The trees still hold up the hills

The point when you can’t quit very well but you can’t force yourself to go on. I took it as a sign that I couldn’t even fail competently, and that’s when you you’re usually about to lobotomize yourself with a shotgun.

I was closer to that than anything else. I took a hasty exit and walked out of the recycling center. I could see 10 hours of tearing apart TVs as if you hated them looming above me. And I couldn’t get over it. I was 25, trained and unemployed as a journalist.

The TV thing is daunting, seriously oppressive. They roll past you and you drag them off the line, beating and bludgeoning them apart. Ripping the insides out, tossing them on the ground to bust them. A reverse assembly line.

I got quickly tired of it. The refusal of my hands to open after a shift and a sore back were one thing, but the never ending stream of TVs, tens of thousands of pounds, 10,000 per person dismantled per day to get full pay. Working frantically to deal with things people got rid of because what? They didn’t match the drapes? Seeing the pictures on that screen bored them, so they wanted to try the same pictures on a different screen?

I stayed for two weeks. Mostly out of spite. I had been offended when the manager made a point of asking if I was sure I if wanted the job, as it was very tiring, he said. A physically demanding gig, he kept repeating. His asking seemed odd. Obviously, I didn’t want the job. Who would? Who wants to give anyone the lion’s share of a day of their life? But you need to live too, and that’s all you have to bargain with. But that aside, he probably saw my pale skin and softness. Johnson, I think his name was.

“Well, Oscar, I think you could have a real shot here. But how do you feel about the physicality of the job? Are you up for it?”

“Sure,” I said. “It seems fine.”

“Ok, good. Good.” He wasn’t much older than me, poor bastard. Just working his way up. He was taller than I was, and was skinnier but had one of those immobile stomachs that paunched out but didn’t wiggle as he hauled things. He’d maybe be able to chisel them out of a better trade for his time eventually. But meanwhile he kept on.

“You’re going to be sleeping good when you work here. This job will really wear you out.”

“… I really think I can handle it.”

“Oh sure, of course. But it is a very physical job. And dirty.”

“No, it’ll be fine. Seriously fine.”

This was all shouted at me as we toured the place. Ear plugs. The entire building was full of artificially deaf people, it seemed.

So after two weeks of working the line I woke up at 4:45 a.m. like usual, on a Monday. Mondays are the hardest, and this time it was raining, hard. It had been all night. I was walking in, one of the last in line when it loomed up in front me. I spooked.

“Hey, where are you going?” The guy behind me said.

I didn’t answer. I got back through the parking lot and into my car, punched the ignition and shot back out on to the road. Fleeing. But what? I wasn’t even sure if it was the boredom or just the fear of dying with that job on my conscience for pimping out my fairly average soul for something so meaningless. Or because it seemed so silly to devote that much time to something that was at best a necessity. At best. Shitting, eating, sleeping, all of the mostly involuntary needs — they were all more pleasant.

On my way home I decided to call the placement office and tell them I was never going in. Mostly because they bother you constantly for about a week if you don’t. So that was the first thing I did when I got home. The house I rented was mercifully outside the city, hidden in trees and rented from an old farmers kids. It wasn’t much, but neither was I and it had a bath tub and a porch. The necessities.

The only thing home was the area cat, who migrated from home to home between some of the farms. She had gotten inside and was rub her ass all over the kitchen table. Usually that bothered me but I didn’t do anything. I wasn’t in the mood to run it off.

I dialed the agency. Johnson answered. It was a different Johnson than the manager, but the same sort of Johnson. It was quite a coincidence that they seemed to run my life. One was Nick and the other Nate. Hard to keep it all straight, but this one had been my contact in several jobs. When I was asking for work I remember it being an odd interview. He had a whispy blond beard and was very thin. That wasn’t what was weird though. He stared past you when asking questions, looking past your shoulder. I kept thinking something was creeping up behind me. He also would answer his phone through a headset, 7 or 8 times every time I was in his office. No warning, he would just start talking to someone else who I couldn’t see. Just go blank and pick up with a different conversation. He had a reputation for giving people a lot of shit trying to get off of work or needing a day for something. Talking to him was hard.

“Hello?” He said.

“Hey, Nick. This is Oscar Blum.”

“Nate.”

“Sorry.”

“Not a big deal. How’s the job placement, shouldn’t you be there right now?”

“That’s what I’m calling about. I’m sorry for the late notice, but I had something come up. I won’t be able to come to work anymore.”

His voice switched back to his usual cold flat tone. Not pleased.

“Well, Blum, can you give notice?

“No, sorry.”

“You have commitments to us, you know. You shouldn’t just quit a job. It’s a good job, and you can be sure I will have to mention this if you use us as a reference in the future.”

What commitments? I didn’t ask, but I am pretty sure he just thought he had me over a barrel. It was a temp agency. Almost by definition you deal with commitment challenged people. My pay checks had even called me a temporary worker.

“I know, really,” I said. “It was a fine job, I just can’t come back in.”

“Fine.”

He hung up. So did I. I was going to make breakfast when Mona got home. I lived with her, or had since a little after we started screwing. Or rather, she lived with me. She also had odd jobs to supplement my spotty incomes.

But currently she didn’t, so I had no real concept of what she did when I was at work. Sometimes she was home and sometimes she wasn’t. I was glad when she got back. She had short blond hair, dyed, and large breasts but no ass and skinny legs. I liked those, and that she was slightly taller than I was. She seemed surprised.

“What’re you doing here?”

“Well I live here, I guess. How about you?”

“Don’t be stupid. Why aren’t you at work? I heard you leave.”

“I quit. Couldn’t hack it.”

“Quit? Why, jesus, you just got that job?”

She was pissed. Hands balled up and going from hip to shaking at me alternately.

“I didn’t like it, Mona. I felt like it would kill me.”

“Work can’t kill you, you lazy fuck. And you don’t need to like it, no one likes it!”

“Mona, it’ll be alright. I’ll find something else.”

“You’ll quit that too!” She was crying now. “How will we make rent?”

“We’ll figure it out,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything off hand. “I’ll try the brewery. They always need people on the line.”

“You try it,” she screamed. “But I’m leaving. I don’t know if I’ll be back.”

She ran out. I heard her start her old pickup and drive off again, fast.

The cat mewled and I looked at it. It was lying by my boots. I stood in the middle of the kitchen still, where I’d been when she came in. I picked up the cat and went and tossed it gently out into the yard and the rain.

I stood and looked off the porch. The barn was still falling in. It was still raining, but softly and a mist rose off the bright green trees around me. They were still holding up the hills and it seem like they would stay that way, at least. I walked into the bedroom and undressed and lay on the bed. Everything would keep until I woke up.