Third shift at a Central Illinois paper plant, harsh winter winds swirling about and inside another night cutting and stacking paper. A union grievance meeting goes awry and in its strange way life goes on.
One's willingness to work and to maintain one's wits can sometimes be all one needs to get by.
With a whir, the trimmer table, laden with three hundred pound books of paper, moves across the floor of the Union Camp Paper Company. The factory’s constant low sound, its sense of slow motion, and the white fluorescent lighting which cast a cold glow, a massive building full of light green machinery mesmerized Phil.
He daydreamed of a windy autumn day, white caps whipping high and throwing breeze into his face, the sky overcast-a cold light. Lake Michigan’s sharp and jagged ice-covered beaches, as she smiled through the mist, her long blowing curly blonde hair promising in an instant, that no, she’d never be his. Who cared? It was in the blood. Snow blew in huge silver dollar puffballs across her beautiful round face, her surprised eyes watching expectantly, gleaming smile. Her teenage willingness to share, be a part of, even if only for now. Soon the years would wipe that all away, conditioned away, frosted away.
In his stream, he had to bring to mind the now almost ancient mantra: just what was it about Michigan girls; yeah, helped if you co-captained the football team. No, but even after those days…
More dreams, twisted apart, a dream never fulfilled, damn. In another kingdom there’d been horses too, a vast tract of grassy land, hot tropical, humid coastal breeze delivered a constant effect. Sweet sweat. You were the fucking Lone Ranger again: you were the fucking Lone Ranger. She followed… she was a rich ranch owners’ princess daughter, behaved like a princess, dressed like a princess, smelled like a princess. She and her politically tied rancher father arrived in their chopper. It impressed her how you opened that huge barbed wire gate from the saddle. Had she known I almost fell out of the damn saddle into the deep mud, was that why she hid a tiny smile?
I lived in the main house. A privileged place as the ranch owner and his wife were best friends of my parents, perks…
Could’ve worked for VillaToros, the ranch owner, for the long haul, twenty square miles ranch land, seven thousand head of cattle, that’s what I’m talking about… major leagues, fuck yeah… at least in Guatemala.
“Hey you dumb fucker, wake up!” Claudia yelled Phil snapped out of his journey.
“What’s yer hurry, you dizzy bitch?” Barely smiling, he pushed four paper stacks to the edge of the huge air table then stepped around as she pressed the ‘out’ pedal.
He considered his reality. The factory, an unsuccessful college effort, a self-imposed and crippling social lacking, checked out before he ever got started, bought into the sixties bullshit. Too late woke up. A few miss-steps is all it took.
Phil thought about his nightly drive to work that took him ten miles from his rental hundred-year-old, country farmhouse, the old wood creaked and groaned showing its well-earned age, the Illinois cornfield winds, at times tornadic thus the ramshackle basement escape. He thought of his fellow workers, native Illinoisians: by God, these were tough people, survivors. Rising predawn, shaking almost dead coals in the fireplace to thaw out froze limbs. Just imagine these farmers who had lived in this house before electricity, rigging up the livestock to pull plows while it was still dark out, Spring approaching and yet the freeze of last winter still killing cold and the black ground not yet thawed, slowly unfreezing, black fertile rock.
His drive took him through Bloomington and into the midnight suburbs. Everything dusted with windswept snow, the little German sneezing bug barely kept out the freezing wind. Back then the radio at that hour only had country and Christian. The twenty-mile drive to the plant, a brightly lit oasis in the middle of a dark industrial park. Sometimes the passing train will have separated out a string of rail cars for loading and unloading paper products. The big warehouse doors wide open so the biting wind rushed in. Phil felt grateful to Nancy that she filled his big, chrome capped, green Thermos full of smoking hot chocolate.
As he drove through the neighborhood, though it was post-Christmas, front yards still lit with colored strung lights, the lower hung bulbs reflecting red, green, yellow off the smooth, wind-swept crystal snow cover, a small, plastic Santa smiling, an angel stuck in flight, a child’s bike left out now snow-covered, frozen in mid-play.
Often a crisp awareness of the craziness of working the third-shift hours would refresh itself in his mind. The situation was peculiar… Fifteen men and one woman gathered at mid-night to stack paper. This thought on its own and naked gave the reality of going to work at midnight its absurd quality. The interior lights in the homes were out. Phil saw the soft glow of little doorbell lights and thinks of the tired slumber inside. As his shift supervisor would state out loud for no apparent reason, ‘someones got to do it’.
As he approached the plant, from a half-mile or so the tall parking light poles cast otherworldly round glows about the space. Approaching as though a silent spacecraft about to dock. Closer he could see the whirling and twisting snow crystals as the wind tossed them about the bright mercury vapor lamps. Often other guys were arriving and parking as near the front entrance as possible.
Soon he’d be amidst a vast array of paper working machinery, unrolling, cutting, stacking, sealing, labeling; clanging gears and axles and the hiss and shucks of hydraulics forwarding paper to people all over the land. Sometimes he’d allow the thinking to go so far as seeing the secretary in a New York office building opening a new packet of bond paper. Perhaps thinking what her life was like, even if for a moment.
Larger configurations, white poster board, might go to schools and office supply shops for project work. It was a big and involved job to be sure, getting the massive rolls, tons worth of raw paper off the train cars and running them through the multi-stepped process until at the end, for example, a small pack of tightly wrapped typing paper was getting a final label, stacked and loaded back onto the train for delivery to Kinko’s or others around the globe.
The brightly hued, green machines attended by their operators and assistants sometimes reminded Phil of a carnival. ‘What the hell’ he thought, ‘its’ union pay, plus twenty-cents extra an hour for working the shit shift.’
With hand-held wood and fiberglass flatteners, Phil paddled the huge paper stacks to straighten them out on the wooden pallet. Claudia did the same with her side.
“So Ol’ man Bent really made it in for the grievance meeting tonight. I hope Mr. Hard-Ass foreman learns something from this.”
“Shit, Claudia, management can do whatever it wants to do. The foreman carried those twelve cartons to help us out. No big deal.” Phil lifted a long drop of paper which would get cut and trimmed into four several hundred-pound books.
“Look, Phil, if the contract says that a foreman cannot do any physical labor then that’s the rules. That’s what they agreed on.”
“We both know that he wasn’t putting anybody out of a job because of those stinking cartons. Hey, I’m all for getting his ass into trouble, but this is a bad joke!”
Phil was on the trimmer crew the night they made the grievance against the foreman, but he had refused to sign it. There were five other witnesses who’d signed the grievance, including Gull, the trimmer crew boss. Gull always goaded Phil to keep up, to cross books faster, but when Phil would keep up or get ahead of him, he’d grow irritated and explode, “What’s your fuckin’ hurry, anyway?” An ongoing competition had developed between the two that would surface often in heated verbal exchange all in fun, helped the night slip by. It was obvious to Phil that Gull had signed the union grievance more out of peer group pressure than from honest conviction.
Phil felt that he knew Gull better than others. It satisfied Phil in a malice free way to see that Gull had behaved nervously and uncomfortably in the days that followed the signing of the grievance leading up to tonight’s meeting. This was especially so tonight.
In his heart Gull, the team boss was a company man: He worked hard for over quota tons. For him, it was a thing of pride, and deep down he didn’t give a damn what the union wanted. There were the times Phil had to step between Gull and the union reps when they complained to him about overproducing. This only added to the ridiculousness of it.
In his forties. Gull had no teeth. He kept his non filtered Camels rolled-up in his T-shirt sleeve; his reddish hair rakishly swept back in fenders and dovetailed in back, Phil thought he looked a lot like a toothless Jerry Lee Lewis, he wondered if maybe Gull fancied himself likewise. He lived in a trailer park, a loner, with his cheap beer, his cherished and aging, American built, pick up, and his tolerant wife.
His walk across the plant floor was like that of a wild west gunfighter ready to draw. Other fellow workers, younger, called out to him, goading jokingly, demeaning or so felt Phil. Phil didn’t appreciate the kidding. He felt protective of Gull. Phil felt that they were laughing at rather than with Gull. He’d respond in unconvincing laughter, seemingly ignorant to the verbal jabs sent his way. Claudia saw it too. They were a team, they sort of hung together. The rest of the factory had similar groupings.
Phil once brought it up to Gull. This thing about lightening up. His response was a quick burst, momentarily hurt, “so what?” Gull wouldn’t have opened up if his life depended on it. Like a tight lid on a huge, boiling cauldron of domestic miasma; Gull was an explosion waiting to happen.
Phil respected that Gull had done military service in the army in Korea. One could see he had mellowed over the years, his appearance and manner a remnant from when he’d been a member of a hot rod gang in the fifties. Once he’d brought in some family photos of a picnic outing to show the trimmer crew; a thin, pretty wife named Thelma who waitressed at the Howard Johnson, a little boy, and in front Gull, no smile, with more hair — -in an Elvis curl — -wearing a black jacket with hanging buckle, sunglasses hanging from his lips, and holding up a can of beer. When Gull mentioned Thelma it was with clear respect, an admiration, daily Gull reported that either Thelma had chewed him out again on one of their many chronic domestic issues besides the drinking, or she had made a new decree which he felt he should share with Phil and Claudia.
Phil knew tonight’s meeting worried Gull because he chomped and chomped like he was chewing on his tongue. For years he’d been without teeth and when asked why he just didn’t go in and get himself a set of ‘choppers’ he’d angrily retort: “why the fuck should I do that?!”
“Well Gull, your turn next at the office, ‘Ol man Bent is sure gonna chew your ass off boa!’’’ Claudia couldn’t resist.
“Yep, hell Cloddy, maybe yer gonna take my job!” he countered half-heartedly, glancing quickly over at Phil. He tried a grin. But his toothless face folded grotesquely into that of a worried cartoon character. Phil and Claudia joined in the friendly kidding.
It was an open secret that Gull hated the union, hated what it represented, would say that in the Army there was no whining, you just did what you were told. The guys on the same shift who were pro-union pretty much left Gull alone; Phil figured this was because Gull scared the hell out of them, or they just saw him as sort of an unpredictable dinosaur. A T-Rex…
“Naw, Gull’s gonna give that old fart a piece of his mind, ain’t ya Gull man. Just ’cause he went to West Point don’t make him special, right Gull?”’ Claudia elbowed Phil and winked.
This back and forth harmless banter, regardless of the topic, was the way they whiled away the long nights on the floor. No serious insults generally. Everyone just wanted to get to six AM. Their radio blared: ‘everybody working for the weekend…’ competed with the country stations throughout the plant.
“Goddamn right! Gonna tell it like it is.” He chomped faster. Squeezing out his cheeks, and turned the safety double handles which brought the long, razor-sharp blade down onto the ‘book’… zip clomp!… a deadly grace, through stacked paper a foot thick. The foreman’s temporary replacement came over to tell Gull that as soon as he saw Jim the temporary foreman come out of the meeting, it would be his turn to go up to the office.
In the front office were Dave the foreman, two union grievance committeemen, and ‘Ol Man Bent’ the general manager. One by one, the workers who had signed the grievance were asked in. Gull was the last in the line-up. As they let each man out of the grievance meeting several of the workers met him and an informal debriefing would happen. A detailed, up-to-the-minute account of the meeting would spread throughout the plant.
Immediately following the personal report, was the time for reflective discourse with groups of two and three standing about, people in studied stances, with fingers holding grizzled chins. ‘Pundits,’ thought Phil, ‘preaching their factory wisdom on what’s right and what’s wrong, and it’s just two in the fucking morning.’
Gull started across the plant floor, a wintry breeze made its way across the interior, tonight the massive rail car doors were wide open and the freezing wind blew through as though on a frozen, sparse green tundra.
“Hey Claudia,” Phil said, “Is this a zoo or what? All right, so you want to work the trimmer blade while Gull’s upfront and I’m replacing you, now who’s coming over to replace me? Let’s not do a damn thing until someone comes over. Hey, Gull was three sheets in the wind tonight. Wonder how many beers he put away before coming to work, I’d be afraid to light a match around him.”
“Fucking-a boy! Gulls own damn fault. He was sweating it out. Let’s see, since Jim is covering temporary foreman, then Dan moved up to Jacobs’ spot on the cut-size machine. Leo would have to go over as Dan’s assistant, right?”
“No, now wait a minute, I thought Hakim was senior to Leo, right? So Hakim would go over to cut-size.”
“Yeah, Phil, but who’s driving the fork truck? Randy’s the only other guy certified to drive it and they’ve got his ass over on skid-wrap, so it has to be Hakim. Ah, who gives a shit, anyway?”
Neil, a short, bearded man, approached, wore black jeans too high, a bit overweight, and walked with an exaggerated waddle. “Hello, Neil, where you been all night?” Phil and Claudia couldn’t resist exchanging quick glances, just the way it was. Always on the lookout for the chink in the armor…
“Baylor machine, I guess no one will run the Baylor until the meeting lets out. It pissed me off too, I had eight bales going. Just makes you feel like not working when they pull this shit.” Neil hopped on the table ledge, sat swinging his legs, pant hems almost mid-calf. “These crazy hours, boy. I’m still not used to them.”
“Who is Neil? I’ve been here for three years and I still think about how crazy it is. Just think, man, everybody else is sound asleep…”
“Well not everybody, Phillip,” Claudia said with a smirk. Neil laughed and did a humping motion. Phil smiled and went on.
“Yeah I know, but I wonder if one should let go of the thought — you know — that when the world sleeps we’re in here going like hell, you…”
“Uh-huh Phil, it’s called third shift, remember? You ain’t paid to think, boa! You’re a weird mother fucker.” Claudia gave Neil a conspiratorial wink.
“Go to hell, Claudia. You can’t tell me these hours don’t change the way you live. How about you, Neil?”
“Damn right, three in the morning is lunchtime for us. We even call it that.” Neil scratched his head and his eyes widened in a questioning expression that started Phil and Claudia laughing. They casually began going through the motions of working this to keep the temporary foreman away. Gull had been gone to the meeting for over half an hour.
‘Ol Man Bent was having a rough time. The four young workers that came one by one before Gull were full of vigor, too quick to anger. Bent resented their youth. There was no preaching to them. Gull was entirely different. He entered the office hesitantly and slumped in his chair, chomping nervously on his gums, his face glistening with a sickly sweat. The ‘Ol Man saw a weakness in Gull and seized the opportunity to regain his position of strength.
At first, Gull answered question for question, his eyes darting from the Old Mans’ stare to the floor. Then Gull lost his edge. Gull could usually stomp all over a debate challenger, for example, say mean and unfair things about his beloved ’Cubbies’ baseball team, he’d just blurt out: “fuck you, man…” Couldn’t do that with ‘Ol Man Bent.
Gull, along with all his fellow employees, knew that Bent had graduated from West Point. He’d heard that the ‘ol man never saw combat in the military, spent most of his time in-country, administrative. His West Point classmates went on to key roles in the hierarchy, even a congressman. Most saw combat, many now enjoying retirement living in dream mansions. There was something about a cheating scandal in school.
“Where in the contract does it specifically say that, Gull? Have you ever even read the contract?” Mr. Bent straightened in his chair, his jaw clenched. “Here, Dave, give him this contract book. Okay, sir, I would like for you to read out loud where it says that the foreman can’t carry ten cartons…”
As soon as Gull stepped into the office Bent sensed his innate unease. The absurdity of it was that Gull was on Bents ‘team’. Bents' weakness as a leader, amongst others, was to ignore the obvious fact that Gull hated being told by the union reps to slow up, or for whatever reason on a given night, “hey Gull you can’t do over two tons tonight.” No explanations, simply orders from the union bosses. The risk of not complying was that you weren't given plumb jobs, or temporary job upgrades to fill an absenteeism along with its extra pay; less extra hour opportunities.
“Uh, let me answer that Gull.” Dave knew his men well, their strengths, their weaknesses, having been in the military himself, Dave had led a now-infamous rescue Ranger party deep into enemy territory, a dessert in the middle east to rescue a failed helicopter raid, several lost their lives. Dave could see Bents tactics and did not appreciate his attempt at belittling a good man.
In relief, Gull swallowed hard and dropped back against his seat. Sweat beads ran down his brow.
Dave the foreman, leafing through the booklet, found what he was looking for. “On page eleven it spells out that, ‘at no time shall the…’’’
“Hold it right there, Dave. Okay, Gull, I think it would help us all out if you read it to us. You say you know all about it, right? Okay, go ahead.”
The sweat rolled down Gull’s paled brow. He grabbed at the Camels in his sleeve and dropped them. Two cigarettes fell out and one rolled to the middle of the floor. He retrieved it. The room was silent save for the noises he was making. A union man reached over and gave Gull a light.
“You about ready, sir?” The Old Man was enjoying himself.
“Let’s see, page eleven, uh, ‘and there, therefore, this act shall cons- cons…’’’ Gull tortured the little booklet with one finger. He thrust the cigarette down and stepped on it.
“Constitute.”
“Fuck this shit! So I ain’t a good reader.” Gull threw the booklet to the floor. His face showed anger and hurt. The stinging sweat gave his eyes the look of tears. He stood up. “I do my God damned work here; I ain’t gettin’ paid to come in here for this shit. Our tons are better than all the other shifts.”
Bents' expression remained blank, impossible to understand.
“That’s right,” said a union man. “This shit about reading it to us wasn’t necessary. You didn’t make the other guys…”
“Look Gull,” Bent ignored the union reps’ comments. “If I ask you to read from the contract that’s an order coming from your manager, you’re refusing to comply.”
“What if I don’t want to read the god damned thing?” Gull, now at a loss of what else to say went for broke.
Bent went for his throat: “I could have you dismissed according to the stipulations in the contract…”
The union rep stood up. “Sir, let’s bring this to an end now, the foreman,” he said gesturing towards Dave; “broke the rules in the contract but we’re willing to let it go, we can all learn from this.”
“However, I have no alternative than to take Gulls refusal to follow my order to read the contract…”
“Sir, with all due respect,” responded one of the union men, “No-where in Gull's job description does it mention he has to read the contract to you…” the man slowed a bit, shifted on his feet a little, seemed to level on the man, then continued. “If you see fit to take Gull to task over this ridiculous impasse, then we too are ready, we will walk out and tomorrow morning no one will work, word will get to the other plants around the country, and sir you will have lots of explaining to do. Are you sure…”
Bent cut in and faced Dave, his foreman. “Hey Dave, you better explain a few things to these men about who…”
“Sorry sir,” his foreman shook his head back and forth. “My suggestion to you is to forget this regrettable issue before it becomes a much, much bigger issue. We can work out the cartons thing easily enough.”
Silence.
“Okay Gull, in the future let’s try to be more careful about signing grievances…”
“Well now, that isn’t right either,” countered one of the union men, this time directly addressing Bent, as though saying: ‘Listen you old fart this is only going to cause serious trouble for everyone.’ “He was in his rights…”
The voices trailed off in Gull’s mind. The intensity of the moment was over. He worked on regaining peace of mind. A subtle coolness entered the office. “Can I get back to work now?” To which all present waited for Bent, who then nodded in agreement.
Gull was told to go back to work and to forget it. Instead, he went outside to the bitter cold. Some drifts had gathered around his old Ford. Climbed in and thought how easy it would be to drive away. He thought about the verbal and maybe even physical thrashing he would get from lovely Thelma, how hard it would be to find another job. Without thinking, he reached down with his right hand between the seats and came up with a pocket flask of whiskey. Even before he had swallowed down the first three mouthfuls his stomach felt relief, the warmth about his face and in his head.
The comforting quiet of the night accentuated by the gentle song of the wind as it circled softly about and even gently nudging the pickup. The swirling snow helped settle Gull. The whiskey began to work its magic. Watching out his windshield he saw the distant and silent passing headlights of the semis on the Chicago bound interstate as though watching twin deadly tracers shoot across the night sky.
Wind was slapping the cord of the flagpole against it, making a gentle ‘cling, cling’ sound. A door slammed. Old Man Bent was leaving. The meeting was over. Gull sat still as the General Manager got into his big, silver Lincoln and drove away.
As the warm and comfortable energy flowed through his body, he felt his self- assuredness return. Without planning, he slammed his fist into the instrument panel, breaking the glass on one of the dials. He brushed blood from his knuckles and put the flask into his back pocket and went back inside to work.
“Well, it’s about time! Hey Phil, our fearless leader is back!”
“All right! The toothless warrior has returned from battle. Well, goddamnit Gull, tell us all about it!” Phil caught the odor of liquor on Gull as he passed to take his place at the razor-sharp trimmer blade. Neil returned once again to the Baylor machine. ZIPP CLOMP went the enormous blade as Gull cut an out-of-square book. He looked down at the foot-thick book and inspected it for nick marks.
“C’mon man, what happened in the office? Get your hand slapped in there, or what?” Claudia and Phil watched Gull expectantly.
“I told him like it is. Then he told me to read the contract out loud.”
“No shit’” Claudia laughed.
“Yep, then I told him to get fucked and threw the book on the floor.” Claudia and Phil reacted with raised eyebrows and whistles. Phil asked, “What about the grievance Gull, what happened?”
“Shit, he wasn’t thinking about no grievance, he was just showing that he can do whatever he wants to do…” Hanging onto the safety double handles with both hands, Gull leaned down to inspect the paper. The whiskey had slowed his reflexes. As he moved toward the razor-sharp blade, the swing of his body turned the handles, ZIPP CLOMP!! He felt a gentle tug on his nose as if someone had gently pinched it.
“Gull, you all right?”
The immediate warmth began streaming down his mouth and chin. Curious of the sensation, he put his hand over his mouth as he turned to Phil. He saw red and realized. “My fucking nose, Phil.” he said too calmly, then with raised voice: “I cut my god damn nose off!” Gull’s knees buckled. He sat on the floor staring at the darkness under the tables.
Claudia held a handkerchief to his face. The front of his T-shirt was streaking and blotching with red. Phil helped him up and headed him towards the parking lot. A pre-designated emergency driver was soon outside waiting in his car. “Don’t get blood all over my god damned seats Gull!” the fellow employee said partly joking.
“Wait a minute,” Gull stopped, “where’s the piece off my nose? I want to take it to the hospital.”
“Gull they won’t sew that on, it’s too…”
“Maybe they can try Phil!” exclaimed Claudia. Phil ran back to the trimmer and searched along the blade edge. On the metal platform, he found the little piece. He thought about wrapping it in paper, but instead picked it up in his fingers and hurried to the waiting car.
Sitting in the car holding the piece of the nose in his hand and holding Claudia’s handkerchief to his face, the three of them went with the driver to the hospital. People returned to their machines, and before long the metallic din had swelled to its usual intensity.
