textfiles/magazines/UXU/uxu-545.txt

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                         Underground eXperts United

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         [  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."


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