University of Northern Iowa

Night ShiftAuthor(s): Karen GlennSource: The North American Review, Vol. 290, No. 3/4, Annual Summer Fiction Double Issue(May - Aug., 2005), p. 43Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25127398 .

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IAN RANDALL WILSON

himself, laughed and took a small bow. Then he motioned several over to help with the restacking. The day went on.

Then one night his mother called and she was crying. "It's the

insurance," she said, "If I want the money he has to be legally dead. I've got to get him declared."

"This is about waiting," Judge said. "When your dog runs off

you have to wait to make sure he's coming home."

"I told the lawyer to go ahead."

After he finished talking to her, he had a glass of water and

got ready for bed. He'd find the letter tomorrow or the day after or the day after that. It had been a long time since he'd last seen

it. Not on the shelf. Not in the closet. Not in his file cabinet. Not

by the bed. Maybe next week. He needed time. A little time. He

needed to plan for what his father had said.

KAREN GLENN

Night Shift

Let us now praise the night shift?

those on the 8 to 4, the 10 to 6,

the 10-hour or 12-hour shift,

the bread bakers pounding and leavening,

the pastry cooks rolling and filling, the sleep-deprived, the heavy-eyed,

the pale and dark ones sleeping

through their days, ambulance drivers

with their bright sirens, pilots whose planes move like wandering stars,

the dawn-obsessed, the checkers of watches,

nurses slipping into unlit rooms,

the uniformed, the dressed-down, the truckers

with their high beams on, the wired,

the goosed-up, the dragged-down,

the lost and lonely selling tickets at dim windows,

girls who kick their shoes off, the ones

who walk the aisles, security staff, night watchmen,

all those who guard our nights,

unsmiling collectors of tolls, bouncers

at the after-hours bars, strummers

of guitars, ticklers of drums, working

in the shadow world where fluorescent lights stand in for sun and flashes of neon

pass for stars. Let us praise the yawners

and those who stretch to stay awake,

coffee hounds, speed freaks, Coke drinkers, women

splashing water on their faces.

Remember the blackjack dealers with their gleaming cards, waitresses sleepwalking from table to table,

taxi drivers with a gun in the glove, all the weary, the fearful, the men

who never see their wives, the nervous babysitters,

those dancing to strange music, the clank

and drone of factory machines,

printers rolling out the news,

all those dreaming of dawn and sleep until, at last, in the first hint of light, the clerk

alone in the 7-11 counts the change in the cash drawer and closes out the night.

May-August 2005 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW 43

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