I Died Afraid My Broken Arm Burdened Them novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Shift Change

Plant 4 smelled the way it always had, of hot cardboard and diesel.

Dale was waiting at the side gate in his work jacket with his hands shoved in the pockets.

He saw the urn in my mother's arms, and he took off his cap.

"Mrs. Marden."

"Paula," she said. "Is the floor full?"

"Shift change is in ten minutes. Two hundred people."

"Then take me in."

He looked at her good coat and her pearl earrings.

"They won't be kind, ma'am."

"I did not come to be liked."

Bram's silver car skidded into the lot behind us. He climbed out with his tie undone and walked fast to catch up.

Nobody spoke to him.

We went in through the dock door.

I knew every board of that floor. I had loaded pallets there with a splint under my sleeve, and I had learned which pallets to take with only my right.

The dock where my arm broke stood fifty feet from the door. I did not look at it.

Workers were coming off the night line and drifting toward the lockers. Others were coming on, pulling gloves from back pockets.

Some of them had their phones out already.

I heard my father's statement coming out of three speakers at once.

"Our son struggled with pride. He refused all of our offers."

A man by the time clock shook his head.

"That's him. That's the kid they found."

"The Ellis Lowe kid?"

"Marden's kid. Look at the news."

My mother stopped in the middle of the floor.

She set one foot on a pallet, and she stepped up onto it with the urn held against her chest.

She was fifty years old, and she stood a head above the room.

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