Bill and I met Anthony in the break room. He was just out of high school and had a goofy grin waiting for the moment to burst. His smile was endearing, but also the same used by kids who lose the game for their team. I recognized it, and I could tell Bill had too by the way he wouldn’t look at Anthony. We walked out onto the floor, Anthony striding ahead of us.
The machines themselves were the size of an Astro Van stretched to thirty meters long. At one end, there was a great spool of paper running up into a printer, then through the rest of the machine. The paper was cut, folded, and glued, eventually coming out in the middle of the machine as new envelopes for the machine operator to pick up and pack in boxes. The machines could be calibrated to make all types of envelopes, but I was about to learn the worst job was box-and-carton. The colloquialism referred to placing small envelopes into sleeves which were then loaded into boxes. Keeping up with the machine took stamina, doubly so as exhaustion sapped the dexterity needed to shimmy the envelopes into sleeves—the pace relentless.
Bill’s eyes scanned the machines, squinted behind thick glasses. I knew what was about to happen. He was about to give Anthony the worst job on the floor. The demoralizing job Bill had in mind making a veteran of the plant hustle, so Bill pulled them off the job, put Anthony to work, and promptly adjusted the machine so the slapping escalated from a whir to a hum.
I watched Anthony work box-and-carton for the rest of the day from a nearby machine. Sweat dripped down his red, flustered face. Many times others helped him catch up. Whenever he fumbled one of the small cartons, I cringed. It pained me to watch him scramble after the hundreds of envelopes as they scattered across the floor. Picking them all up and making them back to his station, ready to pack the never-ending line of envelopes was a Sisyphean task. Every time he caught me looking at him, he showed his goofy grin. I felt horrible, like I was watching him drown. There wasn’t anything I could do—that’s what I told myself. But if I’d wanted to, I could have traded him machines and taken the burden or maybe I could have run over and helped. I didn’t, though. I just kept my head down.
Halfway through the second day, I sensed a change. Anthony must have felt my gaze because he turned around in the middle of packing envelopes, arms glistening with sweat and breath ragged. He didn’t smile this time. Anthony stared back at me, and I flinched; teeth clenched, jaw muscles bulging. I’d seen this kind determination before, but not on a kid who lost the game for their team in high school gym class. It was defiance; the look guys get when asked outside to fight by a big, muscle-bound bully—making a stand.
Anthony stuck around for my tenure in the factory. I got to know him and his story was one I knew before I heard it. He’d grown up in the small town to the east and had just graduated high school the year before. I asked him why the factory, and he replied, “It was better than just sitting around spending money, not going to school.” He said it as if there were no other jobs in the world than working on a factory line. Unlike many workers on the line who were middle-aged with one foot in the grave, Anthony had all his teeth and no track marks. Careful to blend his figure into the background, he managed to avoid drama.
Jessie didn’t have so much going for him. He was a twenty-year-old who had graduated high school and stopped. His front teeth were carious at the gum line, it was hard for me to maintain eye contact. His machine was color-coded WHITE, while I worked in the middle. I got to know him over breaks and in-between operating the machines and clean-up. When I first started, he was all about UFC. I asked him if he played Dungeons and Dragons—the books he read were exclusively fantasy—he responded, “I’m a dungeon master.” I had a hard time not liking Jessie and grew fond enough to never crack a joke about him being white trash on WHITE.
The other workers were either blue-collar by trade, former military, or current felon: sometimes all three. Jessie’s bumbling small-town nature, exasperated by his upper habit, mixed poorly with people who didn’t suffer fools. Rob had liked Jessie, when I started. They would talk in the break room about UFC, training, MMA, and joke around with each other, but one day things went too far.
It had been one of those lunches when everyone milled about like animals with nothing to eat. I was digging through the fridge, scavenging, when I noticed Rob lingering around Jessie’s locker. At the time, I didn’t think much of it—Jessie and Rob shared locker combinations with each other. It wasn’t until Tyler showed up that I noticed anything amiss. They whispered and then Rob scurried out onto the floor. Tyler hung around the lockers until Jessie appeared, frantically throwing his locker open and ripping his backpack out.
“What’s going on?” I asked, too bored and hungry to mind my own business.
“Rob has my girlfriend’s nudes on his phone,” he said breathlessly. “If that bitch cheated . . .”
Jessie trailed off. He was acting strangely after a late night at Rob’s house—I didn’t understand the static.
“That motherfucker took the memory card out of my phone!”
Rob finally gave the memory card back when Jessie threatened to go to management. Jessie had hurt feelings about it, I found out on the line.
“You know we can’t text on the work floor,” I said.
“Yeah, I know. If anyone mentions it, I’m going to tell them I can’t leave it in my locker because last time I did someone took it and stole nude pictures of the woman I love,” Jessie said. He turned back to his machine, grabbed a stack of envelopes, and packed them neatly in a box. As I walked back to mine, I caught Tyler skulking out of the corner of my eye.
The thought that went through my head when I first met Tyler was, this guy is a fighter. Everything about him exuded predation. But for me, it wasn’t his bulging muscles; it was the look of detachment. His smirking expression barely flickered while interacting with people, unless it was to pull his lips back in a crocodile smile. I wasn’t the only one who sensed it.
Dana was a veteran of the Iraq war like I was. He’d seen plenty of action. I asked him if he’d killed anyone and relearned the importance of never asking a man if he has taken the life of another. Shrapnel is impossible to follow back from bodies and through the fusillade of 40mm high explosive grenades to their barrels of origin. Dana was also wary of Tyler, said he could see him, “getting violent over something stupid.” We both kept track of his movements while we worked.
Which was how I saw Tyler stop by Jessie’s station and exchange a few words; even though they were at the machine next to mine, I couldn’t hear them over the roar of envelopes. When Tyler shuffled over past me, I hollered at him, asked what was said.
“I told Jessie that Rob said he’s fucking his girl,” Tyler said. “And she told Rob it’s the best dick she’s ever had.” His smile made me think of alligators tipping their heads above the water’s surface on the Discovery Channel.
“What the fuck did you do that for?” I asked.
“Those two are always fighting like high school girls. I’m just fucking with him.”
In short order, the shift lead noticed Jessie’s agitation and stopped by his station. Mark was the second shift’s lead. He was supposed to call the shots and take care of problems. Unfortunately, Mark was a terrible leader, so no one gave him respect. Jessie was one of Mark’s favorites—none of us had any idea why except that they read the same books and were always having sidebar conversations about their plots. All I could think was, don’t tell–whatever you do, don’t tell.Over and over.
I watched Jessie tell on his coworkers. He didn’t get it, the unspoken code men carry with them when life is hard: you take care of your own business, you don’t run to the authorities, and the names of others don’t leave your mouth. Jessie told Mark all about what was going on—a fool to break the code. As I watched, I found myself lamenting peace’s passing. Second shift wasn’t like the first shift, where it was mostly blue-collar people who worked the floor because it was all they knew how to do. On break they’d talk about their kids like people totally in love, offspring the wind to their sails—a commonality they all shared. They came in every day, never called in, and they busted their asses at work. That just wasn’t the way things were on the second shift. Most were misfits, washouts, and relics from a different era, finding their way to the factory because there was nowhere else to go. We weren’t the kind of people who could be spat on.
The stories made me shiver. Jerry was one of the machine adjusters. Years ago, when he was barely out of high school, a man showed up at Jerry’s door looking to see his girlfriend. It was her ex, trying to make amends. Jerry threw him down the stairs, then beat him two blocks to the hardware store, where he body-slammed him through the front window. Jerry said he blacked out and when he came to, he was slamming a bug-zapper down on the guy’s face, over and over again, until blood ran black.
Jerry did a stint in prison for it. On his first day, another inmate mopping the floor outside his cell made a remark about, “getting a piece of that white ass.” The moment the cell door slid open, Jerry rushed through and hit the larger man as hard as he could in the jaw. The inmate went down, and before he could get up, Jerry snapped the mop handle off and speared him through the shoulder. As Jerry recounted the events to me, there was no change in his inflection. The light in his eyes hardened to the reflection of nail heads, but he spoke nonchalantly, as if describing bluegill he pulled from the river. I could tell he wasn’t fucking around. He had other stories, one about getting in a fight on a work floor in New York where he hit someone in the neck with a mallet—the shift lead took the injured man to the hospital and kept it all under wraps. Everyone on the second shift had a scary story or two that made me hope never to cross them.
But Jessie already had, and there was no going back now. He would have to weather the storm. I surveyed the young man’s physique, not yet viciously winnowed like his teeth, and wondered how long he would last in a fight. When I’d first started at the factory, Tyler had just lost his first amateur MMA fight. It had been the very fight which had sparked our coworkers’ general interest in MMA. Jessie had been especially enamored with the idea of basking in everyone’s attention, much the same way Tyler had. Even the first shift’s lead was on board when Tyler fought, buying a shirt and wearing it to work. From what I gathered, it had almost been like someone from the factory was going to fight their way out. Then Tyler lost, and everything had gone back to normal.
Jessie wasn’t Tyler, though, and his pear silhouette and five o’clock shadow didn’t bode well. Neither did the hate Tyler had for tattle-tales. I’d heard him talk about his little brother, who’d worn a wire during a few of their coke deals. The betrayal had given Tyler’s time in the penitentiary a poetic bitterness which wasn’t lost on any of us. I was thinking about how glad I was to keep my mouth shut when Tyler stopped by Jessie’s workstation to chew the cud. The meth head jabbered, and the ex-con’s rage boiled.
“You already told?! I was fucking around. You keep my name out of your fucking bitch mouth, or I’ll kick your head in! Do you fucking hear me?!”
I kept packing envelopes on autopilot.
Jessie scurried from conveyor belt of envelopes to box, mouth moving but only producing high pitched noises, eyes searching the concrete around him as if he’d lost his keys. Jessie was strung out, but no amount of blather would see him through this. I picked up the row of envelopes off my conveyor belt, slammed them into the box I was packing, and sprinted to the other end of my machine in search of Dana. I found the back empty, and went back.
Now Tyler was in Jessie’s face, screaming, ready to send Jessie’s teeth flying from their last frayed nerve. I had to put Tyler down, somehow. I’d run around the front of the machine, sprint ten meters, grab the nearest solid object and swing it like a baseball bat. No one would expect that. I never got the chance, didn’t even stop packing envelopes.
Tyler whirled away and stormed across the floor. Minutes later Jessie’s conveyor belt jammed full of envelopes. Before the machine had fully shut down, he was moving quickly toward the exit, but not the one to the break room. Instead, to the front of the factory to snitch again—doubling down.
I didn’t realize what time it was until my replacement tapped my shoulder. When I got to the break room, I grabbed my lunch box and sat down to eat, wondering where everyone was. They couldn’t fire them at the same time, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be an example.
Don came in and sat down. He was a big black man in his mid-fifties. A few bids in Rikers Island had worn deep lines around his eyes and grayed his afro. We had become fast friends after a brief period of standoffishness.
“Mark drug all those fools in the office. First Tyler, then Rob, then Jessie. Sure enough, they’ll be talking to HR.” Don said. He got up and walked to the fridge to get his lunch and zap it in the microwave. Don had been insulin dependent until he took control of his diet; his lunches were always home-cooked meals. Don was the best-fed guy on the floor out of necessity.
“Why are they friends one day then mad at each other the next?”
“You ever notice when they fight? It’s after they party,” Don said.
“On the weekends?”
“No. After payday. And then they run out, or a deal goes wrong. They want more, but it’s gone,” he said. “And then there are bad feelings.”
“Do they throw down money together?”
“Rob sells it,” Don said. “Little fuck around white boys out here, sure enough, love crystal. And all other sorts. It hasn’t started on Rob yet, his body, but it’ll catch up with him, and then—boy look out,” Don said. “Funny how Jessie’s teeth are eroding and Rob’s aren’t, like he keeps the best stuff for himself.
“Jessie must have used it before he started working here.”
“Jessie lost forty, maybe fifty pounds since he started here after Rob. It wasn’t until Tyler came on that these fools talked about cage fighting, and ain’t none of them fought a match but Tyler, and he lost.”
Don heard them coming first. I could tell because his eyes ticked to me to see if I’d heard, but my time in the Marine Corps had made me hard of hearing. Jessie walked by the door. I hustled out of the room to see the men filing one after the other down the long hall, then pretended to get something out of my locker. Dana walked out of the bathroom. Even Church casually shuffled through the door from the factory floor.
“Do you think they fired anyone?” Dana asked under his breath.
The troop walked by, their strides shortened and footsteps loud. The men fumbled through their lockers, grabbing lunch pails and water bottles. We gathered around them, Tyler making impressions like a child acting out a story, while Rob did the talking. The factory boss and the HR lady had made a come-to-Jesus speech about how everyone was done fucking around. They were the best factory staff ever, because the boss was the best head of a factory, and that meant he ran the best envelope factory in the goddamn world.
Huddled at the back end of Rob’s truck, rattle-can spray painted matte black, he and others had come to some sort of silent consensus. Jessie’s smile was the color of brittle corn stalks, his laugh needlessly loud. We finished our smokes and clocked back in. Heads down, we trudged to our machines through sweltering humidity.
*
Tip-Top was a notorious working-class bar right in the heart of Ames, Iowa. Its origins were somewhat unknown to most, except that the watering-hole had been around in memory of even the oldest bar-goers. If it had always been so rough, no one seemed to know or care. Tip-Top was like taxes or the law in the minds of most Ames’ inhabitants. The bartenders were two women, bigger than most men, and there were no bouncers. Jerry had invited me down for a drink, saying that Rob and others met for a drink every Wednesday after work. Second shift got off at 10:30, which left plenty of time to socialize until the bar closed.
I met Jerry there, and we had a drink. He told me of his life growing up in New York. He and his friends had formed a street gang for their protection; an ugly spider on the web of a hand as their flag. Jerry talked about how close they’d all been, would’ve done anything for each other. Jerry said he loved Iowa, being in the middle of so much nature, and away from the city.
When Rob showed up, followed by a small entourage, the conversation stutter-stepped and came to solid footing with Jerry asking me if I wanted any steroids—he could get them mailed from out of state. I shook my head no as we turned to greet Rob.
“I thought she wasn’t your girlfriend?” Jerry asked, turning back to the bar.
“She’s not— buys my drinks. I fuck her afterward. The guy with her is her cousin.”
Jerry’s attention had turned elsewhere. The bar was starting to fill with all manner of people, but none of the college-age crowd. The local automotive shop was getting wasted off of a happy hour menu that only applied to them.
“I get nearly $125 out of her every week,” Rob said. “Plus, she drives. I can’t drive—got my second OWI eight months ago.”
I wasn’t listening anymore.
*
It was late in the shift when Todd, a machine adjuster I didn’t normally work with because he was a fill-in from third-shift, approached me. Todd was taller than me by a good five inches, standing somewhere around 6’2” with greasy hair, in his mid-forties. I could tell he was a junkie by the track marks on the crook of his arm. It took an hour of Todd periodically coming up to me and trying to make small talk before I stopped ignoring him.
“My name is Jason. I got hired on about a month ago—no, two. Time slows down in this place.”
“You look like a wrestler. Are you a wrestler?” Todd’s voice was gravel over sheet metal.
“I tried in high school and was better at striking,” I said. “I just work out.”
“I heard you were in the service,” Todd’s eyes drifted in and out of focus as he looked at me, through me, then back at me again. “I was in the service—Navy. I landed jets on aircraft carriers. I used to smoke meth below deck and then go topside to wave them down.”
He then told me about the time he’d been dishonorably discharged for popping dirty on a Urinary Analysis test after doing blow on shore leave. I stood there packing envelopes, wondering how so many people were spun out on drugs. Sometimes it was easy to tell—hollow eyes, rotted teeth, feted breath—other times people hid it well.
“You in college?” Todd asked after regaling me with stories of substance abuse.
“Going back when summer ends,” I answered.
“You’re a smart guy,” Todd said.
But college wasn’t on my mind. I’d heard through the grapevine I was being considered for a promotion. A machine adjuster from first shift had dropped off the gossip.
“You been doing a good job, brah?” Alex asked.
“I show up. I lift the envelopes. I pack them. I don’t complain. I go home,” I said. “What else is there?”
“They’re thinking of promoting you!”
“No shit? It would be great to get off the line.”
“I remember being on the line, back in the day,” Alex said. “Adjusting is where it’s at! You’ll be one step closer.”
I thought about our little conversation after Todd left. Working the machines was a new hell. I’d seen Dana walking around, tending to the giant rolls of paper feeding into the back of the machine, talked with him about how it was a much easier gig—although more technical, less strenuous. It also paid more. I realized Mark was going to make a rare visit by the way he kept eye-balling me. I didn’t care for Mark, and sometimes hoped he’d drop dead. An avid skydiver, there was a real possibility that would happen. But each day, he returned. Mark finally walked into my work area, acting as if he were conducting an impromptu inspection. I didn’t look up or acknowledge him. I wasn’t going to say the first word. After five minutes, Mark spoke.
“Hello.”
I continued working without pause.
“What is it you do?” he asked.
“What do you want, Mark.”
“Just wondering about your plans. For the future.”
“I’m spending summer break working here, then I’m going back to college in the fall.”
“Oh,” Mark said. “You can see why this will interfere with promotion.”
I stopped. Envelopes piled up. I’d forgotten: Todd’s son had recently joined second shift after a DUI, and Todd was happy to drive him to work without inconvenience.
“Todd forced me into conversation, asks if I’m going to college, then sandbags me by running and telling you what I already told HR?”
Mark coughed.
“Strange to make an enemy of someone who he works around dangerous equipment all day,” I said.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“I’m just saying, doesn’t make sense.” I scooped up a stack of envelopes and nestled them away deftly, and Mark dropped it.
The only people who hated Mark more than me were Church and Don. Church, a black man in his early thirties who worked in receiving, spent his day unloading trucks and setting up spools of paper on palettes. Mark had a habit of telling Church what to do—Church had a habit of telling Mark to fuck off. Church had spent a few years “inside,” as it’s called when people have to “go away,” and the experience made him chafe against authoritarian leadership. I never asked Church what he went away for, but if I had, he would have answered “Selling drugs,” without any shame.
Don worked with Mark every shift. Mark was Don’s machine adjuster and about twice or so a week, Don stalked off the floor shaking his salt and pepper hair. The higher-ups always smoothed things over. Don was laid back; his time in prison had left him mellow. Don didn’t tell me until my last week how he’d done time with Tyler at a mid-level security corrections center somewhere in Iowa—Don for selling heroin, Tyler for selling cocaine.
Don, Church, and Tyler often joked about what incarceration had been like. Church had shared cell block with Tyler for a little while but didn’t recognize him because Tyler had spent a good deal of time in solitary confinement. I asked them what Tyler had been like on the inside.
“He didn’t carry on as he does here. He was playing a different role then,” Don replied. “Never heard him laugh until the factory.”
That was the last time I spoke with them about the penal system. It made me want to finish college and keep my nose clean. It also made me want to enjoy the last few weeks of summer, so I put in my two weeks. During my last week, each of my superiors recapped what I’d already told HR.
“Jason, I heard you’re leaving us,” the factory boss said. “Why have you made this decision?”
“I’m going back to college—still. Just like HR said. I mean, I even had a promotion withheld because of it.”
“Uncle Sam paying for it?” His smile made him ugly.
“Yes,” I said, thinking about that $30,000 muscle car he drove while most people on the floor had trouble making ends meet. “Probably best I get back on the line.”
He started to say something else, but I already had my back to him. Church had warned me that superiors would be petty and disrespectful in their parting words. And none too soon my last shift ended. The men I worked with spoke kindly to me: Dana told me to keep my head down and my dick hard, Don said I was bound for greater things, Church promised to buy me a beer—all the while I watched the clock.
When I felt a twinge of guilt—it was easy for me. I’d made sound decisions post-high school, but many of the factory workers had done the opposite, most out of necessity. Even after I left and lost touch I’d run into Anthony and hear stories: Don made it to receiving to work with Church, Jerry taken back to New York in handcuffs.
I think of second shift every time I fill an envelope.