The Blue Blazes by Chuck Wendig

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 ?
    “I remember you. Hard not to. Geez. You’re built like a stack of boulders. I knew your dad a bit. Good Hog. Knew his way around a concrete mix.”
    Skinny Rope lifts the other eyebrow. “Pearl. You mean Brosie Pearl?”
    “Nah,” Santa says, waving a hand that Mookie can see has the crinkly flesh of a burn scar all up the back of it. “Ambrose was the old man. I’m talking about Henry. The son. Rocky, we called him. And that makes you…” He snaps his crusty fingers. “Little Mikey.”
    “Mookie. I go by Mookie these days.”
    “Right. Right. You worked with Davey Morgan down there.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    Santa leans in. “I remember it right, you bailed on us. Left the union.”
    “I had other things to do.”
    “I bet you did. I bet you did.” The way Santa is sizing him up, he knows. “You were with Davey, that means you were with the 147½. That right?”
    “That’s right.” The 147-and-a-half: the union inside the union, a cabal of Sandhogs who know what’s down there and who serve as the first line of defense between the city above and Hell below. They don’t usually run afoul of the Organization, but it happens – the Organization wants the resources the Deep Downstairs has to offer, but the Sandhogs think all of it should stay corked up and kept from the light. “What of it?”
    Mookie doesn’t bother answering.
    “So then you know Davey’s busy. And you know that there’s no way I’m letting a quitter like you down in the dark on our territory. Davey’s not your business. OK? His business is not your business. So, go home, Little Mikey. Go back to your other friends.”
    He knows. He knows who Mookie works for. Santa Claus knows that he’s been naughty, not nice. Skinny Rope doesn’t know elf-piss from egg-nog: he’s following the conversation the way one does when the other speakers are talking a different language. But not Santa. Santa sees all.
    Mookie growls. He’s not fond of being told “no”.
    “Ease off the stick, Cochise,” Santa says. “You’re a big ape used to