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THE CASHIER HANDED her a black plastic bag, weighed down with the items until it almost cut through her fingers, leaving black stains mixed with sweat on her palms. Canned olives, a small jar of mayo, a box of breakfast pastries, frozen pizza nuggets and a bottle of Pelon Trust Fine Bourbon since 1984. Traci shoved her way through the line of old men buying lottery tickets and cigarettes and exited the store. She ignored the catcalls from the juveniles standing along the store wall and crossed the parking lot. The sun glare bounced off the screen as she juggled her phone to answer the call from Ms. Rios.
“Tracinda?” Ms. Rios said.
“Yes,” Traci said, “hello, Ms. Rios. You got the news, right?”
“Yes, I received a call from Sheila Townsend this morning.”
“I think it’s a mistake. I did everything they asked, on time and ...”
“Don’t worry. Sometimes things don’t work out the way we would like.”
“Seems that happens all the time for me, though,” she said and took a deep breath.
“Don’t get discouraged. We’ll learn what we can from this situation and move ahead with the next opportunity,” Ms. Rios said. “A negative mind will not serve you well. Remember?”
Traci followed a beaten down path to cut across a vacant lot and reach Spring Street where she lived. She had never been this way before, but the sun was so hot against her forehead she thought she would pass out if she didn’t get inside soon. She almost missed those blizzard-force winds that blew across the Great Lakes from Canada and sealed everyone inside their homes until April. Summer was short and unbearably hot in recent years, everyone said so.
“Hello, are you there?” Ms. Rios said.
“Yes,” she said and sat down on a short wall of bricks, the remnants of a house foundation. Pieces of wooden window frames and glass shards around her feet. Cans and beer bottles and other deposits of human neglect painted a snapshot of the dire economic condition of the neighborhood. The New Century Renaissance Project had begun for other cities in Faucier County but had only reached downtown Keeferton. The Office of Land Management was begging people to acquire residential lots from the Land Bank. The staff was overwhelmed with vacant and abandoned buildings whose owners lived out of state and withdrew any semblance of property management.
“I think what’s best ...” Ms. Rio continued, “where I think we’re missing it ... what I mean to say is ...”
“Yes?” Traci said, squinting at the contact photo trying not to sound annoyed.
She put down the bag and wiggled her backpack off her shoulders. She wiped the sweat from her face, looked across the field to the City Centre skyline and put the phone on speaker.
“I have an unconventional kind of job for you. I recommend that you give it a shot. I think it will work out better for you than the others have so far.” Ms. Rios said, “Again, based on the feedback that we have received from your previous assignments, and it is also temp-to-perm, and they are eager to fill this position.”
“What is it?” Traci said, knowing that it didn’t matter what type of job it was because she needed the money. Except janitorial, she really didn’t want that. But anything else. And, except working with kids, definitely not that. No way.
“It’s with Dependable Flyers,” Ms. Rios said, “Have you heard of them?”
“No,” Traci said eying the bottle of Pelon in her bag. She stretched her neck to look beyond the overgrown weeds and broken tree limbs for the shortest path to her street. Maybe a two to three minute walk, she calculated from her spot on the broken wall.
“Surely you’ve seen their signs around town.”
Traci wanted to tell her she didn’t go “around town” at all. She barely made enough money to get to work and back home, keep food in her stomach and the lights on. She had watched people hanging out in the City Centre with catered brown box lunches and afternoon jazz concerts on the lawn of the Adega Auditorium. Or meet and network and sunbathe and walk dogs and find potential romantic partners. She was not one of those people. How could she be? All she wanted to know was where to report for her next assignment, right now.
“Sure, sounds familiar,” Traci said, forcing a smile to change her tone, remembering that “people can hear a frown”. She learned that during her first telesales job. Or was it the fourth? “But, fill me in on what they do, please.” Ms. Rios was taking a long time to get to the point. This was a bad sign.
“Dependable Flyers is a business-to-business corporation with approximately 145 employees. They have been in operation in Faucier County for fifteen years with an excellent reputation for customer satisfaction and efficient expedited service.”
Traci picked up the bottle of Pelon in her bag while listening to Thomasina Rios read the company profile from the Dependable Flyers brochure. She imagined her perfect posture at her uncluttered desk in her minimalist and Feng Shui-ed middle management office. She wanted to reach through the phone and flip over a few bookshelves. She opened the Pelon.
“In your new position with Dependable Flyers you will serve as a ‘Flyer’ in their fleet of document and package couriers.”
“Wait,” Traci said re-capping the Pelon, “A what? Courier?”
“Yes, a bicycle courier. It’s an extremely important job. The Flyers, or couriers, are the backbone of the company, actually. Everything depends on them. Ha, well there you have it. Dependable.”
“A bike messenger? What if I don’t have a bicycle?” Traci said as if that was the only thing that she found troubling. She put the bottle back in her bag and took a deep breath. She had a foggy picture in her mind now of all the red and neon green electric bikes and scooters streaking through intersections while she rode the RA-12.
“The company provides the bicycle and deducts a small fee from your paycheck for maintenance. Some of them are electric, no pedaling!” Ms. Rios said with an extra perky tone at the end of her sentence.
“Great,” Traci said. No, it was not great. It belonged on her “never” list of job options. Was this even a real job?
“Why did you pick this job for me?” she asked, immediately regretting it. “If I may ask,” she added to soften the query.
“I think it’s time we started looking for something not office related for you. Thinking outside the box, so to speak,” Ms. Rios said, not so perky this time.
Traci stuffed her bag inside her backpack and slung it over her shoulder. She brushed the brick dust off her pants and stretched.
“It would be a nice change, I think. You’ll get more fresh air and exercise. Meet some new people,” Ms. Rios said.
“Great,” Traci said, not smiling, not pretending. This sounded like a nightmare designed just for her. She was young, about to turn twenty five years old in September, but not in the best shape. And not interested in meeting new people or exercise.
“Great! I’ll text you the deets for the job. You’re scheduled to report first thing tomorrow.” The perky tone was back.
“Thank you,” she tried to match the perkiness and failed miserably, of course. She hung up and immediately heard her message app chime.
“The deets,” she said with a smirk as she turned up the narrow chalk dry trail through the vacant lot watching for copperheads on each side.
Traci noticed some colorful objects bobbing up and down in the distance just beyond an old wire and plank fence. The wood had rotted so badly in most places that the wire draped the ground in a spiral and provided no barrier against intrusion at all. Curious, Traci stepped over the piece of fencing and rounded a brilliant, overflowing forsythia bush. She cupped her palm over her eyes to get a better look and walked closer. The bobbing objects were the caps and headwraps of people digging and dragging heavy burlap bags and blue nylon tarps across a clearing in the field. There seemed to be about seven people of varying ages, mostly women and a young boy.
Traci stepped back behind the yellow cascade of blooms and watched them bickering and joking, while they shoveled almost pitch-black soil from a pile onto the blue tarp. They all grabbed the edge of the tarp and dragged it to a large framed box. And, with a giant “heave-ho” they lifted the tarp over and dumped the soil into it. Traci watched them struggle through this process twice before someone needed to take a break and passed out bottles of water from a galvanized tub full of ice.
“Who are these people?” Traci wondered aloud. She peered through the branches and surveyed the area where they worked. There were white strings tied on long thin rods in twenty neat rows. Strips of red rags were attached to each string. Around the perimeter were a dozen boxes full of plants bulging out of the soil. There was a plastic-covered hoop structure and a collection of long-handled tools leaning against a pickup truck.
“It’s a farm in the middle of nowhere,” Traci whispered. She had lived in this neighborhood for two years. How did she not know about this? She decided to avoid involving herself in whatever was going on and go back the way she came. It would take her longer to get home, but that would be better than to butt in on something that was not her business.
As she turned to leave, her backpack caught the edge of the bush. She tugged on it, ducked under a branch, lost her footing on an exposed tree root and fell flat. By the time she gathered her wits and started to get back up, she was surrounded.
“You okay?” someone asked.
Traci couldn’t see who was speaking. The sun beaming down from behind their backs shaded their faces. They looked like cartoon silhouettes, not real people.
“Fine,” Traci said, blinking and squinting in their direction. “I’m just fine. Thanks.”
She looked around for her backpack and tried in vain to brush dirt from the waves of her thick black hair.
“Did you hit your head?” said another voice, “Did she hit her head?”
Traci felt a hand touch her shoulder so gently it was unnerving.
“What’s your name, honey?” someone said.
“Do you know where you are?” another voice continued.
“No,” Traci said, “I mean, yes. I know where I am. I am somewhere near my house in Magnolia Grove, Keeferton.” Their faces were coming into focus. “I mean, I don’t know what this is,” she said. She could see them now.
An older woman with short pale-yellow hair that stuck out in jagged points on the side of her head like straw was standing closest to her. She was looking Traci over as if she were the admitting physician in an ER. Two more women, younger and thinner, wearing t-shirts soaked through with sweat, were standing further off whispering to each other. A man, about the same age as the women stood next to the straw-haired woman. He wore a navy jersey from the Keeferton Tornadoes, a minor league baseball team that had been sold and moved on to another county with the pockets to build them a new stadium and cable TV rights. The arms of the jersey were frayed where they were cut off. That seemed appropriate, Traci thought, fixated on this man and his shirt. A young boy stood just behind him. The more Traci looked at the boy, the more apparent it was that he wanted nothing to do with her. And that was also “just fine” with her.
“Who are you?” Traci asked.
“Yeah, she’s okay,” the woman said, turning toward the others. “They tell you to ask simple questions to see if their mind is alright, y’know?” She turned back to Traci, “My name is Rowena, by the way. Rowena Garrett. This is my farm.”
Traci spotted her backpack on the ground near the boy. She reached for it and startled him. He stepped back on his heels. Then rebounded and tried to help her pick it up. But froze again when he noticed the scar on the inside of her left forearm. Traci pulled down her lace sleeve to cover it and snatched up her backpack.
“I’ve gotta go,” she said without looking up.
“You live around here?” said the would-be ball player.
“Yeah, in the green and brown house over there,” she said pointing in the general direction of Spring Street.
“Oh, yeah, that house was vacant for a long time,” the man said.
“I thought it still was,” said one of the whispering women with a giggle.
“No, it’s mine,” Traci said brushing dirt from her blouse. “I own it, actually.”
“How come I don’t remember seeing you?” the same woman said, “Seems I would recognize you from hanging around Keeferton somewhere. I got a real good memory for faces. Ain’t that right, Miss Rowena? You go to Reverend McMoultry’s church? They got some new people that joined last Sunday. They from Pekote County, I think. Wasn’t that it?” She nudged the other woman next to her in the sun hat, who shrugged and looked away.
“I don’t really hangout much,” Traci said. “Haven’t had time to make any friends around here.”
“How long you been living in that old house?” she asked with a smirk.
“Two years.”
“Yeah, I guess you pretty busy alright,” the woman said rolling her eyes.
“Sarah, I think I’ve seen her catching the bus from time to time,” said Rowena and looked out the corner of her eye toward the woman. “Just never met. What is your name, honey?”
“Tracin ... Traci.”
“Well, nice to meet you, Traci,” Rowena said, smiling. “You best be getting home now and tend to that.”
Traci looked down with dread at her leaking backpack. She turned and walked toward the green and brown house, not sure that anything she was seeing was legal. And hoped she would never see these people again.
