Rivethead (22 page)

Not long after this pattern of super stupor developed, the matter was resolved in a very ugly way. It happened on a Saturday. I remember the steering gear man showed up absolutely goosed to the gills. Randy and I helped him get rollin’. We were becoming awfully tired of coverin’ for his sorry ass. We decided it would be better if we just let him sink or swim, disfigurement or castration be damned.

Twenty minutes into the shift, the steering gear man started yellin’ out for our foreman. It was the first time any of us had heard him actually speak aloud. Gino came striding over. Thank God, I thought, the crazy shit was gonna turn himself in. It would've been the wise move.

Gino and the steering gear man huddled secretly for a few moments. Then Gino started motioning for one of the utility men to come over and take the job. The steering gear man untied his work apron, turned it around and fastened it on backwards. He grabbed his lunch pail and headed for the exit, the apron flowing behind him like a burlap skirt. Things weren't adding up.

Gino came walking by on his way back to his office. He was doing a rather poor job of concealing the fact that he was shakin’ with laughter. I asked him what the deal was.

“A slight accident,” Gino answered, attempting to brush by me.

“A slight accident! He didn't chop anything off, did he?”

Gino shook his head. “Nothing like that.”

“What'd he do?” I groaned, “piss his drawers?” I'd seen it happen before.

My foreman completely burst. “Um, something like that.” Cackle, cackle.

Something
like
that? Wait a minute. The huddle of secrecy…the bowlegged shuffle…the sudden exit…the
backwards
apron! Jesus, it couldn't be! Not the steering gear man. Not THE ROCK. He was my hero. He was guts galore. Please, don't even tell me that…

“HE SHIT HIS PANTS?”

“Bull's-eye,” Gino yukked. “Just remember, you pried it outta me.”

I was devastated. For months, I had been praising the stoic gallantry of the steering gear man in the pages of the
Michigan Voice.
The way I saw it, he was one hundred times the hero that any headline-mulchin’ fraud on the cover of
Time
or
People
feigned to be. The world was only a bloated bedpan full of shams and leeches wallowing in petty victories that, when sheared down and hung in front of a dyin’ twilight, didn't come close to approaching the regal triumph of the steering gear man. Fuck the Donald Trumps and the Ross Perots. The closest thing I ever saw to an authentic American champ for the masses was a sweaty piece of ground chuck in a Black Sabbath T-shirt who strode upon Hades’ own loading dock, night after hopeless night, as invincible in his death web as he was invisible to the rest of the feeble globe.

Now he was gone and the myth had been destroyed. The steering gear man proved to be as fallible as the next joker. The boss had to suspend him for intoxication in the workplace. I could live with that. But turdin’ in his skivvies? I had to draw the line somewhere. Heroes couldn't go around crappin’ themselves. Even the astronauts found a proper way to dump it.

On his return, the steering gear man hopped over to the vacant spring job next to me. I continued to refer to him as the steering gear man in all my columns. He'd rode that bull a long time without ever complaining. That was a conquest that would never be tainted.

The steering gear man's name was Doug. He had very yellow teeth and a tattoo of a rodent on his arm. Above the tattoo, the word “shoprat” was inscribed. It looked like a homemade job, most likely accomplished with a hot coat hanger at the tail end of some ferocious bender. In the summer, when things really broiled, it shined on brightly, but maybe that was just due to infection.

The switch to an easier job seemed to bring Doug out of his shell. He would chat on and on with me as if he were tryin’ to make up for all those silent evenings he'd spent luggin’ around steering gears. Happy jabber flowed forth. This, I found, wasn't necessarily a good thing.

One afternoon as we were startin’ to roll my ex-hero came to me speaking about beards. I mentioned that I never wore a beard because they always made me look like some goofy leprechaun. In response, Doug complained that his beard didn't grow well on his left cheek area. He pointed it out and, sure enough, there was a definite barren patch.

“I know why it's not growing there,” he said. I tried to appear puzzled. In fact, I was. “It's cuz when I was a kid in school, I always leaned on my desk like this.” He then demonstrated by adopting the thinker's pose, propping his face up with his left fist. “I think sittin’ like that all day long, for all those years, pushed all the hair back into my face for good.”

I nodded and grabbed another muffler hanger. “Makes perfect sense to me,” I lied.

There were those in the immediate vicinity of my job, including Doug, who began to express curiosity as to what I was scribblin’ in my notebook every night. I wasn't about to come clean. I had no idea of how they might react if they were to find out I was dissecting their drab little lives for column fodder in a muckraking leftist monthly with a circulation of 60,000 readers. There was the distinct possibility that they wouldn't take kindly to my in-house voyeurism. The few who were aware of my column seemed to really enjoy it. That was fine, but I politely asked them to keep it to themselves. For the time being, anonymity seemed the safest route.

It all ran smoothly until the fateful day that I allowed my editor to talk me into writing a piece about deer hunting, the most sanctified of blue-collar brood rituals. I tried to tell my editor that I knew nothing of this redneck amusement. He persisted and I gave in as usual.

The resultant article was nothing more than one long cynical defamation of deer hunters. I celebrated the fact that these yahoos often ended up shootin’ each other's brains out in their orgasmic frenzy to go boingin’ some Bambi. I chuckled about all the oldsters who huffed their way right into cardiac arrest in the frigid autumn air. To hell with ‘em. I liked deer just fine. The whole idea of slingin’ a deer carcass over the hood of your Buick seemed rather unhinged.

My big mistake was including one of the good old boys from the Rivet Line as a central character in the article. His name was Polson, one of the banana sticker Cro-Mags. He was forever singing the praises of the National Rifle Association, a tired old tune that he often enlisted when tryin’ to buffalo a fellow linemate into buying some stupid $15 membership into his gritty boys’ club. We managed to get along pretty well considering we hated each other.

The day after the issue with my deer hunting article came out, I was horrified to learn that someone had brought several copies of the
Michigan Voice
into the plant and was spreading them about. I knew that eventually someone would show my piece to Polson and he'd go apeshit. I gambled with my own ploy. Rather than wait around for the inevitable, I decided to present the article to Polson myself and act as though I'd intended to give him a harmless ribbing. Perhaps by doing so, I could defuse any confrontation. I should have had my brain X-rayed instead.

Twenty minutes after presenting Poison with his personalized copy of the article, I heard the unmistakable sound of jackboots thumping up the line. It was Poison, all right. Six feet two, eyes of blue, 245 pounds of snout and gristle. The veins in his neck looked like phone cables. It was stupid, but I thought I'd try to humor him. “Hey, Rambo, so what'd ya think of…”

I made it that far and would have gone further, however windpipes are such nagging mechanisms. They require a flow of air in order to have much success with speech. At the moment, mine was being used for a concertina.

“I should kick your worthless faggot ass!” Poison shouted. There was really no need to yell. Our mouths were almost touching. “I bet all your candy-ass writin’ pals think you're clever. Let me tell you what I think. You're nothin’ more than a dumb cunt with diarrhea mouth. The only way you can get your garbage printed is by suckin’ up to commie assholes who've got nothin’ better to do but sit around, all doped up, tearin’ this country down.”

When Poison was finished with his critique of my vast writing talents, he wadded up the article and flung it at my feet. As he stormed away, I thought to myself how wonderful it would be to somehow wedge his fat head in between the iron pincers of my rivet gun. To pull the trigger, over and over, watching as that thick cranium of his splintered like a moldy coconut.

When lunchtime arrived, I drove up to the liquor store with Dave to grab a cold forty-ouncer. I slammed it down quickly, hardly pausing for air. Dave, who worked right beside Poison, couldn't resist the urge to comment on my situation.

“Christ, have you ever got Poison seein’ red. I'd keep my eyes open the rest of the shift. A few of his redneck pals are down there eggin’ him on and gettin’ him stoked. Oh, by the way, did you know that you're a faggot-commie-pinko-candy-ass-punk-rock-dope-fiend?”

“You don't say.” I managed to laugh. “I hope none of that gets back to my pastor.”

We headed back into the factory. I glanced over at Poison as I passed his job. Dave had been right on the dime—our little spat was far from finished. Poison's eyes bore through me as if I were a twelve-point buck. As I walked on toward my job, I began thinking of new hobbies outside of the writing field. Projects that wouldn't require the use of one's arms and legs.

The horn blew and everyone resumed their duties. I kept one eye on my job and one eye glued down the line. From my vantage point, I could see several rednecks fuelin’ Poison's rage. They'd pick up a
Voice,
read a section, and point in my direction. I would have stood a good chance paired with any one of those miserable shits. But Poison was out of my league. That maniac could've whomped on a grizzly.

Suddenly, it was time for round 2. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Poison jumping the line and heading in my direction. He had another copy of the
Voice
balled up in his fist. Damn, what I wouldn't have given for a stun gun and a can of mace right about then.

Polson stormed up to my job and pinned me against my workbench. Despite appearances, he wasn't here to dry-hump. He spread the deer article open and slammed his fist on it. Meanwhile, my job was going down the line unattended. It wasn't my greatest concern at the moment.

Poison started in. “Where in the hell do you get off writin’ that I rented my wedding tux from
Outdoor Life?
Listen, shitbag, I'll have you know I was married in my MARINE DRESS OUTFIT! And what about this part where you state that the NRA stands for Nuts Run Amuck? Where do you come up with this crap?”

“Just a joke,” I answered. “Can't you take a simple joke?”

“This whole goddamn article is a joke. Do you realize if it wasn't for dues-payin’ members of the NRA, the deer would overpopulate and starve to death?”

Christ, not that stale serenade. In other words, I was supposed to believe that out of the boundless mercy of their hearts, these wildlife assassins were willing to trek 200 miles to the northern timbers to blast large holes in deer bellies, all in the name of preservation of the species. I guess part of it made sense: if you were dead, it was unlikely you'd be crowdin’ anyone's rump out of the chowline.

“If you ask me,” I injected foolishly, “I think you just enjoy killing things.”

“And faggots are at the top of my list!” Poison exploded.

It took Al, our no-bullshit Quality man, and a couple other beefy sorts to pry the bastard off me. The ruckus brought Gino out of his office. He hustled over and instructed us to settle our differences elsewhere. He wasn't at all pleased that we had been letting our jobs sail by incomplete. GM didn't give a shit about dead deer or humorless rednecks or commies. They needed all available muscle attending to the production of recreational vehicles and military gas hogs.

After work let out, I prepared for an ambush that never came. Poison sped off in his pickup and I went out and got miserably drunk. From that night on, we avoided each other completely. He went back to his gun manuals, I returned to my little yellow notepad.

When Mike Moore got wind of my close call he suggested that I make Polson a running character in my column. My editor surely loved to stir up trouble. “Fat fuckin’ chance,” I responded. “All these bikers and tough men and gun freaks belong in someone else's diary. I'm supposed to be on shoprat detail, remember?”

Mike nodded and put his chin on his fist. I was tempted to tell him that such posture was a proven element in the stunting of one's facial hair. Instead, I said so long and headed for the factory where several thousand rivets were waiting to be pummeled. It was nice to be needed.

Go to any General Motors plant in Flint. Turn your back to the building and gaze directly across the roadway. I guarantee you'll be peering at a tavern, perhaps several of them. This bit of truism is as unfailing as spotting a bail bondsman's office across from a jail or a motel next to an airport. Find a factory, you'll find a bar.

Our local version of this concept was a long, dark room located right on the ribs of the train tracks called Mark's Lounge. It was here that the coverall brigade would retire each night to suck ‘em down and spoon-feed one another a thousand years’ worth of their dead fathers’ lies. The conversation always consisted of shop talk: denunciations of tyrant supervisors, unwanted mandatory overtime, sore joints and dreary labor. Second verse, same as the first.

Dave and I quickly adopted Mark's Lounge as our post-shift sanctuary. In a way, we were outsiders. We enjoyed the atmosphere, the red Naugahyde booths cloaked in darkness, the ice-cold beer—however, we weren't much into jabbering about what we'd just left behind in the factory. Nine tedious hours of nothingness spoke for itself. Mostly, we'd end up staring at the natives and listening to the trains roar by like herds of thunder. Where all those trains were headed at that time of morning was anyone's guess. Their destination was the private mystery of important men.

Night after night we'd descend on Mark's Lounge searching for a booth in the most remote corner. Night after night the very same waitress would inquire as to what we were drinking. This always pissed me off. Couldn't she get it through her stacked beehive that we were confirmed Budweiser addicts? It seemed as though everyone else in the bar had their brand of libation tattooed on their foreheads. Hoss would roll in and a bottle of Pabst would hit the bar before he was seated. The same went for Clem and his Southern Comfort. Ditto old Marty and his tall beaker of vodka and orange. Why was it that we always had to go through the customary ordering procedure as if we were out-of-towners fresh off a tour bus?