Green Shirts

FICTION Green Shirts Jeff Wallace In the mornings when it's still cool, Jesse and I drive with the windows down, trying to stay awake. We leave at five-thirty to be at the plant before the first shift bell. The summer fog refuses to lift off the Appalachian Highway, and deer tend to jump out in the morning. They're looking to bed. I'm just getting started. We're running behind. The alarm had barely woke me this morning . The alarm's antenna is a thin black wire, and in the hills it's hard to get good reception. It all has to be laid out very careful. If the wire gets moved, the sound of the radio goes quiet, and I had slept about fifteen minutes too late. Jesse has the radio in his truck blasted, the two shredded factory speakers rattling and shaking, the other two barely covering the sounds of his fat tires. When he first got the Blazer lifted (the kit cost over a grand), he said it sounded like a fucking airplane. That's all fine in town, but out here on the road, it gets real annoying real quick, especially when we have to speed to get to work, and those tires just piss and moan the whole way. I don't have a truck, but if I did, I sure as hell wouldn't put big-ass tires on it. No thank you. We go west and out of the hills as we get closer to work. The fog lifts as the ground levels out and, looking back out the leaky rear window , I can see fog crawling like steam out of the hills. The hill-sides flash from the sun as the truck bumps across the sets of train tracks. "My dad told me that this was one of the first targets for the Russians during the Cold War," I shout at Jesse. "You know why?" "Naw—but I bet you're gonna tell me." Jesse's speeding, and I watch for cops. They'll bust our ass for sure if they sneak out and get us, but they generally wait in the same spot. And I generally know where those spots are. I wait to answer, roll my window up, and light my sixth Marlboro of the morning with a match. I gag as I pull for the first time; I didn't eat this morning and my stomach can't handle the dry taste of the tobacco. I realize I forgot to brush my teeth, and I look back out behind me at the tracks and hills. "It's cause all those goddamn train tracks. For the shit that just passes through—coal, uranium, cabinets." The last is a joke; we work 45 at Mill's Pride, a cabinet factory. Jesse grins, top and bottom teeth showing. His bottom ones are stained from chew. He swallows it while we work cause we can't have any open containers on the line. "You're full of shit, you know that, Scott?" "Naw, I'm right," I say as we pull into the parking lot. Jesse and I have been working here since the fall. We lived on the same ridge growing up, and even though he's a couple years older than me, we've alwaysbeen real close. We share a trailer now down the road a piece from his grandpa's, right on the edge of the strip-mines. We barely get into our building (there's six in the whole plant) on time, and we jog up to the line and wait for the line boss to tell us where we'll be working on it today. Some folks already have their positions staked out—others have a more permanent claim. Jodie, at the start of the line, folds the boxes regardless of the piece. He's too fat to be of any other count. He must be near three hundred and fifty pounds, and he's only as tall as I am, about five-ten. He's already sweating up there—I can see it soaking through his green shirt. Not the regulation kind we all...