“Let go of the pallet,” Paul said.
“I can finish.”
“I didn’t ask if you could finish.”
“I need the hours.”
“I know you do. Let go.”
George released his hand. Without the support he swayed. Paul caught his shoulder and kept him upright.
“You’re done on this dock,” Paul said.
The words struck with the same suddenness as the fall. George had spent the weekend trying to save his apartment. Now he imagined himself unemployed before the first month he had paid for had even begun.
“Paul, please.”
“Office,” Paul said. “Now.”
George followed him through the aisles. The shelves of screws, timber, and plumbing fittings passed in a blur. He kept his eyes fixed on the dusty floor because he did not want Janelle or anyone else to see the look on his face.
There were twenty different ways to lose a job. He had never imagined losing it because his body could no longer impersonate the man he had been before the war.
Chapter Twelve: A Job With a Chair
Paul’s office contained a metal desk, a pair of wooden chairs, two overflowing filing cabinets, and enough paper to suggest the business was being run by a person who regarded computers as an unfortunate fashion. A small refrigerator buzzed beneath the window. On the wall hung a photograph of Paul and his wife standing outside the store on its first anniversary, when he still had dark hair and the parking lot was unpaved.
George sat in the visitor chair with his right leg extended. He wanted to ask whether he was fired and could not make the words come out.
Paul handed him a bottle of water, then took one himself. He waited while George drank.
“I saw the fair video,” Paul said.
George closed his eyes briefly. “I can explain.”
“You don’t have to explain it to me. But I’m going to tell you what I saw.”
He leaned against the desk.
“I saw a man with a bad leg who was scared of losing something important. I saw him make a choice that worked for about four seconds. And then I saw him walk away like his knee was on fire. Is that roughly accurate?”
George looked at the dusty cuffs of his jeans. “Close enough.”
“You know what I didn’t see?”
“What?”
“A man who should’ve been carrying eighty-pound bags this morning.”
George swallowed. “I can’t lose the job.”
“Nobody said you’re losing it.”
“You said I’m done on the dock.”
“I did. And I’m not taking that back.”
Paul picked up a thick binder from the desk and dropped it in front of George. Shipping manifests, purchase orders, vendor invoices, inventory counts. The pages were divided by handwritten labels, most of them in the careful print of a man named Dave Jensen, who had managed the store’s inventory for twelve years before retiring on Friday.
“Dave moved to Florida,” Paul said. “His daughter’s having a baby. He’s been threatening to leave for two years, and now he finally did. I need an inventory manager.”
George looked from the binder to Paul’s face.
“You want me to hire somebody?”
“I want you to take the job.”
For several seconds George said nothing. He had heard the words but could not fit them into his understanding of the day. Five minutes earlier he had been afraid of losing his wages. Now Paul was asking him to take responsibility for every item that entered and left the building.
“I load trucks,” George said.
“You also caught a duplicate shipment on Tuesday before it got unloaded. You found a carton of wrong-sized fittings last month by reading a label nobody else bothered to read. You keep a notebook of vendor errors because you hate repeating mistakes. I noticed.”
“That doesn’t make me an inventory manager.”
“It makes you trainable. That’s more important.”
George turned a page in the binder. It showed a table of quantities, purchase-order numbers, and dates. He could follow it without difficulty. He had done more complicated logistics work in the Marines, though he had never described it that way on a résumé.
“Dave knew every supplier,” he said.
“He did. You’ll learn. Janelle knows the computer system better than either of us. She can show you.”
“What about the pay?”
Paul folded his arms. “Nineteen an hour. Full-time. Forty hours guaranteed unless the entire store closes. Health insurance once the eligibility period is up. And I’m not asking you to unload trucks. Ever again, if I can help it.”
George looked at him. He had been earning fifteen dollars an hour with inconsistent shifts, his income dropping whenever the store was quiet or his knee failed him. Nineteen dollars and guaranteed hours would not make him wealthy. It would allow the next month to resemble the last one less closely.
“Why?” he asked.
Paul did not pretend not to understand.
