Big Bill always got the short end of things. Like ending up here at GM instead of on the city police force. Before he went to Korea and left his toes by the Chosin Reservoir, he was already a sergeant on the Cranston Police Department.
He should have quit the job his first day on the GM security force when the boss stationed him at the bottom of the escalators and stairs to watch for guys who weren’t wearing their safety glasses. If they didn’t have them on the moment they stepped into the roar of the factory, he was supposed to “arrest” them. Or like today, watching the men file past the security office on their way to the time clock to make sure they weren’t drunk, or on the way out, to make sure they weren’t drunk.
Hell, at any given moment in the plant, somebody was drinking or plotting to steal some bullshit thing. He had lost count of how many of the guys had been arrested for DUI on the way home directly from work. Ah well, it paid okay, lots more than he would make as a city cop. And the older and lamer he got because of his war injury, the better the place looked.
But it was meaningless work he did here. He was nothing more than a prison guard watching over the unfortunate inmates. The three strands of barbed wire on top of the six-foot-tall, chain link fence around the plant even pointed inward. He had noticed that the day he came out here to apply for the security job—the fucking fence was designed to keep people in, not out. He had even asked about it and been told that he would see soon enough what it was for.
Big Bill was cold today. The sunny, mild weather of the last few days had given way to the gray of an Ohio winter, snow flurries and sleet slanting across the parking lot of the General Motors plant, the drafty, single-paned windows of the security office letting a stream of cold air across the knee he had sprained Wednesday. He popped a couple more pain pills and shivered with the cold. Always the left leg—the three day retreat at the Chosin Reservoir giving him frostbite in the left foot. The ends of four toes had been amputated after the headlong march, in which he had lost all but a couple guys out of his unit. He ran on as they fell or were shot one by one by the Chinese. What a massacre it turned out to be. It was shit. Fucking shit the way it happened. And now there’s this Vietnam thing.
Big Bill looked around and then opened his desk drawer. He took out the flask and poured several ounces of vodka after the Vicodin. He stared across the parking lot, full as usual even on a Saturday, a Saturday on a holiday weekend at that. There weren’t any holidays in the auto industry, just days of the week. Out by the fence, he noticed Joe open his truck camper door. The poor, dumb son of a bitch had been living out there for a couple of months now. It was against the plant rules, but what the hell, Big Bill wasn’t going to be the one to run him off. Joe wasn’t hurting anything out there.
After lunch, just as Bill was dozing off at the desk, Bob Franklin, the personnel manager, opened the office door. Big Bill got up quickly. Franklin was one of the few who never showed his face on weekends. In fact, he had been on vacation at his Florida home the week of Thanksgiving. He handed Big Bill an envelope. “Big John said you could take care of this. Call in as many men as you need and get this done before the end of the shift.” Then the man turned and walked out.
Big Bill opened the envelope, and incredulous, read over the list of names. Included were shop chairman Milt Jeffers, Crazy Jack, and a couple of others. He was supposed to fire them all by the end of the day. “Holy shit,” Big Bill muttered to himself. In disbelief, the first thing he did was call Big John, the security chief.
“That’s right,” Big John told him. “They’re all fired. Came from up north. Seems GM is tired of a bunch of fucking hillbillies here in Cranston shutting down the company every few weeks. Time to clean house…and time for you to earn your paycheck.” With that, Big John hung up.
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