Excerpt from The Road to Los Angeles by John Fante

A month passed, with four pay checks.  Fifteen dollars a week.

I never got used to Shorty Naylor.  For that matter, Shorty Naylor never got used to me.  I couldn't talk to him, but he couldn't talk to me either.  He was not a man to say, Hello, how are you?  He merely nodded.  And he wasn't a man to discuss the canning situation or world politics.  He was too cold.  He kept me at a distance.  He made me feel as if I were an employee.  I already knew I was an employee.  I didn't see any need to rub it in.

The end of the mackerel season was in sight.  An afternoon came when we finished labeling a two hundred ton batch.  Shorty Naylor appeared with a pencil and a checking board.  The mackerel were boxed, stenciled, and ready to go.  A freighter was moored at the docks, waiting to carry them off to Germany - a wholesale house in Berlin.

Shorty gave word for us to move the shipment out on the docks.  I wiped the sweat from my face as the machine came to a stop, and with easy good-nature and tolerance I walked over to Shorty and slapped him on the back.

"How's the canning situation, Naylor?" I said.  "What sort of competition do we get from those Norwegians?"

He shook the hand from his shoulder.

"Get yourself a hand truck and go to work."

"A harsh master," I said.  "You're a harsh master, Naylor."

I took a dozen steps and he called my name.  I returned.

"Do you know how to work a hand truck?"

I had no thought of it.  I didn't even know hand trucks went by such a name.  Of course I didn't know how to work a hand truck.  I was a writer.  Of course I didn't know.  I laughed and pulled up my dungarees.