Chapter 1:

Explain the gaps in your job history.

Unemployed
October 1st, 2007-September 28, 2007

…That night my brother and I walked into the trailer and the sink was still half full of water because it was clogged. There were three dead mice floating in there and one doing laps.

The counter was so covered in their shit that it had turned black.

Mack said, “We’re gonna get the plague.”

I just said, “Yeah.”

We were soaked from the rain, and cold. On the road a few miles back was our truck, up in flames. Burning despite the weather. Life circles around the drain, but never quite reaches it.

Got rid of the mice. Finished washing the dishes. Unclogged the sink.
Mack nuked a bowl of soup and sat on the couch with it. Left me half the can. For a moment I wondered if the cops would be looking for us for the property damage, but it quickly passed. The rain turned to sleet. The sound of it against the tin roof seemed to increase the silence in the trailer.

“Pneumonia, too.” Mack said.

I just said, “Yeah,” again.

My window to get the first word in was closing. But I didn’t have the energy, so I said something about the salamander we caught a few weeks ago instead. From there he found a way to say something about the ghost he thinks haunts my room, and then he started ranting about god and the bible and divine wrath. I took my soup and went into the darkness of my room, left him in that state.

Hid under a mountain of rotting blankets, and then thought about the fire. Then tried not to think about the fire. Then thought about the fire again.

***

I woke up and Cormac McCarthy was on the carpet to my left. His jacket was torn.

Spine was broken.

Insides spilling out.

I checked to see if he still had any money on him.

Nothing.

The face of my alarm clock was vacant and the batteries were removed. I knew Mack was gone when I saw it. Another element of the world that slipped away while I wasn’t paying attention.

I checked Mack’s room for anything he may have left behind. Found a pile of my books. The older ones were falling apart in a similar state as McCarthy. Hemmingway, Fante, Kapek. He dragged the rubbermaid bin that I used to store them into his room, went through them sometime in the night, searching for more of my cash. Left the trailer what little he found.

So much time, wasted.

Chapter 2:

Tell me about a time you provided great customer service.

Garden Fresh Market
September 28, 2007-January 19, 2008

Everyone wants something that cannot be given.

Mack wanted money, to pay off his debts. The store owners wanted fealty. The customer in front of me wants my help. I tell him “I don’t work here,” and pass quickly, into the back of the store, where he cannot follow. Wearing my apron, nametag, the works. A rookie following in tow. I was to be her trainer.

The general manager is in back, spraying bug-spray into the air, filling the atmosphere. It drifted as a mist into our pores, onto the exposed foods being prepped in the produce section, the equipment in the meat room. He did this every time it was time for him to turn in for the day, his solution to the fly and moth problem. The old man always takes half days and prefers to leave it to other managers to run things.

“Howdy,” he says, to me.

“Yeah.”

He leers at the trainee. She is young, early twenties. She stiffens noticeably uncomfortable. But she recovers and smiles back. He is the boss, after all.

He gets what he wants, but always wants more.As he’s walking away she wants to give him the finger. She does not, as it her first day. So I do. He does not notice this. His back is turned, he walks out the back door, placing the can of pesticide on a storage shelf as he leaves. The trainee coughs. I take her into the produce prep room and show her around.
This is the cooler where we keep everything. The fastest selling products are stacked in the corner, where they are the hardest to get. The produce manager likes it this way.

This is the medical cabinet where we the bandaid box is kept. It used to be empty, but has since been filled with tiny cutout pictures of actors from the popular police drama, Adam-12.

The man constructing a mobile out of construction paper, string, and tiny cut out pictures of actors from the popular police television drama, Adam 12, is Mike. He works in the grocery department, but plays pranks on the produce manager because it is funny and deserved. Where are you going to hang that, Mike?

“Emergency fire sprinkler.”

Keep up the good work, Mike.

Good lord, I want to get out of this place.

Did I say that out loud?

I used to be a criminal. I broke my hand. We were making fenceposts for a nearby farm, I drove a wedge into a length of cedar to split it. I drove the second wedge further up, but hadn’t removed the first wedge. It popped out and crushed my knuckles. There was no hospital, no insurance. The farmer had duct tape. I discretely took some, wrapped my hand, taped the fingers together. The pain must have woke me in my sleep dozens of times that night. I wrote my dad about it. He thought it was hilarious. He wrote me back. “aww, widdle Owen bwoke his widdle pinky!” he wrote back. Fuck him. My brother and I were tree thieves. Take from the county land. The rich tourists land. Whatever. We had a truck. Demand. Didn’t make much but it was a steady operation. My brother would cut the trees down, I would split the wood with a maul, stack it high in our truck. We’d sell it off, when people in town realized they were cold. It was work.
This store. Working at this place makes me angry.

Lets walk the sales floor.

Everyone wants something they can’t have.

They want orange and pears and melons stacked in a neat, tall and perfect pyramid displays. They want to choose from the pyramid of oranges the exact one that they want. The entire thing will crumble, spill over to the floor. There will be fruit everywhere. They will be mad with you, because spheres do not make good building material. Or they will quickly and quietly walk away. You will have to pick it up and re-stack it, before the boss notices. You will get hung up on the why of it. You will question the usefulness of this job, as well as every other action you have ever made.

That customer standing over there, where grocery meets produce. She’s been staring at the same shelves too long. She has a question. She has that glint in her eye. The grocery guys are nowhere in sight. She will see us soon.

This is all so terrible. We have only been out here five minutes. I miss the smell of the woods. I miss the chaotic nature of the work. The time we felled a cedar tree and it split open when it landed, and it was full of bees. The time we ran out of gas because the shitty gas gauge in the truck always read ‘full’ until it ran to empty. The cold silence at night that you could listen to. Grasshoppers and wolves, nearby animals being caught by bigger nearby animals, letting out gurgling death-rattles. The ravens everywhere, during the days. The smell of sweat, sawdust, and rust. “WHERE IS THE SALSA LISA BRAND MILD SALSA. YOU NEVER HAVE THE MILD SALSA.”

The lady with the basketball shaped head asks.

“That isn’t true.” I say.

“YES, IT IS TRUE.” she says.

“No, it isn’t.”

This is a game I like to play with customers. She will not stop talking until I apologize. I have control. I will withhold the apology. The customer will grow irate, and remain locked in conflict, but will not understand why. The trainee appears to have wandered away. She is not learning. A shame.

“I’m going to open my OWN store, in Knighton! And we will always have Salsa Lisa Mild Salsa stocked, and people will always come to my store because you never have what they want here!”

“Let me know when you are accepting applications.”

The mouth is gaping, brows furrowed, and she makes a sound. “Ugh.” I have gone too far. She will want to speak with someone in management.

The trainee standing behind the lady asks, “is this it?”

The lady pays no attention.

“I am going to have you all fired.” she says.

The trainee says nothing. I say nothing. The lady looks back, grabs the jar of salsa lisa brand mild salsa away from the trainee, throws it in her cart and storms off, seeking a manager.

“It was just on the shelves, by the salsa…” the trainee says. “Where it was supposed to be.”

I just say, “yeah.”