The Winter After This Summer

by Stanley Ellin

  “I don’t know,” I said. “If things are like that why do the men stay on here?”

  “Because shipbuilding is the worst business there is. Outside of wartime where the hell can a shipyard sweat go for a job? In the big yards you’re always in and out. Here it’s slow and regular. The old man’s got a fleet of barges working for him all along the coast as far as Galveston. He’s got his own fleet of tugs, and there’s usually one building on the ways. He’s always got some kind of repair job in drydock. As long as we turn out ten bucks’ worth of production for five dollars in pay he stays in the market. You’ll see for yourself if you last. And if you’re wondering why I’m telling you this because you might go to the old man with it, you can stop wondering. I’ve told it to him myself a couple of times already.”

  “I wasn’t wondering about that. What I wanted to know is why I might not last.”

  Guion leaned back against the footrest of the crane and folded his arms on his chest. “Because Andressen’s down on you. I carry some weight, but he carries a lot more.”

  “Andressen doesn’t even know me.”

  “He knew Gennaro, and he knows you were like that with Gennaro. When the old man gave your pal the big talk he thought it was a joke, and he let that out to the wrong people. It got around to the old man and he gave Andressen hell about it. Don’t ask me why Andressen; he’s the one got to take it when the old man don’t like something around here. Anyhow, after that, Andressen had Gennaro marked, and now he’s got you marked the same way. You’re smart you’ll stay clear of him. And you’ll do a real job for me.

  “What you got to remember, Egan, is that on day shift they can bull around and get away with it, and on nights we got to produce. We got fifteen men here counting you in, and when Andressen checks up in the morning he can count every inch of welding wire we burn, and every rivet we put in. As long as we keep him happy we’re all right, but that means nobody goofs off, everybody puts out. This is no college-boy party and no wartime picnic when every crap artist around was faking it in a shipyard so he wouldn’t get drafted. You got that?”

  He smiled at me, a cold smile with no humor in it, and I gave him back the same smile. “I got it.”

  “Maybe. What else did the old man tell you?”

  I said: “He told me to be careful what I said about Jews, because your wife was Jewish. It didn’t seem to strike him that my opinions on the subject might be different from his.”

  Guion looked at me unwinkingly for a long time. Then he said, “You believe in talking right out, don’t you, Egan?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Well, this didn’t have to be one of the times. I don’t need any sympathy from you account of my wife. And I don’t need anybody telling me some of his best friends are Jews. That comes next, don’t it?”

  “I didn’t mean it that way. I wanted you to know how I really felt.”

  “I don’t give a crap how you really feel. All I want from you is a job of work every night until I tell you to quit. Come on over to the one seventy-seven and I’ll show you.”

  He led the way, and I, resentful, angry at both of us, followed. The 177, as I saw from the wooden plaque thrust into the oozing ground at her bow, was the skeletal tugboat on the ways, and there were some men already setting to work on it as we approached. Guion led me over to one of them who was tending a brazier—an iron pot full of glowing coals which was mounted on a tripod—and pointed to the pot.

  He said: “You’ll start as a heater. MacPherson’ll show you how to keep the rivets cooking, and whenever one of us on the hull there holds out a bucket, you heave one into it. But for chrissake, hold them tight in the pinchers before you let go, so you don’t whack somebody in back of the neck. All right, Mac, show him what it’s about.”

  MacPherson showed me and left me to my own devices, and when the time came I was ready. Someone standing by a plate bolted to the framework of the tug yelled, “Yo!” and held out a funnel-shaped bucket, and I snatched a glowing rivet from the pot with my tongs, the white heat crawling over the rivet in waves, and threw. The rivet clattered into the bucket, was snatched out, thrust into a hole in the plate, and as the white heat dimmed to red Guion jammed a riveting gun against it and sent a loud chatter of metal hammering on metal across the silence of the yard.

  For the rest of the time until dinner I tended my cooking like an assiduous chef, wasting no rivets, keeping up with the demands of the outstretched buckets, finding that the feel and sound of everything around me quickly became familiar. When it came time to eat, the others opened lunch pails around the hull they had been working on while I, unprepared, went to a bar a block from the yard’s gate for a beer and a hamburger that smelled strongly of decayed meat. I ate what I could of it, and when I got back to the boat I sat apart from the others, listening to them, saying nothing, unhappily turning over in my mind the bad start I had gotten off to with Guion. I felt a little better—not much, but a little—when with his face indicating neither approval nor disapproval he came over and sat down beside me.

  “When we start again you’ll give Noonan there a blow,” he said. “You’ll be my backer-up while I’m riveting. All you got to remember is to bear down good on your end of the rivet when I’m working on the other end. You give me any leeway, it’ll be loose and we’ll have to cut it off and do it all over again. This riveting is a ball-breaker anyhow. It’s just one of the old man’s bugs. Even Andressen can’t talk him out of it.”

  MacPherson said: “You ought to be glad it’s just the bottom plates he wants riveted. When I started here it was the whole shell.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked Guion.

  “It means that the old man don’t trust welding all the way, so the garboard strake—that’s that line of plates next to the keel—has to be riveted. It’s crap because those plates have to be lapped on top of each other, so you got extra weight and extra trouble. But once we get above there to the next line of plates it’s all welded. You stick around long enough you’ll be a riveter and welder and fitter all in one.”

  “And machinist?”

  “We got nothing to do with machining here. We do the hull. We put it together and then they test the tanks so we can go over any leaks, and then they shove it into the water. She goes in the Basin there. Then they stick in the motors and after that we go back on and put up the superstructure. But no machining. That’s the day-shift business. Maybe that’s why the old man got a weakness for us. He’s crazy about hulls. When they launch one of these things he stands there looking like he was getting laid.”

  “He’s an old, old man,” MacPherson said. “We all get queer when we get old,” and the man next to him said, “But you started awful young, didn’t you, Mac?” and that—good Voorhees humor, good Iobacchoi humor—drew a laugh all around.

  Guion said to me, “The old man is queer all right. About once a month he shows up here nights, and you won’t know about it until you see him standing there. If that happens don’t let on you’re worried about it. Just keep doing what you’re doing, so if you’re maybe having a cigarette go ahead and finish it. He’s been around longer than God. He knows all there is to know, so you can’t fake anything with him. Andressen’s different. When he comes around he’s looking for trouble.” He stood up. “All right, let’s get on the job now.”

  I took note that this was the first information of any sort he had given me without suggesting that I wouldn’t be around very long to apply it. I hoped that was not an oversight, that I was on my way to being forgiven by him. It was not only that the job meant so much to me; it was also the discovery I had made, much to my own surprise, that having known Joe Guion for all of four hours of my life I was desperately eager to prove myself to him.

  Because you cannot work daily beside a man and not have him know your feelings about him, because you cannot work to master a job, sometimes clumsily but always willingly, and not have that willingness stand in evidence for you, I won my point with Guion. I found
that out on a night in early autumn, the first chill winds of autumn moving over the yard, the hull of 177 almost fully formed, so that I was at work inside the fuel tank of the boat when it happened.

  Two things happened that night. The first was that while I was squatting there with the welder’s shield over my face, the crackling of the arc loud in my ears, the smoke of it rising in acrid clouds around me, all my concentration focused on the bead of molten metal I was drawing, I became aware of a form crouching beside me. I pushed up the shield and saw in the glow of my extension light that it was the old man himself. It was the first time I had seen him since that day in his office, and he was dressed in what appeared to be the same suit, the same shirt and tie, everything spotlessly neat and beautifully pressed, so that I wondered how he had been able to find his way down to this hole without some signs of the passage on his clothes to show for it.

  He was sitting on his bony hunkers, a piece of smoked glass in his hand so that I knew he had been watching my work while I was at it. And he said in abrupt greeting, “You never told your father what you were supposed to, young man.”

  “I know,” I said. “My father and I don’t have much to do with each other.”

  “That’s your misfortune. It’s still a courtesy to let him know what you’re up to, and not have him wondering if you’re dead or alive.”

  “Is that what he said?”

  “That is what your sister said. Your family hasn’t heard from you since you left them. Evidently they think it my duty to wet-nurse you as well as pay you wages. You will do me the favor, therefore, of writing your sister a note, telling her that you are alive and well and suitably wet-nursed. I will gladly provide the paper and stamp.”

  “I won’t need them,” I said. “I’ll save up and buy my own.”

  “Don’t show bad temper to me, young man. I’m a Dutchman. I’ll show you bad temper enough to give you fits if that’s what you want. Just show your family some consideration, that’s all. Guion says you’re catching on well. I don’t know about that. That’s a remarkably sloppy weld there. I pity the tank-testers when they get in here.”

  I knew that he was lying in his teeth. “I’ll pay you a dollar,” I said, “for every leak through these welds.”

  “You wouldn’t have money enough to afford it,” said Voorhees, but it was clear that his heart wasn’t in it. He looked admiringly around the tank. “What do you think of this boat?”

  “It’s a nice boat.”

  “Do you see what I meant when I said it was all of a piece? There are men working on big ships never see the other end of what they’re working on. But you know this one inboard and out, topside and bottom now, don’t you?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Yes,” said Voorhees, “that’s how it should be. This is your first hull, young man. When you see it in the water you’ll be seeing your work in every part of it. It may not be very good work, but it satisfies Guion, and I’ll have to trust his judgment. Now give me a hand out of here and walk me back to my car. My legs aren’t what they used to be.”

  He continued to talk in that vein as I walked with him to the Rolls-Royce which waited at the gate, its chauffeur this time properly garbed. As the chauffeur hastily left his seat and ran around to open the door of the car Voorhees stopped and turned to face me. “Tomorrow,” he said, “you’ll get full rating in the union, so Guion tells me. Is that what you want?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t. You should have more ambition than to be a shipyard sweat. I’d say you have the makings of a man who could do very well for himself. Perhaps tomorrow evening instead of your going on the job you’d have dinner with me at my home and we could discuss it. It won’t cost you anything. I’ll see that you get your time credited to you.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “Oh? And why not?”

  I could not tell him that unlike Telemachus I was not seeking a father. So I said, “I get along with the men fine now. I’d like to keep on doing it.”

  “You mean they wouldn’t understand a policy of fraternization with the enemy, is that it?”

  “It could be.”

  He regarded me with those bright blue eyes until I was uncomfortable. “Well,” he said, “if that’s what you want, young man,” and there was a noticeable contempt in his voice when he said it.

  That was the first of the night’s two significant events. The other came about when I got back to the boat. Guion was there, lounging at his ease against the ladder which led to the deck. “I suppose the old man gave you the word,” he said.

  “About the union. Yes. And thanks.”

  “No thanks needed. Did you pick up any other poop from him while you were talking?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “No. Only he had me wondering what a sweat is. They used to use that word for British soldiers a long time ago, but how the hell did it get started here?”

  “How do I know how it got started here? Maybe it’s because this is the Voorhees navy. Is that the kind of thing that’s bothering you when I see you sitting around with your mouth shut?”

  “It could be.”

  “Don’t let it. A sweat is a Voorhees guy who don’t have sense enough to wear a white shirt and work in the office. Like you. Until maybe the old man cozies up to him and fixes him up with something better. Maybe even starts him off with dinner and a dollar cigar.”

  It was a matter of pride for me to keep my face as impassive as his. “How did you know that?”

  “He was over on the drydock talking to me before he went to see you. Wanted me to put in your time for you tomorrow when you wouldn’t be here. Last time anything like that happened was before I even worked here. Andressen said the old man took this kid out of the plate shop, sent him off to school to learn naval architecture, really made a wheel out of him. It looks like it’s your turn now, don’t it? You must have made quite a hit with him one way or another.”

  “One way or another,” I said. “But you won’t have to put in my time for me tomorrow. I’ll be here same as usual.”

  Guion slowly and thoughtfully rubbed his hand over his bristling hair. “You serious?”

  “Yes.”

  “You tell him that?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you tell it to him?”

  I repeated for him what I had told Voorhees, and he shook his head. “That’s kid stuff, Egan. That class-conscious stuff is shit. Maybe it carried water once, but today it don’t mean a thing. You get a chance to work up there where they do the hiring and the firing you’re crazy not to take it. Up there is where the money is, where you can really wheel and deal. Down here is nothing.”

  “Down here is one seventy-seven,” I said.

  Guion said contemptuously, “Jesus, don’t tell me you’re getting like the old man about these crummy boats.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I am.”

  “If that don’t beat hell.” He turned to survey the curve of 177’s shell rising over our heads. “If that don’t beat hell,” he said again, and shook his head marveling at it. “But that’s what must have done it, all right. Somehow or other the old man figured out you were the same kind of screwball he is. And then when he wants to give you a break account of that, you go and blow it. Egan, you’re even a bigger screwball than he is,” and then out of a clear sky he said, “You play poker?”

  “Sure.”

  “Not until you played it with some smart Indians, you haven’t. You want to try your luck, come over to my house Saturday night and meet the tribe. There’s some screwballs there just your speed. And my wife cooks good, too, so you might as well come early and eat with us. Is it a date?”

  It was the first of many.

  TWELVE

  I don’t think that time is ever accurately marked by clocks and calendars; it is marked, in reality, only by the events that impinge on you. Looking back on my months and years at Voorhees’, I find it hard to place th
e date of anything that happened to me, but I can see certain happenings in their continuity, can recall the feeling when now and then they gave me the jolting realization of passing time.

  That happened one night in a bowling alley when Joe Guion ran his hand over his head, a perpetual gesture of his, and I saw under the bright lights that the coal blackness of the hair was speckled with gray. It happened when I saw one day that the Rolls-Royce was parked, not outside the gate of the yard, but at the door of the Administration Building itself. And when the old man came out of the building I saw that he was incredibly bent and shriveled, leaning heavily on a stick, but still defying the gravediggers in the way he angrily shoved aside the chauffeur’s proffered arm.

  These were the things that impinged on me and let me know that if everyone around me was growing older, surely I was growing older too. And there were other things. The moment when a new keel was laid with the plaque reading 181 at its bow, and I suddenly realized that I had been there long enough to see 177 and 178 and 179 and 180 take on their full-bellied, fat-tailed forms and slide down the ways into the water. But the launchings were so much alike that the numbers had stopped meaning anything. Work in the yard was always halted for that ten minutes of launching, and the old man with a procession of clean, white-shirted office help trailing him would hobble down to the bow of the boat and watch with glittering eyes as the two burners, one at the head of each track of the ways, would snap a light to their torches and flip their goggles down. Andressen was always there, and a handful of other supervisors as well, but the old man was in charge and he let you know it.

  “Cut!” he would call out in that piping voice, and then when the burners were halfway through the plates holding the cradle to the ways, “Stop!” to make sure that the two cuts matched each other. Then once more, “Cut!” and the flame would hiss through the rest of the plates, the first lurch of the moving cradle with the boat on it always coming unexpectedly, the burners stepping aside so that the old man could see to his heart’s content, the cradle skidding down the ways, the stern of the boat hitting the water first with a flat splash, then the rest of it clearing into the water, bouncing on its own wave, slipping free of the cradle and floating there at the end of its long mooring rope, saucy and buoyant as a duck. Another one of Voorhees’ tin ducks in the water. Another score for the old man before his time came, and I thought each time as I watched him there—both his claws on the cane thrust into the muddy ground, his turtle’s neck and head outthrust—that I knew what he was feeling then. I wasn’t sure of it, but I thought I knew.