I turn and go around the corner and into work, the smell of the slaughterhouse hitting my senses full force.
This place is clean, but even the scent of disinfectant can’t cover up the smell of death that surrounds this place. It stirs memories that are best left forgotten.
“Morning, Ethan,” my boss, Charlie, says.
“Morning, Charlie,” I reply and smile.
Charlie’s a good guy. Three kids and an ex-wife. He drinks too much. Smokes even more. And says he’s going to die before he’s sixty. I find that strange though. The guy’s adamant that he’s going to die early, yet he doesn’t look after himself. He’s overweight too. Loves to gamble on anything he can—horses, dogs, chickens or cards, he doesn’t care.
Sometimes he’s late paying us because he’s spent our wages already.
I can tell he feels bad when that happens.
He’s sick, I want to say when people get angry with him.He can’t help it. But people are cruel and hard and mean, and they don’t care that he’s sick. They only care that he didn’t pay them on time.
I don’t like my job. Not even a little bit. But I turn up day after day and I earn my money. I’m never late, I’m always early, and I even stay after hours if I’m needed. And that’s more often than not. Though not too late, because my parole officer would get pissy about that.
I think that’s why Charlie likes me.
I’m his constant in an inconsistent world. I’m his sure thing. His winning horse, so to speak; unlike all of his other gambles, I seem to have paid off for him.
“You’re early,” he says to me with a mouth full of cigarette smoke.
“You shouldn’t be smoking in here, Charlie,” I reply.
He looks down at his cigarette and then back up to me as if he didn’t even know he was smoking. “Sorry,” he says, and wanders outside to put it out.
I sometimes wonder who is the boss here, him or me.
