by Unknown
The son would become the father.
“All right,” said Jackson, swallowing back his rage and disgust.
“I’d … I’d really appreciate it if you’d come along, Sheriff.”
“Why’s that?”
“I think you and I have something in common. I think we both never understood what our fathers went through, and I think we’ve both always wanted to know.”
Jackson glanced out the window, at the factory. “I could never imagine what he must’ve … felt like, day after day. I could never—”
He blinked, looked away. “Yeah. I’d like to come along.”
They went downstairs. Will asked his mother to please help him pack his lunch pail.
The other men seemed pleased.
Jackson shook his head, offered his sympathy to Darlene once again, and left with Will and the others.
7
—someday you’ll understand, boy, that a man becomes something more than part of his machine and his machine becomes something more than just the other half of a tool. They marry in a way no two people could ever know. They become each other’s God. They become a greater Machine. And the Machine makes all things possible. It feeds you, clothes you, puts the roof over your head, and shows you all the mercy that the world never will.
The Machine is family.
It is purpose.
It is love.
So take its lever and feel the devotion.
There you go, just like that.
8
The parking lot was deserted, save for cars driven by the midnight shift workers.
They milled about outside the doors to the basement production cell, waiting for Jackson and Will.
As they approached the group Will gently took Jackson by the arm and said, “I think it’d be nice if you didn’t stop coming around for cards Saturday nights.”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
They stood among the other workers. Barrel-chested Rusty smiled at Will, nodded at Jackson, and said, “We got to make sure.”
“I figured,” said Jackson.
“Sure of what?” asked Will.
And Rusty replied: “You never actually started working with the press, did you?”
Will sighed and shook his head. “No. The strike was called right after I clocked in.” Without another word, he took off his jacket, then unbuttoned and removed his shirt, turning around.
Rusty pulled a flashlight from his back pocket and shone the beam on Will’s back.
Several round scarlike marks speckled the young man’s back, starting between his shoulder blades and continuing toward the base of his spine. Some were less than an eighth of an inch in diameter but others looked to be three times that size, pushing inward like the pink indentations left in the skin after a scab has been peeled off.
“Damn,” said Rusty. “Shift’s gotta start on time.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” snapped Will. “Dad used to talk about how … oh, hell.” He took a deep breath. “Better get on with it.”
Rusty pulled a small black handbook from his pocket, then turned toward the other men. “We’re here tonight to welcome a new brother into our union—Will Kaylor, son of Herb. Herb was a decent man, a good friend, and one of the finest machinists it’s ever been my privilege to work beside. I hope that all of us will treat his son with the same respect we gave to his father.”
The workers nodded in approval.
Rusty flipped through the pages of his tattered union handbook until he found what he was looking for. “Sheriff,” he said, offering the book to Jackson, “would you do us the honor of reading the union prayer here in the front where I marked it?”
“It would be … a privilege,” replied Jackson, taking the book.
Will was marched to a nearby wall, then pressed face and chestfirst against it, his bare back exposed to the night.
“Just clench your teeth together,” whispered Rusty to Will. “Close your eyes and hold your breath. It don’t hurt as much as you think.”
The other shift workers were opening their lunch pails and toolboxes, removing Philips-head screwdrivers.
Jackson would not allow himself to turn away. His father had gone through this, as had his father before him. Jackson had been spared, but that did not ease his conscience. He wanted to know.
He had to know.
Rusty looked toward Jackson and gave a short, sharp nod of his head, and Jackson began to read: “‘Almighty God, we, your workers, beseech Thee to guide us, that we may do the work which Thou givest us to do, in truth, and beauty, and righteousness, with singleness of heart as Thy servants, and to the benefit of our fellow men.’”
The workers gathered around Will, each choosing a scar and then, one by one, in orderly succession, plunging their screwdriver into it.
“‘Though we are not poets, Lord, or visionaries, or prophets, or great minded leaders of men, we ask that you accept the humble labour of our hands as proof of our love for You, and for our families.’”
Blood spurted from each wound and gouted down Will’s back, spattering against the asphalt.
His scream began somewhere in the center of the earth, forcing its way up through layers of molten rock and centuries of pain, shuddered through his legs and groin, lodged in his throat for only a moment before erupting from his throat as the howl of the shift whistle growing in volume to deafen the very ears of God.
Jackson had to shout to be heard over the din. “‘We thank Thee for
Thy blessing as we, your humble workers, welcome a new brother into our ranks. May You watch over and protect him as You have always watched over and protected us. Who can be our adversary, if You are on our side? You did not even spare Your own Son, but gave Him up for the sake of us all.’”
“‘And must not that gift be accompanied by the gift of all else?’” responded the workers in unison.
“‘So we offer our gift of all else, Lord, we offer our labours for the glory of Thy name, Amen.’”
“Amen,” echoed the workers, backing away.
“Amen,” said Will, dropping to his knees, then vomiting and whimpering.
Jackson closed the union handbook and came forward, tears in his eyes, and began to cradle Will in his arms; the boy shook his head and rose unsteadily to his feet, then began staggering toward the slowly opening basement doors— here is my son does he have the makings of a factory man?
—squeaking, screeching, loud clanking; heavy machinery dragging across a cement floor—
—the doors opened farther something long, metallic, and triplejointed pushed through, folding around the edge. A glint as more metal thrust out and folded, seizing the door—
—throwing sparks, the mechanical hand raked down, gripped the handle, and pulled the door wide open.
… doors open and the Old Worker is cast away …
Something crumpled and manlike was tossed out over their heads and landed with a soft whump! in the snow.
Will turned toward Jackson. “A man works his whole life away, and what does it mean?”
Jackson and the workers stared into the shimmering electric gaze beyond the iron doors.
“Welcome, my son,” whispered Jackson—
—in a voice very much like his own father’s—
—“Welcome to the Machine.”
… as the production line begins again …
9
You’ll be a worker just like me, that’s the way of it.
Work the line, wear the smell; the son following in his father’s footsteps.
Something like this, well … it makes a man’s life seem worthwhile.
I always knew you’d do me proud.
I love you, Dad. I hope this makes up for a lot of things.
I love you too, son.
Best get to work.
That’s a good boy ….
This one is for my father
Earshot
By Glenn Isaacson
Another short-shor
t that hits the mark from a writer in Baltimore (whom we’ve never met—in case you’re wondering if he was running on an inside track … ). Glenn Isaacson works for the behemoth government industry known as the Social Security Administration, and has spent many years trying to break into the song-writing business. His first published story, which recalls the subtle, yet caustic, brief offerings of John Collier, follows herewith.
“How can she be real? She’s too perfect, too beautiful. She can’t even be of the same species I am. How can she be real?” he said to the rabbit, and its long gray ears perked forward a little and its pink nose quivered.
But the rabbit never talked.
It never talked.
It never, ever, ever talked.
“How can she be human? How can she have thoughts in that beautiful head? How can she have hopes and desires and dreams and goals and preferences and prejudices? She can’t. And if she does, I don’t want to know. All she has to be is gorgeous. That’s all she ever has to do.” He gently stroked the rabbit’s head and looked imploringly at its luminous black eyes.
But the rabbit never talked.
It never talked.
It never, ever, ever talked.
“Her body is perfection. The most beautifully sleek and lusciously rounded body to ever walk the earth. She smells good. I’ll bet she tastes good, too. I know she must. Delicious. And to touch her? Sheer heaven. But she wouldn’t feel anything if I touched her. She couldn’t. Because there’s nothing inside there. She’s not a person. She’s not even an animal. She’s a thing.” He picked up the rabbit, cradled it in his arms, and began walking around the room in a circle. It snuggled comfortably against his chest.
But the rabbit never talked. It never talked.
It never ever ever talked.
“She has a name. Can you believe it? A name. As if she needs one. As if it matters. Linda Greaves! What a laugh! Who could’ve given her a name? She had no parents, no childhood, no past, no experiences, no friends. Nothing at all.” He stopped walking, staring at a knot in the paneling.
“I could do her, you know. Fuck her. Like she was a warm pillow or a hole in the wall. And it would be the best sex I ever had. The best. A feast for my mouth and my nose and my eyes and my hands and the nerve endings all over my body.” He began pacing back and forth in a straight line, holding the rabbit tighter.
“And when I was done with her, I could throw her out like a piece of garbage. Garbage with a name, yet! Linda Greaves, garbage.”
“Or better yet, better yet, I could eat her for dinner. I could cut her up into pieces and roast her over an open fire and she would be delicious, just the right amount of fat and meat. Her skin would turn the prettiest red.” He paused, thinking.
“Or … I could strangle her.” He grabbed the rabbit under its forelegs and let the rest of its chubby gray and white body dangle down. He held it up and stared into its face. “Just like this.” His hands tightened. “I could ask her if she wanted to die and her answer wouldn’t matter at all. I could squeeze the life out of her in less than one minute. Just like this.” His hands tightened more. “Do you want to die?” he asked. “Do you? Do you want to be dead?”
But the rabbit never talked.
It never talked.
It never, ever, ever talked.
He slowly relaxed his grip and set the rabbit down gently on the polished mahogany desk. It backed away from him a little nervously, then seemed to relax and began leisurely exploring the desktop, sniffing at pens and folders and paper clips.
There was a knock on the door.
“Yes?” he called.
The door opened slightly and his secretary leaned in. “Your two o’clock is here, Dr. Grossman.”
“Oh, okay,” he said.
“She asked if she could have an hour today instead of her usual forty-five minutes. She seems pretty upset.”
He glanced at his schedule. “Tell her that’s fine.” He began to pick up the rabbit to put back into its cage, but remembered that this patient was one who liked to hold the rabbit in her lap and pet it. It helped relax her when she talked about her difficult childhood and her generally catastrophic, miserable life. “Why don’t you just send her in. I’ll tell her.”
His secretary turned from the door and said, “You can come in, Ms. Greaves.”
Grossman waited expectantly. The vision appeared at his door. A halo of fluffy honey blonde hair. Sparkling blue gray eyes. Golden skin. Tight blue jeans. A little gold cross that nestled above her sweetly rounded chest. A delicate scent of exotic flowers and spices and warm flesh.
Her nose was red from crying and was dripping onto her upper lip.
Grossman took a tissue from a box on his desk and handed it to her. “Sit down, Linda,” he said. “The extra time today will be no problem at all.”
She sat down, wiping her nose with the tissue.
“Here,” he said, “I have a friend that’ll be glad to see you.” He handed her the rabbit and she smiled, probably for the first time today, Grossman thought.
She put the rabbit on her lap and looked at it fondly. “Only you and Dr. Grossman know all my problems, Mr. Bunny,” she said to the rabbit. She lightly stroked its long ears.
Grossman sat down on his thickly padded leather chair and leaned back. “So, tell me what’s been happening since I last saw you,” he said.
Fee
By Peter Straub
When we finished the following story, we both realized we’d undergone as heartfelt an emotional experience as literature can ever hope to bring to us. Writing with subtle power and a style both elegant and precise, Peter Straub has dropped us like airborne shocktroops into the center of a small’s boy’s terrifying world. As we transverse the landscape of the child’s pain, Straub reminds us from where all the monsters really come. The award-winning author of Ghost Story, The Throat, lost boy lost girl, and In The Night Room marks his territory in The Best of Borderlands with a novella you will never forget.
PART ONE
1
Fee’s first memory was of a vision of fire, not an actual fire but an imagined fire, leaping upward at an enormous grate upon which lay a naked man. Attached to this image was the accompanying memory of his father gripping the telephone. For a moment his father, Bob Bandolier, the one and only king of this realm, seemed rubbery, almost boneless with shock. He repeated the word, and a second time five year old Fielding Bandolier, little blond Fee, saw the flames jumping at the blackening figure on the grate. “I’m fired? This has got to be a joke.”
The flames engulfed the tiny man on the slanting grate. The man opened his mouth to screech. This was hell, it was interesting. Fee was scorched, too, by those flames. His father saw the child looking up at him, and the child saw his father take in his presence. A fire of pain and anger flashed out of his father’s face and Fee’s insides froze. His father waved him away with a curious back-paddling gesture of his left hand.
In the murk of their apartment, Bob Bandolier’s crisp white shirt gleamed like an apparition. The creases from the laundry jutted up from the shirt’s starched surface.
“You know why I haven’t been coming in,” he said. “This is not a matter where I have a choice. You will never, ever find a man who is as devoted …”
He listened, bowing over as if crushing down a spring in his chest.
Fee crept backward across the room, hoping to make no noise at all.
When he backed into the chaise against the far wall, he instinctively dropped to his knees and crawled beneath it, still looking at the way his father was bending over the telephone. Fee bumped into a dark furry lump, Jude the cat, and clamped it to his chest until it stopped struggling.
“No, sir,” his father said. “If you think about the way I work, you will have to …”
He blew air out of his mouth, still pushing down that coiled spring in his chest. Fee knew that his father hated to be interrupted.
“I see that, sir, but a person on my salary can’t h
ire a nurse or a housekeeper, and …”
Another loud exhalation.
“Do I have to tell you what goes on in hospitals? The infections, the sheer sloppiness, the … I have to keep her at home. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, sir, but there have been very few nights when I have not been able to spend most of my time at the hotel.”
Slowly, as if he had become aware of the oddness of his posture, Fee’s father began straightening up. He pressed his hand into the small of his back. “Sometimes we pray.”
Fee saw the air around his father darken and fill with little white sparkling swirling things that winked and dazzled before they disappeared.
Jude saw them too, and moved backwards, deeper beneath the chaise.
“Well, I suppose you are entitled to your own opinion about that,” said his father, “but you are very much mistaken if you feel that my religious beliefs did in any way …”
“I dispute that absolutely,” his father said.
“I have already explained that,” his father said. “Almost every night since my wife fell ill, I managed to get to the hotel. I bring an attitude to work with me, sir, of absolute dedication …”
“I’m sorry you feel that way, sir,” his father said, “but you are making a very great mistake.”
“I mean, you are making a mistake,” his father said. The little white dancing lines spun and winked out in the air like fireworks.
Both Fee and Jude stared raptly from beneath the chaise.
His father gently replaced the receiver, and then set the telephone down on the table. His face was set in the cement of prayer.
Fee looked at the black telephone on its little table between the big chair and the streaky window: the headset like a pair of droopy ears, the round dial. On the matching table, a porcelain fawn nuzzled a porcelain doe.
Heavy footsteps strode toward him. Jude searched warmth against his side. His father came striding in his gleaming shirt with the boxy lines from the dry cleaners, his dark trousers, his tacked-down necktie, his shiny shoes. His mustache, two fat commas, seemed like another detachable ornament.