Halfway Down the Stairs

by Gary A Braunbeck

  —and Amanda, awakened to the majesty that was always without and within her, knew exactly, precisely, with a strength of certainty most people know only once in their entire lives, what had happened to her, and why.

  She looked at her sisters, crowding around her; so lonely-eyed and plain-faced and in desperate need of one moment of glory, a moment like she’d experienced tonight—and to hell with the empty feeling in the pit of her stomach when it was over—but could not find the words to articulate.

  Her sisters, standing there with their jars in their hands. “You’re so beautiful,” said one of them. “Like a picture by Michelangelo.”

  Then held out her empty jar.

  Amanda reached up and took hold of her father’s straight-razor, opened it, and stood in awe at how exquisitely the blade gleamed in the light.

  Her sisters held their breath.

  Every moment of glory comes with its consequences. “I love you,” she whispered to her sisters. “And I give myself to you.”

  “Amen,” they whispered, tears of gratitude in their eyes.

  She placed the razor against her lips and began.

  Union Dues

  "It is one of the great tragedies of this age that as soon as man invented a machine he began to starve.”

  —Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism

  (here is my son

  does he have the makings of a factory man?

  does he have the mark of a worker?

  will he do me proud?)

  1

  A man works his whole life away, and what does it mean?

  Please don't ask me that question, Dad.

  On the line your hands grow aching and calloused, your body grows sore and crooked, and your spirit fades like sparks between the gears. The roar of machinery chisels its way into your brain and spreads until it's the only thing that's real. The work goes on, you die a little more with each whistle, and the next paycheck is tucked inside the rusty metal lunch pail that really ought to be replaced but you can't afford to right now.

  A man works his whole life away. For twenty-three years he reports to work on time, punches the clock, takes his place on the line, and allows his body to become one-half of a tool. He works without complaint and never calls in sick no matter how bad he feels, and for this he gets to come home once a week and present his family with a paycheck for one-hundred and eight-seven dollars and sixteen cents. Dirt money. Chump change. Money gone before it’s got. Then one day he notices the way his kid looks at him, he sees the disappointment, and he wants to scream but settles for a few cold beers instead.

  And what does it mean? It means a man becomes embarrassed by what he is, humiliated by his lack of education, ashamed that he can only give his family the things they need and not the things they want.

  So a man grows angry—

  —because even in his dreams—

  (...doors open and the OldWorker is cast away...)

  —the work goes on—

  —and the machines wait for him to return and make them whole

  again—

  Don't say these things, Dad.

  I can't help it, boy.

  Sometimes it gets to be too much.

  2

  Sheriff Ted Jackson held a handkerchief over his nose and mouth as he surveyed the wreckage of the riot.

  (...as the production line begins again...)

  A cloud of tear gas was dissipating at neck level in the parking lot of the factory, reflecting lights from the two dozen police cars encircling the area. Newspaper reporters and television news crews were assembling outside the barricades along with people from the neighborhood and relatives of the workers involved. Silhouetted against the rapidly-setting cold November sun, the crowd looked like one massive duster of cells; a shadow on a lung x-ray—sorry, bud, this looks bad.

  Men lay scattered, some on their sides, others on their backs, still more squatting and coughing and vomiting, all wiping blood from their faces and hands.

  A half-foot of old crusty snow had covered the ground since the first week of the month, followed by days and nights of dry cold, so that the snow had merely aged and turned the color of damp ash, mottled by candy wrappers, empty cigarette packs, losing lottery tickets, beer cans, and now bodies. The layer of snow whispering from the sky was a fresh coat of paint; a whitewash that hid the ugliness and despair of the tainted world underneath.

  A pain-filled voice called out from somewhere.

  Fire blew out the windshield of an overturned semi; it jerked sideways, slammed into a guardrail, and puked glass.

  The crowd pushed forward, knocking over several of the barriers. Officers in full riot gear held everyone back.

  The snow grew dense as more sirens approached.

  The searchlight from a police helicopter swept the area.

  A woman in the crowd began weeping loudly.

  You couldn't have asked for an uglier mess.

  Jackson pulled the handkerchief away and took an icy breath; the wind was trying to move the gas away but the snow held it against the ground. He turned up the collar of his jacket and pulled a twenty-gauge pump-action shotgun from the cruiser's rack.

  "Sheriff?”

  Dan Robinson, one of his deputies, offered him a gas mask.

  "Little late for that."

  “I know, but the fire department brought along extras and I thought—"

  "Piss on that." Jackson stared through the snow at the crowd of shadows. The strobing visibar lights perpetually changed the shape of the pack; red-blink-a smoke crowd; blue-blink—a snow-ash crowd; white-blink—a shadow crowd.

  "You okay, Sheriff?"

  "Let's go see if they cleared everyone away from the east side."

  The two men trudged through the heaps of snow, working their way around the broken glass, twisted metal, blood, grease, and bodies. Paramedics scurried in all directions; gurneys were collapsed, loaded, then lifted into place and rolled toward waiting ambulances. Volunteers from the local Red Cross were administering aid to those with less serious wounds.

  "Any idea how this started, sir?"

  "The scabs came out for food. Strikers cut off all deliveries three days ago."

  "Terrible thing."

  "You got that right."

  They rounded the comer and took several deep breaths to clear their lungs.

  (…the shift whistle blows like a birth scream, and the factory worker springs forth, with shoulders and arms made powerful for the working of apron handwheels. . .)

  Jackson remembered the afternoon he'd had to come down and assist with bringing in the scabs—the strikers behind barricades on one side of the parking lot while the scabs rode in on flatbed trucks like livestock to an auction. Until that afternoon he'd never believed that rage was something that could live outside the physical confines of a man’s own heart, but as those scabs climbed down and began walking toward the main production floor entrance he’d felt the presence of cumulative anger becoming something more fierce, something hulking and twisted and hideous. To this day he couldn't say how or why, but he could swear that the atmosphere between the strikers and scabs had rippled and even torn in places. It still gave him the willies.

  He blinked against the falling snow and felt his heart skip a beat.

  Twenty yards away, near a smoldering overturned flatbed at the edge of the east parking lot, a man lay on the ground, his limbs twisted at impossible angles. A long, thick smear of hot machine oil pooled behind him, hissing in the snow.

  Maneuvering through the snowdrifts Jackson raced over, slid to a halt, chambered a shell, and dropped to one knee, gesturing for Robinson to do the same.

  Jackson looked down at the body and felt something lodge in his throat. "Damn. Herb Kaylor."

  "You know him?"

  Jackson tried to swallow but couldn't. The image of the man's face blurred; he wiped his eyes and realized that he was crying. "Yeah. Him and me served together in Vietnam. I just played cards with him and his wife
a couple nights ago. Goddammit!" He clenched his teeth. "He wasn't supposed to be workin' the picket line today. Christ! Poor Herb...."

  He turned away, shook himself, and looked back at the man whose company he'd known and treasured, and cursed himself for never letting Herb Kaylor know just how much his friendship had meant.

  Kaylor’s neck was broken so badly that his head was turned almost fully around. Jackson reached out to close his friend's dead eyes—

  —his fingers brushed the skin—

  —1 barely touched him—

  —and the eyes fell through the sockets into the skull.

  There was no blood.

  "Jesus!" shouted Robinson.

  "I hardly—!" Jackson never completed the sentence.

  With a series of soft, dry sounds, Herb Kaylor’s skull collapsed inward; the flesh crumbled and flaked away as his face sank back, split in half, and dissolved.

  Robinson was so shaken by the sight that he lost his balance and pushed a hand through Kaylor’s hollowed chest. He tried to pull himself from the shell of desiccated skin and brittle bone but only managed to sink his arm in up to the elbow. Jackson pulled him out; Robinson's arm was covered in large clumps of decayed, withered flesh. Bits and pieces of Herb Kaylor blew away like so much soot.

  Jackson stared into the empty chest cavity.

  Robinson backed away, dry-retching.

  A strong gust of wind whistled by, leveling to a chronic breeze.

  (…the factory man turns his gaze toward the plant's ceiling ...)

  Unable to look at Herb's body any longer, Jackson rose to his feet and turned toward the sliding iron doors that served as the entrance to the basement production cells.

  He could feel the power of the machines inside; at first it was little more than a low, constant thrum beneath his feet, but as he began to walk toward the doors the vibrations became stronger, louder, snaking up out of the asphalt and coiling around his legs, soaking through his skin and latching onto his bones like the lower feed-fingers of a metal press, shuddering, clanking, hissing and screeching into his system, fusing with his bloodstream as carbon fused with silicon and lead with bismuth, riding the flow up to his brain and spreading across his mind: it became a deep, rolling hum in his ears, then an enveloping pressure, and, at last, a whispe

  Welcome, my son—

  —a powerful gust of wind shrieked around him, kicking against his legs—

  —welcome to the Machine.

  It came from the opening between the doors, and as Jackson moved toward them something long and metallic slipped out, flexed, then vanished back into the darkness of the plant before he could get to it. Jackson blinked against the snow and shook his head. Every so often he'd see something like that in his dreams, a prosthetic hand, its metal fingers closing around his throat...and the thing he'd glimpsed had been like the hand in his dreams, only much, much larger.

  Jesus, I gotta start sleeping better, can't start seein' shit like that while I'm awake or—

  "Christ Almighty!" shouted Robinson.

  Jackson whirled around and instinctively leveled the shotgun but the wind was so strong he lost his grip and the weapon flew out of his hands, slamming against a far wall and discharging into a four-foot snowdrift.

  He stared at the body of Herb Kaylor.

  No way, no goddamn way he can still be alive—

  —moving, no mistaking that, Herb was moving; one arm, then another, then both legs—

  —Jackson reached out and grabbed the iron handrail leading down the stairs; it was the only way he could keep his balance against the wind—

  —that seemed to be concentrated on what was left of Herb's body, lifting it from the ground like a marionette at the end of tangled strings, its limbs twisted akimbo, shaking and flailing in violent seizurelike spasms, flaking apart and scattering into the wind, churning into dust and dirtying the funneling snow; even the clothes were shredded and cast away.

  It was over in less than a minute.

  Jackson slowly climbed the steps and rejoined Robinson. They stood in silence, staring at the spot where Kaylor's body had been—

  —the steps into the basement—

  (It sure as hell looked like a hand of some sort.)

  —but the pressure returned to his ears, three times as painful—

  —what are these marks, Daddy? They’re just like the ones on your back only mine don't bleed—

  —he shook his head and pressed his hands against his ears as he spiraled back to that morning so many years ago, during a strike not unlike this one; his own father, so desperate because the strike fund had gone dry and he'd been denied both welfare and unemployment benefits, had decided to cross the picket line. He remembered the way his mother had cried and held Dad's hand and begged him not to go, saying that she could get a job somewhere, maybe doing people's laundry or something—

  —and the look on her face later, when the police came to tell her about the Accident, that Dad had somehow (“We're not sure how it happened, ma'am, no one wants to talk about it.") been crushed by his press, and Jackson remembered, then, the last thing Dad had said to him before leaving that morning, something about being welcome to come and see his machine—

  —Jackson took a deep breath and stood straight, clearing his head of the pain and pressure.

  "What the hell happened, Sheriff?" asked Robinson, handing back Jackson's shotgun.

  "I never saw anything like it," whispered Jackson. "How do you suppose a man could get crushed in a press like that and no one saw it happen?"

  "What are you talking about, Sheriff?"

  Jackson blinked, cleared his throat and faced his deputy. "I mean…Jesus...how could a body just ... dry up like that? You had your arm in there, Dan. The man had no internal organs. When his head collapsed there was no brain inside the skull." He fished around inside his pockets, found his cigarettes, then lit one for himself and one for Robinson.

  They smoked in silence for a moment.

  Around the corner, the sounds of the crowd grew angrier, louder. The chopper made another sweep of the area. Sirens shrieked as ambulances sped from the scene with their broken and bleeding cargos.

  Jackson crushed out his cigarette, turned to Robinson, and said, "Listen to me. I don't want you ever to tell anyone what happened out here, understand me? Not the other guys, your girlfriend, your parents, nobody. This stays between us, all right?"

  "You got my word, Sheriff."

  A gunshot cracked through the dusk and the crowd erupted into panic. Jackson and Robinson grabbed their weapons and ran to lend what assistance they could.

  (…the iron support beams in the factory's ceiling ripple and coil around one another, becoming sinewy muscle tissue that surges down and combines with the cranks...

  ...which become lungs...

  ...that attach themselves to the press foundation...

  ...which evolves into a spinal column...

  …that supports the control panel as it shudders...

  ...and spreads...

  …and becomes the gray matter of a brain signaling everything to converge...

  ...pulsing steelbeat pounding faster and faster...

  ...moist pink muscle tissue, tendons, bones, sparks, tubes, metal shavings, flesh, iron, organs, and alloys coalescing...

  …and the being that is the Machine stands before the factory man, its shimmering electric gaze drilling into them as it reaches down and lifts them to its bosom, feeding, draining them of all essence until they are little more than a clockwork doll whose every component has been removed...

  ...doors open and the OldWorker is cast away… a hiss ... a clank...

  ...the next shift arrives...

  ...as the production line begins again...)

  The east parking lot was empty now. No one was there to hear the sounds from behind the iron doors.

  Squeaking, screeching, loud clanking, heavy equipment dragging across a cement floor.

  Something long, metallic, a
nd triple-jointed pushed through the doors, folding around the edge. Another glint as more metal thrust out and folded back.

  Throwing sparks, the mechanical hand raked down, gripped the handle, and pulled the doors closed.

  The structure of the factory trembled.

  The breeze picked up, swirling snow down the steps and up against the doors with a low whistle; a groan in the back of a tired man's throat

  A man works his whole life away, and what does it mean?

  The wind stilled.

  It means he has the makings of a factory man.

  Shadows bled over the walls.

  He has the mark of a worker.

  A shredded section of Herb Kaylor's shirt drifted to the ground, floating back and forth with the ease of a feather. It hit the dirty snow and was covered by a rolling drift of chill, dead white.

  3

  Hearing the noise is nothing at times. No, the worst part is that, after a while, you start to wear it. All over your face, in your eyes, on your clothes.

  Stop it, Dad, just knock it the hell off!

  It’s a mark, this sound, that people can see and recognize. You might be at the grocery store or just walking outside to get the mail and people will look at you and see what you are, what you can only be, and that's a factory worker, a laborer all your life, and they know this by looking at you because you wear the noise.