Chapter 9: The Loading Dock
For a week, Kevin had sent his resume to every consulting firm and marketing agency in the city.
But without the backing of his father's trust fund to grease the wheels and maintain his country club networking, his resume was shockingly thin. He was forty-two years old with a history of failed, subsidized ventures. His previous "executive" roles had all been quietly engineered by Marcus Vance. Nobody wanted to hire a fake executive.
The bank accounts were dwindling. Rent was due in two weeks.
So, Kevin swallowed the pride that had choked him for a decade. He walked down to the local distribution center, a massive, concrete warehouse complex on the edge of the industrial district, and applied for a job loading freight trucks. They hired him on the spot.
He didn't own work clothes. He put on a pair of heavy jeans, steel-toed boots he had bought at a discount store, and one of his old college flannel shirts. He packed a ham sandwich into a plastic container and poured instant coffee into a thermos.
The first day on the loading dock was absolute agony.
Kevin spent eight hours hauling heavy wooden pallets, loading boxes of industrial supplies into the backs of eighteen-wheelers. The warehouse was freezing, the air thick with diesel exhaust. The foreman barked orders relentlessly, not caring about Kevin's college degree or his previous zip code.
By the time his shift ended at 3:00 PM, Kevin’s muscles were screaming. His back, unaccustomed to physical labor, felt like it was splitting in two. His hands, previously soft and manicured, were covered in angry red blisters, the skin raw and torn from the rough wooden crates.
He sat in the driver's seat of the used Honda Civic, staring at his bleeding palms.
A memory hit him with the force of a freight train. He was ten years old, sitting at the kitchen table. His father, Hank, had come home late from a double shift driving a rig. Hank had sat down at the table, wincing as he unlaced his boots. Kevin had noticed his father's hands—they were wrapped in white athletic tape, split and bleeding from the cold steering wheel and heavy chains.
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"Does it hurt, Dad?" young Kevin had asked.
Hank had smiled, ruffling Kevin’s hair. "Not as much as it hurts to see you go without, Kev. Hard work is just the price of loving your family."
