THE BODY. THE MIND. THE SPIRIT.
Seven years since he left home.
Seven countries. Seven names.
Seven lives. All temporary. All laborious.
Now, on a drill rig deep in the desert, Mark Bonen is paired with Simon: sixty-one years old, lifting weights before dawn, reading by the fire, cooking like the chef he once was. No speeches. No shortcuts. Just the shift, done right, every day.
Rod by rod, page by page, Mark begins the only work that counts — the making of a man.
But the making has a price.
A novella about discipline, belonging, and sacrifice.
THE BODY. THE MIND. THE SPIRIT.
Seven years since he left home.
Seven countries. Seven names.
Seven lives. All temporary. All laborious.
Now, on a drill rig deep in the desert, Mark Bonen is paired with Simon: sixty-one years old, lifting weights before dawn, reading by the fire, cooking like the chef he once was. No speeches. No shortcuts. Just the shift, done right, every day.
Rod by rod, page by page, Mark begins the only work that counts — the making of a man.
But the making has a price.
A novella about discipline, belonging, and sacrifice.
The labour lives through the night. It always did.
A camp in the middle of nowhere. Shipping containers converted into offices, a mess hall, rows of caravans where the crew slept.
The sun wasn’t up yet, but the air was already warm. The sky had no colour yet, but the workers could not afford to wait.
Alarms.
Vibration on the bedside tables. Eyes open. Mouths dry. Heads heavy.
The coloured vests hung by the beds. The boots sat by the doors.
A short walk to the mess hall. Seventy steps, maybe. Gravel crunching under the feet. The door opened. Smell of old coffee and damp vests already there. Fluorescent lights buzzing overhead. Eggs under heat lamps, pale and rubbery. Toast in a tray. Butter that never fully melted. A plate, cutlery, a cup of black coffee from a pot sitting there since the first man.
No one talked much in the mornings. Eyes down. Forks on plates. Chairs dragging across the floor. The sound of boots on tile. A cough. A burp.
Surprise of the new month. The page on the calendar had changed.
A man in an orange vest looked up. His name was Mark Bonen.
The blonde was gone. Now, a dark-haired woman in a yellow bikini. Sitting on a beach towel with a book in her lap. He looked at the hair. The tan. The book. He couldn’t see her face.
Something familiar. Or maybe not.
He pushed through the screen door. Back to work.
Five months of that door.
Twelve-hour days, every day. Not resting, not talking much, not thinking much either. A man doing the job.
The rig never stopped. Day shift, night shift, seven days a week. Mark was on days.
No weekends. No variety. Just the same loop, over and over.
The visa was the goal. Guaranteed by contract. A signed bond between the company and himself. Two men before him had done it. Got their papers. Sorted. Just a few more weeks to fulfil the requirements, so he did the work. Two years, maybe four. Maybe citizenship after that.
The papers would make him real.
He’d spent years on short visas, always moving. He wanted a life that didn’t have an expiry date.
The time. The heat. The isolation. A small price of admission.
His lower back was stiff every morning. A dull ache that started at the base of his spine. By midday it was constant. By knock-off, sharp. His hands were worse. The skin around his knuckles had split from the grease and the heat. The cracks didn’t bleed any more. They just stayed open. Red lines across his palms. Dirt lived under his nails and stayed there no matter how hard he scrubbed. The shower was cold. He didn’t mind. It shocked his system until everything went numb. He’d stand under it longer than he needed to.
The other guys were alright. Mark was part of the group, even if he didn’t say much. A joke here, a laugh there. He mostly listened to the complaints about ex-wives or new trucks. It was enough. He didn’t need to be the centre of it. He had his own plans. Written down. On paper.
He’d sit on the metal step of his caravan while it still held the day’s heat. Drink five or six beers, one after the other, the cans cold against his palms. Roll a smoke, licking the paper and lighting it with a cheap lighter. He’d take a long drag and breathe. He could hear laughter from the other guys a few rows over, but he didn’t look up. The sky was huge and full of stars, but he didn’t look at those either. He looked forward. The ashes of his smoke disappearing into the dark.
In his lap, a small notebook. Always open to the same page. Same list he’d written when he arrived in the country. He hadn’t added a word since. Not one. Everything he needed was already there.
He was not lonely. Not exactly.
He was absent.
Labor depicts the life of a migrant, trying to get permanent residency status in a new country. Filled with dreams of a secure future kept in a precious notebook, protagonist Mark Bonen works on mining rigs in the desert, where he learns life lessons incidentally. The setting is not defined, so could be in any number of countries with mining rigs in desert areas.
The novella is separated into three parts – Body, Mind, Spirit. Each arc focuses on a different part of the human condition, and the emulation of growth from newborn to adulthood (moving from physical awareness to independent thought through to personal fulfilment) mirrors Mark’s attempts to find grounding in a new country. Unexpectedly called upon to mentor a new worker, the protagonist realises that after seven years of “no proof he’d been there at all” in a range of desert rigs, “it felt good. Teaching. Being competent. Being called Number One.”
The physical hardship of the mining camps is evident: Mark’s hands develop callouses and cuts so deep they don’t heal. While the narration moves forward chronologically, the setting switches with the arcs between the desert for work and the city for breaks. Author Eric H. Nogia creditably captures Mark’s disorientation in the city after months on the rig, noting that there was “No high-vis. No boots. No dust. After six months, he didn’t trust any of it.”
Nogia’s writing is as sparse as the landscape, eliminating superfluous words. Short, sharp sentences bring the audience right into the visceral environment, directly into the characters: men who work hard and play hard, while supporting families in distant places. This stylistic choice, where everything is stripped bare, is highly effective: it draws the reader to the essence of the narrative, as well as to the contemplations of the main players. Although it is not specified, Nogia writes as if from personal experience, which enables him to get beyond mere descriptions and into the introspections of the workers.
The ending is left open. Wherever Mark is headed next, he resolves “The dirt comes with me. I earned it.” Uncertainty is a continuation of the migrant’s status throughout the novel, and it leaves the reader with the same sorts of questions as the protagonist has repeatedly asked of himself.
Labor is an excellent read, in which the reader travels Mark’s journey intimately. Flawlessly written, this novella will appeal to many people.