“And then double strap them!” The white noise of the humming machinery is pierced by his voice. His face angry, his bare knees angular, he cuts through the still air of the night warehouse, “Do your effing job! Don’t stand there like a fool!”
Is that the same Leo Tolstoy lookalike who just cracked jokes and discussed world affairs in the warehouse canteen, raising his paper cup with free tea as though attending the Nobel prize ceremony with the most precious wine in crystal glass and the most refined conversation?
The hefty pallet jack rattles. The sight of a bearded man in a pullover hoodie with rusty spots on the sleeves, steering heavy machinery, rattles my nerves. I look at his face expecting more spite, but it’s my feet that I neglect. A large floor fan falls over when I lean back, led by an instinct. The huge metal fork meant to lift 5,000 pounds misses my feet by just an inch. And the menacing man with his machinery is gone in two seconds!
His behavior startles me no less than the pallet jack’s rattle. Just recently, only others were imbeciles, according to Rock (that was his name). For instance, during the first week on the job, I asked Rock if he knew that he bore an uncanny resemblance to War and Peace’s author and he boomed back “War and Piss!” At the time I totally missed the joke, not being able to hear the difference between “Peace” and “Piss.” Yet, his scrunchy beard suddenly prickled my face when he leaned towards my ear, “You are the smartest one here! Others can’t even read the signs that the pallets should be under 70 inches, let alone the colossal “Piss”!”
“No parcel is left behind” – there was another sign in the warehouse near the standup where we got summoned before our shift. It’s near that sign that Rock anointed me with his niceties. “Who are we?” Process assistants in safety vests elicited responses from the warehouse associates, with their scanners on slings, with their glove clips, with their hard hats looking like embattled, worn-out commandos. “We are wrap down!” We answered as our task was to wrap down after all other associates left. During one of the standups Rock approached me with a small plastic thingy and unexpectedly thrust it into my hands. I didn’t know what it was for.
Neither did I know why, after giving me an extra pair of rubberized gloves, an extra pair of yellow clips, his email address on a strip of paper with a promise to secure for me some editing jobs, and a couple of rolls for a label printer to “close” the pallets, he suddenly started losing his marbles.
At the time I already knew that the plastic thingy he thrust into my hands was used to hook together two blue rolling carts, as Rock always exceeded his duties, picking up two stacks of pallets at once with a long pallet jack or rolling two carts. Indeed, with the “No parcel is left behind” motto we were like dutiful soldiers, the knights of the night, safeguarding precious packages and steering them to the correct destination.
Except that recently this motto reminded me “svoih ne brosaem,” “we don’t abandon our kind” uttered by the Russian megalomaniac whose troops kept attacking Ukraine. Was it after the news of more Ukrainian casualties, including the children, that Rock stopped teaching me how to operate a shuttle dumper? Was it after the stories of Russian brutality surfaced that he gave up on showing me the staging areas for the afternoon freight? Is it because Russian drones attacked Ukrainian cities in the wee hours and school children had to study underground in subways that Rock gave up on teaching me how to break a “packages jam”?
Or, was it, perhaps, because I refused to go to “London” with him?
I couldn’t decipher his sudden change of behavior. Moreover, when I started getting used to the even-tempered humming of the machinery; to the repetitive, predictable scanning of packages; to the assured beeping that everything was scanned correctly and would reach its destination – in other words, everything that took my mind off my overdue, overly dramatic, not-reaching-any-destination divorce – Rock entered and reminded me of that unpredictable, controlling man.
The sweaty night job and a sweet cat jumping down from her watchtower – the windowsill – to meet me at the door after my shift – these two things replaced for me physical touch. And occasional warehouse eye candy, in white tube socks and with bronzed legs, crisscrossed by a scanner sling as though wearing a BDSM harness, aroused me but only a bit. When men pumped up their pneumatic pallet jacks, up and down, up and down, as though performing a sexual act, this was a suitable replacement of any relationship, so I said “No” when Rock suggested that I go to London with him.
This coincided with the news, “Russian forces hit a residential area in Odesa and Kharkiv, resulting in civilian deaths.”
Did he become hostile after the attacks or because I said “No” to London?
This was after I caught sight of Rock raising his paper cup with hot tea to his lips and uttering “I can still get it up!” Then somebody countered, “Say it to human resources!” And then Rock’s response, “I pump it up high to go over the platform into the trailer. If you raise the pallets up, it goes in smoothly.”
I stood dumbfounded. Did I really hear this?
And that’s when he asked:
“Will you go to London with me? You’ll get inspired by shady characters at Marshalsea Prison. That’s the prison where Charles Dicken’s father was jailed for his debts. I’ll make you those bloody English cucumber sandwiches and will print out your poems on an ancient print press.”
With these words, he thrust a piece of cardstock into my hands and his grey beard prickled my ear. The ten-minute break came to an end.
Ironically, my ex was a Brit. On our honeymoon we did go to London. He seemed to pretend that he cared that I was a writer and took me to pubs, saying that pubs were like writing workshops: all writers sit there. My addiction brewed in despair because my ex told me that he would destroy me if I filed for divorce. That’s when pubs did replace, for me, writers’ workshops for a couple of years.
“If you don’t clear the canteen, you’ll be reported to human resources.” Hearing the announcement, I rush back to the floor inadvertently taking with me the ticket to London.
Rock follows me with a grin: “Will you go to the Charles Dickens Christmas Fair with me at the Cow Palace this Sunday?”
“Thank you, but I am on my way to Inbound door 105 now.” I extend my hand to him with the ticket to what turned out to be, quite unexpectedly, a different London, but he lets it drop to the floor and it trembles near the large cooling fan.
The conveyor belts hum as if nothing is happening. I turn them off, as they are the only witnesses to my struggle with a stubborn Tolstoy-lookalike man. There is another reason to do it, to save electricity: the warehouse is empty and the morning sort employees who use them haven’t arrived. To stop the belts, I press a red button. It’s like a panic button because I do panic inside after seeing the look Rock gave me when I returned the ticket to the Dickens Fair. It is still crouching near the fan, shivering under the cool air, a tip-toeing ticket to fictional London!
Suddenly Rock appears as though from nowhere and shouts “Leave it on!” but I continue to the next door.
“Undo the straps!” I hear his voice booming beside me. The tension belts are holding a fluid load that is ready to spill.
How do I release the tension that is building up behind me? My neck stiffens, as I don’t look back. It’s unsafe to release tension belts on my own, as the trailer is filled to the brim.
I walk away and notice that the ticket has now blown away to “Returns,” where warehouse returns are processed. There is already someone’s footprint on it.
“Come to me!” Rock shouts from behind. I don’t look back. A psychologist’s advice to dealing with my narcissist ex was “to grey rock.” Now I grey rock the bully named Rock.
He kicks a pile of packages, and they fly up. I continue walking to a safe island, to a supervisor’s station that I see from afar. Composing myself in my boots with composite toes. Removing myself from the violent situation.
Can you imagine that recently, trying to write my first short story in English, I jotted down the following:
“R. is nearing retirement age but wears purple camo shorts like a child. He lounges on a bean bag in the canteen between his shifts. He told me that in the past he was a COBOL computer programmer but now he devotes his time to fixing antique organs he finds in people’s garages and maintaining an old printing press. Shamelessly toothless, he will still bite if you don’t bow to him, but he is super nice to me. His grey hair flowing, he is hunting “bastards who are dodging the work by hanging out in bathrooms or sleeping under the belts.” He also cracks jokes, occasionally at the expense of his co-workers. He complaints that in our warehouse Pakistanis and Indians all stick together chatting in Punjabi or Urdu, never learning to clearly communicate with regular folk.”
Why did he change towards me?
Today’s news is: “Two women and a girl of 14 are killed in an attack on a pharmacy not far from Ukraine’s northern border with Russia.”
Rock barks, “Don’t stay here just like an imbecile!” He is wearing his Scottish utility skirt with sharp cutter knives in its pockets. The pallet jack rattles. I just read that the Ukrainian leader blamed the US Congress for delaying the aid and I wondered if this is the reason for Rock’s volatility.
I proceed to the second trailer, but the trailer is so full of packages that they spill from the torn shuttles to the platform that connects the trailer and the warehouse, and I quickly close the door, to report the defect. My radio seems to be tuned to the wrong channel and I fiddle with it, while Rock is breathing down my neck.
Are our PPE, boots, hard hats and rubberized gloves, protective enough against a raging man’s outbursts? There is a short story by Vladimir Nabokov that suddenly comes to mind, it’s called “Vassily Shishkov.”
Yes, in the heat of the moment, I’d like to address some Russian classics. It’s true that Rock looks like Leo Tolstoy but my favorite writer is Vladimir Nabokov. I was born in St. Petersburg, just like him, seventy years after he had left our city, escaping from the Revolution.
This is Nabokov’s last short story written in Russian. Its protagonist, a poet Vassily Shishkov, can’t accept the small-mindedness of this mundane world which clashes with his delicate poetic nature. He doesn’t know how he can continue living, surrounded by greed, graft, and murders, when injustice takes place and children are killed.
Stay with me, Reader. I know that this is not the end that you expected for a story about a rancid co-worker, as ready to explode as a botulism-infected can, after a woman rejects his attempts to take her to an imaginary tour of Charles Dicken’s London. And indeed, Rock is breathing hard behind me and shouts, “WHY DON’T YOU DO WHAT I TELL YOU?”
I heard this so many times from my ex, but these words are ominous when there is nobody around, just Rock the Kilter and me. Can Rock the Kilter become Rock the Killer in this warehouse, half-empty, quarter-staffed, and half-sleepy at night? The Process Assistants station is completely deserted today. Supervisors have left and it’s only a few wrapdown workers either hiding in trailers and sleeping or half-heartedly, slowly finishing up their shift.
Vassily Shishkov wanted “to disappear, to dissolve” from this disjointed world and he vanished into thin air leaving only a collection of poems.
The transparence and soundness
Of such an unusual coffin.”
Did this fictional poet Vassily Shishkov – Vladimir Nabokov’s protagonist asks – overrate the firmness and reliability of his unusual tomb?
Did I overrate the transparence, soundness and firmness of my protection?
Let me expand and even shift this metaphor.
Can our writers’ lens, when we look at everything like it is fiction, like it doesn’t happen to us, or like it happens only for the purpose to give us a story that we can later retell with beautiful words, can this attitude “life as an unfolding work of art that we create” serve us as a form of protection?
Can I put up an invisible protective barrier between me and Rock, and many other grey rocks, imagining them simply as fictional props?
“WHY DON’T YOU DO WHAT I TELL YOU?” He shouts.
The Process Assistants station is deserted. There are no other co-workers. There is no safety island. My radio seems to be out of battery. Rock throws a piece of wooden pallet into my back. He is enraged.
“WHY DON’T YOU DO WHAT I TELL YOU?” He swears.
Because I have my own voice. Because I am a creator who has an ability to simultaneously participate in an event and to watch it from aside. Shouldn’t this make me somewhat detached from the cruelty of this world and therefore safe? Am I mistaken, thinking that PPE such as composed poems or prose, on top of composite toes and hard hats, will be enough to build a protective barrier?
In the heat of the moment, I realize that the radio is working again, it was just simply turned off. I turn it on and say clearly, “I would like to report a safety incident at Door 117.” Right as I utter these words, I hear a voice over the public announcement system, “Your shift is over. Thank you for your hard work.” What a convenient deus ex machina! We’ll be “written up,” if we linger here for more than five minutes after the end of the shift.
Checking my watch, I realize that indeed, it’s the end of my shift and that’s a perfect time to escape the situation rushing to the end of the story marked “Exit.”
–Margarita Meklina
Stories