George, Act 2
It had taken three weeks, two different attempts at finding liners that helped with his feet, and more Tylenol than he thought was likely healthy for a man in his 30’s, but George Collins finally made it through an hour at the Processing Center wherein he made his expected rate. Hannah swung by his spot along the stretch of half a dozen people assigned to Nest 1-16 at 8 o’clock and cheerfully clapped him on the shoulder to get his attention.
“Hey, I wanted to let you know you’re doing great, George,” she half-shouted to be heard above the din and rumble of the machines, belts and people around them. “You were right on the edge last week, and today, you’re making standard rate for the last two hours,” she said.
“So, not the probationary rate, then,” he asked in reply, continuing to go about his task, though slightly slower than before she’d shown up.
“No, same rate expectation as everybody else who’s been here a while, that’s awesome,” she said, now moving away swiftly, swinging and ducking in and out of the narrow aisle of packagers down the line from him. It was a fantastic bit of news to get, to finally be told that he was performing up to the standard, and ahead of schedule no less.
When he got outside for his first fifteen minute break an hour later, however, he felt drained. His wrists were sore, and his back twinged at him terribly. The stooping, reaching, lifting and hauling, all confined to a tight radius in his Nest area. It was, to be honest with himself, no worse than it had been at first; in truth, he felt better now than he had in those first couple of weeks. The aches and pains had quieted to a dull hum in his joints at the start of the work week, and even now, he didn’t feel as worn down as he had.
He understood full well that it was just his body acclimating to the workload and environment. It was to be expected, after all. His previous employers had required him to be on his feet all day, on concrete floors, no different than here. Of course, here, he had a significantly higher pace to set for himself, and the warehouse-wide air of fatigue bore down like a pneumatic car crusher at a scrapyard daily, until most of his coworkers, himself included, practically staggered or dragged themselves out to their vehicles in the clustered, hectic parking lot to leave the property and head home for some much-needed rest. That hadn’t been the way of it at the plant.
But the money and bennies are well worth it, he reasoned to himself. That’s why people come here, that’s why people tough it out and stick around. As the horn sounded to warn everyone that they had to get back inside and get to their stations, he grunted and rose from the bench.
He watched silently as a pair of packagers, folks who had come in with his group, shambled away to their vehicles, flapping their hands as a couple of other folks called out to them that they had to get back in. One of them halted long enough to yell back, “Fuck this place!” The shout had almost no force to it, the 50-something fellow too exhausted to put the appropriate force behind his declaration. It came out sounding weak, almost pathetic, like the whimper of a wounded animal.
George could understand. He’d almost reached that point just the week before.
**
As he made his way home the following morning, George realized that he hadn’t had a chance to do any grocery shopping that week, and if he wanted breakfast before putting his head on his pillow, he was going to have to get it somewhere. There was a Gordon’s Goods about five minutes from his building, but he didn’t want to go through the hassle of strolling up and down all those aisles, especially if the overnight stock people were blocking up most of them with pallets of product to be put on the shelves.
Instead, he made his way to Sandy’s, a quaint little 50’s style diner just a few blocks from his apartment. The parking lot was almost empty, with only three other vehicles present, and two of those booted up in front of ‘EMPLOYEES ONLY’ marked spots. The third vehicle, a boxy old Jeep Cherokee in faded orange, stirred a vague sense of familiarity.
Once inside the diner, George found himself smiling and holding his arms out to his sides at the sight of Tom Marks, who gave a hoot and hopped down off of the little red leather-topped stool at the counter to come embrace him. They had been assigned any number of times to the same production line while he’d worked at Hawking Manufacturing, and the two shared an appreciation for sports and old-school punk rock music.
“Jesus, George! How the hell are ya,” Tom asked as he pulled away and led George back over toward his stool. A bored-looking waitress, possibly in her 40’s or 50’s and wearing a uniform so ugly it gave George the chills, came over and poured him an unsolicited cup of coffee and plopped a menu down in front of him.
“I’m okay, Tom, but I’m dead tired. Just getting off of work. You just about to head in?”
“Yup,” said Tom. He took one last bite of his eggs and pushed his empty plate a few inches away, taking up his own coffee and sipping it as George poured cream and sugar into his. “It’s been kind of gangbusters over there; we lost four more people since you left, so the rest of us have been putting in ten-hour days to make up for the loss of labor.”
“Shit, sorry to hear that, Tom.”
“Don’t be, man,” Tom said with a chuckle. “It’s been great to have the bigger check, my man! And it isn’t like we’re losing our weekends this way.” When George looked up to the waitress and tapped the menu to indicate his order, she took it away and swept back around into the kitchen, out of sight for the moment.
“So other than losing some folks, what else is new for you, Tom,” George asked. “Any good stuff going on with your fantasy league?” Tom paused with his mug halfway to his lips, his previously wide eyes and upcurved lips faltering slightly as he set the mug down.
“League’s done for now,” Tom replied after a few moments. “Jack passed.” George had never met Jack, but he knew from conversations with Tom that Jack was the aforementioned fantasy league’s commissioner and the champion for two of the five years that it had been running.
“I’m sorry to hear that. What happened to him?”
“Clinic bombing,” Tom said. “Jack was just in there one day, doing his job, treating people. You know, he helped get about a hundred people a year off of the junk. But there was this group of real hard-liners, they said he was just giving people an excuse, a safe place to use, and one of those people firebombed the clinic. Jack never even made it out of the building.”
George looked down into his coffee, trying to imagine how people could be so hateful, so volatile. But he’d known plenty of individuals like that in his life; it was precisely that hard-line view of the world that had driven a wedge between him and his ex-wife. After another minute of silence between them, Tom broke the quiet. “So, how’re you liking it over there?” George shrugged.
“I’m not liking it, I’m not hating it,” he said offhandedly. “But I’ll tell you what, I’ve been so bone-deep tired most days when I get off work that I haven’t even gone grocery shopping in two weeks. That’s why I’m here instead of at home right now, there’s nothing to make myself breakfast with.” Tom nodded, pulling out his wallet and putting a twenty and a ten on his bill and tucking it all under his plate.
“You get three-day weekends every week, though, right?”
“For now, yeah,” said George. “But if we don’t bring up our staff numbers pretty soon, the whole facility’s going to go on mandatory overtime until we can flesh out the ranks. And in a couple of months, we’re all going to be doing that anyway, what with Mondo Days.”
“Oh, yeah, I remember Ganges starting that up last year. Hell, I snagged some pretty good deals myself. What’re they looking at for their OT on those?”
“Five twelve-hour days,” George said with a shake of his head. He leaned back a little on his stool as the waitress set his plate down before him and cautioned him that she’d be back, but she needed to step out for a smoke. Tom let out a short whistle.
“Goddamn, man. Sixty-hour weeks? Not sure I’d want to be in your shoes, that comes along.” George let out a dead man’s snort of black humor. He didn’t want to be in his own shoes when that happened, either, but what other choice did he really have?
**
“Dad. Dad. Dad!” The shout alone barely brought him out of the realm of slumber, and with it came the odd feeling of the bed under his right side. It was being pressed down by a faint weight, and when his eyes grudgingly creaked open, he found himself looking sideways at his younger son Eric’s face, the boy’s hair mussed beyond redemption and his brow furrowed as if in anger.
“What time is it, son,” he half-mumbled, rolling toward the opposite side of his bed and sitting up, feet throbbing as they hit the floor.
“It’s almost noon,” Eric replied, a touch testily. “The movie’s at 12:40, and we need to get popcorn and drinks.” George remembered now. When he’d finally gotten home, Cynthia called, only a minute after he’d gotten in the door, to remind him that she was dropping the kids off early. He’d stayed awake until they arrived, and made plans to go see a movie with them later on in the day if they would just be willing to let him take a nap, since he was quite tired and hadn’t gotten to bed yet. The kids had readily agreed.
But he had set himself an alarm on his phone for ten o’clock, which should have given him roughly four hours of rest. Not a great amount for a man of his age and stresses and needs, but enough to subsist on. Apparently, he must’ve shut the alarm off and gone right back on to slumber, because here now was his middle child, telling him to get a move on.
It shouldn’t be like this, he thought to himself. I’m supposed to be getting them up from naps, not the other way round. George pushed himself upright, wincing at the pulse of discomfort in his feet and his shoulders, and turned around to face his son.
“Go make sure your brother and sister are ready, I’m just going to get changed,” he said muzzily. Eric nodded and dashed out of the room, granting George the chance to not only get into fresh clothes, but to dry swallow four Tylenol from his bottle on the bedside table and shake himself more awake. A second, more conscious look at the pill bottle welcomed alarm through the back door of his mind, where it had been quietly knocking for a few moments.
The bottle was nearly empty. He’d picked it up on his second day at the Ganges facility, one of those massive bottles of 500 that they sold at Gordon’s Goods. Now, only three weeks later, he was down to perhaps thirty of the painkillers. Had he really been going through so many of them? He recalled once having read warnings on a medical news website that excessive use of some painkillers could negatively impact liver function.
He silently wondered if he had been doing himself more harm than good.
**
It had been far too long since he’d been able to indulge the kids in getting something fun for themselves on a whim, and with more disposable money in his checking account than he had been accustomed to having in well over a year, George found himself practically beaming as all three of the children came bounding back down the aisle toward him, each holding up a different toy in hand.
“Okay, line ‘em up,” he said, and the trio lined themselves up in order of descending age, with Adam at the front. His arm had healed up well, but he was still favoring it, and held his selected hopeful candidate in his left hand. “What in the heck is that thing,” George asked, looking at what appeared to be some kind of remote controlled robot.
“They’re called Robokin, they’re pretty new,” his son said enthusiastically. “It’s thirty-five bucks.” George nodded, and gave him a thumb’s up, which resulted in a little jump of excitement and the careful deposit of the robot into the cart. Next up came Celia, taking a couple of timid steps forward and holding up a couple of books for her father’s inspection.
Neither appeared to be age appropriate; clearly meant for a young adult fantasy audience from their cover imagery, George held out a hand and read through the back cover copy on each. He knew his daughter, all of eight years old, was a precocious child, and well ahead of the curve in terms of her comportment, manner, and capacity for comprehending and carrying on a thoughtful conversation.
There didn’t seem to be anything exceptionally egregious here from what he read, and her selections were apparently the third and fourth titles in an ongoing series. “You’ve got the first two at your mother’s house, don’t you,” he asked with a sly grin. Celia nodded without a word; oftentimes, he worried that she spoke so seldom when they were out in public. At home, she was as talkative as any other child around her age, but whenever they went out anywhere, she clammed up. He gave her the thumb’s up after locating the prices for the books, and he lowered them into the cart for her.
Finally, Eric strolled up, seeming to hesitate before bringing a new Wilson football out from behind his back. It wasn’t a standard ball, however, hosting the black and orange tiger striping of the Bengals. George smiled at the ball as he took it from his son’s hands. “How much do they want for it,” he asked.
“Fifty,” Eric said, hands stuffed in his pockets, rotating back and forth at the waist in that fasion that only children seem to be able to make adorable. “We could probably find it on Ganges for cheaper.” George felt his shoulders hunch up and tighten, his jaw clench.
“We’re here, right now, and we can pay for it and take it home without the hassle of waiting for it to come in the mail,” he said, a little more sternly than he had intended. “Just because you can get anything on Ganges, that doesn’t mean you should.” The kids looked at him with puzzled expressions.
“Dad,” Adam began gently, tilting his head slightly to one side as he looked up into his father’s face. “Don’t you work for them?” George took in and held a deep breath for a moment, then let it out slowly, shutting his eyes as he lowered them toward the floor. When he looked up at his sons and daughter again, he felt the tension smoothing out.
“Yes, son, I do,” he replied finally. “I just want to get these for you kids while I can. I’m going to be doing a lot of overtime coming up soon, and I want to enjoy the time we have together. I know it’s not ‘cool’ to care, but I want to have some good times before I’m too tired to do anything with you.”
The kids didn’t grumble, complain, or bring up Ganges again the rest of the weekend, and when he dropped them off at Cynthia’s on Sunday morning, they all gave him a powerful embrace before darting inside. Cynthia hesitated to shut the door, taking a quick peek inside to check for the children, then reached out to lightly put her hand on George’s shoulder.
“Hey,” she said gently, giving him a concerned look. “Are you okay, George? You look, thinner,” she said.
“What do you mean,” he asked.
“Well, I don’t know, exactly,” she replied, hugging her arms close to herself. “There’s bags under your eyes, and I haven’t seen you wear a belt with those jeans in, like, forever,” she continued. “Are you getting enough to eat?”
“I’m fine, Cyn,” he said, drawing back a step. “I’m gonna dart home and grab a little nap before I have to go in tonight.” He headed back to his car before she could prod any further, uncomfortable with her line of questioning for reasons he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
He was fine, after all. “Better than ever,” he mused to himself aloud as he started heading for his apartment once more.