Rivethead (9 page)

He started talking about the enormous popularity of our best-seller, the Chevy Suburban. “We can't even meet the demand for this product,” he bellowed. “Do you realize that there are people in New England who have never even SEEN a Suburban!” I took a gulp of Pepsi and wondered to myself. Is there no limit to the human suffering some people must endure?

The Plant Manager's Knute-Rockne-reborn-as-poorboy's-Leo-Buscaglia-on-the-threshold-of-industrial-Guyana rah-rah speech continued for another half hour or so. As Bob-A-Lou had predicted, the boss started playin’ footsie with the workers: “I plan to make every effort to visit with as many of you as I can. Your input is invaluable to the future of our operations. It is essential that each and every one of us join together in unifying our…”

“Shut the fuck up,” a guy behind me groaned.

The Plant Manager introduced the man in charge of overseeing worker attendance. In contrast, he didn't seem happy at all. The attendance man unveiled a large chart illustrating the trends in absenteeism. With a long pointer, he traced the roller-coaster tendencies of the unexcused absence. He pointed to Monday, which slung low to the bottom of the chart. Monday was an unpopular day attendance-wise. He moved the pointer over to Tuesday and Wednesday which showed a significant gain in attendance. The chart peaked way up high on Thursday. Thursday was pay night. Everybody showed up on Thursday.

“Then we arrive at Friday,” the attendance man announced. A guilty wave of laughter spread though the workers. None of the bossmen appeared at all amused. Friday was an unspoken Sabbath for many of the workers. Paychecks in their pockets, the leash was temporarily loosened. To get a jump on the weekend was often a temptation too difficult to resist. The Corporation saw it quite differently.

The attendance man took his pointer, which was resting triumphantly on the snow-capped peak of Thursday evening, and, following the graph, plunged the pointer straight down through Friday, a motion that resembled falling off a cliff. Again, there was much snickering.

“Unfortunately, this is not a subject that lends itself to any amount of humor,” the attendance man bristled. “Absenteeism is the single largest factor in poor quality. No replacement, no utility worker can perform your job as well as you. Each time you take an unexcused absence, you damage the company along with the security of your own job!” With that said, he packed up his graphs and charts and stalked off stage to make way for the techno-cretins. The veins in his neck were visible all the way back to the doughnut table.

Hardly anyone tuned in for the technical presentation. It was one long lullaby of foreign terminology, slides, numerology and assorted high-tech masturbation. Why would any of us give a shit about the specifics of the great master plan? We knew what holes our screws went in. That was truth enough. Point us toward our air guns and welders and drill presses and save all the particulars for the antheads in the smocks and bifocals.

“Be sure to help yourselves to the doughnuts and soft drinks on your way out,” the Plant Manager shouted as the pow-wow broke up. It was time to pour ourselves back into the mold and attend to our well-paying jobs. Up with us, down with them.

I met all kinds of bizarre individuals during my first year at GM Truck & Bus, characters who would prove to be constants throughout my factory tenure. Dementia and derangement were rampant traits. Most of these guys were not unlike myself—urped forth from the birthrights of their kin, drowsy with destiny, uninspired, keen for drink, unamused with the arms race or God or the Middle East, underpaid and overpaid, desperate, goofy, bored and trapped. It was the rare one who would come out and fib in the middle of a card game about how he didn't really belong here. We belonged. There were really no other options—just tricky lies and self-soothing bullshit about “how my
real
talent lies in carpentry” or “within five years I'm opening a bait shop in Tawas.” We weren't going anywhere. That pay stub was like a concrete pair of loafers. Sit down, shut up and ante.

Our linemate Dan-O was an irreplaceable native up in our neck of the Jungle. He was the master of diversions. His relentless pranks kept us entertained and loose. More importantly, he had a terrific knack for keepin’ our minds off that wretched clock.

Each night Dan-O would have a new trick. I recall the time he took a long cardboard tube used to hold brazing rods, painted it all psychedelic, and passed it off to the unsuspecting as a porno kaleidoscope. He told all the guys that if they held it directly into the overhead lights and looked through the hole, they would get a gorgeous glimpse of
Hustler
’s Miss August. There was never any shortage of volunteers.

There was never any Miss August either. The victim grabbed the peep tube, tilted it straight up to the lights, only to get doused with a generous flow of water right in the eyeball. Dan-O also made sure to line the peephole with black paint. Not only did the victim wind up drenched, he'd also slink away sportin’ a shiner the size of a tennis ball.

Another Dan-O favorite was his “crucified wallet” trick. He would nail down an old wallet into the woodblock floor in the aisleway, flip the wallet closed to conceal the nail, and insert the torn corner off a $20 bill. Invariably, some guy would stroll by and notice the apparent gold mine. As we pretended to look the other way, the victim casually glanced around and, feeling unnoticed, swooped down for the wallet only to wind up tumbling on his face or developing an instant hernia. The Jungle would explode in laughter as the victim retreated sheepishly.

The most entertaining of Dan-O's pranks, from a spectator's view, was the “charging tarantula” trap. Dan-O would take fishing line, attach it to a very realistic-looking rubber tarantula, and rig the fish line so that at the flick of his wrist the tarantula would come scampering out from beneath a stock crate near the aisleway. For bait, Dan-O would crumple up a dollar bill and place it in the aisle. The innocent pedestrian would come along, start to reach for the dollar, and…SHIT GOD ALMIGHTY…the bug-eyed terror you would see in the faces of these victims was enough to send you howling to your knees. After the victim had fled, Dan-O would leisurely reset the trap and we'd await the next pigeon. Man, the time just flew.

The absolute craziest co-worker I met during my first year was my relief man, Jack. He was a doper, the pied piper of dumbdom, always banged to the gills on some queer mix of speed, mescaline, hash or cocaine. As my relief man, his duties were to come around twice per night and spell me for my break period. I would often hang around as Jack ran through my job. Though there was something plainly dangerous about him, it could never be denied that Jack was always a great source for laughter. His rantings were legend.

Jack also presented me with one of my first confrontations with an enigma that had been bothering me since I had hired in. He was so resolute in his hatred toward General Motors that it completely baffled me as to why he hung around. He had this persecution complex that ate at him like a bellyful of red ants. I didn't really understand it. I was still relatively raw, but I assumed a deal was a deal. GM paid us a tidy income and we did the shitwork. No one was holding a gun to anyone's head. I didn't harbor any hatred toward GM. My war was with that suffocating minute hand. With Jack, General Motors was the taproot for all that was miserable and repellent in his life. To hear him tell it, GM was out to bury him. He was obsessed with vengeance and anarchy.

For instance, one night Jack arrived to send me on break. Before doing so, he raced around the corner to buy a pack of smokes. A moment later, he reappeared screechin’ his lungs out. Apparently, the cigarette machine had eaten his money. An unfortunate break? Not the way Jack saw it. This was just another GM conspiracy designed to crank up the animosity level. The war was on. Jack reached into my workbench and grabbed my sledgehammer. I had a very uneasy feeling about the look on his face.

Moments after Jack charged off with my sledgehammer, I heard the sound of glass being shattered. The pounding continued. He was obviously destroying the vending machine. GM had absolutely nothing to do with these machines. They were serviced by private vendors. Still, Jack bashed away at the machine as if he were poundin’ the very last breath out of Roger Smith himself.

Finally, Jack returned. He had about two dozen packs of cigarettes bunched to his chest. Blood trickled from his forearms. His smile was one demented line stretching from ear to ear. The war had been won. From that day on, Jack always referred to my sledgehammer as the Better Business Bureau. He was convinced that he had delivered a furious blow against the infernal GM empire. All he really did was deprive the department of access to cigarettes for the next several months.

Whenever I asked Jack why he just didn't quit and move on to something that was less aggravating, he would jump all over me. “Goddamnit, that's
precisely
what they're banking on. That I'll weaken and bow to their endless tyranny. NO WAY! They'll have to drag me out of here.”

Besides the crazies, there was also the occasional violent type. We had one guy up in the Jungle, a black dude named Franklin, who kept our department on constant edge. He was forever picking fights with co-workers. It wasn't any kind of racial thing, Franklin had it in for everyone. When something set him off, he just went to whalin’ on people.

One night, he got Henry, our Quality man. Henry had refused to give Franklin an extra pair of work gloves. Franklin became enraged. Later in the shift, he snuck up on Henry and smashed him over the head with a door latch. Henry received a dozen stitches in the back of his skull and Franklin got thirty days on the street.

Franklin worked as a utility man, floating daily from job to job depending on where he was needed. At the beginning of every shift you could hear him throwin’ his customary shitfit about what job the foreman had assigned him to cover. It didn't matter what type of job it was, easy or difficult. He'd scream and holler and demand to see his union rep.

I felt a certain amount of pity for our boss. No matter how he tried to soothe the situation, it only made it worse. For example, I firmly believe that if our foreman were to have come up to Franklin one sunny afternoon and told him his only duty for the shift would be to fornicate with Miss America on some sandy beach with a dozen bottles of chilled Dom Perignon at hand, he would have thrown himself into a blind rage and accused the boss of denying him the right to sweat it out all night on the door hang job.

Franklin didn't pull any of his crap with the veterans or guys who outbulked him. He preyed mainly on the timid, the brittle and the rookies. The rookies were at a severe disadvantage. Without having served the first ninety days of their probation period, there was no way they could risk swinging at anybody. To do so would mean instant termination. GM didn't have time to sort out who was to blame in these skirmishes. You could get sucker-punched while saying a rosary and still receive the same punishment as your attacker. It was professional suicide for any rookie to fight back. Franklin exploited this situation and made a career out of intimidating rookies.

Besides his violent streak, there was something else about Franklin that had me very intrigued. He was forever writing stuff down on little notepads, scraps of cardboard, napkins—anything he could find. Several co-workers I talked to joked that he was probably just scrawling down ransom notes or bomb threats. One thing was for certain. Franklin wouldn't allow a soul to see what he was writing. If you came anywhere near him while he was jotting, he'd quickly cram the paper away.

My curiosity was getting the best of me. Jerome Franklin. Bully. Terrorist. Cutthroat. Man of letters? I had to find out what was behind his mysterious sideline. One evening, while Franklin was covering Roy's old job across the line from me, I went over to the picnic bench and began thumbing through the sports section. In between jobs, Franklin was furiously hammering out something on a piece of paper towel. I decided to make my move.

“Shit, Franks, you rewritin’ the Bible over here?”

“Just some bullshit to pass the time,” he muttered.

“Mind if I took a look?” A big pause. A brutal pause. A pause with a vanity plate that read
U EAT ME
. Finally, Franklin gave me a nervous grin. “Go ahead,” he said. “But I don't want one word of this shit bein’ spread through the department or it's your ass.”

I laid out the paper towel on the picnic bench. The printing was barely legible. Grease spots and sealer smudges covered the page. I began reading and was quickly amazed. Franklin was writing
poetry
of all things. The poetry was not only a surprise, the damn shit was red-hot. He had some great lines in there, plenty of imagery and anger and this passionate raw beauty that welded together in a furious glide. The guy wasn't writing as much as he was attacking the beast. The poetry leapt at your spine and shook you down.

“Jesus, Franks, this stuff really kicks ass.”

Franklin shrugged and dumped another load of pencil rods into his bin. He said nothing. He was obviously uncomfortable about being exposed as someone who could actually accomplish something more than pounding skulls and bustin’ out teeth.

I read on. Who'd have ever believe it? The resident high priest of mayhem was a poet of enormous talent. No whiny art-fag lip service here. No candy-ass dime-a-rhyme. Franklin got in and got out. No excess baggage, no gristle. It was all red meat and arteries burstin’ wide open and gray matter boiling in flame. He had the goods, the bads and plenty of the uglies. I put down the paper towel and was about to say something. Franklin cut me off.

“Not a word. Let's just fuckin’ drop it.”

In the nights to come I hounded Franklin to let me check out his writings, but he always blew me off. I knew better than to press the matter too far and run the risk of having my face flattened, so I just gave up. It was sad that he couldn't funnel his hostility into something more worthwhile than brawling with co-workers and behaving like the campus bully.