The Start of Another Job
by
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And before John could draw breath, the new man stuck out his hand. "My name is Willie," he said. "John," John retorted as he shook Willie’s hand. It was the first time he had shaken hands in the Sam Wirt Camp. "John," said Willie as the foreman led them to a row and left them there, "can you show me how to do this? I worked in the fields, but never in the carrots. You see, yesterday I picked grapes and I made only three dollars and seventy cents, and the day before . . ." "Watch," John said. And in five minutes John had Willie topping carrots just right. Like John, he snapped with his wrist, and every so often he went a step further on the really thin ones – snapping thumb and middle finger together like garden shears, cutting right through the carrots. "Oh, I see," Willie said. "Like a chicken’s neck, you say. We used to have chickens back home." "What happened?" John asked. He was beginning to feel as if he had been drinking. "To what?" "To the chickens. What happened to them?" "Oh. They’re still there." "Oh . . ." "But I am not," Willie said. "Because I am here. "Oh," John said. Now he really had it figured. And his head felt light and his body felt hard and strong from his cheekbones to his toes, just as if he were drunk. He felt drunk. "I don’t know," Willie said. "We used to raise chickens at home. But I could never understand about the eggs. Even though I liked to eat eggs. I still do." "Know what you mean," John told him, although he had no clue. But he knew the particular feel of fermentation, when his body went hard and then numb, and a red wave of heat circled his forehead; and finally thousands of bubbles fled like soda pop to his tongue, sending it loose and wagging. "I know what you mean, Willie," he repeated. "It’s hard to know what to do. About eating eggs and things like that. But right now we got to work a little faster, or we’ll both be out of a job."
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About the Book
Carrot toppers and chief cooks and bottle washers, district attorneys and tow-truck dispatchers, bright-eyed rookies and hollow-eyed veterans, job seekers and job jumpers: All the people in these dozen stories stand besotted with their own work. They all push their work buttons down as far as they will go, until they reach breaking points. Some do break, while others take a break –
Yet each one knows there can be no turning back, and whether one vaults over the rainbow or runs in place, tomorrow will be the bright trembling Start of Another Job.
About the Author
The author lives in New England with his wife, Virginia. He has worked as a journalist and editor, fund-raiser and market researcher, Medicaid case worker, radio dispatcher, laborer, keypunch operator, clerk, human services worker and counselor, radio dispatcher and key punch operator. He grew up in New Jersey, went to school at Antioch College, in Ohio, and lived in various parts of the country before settling in place about twenty years ago. He has been writing fiction, fact, opinion, and poetry for more than forty years; and his work has appeared in newspapers, magazines, journals, and the short fiction anthology After the Fall. Who Shall Live, a novel, was published earlier this year by 1stBooks Library, and a third book, Troll Call, will appear later this year. The author believes that the pen is indeed mightier than the sword.