Now and on Earth (7 page)

"Who is your lead-man?"

I told him.

"Where'd he go to?"

"I don't know."

"Let's take a look at your identification card."

I gave him my card, and he studied it carefully, looking now and then from it to me. Rather reluctantly, I thought, he handed it back.

"I guess it's all right," he said. "But don't waste any time. We're all here to work."

I went on by myself, and the fifteen minutes or so I spent wandering around before I returned to the stockroom were, of course, absolutely wasted. I didn't take time to see very much, and what I did see meant nothing. I was that badly frightened. I naturally told Moon I'd made out all right; I didn't dare risk another interview with a guard.

So, as I say, I've had to pick up little by little what I should have known at the start.

Only a relatively small number of the parts which I saw being made that day reach us. Hundreds of them come through as parts of assemblies. Others are being made for other plants. For instance, we make manifolds for several factories; we have the men and equipment to make them with and they don't. For the same reason we have to buy stuff from them. No aircraft factory is self-sufficient. The items which we sell or buy vary from day to day, depending upon the availability of labor, equipment, and materials.

I have, in all, four types of parts to keep record on: assembly, sub-assembly, and regular assembly-line issue. The fourth consists of parts such as cowling and firewalls, which, because they are bulky and difficult to handle, go direct to the assembly line-a fact which does not excuse us from keeping track of them. When a plane reaches a certain stage, it has a definite number of parts. We-I-am supposed to know what those parts are, regardless of whether I have seen them, and to show them as having been issued.

There is something screwy about this. When I think of what it is, I will tell Moon about it. I am also going to find out why we are constantly short on some parts and invariably long on others.

We issue, or try to issue, parts in units of twenty-five. Not twenty-five pieces of each part, but enough for twenty-five planes. A flap requires only one nose-cover, but it uses sixteen ribs of a certain type. So the unit number on the nose-cover is 1, but it is 16 on the rib.

The release books are, at first glance, the ultimate in simplicity. The first, which is our major concern since we have not yet completed twenty-five planes, consists of twelve bills-of-material, one for each station. On the left side of the bill is the part number, its description, and the unit number. On the right, opposite each number, are twenty-five squares. When a part is received-say, forty-eight pieces of L-1054, which has a unit number of six-I draw a wavy line through eight of the squares opposite that number. When the forty-eight pieces are issued, I merely block the squares in.

But-instead of getting forty-eight pieces I may get forty-nine. Then I must carry my wavy line through eight and one-sixth squares, and they are extremely tiny. If six were the maximum unit number, I might stay somewhere near straight, as far as this particular difficulty is concerned. But the unit number on some parts runs up to one hundred and sixty-four. And there's no way on God's green earth of splitting the squares that fine.

I told Moon about it; and a lot of good that did.

"Well," he said, feeling in his pocket for an apple, "a few pieces like that don't make much difference, Dilly. Just do the best you can."

"But it's not just a few pieces," I said. "You've got seven releases-seven hundred and fifty ships-or a total of thirty bills of material for each assembly station. By the time you multiply even a very small error by thirty you're going to be in one hell of a mess."

"Well," he said again, "what do you want to do about it?"

I didn't know. "I'm just trying to explain why the records are off," I said. "I just didn't want you to think it was my fault."

He climbed up on my stool on his knees and hurled the apple core over the fence. And far down the line, above the whine of unishears and the hoop-hoop of the rivet guns, there rose a yell.

"Well, as long as it's only a few pieces, Dilly-"

"But, Moon. I just got through saying-"

"-we don't care."

He sauntered off.

That was in my third week here, and this is the end of my first month. And I'm beginning to catch on to things better. But it seems like the more I understand, the less I know-the more trouble I find.

The design for our plane hasn't been frozen yet. Engineering changes are being made every day-almost every hour. And they're completely balling up our records system which is static in design. We're getting through dozens of parts that aren't on the bills of material. Some of them are effective on the first plane; some on the tenth; and so on. And I don't know how the hell to show the things. I don't know whether they're replacing other parts or whether they're outright additions.

Moon says if they're not on the bills of material, why to hell with them; and I have let a lot of them slip. But that isn't going to do. The stockroom is getting filled with parts that we have no record on, and consequently when we make our issues we're not throwing them out. This is going to mean only one thing in the end. The Government will reject the planes because they do not meet specifications; and a certain stockroom bookkeeper is going to be on the spot.

And, still, that isn't all.

When a part is replaced or supplemented by another, the unit number on the original part is naturally changed. For example, where, at one time, seventy-five pieces of a part were required to complete twenty-five ships, we may now use only fifty. But-but what in the hell are you going to do when your records show that you've already issued more than enough of the first part for twenty-five planes? Where are you going to put the supplementary or additional parts?

I can see where the difficulty is. The fact that we have issued parts for twenty-five planes doesn't necessarily mean that the assembly station has put them to productive use. They've been ruined, or rejected by inspection. Knowing this, however, doesn't help.

I talked to Moon about it (and he, by the way, seems to be getting a little weary of my talking).

"Well, what do you want to do about it, Dilly?"

"The office must keep a record on scrapped and rejected parts. I want to see it."

"They don't know anything up there. The only way they know about scrapped parts is when they start runfling short. And you can't prove they've been scrapped, then. The guys out in Final will say that our records are wrong-that they never got the parts."

"But the office would know by checking on raw stores-"

Moon shook his head complacently. "No, they wouldn't, Dilly. You've got Experimental and Testing to reckon with. And then we're swapping and lending stuff all the time to other plants. Up in Purchased Parts this morning I noticed we had an invoice for forty static ground tailwheel tires. We paid for 'em and we received 'em, but we don't have them on hand and Final Assembly doesn't have them. God knows where they are."

"If I could just get a report on rejections, then-"

"Wouldn't do any good. When a part is rejected, it goes to the chief inspector. If he rejects it, it goes back to the department responsible for the flaws. They let it lay around a while, and then if it can't be reworked and sent back to Final, they scrap it and send the rejection tag up to the office. Or, maybe, if rejections have been running heavy against them, they throw it away. Anyway you look at it, though, we don't learn about the rejection for weeks, and it's too late then to help us."

I didn't say anything, but I guess I looked a lot.

"Don't let it get you down, Dilly," said Moon. "You're doing all right. As well as could be expected."

So that's the way things are. Or were. For they're getting worse by the moment. I can't say that I'm bored any more. I don't say that the work is beneath me. It would take a genius to work his way out of this mess.

I don't know what in the name of God to do. I've been cutting down on the liquor at night, so that my head will be clear, but it makes me so restless and sleepless that I'm not sure it's a good idea. I've tried to talk to Roberta about it, and Mom, and Frankie, but they're no help. Some of Roberta's old prophecies are coming true, and she's more interested in seeing me repent than anything else. Anyway, she doesn't know anything. Mom says I worry too much. And Frankie says they really can't pin anything on me, if it comes to a showdown, and just to tell 'em all to go jump in the lake. Jo, for one, has made a sensible suggestion. She says I ought to get some books on accounting. But-I don't know. I'm afraid it would take me so long to learn anything that it would be too late to help. And, anyway, I've got to write at night. I told Mom I would and I can't let her down. She's already making over her old suit to go back and see Pop in. I don't know what she'll do after she sees him, but-

The hell-the bad part about it is that I can't quit. There was a young fellow over in one of the other plants who had a grudge against his foreman. He thought a good way of getting even would be to change the labels on a number of the parts' cribs. He did it, and then he quit. And three months later the FBI picked him up on the East Coast. I don't think they'll be too hard on him because he comes from a good Republican family, and his father's a Legionnaire. But me- Oh, good God Almighty! The stuff I've written; my friends and associates; the car I came out here in. If I mess things up- or if things get messed up where I am-what'll it look like?

Don't tell me.

I've studied and I've thought and I've worn a path in the concrete sidewalk around our house from walking at night. And still I don't know what to do. Jesus, I don't know-

If I could just calm down. If I could just do that. And I have tried, and you see how it turns out. I used to work as a posting-clerk for a seed and nursery company. When our books wouldn't balance, we'd start copying from one ledger into another until, when we reached our mistake, our pencils warned us of it. And I've tried to do much the same thing here. Without anticipating any problem, I've tried to-

And it's no go. I've just wound up as usual. Too rattled to know my head from my hatband.

You're probably wondering about Gross. So am I.

All I can say is he's been a lot more decent-on the surface-than I would have been in the same circumstances; and that I feel tremendously sorry for him.

When I left the plant today, Saturday, he said that he had to go to town anyway and that, if I wanted him to, he'd drive me home. I accepted. I wouldn't have, if Moon had been around, because I'm pretty sure that anyone who is friendly with Gross won't be with Moon. But Moon had already gone.

On the way Gross said, "I'm glad you took over the books. I wanted Moon to let me off of them."

"Glad I could help you out," I said. "They are pretty much of a headache."

"Haven't got them straightened out yet, huh?"

"No."

"I thought Moon said you were an A-1 bookkeeper."

I didn't say anything.

"I guess you think I don't know how to keep books. I suppose you told Moon you couldn't fix up the books because I made so many mistakes."

"I haven't discussed you with Moon," I said. "If you want to let me out I'll walk the rest of the way."

"No, you won't either," he said. "I was just talking." When we reached the house, I thanked him and started to get out.

"Wait a minute," he said. "I want to show you something."

While I watched, he took an old envelope and a fountain pen from his pocket, and, after several preliminary gyrations of his hand, executed a picture of a bird with one flourish.

"Can you do that?" he asked.

I admitted that I couldn't.

"Well-keep that, then," he said regally, and tossed it into my lap.

Of course, I had to ask him to autograph it. And I'll be damned if he didn't do it!

Things at the plant are in a worse tangle than ever; I've got a raise; Shannon has been very sick.

There's not much use talking about the first item.

The raise I got last Friday. I was working away at the books for dear life-I mean that literally-when Moon and a little fellow I'd seen wandering around the plant but had never paid much attention to came up to my desk.

"Dilly," said Moon, "Mr. Dolling wants to talk to you. Mr. Dolling is the superintendent of all the stockrooms."

There wasn't the slightest change in his voice or expression, I'm positive; he was as lackadaisical and phlegmatic as always. And, yet, somehow, I sensed a sneer, and I think Dolling sensed it also.

Dolling is barely five feet tall, pot-bellied, sandy of hair (what little he has), and he has a voice that would awaken any dead who weren't completely decomposed. There is a rumor that he owns a big slice of stock in the company, but I don't know whether it's true.

He looked at Moon sharply. "All right. Thank you." Moon said, "Don't mention it," and walked away. Dolling turned back to me. "Mr. Moon," he said, in his rodeo-announcer's voice, "tells me that you are a very conscientious worker."

"Well-thank you," I said.

"I've noticed a small improvement in things myself," he continued, bellying up to the desk so that he was at my side instead of facing me. "Did you understand the conditions under which you went to work here?"

"Why, I don't know exactly what you mean," I said. "I believe I understood them."

"According to company policy-a long-established policy-any man who passes our thirty-day probationary period is entitled to a four-cent raise. We state this very clearly in the company rule book. But we don't run this company any more; the union runs it. They gave us a contract and we signed it with a gun at our heads. And the contract-the union contract, mind you, not ours-specifies that any man who has worked here sixty days and is not drawing fifty-eight cents an hour is entitled to demand a raise to that amount. It says nothing whatever about raising you to fifty-four cents after thirty days. Now I have nothing against the union whatsoever. If a man in this company wants to join the union, I will not persuade him to do otherwise. I definitely will not say, and I am not saying, anything against the union. Understand?"

"Of course," I said.

"I'm just explaining our position. Before, it was our policy to raise all approved probationers to fifty-four cents. Now, since the union doesn't care, why should we?"

"I suppose you shouldn't," I said.

"But Moon tells me you're a good man," he said. And paused for confirmation.

"Thank you."

"And I must say that in this case I believe Moon is right"-pause.

"Thank you, sir."

"You seem to be the type of man we like to have around. Industrious"-pause.

"Yes, sir."

"Sober."

"Yes-sir."

"Conservative."

"Y-yes, s-sir."

"So we are raising you to fifty-four cents an hour, effective this pay period. That's all."

He paced away, hands folded behind his back. When Moon showed up again, I started to tell him about the raise, but he'd already heard about it he said.

"I was just down in Plannishing," he said. "I didn't have any trouble hearing while he was talking to you."

Well-four cents an hour isn't much, only a couple of dollars extra on the week, but it did make me feel kind of good. And I suppose the folks saw how I felt and they didn't kid me about it even when I invited it by kidding myself. Everyone said that the company must think a lot of me to make an exception like that.

After a good deal of very friendly debate we decided to spend the extra two on a Sunday dinner, with me planning and preparing the menu. I can cook, you know; I mean I did it, many years ago, for a living.

I started for the store, and Shannon asked me if she could go along. And of course I said she couldn't, because I was afraid she might start something. I should have known that there was something wrong with her or she wouldn't have asked; she'd've just gone. But I didn't think, and surprisingly enough she didn't come anyway. She just got up and went back into the bedroom and closed the door.

She wasn't around at supper time, but we didn't think anything of it; she's in the habit of keeping her own hours. But along about eight o'clock we began to get worried and we started looking for her. I won't tell you where all we looked-I even went clear down to the bay. To make it short, I found her in the closet in our bedroom. I'd gone in there to get a jacket because it was getting kind of cool, and when I lifted it off the hook I knocked some dresses down and I saw Shannon.

She was way back in the corner, sitting on the floor. She'd got Frankie's manicure set and some lipstick and other cosmetics and she was a sight.

"Oh, my God," I said. "Now, what will your mother say? Don't you know we've been looking all over the country for you? Can't you ever behave yourself? Come on out of there!"

She got up and held out her hands, and like a damned fool I didn't understand. "Now don't daub that stuff all over my pants! For Christ's sake come on out and wash yourself and eat something if you want it, and go to bed."

"Don't you think my hands are pretty, Daddy?" she said.

And then I began to catch on. But at that moment Roberta came up. She let out a wild shriek.

"Shannon! Look at your dress! And you've got that stuff all over my suede shoes. And-"

She grabbed her and began to slap her, and Shannon didn't fight back. And then she, Roberta, began to understand and she got down on her knees and hugged and kissed her.

"Of course you're pretty! You're the prettiest girl in this whole wide world! Wasn't that nice of her, Daddy, to make herself so pretty for us? Just think! All this time she was b-back-"

We were all crying-even Jo and Mack. We were all thinking. A little girl, a four-year old, back in that dark closet for four hours. A little girl who had never been wanted-and who, I realize now, knew that she had never been wanted-trying to make herself wanted; fighting at the last ditch with a weapon she had always scorned to use. Trying to make herself pretty. I thought of her fierceness, how with the animal's desperate impulse for survival, she had struggled against neglect and slight. The tantrums she had thrown to secure a new dress or a warm coat; her swiftness in striking before she could be struck; her dogged determination to have the food she desired-and needed. Yes, and her wakefulness, the fear of attack in her sleep.

And I thought of how, during those four years that she had been with us, she must have wept in her heart, even as she fought and screamed; the loneliness that must have been hers; the fear and dread. And I thought Why did it have to be this way, and, as with everything else, I could find no answer…

I was a 125-dollar-a-month editor on the Writers' Project that year. And Pop was losing his mind and I didn't know it. He came to me with a proposition-a lease deal-and it looked good. And I borrowed 250 dollars to swing it. Pop could never give a coherent explanation of where the money went. But it did go, never more to return, and I had fifty dollars a month to pay back out of my salary.

Our rent was forty dollars. You can see how it was.

One night I found Roberta in a faint on the bathroom floor, a swollen twist of slippery-elm bark protruding from her. And I thought she would be pulled apart before we could remove it. But Shannon-the bubble, the egg, whatever you want to call it-held firm. We went to see a woman down in Southtown. She took fifteen dollars from us, and prodded and poked Roberta with something that looked like a bicycle pump. She poked and pulled and pushed for more than an hour, and Roberta bled and fainted and writhed with the knowledge of the damnation that was to be hers. And Shannon fought again and won.

She fought the sitz baths, the cotton root and ergot, the quinine. She fought the jolts that came from Roberta jumping off the divan, from climbing stairs, from hanging up clothes. No, I'm not being romantic. She did fight. You could feel her indomitability. Feel it and hate it as you would hate a drowning person who threw his arms around your neck.

Then the doctor said it looked like she would be a Christmas baby-yes, sir, it did. And, finally, as the days passed, he became sure of it. And Roberta and I became ashamed of ourselves, and silently we prayed to Shannon for forgiveness. It would be all right now. We wouldn't starve. We could pay the doctor and the hospital. We'd always wanted her, we said. It was just that we didn't see how we could. Now, it would be all right.

I should explain that Christmas babies in our town were sort of municipal property. All the banks and loan sharks made up cash purses. The stores donated clothing and furniture and food. You got a year's supply of milk and ice and stuff like that for nothing. You got- well, you got just about everything. You know. They probably do things the same way all over the country.

At eleven o'clock on Christmas Eve I was sitting at Roberta's bedside in the hospital. The local florists had got wind of what was up, and flowers were already beginning to arrive. There was candy, too, and a big cake from one of the bakeries with "Happy Birthday Xmas Babe" spelled out on the icing. Even some reporters had been there to interview Roberta and snap her picture for the morning papers. Of course, the doctor was there, pacing back and forth and gloating over all the free publicity he was going to get, and asking the "little lady" how she felt.

She felt fine. Not too good understand. But good enough. She felt, in short, like she was going to have the baby on Christmas day.

Maybe it was the excitement. Maybe Shannon, distrusting us, sensed our will and rebelled against it.

But at eleven-thirty Roberta's lips stiffened, and she groaned.

The doctor wasn't alarmed. It wasn't a real bearing down pain. He was sure that-

She groaned again. Her stomach revolved like a football being rolled inside a sweater. She clutched herself, and the involuntary spasms of her stomach rocked her back and forth.

"I won't!" she screamed. "I won't, I won't, I won't!"

They wheeled her out to the delivery room, the doctor pathetically tagging along behind the nurses, and the closing door cut off Roberta's hate-filled and outraged protests…

Shannon was born at twelve minutes of twelve. I cannot say that we were cruel to her. Roberta may sometimes have neglected to heat her milk or change her diapers, but Roberta was sick a great deal. I may have smoked too much too close to her, and kept her awake with my typewriter. But I was trying to write a novel, the advances on which were necessary for our existence. I suppose that the worst I can say is that our kindness and attention were deliberate. We had to think about doing things for her. Occasionally, conscience stricken, we'd smother her with gifts and caresses. But we always had to think-we never did it automatically. And to Shannon, I guess, it seemed a long time between thoughts.

Our spasmodic fits of affection upset her, and she learned to fight against them. She distrusted us, so she ordered her own life; and, all things considered, I think she did well.

There was a summer evening, when she was about two, when we were all sitting out on the lawn of our home. Shannon suddenly announced that she had to go to the toilet. Roberta declared that she didn't.

"She's just trying to make me get up, Jimmie," she said. "I never sit down for a minute that she doesn't think of something."

"Have to go," said Shannon.

"Well do it in your pants then," said Roberta. "Hurt bottom," said Shannon. "You take me, Daddy." I started to get up, but Roberta said, "No, don't you give in to her now, Jimmie." So I sat back down again.

"You don't really have to go, baby. Wait a minute and you'll get over it."

"Have to go," she repeated.

"Go by yourself then," snapped Roberta. "All I hope is that a big bitey gets you."

Shannon looked toward the dark house, and her knees shook a little. And then her head went back and she marched up the steps and through the door.

She was still gone after fifteen minutes, so I went in, and there she was sitting on the stool and grinning toothlessly to herself. And she had had to go; there was no doubting that.

"Stink the biteys," she said. "Stinkem to def."

Fighting, fighting…

Shortly before she was three we took a house adjacent to one of the parks. One day when I was escorting her and Jo there, we saw an old man approaching, and Jo shrank behind me.

"That man," she whimpered, "he said he was going to cut my ears off."

"Oh, he was just joking," I laughed. "You're not afraid, are you, Shannon?"

"Uh-uh," said Shannon. "I fix him."

She was carrying an enormous rag doll with a china head. Before I could stop her, she was down the sidewalk, had drawn the doll back over her shoulder, and had hurled it with all her astonishing energy straight into the old man's solar plexus. I'm not exaggerating when I say it almost killed him.

You couldn't scare her by the mention of policemen. The mere fact that we told her they would get her for her misdeeds was proof to her that they were vulnerable. It got so bad that we couldn't take her downtown. At the sight of a cop she was off, fists flying, mouth open to bite and slash. And even at two and three she could inflict serious damage. We were warned officially, more than once, that if we didn't do something about her, it would be just too bad.