Danny O'Connor woke up at six-thirty because that was when the light came through the crack in the blinds, and the light came through the crack in the blinds at six-thirty every day, and his body had learned this the way a dog learns its owner's schedule — not through understanding but through repetition.

He made coffee. The coffee was instant. It always was. He stood at the kitchen sink and watched it drip into the mug and thought about nothing, which was the only thing he had time for.

The apartment was small. One bedroom, living room, kitchen that was also the living room, bathroom that smelled of mildew even when he cleaned it. The linoleum on the counter was peeling at the corner. He had meant to fix it for three years. He had not fixed it.

He checked the job board on his computer. The computer was seven years old and the screen had a dead pixel in the center that made every word look like it was blinking. The dead pixel was on the word "available," which seemed like a joke.

No new postings. He refreshed the page. Still nothing. He closed the laptop and put on his jacket. The jacket was brown and had a hole in the left pocket. He had been meaning to fix the pocket too.

The truck wouldn't start. He turned the key. The engine made a sound like a man clearing his throat — uncertain, reluctant, trying to remember what it was supposed to do. Then nothing. Just the sound of the starter motor spinning in empty space.

He sat in the driver's seat and looked at the dashboard. The mileage was 187,000. He had bought it used from a guy who said it had "one owner" and looked at Danny like Danny was the kind of man who believed in lies.

He walked instead. It was forty minutes to downtown Flint, and he had nowhere to be, so the walk was not exercise or meditation. It was just something to do between the apartment and the part of the day where nothing happened either.

On the way, he passed the old factory. It had been closed for five years. The sign outside said GM in letters that were peeling and rusted, the red fading to pink, the pink fading to nothing. The windows were smashed. Vines grew through the broken glass. Graffiti covered the walls — names and tags and occasional phrases that were either poetry or madness, possibly both: "GOD LEFT," "EVERYTHING CRUMBLING," "NOTHING MATTERS BUT THE NEXT HOUR."

Danny looked at the factory the way you look at a dead animal on the side of the road — with a kind of detached recognition. This was once a place where people did things. Where they made things. Where they had money and purpose and a routine that told them where to be and when. Now it was a place where nothing happened and vines grew through broken glass and strangers wrote on walls.

He kept walking.

At the community center, there were six people. Tom Harris was there, drinking coffee from a paper cup. Tom was his age — thirty-five, former auto plant worker, currently "between things," which is what people say when they are between things and don't want to say between nothing.

"Morning," Tom said.

"Morning."

"Truck?"

"Truck."

"Damn."

They drank coffee. The community center was in a church basement. The chairs were folding chairs, metal and uncomfortable. The coffee was instant. It was always instant. Someone had brought donuts — six of them, stale, the kind you get from a gas station. They ate two. The other four sat on the table and dried out.

"Got a lead," said a man named Ray. Ray was fifty, bald, with a face like a bulldog's younger, less violent brother. "Detroit. Temporary work. Warehouse. Ten-fifty an hour. Four-hour drive."

Ten-fifty an hour. Danny did the math in his head. Four hours each way. Two days. Twenty hours of driving. Sixty dollars in gas. Eight hours of work. That was sixty times eight, which was four hundred and eighty dollars. Minus gas. Four hundred and eighty dollars minus twenty dollars —

"Who's organizing the transport?" Danny asked.

Nobody answered. They all looked at the floor or the table or the wall.

"Nobody?" Danny said.

"We figured we'd carpool," Ray said. "But nobody's offered a vehicle."

Danny looked at his hands. They were calloused and cracked and smelled of machine oil even after he washed them. Hands that used to build things. Now they built nothing.

"Nobody's offered a vehicle," he repeated.

"It's fine," Tom said. "It's just—"

"It's just four hundred miles round trip for ten-fifty an hour and nobody wants to gas a car and drive a stranger to a warehouse in Detroit."

"That's not —"

"It is what it is."

Someone suggested they organize. A union. A cooperative. Something. Danny was pushed forward, not aggressively but with the casual pressure of people who need someone to be responsible and he was the only one who hadn't already said he couldn't.

"Sure," Danny said. "I'll talk to them."

He didn't know who "them" was. He didn't know what he would say. He just said sure, because sure is the word you say when someone asks you to do something and you don't have the energy to say no.

The union meeting was in a church basement on the other side of town. Danny drove his truck — which started this time, though it took three tries — and parked in the church lot and went inside.

There were maybe thirty people in the room. More than the community center. But not enough to fill the folding chairs. The people in suits were at the front of the room: three men and a woman, all wearing ties, all with names printed on little cards that said something like "Regional Coordinator" or "Labor Relations Specialist."

Danny sat in the back. He listened to them talk about procedures and timelines and strategy and the difference between a "collective bargaining unit" and a "worker advocacy group." He understood about ten percent of what they said. The rest was vocabulary he didn't know and concepts that felt like they were designed to exclude him.

When they opened it for questions, Danny raised his hand. The woman in the front noticed him.

"Yes?" she said. Her voice was the kind of voice that was trained to be welcoming but was actually trained to be controlling.

"I'm a worker," Danny said. "I haven't had a job in five years. My truck doesn't start. I drive four hours for ten-fifty an hour. I have a nephew I'm taking care of because his mom can't. I don't know what a collective bargaining unit is and I don't care. I just want to know if anyone in this room has a car they can spare and a tank of gas they're willing to use."

The room was quiet. The people in suits looked at each other. The woman smiled. It was a kind smile. It was also the kind of smile that meant you had asked a stupid question in a room full of people who had prepared answers for stupid questions.

"That's a logistical challenge," she said. "But we're working on transportation solutions. In the meantime, let me give you my card. We have a list of temporary positions —"

"I don't need a card," Danny said. "I need a ride."

He stood up and left. He sat in his truck in the church parking lot and smoked a cigarette. He had quit smoking two years ago. He relapsed because sometimes the world is too heavy and a cigarette is the only thing that makes the weight bearable for three minutes.

Tom found him there. "Hey," Tom said. "You did good in there."

"I didn't do anything."

"You showed up. That's more than most."

"Does showing up matter?"

Tom was silent. Then he said, "Hey, you did good." And he walked away.

Danny drove home. The journey took longer than it should because he was driving in circles. He told himself he was looking for a better route. He was not. He was driving in circles because the alternative was going home and facing the apartment and the peeling linoleum and the dead pixel on the computer screen and the fact that he had been unemployed for five years and the only thing he had built in five years was a deep and abiding relationship with his couch.

Weeks passed. The community center closed on a Thursday. Nobody announced it. Nobody held a meeting. Nobody wrote a press release. It just stopped: the lights were turned off, the folding chairs were stacked, the instant coffee machine was unplugged and taken home by whoever found it first.

Tom got a job at a warehouse in Gary, Indiana. Two hours away. He told Danny about it over the phone. "It's not much," he said. "But it's something." Danny said, "That's something." He hung up and sat in his truck in the parking lot of a grocery store and ate a sandwich alone.

Little Billy's mother moved away. She couldn't take him anymore — couldn't afford him, couldn't care for him, couldn't face him. Billy stayed with Danny for a few days. The kid was twelve, scrawny, with eyes that were too old for his face. He didn't talk much. He sat on the couch and watched cartoons and ate whatever Danny put in front of him.

Then the gang came. Three boys, maybe fifteen, who lived in the apartment building next door. They came to Billy's door and talked to him in a language that was not quite English and not quite anything else — a street language that Danny didn't understand but recognized. It was the language of people who had nothing to lose and everything to gain from taking something.

Billy looked at Danny when they left. "I'm gonna be back," Billy said. It was not a promise. It was information.

Danny didn't stop him. He wanted to. He opened his mouth to say something — anything — but the words wouldn't come. He had spent five years learning how not to say anything, and he was very good at it now.

Two days later, the police came. Not to arrest Billy — to pick him up. He had been seen with the gang, hanging around their territory, wearing their colors (a blue bandana, which Danny had not noticed but the police had). It was not a crime to wear a blue bandana, but in this neighborhood, wearing the wrong color was close enough to a crime that the police treated it as one.

Danny sat in the park across from the police station. It was evening. The sky was the color of a bruise — purple and yellow and grey, all at once. He watched the police car drive away with Billy inside. He did not follow. He sat there and watched the taillights disappear and felt nothing that he could name.

The wind was cold. It came off the river and carried the smell of industrial waste and dead fish and something else — something that was not quite rot and not quite decay but was close to both. Danny sat with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched and his eyes on the place where the police car had disappeared.

He did not cry. He did not rage. He sat. He sat the way you sit when sitting is the only thing left to do.

He got up. He walked to his truck. He turned the key. The engine started on the second try.

He drove home through streets that were the same as every other street — cracked sidewalks, boarded-up houses, a few people walking home from work or from nothing, the sky darkening as evening became night.

At home, he opened the job board on his computer. The dead pixel blinked on the word "available." He refreshed the page.

One new posting: construction work, three hours away. Starting tomorrow. $12 an hour. No experience required. Bring your own tools.

Danny looked at the posting. He looked at the dead pixel. He looked at the peeling linoleum on the counter.

He turned on the radio. The construction posting came on as a radio ad — a local crew hiring, twelve bucks an hour, no experience needed. Danny turned the radio up slightly so he could hear it over the sound of his own breathing.

He did not turn it off.