by Tom Kakonis
But all that was in the distant past, no longer of any consequence, and he was aware of this present fossil rudely demanding something of him.
“Y’hear what I just said?”
“Ah, no. Afraid I missed that.”
“Daydreamin’, are ya?”
“I hope not, Mrs. Gratz.”
“Better not. Can’t make no money with your head off in the clouds someplace.”
“I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.”
“What I said was I got a niece in sales.”
“Really.”
“Dora Gratz her name. My husband’s brother’s girl. Both of ’em passed on now. The men, I mean, not Dora.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Avon.”
Dingo looked at her puzzledly. “I beg your pardon?”
“That’s what she sells, Dora. Avon. Goes door to door.”
“Dora to door,” Dingo said, making a little joke.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing.”
“That how you do it? Door to door?”
“Not exactly.”
“Hard way to make a livin’, hear her tell it.”
“Perhaps more so for some than others,” Dingo drawled, backing away, his endurance exhausted. “You’ll have to excuse me now, Mrs. Gratz.”
“Gotta leave, do ya?”
“Yes.”
“Go do your sellin’?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, good luck.”
“Thanks.”
“You try’n have yourself a nice day anyway. Even if it is hot.”
“I’ll certainly do my best,” Dingo pledged, but the whole loopy conversation, unsolicited and interminable, the uncanny maternal resemblance and the toxic memories it generated—all of it, in concert, seemed to have cast a pall over the promise of the day, soured its niceness in advance.
Marshall was experiencing similar difficulties with a querulous oldster, male in his case, a sallow, shrunken gnome of a man, animate bone bucket come teetering over to examine him up close through eyes moist, myopic and sly, and to demand with the brash presumption that is the prerogative of age, “Hell happen, your face?”
“A little accident,” Marshall told him.
“Accident?”
“Yes.”
“Huh,” the old man snorted skeptically, Adam’s apple bobbling like a walnut in the slack-skinned throat, “don’t look like no accident to me. Look like somebody whap you upside the head.”
“No, it was an accident.”
“Gonna leave scars, y’think? This accident?”
“I hope not.”
“Could. I knew a fella once, got a banged-up face ’bout like the one you wearin’ there, never did heal up. ’Course, it was a thumpin’ he took. Wasn’t no accident.”
“Maybe I’ll be luckier.”
“Maybe. Wouldn’t bet on it.”
They were standing in among a flock of people assembled just inside the security building gate, waiting none too patiently for the tour, already well behind schedule, to get underway. Mostly the crowd consisted of women, along with a scattering of children and a handful of geezers in about the same general age bracket of the one accosting Marshall now. To steer the conversation away from his battered visage, he invoked the bland and socially legitimate (particularly given the brutal sun pounding down on them, oozing heat out of a cloudless white sky) topic of weather, remarking, “Hot day.”
“Think this is bad, wait’ll y’get inside,” the old man retorted in yet another of those sour franchises of age, the self-assured forecast of worse to come.
“You’ve been on these tours before?” Marshall asked, his interest in this grizzled windbag picking up a bit.
“Every one of ’em. Ever since they started doin’ ’em back in, oh, ’85, think it was.”
“You have a relative works here, gets you a pass?”
“Better’n that. I put in thirty-seven years with this company. They gotta let me in.”
“You must have made a lot of friends here, that many years.”
“Made my share.”
“So you come back every year to see them?”
“Who?”
“Your friends.”
“Nope,” he said, tossing his hairless skull in the direction of a cluster of picnic tables and coolers and portable grills set up outside one of the plant’s many entrances. “Myself, I come for the free eats y’get after. They put on a pretty good feed.”
“I’m sure they do, but—”
“All y’can eat. Burgers, dogs, salads, pie, pop—you name it. All free too.”
“That’s very generous of them,” Marshall said, and to forestall another interruption he put in quickly, “But about your friends, when you were working here did you happen to know a Mike Wazinski?”
“Wazinski,” he repeated, skull in memory-ransacking tilt now, “Wazinski. Nope, can’t place that name. Couple thousand people workin’ here.”
“So I’ve heard,” Marshall sighed.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why you ask? You know him, this Wazinski?”
“Not exactly,” Marshall improvised. “I know somebody who does, said to say hello. If I should happen to run into him, that is.”
“Lotsa luck. It’s a big plant.”
“I see that.”
“This your first time through?”
“Yes.”
“What kinda work you do for a livin’?”
“I’m a teacher.”
“Schoolteacher?”
“College,” Marshall clarified.
The old man looked at him puzzledly, struggling, it seemed, with a concept alien to his experience. “I was a pipe fitter,” he declared proudly, “my workin’ days.”
Marshall was getting mightily sick of all this meandering wheeze. In the hope monosyllables would discourage it he said only, “Oh.”
“Lemme tell ya, you gonna learn things today you won’t never teachin’ school.”
“No doubt.”
“It’s somethin’ to see, your first time inside there.”
So much for monosyllables. “It will be if we ever get started,” Marshall grouched.
“Time’s it now?”
“Nine-thirty.”
“That’s Norse for ya. Always late. Cocksuckers like to make y’sweat for your eats.”
As if in divine answer to their shared complaint, a pair of ancient school buses appeared on the other side of the gate, which lifted at a guard’s signal and the vehicles rolled through and lurched to a stop. The crowd surged toward them, buzzing like a cloud of agitated flies. A man in a blue twill uniform starched to a regimental stiffness hopped out of the lead bus and put up restraining arms. “Okay, folks, let’s just take it easy now,” he directed crisply. “Sorry about the delay, but we’re finally gonna get this show on the road. Want you to form a couple orderly lines here, board these buses. Take your time, plenty room for everybody.”
For Marshall that promised plenty translated ultimately into a small standing space in the aisle of the second bus. All right with him. Anything to escape the chatter of the old man, who had been quick to elbow his way onto the first one. Both vehicles went rattling down the length of the plant, turned a corner, drove another quarter mile, and pulled up at an entrance where two more of the blue twills smilingly waited. The passengers poured out and gathered in a loose semicircle around the uniformed pair, one of whom took a step forward and announced, “Welcome to the annual Norse Aluminum Open House, folks. My name’s Chet Skoglund and this fella here is Cliff Bates. He’s gonna be your guide this morning. You got any questions, just ask him and—” he gave it a theatrical beat, grinned broadly—“he’ll tell you he don’t know.”
A ripple of laughter passed through the group.
“Plant’s runnin’ about half capacity today,” he continued, grin still locked in place, “just enough so you can get an idea of the process, see whe
re all that kitchen foil an’ other fine aluminum products come from. Your tour’s gonna take you all through the building. We’re talkin’ an easy couple hours here, and a good two and a half miles. So I hope you got your walkin’ shoes on.”
Another pause. Some nervous tittering from his audience.
“Now,” he said, voice lowered to sober pitch, “like any industrial facility, there’s some serious safety hazards in here, and last thing we want is anybody get hurt. So for your own protection we ask you to stay with Cliff and don’t go wanderin’ off on your own. Everybody squared away on that point?”
Dutifully nodding heads (Marshall’s not among them) signified they were squared away.
“Any questions before you get started?”
No questions.
“Okay, Cliff,” he said with a maestro flourish, “they’re all yours.”
Cliff beckoned and they fell in behind him and filed through the door. Marshall, last in line, batted his eyes at the sudden transition from brilliant daylight to the sunless world of the plant. The few small bars of dust-filtered light from the ceiling windows cast prodigious shadows and played fantastic games with his vision, reducing him to elfin size in the sheer immensity of the place, its Brobdingnagian scale and proportions, towering walls and great yawning depths. A pygmy he was, stranded in the kingdom of giants, confused, rattled, deafened by the thunderous symphony of enormous machines booming, clanging, grinding, chugging, whirring. Assaulted by the fumy stench of scalded metal. And stricken, finally, by a despair desolate and vast, and by a chastened awe at the arrogance that first had impelled him on this impossible search, the preposterous vanity persuading him, in the cool security of his home, an inspiration would surely arrive, produce the man he sought, carry the day. Blinded, he was, by a smug faith in his own rectitude, no less convinced of his own infallibility than that doddering old fool pestering him outside the plant.
Whose bony hand now reached out of the shadows and clutched his arm, and whose raspy voice bawled in his ear, “That Wazinski fella you was askin’ about, seems to me I do remember him. Waz we called him.”
To which Marshall, astounded by the freakish workings of chance, replied humbly, “Could you tell me how to find him?”
“Works a tool crib, I remember right. In the machine shop. S’pose I could point ya that way.”
Which he did, supplying the directions with a conspiratorial smirk.
Marshall offered up a silent prayer for senior citizens, all of them, everywhere. He waited till Cliff was occupied with a long-winded explanation of the function of a soaking furnace, and then he edged to the back of the group and, when the moment presented itself, slipped away.
In marked contrast to the infernal din of the Norse Aluminum plant, the Quinn home was soundless as a sealed crypt. Lori still remained at the kitchen table, watching a phone that stubbornly declined to ring. She felt a peculiar sense of otherness, sitting there, not entirely unpleasant, a paradoxical mix of disjunction and linkage, the way a spirit, some say, will hover over a room in the instant following death, dispassionate witness to the bittersweet world it’s soon to leave behind.
This floating self spent her waiting moments reconstructing the phone conversation of an hour (or perhaps more, time held equally in airy suspension) ago, the callous voice informing her, “Wilcox not on duty today.”
“Could you tell me where I could reach him?”
“Home pro’ly.”
“Do you have his number?”
“Yeah.”
“Well?”
“Not authorized to give out an officer’s home number.”
“Is he listed?”
“Not Glenn. He knows better.”
“Would you contact him for me? Ask him to call Lori Quinn. In Naperville. Tell him it’s an emergency. Would you do that for me?”
“You talkin’ about a police emergency?”
“No. Personal.”
There had been a small hesitation, not long. “S’pose I could maybe give him a jingle,” the voice grudgingly allowed.
“Thank you.”
“Can’t make no guarantees he’ll get back to you.”
“I don’t expect any.”
It was the quiet force of her own voice, remarkably steady, unpleading, absent anymore of fear or doubt, that had softened him. Of that she was convinced. Through the simple act of picking up an instrument of connection with that other world awash in stormy passions, her departed strength was magically restored, but in curious form, not so much strength now as engagement without attachment. Appetite without craving. Desire without will. Fatalism’s odd fusion of sinewy resolution and sustaining calm.
She waited. Eventually the phone would ring. Eventually it did. She rose unhurriedly and lifted it out of its cradle. Murmured a greeting.
“Mrs. Quinn?”
“This would be Sergeant Wilcox.”
“That’s right.”
“Thank you for returning my call.”
“Station said it was an emergency.”
“It is.”
“And what’s the, ah, nature of this emergency?” he asked, a sober neutrality in his voice.
“My husband is in danger.”
“What kind of danger?”
She told him, abridging the story, keeping it manageable, succinct, clear. When it was finished he groaned heavily. “Aah, I tried to tell him stay out of this.”
“So did I.”
“Why you callin’ me, Mrs. Quinn? I’m not on the case.”
“You’re the only one who cares.”
He chose not to remark on that.
“Will you help me?”
“What is it you think I can do?”
“Stop him.”
“How’m I gonna do that? I got no authority out there. Not in my jurisdiction.”
“You could talk to him. He might listen to you.”
“Don’t seem likely. Hasn’t yet, what you’re tellin’ me here.”
“Will you try?”
“Mrs. Quinn, I’m off today. I got plans.”
“Will you break them?” she asked, a petition blunt in its directness, artless in its simplicity.
A silence filled the line. She put nothing into it. Waited. And finally from the far side of that long silence came first a depleted sigh and then the words, “Okay, I’ll break ’em.”
“Sergeant?”
“Yeah?”
“I’d like to go with you.”
“Don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
“Maybe not. But I want to go.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Well, s’pose it can’t hurt. All we’re gonna do is talk.”
“Yes, talk.”
“You gotta gimme your address, directions. Been awhile since I got out that way.”
She gave him both.
“Pick you up in about an hour.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
Jimmie was scooting about importantly on his autoette, now and then favoring a coworker with a wave, occasionally pulling over to remind one of them of the Rolie pickup at the end of the shift, languidly scornful of their plodding grunt lives but much too shrewd to let it show, his own head full of buoyant visions of the thirty-long bonanza and the good times it was going to buy, just around the figurative corner and dead ahead. But when he turned a real corner near the five-stand hot mill and spotted the weenie slinking along by the rolling belt, eyes darting busily, taking in everything (everything but him, spinning the vehicle in sharp U-turn, nick a fuckin’ time too, thank the fuckin’ Lord for small favors) his heart sank, jaw with it, and he exclaimed out loud, “Holy fuck,” the words swallowed up in the thunk of the machines.
Jimmie had recognized him easily. Instantly. How you gonna mistake that chopped-liver face? No mistakin’ your own work, all the good it done him, shitheel still here and lookin’ like he knew exactly where he was headed, comin’ on like a bad case a the crotch itch, won’t go away you scr
atch it with a rake. Still gummin’ things up. Why the fuck me? Why now? Knockin’ on the door of the biggest single pot a loot in your whole workin’ life. Sometimes a man feel like just throwin’ in the towel.
Except there be no towel throwin’ today, not with Mr. Bughouse waitin’ in the lot (which thought sent a shudder of fear through him, it bein’ already ten bells and countin’). He wheeled over to the closest exit, parked the autoette, and hurried outside. The sun glanced off the asphalt and stung his eyes, hammered at his head. He squinted into it, made out a jam of people gathering by the security building gate. More a the fuckin’ gawkers, waitin’ for their turn inside. He stopped suddenly. In among them was a twat all figged up in pink hot pants and halter top, pink-rimmed shades, flashy butch haircut, looked like a hooker on the prowl. Only it wasn’t no hooker, that much he knew. Was Waz’s old lady, cunt who opened up this worm can, first place. And now they both here, her and the weenie both. Run into each other and the whole thing gone straight down the Chinese pisser. Might as well put a stamp on the Jimmie Jack Jacoby ass, address it Stateville, and kiss it goodbye.
His skull throbbed. Headache every place you turn. In the plant, out here, every place. Sun scorchin’ you, even the sky got to get in the act. Fuckin’ headache from heaven.
