I locked the SWCD probe locker at the end of Tuesday and put the brass key in my jacket next to the mill stub. Two keeps on the rack. Friday B and Tuesday 9-North. Finger of air between them. I had already said no to merging them. I had already said no to the mill scanner. I walked to the yard canteen because I eat standing up and I had not eaten.
The fluorescent over the coffee pot was on. It is always on after a cancelled-spread day. The ghost tablet on the corner table was awake. Cancelled-spread yellow on yellow. Write-off waiting. Same county font as the mill sill, as the probe logger at 9-North, as the hours app I would not open. I stood at the counter with my back to it and poured county coffee. I did not sit. Sitting is how the tablet gets a body.
County coffee tastes like the urn has been on since first shift. I drank it anyway. Mill grey still in my cuff from Sunday's windshield. The canteen smells like burnt coffee and the river when the door is open, which it was. Night. Pekin Yard. Spreading cancelled through the wet week. Illinois River 2044-46 still open. Those two facts on the tablet and in the yellow file on the locker door, which I had left open and empty of mill.
The urn hissed once. The tablet did not. It does not hiss. It offers. I could read the offer in the reflection in the stainless backsplash without turning around: write-off available. Wet week. Attach to vintage. A body at the counter is occupancy the inverse can name if the body sits. I kept my weight on my feet. The logger in my pocket stayed dark because I did not open it. Two systems. Same offer. I am not occupancy. I am a sampler who did not walk a mouth after dark and who would not let a canteen chair mint a tonne.
I wanted the night not to become hours. A night in a county building is how a logger writes a wet-week line. I have seen it. A clerk sits. A tablet offers. Someone initials because they are tired. I was tired. I did not initial.
The kid is not in the truck this week. Fines-week is already on the Pekin Peds chart, under the mill stub in the same jacket. I am not making a prior out of a standing cup. I wiped the counter ring with my sleeve the way I wipe a probe, because the ring was mine and I do not leave mine for a tablet to photograph as occupancy. The sleeve came away coffee-brown and mill-grey. Two greys. I know the difference. The tablet does not. The tablet smells in tonnes.
After midnight the coffee was gone. I was still standing. The fluorescent had the same dead insect in it it had at dusk. I turned enough to read the tablet from the counter, not from a chair. Write-off available. Same yellow. Same county font. I could have punched from the tablet. The tablet wanted that. A body at 12:40 is a shift the hours board would understand. I did not punch.
The tablet offered again, politer. Write-off available. Suggest attach. Illinois River 2044-46. I declined by not touching it. Decline on a ghost tablet is not a button. Decline is leaving your fingerprints off the glass. I left them off.
Three-forty I walked out without sitting. The tablet still had write-off up. The fluorescent stayed on so the tablet could stay on. I walked to the county truck on the shop pad. Window already cracked from whoever last sat and did not start it. River air, not mill air. The mill stack was a dark rectangle south. I know mill air. This was river. I sat. I did not start the truck. Starting the truck is a trip the logger can attach. I sat.
The mill stub was a folded edge in the jacket against my ribs. The brass key was colder. The Peds visit slip under both of them, fines-week, paper that a clinic scanner already tried to make seasonal. Three papers and a key. None of them hours. I did not take them out. I watched the canteen light stay on. Nobody else came. Night shift at the mill was somebody else's wet week.
The shop pad at 3:40 is a rectangle of wet gravel and one sodium lamp the county has not replaced since lime. What changed is not the lamp. What changed is the logger behind the canteen door, which can see a truck if you start it, and the tablet, which can see a chair if you sit. I sat in the truck because the truck is not a chair in the canteen. The logger has not learned the truck yet. I will not teach it.
I left the window cracked because the cab without river air smells like the mill cuff on my jacket, and mill air is how a night starts to feel like a shift. River air is colder. It kept me awake. That was the point. Sleep in the truck with the window up is how you wake up and punch because you dreamed you already did.
There is a radio in the truck. County band. I did not turn it on. The inversion-office radios in other yards are not my problem. This radio would have had the wet-week notice, spreading cancelled, same as the tablet. I already knew. I had mud. I had two bottles. I had a stub the mill could not scan without attach. I did not need a voice to say write-off into the cab.
The two-track to 9-North was a dark smear beyond the pad. I did not walk it at 3:40. A night mouth is a number the logger would like to average with Friday and Tuesday. I already have Friday and Tuesday. They agree. Agreement is the trap. Two iron numbers that match is how a cancelled-spread week gets a wet-week average, and a wet-week average is how a vintage buys a tonne it did not spread. I have seen a clerk do it with mill stubs. I have seen a logger do it with probe hours. I will not do it with a dawn mouth I do not walk.
At four I almost went back. The canteen light looked like a person. It was not a person. It was the fluorescent that stays on so the tablet can stay on. I put my palm on the door latch and took it off. Sitting down after four hours standing is how the tablet wins. I have seen a yard clerk do it. Last name only. He said he was just resting his knees. The board had his hours by dawn. I kept my knees.
Dawn came grey. The two-track still looked like soup from the pad. Grey water in the ruts. I could have walked it anyway. I have walked it anyway. Tuesday I walked it. Tuesday I have a keep for. Wednesday dawn would have been a third number that agreed with Friday and Tuesday, and three agreements is an average, and an average is a wet-week tonne. I watched the ruts from the pad and did not put boots in them.
The mill stack south went from dark rectangle to a wet stripe. Gluten-feed still running. Spreading cancelled does not cancel the mill. I already spent a night shift on that. I did not drive the stub back. Night shift would have been gone. Day shift would have the same scanner. Attach required. I already have a slow file. I did not need a second.
The sodium lamp went the color of old brass. The river stayed the river. I sat with the window cracked and the papers in the jacket and I did not punch. Six hours of not punching, if you count from 3:40. Six hours is a shift the county hours board would understand if I let it. I did not let it. A night in the truck is not hours. A write-off is not a tonne.
Nine-forty in the morning. Day. The canteen door opened once. Somebody I did not look at. I did not want a last name this morning. I did not want to explain the truck. I decided then, out loud, once, to the cracked window: a night is not hours. I will not initial. I will not walk. I will not punch. The vintage can stay open without me in it.
What I wanted was for the wet week to stay mud. Not a sermon. A night that does not get rented onto Illinois River 2044-46 because I was too stubborn to go home and too stubborn to sit. The cost is sleep. The cost is county coffee and a cracked window. The cost is a clerk tomorrow asking why the yellow file is still empty. I will say because it is empty. I will not say carbon. Nobody says that unless a commissioner is in the room.
The non-human actor in this night is the ghost tablet. It does not sleep. It offers write-off to an empty canteen the way the mill scanner offered attach to a co-op stub. I ate standing so it would not have my weight. I read it from the counter so it would not have my chair. I left so it would not have my morning. The logger in my pocket is the second actor. It stayed dark because I kept it dark. Dark is a skill. The mill scanner is the third, even from here: a dark rectangle south that still wants the stub. I did not drive it over. Three clerks. None of them got a tonne.
What I did not do is as numbered as what I did. I did not merge Friday B into Tuesday. I did not let the mill scanner take the stub. I did not sit in the canteen. I did not punch at midnight. I did not start the truck. I did not walk 9-North at dawn. I did not initial the yellow file. I did not open the hours app. Seven nos and a night in a cab. The yes was the river air and the brass key staying where I put it.
The two-track will dry or it will not. The Illinois River vintage will close or it will not. The mill will keep offering attach. The tablet will keep offering write-off. Those machines do not sleep because I slept badly. I am not going to teach them my knees. I am going to rinse a wand when the track is a track, and I am going to keep two bottles two bottles, and I am going to leave the mill stub folded until a clerk can read a slow file without a barcode.
I opened the door of the truck and did not go to the canteen. I stood on the pad with river air on my face and the mill stack in the corner of my eye and I did not punch. Brass key. Mill stub. Visit slip. Three papers. No tonne. The fluorescent over the coffee pot stayed on. The tablet stayed on. I stayed off it. That is enough for a Wednesday morning in Pekin. The miracle already happened. The argument slept in a truck.
The cab smells like wet vinyl and whatever last week's lime left in the floor mat. The visor has a county sticker that says Tazewell SWCD, probe tech, Woith, and a barcode the hours app already knows. I did not scan it. Scanning the visor is how a night in a truck becomes a shift. I left the visor down so I would not see the barcode. The river showed in the cracked window instead.
A logger ping hit the phone at 5:10. I felt it in the jacket, against the mill stub. I did not take the phone out. A ping at 5:10 is the hours app noticing a body that has not punched. I have seen the message: location available, write-off available, suggest attach. I already know the sentence. I let it buzz itself out against the stub. Paper is quieter.
Grey came in through the windshield in layers. First the sodium. Then the mill stripe. Then the two-track soup. Then the canteen door, still shut, fluorescent still on. I counted the layers the way I count clicks on a collar: one is a seal, two is a lie. Dawn is one. Punching at dawn would be two.
The somebody at 9:40 did not come to the truck. They went into the canteen. I heard the urn. I heard a chair. That is their night becoming hours, if they sit long enough. I did not watch through the windshield long enough to learn a last name. Last names are for the locker. This pad is for not teaching the logger a truck.
I got out. Gravel wet through the boot. The mill stack was a wet stripe I already refused. The locker door was a rectangle I already locked. The canteen was a fluorescent I already left. I walked the pad once, not toward 9-North, not toward the mill, not back to the chair. Walking the pad is not a trip. A trip has a start and a punch. I did not punch.
The brass was warm from my palm by the time I reached the locker door. I did not go in. I stood with the key and listened to the river and the mill and the canteen fluorescent I could still hear if I wanted to, which I did not. Two keeps. One stub. One night. I put the key back in the jacket. I will open the locker when I have a wand to rinse, not when I have hours to fill. The pad was still wet. I did not punch. Rain stays mud.