Name Now One Man
The nine always stuck when he was busy. He tapped his calculator and the button clicked as it popped into place, but another nine appeared on the display, so he cleared it all and started from the beginning.
“Ok, so that’s forty thousand three twenty three for the tare weight, and that divided by sixty equals six hundred seventy two point five, divided by sixty . . . gives an average of eleven point two zero zero eight three three . . . pretty close, only three hundred twenty three pounds.” He thought aloud, but no one heard him. He wrote the weight, bin count, and variety on pink and yellow paper. Then at the top he copied the trailer's plate number: 119 IAA, Utah, followed by the date, February tenth. When he removed it from the clipboard he tore the carbon copy from the bottom and dropped it in the white box. He walked across the dock to the office window where he knocked and waited for her to slide it open.
She took the slip from his hand, and without looking in his eyes offered a strange greeting. “Yo, banana boy.”
He smiled politely. “Hi, Carmen. And how are they treating you today?”
All she said was, “Civic,” as she smiled and slid the window shut.
Another trailer was already backing in when he returned, so he ran to the edge of the dock and grabbed a glimpse of the license plate just in time. A12 21A Ohio. He had seen this plate before, he distinctly remembered the palindrome. After writing down twenty to thirty plate numbers a day for the last ten years, he had only seen nine palindromes, an occurrence so rare it excited him, a pleasure he admitted to no one.
Propane exhaust warmed his face when the forklift rushed by and lowered a double-stack onto the scale. The display read 1441, and he smiled when he wrote it down. Not that it was as rare with weights, in fact, he probably scribbled that number several times a week, but it pleased him to see the two events together. Before he could finish his thought the forklift bounced out of the trailer, sped across the floor, and returned with another stack.
“Guero, you get that one?”
He nodded as he jotted the numbers down. 1551. He smiled again. As he looked up the boy ascended the stairs like fog rising in the morning gold of a great archimage. The light seemed to move with his flowing as he approached bearing the smile of an augur. Guero fidgeted and fumbled his pen before he dropped it and watched it slide across the concrete and stop at the boy’s feet, leaving a trail in the black dust. He held out the pen for Guero, who shuttered as he mumbled when the forklift lowered a triple-stack onto the scale. 2112.
Weeks earlier in a dream the boy had followed him through a maze guarded by a silver coyote. Around every corner he had seen the boy dragging a double-edged axe in the sand, and repeating the phrase drab as a fool, aloof as a bard. Whenever he had asked how to get out the boy had only whispered, never odd or even. And when he had finally decided to ask him what it all meant the boy had only replied, Dogma? I am God. He had awoken to a squalling raven outside his window the following morning, the twentieth of January, the eleventh anniversary of his mother’s death. And now he stood before the boy, bowing like an acolyte, reaching for his pen. When he took his pen the boy spoke. “You’re on the right path, but fear clouds your way.” He looked to the ground. “You’re just not ready.” Then he turned to walk away.
“Where are you going?”
The boy stopped in his tracks and faced him. “I have work to do. And so do you.”
“Will I see you again?”
He stood still, deified by the light. “When you conquer your fear the signs will return.”
“But wait . . . “
“When the numbers align, you’ll see me again.” A white breeze tossed the boys hair as he descended the stairs like smoke falling out of a stovepipe. When nothing but his head was visible from the dock he turned one last time and spoke on the wind. “Live not on evil,” he said, and vanished in a gust of gray sand.
