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you behind the wheel or hire somebody else, and that’ll cut into your hours and Pat’s hours, unfortunately.”
    He took a bite of his sandwich and chewed, not looking at me. I didn’t know what else to say, so I waited. Greg finished his lunch while I stared at Miss January and Miss February on the wall behind him. Great West Pool was not living up to its promise. My job was making me into a strange and hamfisted version of myself, one suspended between the beginning and end of the school year. I felt like I was dangling from the tips of a forklift. My first summertime blues.
    Greg crumpled his lunch bag and shot it basketball-style into the waste bin, then broke into a Monty Python voice.
    â€œOh, hello, sir. I came here for an argument. Do you have one, an argument? I would like an argument, please.”
    â€œNo,” I muttered. “I don’t. No argument from the feeb.”
    â€œWell, sir, Sir Feeb, let’s just say I like you, so we’ll just skip all the argument for now and see how you do for the next few days. You drive, just do your best, and most of all—and I mean it—pay fucking attention fucking all the fucking time, sir.”
    As I said, I liked Greg.
    â€œAnd stay away from boss-man’s van,” he added.
    I did. I gave it my best for the next few days, and I paid all the fucking attention I fucking could fucking pay. As promised, I did it all a safe distance from the SRVIVR van. I did just fine, too. Until I ran over Pat.

    I remember barreling around the corner of the building, a box of lining on my forks, eager to load the waiting semitrailer as fast as I could. I was in a hurry because some of the invoice items had been misplaced, and things were getting backed up. When I rounded the corner of the building, I saw nothing other than a Patless straightaway to the trailer.
    Along the edge of the building, in its shadow, just ahead of me and to the left, I saw the two or three towers of wooden palettes stacked under the rooftop overhang. I also saw bright sunlit cement and the bleached gray semitrailer, about thirty yards ahead. But I didn’t catch, despite the twenty yards between us, Pat in the shade trying to pull a palette down from the stack, right there in front of me, between the forklift and the trailer. I must have stared at him and the space he occupied for a good five seconds as I sped towards him.
    Then an image flashed. He materialized in my eye, just to the left of the forks, a body in contorted motion as he leapt out of the way, safe. Safe and toxic with rage.
    Dumb as a lemming, I locked the brakes, and instead of driving ahead, as fast as I could, past the trailer and out of the parking lot, on to 200th street and south for home, or Mexico, or anywhere safe, I stopped to see if he was okay.
    â€œWow, sorry about that.”
    Pat flipped his mullet.
    â€œYou dick, you did that on purpose!” He stormed towards me. “On purpose! You’re fucking dead, Knighton, dead!”
    Another lesson in warehouse culture steamrolled my way. Off came Pat’s Slack Alice t-shirt. As he picked up speed, his hands balled into fists. He hurled threats and promises of
bodily harm, in customary preparation for heavy metal justice. In this kind of trial, court is a loading dock, and arguments are issued in the form of furious pastings. Through drubbings we were meant to reconcile differences or settle old scores. The jury of a few other guys didn’t watch in silent judgment. They cheered for blood, anybody’s blood.
    â€œNo! Pat, no, I didn’t. Really—” I pleaded. “It was a mistake, Pat. It was a mistake!”
    For added denial, I waved the palms of my hands back and forth in front of me, as if wiping the accident away like a smudge in the air. Pleading only fueled him. He continued to bull my way, a shirtless fury hell bent on punching my clock. Without stopping, he scooped a heavy roll of packing tape from the