Site Fidelity by Claire Boyles

Author:Claire Boyles
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2021-05-11T00:37:47+00:00

WINDBLOWN GRIT SCOURED HIS face and tapped against the buildings, which bowed slightly in the heaviest gusts. Joe was happy for the long shift ahead of him, happy to be free from his dreams. Gravel crunched under his boots, louder for the 5 a.m. silence around him. The men seemed quieter at night, presumably due to the human habits of their lives before the camp, but there were always men coming in and men heading out, a twenty-four-hour stream of going to work and getting off work, sleeping and waking, being indoors and being outdoors. Even now there were guys watching The Godfather in the rec room, guys lifting weights in the fitness area, guys walking to the bunks, hoods pulled over their heads to shield them from the relentless prairie wind. The lens coating on his sunglasses was scraped and scratched nearly off from the grit that pelted him as he worked.

He and Dustin were set to ride together, and once Joe got the kid talking his own mind could drift away on the conversational current—he could nod, hum a few times, offer occasional low-stakes advice on Dustin's low-stakes twenty-one-year-old life, call it a day well lived. At the truck, Dustin paused. “Give me a minute, will you? I forgot I need new laces.”

Joe shrugged. The kid was lucky the camp store was open this early. The store didn't carry much—boot laces, work gloves, cigarettes, Twinkies. Joe sat on the back bumper and looked at the sky. The camp lights were no match for the bright splashes of starlight—Joe had never before been able to see the distant sparkle of the cosmos so clearly. There had always been too much light right in front of him, light that tethered him to the moment. His mind wandered up and into the expanse, so that when the man approached, Joe startled.

The man smiled, held out his hand. “Ben Stone. Company recruiter. You're Joe Baker?”

Stone was a grizzled old guy, mid-seventies maybe, a paper copy of the Tribune under one arm and a set of pencils, actual lead pencils, the kind that needed to be sharpened in one of those rotary sharpeners from grade school, in the front pocket of his shirt. A little old for the rigs themselves, Stone had arrived a week ago for a site visit. Dustin had heard he was retired from some high school in Bismarck, a history teacher, and he looked the part.

Joe shook Stone's hand. “Good to meet you.” Joe cleared his throat to shake the sleep from his voice. “You out from Bismarck?”

“Yep. Turned me loose into the field for a few days. I have to say, I was expecting worse. The food is really quite good, though I would never tell my wife that. Quieter than I thought it would be—I pictured it like something from a Steinbeck novel. Not quite Grapes of Wrath because, no family, you know? But maybe Cannery Row.”

Joe laughed. Steinbeck was the only author he'd actually liked in high school English.

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