13. Beckett #3
"Yeah." She chewed. Swallowed. "You don't talk like somebody who usually works nights in a sewing mill."
I looked at her.
She shrugged.
"Just saying."
I dried my hands carefully on a paper towel.
The cuts stung.
"I needed work," I said.
"Uh-huh."
She took another bite.
"There's a plant thirty miles north pays better," she said. "Auto parts. They're always hiring."
"I didn't want auto parts."
"Why not?"
I didn't answer.
She waited.
Took another bite of the granola bar.
Chewed.
Swallowed.
"You picked this place for a reason," she said. "I'm just asking what it is."
"Does it matter?"
"Not to me," she said. "But you're the one who moved here from New York to work nights for minimum wage. So it probably matters to you."
She wasn't wrong.
"I wanted to do something that mattered," I said.
"Auto parts matter. People need cars."
"That's not what I mean."
"Then what do you mean?"
I looked at my hands.
The skin was red and raw. The splits were clean but deep.
They'd heal.
Everything healed eventually.
"I've had clothes made for twenty years," I said finally. "Thousands of them. I've never once made anything anybody actually needed."
The words came out quieter than I'd meant them to.
Kiana looked at me for a long moment.
Then she nodded.
"Yeah," she said. "Okay."
She finished the granola bar.
Tossed the wrapper in the trash.
"These blankets go to the state hospital system," she said. "You know that?"
"I know."
"Two hundred washes," she said. "That's the contract. Most mills do a hundred fifty. We do two hundred."
"I heard."
"You know why?"
I shook my head.
"Because somebody's kid is going to be wrapped in one of these when they're sick," she said. "And it's going to be washed two hundred times before it wears out. And every single one of those times it's going to be clean and it's going to be soft and it's going to do what it's supposed to do."
She looked at me.
"That's what we make here," she said. "Things people actually need."
I looked at her.
"Yeah," I said.
"So if that's what you're looking for," she said, "you came to the right place."
"I think I did."
"Good."
She pushed off the counter.
"Come on," she said. "Shift's almost over."
"Kiana," I said.
She stopped.
Looked back.
"Thank you," I said.
She shrugged.
"For what?"
"For explaining it."
She looked at me for a second.
"You're welcome," she said.
At six I clocked out.
The time clock was near the front entrance. An old mechanical thing that stamped the card with a heavy chunk.
I pulled my card and looked at it.
Ben Krawiec.
10:00 PM - 6:00 AM.
Eight hours.
The first eight hours I'd worked for anyone but myself in twenty years.
Hazel was standing by the door with her coat on.
Waiting.
"You're back at ten," she said.
"All right."
She looked at me for a second.
Not unkindly.
Just looking.
"Your hands are bleeding," she said.
I glanced down.
The gloves were stained dark at the fingertips.
"I'll take care of it," I said.
"There's a drugstore two blocks down," she said. "They open at seven. Get proper bandages."
"I will."
"And gloves that fit," she said. "You can't work if your hands don't work."
I nodded.
She studied me for another moment.
"You did all right tonight," she said.
It wasn't praise.
Just a statement of fact.
"Thank you," I said.
"Ray said you tried to reorganize the carry system."
I felt my face get hot.
"I was wrong," I said.
"Yes," she said. "You were."
She looked at me.
"But you listened when he corrected you," she said. "That's something."
"I'm trying."
"Keep trying," she said. "And don't do it again."
"I won't."
"Good."
She turned and walked out.
I followed a few seconds later.
I walked back through town as the sun came up.
The sky was gray. Not quite light yet. But getting there.
Main Street was quiet.
A few cars parked along the curb. A couple of shops with their lights still off.
A diner on the corner with its sign lit up.
I could smell coffee from the sidewalk.
I kept walking.
I turned at the corner and climbed the stairs on the side of the building.
The room I'd rented was on the second floor.
Above a hardware shop that wasn't open yet.
The stairs were narrow and the railing was loose.
I unlocked the door at the top and went inside.
One room.
A bed. A table. A chair. A window that looked out onto the street.
The bathroom was down the hall. Shared with two other tenants I hadn't met yet.
I'd paid two weeks in advance. Cash. The landlord hadn't asked questions.
I sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled off the gloves.
My hands were worse than I'd thought.
The splits had opened up wide. Deep enough that I could see the raw skin underneath.
I went down the hall to the bathroom and ran them under cold water.
It stung.
I wrapped them in gauze I'd bought at the drugstore when I'd first arrived in Ardis. Then I went back to the room and lay down on the bed.
The ceiling had a water stain in the corner.
I stared at it.
For the first time since I was twenty-four I was a man in a town, and nobody in it knew my name.
And the name wouldn't help me if they did.