Rivethead - Ben Hamper [71]
“Stranger than that. It's your neighbors herding off to work. Christ, what a sorry bunch of losers! They should get real jobs like ours.”
I looked out the window. “They don't look very happy, do they?”
“They look like they're going to their mother's funeral,” Dave cracked. He opened the window and started hollerin’: “$12.82 an hour! I'm makin’ $12.82 an hour to drink Rivethead booze and listen to Rivethead rock ‘n’ roll!’
“Shit, shut that window. You're gonna have the landlord over here.”
We settled back and kept draining the beers. The heavy euphoria of escaping the shop, gettin’ loaded, listenin’ to jams and knowing we were being paid handsomely to do so was a marvelous thing. Dave was as upbeat and animated as I'd ever seen him. He had found a worn copy of “Open Your Door” by Richard & the Young Lions in a stack of old 45’s and played the song over and over and over. Morning spilled into afternoon.
Finally, I had to break the news to him. “We're all out of beer, rail-pull man.”
Dave fished out a twenty and flung it at me. He started the record over for the umpteenth time and banged away on my coffee table with rubber spatulas operating as drum sticks.
“Hey, what about work?” I shouted. “For all we know, they might have got the line runnin’.”
“Must you always be so negative?” Dave laughed. He was plastered.
Over Dave's drunken objections, we left my apartment and drove back to the plant. We weaved our way in through a side door near the rivet line and looked around. Everyone was gone. The supervisors, the workers, even Henry Jackson. We looked at each other and then our watches.
“Hamper, this is fuckin’ spooky,” Dave whispered. “Where the hell did everyone go?”
Down in the next department, I could see a skilled-trades worker putzing about on some hunk of machinery. I walked down to talk to him. “Excuse me, you wouldn't happen to know where everyone went, would ya?”
The guy looked at me as if I was some sort of alien. A very drunk one at that. “Shit, they were all sent home at ten this morning. Not enough parts, I guess.”
Dave and I headed for the parking lot. “The one fuckin’ day they allow everyone to split early and here we are out there thinkin’ we've pulled the great escape,” Dave moped. “That means from ten o'clock on, we didn't have the edge on anyone. No matter which route I go, I always end up gettin’ rawed.”
“Just part of bein’ a renegade, I suppose.”
Dave ducked into his rusty Vega and rolled down the window. “Very fuckin’ funny,” he said. “Tomorrow, I'm stayin’ put till they release us early.”
“You've cursed us already.” I laughed. “We'll probably have to work overtime now.”
Dave's Vega roared to life and sped off for the north unit exit gate. I stood there for a moment chuckling to myself. A midday hangover was introducing itself to my forehead. I got in my Camaro and drove home. A little while later, my neighbors started arriving home from their jobs. I peered at them through the curtains. They looked neither happy or sad.
A few days later, we were crankin’. The parts to the army vehicles had finally all been located and distributed to their proper spots on the line. Let the war games begin.
The setup called for every seventh truck to be a military job. Management treated these units as if they were gold-studded chariots bound for heaven. If the slightest flaw appeared on one of Uncle Sam's orders, the line would jerk to a halt and a stampede of frazzled bossmen would come racin’ with red carpet tourniquets.
All attention was reserved for Ronnie's death wagons. The rest of the trucks slid by like dispensable lumps of Play-Doh. It wasn't the best time to have a truck on order if your name happened to be John Q. Public. I used to sit there and think that if the American auto industry could ever slow down and capture the relentless effort put forth into one of these sacred army trucks, then the day would soon come when we could send all of those Japanese Quality mongers ducking for cover behind the shadow of a real marketplace