Bud Smith in The Baffler:
We came in just before sunup and heard the plastic plant had to be shut down for emergency repair. The foreman drove us to the control house and then went in to talk specifics with the unit operator. We three mechanics remained in the work truck, cellphones lighting up our faces.
One of the guys was watching a video with the sound at a whisper. The other was scrolling. I pecked away at my phone, rewriting by memory a scene from my novel on my Notes app. Even though the book was out on submission, I was trying to make it better. Sometimes one of the guys would ask me who I was sending so many texts to, and I’d say, “My baby mama.” That was easier than explaining that during every hold point on the construction site, I didn’t want to do anything but work on my make-believe.
I’d written about three hundred words when the foreman opened the truck door and said it was the same ol’. We’d pop open the reactor manways after coffee break. I’d worked in this plant about fifteen years by then and had gone inside the polypropylene reactor thirty-something times to clean it out and repair whatever. This outage would be some variation on all those before it with just one thing for sure: heavy labor, the heaviest we knew.
More here.
Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.