JAMES AMBROSE JINGLE

James Ambrose Jingle was born twenty-three years before his youngest sibling, which means he was, by the time Jonny arrived, already fully formed — already the oldest, already the one who knew where the extra fuses were kept and which door stuck in cold weather and what the particular sound of a machine running wrong meant before anyone else could hear it. He grew up in a house that was warm and loud and full of people who believed in things with a completeness he found baffling and quietly admirable. He was the one in the workshop by choice, at first. Then by gravity. Then by something else — something he doesn't have a precise word for and wouldn't use even if he did.

He started at North Pole Manufacturing at twenty-three. He took the job because it was there and because he was qualified and because someone had to know how the machines worked and no one else seemed sufficiently concerned about this. He has been there ever since. In fifteen years he has been responsible for: seven major mechanical overhauls, forty-two documented equipment improvements, the complete redesign of the Sector B conveyor tension system in 2017, and the ongoing effort to get management to approve the replacement of Sprocket 3C on Belt Assembly Line B before it fails catastrophically, which it will, and which he will have predicted in writing, which will be filed under "I told you so."

He does not talk about caring about the work. He talks about the work as a series of problems to be solved, systems to be maintained, tolerances to be met. But there is something that happens in the workshop when no one else is there — early morning, before the shift starts, when the machines are cold and the light comes in low and yellow through the north windows — that is not nothing. He would not describe it as anything. It is the reason he is never late. It is the reason he has not taken a sick day in eleven years. It is the reason he fixes Sprocket 3C seventeen times without being asked instead of once and letting it fail.

He taught Jimmy to use a torque wrench. He didn't make it a lesson. He just handed it to him and stood nearby and corrected him twice and then walked away. This is how Jammy teaches. The information transfers. The relationship remains unspoken. Jimmy is now one of the better mechanics in Sector B. Jammy knows this. He has mentioned it to no one. When Jimmy got his first commendation, Jammy read the notification email, closed it, opened it again, closed it again, and went back to work. He was, technically, fine.

He has a truck with a cracked dashboard and a classic rock station that comes in clearly enough. He has a metal lunchbox that he has carried since 2011 and that has outlasted four vehicles and three section foremen. He goes ice fishing alone in the winter, before dawn, and this is the closest thing he has to what other people call a hobby, which he would not call it. He picks up the phone when his siblings call. He shows up to family things. He makes the coffee. He is, underneath everything, someone who cares a great deal about a world he maintains at arm's length. The gap between those two things is not a problem to him. It is simply accurate.