Jobs, Now, Please

Tom Lake: Ghosts came to work in the carpet mills. They tried to be silent and invisible. The government ignored them, as it had the ghosts who brought in the onion crop and built the Olympic village, because there were too many jobs and not enough workers. The ghosts were willing. They were hungry. They filled apartments along Fifth Avenue and Morris Street and paid the rent on time and fixed their own broken showers because they were too timid to call the landlord, and they obeyed traffic laws while driving to work in their busted-up Geo Metros because they were deathly afraid of police. They worked quickly, without complaint, their heartbeats lost in the hum of the tufting machines. Their money was ghost money, vanishing dollars, born again in another country, called by another name.

But even the lightest footstep leaves a mark.