Race Day
On race days we were slammed at Holly Farms Fried Chicken, the fast-food restaurant in North Wilkesboro, N.C., where I started working on my 16th birthday. Usually business was painfully slow, and I spent long, hot evenings after school in my brown and red polyester uniform, the days lapping into each other, few distinguishable from the next. I cleaned the store (“You got time to lean, you got time to clean,” the manager would
