Four Men Who Refused to Stay Silent
Bart let the chain fall in a loop on the concrete and went back up the dock to his office.
It was 10:40. Calvin took the first load through slowly, I’ll say that for him. The second load had a half pallet riding on top, a display skid with six forty-pound bags of dog food on it. It was stacked wrong. I had seen it stacked wrong that morning and meant to say something. The top of the load caught the corner of a rack beam that sticks out about an inch.
I heard it before I saw it. That grinding creak wood makes when it slides on wood.
The half pallet came off the top at about the height of a man’s head. It was going to land flat on the floor at the mouth of the aisle, on the spot where Jared Wills was kneeling.
He was a skinny kid. He weighed about a hundred and fifty pounds that year.
I did not decide anything. People have called it brave since and it wasn’t. I was four steps away and my legs went. I got there as the pallet came down. I got my right arm under the corner and my shoulder into it and I shoved sideways, and the whole thing slewed off Jared and hit the concrete with a sound like a car door.
Two hundred and fifty pounds of dog food and oak, and my shoulder took the first part of it. It felt like a seam pulling out of a coat.
I sat down on the floor and looked at my arm. It was where it had always been, but it didn’t feel like mine.
Jared turned around with the stretch wrap still in his hand. He looked at the pallet. He looked at the floor where he had been kneeling. Then he looked at me. His mouth was open and nothing came out.
“You’re all right,” I said. “Kid, you’re all right.”
Arlo got to me first. He got down on his knees, which cost him, and put his big hand flat on my back. “Don’t move it, Galen. Don’t move it.” Eddie ran for the first aid kit. Calvin killed the lift truck and came off it so fast he left the key turning. Bart came down the aisle at a walk, with his clipboard.
He stopped about six feet away.
“What happened?”
“The load came off the top,” Calvin said. “Bart, I told you the forks would be up.”
“Is anybody bleeding?”
“Galen’s hurt. He’s got to go in.”
Bart looked at the chain lying in a loop where he’d dropped it. Then he looked down the length of the building at the white board by the front door, which you can see from that aisle if you know where to stand. Then he looked at me.
It wasn’t meanness on his face. It was a man doing sums.
“Walk it off,” he said. “See if it loosens up. We’ll sit down in a little bit and talk about what happened.”
“I can’t lift my arm, Bart.”
“Then sit in the break room and ice it.”