Page 51 - WTP Vol. X #5

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” The man stalked off shaking his head.
Ten minutes later a heavy-set nailer from the win- dow assembly section stopped. “You reading a book?”
“Yes.” It seemed pretty obvious.
“Why?”
“Because I hope it’s interesting and...” About to say because I wanted to keep my mind engaged, Tyler thought better of it. “Just passing time.”
“I got other things to do myself,” the man said. “I mean I can go out on the dock and get in two, even three, smokes. You can’t smoke in here, you know?”
During the nights that followed, Tyler sensed the fac- tory hands marked him as a kind of curiosity. During breaks, instead of napping, or eating, or smoking, or just sitting, he buried himself in his book.
In a Saturday phone conversation with a school friend, Tyler described the workers’ reactions to his absorption with Natasha, Pierre, and Prince Andre. “These factory workers aren’t exactly intellectuals.”
“You don’t say?” his friend said, derision lacing his voice. They both laughed. Yet, oddly it seemed, Tyler felt his laughter somehow diminished him.
As nights went by, the job proved even more de- manding than Tyler had envisioned it. He ached in places he didn’t know he could have aches. And he disliked the hours; he found himself on the way to work when his friends were headed home or pre- paring for an evening out. And his hands smarted from small, embedded splinters. He decided to wear gloves, even if his workmates might consider him a wimp. He suspected they probably did, anyway—the kid who always had his nose in a damn book, the up- pity college boy whose dad had connections.
And then the quality control inspector introduced himself.
“Name’s Hogdson. I’m the quality control man,” Phil Hogdson said the first time they met. He had a raspy voice and he peered at Tyler with candid dislike. Tyler soon learned two things. One: the man always carried a clipboard; it served him like a badge of office. The second thing: the other men despised him. Hogdson liked to show up unannounced, and he
(continued on page 51)
“Abrown-eyed, lanky nineteen-year-old,
Tyler somehow convinced himself that puffing on a pipe enhanced his con- templative image.”
44