Clerical Error - Zary Fekete
“You can’t pray a lie – I found that out.” Emmanuel lifted his head after re-reading the same line for the fifth time. He finally gave up. He had been trying to read Huckleberry Finn to practice his English, but his mind couldn’t focus on it.
It should have been easy to concentrate. The scenery around him never changed. He had already ridden the 200 meter line of New Brunswick railroad track dozens of times that day, the same as every day on this job. He finally put down the book and let his mind wander back over the past few weeks.
He grew up in Haiti, and after turning eighteen he aged out of the orphanage and had to leave. He lived on the street for several months. His only possession was a plastic folder containing his identification card and his immigration application.
Last year, due to a filing mistake in the immigration office, Emmanuel had been approved to move from Haiti to Canada. He knew his Haitian paperwork wasn’t proper, but someone must have missed it. He boarded the plane in Port Au Prince and two days later his village was buried in a mudslide.
His flight landed in Toronto. The processing agent said he could stay in the city or he could be transferred to New Brunswick in eastern Canada.
“You’ll like it there,” the officer said, “The prices are low.”
“Where is it?” asked Emmanuel.
“In the east. North of Maine. America Maine. Many people speak French.” The officer told him that the only jobs available to refugees in Toronto were restaurant jobs…and even those were in high demand.
Emmanuel agreed and a day later he moved into a small apartment in Bayside, New Brunswick. Soon a driver from the packing plant arrived and took him to the fish transport station.
The driver told him about the job. He said any time cargo is shipped between two US ports it must travel on US-built transports which is pricey in taxes. The driver said the only exception to the rule is if some part of the trek is on Canadian railways which gives the freight company a huge tax break. In order to take advantage of this rule the freight companies were working some international angles. Fish caught in Alaska was loaded onto international ships headed south to the Panama Canal. The ships crossed the canal and then traveled north to New Brunswick where the fish was loaded onto Canadian rail cars. The freight then rolled on exactly 200 meters of track: the shortest stretch of official railroad track in the world, just to take advantage of the tax break. The cargo was transferred onto trucks where it eventually crossed the border into Maine…destined for restaurants in the United States, mostly McDonalds.
On the first day the freight foreman pointed to a railroad car, the rear one, and handed Emmanuel a notebook and a pen. He told him to sit on a wooden platform attached to the last car and to record in the notebook the exact time that the cars departed down the 200 meter stretch of track and to note exactly when the cars came to a stop. That was the entirety of Emmanuel’s job.
At first the ease of the job made the time seem delightful. Back in Haiti much of Emmanuel’s life was filled with solving countless daily problems. Everybody in Haiti was used to a certain kind of DIY lifestyle. If there was a fire in your house you had to put it out. No firetruck was coming. If the pothole in the street grew too large it was your job to fill it. There was no infrastructure for these things.
It didn’t take long for the initial excitement of his new life to wear off. The 200 meter track was like a fish bowl. Emmanuel could feel the repetitious rhythm of it in his sleep. He felt the images and smells of it when he closed his eyes at night: the flanking forest, the scent of oil mixed with fir fronds, the ugly jolt when the cars stopped. Each day bled into the next. He watched the many pallets of fish roll by. He and the fish were both confined to a world of schedule and predictable next steps. And they were both here in New Brunswick because of small clerical errors.
Originally published by Potato Soup Journal 2021
Zary Fekete…
…grew up in Hungary
…has a debut chapbook of short stories out from Alien Buddha Press and a novelette (In the Beginning) coming out from ELJ Publications.
…enjoys books, podcasts, and many many many films. Twitter: @ZaryFekete
