Wrote this a good while ago...
THE S382 planer screams like a Tai-fighter each time a board
flies through. The top and bottom head, two cylinders covered with eight rows
of spiraling knives, scour the rough lumber until it shoots out, like slow
motion laser beams. In the line of fire of the outfeed, where the boards are
spat out of the machine, is the stacker operator. I imagine he’s a member of
the Rebel Alliance, and the bad guys can’t hit him. The boards are eaten one by
one, their screams filling my head with imaginary starships, and I’m gone.
Yesterday
morning will not get out of my head. The new employee’s first day, he’s waiting
by the front door, holding the new hard hat I just gave him in one hand, an
insulated lunch box in the other. It’s full of bottles of water. Safeguard against
the Mississippi heat. Then he lurches. His left leg juts out like a spider’s
looking for a perch, then his hips sink. His head seems to have filled with
solid lead, because it’s tilting out over his knee. His eyes are unfocused, his
jaw slack as useless chain. “This mother fucker is still drunk from last
night,” is the thought the crawls across my eyes, and I almost instantly regret
it. His ponderous head has become magnetic, and he crashes into the ground, on
the biggest rock within 50 feet, left temple first. Right arm springs to his
body, and one leg stiffens straight out while the other struggles to find a
fetal home. He’s shaking. Convulsing. Seizure. “Somebody call 9-1-1,” I say,
jumping into a kneel beside him. I hear the words, “I don’t have no service,”
and I say, “Go inside and call 9-1-1!”
He
goes limp, and I almost piss my pants. Then his eyes come to life, but like a
drugged-up patient waking up from surgery. He starts trying to stand, and
begins to fall over. This time I catch him. I try to sit him down, but he wants
to get up. I try to help him stand, but his legs won’t hold him. His face was
already pockmarked, but now he’s pouring blood out of a gumball-sized hole in
his cheekbone. Not the temple, the temple is still sacred.
The
local fire department arrives, and I sigh in my heart because I don’t have to
take care of him anymore. The Mexicans have already walked down to the line to
begin work. They’ve seen some shit. They know there’s no point watching shit
get worse if you can’t do anything about it. The American blacks and whites
stop watching because everything is going to be fine. The entertainment is
over. He’s put on a stretcher, strapped down, and the real EMT’s from the
nearest big town, 30 minutes away, arrive. It’s amazing how smug driving 30
minutes to take care of a bad concussion victim can make a Deep South paramedic
unit. They rotate the victim to his side four times so he can spew vomit onto
the slag. Spew. Vomit. Ralph. Upchuck. He done? Think so. They slide that poor
bastard in the ambulance and off he goes.
Is
there anything you need from me? Is there anything I can do? His wife is here
and in the ambulance now, no one seems quite sure what to do with his car.
“We’ll come get it later,” she says, then adds “He was so excited about having
a job.”
Inside
I look over his application. He was a big rig driver. Drove big forklifts, too.
What if he’d had a seizure on the road? How come the comparable blessing,
having a seizure and busting his face open and sustaining a concussion that
came from a blow loud enough to sound like someone hitting a watermelon with a
baseball bat, why did that blessing have to come to me? In front of me? It’s
like a homeless angel came and bestowed a shopping cart full of spit filled
cans to me to clean and turn in for scrap.
The
boss and his boss (my dad), pull up a couple hours later. “Quite a morning,
huh?” my dad says, shaking my hand. I understand. Don’t make a big deal out of
it. Don’t give him anything else to freak out about. No big deal, no freak out.
“Get any trucks in this morning?” The worst part is it works. Their tactics
work like a box of fucking Lucky Charms. “Four,” I answer. We go to the local
meat and three, and I have fried catfish and three vegetables.
His
dad comes and picks up the car later that day. He says the same thing as the
wife. “He was so excited about this job. Hadn’t had a seizure in nine years.
Doctor always told him that nerves’ll do it, but that never had happened.” I
nod. “Doctor put ‘im on some good med’cine, shouldn’t have no more problems
now.” I wish him the best. His time card was punched in at 6:55AM. I write in
7:05AM as the time out.
I
saw him at a different meat and three about six months later. Face still
pockmarked, steps and handshake hauntingly jerky. Everything all good? I ask.
Everything’s great, he says. He wouldn’t have lasted for us. Too much stress at
our yard.
I
wonder what a seizure feels like. I know it’s not letting go, but I want it to
be. I want to have a letting go seizure, where I seize up and say, What can I
do? I’m sorry, but I’m going to be completely out of commission for the next 30
seconds. Not going to check the numbers. Not going to enter data. Not going to
analyze the problem and figure out why the guys are working so poorly in this
blissful 105 degree, 100 percent humidity, 120 heat index weather. No, my body
is doing what my mind refuses to do, it is saying no to all this bullshit and
shutting down for a minute. I’m going to rest by not resting, it says. I’m
going to relax by tensing up everywhere. Wait until I’m done. Then you’ll know
peace. Then you’ll know serenity. Sit up and wake up and puke up your
breakfast, young man. You just lost your job five minutes into your first day.
