No More Complaining

As a writer, I am sometimes ruled by the desire to pour a little light into a darkened corner and reveal the ugly truths about life and the vermin crawling around in here. I've mentioned before the project that's underway on my street and I've also mentioned that I can't seem to determine what it's all about. The digging, the equipment, the bits and pieces of detritus left lying around at the end of each day, have me wondering exactly what's going on and who's to blame. I decided, yesterday, that it was time someone found out.
I dug out my workboots, an old pair of workpants and a spaghetti stained t-shirt and made my way through the half-ton trucks, around the inexplicable piles of dirt that have been left lying everywhere and finally, after picking up someone's hard hat, to a group of men who were leaning on the cleanest backhoe I have ever seen. I walked slowly, dragging my boots and stirring up a cloud of dust, grunting at anyone who looked at me and punctuated my arrival with the loudest fart I could muster. No one looked up and the conversation carried on as if I were invisible.
"...and I told him that if he expects me to stay one minute after three that he'd be paying me $75 an hour.", said the guy leaning on the front tire of the backhoe. Eminem was pumping from the cab at around 120 decibels and the motor was doing double time keeping the air conditioner in the ring against the thirty degree heat of the outside world.
"I know, I know.", said another guy, who rested a can of Diet Coke on his card table sized belly. "That pool of yours don't chlorinate itself, does it?"
"Fuckin' eh, man. An I ain't spending an extra minute in this pig slop slum at the end of my day. If I don't get to Kanata before four, that friggin' pool boy'll be telling my wife that it don't need no scrubbing with the toothbrush today, lazy som-bitch."
"He'll be scrubbing something, though, eh Skinny?", said the guy with the white hard hat, and they all laughed at that.
I didn't really understand what they were talking about but I joined in the laughter just the same and, I suppose now, that was my mistake.
"What you laughing at, boy?", said Coke Can.
"And what are you doing out of your hole?", said White Hat.
"I, uh, just came over to express my outrage at...uh, the corporate man who...uh...", I was caught off guard.
"Are you speaking English, boy?", said White Hat, "'Cos I know you didn't just insult this city and it's wise councilors, the ones that keep you working all day so's you can crawl home to your shack on Rideau and crack up with your whore girls all night long. You must be speaking' some sort of city folk slang, so I'm gonna ignore it. Now get your sorry ass back in that hole and you dig 'til four o'clock and don't come out a minute before, y'hear?"
"Yeah, 'til four o' five, even.", said Coke Can, "And don't think we won't know how long you stayed in there, 'cos these fine poverty stricken' folk living up and down this street will tell me. Not a damn one of them won't phone the complaint line if there ain't at least one man working' after three. Har, har."
"Git.", said White Hat, "And maybe I won't call my brother Bill at City Hall. Union be damned."
I really had no choice. I jumped in the nearest hole I could find and picked up a shovel, despite the fact that it was on someone's front lawn, and I started digging. I knew Coke Can spoke the truth because whenever I looked out from my hole I could see the frightened stares of the people who lived up and down my street, looking at me with pity from behind the drawn drapes of their houses, but I also knew that no one would speak up for me because, in their eyes, I was one of them. I was a city worker.
As the strains of "Smack My Bitch Up" faded into the distance, I took a chance and poked my head out from my hole and noticed six or seven heads poking out of holes up and down the block. It was four o' five and I guess, now that the bosses were gone, it was safe to come out. We all gathered by the backhoe, quiet now and pristinely clean against the backdrop of dirt and shattered concrete and commiserated about sore backs and sun burns and before long a pole thin guy, about six feet tall, said, "Man, I hate that guy."
"The Super?", I asked.
"The Super? Are you nuts? The Super's the reason I got this kick-ass job. No, I mean that little weasel who keeps writing all that crap about us every day. He's giving city workers a bad name."
A chorus of agreement met his pronouncement and I began to feel very small in this wilderness of steel toed boots and Coleman lunch coolers.
"Just think boys, two more years of this and we'll be the ones leaning on the back hoe.", said Slim.
"Yeah, that'll be sweet. I already got my eye on a sweet little place out in Manotick. Got a pool and a hot tub."
"Nice. I'm almost there. By the end of this summer I'll have close to 30,000 saved for a down payment on a place near the river. Might have to sell the 150, though. I should have listened to you guys. I was shooting a little high for a simple city worker."
And maybe I've got it wrong, too. If I had to spend every day doing what I did yesterday, even for two years, I'd want to drive home in the biggest truck I could afford to the biggest house I could afford in the nicest neighbourhood I could afford. As it is, here I sit in my basement apartment bitching about the hole on my lawn.
They'll be finished right around the time summer winds down into fall and we won't see them again until next year's snow melts, but by then the city will have decided that another street needs to be ripped up and refurbished and you'll have to deal with them. Just don't piss them off or you'll end up like me, sore and sunburned and hiding in your hole until at least four o'clock everyday.