Rivethead - Ben Hamper [52]
“How about takin’ a stab at it?” the guy asked me after a while. “You're not gonna get the feel of the job sittin’ up there on the bench.”
I politely declined. I didn't want to learn any portion of this monster maze before it was absolutely necessary. Once the bossman thought you had a reasonable grasp of the setup, he was likely to step in and turn you loose on your own. I needed to keep delaying in order to give Art some time to reel me back up to Cab Shop.
“Well, you've got three days,” the guy replied. “After that, this baby's all yours.”
I puttered around the rest of the day tryin’ my best to look like I was in deep rumination regarding the task at hand. It wasn't until the middle of the next day that I was able to track down Art. When I caught him, I practically started yanking off his shirt sleeve. Lydia had already informed him of my urgent appeal. I asked Art what he could do.
He exhaled slowly. “It's simply not that easy,” he began. “Once you've been assigned to an area it's damn near impossible to get you transferred out. Especially when that area is the Rivet Line. Not many people want to work down there so they tend to clutch on to their workers. However, I'll see what I can do about working out a trade. They won't surrender one of their bodies without a replacement in return.”
Trade? Surrender? Bodies? This was beginning to stink like some insuperable hostage shakedown. Trade positions? In that case, my trade value had to be nil. Who in their right mind would be willing to swap places with a doomed goomer from the Rivet Line? It would be like having a guy in the drunk tank asking to switch spots with a loser on death row.
By the start of my third day on the Rivet Line, it was evident that a trade was not in the offing. Art started payin’ me all this lip service about “someday in the future” and “guttin’ it out” when all he was really sayin’ was “you silly asshole, I could search from now until retirement and never run across a dupe so ignorant that he'd trade spots with you.”
I gave up hope and surrendered to my new placement. I was to be a riveter. It was now my sworn duty to learn my job as quickly and professionally as possible. I only had one day left to perfect what they referred to as “the pinup job.” If I couldn't answer the bell after the allotted three-day break-in period, GM had every right to usher me down that nearby stairwell, past the time clocks, out the exit and point me in the general direction of nowhere. Nowhere seemed fine in a way, but it was highly doubtful that nowhere paid $12.82 an hour and fixed your rotten teeth for free.
6
MOST CALAMITIES IN LIFE EVENTUALLY FADE AWAY AND LEAVE you scratchin’ your skull as to why you allowed yourself to get so tensed in the first place. My Rivet Line anxiety was one such calamity. I soon conquered the toilsome pinup job and burrowed myself a pliable little rut. Along with the assistance of the day shift operator, I squawked and raised enough hell about the stock-building portion of the job to have it taken away and assigned elsewhere. This allowed me a little free time in between jobs—just enough to surface for air and give a quick wink to the madness.
There were several differences between my station on the Rivet Line and my old home in the Cab Shop. Most notable was the fact that I was now ball-and-chained to a job that kept me forever in motion. That merciless minute hand relented somewhat due to the fact that there just wasn't as much time to stand around clock-gazin’. Oftentimes I would get so scoped-in on my duties, so chiseled to the waltz of the rails, that I wouldn't even notice it was break time until I saw the rest of the crew peelin’ off their gloves. I'd lock into the mission and stow my mind away so as not to have it interfere with the absurdity of the regimen. Entire shifts would sail by during which I hardly developed a tangible current of thought. The last thing I wanted to do was lacerate my brain with the nude truth lurking behind this mulish treadmill. A whore