Chapter 3: Working Man Blues
The next two days were sheer, unalloyed misery.
Michael had thought he knew what being tired was. Hell, when he was fifteen he had spent six miserable weeks on the back of a picker in the middle of summer, slowly trundling up and down rows of corn, working as a detassler. Every night he had come home itchy, sunburned, rank with sweat, and so exhausted he could barely eat dinner before he fell into bed.
But by Sunday afternoon he had gone to some strange place beyond weariness, the culmination of a normal school week, a late shift Friday night, a fourteen-hour day on Saturday, and then yet another five AM alarm the next day. In a last-ditch effort to stay conscious, he’d been desperate enough to drink three mugs of the foul, scalding brew that passed for coff
