Warehouse Parts 1, 2, 3, & 4

Arrive: Scalpel

The first thing I was given when I got to the Warehouse was a razor blade. That first sentence is a lie. The first thing I was given when I got here was a safety knife, but I complained and they gave me a razor blade instead. I was content with that. My job is simple, I dismantle so others can dismantle so others can stack, so others can dismantle, move, eat, sleep, die. I was content with that. My job is to cut the plastic wrapping off large stacks of boxes on forklift pallets, boxes containing eggs, containing raspberries, containing yogurt and hummus and cartons of orange juice.

I pretend while I move from stack to stack cutting plastic, I am a doctor with a scalpel. I take the razor blade and draw it along the surface of the plastic downwards, parting the cellophane covering with ease. The plastic is skin and I am cutting to save a life. I imagine that all skin will peel away softly like the tension has been cut. I imagine that when I slide my scalpel downwards the skin will go slack; it will fall around my patient’s feet like a silk robe and show my patient for what she really is.

First Break: LARP

Maria sits close to me, her black curls draped on my forearm tickle my hairs till goose bumps rise. She looks down, takes a drag and then leans in closer. I can smell the menthol on her breath. She speaks in quiet lisps through black front teeth.
“I have thirty pounds of leather armor that I made myself. I have press-on Elf-ears. I have a tent with Runes carved into the front post and Magic Wards sewn into the canvass. I have two swords, each one is enchanted, one fire and one ice. My friends are monks, priests and wizards. I run as a paladin. We walk around and buy drinks at the tavern. The people who run the program deep in the forests of New Jersey also work as NPCs, non- player characters, and serve us ale, turkey legs and rye bread. They act as smiths and priests, they repair our weapons and armor, and they teach us spells and sell us potions. Some of the workers play as goblins or ghouls and we can fight them at predetermined locations for experience. And for three days I can curl up with my girlfriend beneath the stars, feel her head on my breast; we can be as happy as hero and heroine while we smoke Newports and bad weed in the tent. I always cry into her arms when this all ends and I have to go back to the warehouse and wait for the day that I look like my mother, lose my front teeth and the shimmer in my hair, my eyes rot in my sockets and I realize that none of it was as real as those three days.”

Second Break: Push

I gulp down cigarette smoke like cheap beer during my break. The smoking area adjacent to the cafeteria in the Versacold Warehouse in Bath, Pennsylvania reminds me of home, eight miles from here down the road in Bethlehem. In the glow from the spotlight shining on the Versacold sign on the outside of the warehouse wall I can see gnats swarming in

the summer heat above my head, being battered by the warm July wind. And I am glad they can’t get down here.
Moses, seated next to me, smoking a Newport 100 menthol cigarette, leans back in the red plastic chair and rests his head on the black bars of the fence enclosing the smoking area. His gloves hang from the kangaroo pocket of his sweatshirt, white and limp like a dead man’s hands, ripped fingers ‘cause he died working. And its true, if I had to work at the Versacold Warehouse in Bath, Pennsylvania for the rest of my life I might just end up with hands like that.

Moses, still sitting, smoking his Newport to the filter, speaks in hushed Spanish to Allan and Lucida, and by the rapt looks on their faces I can see he is telling a story. They don’t include me because I can’t speak Spanish and I don’t smoke Newports and I don’t actually work there, I’m just temporary. But they’re still nice to me. I try to blow a smoke ring but the warm July wind disturbs the smoke and carries it away from me. I lean back and put my head on the black bars of the fence and turn away from Moses. Allan and Lucida laugh and I smile. Break time ends and Moses stands up and holds out his torn, dead hand for me to take.

“Just another push” he says to me in English.

Third Break: On Whistling Danny Boy in the Bread Room of the Versacold Warehouse in Bath, PA- or – Two Men Discuss the Proper Way to Beat their Wives in Broken Haitian French.

The dry-goods room is empty except for my broom, my pushcart and myself, walking from aisle to aisle. An hour ago, the concrete floor had been packed with bread goods and boxes of bananas, but now only their dust and shadows remain. I had been put on cleanup duty and it was my job to sweep those shadows away. I spend my time walking and singing into my broom handle, slow songs from a singer whose words echo and haunt the high ceilings. I whistle a tune I was familiar with but did not know all of the words to. “Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling, from glen to glen...” is what I sing in my head, slowly trailing off towards the end. I repeat the tune again, and again, and with each new aisle I start my push with the tune fragment, till I can again slouch towards Bethlehem, my parent’s house.
Oh Danny boy, the pipes the pipes are calling, and then I will slip into another song like when I sit in church and listen to the psalms. I decided I would finish this workday with a somber “Amen” when I stepped foot outside the warehouse. I whistled again.
I heard, from beyond my mind’s ear yet still in synch with my mental rhythm, “oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling...” and it pulled me from my dust-mopping dream state. It pulled hard enough that I let go of my pushcart and paused. I put the dust mop in the pushcart. I walked to the east end of the aisle and as I round the corner I see the door to the freezer, activated by the little electronic eye poised above the door, open for a man driving an electric forklift, holding the wheel like reigns on a chariot. He is black, darker than anyone I had ever seen. He drove his four horsepower forklift at its highest speed, maybe 5 miles an hour, honking as he sped through the door. He was greeted by dozens of other honks from all those other forklifts speeding through the freezer, working like ants trying to feed a queen. And then I heard it again.
“Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling, from glen to glen...”

My last break, nine to nine fifteen. I am walking back through the warehouse when my walkie-talkie startles me.
“James?” Lucida is on the line; her shrill but powerful voice speaks English with a thick Dominican accent.

Shaking me out of my daydream, I stand, like I had been woken by a nightmare; one of those falling dreams. I relax. Again, the walkie-talkie shatters the silence but my mind is ready for it this time.
“James? The bread room looks good, take twenty instead of fifteen.”

“Ok”
My last break, nine to nine twenty. I make it through the double doors and through the cafeteria to the outside smoking section. I grab a chair from the center and sit along the black fence. I rest my head back against the bars. To my left, an old man sits, smoking Marlboro one hundreds. He chuckles. In the corner opposite mine a group of guys not much older than me sit talking about the origins of certain languages, Spanish in particular. One chimes in that it originated from Portuguese. I don’t speak up to correct; I just sink a little lower and light a cigarette.
Next to me sit three black men, older than me by at least ten years, except for the last who couldn’t have been older than seventeen. The man to my right leans back with his legs splayed and arms crossed. The man next to him sits with his elbows on his knees, motioning with a Newport in hand. The boy on the end fidgets. They’re angry. The man with crossed arms starts.
“Man she been telling me to stop going out and shit, like, I can’t have my own life. She tells me I have to watch the kids, teach them how to brush their teeth, but fuck, that’s her job. She stays home watching the kids, watching TV, talking to her mom, and she doesn’t teach them shit. Then she yells at me for going to work and for trying to relax.”
“That’s why. That’s why I told my girl as soon as she had a kid and moved in with me that I wouldn’t put up with that shit. I told her I want her to have my dinner cooked when I come home, that I don’t want to deal with the kid till he’s older unless I have to hit him. And when she complained about not being able to see her friends I hit her too. I said, ‘I let you stay here, pay for your ass and your kid, and you complain?’”
“She tells me I have to support her when she goes to school now. Where was that support when I told her I wanted to go back to school? It was always her and the baby that came first. I had dreams. I had shit I wanted to do and she only yelled at me.”
The boy gets up.
“You have to tell her to get off her ass and do something for you for once.”
“You seen Jay? I haven’t and do you know why? He drove me home one day and while we were stopped at a red light he started to cry. You ever seen one of your boys cry? You ever see that shit? It tore me up to see him like that. His girl is keeping him down too. He told me she wouldn’t let him go back to school until she had, till she’s making more money than he is. He was crying man, saying he had dreams, and she broke him. She broke him. I don’t want that to be me, I won’t let that happen."
“You don’t have to. Just be a man and hit her and tell her to stay in her place.”
They were silent while the one with crossed arms lit a cigarette. The man next to him pulled out another and lit it from the butt of his previous cigarette. I continued to smoke mine. He started motioning again. He spoke again with a lower tone than earlier.

“When my mother died, I was with her. And I love my mother like I love my god and I held her hand and waited with her. She turned to me and said ‘Vive avec moi dans ton coeur, mais vive pour toi avec ta tête.’” He pounded his chest at “Coeur” and his tone rose and his voice got louder at “tête”. “And that’s what you got to do with your woman. Live with your head.”

It was nine fifteen and the supervisor came out and told everyone to get back to work. The two next to me got up and shuffled out. The one with his elbows on his knees walked into the light pouring from the cafeteria and I saw his face and skin. It was rough and angry. His skin was black, darker than anyone I had ever seen. I sat and smoked a cigarette alone in the warm July wind. At nine twenty I shuffled inside to go back to work