FRIDAY IS PAYDAY, part 1 of 2
Fuck Bird.
Daybreak hits me in the lungs. Steel wool, stinging and harsh. Mother is in a dark and persistent mood. It will be sleet until it turns to snow later this afternoon. That’s the report coming across AM 660 out of Albany, about 90-minutes south.
Driving in, especially close to the main gate, the old road is loose gravel, pitted, a coiled snake’s spine, a challenge to suspension and sciatica. The high grass, dry, swaying, holds odds and ends of machinery. A condemned outhouse, desiccated, the color of beef jerky, leans. That’s it. It just leans. Two hulking slate trimmers, dripping chicken wire, and a rusted conveyor belt bear the brutal fact we are all put out to pasture someday when the gears chip their teeth.
Stay oiled, young man. I carried that thought with me for days.
The rusting cab of a back-hoe sits sentry about twenty yards from the front gate, swung open, a heavy-weight padlock hangs from an exhausted, thick chain. Who would break into this gulag? The main yard is a graveyard. It’ll be a beehive soon enough, slabs of rock need breaking down, and pallets of roofing slate, mostly nine by twelve, purple and faded green, stand nine rows deep. They are headed to Michigan today for a new subdivision. We literally put roofs over people’s heads. That’s the romantic part of the job. Humping rock in the sleet, packing pallets—make sure everything is tied off, tight—and forklifting them in the back of a cavernous long-haul truck, not so much.
6:52 AM. We, my brother, and I are exactly eight minutes early. Time enough to punch the clock and huddle inside the mill near the kerosene heaters. Damp concrete floors hold no warmth. We shoot the shit in a circle of Marlboros and steaming coffee from Stewarts. I go there for the gas, not the coffee, and the girl behind the counter. Mandi, with an I, not a Y. Why is that so alluring, intentionally misspelling your own name?
Morning.
See the Knicks?
Lost at the buzzer.
Fucking Bird.
Shit day.
I Heard Big Ray quit.
Big Ray or Little Ray?
Big Ray.
The radio says snow.
He got a job at Norton’s
Jim’s going to work the pit.
Fucking Celtics.
20 to start.
Good for him.
Bird?
No, Big Ray.
Fuck Bird.
Morning.
It’s only Tuesday. Shit.
And I left my work gloves at home on the radiator.