Rivethead - Ben Hamper [79]
I give a slow nod. “They should know,” I reply. This always seems to make him feel better.
As long as I've known this character, the only topic we've ever discussed is the barbed wire fence that surrounds the GM Truck & Bus plant. It must annoy the hell out of him. Others complain about the overtime or the boredom or the humidity but, with this guy, the conversation never varies. Always and forever, the barbed wire.
“It doesn't make any sense,” he insists. “The barbed wire all faces in. The shit's pointed right down our throats. They don't wanna keep others out, they wanna KEEP US IN!”
He's right, of course. And here I always figured that the barbed wire was just so much precautionary neckware strung around the grounds to ward off would-be Empire looters. Just the Company's paranoid way of pissing on its boundaries. Hey, you never know who might drop by and try to pilfer the cookbook.
Silly me. Just one look will tell you that GM designed their security fencing with one guarded eyeball on their own work force. The barbed wire does face inward. Maybe they believed that we were all double agents plotting to swap the recipe for our cherished military vehicle to a carload of Russian Intelligence parked on the dark side of the trainyard. The ingredients to Ronnie's new death wagons, even up, for a dozen cases of Stolichnaya 100 proof.
Maybe they all lived in fear that one hot July evening we'd be smitten with road fever and roam our bunions elsewhere. We'd all toss off our gloves, rub axle grease all over our faces, load up our coolers full of car stereos and carburetors, and flee over the West Wall.
As we marched on toward freedom, the bullhorns would blare: “WARNING! WE COMMAND YOU RIVETERS TO HALT!” (The shriek of gunfire over a backdrop of Glenn Frey music.) “REPEAT! THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING! HALT IMMEDIATELY OR NO MORE MICROWAVE POPCORN FOR SIX MONTHS!”
Maybe there's nothing to it at all. Maybe some construction boss just hung the blueprint for the security fencing upside down. An honest mistake. Then again, maybe GM just strung up all that confounding barbed wire to give us Midnight Plow-boys something to chaw on in between the beer nuts and the swizzle sticks: the long wait for death and the heat to go off.
8
THE BIG CONTRACT WITH THE PENTAGON, COMBINED WITH THE sudden rebound in truck sales, enabled more shoprats to be recalled from indefinite layoff. Consequently, the Rivet Line began an overdue blood transfusion. We embraced new workers from closed factories in Saginaw, Bay City and Lansing. Off went the disgruntled rednecks in quest of lighter workloads. In came the greenies to swallow up the vacancies. You could feel the atmosphere of the department recharging.
The new guys fit in well. Jerry, Herman, Dickie, Tony, Hogjaw, Willie—an easygoin’ bunch who worked hard, partied hard and weren't opposed to mixing the two together. We were all around the same age—mid-twenties, single, unshackled. The only surprise to this new group was the inclusion of a female, a very unfamiliar species in our area.
Of course, we'd seen this happen before. The results were always the same: an honest attempt, a few hours of overmatched jousting with the rivet guns, a huddle with the foreman and a quick reassignment. Why they even bothered movin’ women to the Rivet Line is beyond me. The success rate was abysmal. I think they just liked to keep the ladies guessin’, taunting them with hectic visions of brute labor. GM was big on useless gut checks.
It turned out that the new female was to be replacing the guy next to me. The idea suited me fine. God knows I was sick to death of this idiot. His name was Kirk, a nice enough sort, but I had grown terribly weary of his nightly blabber. All he ever talked about was how much