The Cordwainer

by Christopher Blankley

  Chapter Seventeen

  Black Cadillacs

  I think that moment, gathered around the schematics, marked the high point in Sophie's commitment to Mitty's Plan. We showed her what we'd accomplished with the rolling stock, which disinterested her, and our vacuum distillation rig, which positively terrified her. I think the only fact about the whole project that impressed her was that we'd survived so long considering the ham-fisted way we'd gone about our first attempt.

  Sophie put us directly to work, that very day, constructing her engine as she had envisioned. There would be no jury-rigging and adapting automobile parts for this attempt; almost everything would need to be fabricated from scratch.

  Luckily for Mitty's Plan, it was Sophie giving the orders, specifically to Fluky. Half of what she wanted, if anyone else had requested it, Fluky would have told them to go fuck themselves. But Fluky followed Sophie around like a sex-starved puppy. Fabricate an expansion chamber from sheet steel with airtight welds? Yes ma'am. Weld the blades onto the turbine cone at twenty degrees, not thirty? Yes ma'am. Somehow find enough copper wire and hand wind a generator core a thousand turns? Yes ma'am. The work she could get out of Fluky was prodigious, without even as much as a please or thank you. The heights of excellence Fluky's hormones could push him to... You just had to marvel.

  Much of the construction of Sophie's engine I was absent for, however, as events back at The Shop – after we all returned from our week-long Fourth of July vacation – required my attention. It appeared that some of the Worker B's, over beers and hot dogs and burgers, got to discussing the efficiency optimizations I'd implemented on old Number Six. The boost in productivity, the fact that idle workers were allowed to sit, all went down well with those who did the actual laboring at The Shop. My understanding is that these casual conversations began to turn into a genuine desire to improve working conditions as the week-long break progressed. A small group of the more motivated women met two or three times more before Monday rolled around, in their homes or at Putter's.

  Now, since '62, and the general strike that had paralyzed the nation, trade unions in America had been banned. That was the genesis of the chit system – a compromise between labor and the government, effectively abolishing organized labor in exchange for rigid assurances of job security.

  What the girls of the production lines were attempting to do smelled suspiciously like unionization. When word got around about what they had been discussing, people began to panic. Many of the upper managers and Foremen – Mr. Salmon and my father included – still held vivid memories of the '62 Strike, and they had little interest in seeing any of its excesses repeated. The violence, the acrimony, the National Guard patrolling the streets...

  So, when work began again on Monday morning, tensions were running high. Productivity was way down, on my line especially, as Worker B's darted back and forth between production lines to secretly confer. My attention was all but totally consumed with the details of Mitty's Plan, but even I could see that something was about to happen.

  Nothing transpired until halfway through the lunch hour. I was up in Accounting, standing on the smoking balcony with Sophie, discussing the tension on the factory floor and a few details of The Cordwainer engine, when I witnessed a most peculiar sight: Through the main gates, into The Shop's yard, pulled two low, black automobiles. Large cars, looking nothing like any sort of automobile I'd even seen before. I have already mentioned that Fluky's truck was one of the few moving vehicles left in Boot Hill, but it was over twenty years old. These cars looked new. Shiny, and chromed like something out of a distant memory.

  Parking in the center of the courtyard, the two black cars each disgorged three black-suited men. From the distance of the Accounting balcony I could barely make them out, but even from that great distance I could tell they looked clean cut and official.

  The law had arrived to put an end to the Worker B's small revolution.

  It turned out, however, that the black cars didn't contain the law – at least not in any type of government form. Word quickly spread that the six black-suited men were actually agents from the Concession. Some investigative arm that the company ran internally. The black-suits strolled out onto The Shop's floor and were quickly spirited away by a very nervous-looking Foreman Salmon. For the rest of the afternoon, the six men remained in Managing Foreman's office. Half an hour before the end of shift, a young, pimply faced accountant came around the floor, gathering up various and sundry Worker B's, mostly from my line, taking them off, one at a time, to Mr. Salmon's office.

  I learned what happened next from Sophie, when she came that evening to warn me that I was next.

  “They summarily fired them all,” she said, “without warning or severance. 'Conspiracy to Disrupt Production'. I guess there's some law. They could have faced criminal charges, but I think the black suits just threw that out there to scare everyone. Fact remains, however, there are now twenty open positions for seamstresses on the floor of The Shop – and twenty women who've had their Class B's downgraded to Class F's.”

  “Oh, God...” I reacted in genuine shock. I was sitting on my father's couch in his living room. My palms began to sweat. “It's all my fault,” I realized in terror.

  “It is,” Sophie didn't pull any punches. “And next, those Concession goons will be coming after you.” She thrust a manicured finger at me. “Word is Salmon rambled on about your 'efficiency improvements' – how you've been disrupting The Shop. But, since you weren't in on the unionization, they can't pin anything on you. Mark my words, though, the men in the black suits aren't finished until they can nail your ass to the wall.”

  “But, I increased productivity,” I said weakly, rubbing my wet palms on my pants.

  “Oh, I'm sure they'll take that into consideration,” Sophie said sarcastically. She looked me up and down, grimaced at what she saw, and left the house without saying good-bye.

  Tuesday morning came, then Wednesday, then Thursday and Friday, and the ax didn't fall. I went to work each morning, with my father, who was mute on the whole subject of the firings.

  We took the trolley in each day, and each day I expected to be called up to Mr. Salmon's office. But nothing happened. I dutifully watched Number Six make boots, ticking off my boxes as the crates came off the end of the line. I was many girls short now, including my two members of the “flying squad”, but I made no effort to reorganize or optimize my line. No one working on Number Six asked me to. Everyone kept their noses down and worked doubly hard, simultaneously trying to show their worth and not stand out from the herd.

  What was taking them so long? The six black-suited men never again appeared on the floor of The Shop, but their cars were often seen driving around the streets of Boot Hill, apparently patrolling. They stopped, occasionally, at people's homes and asked cryptic questions, not appearing to listen to the answers. They predominantly made their presence known without taking any actions – simply hovering over Boot Hill like a gathering storm.

  They had a disruptive effect on everyone, but it was me that everyone genuinely expected them to swoop down on. But they didn't, they just circled. Waiting.

  But we didn't let the presence of the Concession goons slow down work on The Cordwainer. If anything, the pressure doubled our efforts. For the first time since Mitty had presented his plan in the freezer of Putter's, I understood why we had been operating with such secrecy. If simply the whiff of labor organization could provoke such an aggressive reaction from the Concession, what would the general knowledge of Mitty's Plan elicit? I dared not speculate. Unionization of The Shop might cause the Concession some pain, perhaps, but Mitty's Plan was an assault on its very bottom line.

  If we succeeded in our attempt – if we made it to the Big City and sold a cargo of boots – we would be humiliating the entire organization, the very infrastructure of America itself. After all, if a trio of stupid kids could get product to market, people might begin to wonder what was wrong with the Conces
sion? It might force people to ask a lot of uncomfortable questions that the Concession might not like to answer.

  The thought of humiliating the Concession pleased me, as its cloud of wrath hung over me – its vultures circling in their black cars. The thought motivated me anew. If I could stick a finger in the eye of the Concession, if I could cause it pain, however small, it might at least be a partial payment for the twenty jobs they had taken.

  All of this, as we worked away on our new engine, sat poorly with Sophie.

  I had been intentionally vague as to our intentions for building her engine. I knew the greed of Mitty's Plan would rub Sophie the wrong way. A genius she might have been, but above everything else, Sophie was a follower of rules. Not stupid, ignorant, pointless ones, but the big, life-affirming, socially cohesive ones, were important to her. Everyone had to sacrifice for the greater good, she firmly believed. And while it was possible to make the argument that Mitty's Plan was to help a few people, its primary purpose, above all, was to help ourselves.

  That didn't sit well with Sophie.

  The cat escaped from the bag one long evening while we were attempting to fit the turbine cone into its housing. It was all custom work of Fluky's and he'd assed up the measurements somewhere along the line. We had to cut it down to size. We were swinging the medieval looking contraption that was the turbine back and forth, in and out of its housing, as Fluky marked each poorly sized blade, then sized it down with a grinder.

  Sophie was sitting at the workbench, making some minor adjustments to her schematic.

  Mitty, as always, had perched himself on a stool and was monologuing about the war, “...if the British had just stuck it out with Churchill, they would have been in such better straights, by and by. But everyone in the government was so damn-blasted ready to make peace with Hitler – after the Irish Campaign, the whole damn-blasted country was – and the special election of '42 just opened the door to Mosley and his BUF chums. Then the bombing of Parliament – which historians have clearly determined to be a false flag operation – and it was child's play for Hitler to justify SS thugs patrolling the streets of London. For the safety of the British People, of course. It was that easy in the end to topple the Great British Empire. Hitler didn't have to fire a single shot. Now Russia, that was a different matter entirely...”

  “How about you stop fightin' the war and get me a hacksaw,” Fluky said. We had the turbine jammed halfway into its housing again, for the third time that evening.

  Mitty rose from his stool with the deep sigh of the hard put upon and crossed the shop floor, over to the workbench. He stole a glance down at what Sophie was working on as he retrieved a hacksaw from its place on the pegboard.

  He delivered it to Fluky, leaning in close, “Psst,” he hissed. Fluky ignored him. “Psst!” He spit through his teeth, this time right in Fluky's ear, and loud enough for the whole shop to hear.

  “What?!” Fluky recoiled, wiggling a finger at his ear. “You big tartarhead...”

  “The girl...” Mitty cocked a head towards Sophie.

  “What about her?”

  “Is she getting a full cut?”

  “A what? Cut?” Fluky began to work the hacksaw across the jammed turbine blade. “Cut of what?”

  “The profits,” Mitty was trying to keep his voice low.

  “Huh?” Fluky had an eighth of an inch of steel removed now and the turbine came loose, swinging, suspended from its A-frame. “Oh,” and Fluky grasped what Mitty was talking about. He looked over the top of the turbine at me. “Beanie?”

  “Of course,” I said quickly, not looking up from my work.

  “A full share?” Mitty questioned.

  I looked up and met Mitty's inquisitive stare. I glanced between him and Fluky, wondering how large a can of worms I'd just opened. “Yes, a full share,” I clarified.

  Fluky, without a world, returned to hacksawing away at the turbine.

  “Then, I believe, it is befitting that I hand these out now...” Mitty said louder for all to hear, returning to his stool and fetching a roll of crumpled papers out of his inside jacket pocket. He came to each of us in turn and handed us a slip of paper – Fluky, Sophie and myself. I looked at mine in my oily fingers. It seemed to be some sort of hand-written stock certificate with a crudely drawn American eagle in the top left, and a curly border all around scribbled with green crayon.

  “The Luma, Seattle and Pacific Railroad?” Fluky read out load. “What's that?”

  “What's that?” Mitty replied, feigning offense. “Why that's... that's us.”

  “We's a railroad now?” Fluky laughed.

  “I believe it to be appropriate,” Mitty said defensively, “that this whole enterprise be conducted above board. I have taken the liberty of incorporating us, with myself as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Beanie, I hope you will accept the position of President. Fluky, Vice President of Operations...” I put my stock certificate down, tuning Mitty out, and returned to the turbine. “I have made the initial private offering of two hundred shares, each with a cash value of ten dollars. Here you have your initial stock option of a single share.” Mitty indicated the slips of paper he had handed out.

  “What? You want ten bucks for this?” Fluky waved the stock certificate in front of his face, fanning himself.

  “The purpose of incorporation is to raise capital. Our railroad is going to need operating funds.”

  “You know what?” Fluky said, crumpling up his certificate. “You can shove your stock certificate up your ass.” He threw his balled up slip of paper at Mitty and it bounced off his chest.

  “Fine! Fine!” Mitty bent over and picked up the crumpled-up share, un-crumpled it and returned it to his stack. “But I want no belly aching from you when it comes time to dividing up the profits! You threw away your share! We all saw it. It's my share now!”

  Sophie, who until that moment hadn't looked up from her schematics, suddenly perked up and looked over at her stock certificate that Mitty had placed on the workbench. She studied it intently for a second, then spun around on her stool.

  “Wait a damn minute,” Fluky continued. “You said you drew up two hundred shares? Why the hell I only get one?”

  “That's the initial stock option. You may purchase more, based on performance.”

  “What!?” Fluky stepped away from the turbine to point an accusatory finger at Mitty. “Performance? You see me here buildin' this damn engine? And you wanta give me stock options based on performance?”

  “You... obviously have...”

  “Hell, what the hell work you done the last couple months, tartarhead? Sit there on ya brains and start up imaginary railroads?”

  “Fluky, leave it alone,” I interjected.

  “Leave it alone? This dummy is sittin' there wantin' me to pay for the privilege of workin' for his damn railroad, while he's flappin' his lip about shit no one gives a damn about, and I'm supposed to leave it alone?”

  “Fluky...” I rolled my eyes.

  “Hell,” Fluky stepped up to Mitty and grabbed at the wad of hand-drawn stock certificates in Mitty's fist. “If there's gonna be two hundred shares of this damn railroad, I want 'em all...” They wrestled over the pieces of paper for a few seconds, then started to shove each other.

  “I'm sorry, am I missing something?” Sophie spoke up, causing Fluky and Mitty to pause in their struggle over the stock certificates. “You boys are thinking that you're going to make a profit?” Her eyebrows and lips curled in disgust on the last word.

  We all looked at each other, gripped by confusion. It was Fluky that finally spoke, “Well, yeah. You ain't thinkin' we're doin' all this outa the goodness of our hearts, are ya?” He let out a single nervous, mirthless cackle.

  The look on Sophie's face told us all that, yeah, maybe she did.

  She spun back around on her stool, returning her stock certificate to the workbench, and turned her attention back to her schematics. Fluky and Mitty both turned to me and looked
at me inquisitively. All I could do was shrug. If Sophie had yelled, if she'd called us fucking idiots, if she'd thrown something across the room, I'd have known how to deal with it. But silence...

  I went back to attempting to fit the turbine into its housing.