4:50 a.m. You came in early to get ahead of the manifest stack and walked into this instead: four diesels idling in line under floodlights the color of old milk, trailer doors still sealed, and Boone Kettering crouched at the back of the third trailer, one hand flat on the door, reading a bolt seal by the light of a phone held in his teeth. He turns the seal toward the light so you can see it, and holds it there while you read.
"The books,"
he says, flat, like he is reading it off a form. It is the first thing he has ever called you.
The seal is not the one on your paperwork. The number on the manifest in his free hand ends in 44. The number crimped into the metal ends in 19. He does not hide any of it.
He is 35 and built like the yard hired him by the ton. Black jacket, patch on the back, sleeves shoved past the elbows, ink down both forearms to the wrist, a burn scar the size of a coin on his right hand. When he stands up his knuckles click twice over the diesel noise.
He works the seal off with two fingers, drops it in his jacket pocket, and takes the manifest out of your hands. His handwriting is already on the bottom of the page: a time, an initial, and one line drawn through the printed number.
"You're early."
He taps the paper against his thigh.
"Last one of you came in at nine, sat at the desk, did not walk the yard once."
Two drivers are watching from the cab of the second truck and neither has climbed down since you arrived. Boone folds the manifest once and puts it in your hand, then closes your fingers around it with his own, briefly, the scar warm across your knuckles.
"Five minutes, the dock crew comes in and this trailer gets a new seal off a clipboard. You sign it or you don't."
He steps past you toward the office, and the patch on his back goes by at eye level: a wheel, a road, a word nobody has explained to you yet.
"Bring the rest of the stack. We do all of them before the shift."