Wheels (33 page)

The foreman, young and white, but balding, with the harried look
of a middle-aged man, had a pencil poised and said peevishly, when Rollie
hesitated, "Social Security I"
Eventually Rollie located a card which a clerk in Personnel had given him.
It had the number on it. Impatiently, with the knowledge of twenty other
things he had to do immediately, the foreman wrote it down.
He pointed to the last four figures, which were 6469. "That's what you'll
be known as," the foreman shouted; the line had already started up,
and the din made it hard to hear. "So memorize that number
.”

Rollie grinned, and had been tempted to say it was the same way in
prison. But he hadn't, and the foreman had motioned for him to follow,
then took him to a work station. A partly finished car was moving slowly
past, its brightly painted body gleaming. Some snazzy wheels
!
Despite
his habit of indifference, Rollie felt his interest quicken.
The foreman bellowed in his ear: "You got three chassis and trunk bolts
to put in. Here, here, and here. Bolts are in the box over there. Use
this power wrench
.”

He thrust it into Rollie's hands. "Got it
.”

Rollie wasn't sure he had. The foreman touched another worker's
shoulder. "Show this new man. He'll take over here. I need you on front
suspension. Hurry it up
.”

The foreman moved away, still looking older
than his years.
"Watch me, bub
!
" The other worker grabbed a handful of bolts and dived
into a car doorway with a power wrench, its cord trailing. While Rollie
was still craning, trying to see what the man was doing, the other came
out backward, forcefully. He cannoned into Rollie. 'Watch it, bub
!
"
Going around to the back of the car, he dived into the trunk, two more
bolts in band, the wrench still with him.
He shouted back, "Get the idea
.”

The other man worked on one more car,
then, responding to renewed signals from the foreman, and with an "All
yours, bub," he disappeared.
Despite the noise, the dozens of people he could see close by, Rollie
had never felt more lonely in his life.
"Youl Hey
!
Get on with it
!
" It was the foreman, shouting, waving his
arms from the other side of the line.
The car which the first man had worked on was already gone. Incredibly,
despite the line's apparent slowness, another had appeared. There was no
one but Rollie to insert the bolts. He grabbed a couple of bolts and
jumped into the car. He groped for holes they were supposed to go in,
found one, then realized he had forgotten the wrench. lie went back for
it. As he jumped back in the car the heavy wrench dropped on his hand, his
knuckles skinned against the metal floor. He managed to start turning the
single bolt; before he could finish, or insert the other, the wrench cord
tightened as the car moved forward. The wrench would no longer reach.
Rollie left the second bolt on the floor and got out.
With the car after that, he managed to get two bolts in and made a pass
at tightening them, though he wasn't sure how well. With the one after
that, he did better; also the car following. He was getting the knack of
using the wrench, though he found it heavy. He was sweating and had
skinned his hands again.
It was not until the fifth car had gone by that he remembered the third
bolt he was supposed to insert in the trunk.
Alarmed, Rollie looked around him. No one had noticed.
At adjoining work positions, on either side of the line, two men were
installing wheels. Intent on their own tasks, neither paid the slightest
heed to Rollie. He called to one, "Hey
!
I left some bolts out
.”

Without looking up, the worker shouted back, 'Torget it
!
Get the next one.
Repair guys'll catch the others down the line
.”

Momentarily he lif ted his
head and laughed. "Maybe
.”

Rollie began inserting the third bolt through each car trunk to the
chassis. He had to increase his pace to do it. It was also necessary to
go bodily
into the trunk and, emerging the second time, he hit his head on the deck
lid. The blow half-stunned him, and he would have liked to rest, but the
next car kept coming and he worked on it in a daze.
He was learning: first, the pace of the line was faster than it seemed;
second, even more compelling than the speed was its relentlessness. The
line came on, and on, and on, unceasing, unyielding, impervious to human
weakness or appeal. It was like a tide which nothing stopped except a
half-hour lunch break, the end of a shift, or sabotage.
Rollie became a saboteur on his second day.
He had been shifted through several positions by that time, from
inserting chassis bolts to making electrical connections, then to
installing steering columns, and afterward to fitting fenders. He had
heard someone say the previous day there was a shortage of workers;
hence the panic-a usual thing on Mondays. On Tuesday he sensed more
people were at their regular jobs, but Rollie was still being used by
foremen to fill temporary gaps while others were on relief or break.
Consequently, there was seldom time to learn anything well, and at each
fresh position several cars went by before he learned to do a new job
properly. Usually, if a foreman was on hand and noticed, the defective
work would be tagged; at other times it simply went on down the line.
On a few occasions foremen saw something wrong, but didn't bother.
While it all happened, Rollie Knight grew wearier.
The day before, at the end of work, his frail body had ached all over.
His hands were sore; in various other places his skin was bruised or
raw. That night he slept more soundly than in years and awakened next
morning only because the cheap alarm clock, which Leonard Wingate had
left, was loudly insistent. Wondering why he was doing it, Rollie scrambled
up, and a few minutes later addressed himself in the cracked mirror over a
chipped enamel washbasin. "You lovin' crazy cat, you dopehead, crawl back in
bed and cop some Zs. Or maybe you ftxin' to be a white man's nigger
.”

He
eyed himself contemptuously but had not gone back to bed. Instead he
reported to the plant once more.
By early afternoon his tiredness showed. Through the previous hour he had
yawned repeatedly.
A young black worker with an Afro hairdo told him, "Man, you sleeping on
your feet
.”

The two were assigned to engine decking, their job to lower
engines onto chassis, then secure them.
Rollie gr
imaced. "Them Wheels keep coming
. Never did see so many.
-
"You need a rest, man. Like a rest when this mean line stops
.”

"Ain't never gonna stop, I reckon
.”

They maneuvered a hulking engine from overhead into the forward
compartment of one more car, inserting the driveshaft in the transmission
extension, like a train being coupled, then released the engine from
suspension. Others down the line would bolt it into place.
The worker with the Afro hairdo had his head close to Rollie's. "You want
this here line stopped? I mean it, man
.”

"Oh, sure, sure
.”

Rollie felt more like closing his eyes than getting
involved in some stupid gabfest.
"Ain't kiddin'. See this
.”

Out of sight of others nearby, the worker
opened a fist he had been holding clenched. In his palm. was a black,
four
-inch steel bolt. "Hey, take it!
"
"Why so
.”

"Do like I say. Drop it there F He pointed to a
groove in the concrete floor near their feet, housing the assembly line
chain drive, an endless belt like a monstrous bicycle chain. The chain
drive ran the length of the assembly line and back, impelling the
partially completed cars along the line at even speed. At various points
it sank underground, rose through extra floors above, passed through paint
booths, inspection chambers, or simply changed direction. Whenever it did,
the moving chain clanked over cog points.
What the hell, Rollie thought. Anything to pass the time, to help this
day end sooner-even a bunch of nothing. He dropped the bolt into the
chain drive.
Nothing happened except that the bolt moved forward down the line; in
less than a minute it was out of sight. Only then was he aware of heads
lifting around him, of faces-mostly black-grinning at his own. Puzzled,
he sensed others waiting expectantly. For what?
The assembly line stopped. It stopped without warning, without sudden
sound or jolting. The change was so unremarkable that it took several
seconds before some, intent on work, were aware that the line was now
stationary in front of them instead of passing by.
For perhaps ten seconds there was a lull. During it, the workers around
Rollie were grinning even more broadly than before.
Then, bedlam. Alarm bells clanged. Urgent shouts resounded from forward
on the line. Soon after, somewhere in the depths of the plant a siren
wailed faintly, then increased in volume, growing nearer.
'Me older hands who had watched, surreptitiously, the exchange between
Rollie and the worker with the Afro hairdo knew what had happened.
From Rollie Knight's work station the nearest
chain drive cog point was a hundred yards forward on the line. Until that
point, the bolt he had inserted in a link of the chain had moved uneventfully. But when it reached the cog, the bolt jammed hard between cog and
chain, so that something had to give. The link broke. The chain drive
parted. The assembly line stopped. Instantly, seven hundred workers were
left idle, their wages at union scale continuing while they waited for the
line to start again.
More seconds ticked away. T
h
e siren was nearer, louder, traveling fast.
In a wide aisle alongside the line, those on foot-supervisors, stock men,
messengers and others-hastily moved clear. Other plant traffic,
fork-lifts, power carryalls, executive buggies-pulled aside and stopped.
Hurtling around a bend in the building, a yellow truck with flashing red
beacon swung into sight. It was a crash repair unit carrying a three-man
crew with tools and welding gear. One drove, his foot against the floor;
two others hung on, bracing themselves against welding cylinders in the
rear. Forward on the line a foreman had arms upraised, signaling where the
break had happened. The truck tore past Rollie Knight's work station-a
blur of yellow, red, its siren at crescendo. It slowed, then stopped. The
crew tumbled out.
In any car assembly plant an unscheduled line stoppage is an emergency,
taking second place only to a fire. Every minute of line production lost
equates a fortune in wages, administration, factory cost, none of which
can ever be recovered. Expressed another way: when an assembly line is
running it produces a new car roughly every fifty seconds. With an
unplanned stoppage, the same amount of time means the full cost of a new
car lost.
Thus the objective is to restart the line first, ask questions after.
The emergency crew, skilled in such contingencies, knew what to do. They
located the chain drive break, brought the severed portions together.
Cutting free the broken link, they welded in another. Their truck had
scarcely stopped before acetylene torches flared. The job was hasty. When
necessary, repairmen improvised to get the line moving again. Later, when
production halted for a shift change or meal break, the repair would be
inspected, a more lasting job done.
One of the repair crew signaled to a foreman -Frank Parkland-connected by
telephone with the nearest control point. "Start up
!
" The word was passed.
Power, which had been cut by circuit breaker, was reapplied. The chain
drive clanked over cogs, this time smoothly. The line restarted. Seven
hundred employees, most of them grateful for the respite, resumed work.
From the stoppage of the line to its restarting had occupied four minutes
fifty-five seconds. Thus five and a half cars had been lost, or more than
six thousand dollars.
Rollie Knight, though scared by now, was not sure what had happened.
He found out quickly.
The foreman, Frank Parkland-big-boned, broad-shouldered-came striding back
along the line, his face set grimly. In his hand was a twisted four-inch
bolt which one of the repair crew had given him..
He stopped, asking questions, holding up the mangled bolt. "It came from
this section; had to. Some place here, between two sets of cogs. Who did
it? Who saw it
.”