Thirty Tires in a Blizzard

This story contains expletives, so please be aware of this before reading.

The snow was over my head. That’s not poetic exaggeration — it was literally over my head, and I don’t give any version of a flying fuck what anyone says, that is not normal. When you’re digging through a frozen graveyard of discarded military tires from some defunct regime in Outer Mongolia, normality has long since packed its bags and buggered off.

The directive had come from The Major, as all bad ideas did.

“Dig those tires out. Size 2000/95/10.6.”

Simple words, but stupid words. Words that condemned three grown men to frostbite, misery, and the kind of wind that could sandblast the skin off a rhino. Minus thirty degrees C, fifty‑mile‑an‑hour gusts, and snow so deep it felt like wading through God’s own freezer.

We found the first tire buried in a crevasse at the end of the yard. Please read that the end of the yard was a full 200 yards long and full of fucking snow! This was a time to bring the loader back to life. This, a semi-religious mass performed each year. Would it still start after so many misfirings?

Jack was at the controls of the loader — a machine so ancient that Moses probably signed off on its production. Jesus, apparently, had foreseen that some idiot in 2008 would buy it for a tire shop in the middle of nowhere. Brakes hadn’t been invented when this thing rolled off the line, which explained why my right leg nearly became a sacrificial offering to the gods of industrial stupidity.

The tire came up swinging, grabbed my leg like a pissed‑off octopus, and dragged me across the snow on the end of a chain. I kicked like a madman trying to escape a shark attack. Eventually, it let go.

Devon, ever the supportive colleague, laughed so hard he crushed every cigarette in his pocket.

“Looked like fun,” he said. A smile, or should I say a wide grin, on his face.

“Oh‑bastard‑really.” I really wasn't that angry with him. I knew that the time would come when I could return the favour.

We carried on. The Major wanted thirty of the bastards. Thirty. Who in their right mind sends men out in a blizzard to dig up tires the size of small cottages? But orders were orders, and the Major’s orders always came with consequences. Or so it seemed to us who worked under him. How no one had died as yet was almost proved to be false today. Me being the victim of his insane way of understanding the weather. Or the prospective weather, which wasn't a favourable forecast.

Jack kept yanking tires out with the loader like a man possessed, and I kept running like Joe‑fuck every time the hook caught. My leg throbbed, but it was still attached, which felt like a win.

Then Twat — being a normal, everyday Twat — asked for help with some ginormous tires he was behind on. He was in a good mood, which meant he wanted to work rather than kill someone, so we helped. He’d been grinding for hours without a single spark of trouble. I touched the same cable for half a second and got electrocuted. Mildly, but enough to make me reconsider my life choices.

Devon laughed again. Of course he did. We did, all of us, stare at Devon and wondered what, exactly, he was doing just standing around with a smirk on his face. Was he working?

When The Major found out I wanted to go to the hospital for an X-ray, he stared at the three of them like they were zoo exhibits. He didn't let me go, even when I told him that, according to employment law, he should.

“What I don’t get is this,” he said. “One of you nearly loses a leg, gets electrocuted, and the rest of you just watch?”

Apparently, the look on my face while all this was happening to me was worth the wait‑and‑see approach. Devon especially. Noting to the Major that he did laugh, as it did look like fun.

Twat chose that moment to burst the tire we’d been working on. Even to this day we cannot work out how he did it. This, among many other things like this. Truly spooky!

“JESUS‑FUCKING‑CHRIST!” The Major was now in 'how do I explain this' mode. Not the first time that happened, by the way.

We all sighed with relief when Twat announced he needed to see ’er indoors — Fi‑Fi La Grande. He’d been trying to find out her real name for what seemed an age. The headstone brochure she’d left lying around was a clue, we thought. It took him three minutes and an ice‑pick to get the truth. We were impressed, in a horrified sort of way.

The Major returned, red‑faced, to inform us that the customers who owned the now‑burst tire were waiting in the lobby. Devon and Twat walked straight through the electrified water to fix it. I watched from a safe distance.

“I could’ve done that two hours ago,” Devon said. Pointing at the burst tire. Bursting the tire, not making it ready.

Twat growled.

The customers left happy, which was a miracle. We didn't know the lie that the Major had used to make them happy, but, obviously, it worked. Four minutes before closing, The Major paged us with one of his jests: install two tires of limited worth on a car. Twat took one tire to the shop, leaving the other behind.

“Why didn’t you bring both?” I asked.

“Didn’t want to stop you from bringing the other.”

Somewhere, in some universe, that made sense.

The vehicle didn’t exist. The Major just wanted to piss us off before we went home—nothing like work‑life and home‑life being the same flavour of misery.

Fi‑Fi bid us farewell, window cracked so her thick, sweet smoke could billow out like a steam train. Levitation wasn’t usually her thing, but we understood she had an undercover job in Moscow.

Au’revoir.