After a while the gray woman left him, mumbling her grudging satisfaction with his work. She failed to say thank you.
Owen watched her out of sight, watched from the corner of his eye until he was certain she was gone and not merely hiding somewhere to mousetrap him. When the woman didn’t immediately come back to spy on him, Owen quit work and walked over to see what the next fellow was making.
Bacon. It was poor bacon compared to his own, and Owen guessed the man didn’t have his mind on the job— or didn’t have enough of a mind for the job. He continued the inspection of the nearby machines and their products. Several workmen were making bacon, but the quality of the meats varied widely from one man to another. A few were turning out slices of ham, thin stringy ham that looked less appetizing than the poor-grade bacon. One man was dispatching empty trays. Each tray was neatly wrapped in waxed paper and sent on its way, but it contained nothing. Owen figured the guy for a politician.
Two men who worked at machines next to each other were making slices of white bread, and to Owen’s gaze it seemed very good bread indeed—not the barely edible sliced cardboard found in some restaurants. Perhaps the workmen were professional bakers. Near them a man made butter or margarine, but it was impossible to determine which. Owen decided not to have butter on his toast in the morning.
He found the egg factory just before returning to his own machine. A small egg tray with room for just two eggs rested on the bottom of the work area, and the mechanical fingers reached down from above with an egg carefully cradled in each hand—if they could be called hands. The eggs weren’t allowed to drop, but were placed in the cartons, closed, tied with string, and sent on their way. The egg man had his heart in his work.
Owen returned to his station.
He turned out bacon like the skilled professional that he suddenly was, uncounted slices of succulent bacon having less fat than any other production unit along the aisle. Somebody would thank him in the morning for the tasty breakfasts he was preparing, while somebody else next door would surely express their envy at the superior product when compared to the grungy stuff they were eating. Perhaps that second party would even launch an investigation and then demand new standards of workmanship so that all bacon would be as good as his. His was clearly the superior product and would be the envy of many households.
Then Owen made a necktie.
It wasn’t a very good necktie. The colors were poor and the pattern was awry, but it was his—the very first necktie he’d ever made—and he was quietly proud of it. He wondered if perhaps he could create a fad for neckties among the populace, something to relieve the monotony of the drab coveralls. He made several neckties, each an improvement over the one before with better and truer colors, distinctive patterns, and eye-catching designs—all in the correct width of course. Each necktie was wrapped in individual gift packages and sent on its way.
Next he tried a loaf of bread and discovered what the fourth and last button on the row was for. The bread was a dismal failure and had to be scrubbed; his visualization of the interior was faulty and the loaf sagged like a wet shirt wadded into a ball. Clearly, it wasn’t fit to eat. Curious as to how to be rid of the mistake, Owen punched the last button in the row—a red button—and the faulty bread dropped from sight. He thought he saw a little door open at the far end of the chamber, and the bread seemed to fall through it. Well and good. The working area behind the window—and suddenly he thought of it as his operating theater—was given a steam bath from pipes or vents not in his line of sight, and then other pipes unleashed a furious gale of air that dried the operating theater. When the scrubbing was complete and his theater once again sterile, the work light went out and the machine stopped.
Owen pushed the first button and made ready to begin all over again. The light came on and a tray slid into position, awaiting his inspired creation. Owen put his forehead firmly against the concave bar and thought about a cigar—the kind of cigar he liked, the kind he used to smoke back there.
A worm turned in his mind and asked, Back where?
“Well, you know,” he answered aloud. “Back there where I used to be, before this happened.”
Before what happened, the nag worm demanded?
“Before I stopped being twenty-eight,” Owen said. “I used to be alive and twenty-eight. There was a war on and I was draft bait, and all that there stuff.”
Were you in the war? the nagging memory asked.
Owen paused in his work to consider that. “No, I wasn’t,” he said at last. “And I’m alive now. I’m trying to make a cigar.”
He closed his eyes to concentrate on the cigar. It must be firm, but long and slim, having a greenish brown wrapper and a decent filler free of weeds. Not a fat cigar and not a blunt one—he found those kind too strong. And it should cost more than a nickel. He may as well go the whole hog while he was dreaming.
Owen opened his eyes to examine the tray. “Wow!”
He was so pleased with the cigar that he made a dozen more in rapid succession, and then concentrated on a dozen matches to light the cigars—but, on second thought, whipped up two dozen matches because his cigars frequently went out. He was in business for himself.
His work came to a full and unhappy stop when Owen realized what would happen if he pressed the second button or the third: his fine cigars would scuttle away to become somebody’s breakfast. He stepped away from the machine to take stock, and then peered about to ascertain if he was being watched by the gray granny. The woman wasn’t in sight. Owen began hunting for a door, for a way into the sealed operating theater of his magic manufacturing machine. It seemed logical to him that some kind of entrance should be available; the matches and cigars had to be retrieved.
He began the search at the corner on his left hand, working all along the side of the great machine to its far end. The end of it was just across an aisle from another machine and another worker, and that end surface was totally blank—there wasn’t so much as a seam or a rivet. Owen went back to the front window and started again on the opposite flank, fingering the vast expanse of metal from the right-hand corner rearward. He found a small door secured by a latch. Owen turned the latch and pulled the door open, seeing the work light blink out as he did so: a safety switch was connected to the door. He made haste to recover his prized cigars and the matches, tucking them away in his breast pockets. Owen , closed the clean-out door and retreated to his rightful position at the front window, a satisfied smile on his face. He was a self-supporting small businessman.
Next, a bottle of good booze. It had to be good booze —not like that raw stuff the first woman had been belting down. Well, why not two bottles while he was at it? He thought that pint bottles would fit into his pants pockets very well indeed; they were large pockets.
Owen bellied up to the machine, put his forehead to the operating bar, and very carefully visualized his twin desires. Two fine pint bottles of clear glass. Very good. Now to the contents. He struggled to recreate the liquid contents just as he’d last seen them—it—on the shelf of Ollie Cronin’s drugstore in Hartford City, Indiana. The contents must be a golden brown—but a shade more golden than brown; they—or it—must be smooth to the taste, yet fiery and full bodied; the liquid should be a sour mash whiskey of, say, ninety proof and eight years old. Yes, eight was a nice round number. He put his fine mind to it and sweated the recreation. His imagination said, Let it be choice.
Owen pushed the first button and opened his eyes.
Two perfect pints of whiskey waited on the tray in his operating theater. One of the bottles had fallen over, but as he watched the mechanical fingers came down and righted it. The lids were on tight. Owen felt pleased. He suspected that he had a surprise for the baby doll who awaited him at home that night. Owen stashed the bottles in his pockets and got back to the front of the machine a moment before the gray grandmother hove into sight.
He dutifully resumed turning out juicy bacon.
The woman paused at his sh
oulder for a sullen moment and inspected his product—neat packages of rich, tasty bacon. Five slices to the package, all nicely wrapped and sealed and sent on their way to the breakfast tables.
He stayed at the task as long as the woman stood behind him, but when she was again satisfied and went on her way Owen made a monkey wrench.
It had occurred to him that a fine monkey wrench might please someone so he visualized one, produced it, wrapped it, and sent it along after the bacon. The wrench had been a good one, a fine tool surely to be appreciated by a conscientious craftsman, and he was pleased with his handiwork. Good tools made good mechanics.
Other tools followed, sometimes one to a package and sometimes several just for variety: screwdrivers, pliers, ball peen hammers, chisels, a crosscut saw and then a fine-toothed one, awls, squares, files, center punches, steel rules—but he did worry about getting the inch marks the proper distance apart—an an adze. A hatchet was an afterthought. He made everything a journeyman carpenter or a mechanic might want in his toolbox. He made toolboxes. The quality and workmanship of his tools evoked a mild wonder: they were so well made, so finely balanced, so meticulous in detail, so right. Perhaps he*d been a carpenter or a mechanic before.
Before what?
Before he ceased being twenty-eight, before the fuzzy Image of the Ford panel truck, before he died.
Owen stopped work to think about that.
Scrawny wisps of memory scuttled about in his mind, skittering away in maddening fashion when he tried to pin them down. Sometimes two or three stray wisps touched and thereafter clung together, stayed together to form a whole, but in the next moment two similar wisps rebounded from each other and refused to be joined. Here and there he discovered half an image, half a memory. There were vague and mysterious things in the back of his mind, mysterious shapes that seemed related to the darting strays, but they too refused to assume a solid shape and hold for his inspection. It was a frustrating business, but his mind didn’t seem to be all there; his memory seemed to be like the scrawny bacon made by the joes down the line.
He easily remembered Cronin’s drugstore and the booze on the shelves. He remembered Hartford City and now he supposed that he’d once lived there. And he recalled the truck—the 1940 Ford panel truck was clearly fixed.
Owen studied that image.
The truck wasn’t new: he hadn’t owned or driven a new truck. It appeared to be two, or three, or maybe four years old, now that he examined it. Suppose that it was three years old and he had driven it. That meant he was alive and driving in 1943. So far, so good. That fitted with other stray facts he remembered. Franklin Roosevelt was President of the United States—oh, yes, yes, he was serving his third term as President, and there was a war on. That was right. The United States was fighting a war with Germany and Italy and … and who? Some other country. The armies were fighting on two fronts—but where?
Everybody was pitching into the war effort. Many of the factories employed two shifts and some even had. three—they were running twenty-four hours around the clock, making planes and jeeps and shells and nuts and bolts, and piling up the overtime. Did he get any overtime?
Owen didn’t know. He couldn’t force his half-memory to tell him.
He felt so frustrated he put his forehead to the machine and made a cucumber. He was fond of cucumbers.
Owen Hill was surprised at the shortness of the workday. It had union hours beat-handily. ~
He guessed that it was still several hours before noon when the grayhaired supervisor took up a stance in the middle of the factory and blew another piercing blast on her whistle. The blast stopped the works. The zombies stood away from their machines. Owen pushed the red button to clear the operating theater of a cabbage head he was working on and wandered into the aisle. The shrill whistle echoed around the building a second time, but Owen was the only man to cover his ears. He discovered the wooden workers trooping out the door and followed them for want of anything better to do. There was no point in hanging about the factory and getting into another argument with Granny.
The rolling road was still moving in its original direction, although he’d half expected to find it reversed. That meant he—and all the others—would have to ride all the way around the town on the great circle tour until they reached their respective doors again. Mighty poor planning, he thought. This was an inefficient way to run things with a war on. He tried to remember if that inventor fellow—what was his name?—had arranged for a reversal of the road when it was time to go home.
Owen mounted the road with considerably more skill than he’d managed the first and second times and felt proud of himself. He was becoming expert. There was a moment of awkwardness when he thought the road would throw him, but he held his balance and remained upright. The zombies rode home as emotionless as before, displaying neither surprise nor exhilaration at the brevity of their workday. Perhaps this was the usual day—perhaps they were used to short hours and no overtime.
Own looked back at the factory a last time.
The elderly gray woman stood in the enormous doorway and the hostile gray eyes followed his departure with some suspicion. She was obviously upset about something, and her manner suggested that he was the cause of the trouble; her suspicious glare followed him nearly out of sight. He couldn’t guess at the cause of her upset; certainly nothing had gone wrong at the factory to his knowledge.
Owen suppressed-a sudden notion to turn around and wiggle his fingers at her—she just might have sharp eyesight and note where he was holding his thumb. She just might understand the parting gesture.
He decided not to go home, not to beat a retreat to the nice blonde’s house just then. That could wait a while. There would be plenty of time for the pink lady’s company at nightfall. The sun was stiflingly hot and approaching the zenith, but he knew of a cool place to escape from that sun, an inviting place where he could sample his homemade wares and contemplate the mysteries of the universe—or, at least, the mysteries that were rocking about in his skull. The blonde would keep, but the timber beckoned him.
Four
Caskets!—a vile modern phrase, which compels a person
of sense and good taste to shrink more disgustfully than ever
before from the idea of being buried at all.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
The woodlands were everything that Owen Hall had anticipated and he plunged into the cooling shade with ready delight. The trees smelled good; they smelled of Indiana during his boyhood.
Owen had kept a careful watch on his tedious circle of the town, half expecting to see the drunken harridan again as he traveled past her door—whichever green door that might be—and fully expecting to meet up with the blonde date a second time, but neither woman was sighted. He deemed it wise to avoid both women on the circle tour, since both were likely to cause him trouble.
There had been other traffic wardens dressed in pink coveralls watching the workmen ride past their stations, but all were strangers to him. Owen thought he detected surprise on some of their faces, but he kept his head down and his mouth shut and did nothing to call attention to himself. He didn’t want to be shunted away from his goal, so he rode as the zombies did, with his gaze firmly fastened on the nape of the neck in front of him. When in Indianapolis, do as the Indians do.
He tried to ignore the scorching heat of the sun and concentrate on what was ahead of him. The cemetery— that first familiar landmark—finally came into sight and he made ready to leave the road. Men were still at work in the old graveyard, but Owen ignored them and kept a sharp lookout for anything clad in pink. A careful sidelong scrutiny revealed that his immediate area was free of the wardens.
Owen jumped from the road. He stumbled in the tall grass, grabbed a breast pocket to prevent the cigars from falling out, recovered his balance, and broke into a trot There was no outcry behind him, no frantic blowing of whistles.
The leafy timber seemed to welcome him.
Owen paused just i
nside the tree line and turnedt to look back along his trail, but he wasn’t being followed, and the zombies appeared not to miss him. It was comforting to know that they weren’t likely to snitch on him. Owen worked his way deeper into the woods, always looking for, but failing to find, sign of bird or animal life. The timber floor was moss covered and thick with weeds and underbrush, but he saw no evidence of game trails or man-made ploddings. Perhaps this part of the new world was unexplored by woman or workman. Well, that was their loss.
Owen found a place to his liking alongside an aged locust. It was a familiar tree. He cleared away the brush and stomped the weeds flat to make a sitting place and then relaxed with his back against the locust. Little of the outside world was visible except ragged splotches of sun and sky overhead. It was pleasant to be alone for a bit.
The two pint bottles were lumps in his pockets.
Owen laid one bottle aside—for the blonde, he told himself—and held the other up against a shaft of filtered sunlight. A nod of satisfaction. The contents of the bottle certainly looked smooth, and he was pleased to note his visualizing had been so successful that a tax stamp sealed the cap. Now that was artistic recreation. Owen broke the seal and removed the cap.
He opened his eyes a swallow later and was amazed at what he had wrought. A second swallow quickly followed, accompanied by a growing admiration of the product.
“By golly, that is smooth!”
The whiskey warmed his stomach. He glanced toward the sky and accidentally discovered a companion—a gray squirrel perched on an overhanging limb of a nearby tree, peering down at him with open curiosity. Owen was elated by the discovery: there was another live body in the woods beside his own.
Ressurection Days Page 4