Headed Up to Chapleau
He said
he was headed
up to Chapleau next week
to work on the roof
of the new curling rink,
the tonneau cover
of his back half-box flipped up
so the studs
can hang over the back,
secured and with an orange
safety flag,
“the coppers are really
sticklers up north,”
he tells me,
“everything has to be to code.”
Says he hates driving the 129,
but the money makes you
do crazy things.
“You wouldn’t believe the budget,
they’re already behind two years,”
he admits.
“Everyone is working slow
as possible.
At this rate,
everything should be done
when the ice caps melt,”
he jokes.
“I’ve dragged my ass like an anchor,
but never on a job like this.
The foreman is all mobbed up
and everything
is running over budget.
Even the fire alarms
are an issue.”
Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author who lives in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage. His work has been published both in print and online in such places as: The New York Quarterly, Red Fez, Evergreen Review, The Literary Underground, Horror Sleaze Trash, Rusty Truck, Zygote in my Coffee and The Oklahoma Review. He enjoys listening to the blues and cruising down the TransCanada in his big blacked out truck.
