By K. A. Polzin
Featured Art: “Walking On Fish Bones” by Lesley Weston

“Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera!” Tiny called to me from the loading dock. 

Me: “Okay, I’m coming, etcetera!” I ditched my forklift and hustled over.  

Tiny grabbed his car keys, and we headed out. He knew I knew that today was Taco Truck Day. So he didn’t need to say the words. Every Tuesday and Thursday at lunch: the taco truck.  

Tiny drove. In the car, he said, “You hear that? That’s my stomach actually growling. Audibly. I’m so fucking etcetera.” 

“Me etcetera,” I said. 

At the taco truck, I got carnitas. Tiny got al pastor. Against worksite rules, we both got a Modelo.  

Ramón from the truck usually threw in some kind of freebie. Today was corn salad. We were good customers.  

When we finished, Tiny wiped his face with a napkin and said, “Etcetera?” 

I stood up. “Yeah. Etcetera, I guess.” 

He drove us back to work. 

Tiny, getting out of the car: “Etcetera those pallets that came in this morning.” 

Me: “Yeah, I know. Fucking etcetera.” 

There was only one job on the loading dock: moving pallets. Putting them on trucks, taking them off of trucks. So Tiny could only mean one thing. No need to specify.  

People at work were used to Tiny and me, to the way we talked. Ditto our friends. Even Ramón at the taco truck was used to us. When we etcetera-ed, he’d smile like a tolerant parent.  

My partner Sirina, however, was officially tired of it. You may know what this is like.  

That evening, at home, I was in the kitchen pouring myself some wine. “Would you like a glass of etcetera?” I called.  

“Enough with that already!” she barked. “And, yes.”  

I handed her her glass of wine sheepishly. 

A little softer, she said, “Just talk like a normal person, okay?” This was as close to an apology as I could’ve hoped to get. 

It was my fault for forgetting how furious our little piece of fun made her. It seemed as though any deviation from standard behavior annoyed Sirina. Worst of all (to her): we would speak in our way in front of the uninitiated—randos—which marked us, in her book, as weird. But I’d found that most people didn’t even notice. And a few, bless their hearts, caught on pretty quickly, and sometimes even chuckled at it.  

For the most part, I kept my work-me and my home-me separate. Maybe that’s true for a lot of people. And Sirina liked Tiny, as long as we acted “normal” around her. Which we tried to do. 

To me, it was only a fun game. Were we supposed to just work all day and be deadly serious? Because I would not like that.  

                                                                                        # 

Tiny had been a judo master in El Salvador. He was on the national team. You can see it in the nimble way he moves about the warehouse. But he did something that ticked off a neighborhood gang—I fucked up, was how he put it—and for the safety of his parents and siblings, he had to flee the country, cut off all contact. That was fifteen years ago.  

I got pretty good grades in high school, but for financial reasons, I could only afford to go to community college and get an associate degree, which the internet said would offer “the potential to qualify for more jobs.” 

And that’s how we each ended up on a loading dock.  

It’d been eight years. We started Taco Truck Days right at the beginning. Tiny had a car, so he drove. After a while, we were having each other over for the occasional dinner, too. Tiny taught me a little self-defense. I helped him with his citizenship forms. He went to my sister’s wedding. We grew tight. 

Tiny is huge, not tiny. That’s the joke. In El Salvador they called him Chiquito. He’s an easygoing dude, but don’t kid yourself: If he has to, he will kick your ass. 

                                                                                        # 

The next day at work, Tiny and I and a few of the others were playing an impromptu shuffleboard game with the push brooms when Ted, our supervisor, surprise-checked on things.  

“What the fuck, guys?” Ted said, arms pleading with us. “Are all those pallets loaded?” 

They were not.  

We all stared at him and not at the stacks of work to be done.  

“We’re on it, boss,” Tiny said—convincingly, I thought. “Just taking a quick break, then etcetera.” 

Ted: “No. No more breaks. Do it now!” Pause. “Etcetera!” 

I ditched my broom and made for the forklift, but it was all I could do to keep from laughing. Ted had never betrayed any awareness of our little word game until then. And to top it off, he’d used etcetera in anger, as an interjection. It was a first. Ted was an innovator!  

As soon as he was out of sight, Tiny and I laughed our asses off. We got the pallets loaded toot sweet, then headed off to lunch.  

Tiny, in the car: “Do you think he even realizes he said it?” 

Me: “You think it was an unconscious thing?”  

“I think I do, yes,” Tiny said. 

“Interesting.” Pause. “Or maybe he was trying to relate to us, speak our language. He thinks that’s how our generation talks.”  

“He thinks he’s cool now!” 

When we were done cracking up, Tiny said, “You know, Ted recommended me for the management program, but man, I fucked up. I biffed the interview. I’ll be loading etcetera until I’m a grandpa.” 

To Tiny, the big twists and turns in people’s lives were due to one cause: they fucked up. Maybe it was Tiny’s big fuckup in El Salvador that caused him to see life as a series of tragic missteps. Also, whenever he pronounced his signature phrase, he really hammered home the fricative—ffucked up—which made every fuckup sound worse. Significant.  

“I’m sure there’ll be another chance,” I offered. “Ted likes you.” 

“You really think so?” 

I nodded. “Etcetera,” I said with conviction. 

                                                                                        # 

When I got home, Sirina asked, “How was work?” 

But I couldn’t tell her about what Ted had said—about the most interesting thing that had happened all day—because of our indefinite moratorium on said word. So I told her about something that happened with the forklift.  

She got that look on her face, the one she got whenever I fell short. “Wait, what? So, the forklift wouldn’t start? That’s the whole story?”  

How could I explain? I had a way better story, but I was forbidden from telling it.  

                                                                                        # 

A few years before, Tiny got serious with this one woman, Trini, but she broke up with him after he told her about El Salvador, about how he’d fucked up. She told him she wanted her kids to have a big family, but with Tiny, they’d have half the abuelos and tios of other kids. 

“Shoulda waited,” he told me. “Shoulda waited until she couldn’t live without me. But I fucked up.” Tiny hadn’t had a girlfriend since then. I think he was worried he’d get burned again.  

I’d been with Sirina for a couple of years. We moved in together after six months. It just seemed like the thing people do. Tiny had never said a bad word about her, but I could tell he didn’t like holding his tongue around her. It wasn’t his style. He was just Tiny, take it or leave it.  

                                                                                        # 

After Ted’s groundbreaking outburst, Tiny and I made it our goal to get everybody at work to use our pet word at least once, consciously or not. Solely for our amusement. The rule was: we couldn’t explain the thing to people; they had to adopt our usage of their own accord.  

Our initial strategy was to inject it into questions, hoping that the person would reply in kind. Our first attempt: 

Tiny, to Rochelle: “Did that shipment of etcetera come in yet?” 

Rochelle, looking puzzled: “Which shipment?” 

It was an inauspicious beginning. I blamed it on poor planning. We decided to join forces and double-team the next person.  

Attempt 2:  

Tiny, to Kevin and me: “I’m getting a coke from the machine. You want an etcetera?” 

“I’ll take an etcetera,” I said, pulling a fiver from my wallet.  

Tiny looked at Kevin. We waited. 

“I’m good,” he said. 

We both agreed: It was a kind of success.   

We kept at it. Then, one day: 

Tiny, to the crew: “How many etcetera did you guys load today?” 

Me: “I know I did at least thirty etcetera.” 

Trish tapped a few keys on her tablet. “We did a hundred and twenty altogether,” she said.  

Tiny smiled. “Excellent. Great etcetera.” 

Then he gave me a wink. This was major progress. 

Later, when it was just the two of us: 

“This is the most fun I’ve had in etcetera,” Tiny said, eyes alight, like a kid with a cupcake.  

That made me a little sad, thinking how long it’d been since Trini, since he’d had something happening in his life. 

                     # 

God, did I want to tell Sirina about our little work project. I thought about giving it a shot, trying to come at it from a new angle, but then I pictured her fury. It was sufficient deterrent. 

I used to wonder if maybe she was jealous of the fun Tiny and I had, but no: it seemed she just thought our word game was “silly,” “juvenile,” and “pointless” (her words, at various times).  

Sirina was a waitress, so she heard lots of lame jokes from customers, often the same jokes she’d heard before. Maybe that explained things. 

“I mean, what is the point?” she once asked, I assumed rhetorically. “Why are you so amused by this?” She made a face like something smelled bad. 

All I could think to say was: “We just are. Different people are different.” 

                                                                                        # 

Tiny never said to anyone, “You fucked up.” He was a patient teacher, always helping other employees, showing them how to fix their mistakes. Only later, in the telling, would he apply his signature phrase. Like after a new hire wrecked a forklift and got fired: “Terri, man, she fucked up.” It was when he was assembling the narrative of people’s lives that events received the designation. 

Maybe acknowledging other people’s fuckups made his big one feel not so bad? We’re all fuckups maybe, Tiny was hoping. Subsequent events may have proven him right. 

                                                                                        # 

Our project progressed nicely. In addition to Ted and Trish (and, in a way, Kevin), Tiny and I initiated three additional (successful) etcetera-based interactions, though one remained in dispute. What happened was this: 

1. Tiny gestured toward the earplug dispenser, saying to Troy, “Hand me a pair of etcetera.”  

2. Troy tossed Tiny an earplug pack.  

I felt that the phrase “pair of,” and also Tiny’s hand gesture, were leading, and therefore a kind of cheat. Tiny felt a success was a success; any seeming comprehension or acceptance of our usage was an accomplishment and should be celebrated. We agreed to disagree. Because we both still had the same goal: worksite-wide use of our word, either conscious or unconscious.  

And we continued to make excellent progress until the accident. I guess you could say re: what Kevin did that day: he fucked up.  

                                                                                        # 

The night after the breakup with Trini, Tiny and I did split a case of Modelo. This is not something I recommend. I tried to keep up with Tiny but failed. After beer 14 or so, Tiny drifted into a kind of half-sleep on the couch and started talking to the ceiling.  

“Hector,” Tiny said into the air. Then: “Berta. Angel.” He seemed unwakeable, so I just listened. “Cesar. Flor. Veronica.” 

Then I knew: He was saying their names, the family he’d left behind. It seemed like a private thing. I got the feeling it was something he’d done before, maybe before bed each night, like a prayer. It was the first / only time I would hear him speak their names. 

The last name he said was José. Then a pause. Then, drifting off: “Etcetera.”  

                                                                                        # 

The accident. It happened just like one of those Ultimate Fail videos, where a guy is loading a huge stack of some product with a forklift, and his stack starts to tilt to one side. Next, the guy tries to correct the angle, keep his stack, but it’s tilted too far, he’s screwed and he knows it. It’s already a done deal, he’s just waiting to see how bad it is. Sometimes it’s glass bottles of some liquid cascading down and bursting into smithereens by the hundreds, sometimes it’s dozens of barrels rolling, rolling across the warehouse floor, sending the crew fleeing. This was worse. 

After the initial tilt, after Kevin attempted to correct the angles, to hold onto his stack, it all fell into the shelf, and the shelf toppled over into the next shelf, and so on, and so on, domino-style, across the warehouse, like a gigantic, terrible kids’ game, until a shelf fell onto Tiny.  

We all heard him screaming. 

By the time we dug Tiny out, he was bloody and moaning. “I fucked up,” he managed to say. 

“Ambulance is on the way,” Trish told him, working to keep her voice steady.  

Tiny: “It better hurry.”  

I squatted next to him. “You’re gonna be fine,” I said. But I was no doctor. That’s just what you say, isn’t it? 

“Púchica!” Tiny said. “I hurt all over.” I noticed blood had soaked into his scalp.  

“To be expected,” I said. “A shelf fell on you.” 

“Not just the shelf. There were contents.” 

Ted arrived, out of breath and looking both furious and nervous. He glanced around at us as if making a mental roll call. Then: “He alright?” 

We all stared.  

“I’ve been better, boss,” Tiny said. 

The EMTs rushed in, strapped Tiny to a stretcher, and started wheeling him away. I followed alongside.  

“No taco truck today,” Tiny said to the air. Was he delirious? 

“…possible serious internal injuries,” I heard an EMT say into his radio.  

At the ambulance, one EMT blocked me with his body. “Sorry, bro, you can’t ride in here.” 

Tiny grabbed hold of my arm, halting the stretcher. “Listen, man, if I don’t make it…” 

“You’re gonna be fine,” I said again. It was a dumb time to say it. I could see he had something to tell me.  

“Yeah, so you said. But just in case.” Tiny’s voice had gone serious. 

“I’m listening,” I said. The EMTs waited impatiently. We had perhaps seconds.  

“We’ve never said it before, but I want you to know.” Pause. “I etcetera, etcetera,” Tiny said. Then he gave me a sly smile. 

“I etcetera, etcetera, too, man,” I said. I smiled and gave his arm a pat.  

He let go of me, then they lifted him up and in. I had to take a Lyft to the hospital. 

                                                                                        # 

It was a few hours before a doctor came out to talk to me. Tiny would live, she said, but he might not walk so well. Or at all. Time would tell. No, I couldn’t see him yet, she said. Come back tomorrow. 

It was late by the time I got home. I’d texted the whole sad story to Sirina. When she heard me come in, she rushed over and took me in her arms. Then she held me at arm’s length and gave me a look of pity, jutting out her lower lip as if I were a little boy with an owie. 

“It must’ve been awful,” she said.  

I wished I could tell her all of it—how Tiny had held onto me, how we’d said what we’d said. But that word, that topic, was forbidden.  

I could no longer understand why.  

I thought of Tiny. He was going to need my help. It would soon be his time.  

“I think we should end this,” I said.  

Sirina stopped pouting. “What? Why?” 

I took a breath. Then: “Etcetera.” 

Sirina wrinkled her brow. “That’s not funny. Don’t do that to me. Tell me what you mean.” 

I felt strangely calm.  

Then: “Etcetera,” I repeated. It was everything I wanted to say.  

Sirina huffed. “Fuck you, then.” She began to storm off. 

“Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera!” I called after her. 

                                                                                          END 

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K. A. Polzin’s stories have appeared in Subtropics, swamp pink, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere, and have been anthologized in Best Small Fictions 2023 and the Fractured Lit Anthology 3, and chosen for the 2025 Wigleaf Top 50. Polzin was shortlisted for the Jacob Zilber Prize for Short Fiction.