Barry was enthralled with the exponentially increasing snowfall. The forecast had called for the year’s first blizzard, twelve to sixteen inches starting in the afternoon and continuing through the night. The powder was already showing accumulation, and the wind had increased in force — doubling and gusting — since Barry had left his house. He pulled up his collar and squared his pea cap down over the ears. Again, he headed into another shift he wished was his last.
Material, Planning, and Logistics (M, P & L) for the Rouge Foundry Works held an elongated storeroom aloft as headquarters. It was tidy and well organized, but impossible to keep clean from a layer of soot generated by the works running below. More than soot, really, it was like an invasive burnt dust, a fine, powdery, oil-based grime that stuck to things. It worked its way into mechanisms and crevices, up nostrils, down lungs. Workers gave in to it as reality, an absolute. Not something to be combated, as it covered all things.
M, P & L’s workspace had one large wall of square-paned, segmented windows that looked out on one of the molding bays down in the works. Looking out over the scene, the contrasts produced by darkness and fire could trance a viewer. It was not unusual from such a vantage point to ponder the existence of heaven and hell — or at least the planes of hell, higher and lower. Loud by comparison to most workplaces, this room was like the foundry’s scriptorium, its personnel like busy monks, interpreting and writing, interpreting and writing.
At changeover, first shift gave their pass-down to second. It was brief today: some procurement, but mostly shipping, incepts, and the dailies. First left second a few inspections, but all in all it would be an easy evening. The men, five from each shift, then sat on desks and squat filing cabinets to shoot the shit about the weather and the Lions.
The man closest to Barry’s age was twice his twenty-nine. M, P & L was a retirement position. Barry’s father knew people; he’d had a long run at the Rouge plant, forty-one years — thirty of those at the foundry. In an act his dad associated with grace, he pulled some strings. Since Mr. Biehn wasn’t able to keep his son from Ford and the foundry, he could at least get him out of the pits. When his dad retired, Barry was transferred to the loft. It caused no end of resentment.
Barry’s interest in his coworkers’ chatter had waned. He looked down on the smelting bay as he’d done every day since coming to the loft. The infernal chiaroscuros, the sparks and fires, the molten pour of reality, his entire sweep of vision begged Barry to consider again the question he’d been asking for over nine years now, What the fuck am I doing here?
Barry couldn’t focus lately. He was tired all the time. His daughter was six months old and not sleeping through the night. There had been a drop-off in his production. Fatigue hung around his neck and cramped it, above his eyes in headaches. He was self-conscious about the attitude of slack that had crept into his duties. His coworkers assessed that all of this was simply a byproduct of his newborn, but Barry was mystified. It couldn’t be that simple.
He felt like he was losing both the drive and ambition to get out of Ford. The foundry was supposed to be a stop along the way, a means to an end. He had planned to be gone years ago. Had he finally resigned himself to being a union man? Was that it? A Ford employee? A procurement clerk? He still went to class on Saturdays, 8 a.m. until 2. He only had a couple more semesters before he got his Associates in computers. He’d been wondering lately what this all meant.
The early ’80s had been hard on Detroit. Except for the Tigers, there wasn’t much brightness. After last season, it looked like even the recent world champs were headed for the shitter. Jobs like Barry’s were under fire, but at least they were unionized. Mechanization and outsourcing had killed some skill sets, databases and inventory systems snuffed others. A round of contract talks approached, and no one, from plant managers down to the lowest committeemen, could muster much hope.
Hank, the man twice Barry’s age, tapped Barry’s knee with a clipboard holding triplicates.
“You get that, Bear?”
“Sure,” Barry lied. He took the clipboard from Hank, but did not go out to begin the procurement inspections. Instead, he went to his desk as the pow-wow broke up. The word wife popped into his head, so he called.
“Hey,” he said as she picked up on the first ring.
“Hey,” she said back.
“Snow bad?”
“Kind of. Pretty, though. What’s up?”
“Nothing. Just thought I’d call.”
“I’m fine.”
“Okay. Don’t shovel. I’ll do it when I get home.”
“You know Burns. He loves you. He’ll be over here like clockwork with the snowblower around 9:00. Guaranteed.”
“I think Burns loves you, not me.”
“Either-or, he’ll probably beat you to the punch.”
“Okay, baby. Well, I just wanted to check in.”
“Be careful driving tonight. Oh! Bunny, I’m going to move Kara’s crib into our room tonight.”
“Just wait and I’ll do it when I get home.”
“Shush. I’m fine. I can do it. I’ve been cleared to lift things, jackass.”
“Well,” Barry said, “watch your back.”
“You watch yours,” Sera replied.
“Lates,” Barry said.
“Lates,” Sera replied.
He drifted for a moment, then set his inner-ear plugs and headed to the floor. Barry was splitting Johnson’s work with Brown, as Johnson had lost some fingers last week when he decided to help out some guys with a winching chain. Johnson was still on medical and was sure to milk it. Barry donned his headphone-sized ear protectors over the inner-ear plugs. The world slipped into a light, constant humming as he walked down flight after flight of metal fire escape stairs.
Barry walked through the foundry with his clipboard making a series of check marks on procurement triplicates. He went to Johnson’s areas and did the same. Minutes stretched into hours. This was Barry’s shift. Later, he returned to the loft and ate a meat loaf sandwich. He spent the rest of the evening sorting and filing, miserable work.
Barry joined the long line waiting to punch out at the main. He mashed his time card into the old clock slot when he reached it. The stamp crashed down with mechanical crispness born of another generation. They did not build things like that time clock anymore. His card was stamped on the last Friday of the two-week register: 10:16 p.m.
Barry passed through the metal detectors and the Pinkerton security that manned them. Normally, this twisted his guts, made him feel like stealing just to spite the fuckers. But aside from the tools that everyone had already stolen three sets of, what was there to take from this place? Raw brake drums? Frame parts? Axle castings?
He stopped at the bay of pay phones to call Sera, but he could not get through, busy both times. He sat in the booth watching coworkers trudge by. It seemed they’d been set upon by a blackness deeper than the film that coated them. They traipsed after a shift, as if the ingots that stuck to their coveralls each weighed a ton. Barry tried the call several more times, but gave up after a few minutes as the last of the foot traffic had passed. He made for the exit and wrestled with the soft dread of new fatherhood. He wondered if something had happened. Was everything okay?
It had snowed fourteen inches in all. No tricky drifting as the wind had died, just a snow laid heavy, flake upon flake. Someone had shoveled the walk leading from the main to the lot, but typical union, they’d done a half-ass job. It was unsalted and slick to each footfall. Barry ran and slid on the sidewalk leaving furrows as he went — running and sliding, running and sliding. He thought of the Hawaiian Islands and surfboards.