Stephen McAlerod sat lonely in the large, yellow earthmover that earned his pay. The day was done, his last 30 tons of stone dumped near the crusher, and the tractor powered down, sputtering and wavering to a stop as the last of the fuel in the engine was messily burnt.
He slowly removed his hard hat, exposing the curly reddish-blond hair underneath. His freckled face, hair, short stature and oddly mixed north-south UK accent made him appear to all as a real life, red-headed stepchild. He was an easy man to make fun of.
He pulled off his hearing protection, and popped the earbuds out of his ear. The silence was a welcome relief after 8 hours of blasting music over the drone of the old diesel engine and spotty transmission that would hum and rumble even through the large earmuff protectors that he wore. Stephen suspected that the vibrations were hitting his eardrum from the base of his skull, as he could hear it even over music turned all the way up. He wasn't, of course, allowed to listen to music during his shift, but balls to that. The job would have been completely unbearable if not for the music.
Really, the job was still completely unbearable. It wasn't the monotony, or the constant noise, or the dreary, grey, drab Scottish sky that hung over the quarry like a nice day in purgatory. It wasn't the mud, or the pay, or the uncomfortable truck seat, or even the idiot, hypocrite, hippy protesters outside the quarry, standing on roads that this mine had built from the bones of the earth. His co-workers made it unbearable. A loutish lot of toothless imbeciles, they were. Brash and boorish, stupid beyond all reckoning, and loud. But they were also vicious and mean, and they stuck together, and they hated Stephen. Stephen was an outsider, and had cemented his status as an outsider early on, by cold cocking an annoying young man named Crom after he made a particularly rude comment about his mother.
They had taunted him relentlessly. He had hoped the move would establish respect and fear; get them to back off a bit. He wagered that these sorts of people would take note of that sort of thing, kind of like in prison. It had worked during his school years. He was short, but strong and stocky, and desperate to prove he was not to be trifled with.
He miscalculated horribly.
The whole lot of them had intensified their attacks as a result. Crom was more powerful than he had guessed. Now, every couple days, as he stepped out of his tent in the morning, he would find a dead animal. Not just dead, but mutilated beyond recognition, cut specifically through the innards to smell terrible. In the mess hall, they would throw food at him. Pudding cups, spoonfuls of spaghetti sauce, the messier, the better. The cook had taken pity on him, and now served him dinner in his tent. They had taken to calling him Pecker-nump, which should have been a relatively benign insult, but they said it with a joyful malice that always surprised him.
Two subsequent fights, one of them hospitalizing a young lad named "Dilly", had convinced him of his course of action. He feared retribution. He knew it wouldn't get better. He had to quit. The job sucked anyway. He would move south, see his mum, and find a new job.
He sighed deeply, opened the door, and trundled slowly down the ladder of the truck. The job site was empty. The wet mud squished softly under his heavy boots, and made a squishy noise in the moist, sullen air.
Good, he thought. I'll just clock out, pack up, and go.
He got back to camp as dusk was settling in, after the quarter mile walk from the quarry to the barracks. He hoped the cook had left him some food, as it was another mile walk to the bus station in Lanark, and he was hungry.
The barracks ground was also empty. He thought nothing of it until he reached the tent camps on the far side. There was nobody around. He wondered if he had missed a company meeting or something...
As he rounded a larger 10-man tent on the way to his own small tent, he heard behind him, "Oy, Pecka."
Stephen swiveled around, his arm high to deflect an incoming blow. The blow never came. It was Crom's older brother, Oliver, standing in the shadow behind the big tent, far out of range to hit Stephen. Stephen froze in fear. He must have a gun, then. Oliver stepped out of the shadows holding only a 2x4. Stephen, relieved momentarily, just wanted to leave in peace.
Stephen backed up apace with Oliver, towards his tent. He said, almost shouting to the night air, "Ya got me, boys. I give. Imma leave t'night. I swear t'ya."
Oliver, equally loudly, replied, "An' we jus' gonna let ya' go, aight? Afta' all'n ya did ta Crom and Dilly?"
Stephen, quieter now, responded "T'was only right 'n fair."
In the fading light, Stephen could see Oliver smile his scraggly toothed smile. Several more men who had obviously been hiding in the big tent, stepped out behind Oliver.
As the men closed ranks in front of Stephen, Oliver said "Right 'n fair ain't 'dis world, ya fuckin' keech."
Just then, Stephen felt something cold and metal hit him hard in the back of the knees, and felt his legs buckle, then felt his head hit the soft, wet dirt.
As Stephen opened his eyes, Crom now stood over his head, smiling a sinister grin with a crowbar in his hands. His smile was missing a front tooth, a tooth that Stephen had knocked out of his face. The other men now crowded around him, silent, with Oliver at his feet.
Stephen, the fear slowly leaving him and replaced by an impotent defiance, looked up angrily at Crom. "So now what, Crommy, ya gonna kill me?" he sneered.
Crom leaned his crowbar against the ground near Stephen's face, casually putting his weight upon it. He pulled out a crumpled piece of paper and opened it. He then spat square in Stephen's face, smiled even broader, and in his annoyingly nasal voice, said, "Naw, Pecker-nump, we ain't here ta kill ya. We jus' gonna 'ave a lil' talk is all, ta send ya on ya merry way. The boy's is here to, uh, ensure you listen. Right 'n fair, I say."
The other men chuckled ominously.
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