Then he fired a knee up into Mookie’s balls.

He followed it up with, “You got a hard head, Mikey. Hard as diamond, but nowhere near as pretty.” Then he shoved Mookie back into the lockers.

More laughs. Haw, haw, haw. Assholes.

And it’s those laughs Mookie hears when he steps into the work office – really, a trailer, but a trailer that probably hasn’t moved in ten years. Up on cinderblocks. The side of the trailer facing the hole is caked with dust, the rime of blasted rock.

Inside are the Sandhogs – some about to go on shift, some about to go off, others who are new to Local 147 and hoping to get some work for the day. Mookie walks on the dirt-smeared linoleum, past rows of lockers marked with masking-tape labels showing nicknames like “Weasel” and “Little Blue” and “Mudcrab”.

He steps into the main area – guys sitting on benches, guys playing cards around a little side table – and eyes turn to him. They’re all hard-asses. You can’t be a Sandhog – one of the best-paid and most dangerous union jobs in the whole goddamn country – and not be a hard-ass, because candy-asses either get pounded to silt (and quit) or turn hard as stone (and stay on the job). So, these hard-asses know another hard-ass when they see one.

They don’t recognize his face, though. And he doesn’t recognize them, either. These are younger guys, mostly. He sees a couple veterans in the back: some old ratty strip of rope with his hard hat still on standing next to a doughy three-chinned dumpling of a man with a Santa’s beard and a pair of industrial-grade eyeglasses too big for his already big head.

Mookie maybe recognizes Santa, though doesn’t remember his name.

It’s the two old vets who stand and wave him toward the back. As it should be. The young guys are faster, tougher, but they’re not the alpha dogs in an operation like this. The old hats, they’re the ones who know what’s up; you piss them off, they’ll leave you down there, floundering in the dark with your dick in your hand.

The shriveled length of rope whistles through busted teeth. “You need something, big fella?” The Santa Claus motherfucker just eyes him up.

Mookie nods. “Looking for Davey Morgan.”

“Davey Morgan?” Skinny Rope lifts a furry eyebrow. “He’s on site.”

“Then I need to go on site.”

“He’s in the tunnels. Way down.”

“Then I need to go way down.”

“He’s not available. Sorry, big fella. Now scram the fuck out of here.”

Mookie feels agitated. And suddenly angry. Half-afraid that Grampop’s ghost is going to come up out of nowhere and whack him on the back of the head with a loaded dustpan, tell him he’s “more useless than pair of tits on a lawnmower”.

It’s then that Santa speaks up. “You’re the Pearl boy.”

A turn of the worm inside Mookie’s heart.

Mookie gives him a look like, Yeah, so?