Digital Underground - uXu - Underground eXperts United #uxu-545

### ### ### ### ### #### ### ### ### #### ### ### ##### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ##### ### ### ########## ### ### ########## ### ### ### ### Underground eXperts United Presents... ####### ## ## ####### # # ####### ## ## ####### ## ## ## ## ##### ## ## ## ## #### ## ## #### # # ####### ####### ####### ## ## ## ## ##### ## ## ## ## ## ####### ####### # # ####### ## ####### [ Conveyor ] [ By Eric Chaet ] ____________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ CONVEYOR by Eric Chaet Correa swiveled, sat up, shut off the alarm, drank & ate, showered, put on layers of clothes, & shoveled the driveway of the house Karen had bought a year ago - over his protests that it was beyond their expected means. The snow - coming down hard - was heavy & deep. When the driveway was clear, he drove the tiny car along the winding river road - very slowly, brights on. Desolate fields & deteriorating barns. Howling wind jerked the naked branches of elms & oaks - & poured thru the groove that was the river's frozen surface & banks. Then into town: streetlamps & a trickle of morning-shift traffic. At the temp agency, Correa had been told that finding parking in the visitors' lot at the distribution center would be a problem. But there were hardly any cars parked in the deep & swirling snow, in yellow light under the lamps. Correa reported to small, black-bearded Stan - who gave him a card from a rack, & showed him how to slide its magnetic patch thru a slot at the clock's side. He was to slide it thru to indicate arrival, lunch, in from lunch, & end of shift. Stan didn't look at Correa, kept moving, talking. Correa was to patrol 5 of the loading docks, dealing with whatever cartons came down 5 conveyors. Stan showed Correa how to build walls of cartons - of all different sizes, weights, & shapes. The first wall, against the front of the trailer, had to go from floor to ceiling, wall to wall; then he no longer had to build to the ceiling, only nearly so. Correa was just able to keep up. After a few hours, anxiety drained from his body - & it was easier. There was nothing more he could do about his finances or career, about the balance between Karen's & his needs & wants, or about the people he was trying to serve - & those he was trying to oppose. Hardest was lifting boxes above his head. His shoulders ached. Correa had trailers at docks 24, 26, 28, 30, & 32. Others on his team - he didn't realize, at first, that he was part of a team - had the other docks from 16 to 32, including the odd numbers on the opposite side of the high, huge room. Besides doing what he was doing, they were also scanning labels of pallet-loads into a computer, then, using a pallet-jack, wheeling the pallet-loads into trailers. Alone in trailers, building walls of cartons, Correa gladly worked steadily. The killing poverty of his village in Mexico - a square of adobe cells, pump & grill in the middle - appeared in his mind's eye, then faded. For a year, Correa had been phoning to invite his father, 90 - who considered himself its mayor, not realizing that in the years since his wife had died, his political benefactors had also died - to come live with Karen & him. But his father, narrowly "shrewd," as always - he had opposed everything Correa had ever tried or said he was considering - playing with the cord of the old black phone, sitting in the battered recliner Correa had given him - would neither say yes nor no. For the whole year, Correa had had not a single assignment - no new clients; no assignments from the few who had given him, then Lopez & him, one assignment after another, every so often, for decades. The year was over now. Now - lifting & arranging cartons - he was "on vacation" from the long year of worrying. Whenever Correa emerged - to deal with the corner of a carton stuck between 2 rollers - subsequent cartons falling to either side, other cartons backing up, cutting a laser beam, setting off a blinking light above - he didn't know the names or functions of any of the young men he saw walking or driving by. Overhead, the main conveyor was a noisy motorized belt. But Correa's conveyors were passive rows of small steel wheels on steel axles, fed by rows of steel tube rollers. Steps of linked conveyor sections led down from the overhead conveyor, to the door of the dock, & into the trailer. At each step, there was likely to be a jam, a back-up, cartons falling to either side - until Correa hurriedly unjammed & cleaned up the mess, & tended to the other conveyors, backing up meanwhile. Signs overhead told his trailers' destinations: Wausau, La Crosse, Milwaukee, Oshkosh, & Madison. According to words printed on them, the cartons contained chocolates, cat litter, vitamins, candles, toilet paper, paper towels, shelving assemblies, disposable diapers, school supplies, mouthwash, light bulbs, lamp sets, detergent.... "SAVINGS GALORE!" said a sign on the back of the loaded trailer, when, door pulled down & locked, & the trailer hitched to a truck, it was hauled away. Boxes kept coming, tho, & Correa stacked them alongside the conveyor, til another trailer replaced the departed one, & he rushed to build a wall of them - & those continuing to come - way up in front - & get back to his other, backed-up conveyors. ANY ONE DAY, A TRAILER could be nearly full when Correa began, or half full, or nearly empty. Someone during the night shift would have left a neat start, or a mess primed for collapse. Morning, Correa turned on the light that shone into each trailer, & the fan that blew air from the heated warehouse into it. He pushed & dragged the collapsable conveyor sections - which badly needed aligning & oiling - into the trailers. When a new trailer pulled in, he opened it, & - using a metal hook with a meter-long handle - pulled the heavy miniature metal drawbridge from the warehouse floor, over a gap of maybe 25 centimeters - cold blowing up from the dark below - into the trailer. He unfolded its central hinges - which needed oil, & resisted - & laid it flat. IT WASN'T MEMBERS OF HIS CREW who first helped Correa - but members of the crew that handled the adjacent 20 docks. Bob, loading 34 - tall & shy, big cysts on forehead - showed Correa how to use the hook to pull the dock-leveler, at 32. Jerry - very young, stout, bespectacled - helped Correa push one of his conveyor assemblies in further, so that each step was less steep - it was stuck & Correa couldn't budge it - so that fewer cartons would tumble off in the doorway. Jerry explained that, after he & his brother worked here for a month as temps, they were told they'd been hired as "associates" at $7 an hour. He said they were looking for something that paid better. They'd been here 3 months so far. He wasn't assigned any trailers. He helped the 4 others on his crew, loading 33 to 50, whenever they fell behind. He & his brother lived outside town, in a farm-house, but were staying in town tonight, because of the blizzard, with their mother. They'd never lived any one place long, he said. A young fellow, short black hair slicked down, swaggered down the aisle between the 2 sides of the giant wing of the warehouse, cheerfully giving Correa two thumbs-up. Another young man - early twenties, long hair & beard, filthy jeans, bright red silk jacket with RED WINGS (a hockey team) embossed from shoulder blade to shoulder blade - sauntered by. A variety of fork-lifts were driven by, their drivers paying no attention to Correa, or checking him out, coolly. Claude - older, short, bald, immaculate, limping; comfortable, with dancing eyes - came by, all jokes, & introduced himself. When Correa asked, Claude said he'd worked 12 years at Preble & Gallup (disposable diaper company), then 12 more at Fort Marquette (tissue paper company), quitting each because "I got tired of it" - before coming to work here, 7 years ago. His wife was a school teacher, his son a doctor. Claude dubbed Correa "The Philosopher," & prompted him to make outrageous pronouncements regarding current events. "What do you think of the Pope & Castro?" "I like them both," Correa said. Claude hooted with delight, returning to his conveyors. Next time: "What about Clinton & Monica Lewinsky?" "I believe Mr. Clinton is a self-deceiving opportunist, but if they like one another, that is a good thing, isn't it? Can there be too much giving pleasure to one another?" Claude hooted, & without hurrying, returned to work his conveyors, steadily & effectively, Correa noticed. GRADUALLY, CORREA LEARNED who his team-mates were. Hoag was a youth about 250 pounds, just over 6 feet tall, enormous thorax & abdomen, much fat over muscle, arms the size of Correa's waist. Little blond goatee, baseball hat. Hoag worked deliberately, holding a carton in each hand, cartons that Correa needed 2 hands - & straining arms - to lift. When Correa asked Hoag to help him with a dock-leveler that wouldn't unbend at the rusty hinges - "I need some muscle" - Hoag did it easily, then swaggered off without a word. Sam was a skinny cigarette-smoker - Correa smelled the tobacoo - of yellowish complexion. Sam was as thin as Correa, & Correa thought him beyond youth, at first. Or was he ACTING unperturbed - as tho youthful struggle was something to be ashamed of? How was it that Sam - tho he LOOKED incompetent - never seemed to fall behind? In their only conversation, Sam said - "Now that you see how we do things around here," if Correa would tell Sam when Correa wanted one of the pallets-full of oversized & odd-sized cartons "scanned" into the computer, Sam would do that much for him. Then Correa could get a pallet-jack - "Not this one, it's mine" - & wheel the stuff into the trailer he was loading. Bald, sweat-shirted, profusely sweating, straining Cooper had asthma & epilepsy, he told Correa. Correa saw Cooper leaning over one of the conveyors, as tho trying to catch his breath. Correa went over & said, "How are you, today?" "I'm okay," Cooper said, surprised - then told Correa that, earlier in the week, he'd been sick. He'd worked as a "customer service representative" - at Langley's, the hardware chain, 2 years, out of high school - before coming here. "You quit Langley's?" "After two years, all they gave me was a nickle raise. Besides, here I get medical insurance that covers the asthma medicine. It's expensive." Cooper was not as big as Correa thought he was at first. He was also not as old as Correa had taken him to be - because he was nearly bald, & looked worried, tired, & sad. He said he was 22. He looked fragile, Correa realized, looking at him attentively - tho he outweighed Correa by, easily, 50 kilograms. Correa told Cooper that he had asthma, too - & they compared the steadily rising costs of their inhalants. The last member of the crew was Martin - a thin young man, wearing a baseball hat, glasses, a handsome flannel shirt (tho frayed at the cuffs), neat jeans, & sneakers. Wound up very tight - cold & angry - he kept wheeling a pallet-load toward one of his trailers when Correa said hello, & muttered something under his breath, with "fuckin'" in it. The third time Correa asked tobacco-smelling Sam - who made a show of slow-motion dancing to the beat of one of the adolescent "love" songs that blared, always, over the loud-speaker - to "scan" a pallet-load for him, Sam, smiling into Correa's face, with shining, cunning eyes - as tho he'd caught Correa trying to take advantage of him, & was now triumphantly springing a trap he'd laid for just such an eventuality - said, "No!" Correa turned to bitter Martin - who, to Correa's surprise, was glad to oblige. Martin said he'd been here 8 months, & there was no fuckin' team-work - & that he was only too willing to help Correa. "We'll get some of these pallets the night crew leaves, out of our way," Martin said, without pausing. Correa had to lean toward Martin to hear what Martin said in a voice without projection. Martin had worked at a Thighs & Fries for 3 years, he said. He'd always had to open the place at 3 a.m., to make the coffee - no matter what the weather was like. Til he'd been in a car accident. The other driver was drunk & stoned & had no insurance. "Isn't that nice?" Martin asked. His spine had been driven up into his skull, he said. Another inch, & he wouldn't have survived. The crew who came to clean up stole his expensive watch. When he woke, the hospital people said he had to stay in bed weeks, but Martin went back to work in days. His insurance company tried to renege, but Martin finally got $40,000 out of it. He said he had a brother whose wife had left him with 2 kids, & this brother had a disease that would incapacitate him by the time he was 40. WHEN CORREA ARRIVED in the morning, he would go to the room with the vending machines & refrigerators, & drink a can of root beer. He'd usually be able to relieve himself just before work started, which made everything easier - urination had become more & more difficult for him in recent years - for the rest of the day. He suspected that the urination difficulty was a side-effect of the cheap over-the-counter inhalant he'd used so frequently, during the cold winters he & Karen had lived in a tiny, drafty cottage, his first 8 years up north - when his breathing was so frequently choked off. Coffee - a lot of it - drunk to keep warm & to keep on initiating contacts when initiatives were almost always ignored or politely rebuffed, resulting in a tendency he couldn't afford, to give up - was another possible culprit. Also, possibly, being sexually aroused so frequently, over 3 decades. Maybe years of malnutrition. Or some combination of these. Plus other factors - water pollution, maybe? - that he was as ignorant of as before he had learned to comprehend Spanish or English, or to sift thru information & draw conclusions.... He would arrive about 4:45. So would Martin, to tell again about the car accident in which his spine had been rammed into his skull - a mantra justifying sustained fury. So would a young woman whose name Correa didn't think to ask - quiet, blond hair in a glossy shingle, languid - with a bag lunch - milky skin & big, dark, passive eyes. One morning, Correa fed coins into the glowing soda machine, got his cold can of root beer, & began drinking. Martin arrived - complaining of a cold, fed coins into another machine - & unwrapped & began eating a "fruit" tart - that looked to Correa, in the vending machines' light, unwholesome, even unreal. Then Martin poked his nose into GOLF ADEPT, a magazine he'd brought with him. The chunky young man who delivered plastic-sheathed rugs, occasionally, to the door of each trailer, entered, sat, tore open a bag of chips. Yesterday, he'd told Correa about his outside business, doing other people's taxes. He said he had 2 associate's degrees. "And look where I end up!" "Good morning, Rug Man," Correa said. "What's good about it?" the younger man demanded. Correa said, "Don't you think it might be advantageous to FIND something or MAKE something good about it?" - & turned, thinking, REFORM YOURSELF, WOULD-BE WISE MAN! - & observed snow falling on lamp-lit trailers & arriving cars, & on sparse highway traffic beyond - slowly moving head-lights illuminating falling snow in the dark - thru window reflections. The girl's reflection - slouched on one of the hard plastic chairs, just waiting - now impressed itself on him. "Where do YOU work?" Correa turned again, to ask her. "Back there," she said, surprisingly eager to reply - not sulky, like the other 2 - pointing to the left, the opposite way from where Correa would go from the clock with the magnetic slot. "Way toward the back." "What do you do?" "Price clothes." "Oh," Correa said, wondering what "price clothes" meant - & what "way toward the back" was - & headed downstairs to put his card thru the slot. DURING EACH BREAK, CORREA FIGURED OUT how much cash he had, how much was left in the bank, how much he needed for rent, food, gas, medicine, for shoes he wanted to buy (his sneakers had fallen apart, so now he worked in heavy boots with lopsidedly worn heels), how much to be free from such labor, again, for a month, 2 months, 3? This data - together with the question, how much money would he need TO BREAK THRU, beyond this "station" - &, so, how much time? - would be as much part of him, each time he drew his card thru the magnetic slot, as his layers of clothes, boots, & the blue padded gloves Stan had issued him to wear. MANY OF THE MEN WENT OUTSIDE - during the 2 breaks & during lunch - or to their cars to smoke cigarettes. Most, Correa among them, went to the room with the vending machines. The TV, by the clock above the refrigerators, was always going, a talk show on - ill-educated couples shouting at one another about betrayals, egged on by a host or hostess feigning empathy. Correa could not understand all the idioms, but the mischief & denigration were plain. There were also commercials for courses you could send for - with a toll-free number to call - to help you get ahead in the world. "If you keep doing what you've always been doing, you'll always have the same result," a self-confident voice prompted Correa to forget his resolution to proceed, now, detail by necessary detail, setting aside the long-term. There were 8 tables, with plastic chairs. The round molded seats & backs made upright posture impossible. At one end table, black-bearded Stan & some buddies played a perpetually-resumed card game. At the rest of the tables, the others ate, drank, &, when someone could think of something - frequently everyone just sat - talked. Correa ate sunflower seeds or a hard-boiled egg. The third week, he had enough money to bring cheese sandwiches on good bread. For nearly 2 years, more than 10 years ago, Karen had supported Correa, while he struggled with English & sought employment in the United States. Then, while he did occasional consulting work, furiously marketing his services between assignments, Karen left her job as store counter clerk, to finish her schooling. Living expenses plus the tuition for her school had absorbed all of Correa's earnings for 4 years. Now, for the first time since Karen had become a paralegal at Magaryk & Grundvalt, both Karen & Correa had reached the point of having no cash, at the same time. Karen had mortgage payments, property tax, & payments on her new car - Correa drove the old one - due from the first to the fifteenth of January; & Correa had spent all he could on getting out brochures in English & Spanish - while his & Lopez's formerly regular customers more consistently than ever punished them, withholding assignments, for daring to announce that they were now more than a local - northern Mexican - crew willing to install systems designed by others. Martin read his golf magazines. "Keeps me from thinking about where I am," Martin said, when the rug-deliverer asked. The Yard-man - who backed trailers (in the yard) into the slots between 2 other trailers, whenever one of them, full, was driven out - was seriously overweight, but had some residual handsomeness from a simple, physical youth. He had an enormous lunch-box, with a green & gold Green Bay Packers (a football team) decal on it. ABOUT 40, Correa gauged - so, with Correa & Stan, one of the elders. Claude, who called Correa "Philosopher" - the oldest - always went to his car. The Yard-man called people on the TV "fat pig" or "ignorant bitch" - or put down his co-workers. "Think you're smart?" he liked to say. "You're a pain in the ass." Several of the young women sat together, eating, talking in low voices, giggling. One liked to tease the Yard-man, who teased back, but occasionally lost his temper. Correa didn't want to strain to understand what they were teasing one another about - tho he realized that he was part of the audience they were trying to reach, in order to energize themselves - very local politicians. Can I have come to the end of my learning, &, so, to my final station? - Correa wondered. One of the fork-lift drivers - a tough-looking fellow, wearing a jacket that said VAN'S TAVERN - getting up from a table across the room, yelled at the Yard-man, "I'll kick your ass" - dramatically punching a fist into the other, open hand - then left the room. Martin listened to anything the Yard-man said, while reading his golf magazine nearby, & tried to impress the Yard-man with clever commentary - but the Yard-man's game was not being impressed. But the Yard-man responded parentally, approvingly, when Martin talked about his snow-blowing business. How, after hours, he could earn a little REAL money - "I charge all I can get away with - like everyone else does to me. I'm not different from anyone else in business," Martin said. "I'm not better than anyone else," the Yard-man more than agreed, cuing Martin to extend his self-deprecation all the way, for maximum social advantage. Most of another exchange between Martin & the Yard-Man Correa missed, looking at the feature article he'd been waiting for. It was supposed to appear in FABRICACION Y TRANSMISION (out of Monterrey) in the spring, then summer, then autumn. It had finally appeared, in the winter issue - & Lopez had sent him a copy. The article talked about many of the best features of Lopez's & Correa's innovations, but left out a lot. What it talked about, it got mostly right, with only a couple of misleading sentences. Their current addresses & phone numbers were listed accurately. It was, by far, the best publicity, yet. Maybe something would come of it, Correa thought - but how long it had already taken, & what an investment - money, time, hope, nearly insurmountable discouragement - had been required! "No woman is worth a diamond ring," Martin was saying. "Your opinion," said the Yard-man, dripping with sarcasm, gathering up his huge lunch box, & making his way out of the room. "Martin," Correa said, "there are women worth diamond rings - but they are the ones who won't insist on your getting them one." Martin smiled. It was something hopeful he could comprehend & agree with. ONE MORNING OF A TERRIBLE BLIZZARD, around 6, Correa was coming out of the men's room, hurrying back to his conveyors, when he passed the entrance door. You needed to know & punch in a 3-digit code, changed weekly, to get in. Thru the window of the door, Correa saw a young fellow, blond & slight - a beautiful youth, except for disfiguring acne - knocking on the door. Correa kept going, thinking, I'm not the one to let anyone in. But the youth knocked louder, & Correa turned, & let him in. "Thank you," said the youth. "Sorry." Correa was surprised at the courtesy, & also at the pathetic lack of any machismo - but kept going, in a hurry, back to his conveyors. Next time Correa saw the youth, who was walking down the aisle between the 2 rows of loading docks, Correa ran after him, & said, loudly, over the roar of the overhead conveyor, "I would have let you in right away - but I am a temp, & I did not know if I should be letting anyone in." The youth stopped & listened, amazed. Correa hurried back to his trailers & conveyors. A week later, Correa passed the youth - this time letting himself in - by the entrance door again. The young man said he had been working here, as a temp, for a couple of months, & that they still hadn't offered him a job. "These are terrible times," Correa said. "No one is offering anyone anything. How old are you?" "Nineteen." "When I was nineteen," Correa said, "I couldn't have done this job. Can you keep up?" "Yes." "Well, they haven't fired you. Every day you get stronger, & learn new tricks. I see you eating junk from the vending machines. Are you getting decent food at home?" "Yes." "Hang on. You're doing all right. Do you know any stretching exercises?" "Yes, from karate." Correa assessed the youth again. "That's good," he said. "Be careful not to hurt yourself. They would throw you away like used tissue." "Thanks for the encouragement." CORREA DROVE TO THE TEMP AGENCY after work - after the second week - to get his check for the first week. Then he filled the gas tank, bought groceries, & paid Karen, about 10 days late, the rent, $250, due January 1. She still insisted that he didn't owe her any rent. When, 13 months ago, she told him she WAS going to buy a house, that it was 20 years later than she had assumed she would own a house, that it was a good investment, that she needed a house to fix up to occupy herself productively - Correa had said, "We have different ideas about investing." But he had given her $3,000, which would have been a year's rent in the tiny cottage between the golf course & the corn field - "My rent for the year" - & another $1,000 - "This is a gift" - so she could close the deal. He wished she did not have such conventional compulsions - it was a weight he felt himself to be carrying - but admired & was grateful for her courage in committing her heart so irretrievably to such a wild gamble as he knew himself to be. WITH THE SECOND CHECK that he picked up at the temp agency - after week #3 - Correa sent Lopez a $20 bill, with an article on the maquiladoras from a July BUSINESS WEEK, folded around it. And he bought asthma medicine, 2 months' worth. He still had nearly enough money left - about 4 more hours loading trucks would do it - for the NEXT month's rent. CORREA WAS UNUSUALLY TIRED Tuesday & Wednesday of the fourth week. He had trouble even lifting his heavily-booted feet. He slept 12 hours each of the 2 days. But on Thursday, he felt stronger than ever. First thing, that Thursday, Correa told sad, bald Cooper, "I don't want you to mention this conversation to anyone, but you decide. I don't know how much longer I will work here. Maybe days, maybe a month. "I want you to help Martin. Not that he needs much help. He is a very good worker. You & Hoag are friends, & I see Hoag & Sam talking, too. But Martin doesn't think he has a friend in the world. If you help him just a little, he'll help you, even more." Cooper looked dejected. "Sorry," Correa said. "I should've said, 'How are YOU?'" "I'm all right," Cooper said, but he sighed. "Look," Correa said, handing him one of his 3 remaining cough drops. "They have honey in them. Gives you energy." Cooper took it, & was reading the wrapper, as Correa went back to his trailers, & resumed stacking. Correa didn't expect to see results for a while, if ever - but, immediately, he saw Cooper driving a fork-lift, helping Martin with a pallet-load of heavy shelving left by the overworked night-shift - & Martin grinning & chatting with Cooper, helping him navigate the fork-lift between the conveyor & the side-wall of the trailer. Within an hour, Correa saw several people helping one another, who had not previously looked up from their own work, cooperating. As Correa caught up with the last of the cartons on his conveyors, he realized that no more were coming. Unprecedented. And everyone else was standing, without any more cartons to load. For the first time since Correa had begun working at the distribution center, they'd caught up. The place was still, the floor clear, the conveyors empty. The young men stood at the doors of trailers, looking around the place, & talking softly to one another. Correa walked over, started talking with Martin, & made a mock-gesture with his arm for Martin to have a seat on a pallet. Just then, a skinny young fellow, with atrophied muscles & manic energy - whom Correa had never seen before - talking rapidly into a cell phone, whole body tilted forward at a 30 degree angle - charged up the aisle between the odd- & even-numbered docks. "Who's that?" Correa asked Martin. "One of the big-wigs." A few minutes later, Hoag approached Correa, & said, "Davis says temps stand over there," indicating a place by a steel post, between 2 conveyors. So Correa went & stood over there. So did the blond youth with the acne, so distressed at not being hired; his friend whom Correa had seen him eating with - a dark, diminutive fellow (Correa wondered how he could possibly do the work) with bags under his young eyes; & another fellow, about 40 - Johnny: wiry, with quiet determination, black mustache, baseball hat. Correa & Johnny had shaken hands & exchanged names by the magnetic card clock, earlier this week. A VERY TALL MAN in suit & tie - was this, or the man with the cell phone, Davis? - approached them. Without looking at them, he said, "Come with me," turned his back on them, & walked rapidly. They followed him. He led them into the opposite wing of the building from the loading docks, where Correa had never been before. It was huge. There were 10 vertical levels of dozens of rows of steel bays - the kind Lopez & Correa had installed in a pottery factory, a glass factory, & a brewery in Monterrey - tho never so high. And these looked about a kilometer long! You built such bays with standard-sized steel beams, bolts thru holes in ends of girders, standing on what you'd already erected, clamping mating nuts on the threads of the bolts, with torque wrenches - like a giant erector set. This job must have taken a dozen workers a couple of months to erect - a HUGE contract for someone. Correa could now see the conveyor system's grand scheme. Inclined conveyors with moving belts, from a multitude of docks where other crews unloaded in-coming trucks, fed the overhead conveyor. There would be a control panel - Correa glanced upward & back, at a hive of offices they'd just walked under - between here & the loading docks. The tall man led between 2 rows of bays, pallet-loads of cartons on them here & there up to the top - but mostly empty. They'd built more than they needed: the usual over-expenditure on equipment, the usual disregard of the operators of the equipment, Correa thought. Til they came on a little knot of activity - 2 young women & a pale, flabby fellow Correa's age - like a fish in a pail, thrashing, gills desperately working - struggling to keep up - rapidly unfolding shirts, putting them on plastic hangers, & doing something with scanners & labels. "Emily will show you what to do," the tall man said, still not looking at them, & strode away, apparently angry. Emily was the blond girl with the milky skin & dark eyes, who slouched on a plastic chair in the mornings, in the room with the vending machines. Now that Correa saw her upright & working - & in charge - he saw that she was, in her way, appealing, graceful - & afraid - & younger than Karen's daughter, Janet. Whom Correa had helped to get past running with a bunch of deliquent teens, a suicide attempt, elopings, dropping out & back into school - into a more deliberate adulthood - conventional marriage, store-clerking, school again. (Tho Janet thought her course would now be smooth, Correa doubted it.) Emily looked Correa in the eyes, the way Sneakinpaws, Janet's black & white little cat - who stayed with Karen & Correa when Janet moved on - looked, when she wanted Correa to let her thru a door, or feed, or rub her. The other woman - GIRL - slim, with tightly curled red hair - gave Correa a swift, sly, happy look. Correa thought she was responding to his habitual look of sexual appraisal, sensing that she had some advantage - he being an addict of desire - over him. But Correa had no desire to have anything to do with her...lust for the excitement of power - & was dismayed that he had triggered it. How often, in 30 years or so, had he encouraged such lust for advantage, a pole away from tender caring? But Emily's look - Ay! Emily! - caused him to reel for an instant. She would be a compliant sexual partner, gladly surrendering the fate of her heart to something good & confident that she sensed in him. He kept his eyes from hers, not to give her false hope, not to encourage fantasy. Something - something he had delighted in - was ending. Correa had his blaze-orange, frequently-patched, down jacket over his shoulder. He noticed a small white feather jutting halfway out of a tiny hole at the edge of one patch - where he finger-hooked the collar - a few inches from his right eye. Emily began showing the 4 temps how to cut open the plastic packages the shirts came in; how rapidly to unfold them, put them on the hangers; use the labelers.... Correa noted that these were shirts made by Jordan, one of the companies currently notorious for exploiting workers in Indonesia. "I was going to quit tomorrow," Correa said, realizing as he said it, that it was probably so, tho he had not known it, "but I'm going to quit now. Nothing personal," he told Emily's pleading eyes. Immediately, as he walked away, he was dissatisfied at leaving her with a phrase that never ceased to insult him - everything was personal - when others brushed HIM off with it. But if Correa stayed to satisfy her - or to help the acne'd blond young man - assuming he was capable of helping him - Correa would have to stay a long time. And, tho it was nearly impossible to get anyone to acknowledge it, to such an extent that he could hardly believe it himself much of the time, he had business pending, business he thought more important than the business pre-occupying those whom he could not get to attend to & understand what he was offering. He retraced his steps, back toward the center of the building, where he took his card from the rack, & pulled it thru the magnetic slot. Bearded Stan was working with some cartons, & cutting some plastic sheeting at a long table nearby. Correa went over to him & said, "I quit." "No problem," Stan said. "Do you mind if I say good-bye to my crew-mates?" "No problem." So Correa went back where huge Hoag, Cooper, & Martin (always, til then, alone), were talking with animation, near the computer, into which they were scanning labels, getting ahead during the lull. "I quit," Correa told Cooper, shaking his hand. Cooper seemed to be making an effort to meet Correa's eyes, respectfully. "I quit," Correa told Martin, who smiled into his face, glad for him. "Correa!" Hoag - who had never said his name before - seemed to be saying - tho Correa could only see the movement of his mouth, not hear anything thru the din of the "love" song broadcast by the loud-speaker, plus the rattling of the overhead conveyor, which started up again, just then. Correa went out thru the entrance door, fastening the snaps of his jacket, in the falling sleet & snow. He had the lot full of parked cars to himself. Fool! he called himself. It is so hard to find any way to make money, & all you had to do was put shirts on hangers! He got in the little vehicle - assembled in Juarez - turned the ignition key, got out, scraped off all the windows, got back in, & started driving. Sleet freezing on the windshield, he crouched over the wheel, to see the road thru a narrow strip of glass just above the dashboard, that the defroster managed to clear. There were deserted cars at all angles, in snow-filled ditches. Oh, how I love to be the Great Leader! he mocked himself, but cheerfully. Light, somewhat tamed, as thru glass bricks, permeated the storm. His presence in the storm's uninhibited wildness - & especially his capacity to navigate it - buoyed him. AYEE! THE PADDED BLUE GLOVES Stan had issued him - suddenly Correa realized that they were tucked into his belt, under the jacket. He had forgotten to turn them in. He made an effort to remember them, then wipe clean the image, so that he could focus on the road thru the storm. BACK IN HIS LITTLE OFFICE AT THE HOUSE - Correa called to tell Stan he'd walked off with the gloves, offering to return, & give them to him, in order to avoid being charged for them. "No. It's all right. I'll take care of it, buddy." --------------------------------------------------------------------------- uXu #545 Underground eXperts United 2000 uXu #545 Call Terraniux Underground -> +46-8-7777388 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

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