The Land of Plenty, page 8
“By God, that’s right.”
Carl looked up at the pipes again. There was something deep and scientific about the thought of hot air rising that stirred him. He could imagine the hot air rising like a thief in the night and trying to open the valve. Inside the pipe the water waited and pushed and strained and tried to get free. The good cold air stayed close to the ground; it could not rise. He wished that it was the cold air that rose, and the hot air that was heavier; then there wouldn’t be anything to worry about…. Small drops of steam had condensed on the outside of the pipe.
The men were standing on the transfer tables and machine platforms, back out of the light, watching them. He swung the light until it focused on a boy near him, Hagen’s boy, sitting on a sawyer’s table with his feet drawn up under him and his back resting against the saw guard. “You!” Carl yelled. “Go out in the fireroom and tell Mike to watch his fires and if it gets too hot for the sprinklers tell him to pull his fires! You hear?”
Johnny gawked at him.
“You hear?” Carl yelled again.
Johnny looked from side to side, trying to see if Carl wasn’t talking to someone else. Then he looked embarrassed. “Me?” he asked.
“Yes, you!” Carl was shouting. “Can’t you hear? Tell Mike to pull his fires if it gets too hot and he thinks there’s any danger of the sprinklers blowing! Can’t you understand that, for God’s sake?”
Johnny jumped off the table. He started toward Carl. When he moved he almost fell over. His foot had gone to sleep. When he moved it seemed to follow him with a separate, dragging motion. Johnny stopped and looked down at his foot in astonishment. Then he leaned over and began slapping at his knee.
“No!” Carl was shouting. “No! Not here! The fireroom!” He waved the flashlight in a wide circle. The boy kept on slapping his knee while he stared at Carl and then looked in the different directions Carl pointed. He made a little run in one direction, only to turn around and run back the other way. “The fireroom” Carl yelled. “Tell the fireman, you dummy!”
But before Johnny could get started, Carl changed his mind again. “No, wait! Go up in the other end and tell Dwyer to see it don’t get too hot for the sprinklers. Tell him to watch the heat. Frankie Dwyer!”
Johnny started off into the darkness. He did not know where he was going, or what he was supposed to do. He only wanted to get away from the light, and to act as if he understood what Carl wanted. He almost dove into the shadows. After a moment he called back, “Who shall I ask?”
“Frankie! Frankie Dwyer! You know him? Ask somebody. He’s up there!”
There was a little silence.
“What,” Johnny said. “What shall I tell him?”
“Tell him,” Carl began loudly. Then he turned around and slammed his gloves on the floor. “Oh, God,” he said in despair. He went stamping back and forth, mumbling to himself like an old man. “Oh God, oh Jesus, oh, son of a bitchen hell. I can’t stand this; son of a bitch, I can’t stand this.”
Hagen came over to where Johnny was standing. He did not turn his flashlight on. “Listen, son,” he said, “go right straight across till you hit the wall. Follow it till you come to a door. Frankie’s outside. Just tell him Carl told you to tell him to keep his eye on the heat. That’s all. You understand?”
Johnny said, “I know, I’ll tell him.” He was trembling.
“Take it easy,” Hagen said shortly. “Don’t try to break your neck.”
Johnny started off in a blind, reckless sprint. He almost dove into the shadows again. First he bumped into one of the cutoff saws. He jumped and scurried around it like a rabbit. “Take it easy!” Hagen yelled angrily. “You want to kill yourself?”
But Johnny was already far on his way. Hagen turned back on Carl and Morley. Carl was storming at the darkness. He lifted his voice; he was bawling out the whole factory. Sometimes he bawled out the whole world. “I can’t get any cooperation around here!” he cried. “How can I get anything done when everybody’s dead from the tail both ways? How can we get anywhere if nobody pays any attention to what I say? By Jesus God I’m not going to screw around with it any longer. You fellows listen to me, you listen to me, there’ll be some changes here—there’ll be some changes! And somebody will be God-damn surprised some day when they try to come to work!”
Hagen turned on him. “Hell, I’ve had enough! Are you going to call the power house?”
“How can I call the power house when every son of a bitch and his brother is hanging around my neck? Everybody here is outside smoking or stretched out flat on his can. I been trying to call the power house for half an hour! What do you think I been trying to do?”
“Who’s stopping you?”
“I know who’s stopping me! I know God-damn well who is!”
There was a moment’s silence. Then Hagen said, “Well, Carl, if you don’t like the way I work, you know what there is to do about it.”
The crowd had grown around the light. Carl glanced up before he spoke. “I didn’t say I didn’t like the way you worked!” he said. He tried to say it angrily but his voice faltered.
“If you don’t like the way I work,” Hagen repeated, “go pull my card.”
There was a moment of silence. Carl made a brief interrupted gesture of contempt. “I’m not pulling anybody’s card,” he said. “I just want to say…. I’m trying to get the lights back on. I ain’t got time to screw around here all night with everything else.”
They waited.
“You hear?” he shouted suddenly. “You hear?” Then he stamped off toward the stockroom, the light bobbing at his feet, and Morley trudging along behind him.
3. MARIE
THE lights went out and the girls straightening the veneer on the long grading tables stood listening to the dying motors and the long wail of the fans as they stopped. Darting in quick, adroit movements, they lifted the pieces of veneer as the chains carried them along, separated them into their grades and widths and turned back to lift another piece without pausing. And now the chains stopped. Slowly, as if reluctant to stop, they moved for a moment longer, gave a last spasmodic jerk before they became motionless.
She stayed in her place. Her hands in their cotton gloves braced her against the table. She saw Hagen’s flashlight graze across the factory and heard the long-way-off voices after he called the foreman.
Wait, she begged him. Don’t hurry.
Hello, Bilious, a voice said, can you feel that?
One of the kids from the stockroom.
“Oh, get out of here,” she heard a girl’s voice, wearily, not in anger but disgust, “keep your hands to yourself.”
And old Mrs. Humphrey said, sternly, “You boys get right out of here. Now I mean it. Now git.”
They gave a long raucous laugh.
“Git!”
She felt her way to the wall and sat down. The spasms of weakness cut through her. Shaking in this heat, she thought, my teeth chattering. And yet there was no pain, but the aching dizziness that deafened her to the sounds around her and dulled her to the heat and thick air. Without thinking anything she worked and wondered how much time was left and how long, how long, before the whistle blows and lets me go.
She slept on her feet. The chains pounded and the stream of wood passed endlessly under the low bright light. Beside her the grader marked each piece, his face set and expressionless and his eyes darkened under the green eyeshade.
Oh yes! the kid’s voice, Who said?
“Now you git. You hear me?”
The sheets of wood floated down the chains, past the graders and the girls who stood watching, all the way down the table and out of sight. They came up out of the haze at the end of the kiln, hot and dry, dropped over a slight waterfall where one chain ended and another began, and where she stood straightening them as they passed. She was thirsty, but each time she got a drink the water was hard and acid in her mouth, the taste of the rust on the inside of the pipes.
While she worked she made up long and complicated bets with herself, forgetting whether she had won or lost. A part of her would say that an hour had passed, a part would say that only five minutes had gone by since she had looked at hen watch. Then she would bet with herself—that she could wait for half an hour before looking to see what time it was, that she could count to a thousand before looking around. Sometimes she would count the dead pieces of wood that floated so gravely under the lights, giving them quick names and numbers as they passed with their eyes closed and their hands folded beside them. And sometimes it would seem that the chains had stopped, and that the factory was moving in the other direction … and then it was like sitting in a train stopped at a station, when a train on another track begins to move. The chains would stop and without a jar the factory would begin to slide the other way, the floor and the lights and the people sliding past the motionless pieces of wood.
What time is it? All night long she made up games and bets with herself, trying to spur on the slow hands of the watch. She began to hate the stiff priggish little hand that barely moved, that held back so stubbornly from one figure to the next, her heart warming to the minute hand that tried to hurry. There was a small precious ration of the things she could do: get a drink of water and go to the toilet; look at her watch and count the pieces of wood as they passed. She tried to concentrate on the games she played with herself, on the bets that one part of her mind made against another part. The good part of her mind bet that an hour had passed, and the dark and unpleasant part bet that only a few minutes had gone by. She tried to concentrate on what was before her eyes, the appearance of each piece of wood, struggling not to remember the pain of the last few days, the waves of anguish that threatened her and almost overwhelmed her.
Sometimes the things she did not want to remember were stronger, driving the games and bets out of her mind. Then she gave up and the dark cloud of things she did not want to think about blinded her and made her hands clench and her eyes close involuntarily; she gave up and remembered all the things she did not want to remember: the hot stench in the doctor’s office and the sweat on his face as he leaned over her; a girl who had died a long time ago, and somebody who had told her it was harder on a woman than having a baby; the pain and the feeling that she was broken inside; the rush of secret blood. Over and over as she stood by the table the dark rush of memories poured over her, and she went down and down, the games and bets shattered and forgotten. Then when she could not endure the memories any longer she would build up another game to try to drive them away.
“Marie,” someone said.
Here I am.
She had a nightmare feeling that she only dreamed it and no words were said. “Marie!” the voice said again, “where are you?”
“Here I am.”
Ellen settled beside her by the wall. “Oh, God, it’s hot in here,” Ellen said.
Now I want to tell you boys this, Mrs. Humphrey said, as long as I’m in charge of these girls I’m not going to have you coming in here and acting smart and I’ve told you for the last time. If I hear one more complaint I’m going to turn in your names, and not only that—I’m going to slap you down so hard you won’t know what hit you.
Wow!
Some of the men passed on their way outside. The old women gathered somewhere near them and their complaints rose in a weary murmur.
I told you, Ellen would say. I told you not to come to work.
I’m all right now.
You’re not all right.
I am all right.
You’re not! You’re not!
Standing in the littered room at home with Ellen’s voice low and anxious so her mother could not hear them.
You’re not. Do you think I’m crazy? Do you think I’m blind?
I ought to know how I feel.
You’ll kill yourself.
The dark thoughts began coming back like cats after a bird. She saw them prowling behind the near fringes of darkness like cats, all the dark savage thoughts waiting to pounce on her and tear her apart. It’s your own fault, Ellen would say unless she stopped her, I told you. Unless I stop her.
She braced herself with a dull aching resentment against anything Ellen could say out of the remoteness of her strength and free mind. She braced herself against Ellen’s fierce affectionate gloating and her Marie, I told you, I told you, when she thought she was being kind.
“Say Myrtle,” someone said. “Come here a minute. I want to tell you something.”
“Oh, yes?”
“Ellen,” she said.
“Yes?”
“What time is it?”
“About ten I guess.”
“Ten?”
“Listen, Marie,” Ellen said.
Here it is.
“I asked Hagen how long we’d be down.”
“What?”
“He said he didn’t know—maybe half an hour. So I said would you have a chance to get out and he said yes, and Frankie Dwyer said if Carl came around to tell him Frankie Dwyer was looking for him and he’d tell Carl something was wrong so Carl would keep busy and wouldn’t have a chance to snoop.”
Tell them all, she thought. “What about Mrs. Humphrey?”
“She won’t say anything.”
“No?”
“She won’t! You know she won’t!”
“Won’t she.”
Ellen began stammering, “You don’t want to do…. You just say…. Because you think he’ll come after us. And you know you can’t depend on him.”
She braced herself, the savage thoughts circling around her in the dark. “Why don’t you ask me how I feel?”
“Why?” Ellen said. “Why don’t I ask you how you feel?”
“You always ask me. You never let me alone.”
“Oh, hard!” Ellen cried. “Oh, Marie, you make it so hard for me! Why don’t you go home? Why can’t you take care of yourself? You can’t stand up and everybody knows it; everybody can see…. You’re supposed to be home. You know what he said. Do you want to kill yourself?”
Marie smiled into the dark. The thoughts were driven back. She felt the sweat on her face, and I must look like the wrath of God, she thought.
“Don’t get excited,” she said in relief. “I can take care of myself.”
“Yes, you can take care of yourself.”
She heard the boys from the stockroom teasing the girls, the sarcastic cries oh, yes! and the incomprehensible shouts of laughter. Nearer to them the old women’s voices rose in the tired complaints, I did a big washing before I came to work, it’s a wonder to me how they expect us to get along.
“You’ll pretend it’s all right,” Ellen said. “Just to show me…. I don’t care. It’s none of my business. But I despise him. I don’t see how you stand him. You’re a fool to put up with him….”
Marie closed her eyes. Behind the dry lids the colors moved and flashed in their soundless explosions. She could see the pieces of wood passing endlessly before her under the bright explosive lights, the marker beside her checking each piece, the chains stopping and the factory beginning to slide the other way. For a time, talking to Ellen, she had forgotten. Now all the things she did not want to think about began crowding up on her again, as if with renewed strength because they had been away so long, and she remembered the hot, hot stench in the doctor’s office, the scythe-shaped instrument, the stirrups that cut her bound ankles. The memories pressed on her like a weight she could not carry any longer, and she turned almost frantically to Ellen, saying, “What time is it?” in a harsh strained voice, not knowing that she had asked it before, not remembering that Ellen had already answered her.
4. WINTERS
LISTEN, the voice said dully and he said, I’m listening. I don’t want to argue, the voice said. I want to tell you the truth.
Don’t listen to that goofy bastard, the other voice said.
Goofy, the first voice said coldly. Goofy, you goofy son of a bitch, you’re goofy.
What?
I’d like to get that guy here. I’d like to have him juggling them hundred-fifty-pound irons on the press for a week. I’d give him his three weeks in six weeks and let him look at forty-six ahead of him.
Listen, the voice said. See if I’m right.
Winters said, Why? What are you arguing about?
A match flared somewhere down the wall. On the harbor the string of channel lights and the intermittent flash from the lighthouse of the jetty. No wind on the slate water. It’s cooler, he thought, and then he thought of the hot room where the fan swung and Ann gasped for her breath. Open the window! Blind in the heat and the fan humming like an insect and the sweat on her face and the muscles in her throat like wires. Ed, she said, open the window! and the girl wiping her face and the fan reaching the end of its swing and starting back.
Don’t listen to him, the voice said with dull passion. His ass is out.
Tide in, the tugboats headed for the bar-bound ships. Forget it. Somewhere down the wall a match flared. Listen. Cool on the still water, the fresh air she’ll never taste.
What? he cried. What is it?
We’re having an argument.
Argument hell.
Listen, Winters.
Let me tell him.
So all right I can’t stand it and her eyeballs turned back in her head. I can’t stay here. I can’t stay here. Hands clench and unclench and the girl reading and the fan buzzing like a fly. Stopped now. I wonder.
Believe it or not the voice said. You seen the cartoon. You know Ripley, them believe it or not cartoons, he had one proving that if you worked twenty-four hours a day you’d only have to work three weeks to work as many hours as you do in a year working eight hours a day. Three weeks! I looked at that, I said, if you was here you’d learn something, baby, besides how to draw cartoons.
Tell me this.
He says you work three weeks out of the year. If you work twenty-four hours a day. Three weeks! How does he get it? He figures five and a half days a week.
Forty-four hours.
You’re nuts, the voice said. Nuts.
I didn’t say it! I’m telling you what it said in the paper!
