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[...] We worked so hard and so fast that we had completed the current order of barges – at least the open-topped, hopper barges – ahead of time. But somehow this seemingly obvious and significant fact didn’t affect the foremen’s need to see me working, or for that matter, the whole, goddamned world…

Sloane brought our paychecks around one Friday and with them was our bonus check for that quarter. I opened the envelope containing my check before Sloane could walk away.

“A fucking $9.86 bonus?!” I yelled.

Shaun opened his as well. “Look at that, dude, $8.41. That’s some bullshit.”

Other…

The local paper, the Courier-journal, contained a brief mention of the death of two men at the Tyson plant in Robards, Kentucky. One of the men was working near a vat of chicken parts when he fell and landed in the steaming mess. He attempted to get out but the gas from those rotting chicken guts o…

That next week the company published a newsletter of its own to combat the popularity of our newsletter. Unlike our newsletter, it had much higher production values, came to us semi-glossy, with blue ink on white paper, and was doubled-sided. The main section featured the president of the company a…

I spent a lot of time beneath one barge or another during that summer and the summers that followed. It was the only way to survive the heat. The company recognized how dangerous it was to work for long in the heat; they sent out memos to the foremen, they put up safety banners, they gave us water …