The Secession of Simon’s Shadow

Chapter 1

I wasn’t prepared. The shock of the noise and all that blasted me when I opened the metal door. Not as loud as a rock concert. I just wasn’t expecting it, that’s all. I refused to cover my ears though. I didn’t want to look like some damn rookie on his first day—even though that’s exactly what I was.

The monstrous green machines making all that noise roared from every direction, spitting out large and small gray objects at every speed imaginable. I stopped and stared. I had to. At every machine a guy in a gray uniform stood and fielded the parts or just watched as they spewed into a tub. Occasionally, the guy would stop and measure a part with a small vise-looking thing or make an adjustment on the machine.

“Hey!” The short, pudgy guy in the gray lab coat leading me through the maze had stopped and was looking back at me with a sneer on his face. “Keep moving! I don’t got all day!”

The guy had been right in front of me but was now twenty feet ahead and pissed as hell. I took one last look at the monsters and stepped quickly behind the guy again. He traipsed between the presses and darted to the right or left to avoid a forklift or golf cart. I tried my best to keep up with him but kept getting cut off by the same forklifts and golf carts he avoided.

Finally, at the back of the building, he opened another door and stepped through. I followed. The noise abruptly stopped. The sun shone brightly on a cloudless day and half blinded me. I raised my hand to my forehead to see where the guy had got off to. He stood on the stairs in front of a large white trailer motioning me toward him. I ran over and started up the steps.

“Where in the hell is your hardhat?” the short guy bellowed. “You’re not supposed to be outside here without a hardhat because of the cranes.” He pointed.

I felt the top of my head and realized I had forgot and left it in the office.

“I guess I forgot it,” I said and started back the way I came.

“Hey! You ain’t goin’ back up there now, Rookie. You’ll have to grab one in here,” he said as he pointed to the trailer. The guy let out a disgusted sigh and spit tobacco juice into the can he was holding. He opened the door of the trailer, and we stepped in.

Inside, a bunch of guys with hardhats in their hands were talking amongst themselves as they sat at tables arranged in a long rectangle. At one end of the rectangle sat an older guy in a gray lab coat holding a filmstrip up to the light. The others were dressed mostly like me: jeans, t-shirt and work boots. Two were dressed in the gray uniforms of the press operators I saw in the building.

The guy had put the filmstrip down and tried to get everyone’s attention.

“Listen up! Hey! Listen!” The older guy had a hard time getting anyone’s attention. His voice sounded a little like Elmer Fudd’s and he looked like a clerk in a shoe store with his balding head and wire-rim glasses.

“SHADDUP YOU A-HOLES!” bellowed the short guy. He had everyone’s attention. “If you ain’t sittin’ down – sit down or you’ll be back lookin’ for a job before you can spit!” To punctuate the sentence, he spit a nasty brown glob into the can.

“Thank you, Mr. Carp,” mumbled Elmer Fudd with a distracted look on his face.

“Don’t mention it,” replied the short guy. “This is Mr. Hartman. He’s in charge of teaching you morons about safety so you don’t lose a finger or a hand. If you don’t listen to what he says, you’ll be runnin’ to the nurse with a blood-soaked rag wrapped around your wrist, and I’ll be the one fuckin’ laughin’ his ass off at you. So. LISTEN UP!”

“Yes, gentlemen. What I have to say is very important. You also have to pass the test at the end of the session so listen carefully,” said Hartman in a whiny voice.

Hartman then droned on and on for almost an hour about the safety rules at Fruehe-Cristman. I had applied at F-C earlier that afternoon and they told me to come back at three wearing work clothes and steel-toed shoes. I figured they were plenty hard up for workers if they needed me that badly, but they were gonna pay me almost four bucks an hour to start. I don’t argue with anyone who’s gonna pay me that much.

Hartman showed slides of examples of the safety stuff he was talking about. It was so funny. You could tell from the beginning who were the good guys and who were the idiots. The guys wearing safety glasses and hard hats and smiled like chessie cats did everything right. The other guys didn’t wear protective equipment. They dressed like slobs and looked like morons. By the end of the thing, most of us were laughing our asses off when the slobs tripped over a bucket or got zapped by electrical wires. Carp had left halfway through, so we figured no one was going to say anything.

True to his word, Hartman passed out a test and pencils at the end of the lecture. Some of the guys there looked pretty crestfallen when he did that, but the guys who listened were more than happy to help those who had taken the speech less to heart. Hartman knew he didn’t dare say anything about it either. He announced that everyone had passed the test and we mock-cheered like hell when he told us we were all officially F-C employees.

I exited the trailer along with the others having remembered to first grab a hard hat. Carp had returned and read off a clipboard the number of the building each of us would be working. He told us to get into groups by number so we all started talking at once to figure out who was in which group. That pissed off Carp majorly.

“SHADDUP YOU MORONS!” he yelled. “Group one people right here,” he said and pointed. He walked an invisible line pointing out where each group should line up. When he finished, six groups were assembled. The only guys that didn’t find a group were the two guys wearing uniforms. They weren’t newbies like the rest of us. They each lit a cigarette and watched us for a time before sauntering off.

Carp waved in the direction of the building I had come out of and six other guys wearing gray coats showed up and walked over to us and stood in front of a group. I was in the sixth group with one other guy and we both followed our guy to building six, or I guessed it was. Another gray coat explained that until we were there for thirty days, we’d be in charge of a broom, a scoop shovel, a rag, and a trash barrel on wheels. If they thought we were worth keeping, we’d be placed on a regular job somewhere. If not, “AMF”.

He told us to start sweeping, and he buggered off. The other guy, Harold his name was, and I weren’t too sure where to start, but the place was a pigsty so it really didn’t matter. We worked together for a while, but then we realized we’d get more done if we split up.

Building 6 was way quieter than the other building I had walked through. Mostly there were these grinder things that scraped parts and made them shiny. They also had big vats that reminded me of my little sister’s rock tumbler though much, much bigger. In the back of the building, hanging parts moved to the left in these long open closets. That’s where guys would spray paint the parts bright blue, adding paint to what the guy to the right did. By the time it got all the way down the line, the parts were completely painted. Then they moved into a closed cabinet, and I couldn’t see what happened to them there. The conveyer must have turned a corner in there because the finished parts came out the same end they went in. One guy hung the unpainted parts on the conveyor going in and took the bright blue parts off when they came out.

After a couple hours of sweeping, I got thirsty and walked over to a water fountain to get a drink. It was so filthy. I used my rag to clean it first. Some guy walked over and asked if my name was Suzy Homemaker.

“No. My name is Jack. Jack Spencer.” I held out my hand. The other guy grabbed it and held it up by my thumb and shook it up and down limply.

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Jack Spencer,” he said. “I’m Thomas J. Craig, but most people call me Jeff. Please excuse my weak handshake, but I’m saving that hand for my girlfriend. You must be new here.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I just started today.”

“Oh, you don’t have to tell me that, Jack. I figured that out already.”

“How?” I asked. Jeff had an ugly red scar on his left cheek, and I had a hard time not staring at it.

“You’re working way too hard, Jack,” said Jeff, shaking his head. “Oh. You wondering about my badge of honor?” he asked, running his index finger along the scar.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but . . . how did it happen?” I asked.

“I got in a knife fight ‘cause some asshole paid too much attention to my girl. I don’t like that.” Jeff had a funny, far off look on his face as he talked. It gave me the creeps. “I walked away, but the other guy had to get a dozen stitches.”

I made a mental note that if I ever met Jeff’s girlfriend, I wouldn’t even look at her let alone speak to her. I had one more question.

“What does AMF stand for, by the way?”

“It stands for Adios, Motherfucker,” said Jeff. “That’s what they write on your records when they can you, Jack, or so they say. My advice is to not get canned. Of course, you’re leaning toward a canning right now standing here talking to me.”

“Oh. Sorry,” I said and walked away brusquely sweeping my head off. I could hear Jeff laughing behind me.

“AMF, my boy! Adios!”