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Go shoppingSometimes the transgressions of the past can get in the way of progress.
“Goddamit!!!”
The moment McCoy shouted from atop his grader I knew why. He shut down the diesel engine and the vacuum his quitting created seemed to trigger the other H-E operators. They shut down their rigs, too. McCoy kept swearing. It would be another day off while the cops, coroner and medical examiner spent the day digging like archaeologists in what was supposed to be just another incoming Vegas housing tract.
Goddamn the bones. Some runt who was buried out here by the people he’d pissed off years ago was going to throw twenty guys outta work for the day. But that was the price of sprawl. The early 2000’s were that way for us; we were stumbling over some idiot’s shallow grave every few days.
[private]”These people are like goddamn dogs,” McCoy said. He unzipped and whipped it out to piss up the side of the Cat’s tire. “Out here burying their problems. I’m good and goddamn tired of paying for everyone else’s sins.” He finished, zipped up and leaned against the ladder leading to the cab of his rig. “Fuck em. I say this is it. I say from now on we keep gradin’ and leave the past be the past.”
McCoy’s closest drinking buddy shuffled his feet. “But what about some kid comes along one day, playing in his yard and digs up Sammy the Stoolie’s leg bone?”
“Or his dog finds it,” said another.
“Fuck em,” said McCoy, “fuck ’em all. They’re all dogs.” With that he climbed back on his grader and fired up the engine, soot shooting from its stack like an angry day at Sobibor. “We all are, right? Let’s go.”
McCoy squinted into the Nevada sun and threw the Cat back into gear. And that was the last time anyone stopped working. In fact, it was the last time I heard anyone even mention the bones. I admit it was kind of a relief. McCoy had freed us just to get on with what needed doing, and get past what could easily happen to any of us at any moment.[/private]
About Matt McGee
MATT McGEE writes short fiction in the local library until the staff makes him go home. His collections 'Diversions' and 'Leaving Rayette' are available on Amazon, as well as his poetry collection 'We Liked You Better When You Was a Whore.' His new column 'The Diary of a Laptop Hobo' chronicles a reluctance to go home when it seems there's always something to do
