Chapter 19: Loading Dock

Tyler Kreutzer showed up for his first shift on the Dorothy Lane loading dock at 5:55 a.m., in white sneakers.

I was waiting for him with a clipboard.

"You're early," I said.

"Is that bad?"

"It's the nicest thing anyone's done on this dock all week."

I handed him an orange vest with a name tag stuck on the front.

The tag said TYLER, in marker, and under it, in smaller letters, someone had written *(NEW)*.

"Fourteen dollars an hour," I said. "Same as everyone. Same vest, same break, same time clock."

"You're really not going to give me a deal?"

"You asked for a job, Tyler. A deal's a different thing."

"I did ask for a job," he said, and put the vest on over his hoodie, very carefully.

The boy in the gray hoodie, who came to Dorothy Lane every Wednesday to help with pallets, walked out of the stockroom with a hand truck.

"This is my cousin," I told him. "Teach him everything."

"Everything?"

"Start with the bags."

The first bag Tyler picked up weighed forty pounds, and he hugged it against his chest with both arms.

"Okay," he said. "That's not so bad."

"That's one," said the boy. "There are three hundred."

By seven, Tyler had learned to lift with his knees.

By eight, he had learned that you don't lift with your knees when the bag is wet.

At nine, he dropped a bag of lamb and rice on the concrete, and it split from end to end.

Kibble poured across the dock and under the pallets.

Tyler looked at it in horror.

"Is it okay if I film this?" he asked. "For the people who think I died?"

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