. Pull on one hank, another tightens. Loosen a loop to extricate a bight and there's a tangle.

Labor is a job, a task, a grind, a career, a vocation, a whim, a duty, an assignment, a mission, a chore. Skilled and unskilled. Trade labor and grunt. Hired and forced. Artful tasks and thankless ones.

Culture's paradigms are set in stone: if you choose skilled labor among a host of possibilities available to you, or because of an apprenticed lineage, then it is “noble,” “honest,” “humble” work. If labor is forced upon you by circumstance, lack of education, or desperation of one kind or another, then it is “soul-killing,” “monotonous,” “drudgery.” This trope is everywhere. It's in our books, from Dickens's scullery maids to H. D. Thoreau, redeemed by his hoe. It's in politics, from the Industrial Revolution's casualties to today's hard-workin' Americans. It's in our beliefs and myths, from Luther's Calvinistic nose at grindstone (reward) to Sisyphus's uphill task (punishment).

Labor uplifts, grounds, ennobles, debases. Labor redeems. We're damned to it.

Who would you rather be, the third son in a line of lauded stonemasons, or an immigrant stacking boxes in a warehouse? Both laborers. Which paycheck would you rather earn, Davis-Bacon wages for the dozer operator protected by his union, or half minimum wage for the lady who cleans hotel rooms under the table? Both “working for a living.”

Labor taxes, rewards, demands, pays out, exhausts, shores up. Laborers are saved. And spent.

The romance of a hard day's work is, like any romance, as dependent on who's doing the loving as it is on what is loved. We may labor under assumptions, but nuance insinuates into any task, complicating stereotype. Who can say the migrant fruit picker, exhausted and used up, has never loved the feel of wind on his face high on a ladder, has never felt pride at a load of lemons, stacked and bright? Who can say the carpenter, handy and artful, has never cursed his sore wrists, wished a day would pass without sawdust gumming up his eyes?

Labor of love. Labor beneath. Fruits of labor. Labored breath. Labor the point.

My labor career began as a whim and became a life. It's craft, and also drudgery. I have worked alongside some of the smartest people I have ever met, and some of the dumbest. Made more money than I was worth, and also way less. I chose this job years ago, and every year I get to choose again, knowing two things: I could do other jobs—teach, edit, write grants, make sandwiches, go back to school in archaeology. And also, right now, trailwork is what I do best—dig holes, survey grades, design alignments, train crews, haul logs.

Labor is the process of birthing. If you push hard enough, labor delivers.

Some of the best advice I've ever gotten regarding upward mobility came from Joel, a co-worker in Denali: “Duct tape can get you through times without money a lot better than money can get you through times without duct tape.” I can't think of an exception to this rule.

How to play “moose duds”: at lunch break, one person sits with mouth open while the guy opposite hucks moose droppings at the target. (Moose dung is light and dry, like sawdust molded into a thumb-size oval.) If a turd hits you in the mouth and you flinch, you have to swallow it. If it lands inside and you don't flinch, you can spit it out (I've seen this happen once). One day, Flip tossed a chunk right into Krusty's mouth, and with loony bravado, Krusty gulped it whole and smacked his lips. We weren't disbelieving—there was little point around Krusty, who was always furthest beyond the pale—but we were impressed. The crew shouted and cheered, until Krusty, usually goaded by applause into further hijinks, suddenly went quiet and grabbed his throat. He swallowed hard, throat lurching like a snake with a goat lodged in its neck. Flip asked, with uncharacteristic concern, “Dude, you all right?”

The dud would not go down. It was stuck, low enough that Krusty couldn't cough it up and high enough to impede passage down his esophagus. He tried a drink. The water hit the blockage and backed up, streaming out his mouth. He could intake liquid only by letting it sit in his tipped-back throat and seep like water down a slow drain. The crew died laughing once we saw this was an inconvenience, not an emergency, but Krusty passed an uncomfortable twelve hours. No food, no liquid, not even the cheap whiskey that cured all his other ills. Nothing could get past the turd, and he swallowed compulsively, massaging the lump in his throat. (Or, the dump in his throat, who could resist?) Finally, the turd dropped. Krusty looked for the dud for the next few mornings, delighted at the prospect of recycling a turd inside a turd, but he never confirmed its passage. He now recalls the event with the proper hilarity and we introduce newcomers to games of moose duds with its moral intact: if you're not careful, you'll eat shit.

Wild is metal and noise, trucks driven too fast, a machine that could crush you if you lost control. Wild is the sound of gears in motion, the heat of physics. It's the snap of something under pressure breaking, the space left behind when momentum passes, the jolt of inertia suddenly changed to work. The slow ticking while the engine cools.

Tourists are the albatross of front-country trailwork, circling us with constant questions, getting in the way. Once, an approaching couple picked their way down a closed trail past the yellow “CAUTION” tape that flapped along the muddy edge. She wore pink Keds with anklets, a sweatshirt that read “Sexy Grandma” in rhinestones. His showed the howling profile of a wolf and the cursive “Last Frontier.”

They stopped in the middle of the swale I was digging. “Well,” the man slurred, “guys must be getting' awful lazy, lettin' the pretty girls do all the work!” He tongued his lip and winked, then swayed left to avoid the mess the Bobcat's tracks had made. His wife gripped his arm and smiled tightly, lips shined with gloss. Bear bells dangled, useless, from their belt loops by tiny fluorescent carabiners that could never hold their weight.

I raised my eyebrows, swallowed the things I'd spit if I weren't clad in the green and gray, my name tag sewn above the pocket, rendering me accountable:
C. Byl.
We were supposed to be polite. But later, when a white-haired lady passed in her sturdy boots and asked, “How does a lucky girl get a job like this?” I imagined an answer not really hers, this woman who may have wished to swing a tool, but never got the chance. In my mind, the pageant's for the slurry old goat: I stand before him, strip, grab my uniform shirt by the tails and pull upward, buttons popping. In my sweaty sports bra, nipples visible beneath the spandex, Carhartts pulled low by the weight of my Leatherman, baring my midriff. I grab the whistle from around his neck and twist. “Who's a pretty girl now, Mr. Wolf Shirt?” I hiss. His face bulges. I snatch the bear bell from his belt and press it into the crotch of my elbow, where I squeeze it between my bicep and forearm until I bust the thing, ringing. “This is the real Alaska, pal,” I sneer, relishing the tourists' cliché, plastic in their mouths, wicked in mine, the same words changed only by our position to them. “You better watch out for the wildlife.”

Out the west end, midhitch, we needed a break from rockwork. We went to brush the McKinley Bar trail, a two-mile section leading from Wonder Lake campground to the McKinley River. Brainless but satisfying work, a perfect change of pace. And necessary. The trail hadn't been brushed in years and tundra plants, slow-growing though they are, overwhelmed the tread. I have always been a fan of an aggressive brushing operation. If you're out there with tools, make it count. Of course, I did cut my brushing teeth on Glacier's jungled Middle Fork drainages, where if you didn't cut back twice as far as you thought you should, the packers would tear you a new one, and the vegetation would grow back by the time they were through with you. Chip and Jack had no such education. It was Jack's first year on trails and he was busy soaking up the protocols. Chip had a few seasons under his belt but didn't tend to go overboard about anything. They politely second-guessed the clear-cutting instructions. My brushing commandments seemed a bit excessive.

“Do we have to kill these little trees?” said Jack, who despite his new nickname, “The Rod,” had not yet managed to callous his soft heart. I had recommended yanking tiny spruce saplings, root and all, twirling once or twice, and flinging them.