Olivia's Mine (25 page)

When he had barked at Sarah one morning for
no apparent reason, Olivia took her aside.

“You shouldn’t let him treat you like that
Sarah,” Olivia offered.

“Well, he is the boss.”

“But still, he should show some respect. He’d
be lost without you.”

“Don’t let it get to you. His bark is worse
than his bite.”

“Sarah, how long have you worked for Mr.
McMichael?”

“Since I finished school. I was the best at
math in my class, and he needed a bookkeeper he wouldn’t have to
pay very much, and there I was, with no experience needing a job.
It was a match made in heaven. At least for him.”

“How on earth do you put up with him?”

“It all blows over. I’m used to it. He
doesn’t stay mad for long. I know what makes him crazy and what
doesn’t. If he’s particularly mean with me, then I’ll forget to
sugar his coffee. I’ll listen out here while he has a fit about it
in his office and I’ll have a quiet little chuckle to myself. He
just thinks I’ve been forgetful. He won’t fire me. I’m very good at
the books although my typing isn’t that great. And I think he does
know he’d be lost without me.”

“I see,” Olivia said.

“I know people think I’m a blabbermouth, but
really Olivia, there’s not much about this operation that I don’t
know about, sometimes months in advance. The numbers are right
before me. You don’t have to worry; my lips remain sealed. That
goes for your Uncle’s affairs as well.”

Sarah read the astonished look upon Olivia’s
face.

“Don’t look so surprised. I’m a smart cookie.
If I were you, I’d be checking the grade of the bolts being used in
the installation. Check inside the box and make sure they haven’t
been switched with a lesser grade of material. You’ll probably find
the good ones in a bag in the stockroom, not in the box. The
foremen are always under the gun to save costs. It’s not something
your engineer would necessarily look out for, but then he doesn’t
know all of our foremen’s, (including your husband’s), tricks in
the stockroom. He’ll switch them if he thinks he can save a dollar
or two. Oh, and those specialized drill bits your man Hearn wanted?
Here’s the purchase order Frank gave me. A little suspect don’t you
think? Why would he be ordering twice as many as Hearn told me he
needed? Hmm, maybe so he can keep them after the job is done? He
likes his coffee with double cream, Mr. Hearn does. He just
mentioned the drill bit order to me in passing. Funny how it all
comes around eventually.”

Sarah accidentally knocked her teacup to the
floor. It tumbled before she could grab it, but it did not
break.

“He wouldn’t!” Olivia exclaimed.

“Go,” Sarah said, pulling a towel from her
desk that she kept there for just such an emergency. “Do a little
sleuthing. Just protect your source.”

Sure enough, Olivia had the engineer do an
inspection and Sarah had been right. The bolts had been switched,
and Frank did try to order more bits than were needed for the
installation of the concentrator. She would have to have a talk
with Frank when she got home. Or not. It was probably easier just
to re-write the purchase order, since Sarah still had it on her
desk.

As she began to feel more comfortable at the
mine, she found that some of the problems she encountered she could
solve by a simple phone call to her Uncle. Busy as he was, he
always made time to ease her concerns and share a little gossip.
Some however, were a little more complicated.

“What are you doing?” McMichael had asked her
one day when she wandered over to the concentrator site and started
nosing around.

“I’m inspecting the installation sir. I’m to
do it once a day.”

“And you know what to inspect, do you?”

“It doesn’t matter if I do or I don’t sir. I
rely on Hearn for that. It’s just a formality. I find the men pay
more attention when I come around.”

McMichael stared at her. The men started to
snicker amongst themselves.

“All right, enough,” McMichael said to
them.

“I meant that they need to be watched.
They’re not always focused on their jobs.”

The men quieted.

“I knew what you meant,” McMichael grunted.
“Listen to me. Women were not meant to be at the mine. Not in this
part of the mine. They cause distractions. The men focus better on
their jobs when you’re not around, rest assured.”

“Mr. Bower says I am to do it once a
day.”

“Well, Mrs. Fitzpatrick. Uncle Aaron Bower or
no Aaron Bower, there will be no women in dresses in my
concentrator building. Safety hazard. All that material could get
stuck in the machinery. Your hair could get caught in a moving
part. We can’t have that, now can we? Go back to the office,
please.”

Olivia sighed.

“I am just doing my job, Mr. McMichael,” she
said as she left.

McMichael addressed the men.

“If I hear any of you saying one word, one
inappropriate word about Mrs. Fitzpatrick, while she’s working
here, there’s going to be trouble.”

The next day, at precisely eleven o’clock,
Olivia returned to the concentrator building.

McMichael could see she had donned a pair of
oversized men’s coveralls, the length of her skirt stuffed down the
baggy legs. Her hair was tied up in a ponytail. As odd a sight as
it was, she looked stunning. The men stood there with their mouths
open.

McMichael smacked his newspaper against the
wall in anger. She had got to him, in more ways than one.

“What are you staring at?” Olivia asked the
men. “Get back to work. Focus, focus, focus.”

They glanced at McMichael who raised his arms
in a circular motion, indicating that they return to work.

“You heard her,” he said, mimicking her.
“Focus, focus, focus.”

Olivia wasn’t amused.

“Get new shoes,” he ordered Olivia as he
stormed back to his office. “No women’s heels. Regulation footwear
must be worn on site. You can get some at the store. My store.”

It had been the beginning of their
co-existence at the mine. Most of the time McMichael just looked
her over, grunted, and left, although occasionally she was sure she
could hear him mutter “damn railroad“ under his breath. She took
guidance from Sarah and ignored most of his more personal
outbursts, fortunately they were beginning to be fewer and farther
between. Sarah had been right; the outbursts didn’t last long. She
thought once or twice he had actually been quite pleasant to her,
but they were usually alone when that happened.

He was an interesting man, she admitted to
herself. She found herself looking forward to at least having a
good conversation with a male each day. Sometimes the chatter at
the store amongst the women was more than she could bear.

Today, as she left home and went over towards
the mining office, she could see a group of men outside, blocking
the entrance.

“Excuse me Peter,” Olivia said. “I need to
get by. Should you not be on shift already?”

“Mrs. Fitzpatrick, this is nothing personal,
but I don’t work for you. I work for Mr. McMichael.”

The group of men lined up behind him. They
stood there, with their hands in their pockets and their gear on
the ground, refusing to budge. She could see Frank up the hill,
watching the situation from above, and choosing to do nothing.

“Oh but it is personal, Peter,” she said.
“And you do work for me in a sense. Because if you and the other
men don’t get to work, there will be no ore mined today, which
means my concentrator will be empty, which in the end, means you
won’t get paid. You or your friends. Now stop blocking this
entrance so my men can get to work. We’re scheduled to run a
preliminary test on it today, you know that.”

“We don’t take orders from women,” one of the
older men said. “And those men you’re calling yours won’t be
crossing this line anytime soon. Not until we get a proper
supervisor, a man, overseeing us.”

“We’re on a protest strike,” one of the men
in her unit said.

“A protest strike?” McMichael yelled. He had
come out from his office to see what the commotion was about. “Did
I hear you correctly? A protest strike?”

The men’s bravado had suddenly been
lessened.

“Well please,” McMichael began, his voice
being very theatrical, “tell me if I’m wrong, but in order to have
a protest strike, you’ve got to have a union. And as far as I know,
and I would know because I am the boss, there is no union in this
town. So therefore, there is no strike. Do I need to remind you
about what happened when the Armstrong brothers tried to form a
union a couple of years ago? The Wobblies, I believe they called
it? They didn’t succeed, did they? And are they working here
now?”

He paused for effect.

“Are they working anywhere now? No, they are
waiting in the bread lines in Vancouver. Gentlemen, let me put it
to you in words you will understand. I don’t like having Mrs.
Fitzpatrick overseeing the concentrator operations any better than
you do. But in order for this mine to have a new fireproof
concentrator, I had to pay that price. I paid that price to save
your jobs. So you’ve got five minutes to get back to work before I
re-think this whole deal, including why I employ you in the first
place. Does anyone have a problem with that?”

There was a low grumbling as the ad-hoc
protest group started to disassemble.

“Oh and Peter,” McMichael said, “pack your
bags. You’re fired.”

There was a look of shock on Peter’s
face.

“Well really Peter, what did you expect?”
McMichael asked. “Get going. Give my regards to the Armstrong
brothers should you run into them.”

McMichael turned to Olivia.

“The next time someone steps out of line like
that, you fire him. Or deal or no deal with your Uncle, you’ll be
the next to go.”

“But that’s not my responsibility,” Olivia
said. “I don’t work for the mine. Peter was right in that
regard.”

“No, but you represent your Uncle. I’m sure
he wouldn’t let any other manager he had be disrespected. For the
past two weeks Peter’s sole job has been installing the
concentrator. So technically, he was on loan to you. I want you to
go up to the Chinese barracks and get two men to take his place. I
don’t care if it’s their day off. Take two of the biggest,
strongest men you can find. We’ve lost time with this nonsense
today. I need that concentrator fully operational. I want the first
load going through it today, no excuses. Don’t worry, your Uncle’s
costs won’t be raised any with the extra men on board.”

“Yes sir,” Olivia said.

“I see your husband watched all this from the
hill. Interesting. He didn’t rush down to see what all the fuss is
about?”

“No sir,” Olivia admitted.

“Well I’ll say one thing for you Olivia.
You’ve got more backbone than he does. I don’t like my supervisors
not supporting each other. Carry on.”

Olivia took a deep breath and headed inside
the concentrator building. McMichael stormed up the hill to
Frank.

“What the hell were you doing watching all
that from up here? Are you my foreman or not?”

“She seemed to be handling it.”

“Well lucky for you she was. You should have
stepped in and stopped it before it got started. That’s your job,
need I remind you. You are to ensure that there is no trouble as
far as Olivia is concerned. I would have thought that would come
naturally. Let’s not even think about the ramifications of my
railway deal going sideways if her family wants to make trouble.
Because if that goes south, you’ll be going south, the pair of
you.”

“I’m sorry sir,” Frank said.

“Sorry? Do you still not get it Fitzpatrick?
It’s her family, your in-laws, that are holding all the cards here
at the moment. If I were you I’d be holding it over my head like
there was no tomorrow. What am I going to do? Fire you? Not until
that concentrator is up and running. Bower wanted a relative in
charge. All right, I can understand that, blood being thicker than
water. God knows why he didn’t leave his nephew Jason up here, but
he didn’t. But he didn’t have to pick Olivia. She could have stayed
at that confounded store of hers. There was another male family
member here all along. You Frank. You! How did you lose all that
control? Did you ever have it? If you were a smart man, you would
have used that leverage to become a partner in the railroad we’ve
been trying to push through. But instead, now we both have to deal
with Olivia.”

Frank said nothing.

“You don’t know, do you? You truly don’t
know. Do you still talk to your wife at all Frank? Even the
slightest conversation in passing? Her father William has agreed to
talk the Canadian government into working a deal to extend the
north-south rails from Vancouver all the way north to Squamish. The
Bowers have agreed to go after the financing. Can you envision what
that will mean? Britannia will become bigger than Vancouver.
Everyone will want to move up here. We’ll be able to move more ore
out, cheaper too. They’ll be able to ship more lumber from the
forests. Mills will spring up everywhere. Men will have jobs for
life. It will be truly amazing. But its fate all lies with that
confounded woman you married.”

McMichael tapped Frank on the shoulder.

“Deal yourself a new hand Frank. If you play
your cards right, you could be a very wealthy man indeed.”

Sarah was spending an unusual amount of time
in the store, Olivia thought to herself. Not that Sarah didn’t come
in often just to browse, but today, Sarah seemed a bit rattled.

It was customary for Olivia to get up early
and come and open the store on Wednesday mornings so that Lucy
would have at least one morning to sleep in an extra hour. Olivia
didn’t have to be at the mine until nine, so it worked out for both
of them. They had become so busy that the store was now open from
dawn to dusk, every day but Sunday.