Huey puts me on the three-to-eleven shift, Monday through Saturday, and pays me five bucks an hour cash under the table, every cent of which goes to paying half the insurance deductibles on the damaged cars. After those are paid, Dad says the money is mine to do as I please with. Mom says otherwise and makes me open a savings account.

Anyway, Tank’s dad agrees to pay the other half of the owners’ deductibles, but he refuses to make Tank get a job, saying wrestling is his son’s full-time occupation. However, he does decide to ground Tank, sentencing him to the basement and taking away his cell phone and laptop, meaning I’ll have to come up with some creative tactics if I want to communicate with him during his home imprisonment.

Thanks to Brandon Watkins, I learn the job quickly. Huey places him in charge of training me, saying Brandon and my brother are the two best stock boys he’s ever had, meaning I have some big shoes to fill or whatever. Brandon tells me to watch out for Huey, especially when he comes in drunk toward closing to check up on things. He says Huey’s a happy drunk but sometimes flips out over little things, like small amounts of broken glass. But Brandon says as long as I keep the floor clean and the cooler stocked, there’s little chance of the boss freaking.

First day on the job, Brandon takes me straight to the back room, a narrow, rectangular space where the nasty job of sorting and bagging returnable containers occurs. I notice a small bathroom immediately to the left, but the remainder of the back room is behind the massive walk-in cooler, making it impossible to see from the main floor. Seven waist-high wooden rectangular bins, each lined with a thick red garbage bag, span the back wall.

“These are the returnable bins,” Brandon says. “Every hour or so, go out on the floor and check the two shopping carts for bottles and cans. They’re usually full.”

“Man, that’s a lot of empties.”

“Yeah, well, most states have a five-cent deposit law, but for some stupid reason I’ll never figure out, the great state of Michigan offers a dime per empty, meaning most people around here make a point of returning their bottles and cans.” He pauses. “And it also means plenty of extra dirty work for us.” He looks toward the entrance. “Follow me. I’ll show you what I mean.”

We walk out to the middle of the store, where the two carts are overflowing with empties. Huey’s behind the counter filling out a liquor order. He looks at us, grunts, and resumes his paperwork.