College Bookstore Shipping and Receiving: A Couplet
Stephan D. Gibson
After Jesse Amado’s Me, We, 1999, granite and marble
I.
The UPS driver would yell, “Stand aside! Working man coming through!” Small, wiry, a black mustache bigger than anything I could manage even today, he would charge through us, hand truck piled high with cartons, stacked so tall he would hold the dolly with one hand and stretch the other up to steady the top box. He filled empty isles of the warehouse with piles of crates, shrink-wrapped and shiny white on pallets. Sweat would blacken his uniform, fanning out over his chest like a wise man’s beard. Rarely, when we were the last delivery of his day, he would sit in the office and argue with my boss, his old friend, about unions and government and God and anything to keep having a conversation, to keep silence from coming between them. He’s retired, black hair white now, but his voice still freezes college boys with fear.
II.
You can race pallet jacks. One foot on a fork, pushing with the other, and steering with the tow bar. Carefully. They turn sharp enough to throw you. She taught me this, one of the women there. After work we would carry wooden pallets to my car. Some were broken beyond use, almost black with oil, dirt, and travel. Others were new, prickly, with the faintest smells of white pine and diesel. We crammed them in the back of my car, hauled them one last time, for kindling, up the canyon. I’d let her use my car over Thanksgiving and Christmas break if she’d drive me to and from the airport. House sat for her once. Tried to force-feed medicine to her sick black and white cat each day that week. Chased it under her bed. I bought her dinners and we watched Truly Madly Deeply once. Two mes who never made it to we.