He rolls the piece of his bitten-off dried skin between his fingers, squinting at the forming drop of blood where he ripped too much of his thumb skin off. Again. Such weird-looking, soft hands that match the rest of him, and those stupid teal jeans. What a brat. 

The wiry, leathery man in his mid sixties leans forward in the ancient rattan chair, which now squeaks in complaint over any weight it has to bear. Squinting in the harsh, fluorescent barn lighting, Rand’s eyes follow the new hiree in the corner. 

It had been only a few months since Rand had finally agreed to hire him. The boy must have filled out twenty applications in the span of two weeks. Why some trust fund baby with eight hundred dollar snakeskin boots had been so eager to work on a hog farm was beyond him. Now Rand had formed a decent guess of why. 

Oh he had heard the stories circulating in from around town. New people never escaped rumors for long in any tight-knit community, and this boy must have been mad for any attention he could get.

Rand shook his head slowly at the young man, watching as he slowly limped towards the hose in the corner to fill his water bottle again. It had not been even three hours since his shift started. It’s not even summer yet, boy. A fraction of a sneer pulled at the old man’s face.

 

He had to admit, it was getting to be entertaining. Zealousness, along with some reasonable fear of being fired, had motivated the new kid to work with energy the first week. But a few ornery sows, a ladder rolled over a foot, and snickering long-time workers had put a gloomy, paranoid look on the kid’s face. Rand thought it fit him much better than the arrogant smile he wore at first, since his ridiculous rose gold-frame glasses were broken anyways. 

His eyes were always red and twitching, and Rand had gotten four complaints already about the boy showing up smelling like death warmed over. And he stole food. At least that is what Rand’s foreman, Eugene, had reported. Last Thursday, when the shipment of feed corn had come in, Eugene had been unloading vans with a menagerie of the few workers who had not called off that morning. A pallet of feed had been sealed poorly, so the mess had been hastily pushed to the side for the janitor, whenever he could get to it. The area had barely been deserted before the kid discovered the mess. He was shoveling feed corn in his pockets when Eugene had rolled by in the forklift. Time to crack down on uniforms again. Rand leaned over in the chair, and it squeaked again as he spat on the ground. Ten minutes passed, marked by the slow, uneven smacks of the boy’s mucking shovel hitting the plastic bin. Rand glanced down at his spittle. A small beetle had been drawn to peach scent, but Rand decided not to stomp on it. The chewing tobacco juice would shrivel the bug from its insides out.