Manny grimaced into the sunshine as he stepped down from the truck and into the heat of the sun-baked road replacement building site. Huge earth movers stood parked along the length of this old section of highway and women, dust-covered and mostly heavily built and/or athletic moved up and down bearing the heavy-duty tools of their trade, hardhats gleaming.
He gulped and instinctively tried to straighten himself up, pulling up the waistband of his extra-baggy work jeans. He was in the presence of the best road building team the company had and this was in spite of all the trouble he had gone through in the last job. He was in Longhorn Lady territory. Being out here certainly felt a lot better than the precision tunnel engineering jobs he had been working on - well, the jobs that had been precise until he started working on them.
He shivered in the sunshine as he remembered the cold look Mr. Masters had given him as he had been marched into the company HQ boardroom. The interview had ended well, but those first few minutes had been hell.
"So you're Honest John, are ya?" came a playful and pleasingly rich female voice behind him.
"Honest John?" he asked, confused, as he turned to face in the voice's direction.
Manny wasn't too short - 5'10" - but this woman towered over him by at least four inches. She was broad too, though not fat in any way - powerful looking. He wasn't in bad shape, but he could see that she was in a different league. A wide, pretty, gap-toothed smile and dust-smudged features that looked regally beautiful otherwise completed the impression of talking to someone from the big leagues. On a lapel of her denim work vest, there was a pin showing a bulls head over a radioactivity symbol.
"Yeah, the guy who owned up to the tunnel FUBAR! HQ said they were sending you down here to replace Elmer."
"That's me then, I guess. What happened to Elmer?"
"Exhaustion. He had a tough job; so will you!"
"Elmer? He never seemed to get tired of being a dickhead when we were working together over at Mannion Woods."
She threw her head back and roared out a laugh, a sweaty, mighty arm swinging around to clap him amiably on the back with a heavy thump.
"'Honest John,' alright! Yeah, he started a bit mean, but he... well, he mellowed right on out when he saw how the Longhorn Ladies do things here."
Keeping her hand on his back, she guided him around and set off towards a set of huts at the far end of the site.
"I can't say that I mind the change Johnny, you seem like a little cutie! The girls are going to go nuts for you." She looked across at him as they walked down a freshly dug ditch and added with a playful nudge, "Well they're just going to have to wait in line behind Jack and me!"
Manny blushed and grinned weakly back at her, a little dazed by the proceedings and trying to keep his bearings.
"Is Jack the site foreman?" he asked.
"Nah, she's just in charge of the demolition side of the operations. I'm the forewoman here: Sally Grimes - or Mustang to my friends," she leaned in close and slung a brawny, sweaty arm across his shoulders companionably, "and to my cute little newcomers too!"
He nearly stumbled as the side of his face was mashed into a wall of huge, heavy boob and sun-warmed chest-beef. She didn't release him, so he got his feet back under him and strolled on, thinking of anything other than this friendly, pretty Amazon escort.
He looked up at her as she carried on about a few bits of news on what the site was and how it was going. His groin was giving him some serious signals, but his brain was mashing those impulses down for now, even as it caroled halleluyahs that she was his new boss and not some rumpled old grouch instead.
"So "Jack" is another lady then? Does everyone have nicknames here, Mustang?" he asked after she was finished.
"Ha! With her it's more a job description! Anyway, I only give nicknames to the ones I get my hands on, Johnny! Makes life a bit more fun!"
/////
The inside of the main hut was pleasantly appointed, if a bit dusty in places. There was a homey feel to the place, with nicer fittings and applicances - including the best coffee machine he'd ever come across in one of these places. It was sat next to the most amazing smoothie maker he'd ever seen, some 5 litres of capacity in the huge glass jug sat atop it. An antique radio crooned sweet country music into the room to complete the impression.
"You ladies must be on the road an awful long time, Mustang; this feels like a home away from home."
She beamed at him as she slid behind a desk piled high with charts and retrieved a walkie-talkie, ducking her head to mutter into it "Jack, he's in hut one." Shrugging she put the walkie-talkie down and looked about her office before responding to his comments, "I'm glad you like it! It's better if you enjoy going to work in the morning! Most of the girls stay at motels along the way, but Jack and me stay with the huts... got a pair of caravans out the back that we use."
She stepped out from behind the desk again and crossed the hut. She cleared some papers from a hugely solid looking workbench and threw a couple of plush cushions on top. It was mystifying to Manny. He just sat and watched, puzzled.
"Surely you've got to keep on moving these huts to keep up with the works?" he offered.
"Oh ya! Jack takes care of it... she sets them up at the far end of the run we're working on, so they only have to move every couple of days."
"Two days?!" he asked incredulously, sitting up in his seat, "That's a mile of road!"
Mustang grinned at him and she winked, "Well, we are the best, Johnny! I think that when Jack gets here for the interview you might see why."
"Interview?!"
/////
Manny had never seen anything like it before in his life.
He still didn't really understand it.
The wall next to him had fallen outwards, braked by a pair of pistons he'd not noticed at all. That was understandable.
It had formed a ramp. That was understandable.
It had gotten quite dark again as something massive blocked out the light. That was understandable.
A hammer that had a head the size and shape of that coffee machine in the corner had thumped into the floor with enough force to rattle the whole hut. A pair of chisels that looked like the playthings of giants had thumped down afterwards. This was on the limits of comprehension.
A pair of hands that gripped his jeans and had roughly tugged them off him before lifting him bodily into the air and dropping him onto the pillows on the workbench. The last tenuous threads of recognition.