Chương 82: Scab

I never saw myself as a particularly ambitious man, but it never occurred to me how averse I would be to the notion of getting up for the shift of a job. Probably from spending too much time sleeping in squats for the past half of a year before getting put right into a government job. Disturbingly, I actually wasn't bothered. Maybe that was something to be concerned about, a willingness to default to a more mundane job. For now, it wasn't worth thinking about too hard. I hadn't even tried the job yet.

Chris and I were dropped off at a reasonable spot to walk to the warehouse to avoid a clear trail. And of course, Chris couldn't try to keep quiet on the trip.

"So, what are you expecting in there?" He asked. I shook my head.

"Shelves and boxes."

"It can't just be that!"

"Setting up too many expectations in advance means I'll jump at shadows. You know how hard it is for me to try not doing that? We're going into a building full of henches, undercover, to work with them. One slip of the tongue from either of us and we're going to have to brawl our way out. I can hold back for a few guys, but if I slip even slightly, someone could get seriously hurt."

"Leo-""I'm trying not to be that person anymore, Chris." My hands slipped into my pockets as my gaze was focusing ahead.

"I'm doing my best to take this hero shit seriously. They're not catching me on camera with blood on my hands again." There was silence for a few seconds, broken up by the sound of him chuckling.

"Did that sound cool in your head?" My gaze snapped over to him.

"Excuse me?" He put on a gruffer voice.

"'I'm doing my best to take this hero spit seriously.' Listen to you!" He then started laughing.

"I just sound like that."

"You are eighteen years old! No you don't! You just try to because you think that's what sounds intimidating."

"I don't really think about how I sound at all. And have you ever heard me sound any higher pitched?" Chris shrugged, weaving out of the way from a stop sign without even looking at it.

"Well, no, but eighteen year olds don't normally put on that kind of voice. But at least you're trying to make better soundbites."

"I'm not trying anything! And you seem real giddy after all the issues you were having with this mission." He shrugged.

"It doesn't feel that bad if all I'm doing is pretending to do accounting. It's not like I'm committing any crimes." I stopped for a moment, watching a car passing as I gathered my thoughts.

"I think that might be illegal. Wouldn't that be fraud?"

"... I mean, you've got to be licensed, but if someone in admin's doing it, they're probably certified. That's gotta be fine,""Listen to you. Trying to play fast and loose with the laws now." Chris scoffed.

"I'm just trying to be rational here."

"Yeah. But you couldn't even try to take what I was saying seriously."

"No, it is serious," he blurted out, looking ahead as the smile faded from his face.

"You're completely right to want to keep it safe. Just because we're with the government doesn't mean we need to be their killers. We should be trying to keep things as nonlethal as possible. Even for bad guys. We're still heroes. It's a good thing to recognize that. If it gets hectic, come to me. I'll help make sure we get out of there without anyone getting really hurt." My throat began to dry as I heard that. Didn't even know why it struck me that hard.

"It's just..." He looked back to me, putting on a smile that didn't reach his eyes.

"Back when we first met? You wouldn't have told me any of this. Nor would you be so... theatrical about it. I couldn't help but find it funny, that you're opening up a lot more than you think." My face scrunched, trying to figure out what the Hell that could really mean. I just shook my head, focusing on the road ahead.

"Whatever." A few more minutes of silent trudging later, we finally made it to the shipping location. A wide parking lot surrounded a similarly large slate-grey cube of a building. The lot itself only had one entrance accessible from this side: A gate that broke the monotony of fencing on either side of it. By the gate sat two men in beach chairs. Old. Worn by the friction of a hard experience. One spoke, smoke coming from his mouth that he likely borrowed from the cigarette between his fingers.

"You two goin' into that warehouse?" I nodded.

"Yeah."

"How much they payin' you?" Probably shouldn't have told him. But I wasn't exactly considering risks, here.

"Twelve an hour. Why?" He scoffed, letting out a whooping laugh before looking to the other man.

"They're gettin' paid a fuckin' dollar more than us. You believe that shit?" The other man laughed and nodded.

"Actual bullshit, dude," the other man said, rubbing his bald head.

"And you got told you're scabs, right? That you're here to do the job while we're trying to get some pay to actually match our fuckin' bills?" I shrugged, making my way to the gate. The smoking man put an arm in the way.

"Come on, kid. Answer his question. We're not gonna stop you from going in. Just wanna vent about this since we're not allowed at the negotiations right now." I let out an exhale. Chris tapped my arm but I just kind of nudged him off.

"Yeah. We were told we're covering while you guys get that figured out. It's what, forty extra bucks a week? You think it really matters that much?" The smoking man shook his head, taking a drag.

"Kid, we get eighty eight bucks at the end of the day. We lose eight of that to Uncle Sam. We lose four more from Aunt Virginia. Six more gets taken to pay for my dad's health insurance and the welfare for the guys who don't wanna work. Then after insurance and my retirement account, I take home sixty-two of those dollars." Was trying to math out the gap there when the bald man spoke.

"I take sixty-five. I turned down insurance."

"Regardless," the smoking man said.

"You're not paying any of that. You're just getting the twelve bucks every hour. At eight hours, that's ninety six dollars. You're taking home thirty more fuckin' dollars than us at the end of the day. Multiply that by five. Hundred extra bucks for no good reason. How's that fair? I've been working at this shipping house before Jonesy got it. Haven't gotten a raise in fifteen years." Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

Rolling my eyes, I took a couple more steps towards the gate.

"Look, I'm sorry to hear that. I'm just trying to get work done too." The smoking man's hand got in the way again.

"I get you're a bit too young to really get it. I won't take up any more of your time after I say this: You're helping a piece of shit and you ain't much better for it." Reaching down, I pinched the unburnt portion of his cigarette, lightly tugging half of it off and dropping it on the ground.

"You ever put your hand in front of me again, I'm breaking it," I warned, pushing through the gate. The smoking man threw his hands up in a mix of exasperated concession and likely an attempt to feign defense. Fine by me, he could be as pissy as he wanted. I'm gonna be the reason he gets to go to bed safe tonight.

"You didn't need to be that aggressive," Chris noted after we were out of earshot.

"I do. I'm the one playing the scumbag. Imagine if any of the other scabs spotted me trying to prostrate before him."

"Prostrate? When'd you learn that one?"

"One of my classes is an English class. I got a dictionary out of it." Chris squinted at me for a few moments before shaking his head.

"I'm going off-track. That kind of clash over the workers getting paid means you just ignore him or act ignorant and move on. These guys are getting screwed out of work, they're probably not getting paid at all right now. You might've just seriously raised tensions here."

"Doubt it. If all of them are like those too, they're too old and out of shape to do anything serious. Not much they could do." As I stated that, I glanced around, just confirming the parking lot was mostly empty. There were cars parked a good hundred feet away, but that didn't raise any concerns for me. Some trucks passed by through another entrance, but their windows were up. They wouldn't be able to hear.

"I think I heard about something being done happening in Minnesota like eighty years ago. Burnt a couple warehouses down." I shrugged.

"And if that happens, we suit up and do what we can to make sure the henches here don't hurt anyone. Your bag's packed, right?"

"Yeah, yours?"

"I don't go anywhere without it," I assured, pushing open the door to the warehouse. The activity was already high, even at this early point. The amount of people weaving through the labyrinthine arrays of shelves didn't match the amount of cars I saw. An entire swarm was set on just pulling boxes out of trucks, either by hand or with forklifts. They all stood out with bright white hardhats against the greys and browns that colored the entire facility. One guy was at the nearby punchclock, filling out a notepad.

I approached him, speaking up.

"Hey, where's Jonesy? We're a couple of his temps." The man pointed down further along the warehouse.

"Office is that way." He glanced at Chris, cocking his head.

"... That kid supposed to be here? He forklift certed or something?" Chris spoke up.

"Uh, no, I'm here to help with the books." The warehouse worker shrugged, "Ain't my business." With that set, we made it over to the office where Jonesy was henpecking away at a computer's keyboard. The office stunk like tobacco, as though the aroma was emitting from all the little baseball trophies and cheap furniture littering the place. I noticed a door on the other end of the room. Large and wooden. Had a knob instead of a handle, which made me think it wasn't to a bathroom.

"Oh, there's Harry and uh... what's your name again?"

"Charlie," Chris stated.

"Charlie, that's it!" Jonesy got up from his desk, his full appearance clear. Closer to Chris' height. Maybe in his fifties. Thick grey hair, seemed to grow more "out" than "down." His face was long and his deep-set eyes sat behind a pair of thin-rimmed glasses. The stranger part was the bright red floral shirt he wore. Not very professional, but who was I to judge. We both took a moment to shake his hand before he started.

"Alright, Charlie, you're gonna be headin' upstairs to my accounting office. Miss Tina is going to show you the ropes. I'll be showing Harry around for what I need him for."

"Uh, yeah, okay," Chris agreed. Jonesy pointed a thumb to the door behind him.

"Go through that door, go up the stairs, and you'll end up right in the office. You get a great view of the whole facility!" When Chris made his way through that door, Jonesy put a hand on my back and led me out of the office after grabbing an empty clipboard and a spare hardhat.

"Alright, so I'll be clear with you here. Everyone in here's from the Facebook group. And word's spread to the point on average they'll know you're a superhuman, so don't worry about using your thing. The main task I want you to do is move the heavier cargo when all the forklifts are held up." He pointed to the loading bays where the forklifts were moving large crates out. Honestly, it looked like that'd be a cakewalk besides getting anything onto higher shelves.

Maybe unwieldy due to the shape, but that felt minor in comparison.

"Otherwise," he explained, approaching a table by the punchclock and picking up a stack of papers and fit them into the clipboard.

"You're gonna go through aisles and write down the numbers under each barcode on a box. If you can't reach a shelf, go get a ladder. This is your downtime when you're not moving heavy cargo in and out. Speaking of which," he noted, glancing back towards the loading bay. I looked with him, where it was apparent that all the forklifts were moving away while a few people were struggling with moving a larger crate by themselves.

"Time for you to do your thing. You get a half-hour lunch, you choose when." Slapping the hardhat onto my head, he shoved at my back and sent me stumbling off towards the loading bay. Hands in my pockets, I strolled over like it was nothing while the movers glanced over at me. There were initially some curious expressions before one went "Oh I think that's the new kid who just joined the Circle. Watch this shit." So Jonesy wasn't kidding about my reputation preceding me.

After slipping the clipboard into my jacket, I made my way up to the opened truck. I tried working my fingers under the long wooden crate the others were struggling with. While it would be easy to just jam my hands in to pick it up, I knew for a fact there'd be a lot of trouble for damaging the cargo. I had to somehow be delicate with something this heavy. Finding a proper bit of purchase on the top was easy, on the bottom, not so much.

It was this balancing act of pushing down on one end to try and tip it up and slide it back without splitting the container in half. Every wobbling of the crate prompted sounds of surprise and anticipation that died down whenever it descended back to the bed of the truck. After finally sliding it out enough to get my hands under it, I carefully hefted it out of the truck proper to the cheers and surprise of the surrounding workers.

"God damn, look at that!"

"Man I wish I could lift shit like that, wouldn't need a fuckin' cherry picker when I work on my V8."

"Dude, does that hurt to do?" I shook my head as I spanned my arms out to keep it properly over head.

"No, not really," I confirmed. It was pretty light for me, but I knew if I let it work its own weight around, there'd be a huge mess.

"But I'd appreciate someone pointing out where the Hell I should put this thing." One of the men led me down one of the aisles, where I slid the crate onto the shelf with a heavy thud.

"What's even in this, anyway?"

"Those long crates?" The man accompanying me asked.

"I think they're canoes. There's a lot of boating stuff up here." Looking over the crate, my brow furrowed. I saw a barcode, complete with numbers, but no other label.

"Hm."

"Could be the bigger parts for like a motorboat. I know this stuff is all above board, Jonesy's company has a deal with... I think it's Sea Ray?"

"Neat. I'll have to ask him later," I noted as I tried to mentally etch the number above the barcode into my head. If I could get to Chris later, I could have him look into it for me. He nodded, before a wide hand clapped me on the back.

"You're already impressin' me, bud. Keep on helping us out and they might make you permanent here," he said, before waddling back off to the loading bay. That sensation sat on my back oddly. Wasn't really used to genuinely getting told I did something right. Shame it's from a bunch of people I was gonna end up probably putting in jail.