Temp agency — By Jonathan Kime
artwork by Sonia Redfern
Part the clear plastic curtains separating downstairs from upstairs, briefly feel the air conditioning on my face. Quickly lose that feeling as I push the cart up the ramp, back into the elevated oven, over scarred pine planked floors, up into the brick-walled warehouse. Cart loaded with 50-pound spools of fabric. Seven, eight, nine spools per cart. Three industrial floor fans, four feet in diameter, droning like baritone versions of white noise machines. Racks and racks of fabric waiting for trucks. Waiting to become shirts or socks. Rack C-6, unload a spool. Rack H-11, unload another spool. Temp agency job, summer, textile mill, droning, spools, empty the cart, return it, get a new one, repeat. Time stops. Time never stops. Time is a construct.
A man approaches me, short, surly, tells me the signs on the racks need redoing. Shows me posterboard and markers. No problem, I say. Comes back by when I’m mid-task. What the hell is that he says. Is it a backerds F or something? That’s what he says, backerds. It’s a seven, I say, a slash through it so no one thinks it’s a one. Are you part Mexican or something he says. Except he uses a different word for Mexican. A dangerous, obtuse smile. Dimwitted idea of wit. This is where I’m from.
Later, the breakroom, air-conditioning. Talking to Lester. Tell him about the seven that was not a backwards F. Tell him about the guy, what he said. Lester knows the man, knows many men like this, says he’s the kind of man who still says colored and calls it political correctness. Says much worse in private. This is where Lester is from. Lester is my friend at the textile mill. We talk about books, music. His mind crackles. He tells me he is going back to jail, unpaid alimony, contempt of court. I ask how much he needs to avoid this. It is a lot but not insurmountable. Is there a way to get this amount together, I ask. No, he says, and anyway, it’s fine, he says. He will catch up on reading. Catch up on working out.
I have never been to Burlington, Vermont, but I imagine it is nothing at all like Burlington, North Carolina, where I am from. I leave early, two weeks before I intended to leave. Two weeks before the semester starts, before my student aid is available, before housing is available. I have a car that runs, money for gas. Leaving the place I am from, driving on a back road before the interstate, slam on the brakes. Come to a complete stop. A deer materializes in the fading, almost-dusk light. Head up, looking at me without looking at me. Motionless for a moment. And then it is gone.
Jonathan Kime is a strategist for an international development organization. His writing has appeared in The Sun, The Rumpus, Salon, Bicycling, and others. After living in Southeast Asia and Southern Africa, he's back in the U.S. South. He currently lives with his family in North Carolina, though not in the town the story is about.