The Occupation of Emerald City: The Worker by Ken Brosky Read Free Book Online Page A

threat to the world.

 
    “Government” was misspelled and the picture looked like a
cheesy cutout from a tour guide. Blake took one home with him and promised to
return as soon as he got a hold of his parents. He promised to come back with
answers, but I didn’t want answers, I wanted bodies to shovel that coal inside,
as much as possible because keeping the plant running was the only thing that
made sense. I told Blake sitting around worrying wouldn’t help anything, but he
still left.
    The sun was coming up and I kept working. There was coal
everywhere, lying in piles on the concrete, between the rails, and more sitting
out on the open field. I felt guilty for not trying harder to convince my
workers to stay. They were my responsibility, and now they were driving through
empty streets in a burning city, ducking bombs that fell out of the dark sky.
    Just when I was beating myself up the hardest, Bert the
security guard stopped by to help. The old security guard who looks like my
grandfather with a white mustache, and sits in a little white box at the edge
of the parking lot on the front side of the building next to the only entrance
into the parking lot. He told me he was sick of watching the city burn in the
distance, sitting around listening to people on the radio praying to their god
and trying to figure out why the Emerald Guard wasn’t fighting back. No one had
any concrete answers and after the phone lines went down the radio host
couldn’t stop sobbing on the air.
    So the two of us worked. Bert shoveled a little bit, then
stopped for a breather, huffing loud wet breaths with his mouth wide open. Then
he started shoveling again. The afternoon was quiet, and no one showed up. By
mid-afternoon, we had barely shoveled enough coal to keep one furnace running.
    “You shoveled,” the interrogator says. “Then what?”
    “I shoveled until it got dark,” I say. “Then I slept in the
break room and when I woke up, I started again.”
    “Then what?”
    “Then I shoveled some more.”
    “When did you go home?” he asks, stamping out the cigarette
on the ashtray.
    “The third or fourth night,” I say. “I don’t know for sure. I
just slept when I was tired and worked when I wasn’t.” Bert had stayed, too.
The old man helped—sure, he slept a lot more and he couldn’t shovel worth
a damn, but at least he tried his best. Me and Bert sat in the break room with
Tasha and ate the food from the two employee fridges. The first night, we had a
veritable feast of microwave meals: macaroni and cheese with Salisbury steak
and a heaping side of teriyaki rice.
    No one brought up the fact that the three of us, deep down,
were probably sticking around because we didn’t have anywhere else to go. No
one to run home to. Three sad people married to their jobs, although I’m pretty
sure I was the only one who had actually chosen that fate. Bert’s wife was gone. Tasha talked about dates sometimes during
breaks but never talked about boyfriends.
    “Then what?” the general asks.
    “I took my pill,” I say. Hint, hint. Take down the name, Mr.
Interrogator. Get the drug for the helpful detainee.
    “Then what.” He lights another cigarette.
    “I went to sleep,” I say. “And then a group of men came in
dressed in black ski masks. They grabbed me and put a mask over my head and
then they put me in a van and took me here.”
    The cigarette hangs loosely between the general’s fingers, a
snake of gray ash dangling from the end. “And then what.”
    I shake my head, frustrated. “And then you threw me in a
cell. There’s nothing else, I swear to god.”
    “Are you religious?” he asks.
    “Yes. No.” Does agnosticism count?
    “Are you Christian, Muslim, or Jew?”
    I know why he’s asking this. All three religions exist in
Emerald City. The Jews are a distinct minority. The Christians and Muslims
don’t have a good history. I know all this because when my family moved here, I
had to learn about it all so I