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Saints and Martyrs ˜ 291
all kinds of problems if we let him in the house. We just got to get him out of
here.” You just categorized me with all the rest of the ones you experienced being
drunk and not being able to communicate or follow instructions. So when I was
drinking and tried to get a shower and some dry clothes on that day in 1996, you
just kicked me on out. The Open Door didn’t want to be bothered with what
you thought I would do. You know, that just added to it. I said, “Damn. Just
total disrespect because of what they assume, because I’m homeless and I come
to this place needing some basic help. They assume that I ain’t no good; that I’m
stupid, or dumb; I ain’t never been worth anything in my life.”
A year later I started looking for paid employment, and I started making
plans to leave the community. I was riding the train going out to see about a job
in Dunwoody, and I saw a guy who uses the services here. We got to talking, and
he told me, “I know where you can immediately get a job.” So I went out there
the next day, and they hired me. So I started working.
I work on a type of conveyor line where there are chickens hanging in stirrups
by their legs with the feathers off and the head chopped off. After the neck
skin is split open, my job is to reach in and take the craw and the windpipe out.
We go through about fifty thousand or more in a day. I do about one chicken a
second. The chickens are drained by the time they get to me, so there’s not a lot
of blood.
I be on the site from 7:00 a.m. until 5:30 p.m. That’s the longest we can work
in a day because they have federal inspectors there, and they shut it down at 5:30
p.m. That’s the longest they’re willing to work. And when they stop, everything
stops. That’s about ten hours of work. We get a ten-minute break every hour.
We get a thirty-minute break from 9:30 to 10:00, and we break for lunch from
12:30 until 1:00. We’re not paid for that hour of break time.
I looked for work at a restaurant, in construction, at an animal hospital. I
just couldn’t find anything else.
I realize I’m getting old, and my mind is willing, but my body ain’t able. I
try to work at a pace that I used to work at when I was younger. I try that these
days and these old bones and everything just won’t take that abuse and stress. I
reach up, grab, twist, and pull down. That’s the motion. When I wear one hand
out I go to the other. Because my left hand is swollen, I had to wear a steel-mesh
glove. It was so tight around my fist. After you flex your fist fifty thousand times
a day, that’s a lot of pressure.
There are a lot of Mexicans working in the plant, and I can’t read their age
too good. But this young Black guy, he seems to be the youngest one, he’s nineteen
or twenty. There are some old women who work over there. If they’re not
actually sixty, they look it. I’m quite sure there are illegal aliens working
there, too.
I make $5.25 an hour, with a fifty-cent bonus if I get there on time every
day. I get a quarter raise this month. In three weeks I’ve saved $412. I make about