49594
I know this sequence like I know my social security number. My father made me memorize it when I was 10.
I carried the card in my wallet. It shows the wear of time and the trust a parent had in their child.
I know it like I know my grandmother’s phone number. I haven’t dialed those digits since she was preached off to heaven in the winter of 2001. I’d call her on the phone, still connected to a wall, it’s cord as long as a drug store receipt. She’d call me on days I was homesick from school.
“Jussy, how are you feeling?” she’d say.
“I’m fine, maw-maw,” I’d say back.
“Mmhmm. You’re always fine,” she’d say.
49594
I know it as well as I know my spouse’s birthday. The times my children were born. My parents’ wedding anniversary.
I’m told not to use those numbers when setting an online password.
49594
In the darkness, I pressed them. Slow, methodical, with a level of misunderstood shame.
I did so each night in a seven-minute window, running me down from 10:53 to 11:00 pm. Eight hours later, I’d repeat the ritual—this time at a quicker pace.
My fingers move with the skill of Rachmaninoff, and I’m out the door. The rest of the world starts their day, and I’m ending mine.
This was my identification number. What the company saw instead of my face, instead of my passion, instead of what made me, well, me.
A symbol, a mark, proving I worked the late shift at a factory job. The kind that has since gone overseas.
It was a number squeezed in between others.
49593 belonged to a character named Pookie. His brothers got him the job. He wore a Joy Dog Food hat and started every sentence with “My hand to God” before he lied and laughed. Pookie made the night go by fast.
49596 belonged to Dwayne. His daddy, like mine, put in a good word with the right person. Our interviews were just a formality.
His older brother worked there too, so we called Dwayne “Baby.”
49594
It’s the number of cuts on my hand stinging from the chemicals I used to add to baths of tin, nickel and gold; the pairs of steel-toed boots falling apart from exposure to acids. It’s the respirator I pull over my face to ward off pure ammonia.
A man named Ken got too close once. He didn’t read the hazard label. Said he could tell what was in the barrel drum by the smell. Code Blue.
It’s the number of sweat bumps I got up and down my legs. It’s the number of times I came close to a heat stroke in the summer; the amount of Dixie burgers in the cafeteria vending machine with my name on it.
It’s the number of books I read in the breakroom. It was the Masonic handshake that allowed me access to a blue-collar world.
49594
A palindromic number, the same backward as it is forward. A number that kept me in the same place for five years.
It defined who I was—somebody who had to punch a clock when I wanted to clock a mouthy supervisor. A cog in the wheel, like my father and his father.
My birthright.
Proof I wasn’t above my raisin’.
49594
I raced around the warehouse on pallet jacks with the Pickle brothers. They were two of five siblings. They lived not a mile down the road.
One weekend, we tubed down the Dan River, cutting our ass cheeks against the rocks in the shallow ends. At their house, the TV was always on the Cooking Channel. The first time I played a Sega Dreamcast was with them.
49594
We called him “Happy” because he was always smiling. We called him a Yankee because he came from Pennsylvania. When he’d go visit family back home, he’d return with Lord Chesterfield Ale.
At the end of a shift, we’d lean up against cars, sit on tailgates, and down one or two. Other times, he’d return with chocolate milk. It’s still some of the best I’ve ever tasted.
Last week, Happy messaged me about a reunion I’m afraid to attend. I don’t know what I’d say to some of the best people I’ve ever known.
The phrase “salt of the earth” gets tossed around a lot. I learned about it on a factory floor.
From Dwight, who always showed up early before the shift change with a smile on his face.
From Jim, who showed me how to dial in a line to the point where I practically stole money from the company at night.
From Tommy, who let me try some of his wife’s cooking when I forgot my lunch at home.
You know, the kind of people who make a place bearable.
Folks ask me what electroplating is. I try to tell them. It never comes out right.
I asked my father once; he told me I’d have to see it for myself. See the assembly line. See the towers. See the people who keep them running.
It’s been twenty years since I needed that number to log my hours. 240 months since it helped me collect a paycheck. 7305 days since I walked out, moved on, and went off to school.
Got degrees and letters to go before and after my name to replace that number.
Sometimes at night, I wake up in a panic. My hands outstretched, reaching for a reel of parts that slipped through my hands decades ago.
49594.
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Justin Cox received his theological education from Campbell University, Wake Forest University School of Divinity, and McAfee School of Theology where he earned his Doctor of Ministry. He is an ordained minister holding standing in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and American Baptist Churches USA. When not spending time with his spouse and daughters, he can be found writing and baking late into the night. His thoughts and reflections are his own.