Chapter 13 - The Work of Ordinary Days
Community service at the county food bank began at six in the morning. Ryan’s job was unloading pallets of cabbage, dry beans, and canned peaches from eighteen-wheelers that backed into the freezing concrete loading bay.
The supervisor was an older Black man named Horace who had lost two fingers in a textile mill thirty years before and had no patience for self-pity. Horace didn't ask what Ryan was there for; the orange slip from the court clerk told him all he needed to know.
"Stack them five high," Horace said, pointing to fifty-pound sacks of Idaho potatoes. "Interlock the corners or the whole damn tower comes down on the forklift. Balance, Miller. It’s all about balance."
Ryan worked until his forearms were covered in potato dust and his back burned with a dull, honest ache. He learned to listen to the other men on the line—some were probationers like him, some were veterans with pensions that didn't stretch to the end of the month, some were church volunteers with silver crucifixes bouncing against their aprons.
In the batterer’s intervention group on Thursday evenings, a licensed counselor named Marcus forced the eight men in the circle to speak in the active voice.
"You said 'the plate got broken,'" Marcus would interrupt, pointing a blunt finger at a burly carpenter across the circle. "The plate didn't commit suicide. Who broke the plate?"
"I threw it," the man muttered.
"Say it again so your lungs believe it."
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Ryan waited his turn. When it came, he didn't look at the linoleum. He looked Marcus in the eye and said, "I hit my wife because I wanted her to feel small so I wouldn't feel terrified."
The room was silent for four beats. Marcus simply nodded once. "Now we can start," the counselor said.
