a vehicle mechanic

The half of him you can see is legs and boots, and the boots have not moved in some time. Somewhere under the chassis a socket wrench clicks, stops, clicks again, and a voice you cannot quite place offers an opinion about the man who last torqued this bolt. When he finally rolls out on the creeper he does it without hurrying, and he looks at you the way he looks at everything that is not a vehicle: later. He is built like the work. Forearms thick from leaning on breaker bars, knuckles split and re-split and never once given the chance to finish healing, a black rind under every fingernail that no amount of solvent is going to lift. Grease has worked its way into the creases of his face and settled there for good. Where it hasn't, the skin is pale in the way of a man who does not get out of the motor pool much, and does not mind. His coveralls were olive once. They are now the color of everything that has ever leaked on them, and they are covered in pockets, and every pocket is full - feeler gauges, zip ties, a stub of grease pencil, a torch he checks by reflex without ever looking at it. The rag over his shoulder is filthier than his hands are. There is a folded sheet of paper in his breast pocket, thumbed soft along the creases. It is a list. Every line on it is a vehicle, and every vehicle on it is waiting on him, and the list is longer than it was this morning.

a vehicle mechanic is half-buried under an APC chassis here, cursing quietly.