First Day on the Job

MAIN CAMPUS

Yesterday was my first full day on Jackel Island.  I wake to a symphony of a thousand birds singing outside my cabin window.  This place is full of life.

After breakfast in the lodge, Darcy gave me a tour of Main Campus.  The large stone lodge, called Central Lodge, sits back in the clearing, dead center.  To the left and right of Central Lodge, our cabins and main buildings form a semi-circle.  Our cabins sit behind the main buildings -- there's the Administration Building next to the lodge, the Medical Building (Dr. Jim says to come visit any time... he'll always have a cup of coffee for me!), the Computer Building (where we can email folks back home), the Laundry Room... There are a couple of sheds too.  The Security Team has their own shed (that they keep locked) where they store rifles and flashlights and a flare gun and God knows what else, and Tariq, the Chef who's always yelling, has a shed where he keeps extra cooking supplies.  Kane, who's head of Maintenance (the huge black guy who doesn't say much, but who's always chopping wood or sharpening his knife), has a shed filled with shovels and brooms and cleaning supplies, and sometimes a dead animal that he's skinning, not to mention his special knives.  On either side are our bathhouses -- toilets and shower stalls.  Darcy says the men's bathhouse must be nasty, and Grady sometimes uses OUR bathhouse, pervert that he is.  Those were Darcy's words.


My first day on the job was pretty horrible.  I met Earl, my boss who heads the stables and the horses.  He's mean.  He gave me crap work all day.

EXCERPT FROM NOVEL
 

I changed into my heavy jeans, yellow cotton shirt with the v–neck, and sturdy shoes, then went behind my cabin and followed the short path through the woods.  My life was once again changing, but this time, for the better.  I hoped.  I thought of my introduction to the horse world when I was nine years old.  It was just after my parents were killed from the boating accident off the coast, when I was brought to my Uncle’s house to live on the farm.  I remember finding solace and strength in the horses after being ripped from my life and thrown in with Uncle Calvin, who shook me awake at dawn until my teeth chattered in my head, who’d smack me in the back of my head when I mixed the horse grain incorrectly.  The horses stood unremitting as they braced the same rough handling and desecration I withstood, and from them I learned.

The woods gave way to a meadow, and as I passed the field of flowers, I stopped to look at the stables ahead of me.  Low against the mountains’ feet sat a dark red A–framed barn that settled on a mixture of compact dirt and sand.  Tan worn wood showed through in spots under the Indian–red, giving the structure a beaten surrender to the mountains that towered behind.

I quietly walked forward and stopped a short distance from the fence.  To the right of the stables stretched a white horse–fence that encircled a containment area for the animals.  Immediately inside the area, a tall thin long–limbed man close to fifty bent scrubbing a water trough.  Beyond him three horses were feeding in the paddock – one white, one black, and one brown.  A breeze swept by from the meadow, and the white horse looked up.

I watched the bony man work the scrubber with the vitality of a man half his age.  He wore weathered filthy jeans, scuffed boots, and an open green–striped collared shirt over a black T-shirt.

“You going to just stand there, or are you going to help out?”  He called over to me, without ever looking up.  How he knew I was there bewildered me.  I slowly approached.

“Hello.  I’m…”

“You can start by grabbing the broom that’s in the barn and knocking down the cobwebs in the corners.”  Still, he never looked up.  I stood there for a moment, watching him clean the trough without missing a beat.

“All right,” I said slowly, and backed up.

Inside the stables, sunrays pierced through the cracks of the wood in sharp angry lines.  I smelled hay and wood and horses.  I found the broom in the corner and began working on clearing the cobwebs, ripping them away.  I thought of the horses I had seen at a glance.  I couldn’t wait to lay my hand on the horse’s barrel, and when I did, I could tell how tense or relaxed the animal was, which would give me an indication of how difficult my job would be in the upcoming months.

I was done clearing cobwebs soon enough.  I put the broom back and left the stables, walking outside to the animals.  The white horse looked up at me as the black and brown one continued to feed.

“Done already?” Earl called out, still working the troughs.  “Now you can wash out the water buckets.  Scrub ‘em real good, you hear me?  Then fill ‘em back up with clean water.”  I stood there for a moment.  “What are you doing, catching flies?”

“Where are the water buckets?” I asked blandly.

“Over there.  And the hose is over there.”  He didn’t look up from the trough.  He just pointed.

When I finished cleaning and filling the water buckets, he had me muck out the stalls, clean the saddles, then clean them again because they weren’t polished well enough, and then I had to put out bales of hay for the animals.

A bell sounded.  Noon.  Never thought I’d be this happy for the lunch hour.  I looked at Earl who was working out a knot on a saddle.  “Go on, get!”

“You’re not coming?”

“Too much damn work to do here.”

“So should I stay and help you?  I pull my weight.”

“I said get!”

I was late entering Central Lodge for lunch.  I’d left the stables filthy so I had to wash up and change clothes.

It was wonderful seeing Darcy, Brian, Jeremy, Jim, Tom, Adrian, and even Joel and Grady.  Little Derek, of course, too.  They were already seated and eating, but called out warm hellos when they saw me.  It was like I’d known them longer than a day.  I hadn’t even been on this island for 24 hours yet.

Tariq had prepared ayam kalasan, a Javanese fried chicken of sorts, with some kind of yellow rice, and cut pineapple.  I slid into a seat next to Darcy.

“So how’s the first day on the job going?” Tom asked from the other table.

“Nice!”  I lied.

“You getting the horses in line?” Jim asked.  I didn’t tell him I had no feel for them yet, as I hadn’t gotten within ten feet of any animal this morning.

“They’re fine animals.”

“Working here on the island has its own tempo,” Aidan said, not necessarily to me.  “You find it, you hear it, and it grabs ahold of you and kind of guides you along.”

“Sounds like we should put those words to a song,” Darcy said, laughing.

As I approached the stables for the second time, I watched Earl work the horses.  He had command of the black and brown animals, but as he circled the white horse, the animal eyed him back with ears plastered back, and the animal kept his distance.  I drew closer.  The white horse was terrified, some past trauma.  This I could see.  This animal held no trust and certainly no appreciation for humans.  So it was an abomination when Earl struck the horse with a leather strap.

I remember the feel of the table edge banging my hip when Uncle Calvin shoved me aside for not answering him.  While he never out and out struck me hard, nor did he ever leave a visible mark on me, his treatment of me was bitter and my memory of his company was afflictive.  Aunt Priscilla was forever silent and never protected me from his malice.

I now felt hot liquid behind my eyes, which I held in.  I had an urge to rip the leather from Earl’s gloved hands.  I hated myself for standing still, as my Aunt had done for so many years.

“About time you returned.”  Earl said as I opened the gate. “Someone needs to spread manure, and I’m busy breaking this here horse.”