1
The Short Straw
Mari Tucker perched on her truck’s tailgate, watched her boss pick up his clipboard, and prayed.
Any crew but Wyatt’s crew.
She’d volunteer for the concrete pouring team with their lecherous inspector, or the choking dust of checking in front of the bulldozer, or even monitoring the yard where they kept all the dirty porta potties. Anything.
Any foreman but Wyatt.
Mari turned up the camp stove sitting next to her so the water would boil faster. Maybe a little fresh coffee would keep her on her boss’s good side. It had worked so far—she’d been on this job for weeks, passed out more free coffee than she could afford, and had somehow avoided coming face-to-face with the infamous Jack Wyatt.
“Let’s stick Rajni on the porta potty yard,” Marcus decided, and marked it on his clipboard. Snickers came from the other biologists all standing in a loose circle, chatting while they waited for their assignments. It always tugged like a stitch in her stomach to watch them, so she parked her old Toyota just a little away from the main group.
She shivered in the predawn bite of the air and edged closer to the warmth of her stove, where the pot was starting to steam. All the chitchat during the morning meeting may not have been her scene, but her extra-large coffeepot was always popular.
In the next truck over, Rajni had been tightening bolts that had rattled loose on her truck’s solar panel, but she stopped long enough to flip their boss a middle finger.
“Wyatt last week and now keeping critters out of the shitters? Love you, too, Marcus.”
“I live to please.” He laughed. “Lisa, you’re with Junior’s tower assembly group. Hotaka, you scored the concrete pouring crew because they get male bios only until their inspector learns to behave.”
With every assignment given, Mari’s shoulders cranked a little tighter. She glanced over at the construction yard, its floodlights blaring brighter than the sun that had just started to come up. Men bustled inside the chain-link fence, the reflective stripes on their safety vests flashing. The biologists always parked just outside the yard, like party guests nobody would let near the chips and salsa.
“Mari . . .” Marcus paused, tap-tap-tapping his pen, and gave her a pained look.
Nausea kicked up into her throat, and her fingers froze on the knobs of the stove. He hadn’t said it. Maybe he could still mean she was on bulldozers.
“I had one more guy who was up for a rotation,” Marcus explained, “but Wyatt said, and I quote, ‘If you send that sunshiny mother-effer back here, he’s going to end up stuck where the sun don’t shine.’” A dry smile lifted her boss’s beard. “End quote.”
“How’s the whole HR mess with those two?” Rajni asked, popping her wrench back into her bulky toolbox.
“They’re still on company-mandated five hundred meters’ distance from each other until the suits determine whether locking somebody in the back of a truck in the desert is assault, or if can be ruled accidental.”
“It was 102 that day!” Lisa glared from the tailgate of her purple Toyota. “It could have been murder.”
“Wyatt did say he left the windows cracked.”
“We should change out the rotation criteria,” Rajni put in. “Instead of one week at a time, it should be three strikes, you’re out—if he makes you cry three times, you get to skip your next turn.”
“Which would disqualify pretty much everyone,” Marcus said. “Nice try.”
Mari turned away so she could tuck in the end of the sheet on the bed inside her truck camper shell, and hoped everyone’s attention would turn to something else. It wasn’t like she couldn’t endure a guy with a temper. Whatever he pulled, she’d seen worse. But these days, she’d rather just . . . not.
She didn’t want much—just the chance to pull on her sun-faded safety vest and disappear into the sea of other sun-faded safety vests. Some of the biologists got bored being on the sidelines, but she sort of liked dogging the edges of the construction site while they built their power lines. It felt like playing patron saint to desert creatures, only dashing in to scoop vulnerable animals out of the way of the bulldozers and hungry truck tires.
For an instant, the memory of the little yellow cottage flashed into her mind, with buttery light pouring from the windows and its small porch beckoning. She shoved it away. This job, this life, was a blessing, and she wasn’t greedy enough to ask for more. Not even this week, when she’d just drawn the stubbiest of short straws.
“I’ll make it up to you,” Marcus promised.
She nodded and gave him a quick, reassuring smile. She’d keep it polite and professional, and as soon as she could, she’d fade back into the desert. For the sake of the rare animals they protected, she could force herself not to back down. Not even from the temper of the infamous Wyatt. Her fingers tightened on the edge of the dusty tailgate.
“And if he gets to be too much, call it in,” Marcus said. “I’ll juggle some things and staff it myself if I have to.”
“Oh, and have his crew break up another fistfight between the two of you?” Lisa gave him a pointed look. “Last time, you barely made it to eight a.m.”
Marcus glanced down. “I shouldn’t have tried to punch him. It was unprofessional.”
“Jack Wyatt ought to be fired,” Lisa grumbled. “He has a blatant disregard for the Endangered Species Act, and who gets away with treating other people that way?”
“The foreman who builds towers twice as fast as anyone else,” Marcus said. “That’s who. They’re so over budget and behind schedule that Wyatt is the only thing saving their balance sheet from going pure red. Until he starts hitting crew members instead of just yelling at them, or kills an endangered species, he’s staying.”
“Which won’t be long, considering he ignores half our rules,” Lisa muttered.
“Coffee, anyone?” Mari called. She didn’t want the debate to drag on any longer and make her look like she was trying to dodge her turn. Her coworkers crowded in and she hopped off the tailgate so they could get to the coffeepot, taking a few steps away and stuffing her hands in her pockets. The spring sun was already burning off the morning’s chill, its heat ferocious even in the first moments of dawn.
Behind her was the busy construction yard full of yellow-painted heavy equipment and construction workers. But looking this way, the Mojave Desert rippled out around her in miles of empty, beautiful safety. Joshua trees waited in patient, spiky silhouettes, and creosotes stretched toward the sky, their simple leaves lacy in the low morning light.
Mari pulled her hair over her shoulder, smoothing it and beginning a braid. She needed to chop off the last few inches. They were all dead ends and two-year-old dye in a brown so cheap that it had never really matched her natural color. She preferred the naked streaks of gray. At least they were honest, and they weren’t trying to please anyone.