Rivethead (20 page)

Along came the bouncing necktie to scoop us up for deployment. Like some proud corporate Johnny Appleseed, he led the way, scattering an occasional rat into one of the boisterous orchards, all the while conferring with a clipboard the size of a storm window. We plunged on through the Motor Line, the Final Line, the Axle Line, the Ten-Items-or-Less Line.

We appeared to be on a one-way, no-frills collision course with the Frame Line—home to several departments, among them the Rivet Line. Dave was in a panic. I feigned dejection, but truthfully I couldn't have been happier.

Ah, the Rivet Line. Just say yes. A nice little spot to settle down and raise up a blister colony. A place where pipedreams spawned and delirium tremens held casting calls. A low spot in the valley where my partner and I periodically returned when the economy began to play boomerang.

Johnny Appleseed brought us to a halt in front of the General Foreman's trailer. He ducked inside to rouse the big boss while we stood outside contemplating our location.

“Mother of whores,’” Dave snarled. “We could wind up right back on the Rivet Line!”

“That would suit me,” I said.

Dave couldn't handle it. “What the hell is it with you and those goddamn rivets? The place ain't nothin’ but a shithole. I think that you and that Rivethead alter ego of yours are both sick in the fuckin’ head!”

“Doesn't it only make sense that I should resume my God-given specialty?”

“Nothing makes sense,” Dave stammered as the boss motioned us into his trailer.

The General Foreman forced us to listen to his drab little pep talk about the wonderful new military vehicle we were going to be building. He mentioned how grateful we should be that the government had chosen our plant to assemble all of these army trucks. Without the military contract, we'd all be on the outside a million miles away from any kind of shoprat redemption. To show our appreciation, it was mandatory that we return an immaculate product. Our long-term survival depended on gettin’ the boys in the Pentagon all a-twitter.

After the rah-rah was completed, the General Foreman told us to follow along as he escorted us to our new departments.

Panicking, not wanting to leave anything to chance, I suddenly bolted by the rest of the pack and sprang myself at the boss. A lurchin’ urchin, front and center.

“Um, Mr. Gibbons, sir?” I said.

“Is there some kind of problem?”

“Not exactly. I just wanted to let you know I'm intimately acquainted with the jobs on the Rivet Line and I volunteer to return to that department.”

The General Foreman gave me a puzzled onceover. Shit, he thought I was nuts too. He waved the group to a halt and thumbed through his papers. “What's your name?” he asked.

“Hamper, sir.”

He flipped a few more pages. “Well, Hamper, my sheet has you down for assignment in the body drop area.”

Oh, shit. Now we were talkin’ very dangerous yo-yo slave labor. The body drop area was where the cab portions of the trucks came zinging down on cables from the second floor. The cabs plunked themselves down on their matching frameworks while workers ducked for cover and then humped to fasten the two together. To top it off, this was where Henry Jackson camped his fat Nazi ass the majority of the time. I would kill or be killed within days.

It was time for full-tilt grovel. “Mr. Gibbons, you just spoke to us about the importance of Quality workmanship, a concept I fully embrace. I believe that by returning me to the Rivet Line, I would have more value to the Company considering the expertise I have in this area.”

“Hmm,” Gibbons pondered. My knees became butterscotch pudding supported by broken Slinkys. Icebergs danced with suntan lotion billboards. Jets swooped into the sides of skyscrapers. Drunken herds of hippos shinnied up radio towers. And then…

“Go ahead and report to the Rivet Line,” the big boss stated. “I'll move someone else over to the body drop area.”

I could have kissed the bastard. Instead, I whirled around to find Dave staring at me. He had been hangin’ on the fringe pickin’ up pierces of my sorry butt-smooching. He shook his head. “That had to be the most pitiful display of brownnosing I have ever witnessed,” he said. “To think that someone would actually go out of his way to be sent to the Rivet Line. It's too absurd to comprehend.”

“At least I know where I'm headed. For all you know, you'll be stuck heavin’ transmissions.”

“I'll take my chances,” Dave replied bitterly.

The Rivet Line had undergone an extensive facelift as jobs were rearranged to accommodate the production of the army vehicles. The change appeared to be for the better. There were more workers to attend to the extra duties and some of the more aggravating jobs had been busted up into less strenuous routines.

I was placed on a job directly across from the foreman's office and picnic table area. The job turned out to be a cinch. The four-wheel-drive castings and dual exhaust muffler hangers that had been a part of my old pinup job had been slid down the line and were now part of my new job. The big difference was that now I wasn't required to wrestle with the rails or attach any cross members. My groveling had paid off. I could see plain sailing straight ahead.

Meanwhile, management was having all kinds of problems attempting to start up the line. The military vehicles were responsible for introducing numerous new items and it seemed like every time the supervisors thought they had everything covered, some precious new part would turn up missing or defective. The line would budge for just a moment and then some hysterical bossman would come racing down the aisle bellowing “Stop the line! Stop the GODDAMN LINE!”

About the third day into this herky-jerky chaos, I was sittin’ on my bench when I happened to glance out into the aisle. Passing through to the foreman's office was Henry Jackson. Shufflin’ along right behind him was a very dejected-looking Dave Steel. “Hey, nomad, welcome home!” I yelled. Dave gave me the finger.

After a brief meeting with the foreman, Steel came sulking out of the office headed in the direction of his old rail-pull job. Poor Dave, there was no way to dodge destiny, no escape from the undertow of stubborn fate. His bed was made.

Passing back on his way out of the department, Henry Jackson abruptly halted in front of my bench. He eyeballed me with that evil glint and then came struttin’ over. “Well, if it isn't the elusive Mr. Hamper,” he hissed.

“Is something wrong, Henry?”

“I've only been searchin’ for your ass for three days now. Hamper, you don't belong over here. You were assigned to the body drop area. I suppose you think you're so clever you can just pick your own setup, am I right? Sorry, your ass is mine, Rivethead.”

Terrific. Of all the idiots in the plant, Jackson would have to turn out to be one of the slim minority who was acquainted with my Rivethead persona. This didn't bode well at all. Just the way he had pronounced that title told me that I had catapulted right to the top of the Henry Jackson endangered feces list.

There was absolutely no use in tryin’ to explain anything to Jackson, so I hollered down the line to my foreman to come and straighten this mess out. As soon as he arrived, Jackson shoved his finger at me and barked “This man does not belong here!”

“I'm afraid he stays put, Henry. The General Foreman sent him over personally.”

Jackson helped himself to one of my cigarettes lying on my workbench and glared at me as if I was some kind of repulsive tumor. “Watch your step, Rivethead,” Jackson snapped as he took off for the aisle and his next appointment with meddlesome tyranny.

I asked my foreman what Jackson was doing here in the first place. Like me and so many others around me, Jackson was a second-shift fixture. What were we all doing here lumped together on days? My foreman looked at me curiously. He explained that everyone was temporarily workin’ the day shift until they got this military vehicle off the ground. I felt very stupid. I was so out of it, I hadn't even paid attention to the fact that the factory seemed to be bulging at its seams and that I hadn't been able to find a parking spot within three blocks of the plant. Something about 6:00
A.M
. brought out the dunce in me.

I had another question. “After this is all running smoothly, will I be able to retain this job on the second shift?”

“The job's all yours,” the boss replied. “A Mr. Donlan will be your night supervisor.”

Damn, things were falling together perfectly. I had a pussy job, an upcoming reunion with Gino Donlan and my beloved second shift, and, until then, a loafer's life sittin’ around doin’ absolute zilch while the brass sorted through the confusion of the new military vehicles.

Feeling relieved, I decided to stroll down and visit Dave on the rail-pull. I found him sleeping in one of the empty stock bins, a newspaper covering his face. I gave the bin a hard kick and Dave scrambled to his feet. “Let's hit the cafeteria,” I said. “You could use a coffee.”

“I could use a change of scenery more than anything else,” he grumbled.

We went downstairs to the workers’ cafeteria. The place was an absolute zoo. Radios blared, voices shouted, fists banged on Formica. Tablesful of old geezers were tossin’ spades and suckin’ on sausage links. The young guys were lined up by the phones waitin’ to rouse their women out of bed with giddy tittle-tattle about how they were all bein’ paid to lounge on their butts. There was nothin’ like a prolonged line stoppage to goose up the morale of the natives.

Dave and I found a couple seats in the back. Dave was eager to tell me about his brief fling as a desperado. Three days sprung from the jaws of the rivet tips.

“Christ, I was a renegade,” Dave mourned. “Just after you fellated that General Foreman into sending you back to the Rivet Line, he sent me upstairs to the paint department. It was great. Just me and these old coots—no noise, no filth, no bustin’ ass. I was rivet-free. The foreman even said he might have room for me.”

“Let me guess,” I injected. “Then Idi Amin showed up to piss on your parade.”

“Yeah, that bastard came pokin’ around and ruined everything. Right when I thought I'd escaped the Rivet Line once and for all, I spot Jackson waddlin’ around the corner like a bloodhound from hell. He must spend a third of his time just seein’ to it that I remain miserable.”

“Sluggin’ rivets appears to be your natural destiny, Dave,” I said. “I suggest you stop buckin’ your birthright.”

Dave crumpled up his coffee up and sent it whizzin’ past my head. He folded his arms across his chest and slouched down in his seat. “I was a renegade,” he groaned.

We spent the better portion of the next two weeks slurpin’ bad coffee, chain-smoking and concocting this ridiculous idea for a short film. We needed something to pass the time. Even though the line was only budging out about one truck per hour, we were required to stay put near our jobs. The boredom made our drowsy morning brains wander to the absurd.

The movie we were discussing was to be a violent blue-collar docudrama called
No Need for the Grievance Procedure.
It would be a collection of short pieces that chronicled the systematic executions of our least favorite shoplords. I can't recall each piece in detail, but I do remember my favorite—the gruesome dispatch of Henry Jackson.

In our scenario Dave snuck up to the glassed-in office where Henry sat and shrewdly welded the door shut from the outside. Dave then commandeered an abandoned fork truck and bore down on the tiny office, scooping it right off the factory floor. Raising the office several feet above the ground, he jostled the cubicle violently. Inside the office, Henry Jackson was slammed to and fro like a mannequin in a cyclone. His head was bleeding badly from repeated bashings with airborne file drawers, stapleguns and the old iron coatrack.

After Jackson was thoroughly marinated, yet still clinging to life, Dave backed up the fork truck and sped off in the direction of the train trench. At this point, the workers all left their jobs and followed behind like so many brainless ghouls in a George Romero flick. Dave had it timed so that a huge cargo train just happened to be barreling down the tracks.

As the train roared its approach, Dave lifted the battered office high above the trench, gave it a few last violent jerks and deposited Henry's welded death cage onto the tracks. Only seconds remained before the crash. Dave hopped down from the fork truck and stood beside the silent assemblage of coworkers. Inside the office, Henry was furiously pounding on the windows, his eyes as wide as Frisbees, his lips mouthing useless final pleas for forgiveness.

Allowing himself a smile, Dave bent over and flicked the butt of his cigarette on top of the office. He waved his hand at Jackson while pointing at his crotch. Just before impact, Dave jumped back and motioned for the other workers to do the same.

SMASHHHH! The train slammed into the office and began pushing it toward the gigantic iron spring at the end of the trench. Seconds later, the office exploded, crushed between the spring and the nose of the locomotive. Glass and paper and hair and bits of skull flew through the rafters. An eyeball casually rolled up near Dave's work boot and he winked at it before kicking it back into the debris.

With nothing left to accomplish, Dave looked at the workers and nodded. Silently, we turned around to head back to our jobs and finish out the shift doing our utmost to produce a fine-quality truck. Henry would have been proud of our commitment to duty.

One morning, tired of movie plotting and fed up waiting for the line to move, I suggested to Dave that we sneak out of the plant and head for my new apartment a couple miles down the road. If we were going to be paid to do nothing, I reasoned that we could do it just as well somewhere else and Dave agreed.

We arrived at my bachelor dump and as I uncapped the beers Dave rummaged through my record crates and found some music to his liking—mainly sixties garage crud like Blue Cheer, the Troggs and the Shadows of Knight. We cranked up the music to a very conspicuous level considering that it was only about 7:30 and most sensible human beings were still tryin’ to sleep.

Dave moved over to the window and peeked through my curtains into the parking lot. “Hey, come over here and check this out,” he yelled over the stereo.