Page 50 - WTP Vol. X #5

War & Peace in the Window Factory (continued from preceding page)
“Didn’t that personnel fella tell you? We’re doin’ piecework. Get extra credit for anything over the eight-hour quota. Limit is ten and a half hours. They put a cap on her so people don’t get beat down tryin’ for more. Anyhow, ten and a half hours; that’s jack- pot. You’ll get the hang of it.”
And so it began. The frames just kept coming as Gus fed them into the machine. No sooner had Tyler retrieved one and placed it on a growing pile than another appeared. His shirt soaked through with per- spiration, his hands reddened, his shoulders ached, and he needed a trip to the bathroom. The machine, it seemed, possessed a limitless appetite. For that mat- ter, as the frames appeared one after another, Tyler thought Gus himself must be a machine. Like the Chaplain character in Modern Times, Tyler felt over- whelmed, struggling to keep up. At long last, break time provided a respite.
Tyler trailed Gus to the toilet, the urinal a long metal trough with slow running water. Malodorous open stalls lined the wall behind them. And grey metal sinks line another wall. Badly lighted, the place lacked soap and towels. It repelled Tyler.
“You done alright for the first time,” Gus said while they stood relieving themselves. “But you’re gonna have to pick up the pace if we’re gonna make jack- pot.”
As the night dragged on, Tyler fell into a mindless rhythm. Grasp, lift, pivot, step, stack, pivot, step, grasp, lift. To his chagrin, he’d been assigned a job that required absolutely no thought; one of repetitive drudgery. So much for the life of the mind.
At the meal break, Gus disappeared, and Tyler wan- dered out onto to a loading dock. Legs extended before him, he slumped down against a wall nibbling a roast beef sandwich he’d brought along in a paper bag. A railroad siding paralleled the back of the plant. Beyond the track, the Excelsior River flowed by in the darkness. Tyler savored a faint breeze as he watched men loading boxed windows into freight cars. Light- ning still illuminated the distant sky.
That night Tyler made his way to his car, convinced this had been his first and last shift at the factory. When he arrived home twenty minutes later, he col- lapsed into bed without a shower. Exhausted, he slept until mid-day.
~
He’d decided not to go back. “Just not for me,” he said 43
when he wandered into the kitchen in early after- noon.
His father, home for lunch, looked up from his mixed salad and said simply, “Oh no. You’re going back.”
And back he would go. About to leave the house Tyler glanced at the stack of books he’d set aside
for summer reading. War and Peace topped the pile. Impulsively he picked it up and carried it with him to his second day on the job.
Once more the frames came at him in a fast-flowing torrent, but he managed the stream, determined not let old Gus show him up. And, while he occupied himself with mind games, he became increasingly conscious of his surroundings. Everything—walls, pillars, floor—painted light green or grey. Forklifts shuttled here and there under the glare of overhead fluorescents, and individual machines acquired dis- tinct voices. His muscles hurt and sweat dripped into his eyes. He wallowed in self-pity. But while he toiled at his machine, he conjured up a strategy to relieve the tedium. Tolstoy awaited him.
When the lunch break came, he searched out a cor- ner, settled on the floor, and opened his book. He’d set himself a task. Every night, even during short breaks, he would immerse himself in the book.
He could in this way not only defeat the boredom
but engage his brain. He intended to work his way through the book, or as much of it as he could, during his summer at the factory.
He’d been reading for five minutes when a punch press operator, also on break, approached and hov- ered over him. Mostly bald and with a pinched face, the middle-aged man said, “I’m Willie Kirk.” When Tyler lifted his eyes, like a self-appointed inquisitor, the man said, “What are you reading?”
“War and Peace.”
“Never heard of it. What’s it about?”
“Well, I’ve just started. But it’s about Russia during the Napoleonic era.”
“Better not let the bosses catch you reading that.” Kirk looked at him suspiciously.
“Why not?”
“They don’t want no communist stuff here.” “But it’s not...”