Rob S. Friedman
April 2022
The Jarlsberg's In
The thud of the trailer greeting the dock moved his bovine gaze from the window to the floor, to his knees, to fingernails as scuffed and chipped as his steel-toed boots.
I followed him out of the break room where the crew begins and ends the day where the oak tag blanks sit next to the stencil press on a shelf above a can of ink-stained brushes.
The first container of the day was filled with square boxes of round cheeses from the Nordic dairy lands of his grandparents now time-filtered myths and memories.
Onto the rollers he’d painted battleship grey just weeks ago he placed a layer of boxes and another atop another until he couldn’t see around or over his wall of cardboard brown.
I tried to match his metronomic arms extending swiveling the cold cases moving onto other rollers chocked with shims forts of cheese on wheels.
He watched me fail, fail to align the bottom layer so the corners didn’t snag a wall fail to rest one box edge precisely atop another to steady their ride with concentrated weight.
He tapped his pack of Newport to pull one with his lips reached for his lighter and sighed, silent until he inhaled his comfort and blew it from the corner of his mouth readying himself to mete out instruction.
Rob S. Friedman 