THE LUGGAGE CENTER

Belinda Ames walked into the center of the warehouse, shivering in the short-sleeved blue uniform she’d just changed into.  She looked around for someone who could be Mister Vote, her supervisor, but didn’t see anyone who was likely to be him.  She spotted half a dozen other blue-shirted workers walking on the other side of the warehouse, and thought about making the trip over and asking them if they knew where Mr. Vote was.  But she felt nervous about leaving the place the forewoman had told her to wait.

“It’s past eight, Dimitry!” she heard a man’s deep voice say. “Get your ass on that forklift.”  She watched one of the workers, a squatty dark-skinned man, scramble over to an empty forklift on the far end of the warehouse.

The warehouse reminded her of a baseball stadium in Atlanta where her dad had brought her when she was nine.  As they made their way through the noisy crowd, her hand had slipped out of his, and she found herself alone, like he’d been swallowed by the mass of people around them.  She had wandered around alone for twenty minutes, looking up at the massive cement walls, the menacing steel beams, hoping her father would reappear as suddenly as he’d vanished.   Now she stared up at the duct work two stories above, the enormous mounted racks on the walls around her, hundreds of dented suitcases, crushed duffels and dusty backpacks, and felt that same sense of fear and hope.

She needed this job.  She hadn’t worked since the year she’d spent as a cashier at the Mini Mart off the Interstate, where she first met Sam.  After they’d married, he’d insisted she stay home and have babies, which she tried and failed to do, three times, her last miscarriage occuring after he’d beaten her silly during one of his three-day drunken tirades.  Sam was gone now, and here she was, back in Liberty, Alabama, starting a new career in the center of the universe of unclaimed airline luggage. 

The warehouse smelled like that polluted stream in back of her mother’s house, like rottten eggs.  She hoped the air would lighten up later in the day.  She spotted a folded cardboard box someone had left in the middle of the floor.  She bent down to pick it up, trying to make herself useful.  The sides of the box were cold and smooth, except for the frayed edges which tickled her fingertips.  She placed the box next to her left leg.

Then she heard a door open and saw a man with a black ponytail and bushy beard walking toward her.  He must be Mr. Vote.  She ran her fingers through her uncombed blond hair,  like she always did when a man approached.  As he came closer, a loud crash from outside shook the building.  Belinda watched the man turn and run back out the door.  She stood there, the box still at her side, waiting for someone who wasn’t there to tell her what to do.