Rivethead - Ben Hamper [70]
“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.
“Let me