Original Sins

by Lisa Alther

  People was all the time saying how easy he had it just watching other people work. The truth was that doing the work was easy. Getting people to do it right was what was hard. All his sympathies was with the foremen and supervisors and managers. Trash like Mrs. Pritchard left it all behind them when they punched the clock and walked out the door. But management took their problems home. He was getting used to this kind of responsibility, had to if he was going to be a foreman.

  He waved across the room to Betty Boobs, who’d just arrived. She’d put on some weight since marrying Hank right after high school. Even those green coveralls couldn’t conceal her huge tits. She used to be a good time, but he’d reformed since marrying Sally and didn’t run around on her anymore, although Sally pretended not to believe it and pouted if he stopped off for a beer after work. Even to go to Raymond’s the other night, he’d had to bring Raymond in from the car to verify his story. Raymond had looked at them like they was crazy. But poor old Raymond had probably never been in love himself. It made Jed feel good to have Sally worrying over him, and sometimes he dawdled in the locker room and parking lot to keep her guessing. She got real sexy on such nights and would sometimes even blow him. It was a funny thing: He loved that when it was actually going on. It was damn nice just to lie back and let it happen. But after it was over with, he’d feel terrible and jump up and smoke cigarettes and be mean to her and refuse to hold her. He couldn’t stand knowing she’d seen him all helpless on his back and whimpering like that. And he couldn’t stand the idea of her performing on him like some kind of high-paid hooker.

  Every now and then him and Betty Boobs exchanged a look that indicated neither had forgotten their good times. It was strange having her married to his best friend. Did she talk to Hank about how he screwed? What did she tell him? That he was pretty good at it? Or not? Was he or wasn’t he, he often asked himself. As he gazed at Betty, bursting out of her coveralls, he wished he could get Sally to show more enthusiasm, like Betty used to. Screwing Sally was like screwing a corpse. He studied the V where Betty’s coverall legs joined. Her cunt had a way of tightening around you so you wondered if you’d ever get out again. Both Hank and him had pushed their dicks time after time into that dark tight slimy hole. His breathing quickened.

  He felt ashamed. He was a married man now. Betty was his best friend’s wife. What he’d been thinking was sinful. As for wishing Sally would behave as Betty had … In high school Betty had been nothing but a whore. That was a horrible thing to think about your own wife—particularly such a sweet girl, who was so good to their children. Sally was a saint. He was a monster to be having such lustful thoughts about her.

  In the lunchroom he sat with Hank and Betty. He generally made a point of not getting too chummy with his workers. At first his father scolded him: “You’ve known these people all your life. You work with them, you live with them, you put your pants on the same way as them every morning. What you want to go being so snooty for?” But in foreman class they told him to be careful that way, not to let your workers lose sight of who’s boss. They hadn’t had no foreman class when his father had got into it all, so his father didn’t know all the modern ways.

  Jed looked at Hank and Betty with sympathy. He could afford to have Sally not work. It had taken his father up until a couple of years ago to be able to let his mother quit. Hank and Betty couldn’t even afford one child yet, and here he already had him his two.

  His mouth full of bologna sandwich, he said, “Some people are saying them organizers is back in town.” Hank didn’t reply. “They better have a better disguise than last time.” He laughed. Hank smiled. “Some folks you got to kill before they get the idea they’re not wanted. You take a Yankee: You have to spell things out for him like he was a little kid or something.”

  “Maybe some folks around here wants them,” Betty said. Hank looked alarmed.

  Jed was surprised, both at her sentiment and also at the fact that she expressed it. Sally generally had enough sense to let the men do the talking on topics she didn’t know nothing about.

  “They wouldn’t be hanging around without they think they got a chance. Shoot, I can see why some folks is interested,” she added.

  “They talk more money and pensions. Sure, they promise you whatever you want. But what do you actually get? You get to buy diamond rings for a bunch of Yankee gangsters.” Jed waited for agreement. “Am I right?”

  Hank looked at him. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “You calling me a liar?”

  “No, I ain’t. But there might be more to it than that.”

  “Listen, I figure if I do my job, I get me my raises. If I don’t deserve them, they won’t give them to me. And if I don’t deserve them, I don’t want them. Prince is fair. I don’t question his decisions.” He’d been to foreman school and understood these things. It was up to him to explain them to Hank, if he could just keep his temper like they taught him.

  Hank snorted. “Prince ain’t running this show no more, buddy. He done cashed in his chips.”

  “He’s in here every day, ain’t he?”

  “Yeah, but he ain’t calling the shots no more.”

  “You ain’t interested in joining up with no union?”

  “Naw, I don’t know. I’m just thinking is all.”

  “Yeah, well, you may just think yourself right out of a job.”

  “Are you threatening me, Tatro, or what? Cause if you is, you can just take your father-in-law’s job and stuff it.”

  “Now just cool down. I was referring to the strike at that radio factory in Dunmore in the fifties. Shut the whole place down when the union come in.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Shoot, yeah. You talk pension funds and health benefits. What you really talking is unemployment.” Jed could tell Hank was impressed, and he was pleased with himself for keeping cool and helping him understand how unions worked. He glanced around the lunchroom and saw Raymond sitting at a corner table talking intently to Mrs. Pritchard.

  After lunch a consultant from the home office, whatever that was, appeared with a man who had a stopwatch and wanted to time how long it took to remove full bobbins from spindles. Raymond’s were almost full, so Jed and the men went over to his machine. Raymond had already called a cart. When Raymond switched off the machine, the man switched on his watch. Raymond looked at him, then went over and leaned against the wall, his foot propped up. He reached inside his coveralls pocket and pulled out a foil pouch of tobacco and some rolling papers. With great care he rolled himself a tight cigarette. He offered it to Jed, who looked at him. Then he offered it to the men, who stood dumbfounded, watching the second hand sweep around the dial. Raymond lit up and inhaled deeply.

  Jed was paralyzed. “It ain’t time for your break yet, Raymond,” he finally murmured.

  Raymond looked at him and smiled. “I feel like a smoke.”

  Home Office and Expert exchanged looks.

  Jed felt his fists tightening. “This man needs you to do your job so’s he can time you.”

  Raymond exhaled. “I know yall’d like me to be a machine, but I’m afraid I ain’t. Sometimes I want a smoke. Sometimes I get tired. Sometimes I’m sad or hung over. How do you time that?”

  “Look, Raymond, this here man’s got him his job to do. And so do you. Now unload them goddam bobbins.”

  Raymond blew out a steady stream of smoke and gazed at Jed through it. “Baby brother, why don’t you just go get yourself stuffed? And then enroll yourself in some kind of industrial museum, like the anachronism that you are.”

  Jed felt his face go red. He didn’t have no idea what Raymond was talking about. This was what Raymond had always done in high school—started using big words nobody could understand. But in high school Jed could just punch him out. They’d trained him in foreman school to handle such situations. Expert was watching him, but he didn’t have a clue what to do.

  Expert spotted another machine that was about to switch off and walked toward it. Jed f
ollowed, glaring over his shoulder at Raymond. He saw Home Office make a note in his book and wondered if it was about his unsuitability to be foreman. Goddam Raymond anyhow. Always trying to make him look bad.

  In the locker room he changed from his coveralls and shirt and tie into his softball shirt. Grey with red lettering: Benson Mills I. They had them their own mill league, half a dozen teams. And the best players from each, of whom Jed was one, were on the Benson Mill team that played in the city league. The Princes had always supplied the shirts, and awarded trophies at a banquet at the season’s end. He’d like to ask those union people how many companies had presidents that would of did this. Gingerly he touched the roll of fat that was beginning to hang out over his belt. Sally spent her days trying to cook his favorite foods. Even if he wasn’t hungry, he ate them, so he wouldn’t hurt her feelings. Frankly she couldn’t cook as good as his mother. But she was trying hard and improving fast. He better start doing some regular exercises.

  The one bad thing about being foreman, Jed reflected as he stood in center field poised for the next pitch, was that then he’d have to play on the supervisors’ team. They usually lost 23-1, or something pitiful like that. They was mostly too old and too fat. And what your workers couldn’t do on the shop floor, they did on the ball field, so that they was really out to get you. If they was one thing Jed hated, it was losing. Coach Clancy used to say, “I don’t hold with none of this ‘it’s how you play the game’ fairy crap. I don’t want nobody on this team who ain’t going out on that field to win. If you lose, you’ve failed, is how I see it. You’re a disgrace to your school, a disgrace to your town, a disgrace to your coach, and a disgrace to yourself.”

  The carding room foreman popped a fly to left field. Jed caught it on the run and shot it to second for a double play. As he trotted in to bat, he caught sight of Sally sitting on a blanket in the grass, to one side of the bleachers. The kids toddled and tumbled around her, while she smiled at them lovingly. He grinned and waved, and she waved back. She was a good girl. A wonderful mother. A devoted wife. As his teammates got on base, or failed to, he sneaked glances at his family. Joey was walking underneath the bleachers; squatting and playing with candy wrappers; crawling up on the seats from below, startling and charming their occupants. He could remember doing the exact same thing. And here he was a big huge man now, who could no more fit between those bleachers … It was a funny thing thinking that one day your little baby son was going to be a big man just like you. And you, you’d be …

  He hit a line drive past the shortstop and got on first.

  Back in the left field he took off his cap and put it back on the way he liked it, with the bill just above his eyebrows. He had to jut out his chin to see out from under it, but it kept the sun out of his eyes when he was trying to follow a fly. The sun was setting behind the hill in back of the bleachers, where several players stood in the bushes with their backs to the field taking leaks.

  Mr. Meaker hit a low line drive toward left field. Mr. Meaker was his boss this month. Whatever Mr. Meaker wanted was fine. If he wanted to run around those bases, wonderful. As Jed thought and dismissed this, he was automatically running in on the ball. He put down his glove to scoop it up—and it shot past him. He stared at it. He never missed this catch. The crowd roared as Meaker rounded second. Jed retrieved the ball and stopped him at third.

  “That was pretty pathetic, Tatro,” Hank said, grinning as they trotted in to bat.

  “Jesus, I don’t know what happened. Must of taken a bad bounce.”

  Hank laughed. “It didn’t take no bounce, Tatro. You just lost your interest in killing the bastards is all.” “What you talking about?”

  “Well, you’re about to join up with them, ain’t you?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t see what that’s got to do with playing ball.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  In the bottom of the sixth the score was 27-3. The supervisors couldn’t get three outs. Everyone’s supper was getting cold. Finally they forfeited good-humoredly, as they usually ended up doing. Jed wasn’t sure he’d be able to stand it. Was it worth the extra salary and prestige to forfeit ball games with a smile? He guessed it probably was. Like Coach Clancy used to say, you had to pick your fights careful-like. “You got only so much fight in you, right? You fight with your girl, you got no fight left for the ball field. But which is most important?” Well, this situation here was the opposite. All right, sure, you lost softball games, but you was winning at the really important game.

  He flopped down on the blanket and kissed Sally. She was laying out fried chicken. He stuffed half a deviled egg in his mouth and said as he chewed, “Lord, woman, I could eat me a horse. What you got for us here?” He rolled over and knocked over a Coke bottle with a jonquil in it.

  “Hey, honey, you’re squashing my flower!” He sat up while Sally stuck it back in the bottle and set it off to one side.

  Jed was gnawing a chicken thigh. “Hey, Sal! Remember this blanket?”

  She studied the olive army blanket with the dark wet splotch in the middle. “Sure. We’ve always had this blanket. You carry it around in the back of the Chevy.”

  “Don’t you remember? We used to keep it down in the powder magazine. We was lying on it that night when … uh …”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Those were wild times.”

  “Yeah, they sure were.”

  They had never talked about it, not even while it was going on. Did she know about his struggle over whether to marry her or leave town? He’d never told her about the talk with Mr. Marsh. What had it been like for her? “Are you sorry it happened?”

  She hesitated. “How could I be sorry, silly?” She leaned over and kissed him. “Look at all the nice things that have happened to me because of it.” She gestured to Jed and the children, who were scuffling in the grass over the jonquil. “Are you sorry, darling?”

  “Oh hell, no. I mean it’s too bad we was rushed. But it’s what I would of wanted anyway.” He was recalling how good it felt that evening to run in on flies and pluck them out of the air and shoot them like bullets to the basemen, to connect with a pitch and send the ball hurtling beyond the outfield. He remembered the thrill of placing a block just right, so that the back could move through the hole for a first down. He remembered feeling and hearing the crowd rise as one to cheer his tackles. He never had this now. He could of had four more years of it at college. Then pro ball? Had he been good enough? He’d never know. Sometimes he’d imagine Joey playing halfback for the Rams or something. You’d have to be tough, though—either not want the girls, or not feel responsible if you knocked them up. Like that cowboy in Beyond the Rio Grande, which he’d read last week. Fuck them and then ride off into the sunset, never looking back, while they fell to their knees and wept and pleaded with you to stay. Not care about being away from your parents and family most of the year. Living in hotels, picking up strange girls, eating in restaurants, flying all around the country … He sighed.

  “Are you sad, honey?” Sally asked, playing with his damp hair.

  “I don’t know.” He sat up, picked up Joey’s large inflated ball, and threw it at him. Joey had been stumbling around holding the jonquil in both hands, his nose stuck it in like a giant besotted bee. The ball hit him in the forehead. He looked up, startled.

  “Hey, Joey! Don’t cry, son. Boys don’t cry. Be Daddy’s little man.”

  Unconvinced, Joey began to shudder, preparing to wail.

  “Come here, son!”

  Joey edged closer, fearfully. Jed took the jonquil. “Flowers are for girls. Let’s you and me play ball.” He handed the battered jonquil to Sally, who handed it to the baby, who shoved it in her mouth.

  Joey and Jed tossed the ball. Joey would gather in both arms when he saw it coming. If he happened to have the ball in them when he did so, it was strictly by coincidence. Eventually Jed took him by the hand and led him to the bushes on the hill behind th
e bleachers. They stood with their backs to the field and their hands in front of them. Joey’s head was nearly hidden by the bushes.

  “Daddy and Joey, we the men!” he announced as he swaggered back to Sally.

  “That’s right, darling,” she cooed, gathering him in her arms and planting a kiss on his pink cheek. He pushed her away, struggling to escape.

  The next morning was brilliantly sunny. Jed and Hank were putting siding on the new room. Joey was stumbling around hitting things with a hammer.

  “I really predate your help on this, Hank old buddy,” Jed said as he drove a nail.

  “Hey, would you please stop telling me that? It’s getting downright boring.”

  “But I do.”

  “Shit, I know you do. And I know you’ll do the same for me when I need it.”

  “You going to be needing you an extra room sometime soon?” Jed looked up with a grin. He took a long drink of beer.

  “We’re thinking on it.”

  “Well, you won’t never regret it. Children is a real blessing to a marriage.”

  “Yeah, but we’re worried that you can’t just pick up and go out to a movie no more when you feel like it.”

  “Well, yeah, that’s true. But pretty soon you stop feeling like it. You get so you’d rather stay around-the-house with—the kids.”

  “That’s what we’re afraid of.”

  Jed looked at him indignantly. “It ain’t so bad.”

  “Not for some people. But we ain’t sure we’re that type.” He put down his hammer and took a gulp of beer and wiped his forehead with his forearm.

  “Well, you just do what you do, buddy, and one day they’s three of you where there used to be two.”

  “That’s what happened to you. After that, I swore it wouldn’t never happen like that to me.”

  “Goddam, I don’t know how you can be so cold and calculating about it. Sally and me, we just couldn’t help ourselves.”