There was just a “pop” sound. I didn’t think much of it till I saw his sleeve.

It was late fall of my seventeenth year. My first job out of high school was as a joeboy with Vukarziak Dredging.

My dad knew a guy who knew a guy who needed someone, and I wasn’t doing anything. I had a heartbeat and all
four limbs, so the job was mine. The money wasn’t bad, and I needed a car in the worst way, so there I was, under a
sky as grey as a wino’s phlegm, shoveling muck and cursing whatever malevolent gods had placed me there. Rain
ran down the back of my neck and off my nose, I was cold and miserable - so began my real education.

The dragline was a monster, a snorting, growling behemoth. Its age was indeterminate. I think that at one time it
was an orange colour, maybe yellow. There were still some paint remnants, but it was mostly rust now, rust and
grease, smoke and dirt. Its massive steel boom swung a hundred and fifty feet out over the water where its cables
hummed and howled, tossing its bucket out, drawing it back to dump the river silt in an oozing heap.

The day was the same as I had come to know, working beside the river.  I was employed by a guy who could
charitably be described as a miserable old bastard. Cheap, uncaring, in love with the dollar and utterly unable to
part with one without an hour of argument and 15 minutes of whining. He had three machines, all old and wired
together.  Five of us worked there. We were our own little universe, a couple of miles out on the floodplain.

Mr. Vukarziak described himself as “Dyeh Boz". He was an odious, corpulent man with eyes like a mean dog.  His
background was Slavic of some sort, I have no idea where and only ever asked him once. His reaction was one I
came to recognize as his standard reply to any question. “VADDAYOUVANT!!
GEBBAKTOVORKYOUFOKKER! VADDIPAYOUFOR?? HAH!!???” Always delivered face to face no further
than three inches away, in a cloud of tobacco (smoked or chewed), whiskey fumes and saliva. Sometimes partially
chewed or digested bits of pickled something were included for variety. I’d like to say he was the sort of guy who
covered a heart of gold with a gruff exterior, but he wasn’t. He was an asshole.

I never learned the guy’s name. He had run the dragline for awhile.

It happened on my third day on the job, I was still bewildered and confused by just about everything around me. I
had a vague idea what we were doing there and was just coming to understand how the machines worked together.
The dragline drew the silt out of the riverbed, swung over and dropped it in a pile. The front shovel dug at the pile,
filling trucks that took it god knows where. The bulldozer maintained the pile and kept it from spreading out too far,
it maintained the roads and working area. Mr. Vukarziak sat in his trailer and smoked. He drank, schemed and
read the paper. That was, when he wasn’t out ranting at us.

It happened on the Monday morning. I was working beside the dragline as it snorted and swung. The rain was
falling as usual, the mainline was howling in when I heard the “pop”

I looked up at the operator. He seemed normal in every way except for his left sleeve, it hung limp and wet from
just below his elbow. It was one of those moments where you know there’s something wrong but can’t quite put your
finger on it. It seemed that he reached for a lever a couple of times, then looked kinda confused as his eye caught
the dripping sleeve. He looked at it and it seemed that time slowed way down.

 I remember the cigarette between his lips. One of those pictures that your brain keeps for some reason no one
knows. It dropped out as his jaw went slack and left a little pattern of sparks as it bounced off the levers. The
cables all went slack as his hands and feet came off the controls, The big bucket crashed to the wet ground in a
splash of dark Grey muck and a nest of slack cables.

He tried to climb down from the cab but dropped onto his ass on the track. Clean, bright blood puddled in crisp
contrast to the muck that seemed everywhere. I stood, rooted to the spot. I couldn’t move nor speak. I knew that
something was happening but my mind couldn’t tell me what it was. He looked at me, his lips and mouth moved, but
there was no sound. His eyes gleamed with confusion and fear. The big diesel sputtered and growled.

I stared, it was as if a siren started from a long way off, the long wail began back in his throat, it swelled and
receded. He began to rock slowly, wailing.

I have no idea what I did after that, the next thing I knew I was on all fours heaving my guts into the same mud.
The guy who ran the bulldozer was patting my back and talking gently to me, the taillights of Mr. Vukarziak’s
pickup truck receded in the distance.

“C’mon boy, he’s gone now, it’s time to make ‘er pay”

I got up on rubbery legs and wiped the yellowish stringers from my lips. I followed him up into the cab of the
dragline, doing as told me. It wasn’t till I saw the grease-smeared pinkish lump that I realized what we were doing
there. I reared back away from it, it was wrapped with a few turns of cable on the spool. He said “ I’m gonna slack
off the mainline, tell me when its nearly free”

I looked at him like he was speaking Egyptian, I understood what he was saying, but I couldn’t believe it… He
wanted me to touch that thing? He turned around and looked me in the eye

I remember him speaking through slightly gritted teeth, lightly sweating, he spoke quietly and patiently. “Kid, its
just an arm, it’s no good for anything anymore, and if we leave it there it’ll start to stink. Just get it out of there and
lets get back to work.”

I climbed into the bowels of that big machine, it was like I was watching myself do it. God I was scared.

                                               ***
Smoke belches from the big stack. Wheels spin and the cables sing on their drums. Up in the cab, I sit with a greasy
cap perched on the back of my head. Cigarette smoke drifts slowly around as rain patters on the grimy windows.

 The dragline swings smoothly on its pinion as another bucket of silt splashes onto the pile. My hands rest on the
levers. I pull and push just enough, just so.

If you watched me run that beast you’d see a master at work. You’d see grimy hands grasping levers whose bare
steel handles are worn shiny smooth. You’d see the river muck growing in its pile.

You’d never see my eyes dart reflexively at the big spool. You’d never see the nervous twitch of my left hand each
time the clutch engages and the mainline begins to sing back in.