Portrait of a young con arist

 

Chapter 12

 

Corn Meal

 

 

 Excruciating heat rose from the pot-holed drive as Kenny walked up it from the river. A full mile of twisted trees covered in a hairy coating of tar and dust. The man from the temporary employment service had lied saying the bus came up all the way from downtown. He had strained a muscle and stumbled forward with a limp, each alternate step drawing sharp pains up from his feet.

 The walk ended with a fence and gate and guard's booth, the glass of which dripped on the inside from condensation. An air conditioner hummed from somewhere on the far side, gasping as badly in the heat as Kenny did. He knocked gently on the glass, the coolness seeping into his finger.

 The guard inside rolled out from under his hat in surprise, legs tumbling off the desk top like two logs. His startled expression changed to chagrin when he focused in on Kenny and yanked open the window.

 "What the hell do you want?" he asked, thin gray mustache rising into an acute sneer at the ends of his mouth. Kenny's reflection wavered slightly in the glass beside the man's, stringy dirty hair extending down to the shoulders of his tied-dyed T-shirt. A minute growth showed on his chin for four days of traveling up the highway from California. But his eyes looked the worst for it, worn out and down, like an advertisement against hunger on TV.

 "I'm here to work," Kenny said, keeping his arms down against the circles of sweat that had formed around his arm pits.

 "We're not hiring," the man grumbled and moved to slam shut the window again.

 "But Manpower sent me!" Kenny protested and waved the pink appointment slip the office had given him.

 The guard looked annoyed, studying the slip at a distance, then Kenny, as if looking for some connection between the two. The word "hippie" flickered angrily into his eyes.

 "Manpower," he mumbled. "Let me see that."

 He snatched the paper from Kenny's fingers and snapped shut the window. He read it slowly as a whistle tooted from the roof of the factory just beyond the gate. A thick stream of block smoke rose up into the air, a long dark finger twisted out of shape as it reached the upper wind stream. It stank of tar.

 "Just wait right there," the guard said thought the glass and grabbed up the telephone from the desk. Kenny heard little of the words, but the man vehement gestures said he was unhappy with the situation. After a moment, he slammed down the phone again and jerked open the window, shoving the paper back out into Kenny's hands.

 "Report to Mr. Cooper," he said and pointed toward the building. "He's through the gray door there."

 A low whine sounded as the gate swung in, creaking a little on its rusted hinged. Kenny stepped over the threshold, then heard the whine again as the gate closed behind him. It and everything else had the same sticky mat of tar and dust he had noticed earlier on the trees. Even his feet stuck as he walked, soles sticking to the sticky ground.

 Dead ivy shielded the gray door and the small sign hanging above it saying: employees only. Kenny knocked, but no one answered, and he pushed it open with his finger tips, cigarette smoke and stale coffee struck him like an exhaled breath.

 It was dark inside despite two rows of florescent lamps slung down from the ceiling. Bulky men in gray work clothes looked up from lunch tables to the right, grim, sun-burned faces squinting against the sudden intrusion of light. Their talk sputtered into silence. One man's newspaper fluttered up with the closing door, then settled slow and was ignored. Only the time clock, protruding from the left hand wall, made any sound-- clicking twice.

 "I'm supposed to see Mr. Cooper," Kenny said, studying the faces for some sign of recognition as he eased deeper into the room. A short man with curly hair and crooked nose pointed towards the oval payroll window at the rear of the room.

 "Thanks," Kenny said and took another step towards it. One of other men leaped up and barred his way, large belly boiling over his belt.

 "We don't need no hippies here," he said, wiping something off his fingers and onto his stained T-shirt before screwing down a Detroit Tigers baseball cap onto his head. The bill made his close dark eyes look like a rabid dog's.

 "Can I help you?" a woman behind the window said, her blond hair stark against a back drop of filing cabinets and typewriters. Kenny eased against the bulky man and pushed his pink slip into the cup beneath the glass.

 "Manpower sent me," he whispered.

 The woman's red painted mouth soured. "Mr. Cooper expected you an hour ago."

 "I know but I had to..."

 She vanished, her high pitched voice calling Cooper's name somewhere out of sight. An instant later, the door beside the window snapped open and a tiny man shorter than Kenny by a foot popped out, perfected suited in gray, with a ruler-long tie and a balding head. Sweat bubbled on his brow as he patted it up with already soggy handkerchief. His round glassed had fogged and he squinted at Kenny through them.

 "Are you McDonald?" he asked.

 The whistle interrupted Kenny's reply and the man's sharp gaze turned towards the tables and the unmoving men seated around them, surprised, then angry, as he glared.

 "What are you people waiting for? An invitation? Get back to work."

 They grumbled, but they rose, benches scraping the cracked concrete floor. The men shuffled passed Kenny as they moved through another door beside the time clock, tar-stained hands adding to the thick black mark near the handle. The man in the baseball cap hesitated, but cast a wincing glance at Cooper before following the others.

 When they were gone, Cooper looked to Kenny again. "We don't like people being tardy around here, young man," he said.

 "I know, but...."

 "And we don't like excuses either. Come along. We have work for you."

 He held the door open through which the other men had just gone. The stink of the factory flowed out, striking Kenny in the chest like a blow. He staggered back, drawing down the man's thin brows.

 "What's the matter with you, young man? Are you ill?"

 "The smell...!" Kenny croaked.

 "Oh that," the man said in disgust. "You'll get used to it. Everyone does."

 Kenny wanted to ask how. He could hardly breathe. But the man strode ahead again, stepping beyond the shadow of the door into the open room beyond. The roof was invisible amid a collection of twisting ducts and dirty lights. Brown-stained windows encircled the building near the top, huge fans rotating slowly below them, but neither did anything circulate the air.

 A gloom hung over everything, though rows of lights marked out evenly spaced avenues between the machines. The air itself seemed stained like the windows and the grounds Kenny had seen climbing the hill. The floor and girders had grown fur from the tar and dust.

 "This way," Cooper said, nudging Kenny towards one of the aisles, monstrous silver vats rising up either side like walls. They varied in size, shrinking as they went along, but the ones nearest rose nearly to the ceiling, and moved in a slow rotation with the sound of sloshing liquid inside. One shuddered, like a drunken giant, clearly out of rhythm with the others. It howled, metal grinding on metal.

 Cooper stopped and cursed and grabbed up a telephone from one of girders, screaming in it as if needing to be heard over the screeching metal. His voice echoed off the walls from some hidden intercom.

 Number three's on the blink!

 Shapes swelled out of the shadows taking on the form of men as they reached thin ladders at the foot of the vat. They could have been insects, crawling up to the walkway around the belly of the machine, ants following each other's firmament trail. It took a moment for the shudder to cease, though the wail remain like an after shock, echoing in among the ducts and girders.

 Cooper grunted. "Took them long enough," he said, then waved towards one of the men high up on the platform, the shadows twisting the figure into something grotesque, though when the man waved back, he seemed untouched by the darkness. He descended ladder quickly, pausing at the bottom briefly to tap the glass of a pressure gauge.

 Yet the closer he came the darker he seemed, black hair, mustache and eyes glistening under the florescent lamps as if they had been oiled. He needed a shave which darkened his jaw and there were smudges of tar on his neck and arms and hands.

 He wore the same gray jumpsuit Kenny had seen on the other men in the lunch room, but a blue patch over his right breast pocket labeled him "Supervisor."

 

 "I brought you the man you wanted," Cooper said, indicating Kenny.

 The supervisor studied him, his gaze moving from the worn-kneed jeans to the fluff of sweaty blond hair curling at his shoulders, lingering a moment over this last. The frown distorted the man's already marred face. A long, pale scar ran down his left cheek from the corner of his eye to the edge of his lip, like a piece of string that tightened as he squinted. His black mustache wiggled slowly as his mouth shifted expression.

 "Casey won't like the hair," the man said finally.

 "Fuck Casey. The boy's a body," Cooper snapped.

 "But is he Irish?"

 "For Christ's sake, Dennis! We're not going to start that again? If the old man doesn't take this one, he'll never see one again."

 "I'll tell him that," Dennis said with a grin that tugged so tight on his eye and mouth that it looked like a grimace of pain. He glanced at Kenny and motioned him down the aisle with his head. Cooper paraded back up the aisle the way they'd come.

 "What's your name, boy?" the supervisor asked, breaking into a long stride Kenny found difficult to match.

 "Kenny McDonald."

 The man stopped and turned, his dark eyes studying Kenny with a glint of delight. "Then you are Irish!"

 "Half English," Kenny said. "My mother's maiden name is Grimes."

 An honest grimace crossed the supervisor's face. "Do me a favor. Don't say that to Casey. Not unless you want a war."

 Kenny said nothing, watching instead the wall of vats shrinking on either side and the narrow dusty avenues opening between them on either side, stained with trails of tars and wheel marks from fork lifts and hand trucks. A few footprints showed among them like cave markings from a prehistoric time. The smallest vats were uncovered and churned with dark liquid, a discolored oatmeal stinking of newly paved road. Under the surface an invisible arm rotated, scraping tar from the bottom and sides.

 "Those are the automatic machines," Dennis said. "You won't be working around them."

 He led Kenny to alcove on the left, a dark little cave bordered with slanting girders and descending ducts. Six small vats formed its northern wall with wooden steps leading up to each. Drums, some full, some empty, littered the floor like discarded bodies.

 In the midst of the disarray, and old man crawled down one set of stairs and up another, his hair white, his back bent, his fingers gripping a stained-wooden paddle. He stirred one vat for some time before looking up. His face came to a point at his nose, so each eye fell on an opposite side like a fish, though both stared towards Kenny and the supervisor with a disapproving glare.

 "And what would you two be wanting?" he asked sharply.

 "I brought you a gift," Dennis said, nudging Kenny forward. "He's only a temporary. But you've got him for today."

 "One day?" the old man barked, spitting off the side of his small platform into the dust. "At lot good that'll do me tomorrow. Or the day after that. Why don't you give me one of the louts from the lots. At least they know what they're doing."

 "Because none of them want to work with you any more, old man. They said you treat them like shit!"

 "They don't work, Dennis," the old man growled. "Which is why you've dumped them on me, thinking maybe I can sweat something out of them you couldn't."

 "What about this one?" Dennis asked. "He looks strong enough for what you want?"

 "Take him away, he's useless."

 "Old man!" Dennis bellowed. "Just because you're here thirty years doesn't...."

 "Fifty years!" the old man snapped. "I've been here fifty years."

 "Fifty or a hundred years, you're still a pain in the..."

 "Is he Irish?"

 "We don't hire by nationality."

 "They did with me," the old man said, then squinted at Kenny, his clear gaze studying the details of Kenny's face and hair, working down to the tied-dyed T-shirt and worn jeans. He clucked his tongue then asked. "What's yer name, lad?"

 "His name's Kenny," Dennis snapped. "Will please stop with the interrogation."

 "And his last name?"

 "McDonald," Kenny said, not quite able to meet the old man's gaze, though white brows rose in new consideration.

 "Now that's a good Irish name, if ever I heard one."

 "Good!" Dennis said. "Maybe now that that's settled we can put him to work?"

 "We haven't settled anything," the old man said. "I can't use someone who's only going to be here a day."

 "Damn it, old man. I'm not going to play this game with you," Dennis said. "I'll leave him here. You make up your mind whether or not to use him. You and Cooper and work it out if you don't."

 With that, Dennis turned and marched back up the aisle, his shape absorbed again by the shadows till he had vanished completely. Only the click of his heals against the concrete floor said he still existed.

 Casey stared after the man, then snorted, drawing up the palled out of thick black liquid. He examined it, touching the tip with the tips of his fingers. After a moment, he looked down at Kenny again.

 "So are you Irish?" he asked.

 "Half," Kenny said.

 "And the other half?"

 "English."

 The air whistled through the old man's teeth as he drew in the breath. It held it for a long time in silence, his gaze stuck to the paddle end as thick drops of black liquid dripped back into the vat.

 "Which half's English?" he asked finally.

 "My mother's maiden name is Grimes."

 This sigh came more easily as the man's shoulders relaxed and the tip of the paddle dropped back into the black liquid. "Then it could be worse," he mumbled, and glanced down the aisle the way Dennis had gone. "There are worse in this place with less blood than you've got. I'll tell you that. Let's see what you can do with our back, lad. Why don't you take those barrels out to the yard."

 He waved his stained finger towards the line of recently filled drums near the foot of the platform. Kenny went to the first of these and gave it shove, stumbling back with a grunt from it when it wouldn't budges.

 "Not like that, lad!" the old man scolded. "Us the hand truck." He pointed towards a forked vehicle, laying back-down under the slanting girder.

 Kenny recovered it, but took a moment to figure out how the barrel fitted into its forks. Then, another moment to yank the whole thing up onto its crusty rear wheels.

 "Where is the yard?" Kenny asked, balancing the precarious load, dried tar cutting into the palms of his hands from the encrusted handles. The old man motioned vaguely down the aisle, a direction opposite the one in which Dennis had disappeared.

 "That way," he said and turned back to his stirring.

 The hand truck wobbled under its burden, patches of hardened tar distorted one of its wheels, whacking at the concrete at regular intervals, like a smaller errant machine out of sync with the world around it. The vats ended with a cluster of descending ducts. Pallets of finished product filled the read of the building. A immense doorway opened in the factory wall, dazzling light searing in from the exterior. Kenny pushed his load through it.

Outside, clean air swirled around him, eddies rising up from the river valley smelling of fish and ships and trees. Smoke rose from the factory roof, churned into hazy clouds. The noise settled into a low mumble contained by the walls, more vibration than sound.

 But the heat remained, the sun withering everything it touched, from the weeds near the fence to the pale wood pallets stacked to the right. Tall grass hid the river, but rustled dryly and swelled like a golden sea.

 Inside the fence to the left, broken pallets displayed a graveyard of junk: silver hulls of former vats, ceiling lights, dilapidated saw-horses. All that was metal rusted; all that was wood, turned to dust.

 On the right, walls of a pallet city rose, one full pallet stacked upon another: tar drums, paint cans, roofing shingles. Several openings indicated a primitive road system within, the dirt marked with the ribbed pattern of fork-lift wheels. Down at the end of the yard, the fork life hummed, loading pallets into a tractor trailer. Men in gray swarmed around it.

 "Psst!"

 Kenny stopped. A shadow danced above him along the top of the pallet wall, some dark shape leaping from one stack to another, waving him towards on the openings.

 "This way," the figure called.

 Kenny nodded and followed as the shadow vanished into bleached brightness, though its call came again. "This way."

 The passage ended at the factory wall and with no obvious place to put the barrel. Scrapping sounded behind Kenny as the man descended, hands and feet finding gaps in-between the pallets. Once on the ground, the figure turned, screwing down his baseball cap over a headful of greasy red hair. It was the man from the lunch room earlier, and he looked even less friendly than he had, his pudgy, unshaven face twisting into a snarl.

 "I told you we don't like hippies here," he said, clenching his two large hands into massive fists.

 "Look, mister," Kenny said. "I'm not here to make trouble. I got a pregnant girl at home and she needs food. All I want to do is get on with work."

 "Yeah, I'm sure," the man said. "And all I want to do is break your face."

 Behind the man others appeared, like aberrations popping out from between the cracks of the pallets, curious faces dressed in gray. Some of them laughing. "You show him, Ben," they said.

 Kenny swung the hand truck around, putting the barrel between him and the others. The man reached towards him, but couldn't reach around the belly of the barrel.

 "Damn it, boy! Hold still!"

 "Why so you beat me up?" Kenny asked, swiveling the hand truck around as the man moved to one side, keeping the barrel between them. The man snarled.

 "So you want to play games, do you?" he said and leaped.

 Kenny abandoned the barrel and scrambled up the wall, imitating the man's previous climb down, fingers and toes clawing at the pallet wall. He was half way up before the falling barrel thumped below, followed by the bellowing man.

 "My foot! My foot! The fucking hippie crushed my foot!"

 At the top, Kenny peered back down. Gray shirts swirled around the upturned barrel, lifting it from the fallen man. Some grumbled and stared up, shielding their eyes against the sun light.

 "And what the hell is going on here?" Dennis' voice roared from behind them, as the man himself marched out of the shadow, his face drawn upward by the upturned heads of the men. He squinted and like them shielded his eyes, then frowned. "What the devil are you doing up there, boy?"

 "Keeping myself from getting beat up," Kenny said.

 "Beat up?" Dennis said, casting a glance at the men around him. They shied back, refusing to meet his gaze. "Which one of you blow hards has been bothering the boy?"

 None admitted anything, though several glanced down at the man still sprawled on the ground at their feet.

 "You bothering the boy, Ben?"

 "Me?" the man caterwauled. "It's the hippie that tried to kill me."

 Dennis' chest heaved slowly as he took in a long breath. "Come down here, boy," he mumbled. "No one's going to beat you up?"

 "Are you sure?" Kenny asked, studying the grim, sunburned faces below, redneck faces with glinting eyes.

 "I said get down here," Dennis yelled. "Or do I have to come up and get you?"

 Kenny eased his legs over the side and scrambled down. The men beneath made room for him, forming a circle around scene, Kenny, the fallen man and the barrel in its middle.

 "The hippie dropped the drum on me, Dennis," Ben said as other men helped him up onto his uninjured foot. "Didn't I tell you it was no good you hiring a hippie?"

 "He cornered me," Kenny said. "I got scared."

 "So you dropped a barrel on him?" Dennis asked.

 "That was an accident."

 "Liar!" Ben howled. "We was just having ourselves a little fun. No body meant to hurt him."

 "I see," Dennis said, his somber expression drawing tight his scar like a noose around his eye. "It would seem the one you harmed was yourself. Let it stop there. Any more of this and someone won't have a job. That goes for all of you. Now get back to work."

 "What about my foot?"

 Dennis stared down. A black mark showed on the leather boot top, like a cut across its top. The toes did not look crushed to Kenny, nor did the show seem dented.

 "Saul!" Dennis shouted as a short, gnarled man popped out of the crowd.

 "Yeah, boss?"

 "Take Ben down to the doc and get him fixed up."

 "That's it?" Ben howled. "That's all you're going to do about this?"

 "What did you want? An ambulance?"

 "I want that hippie out of here!" Ben said.

 "Too bad," Dennis said and motioned for Saul to take him away. Ben glared for a moment, then closed his eyes, allowing himself to be led away.

 Dennis looked to Kenny, his gaze lingering for a moment on the hair, then stared straight into his eyes. "Still scared?"

 Kenny gave a hesitant shake of his head.

 "Good, then go back to work."

 "I can't," Kenny said. "No one showed me where to put the barrel."

 Dennis' chest heaved again. "This way," he mumbled, helping Kenny gather up the hand truck and barrel. He led him back through the maze to the open area where a pallet waited with other barrels along the fence.

 "Thanks," Kenny said when he had dumped the load.

 "Don't mention it," Dennis said gruffly, then paraded away, down towards the far end of the yard where men were once more loading the truck.

                                                       ***********

 The old man twisted around on his perch when he heard Kenny, his face contorted into a webwork of angry lines. "And just where the devil have you been?" he growled, several more barrels waiting in a line at the foot of the stair.

 "I had problems outside," Kenny said, fitting another barrel onto the forks of the hand truck.

 "Aye! I've seen those kinds of problems before," the old man said. "And I don't need them here."

 

 Kenny stopped half way into the aisle. "What's that supposed to mean?"

 "It means there's always problems when there's work to be done."

 "But it wasn't...."

 "No arguments," the old man snapped. "Either get on with your work or go home. I'm not here to listen to your problems."

 Kenny stared up, but the old man had turned back to his own work, colder now, sniffing slightly as if he could smell Kenny's English blood over the scent of tar.

 "You know, Casey. You remind me of my uncle back east," Kenny said. "He used to make me work every day after school in his boat yard. Nothing was ever good enough for him either."

 The old man shoulders rose, but the paddle kept up its slow circling, black liquid sloshing up against the sides of the metal vat. When the man said nothing more, Kenny turned and rolled the barrel down the aisle and through the wide door into the yard. He repeated this again and again, back and forth from alcove to pallet, as if rolling a stone up one side of the hill to have it rumble down the other. The stink of his own sweat working up from under his arms until he wasn't sure which smelled worse, he or the factory. The noon whistle tooted relief, by which time the first pallet had been filled and a second started. Up one side, down the other.

 He dumped the handtruck in the alcove and pulled himself up onto a fresh pallet of empty drums. Someone had deposited it during his last cycle outside. The rutted mark of the forklift wheels showed vividly in the dust.

 "You have a cigarette?" Kenny asked.

 The old man leaped up from the shadow at the far corner, his face wrinkled with rage again, the dented green door of a locker swinging open behind him with the rustle of paper. His thin fingers still clutched the padlock.

 "What are you doing here?" he yelled. "Didn't you hear the lunch whistle?"

 "I heard it."

 "Well?"

 Kenny squinted, trying to read something from the old man's crinkled face. "I don't get you?"

 "Get up with the others to the lunch room," the old man said, barely able to expel the words.

 "I don't have any lunch," Kenny said. "It's one of the reasons I'm working here. Remember?"

 "That's not my fault, lad," the old man growled, free hand closing the locker door with care. He bent and re-threaded the lock hasp through the eye, snapping it firmly shut before rushing again. "You can't stay here."

 "I'm not going to steal anything," Kenny said. "I'm just too..."

 The old man took a step towards Kenny, reaching for his paddle as he did.

 "All right, I'm going!" Kenny cried and leaped down off the drum. Behind the old man, a piece of yellowed paper showed through the vent slit like a tongue.

 

 "Good!" the old man yelled as Kenny hurried up the aisle. "And stay there till the whistle sounds."

 The factory noise had subsided. Many of the machines had geared down to some lower, quieter mode. All of them marching in place until someone threw the proper switch. Voices rose and fell from the lunch room, and Kenny heard the laughter well before he reached the time clock door.

 A cloud of cigarette smoke greeted him, escaping into the factory as he entered. An ache rose into his chest. He eyed the rednecked men seated around the tables, their smug faces sitting back with smoke swirling around them-- cigarettes dangling from their mouths as they talked and drank and ate. The food smell haunted Kenny, too, as thick sandwiches rose and fell and slowly vanished into the maws of the men. Even the soup smelled inviting, steaming into the steamy air fresh from the dispensing machine. Somewhere above it all, a radio announced baseball scores through a broken speaker, the voice warbling out familiar names and strings of numbers. Several men jostled each other after each, slapping down dollar bills with each new set of figures.

 Some glanced up at Kenny's arrival, busy brows rising with surprise, though Kenny pushed through the foggy air like a chugging river tug, banging open the gray door to the outside. It slammed behind him. A river showed through the devastated landscape like a shard of glass. He could almost smell it as a breeze rustled through the tar-encrusted branches, bringing memories of sea salt and sea gulls and the long road up from California.

 The gray door opened again as the dark face of Dennis appeared, the large man slipping out in a shroud of cigarette smoke and workman laughter. His big black mustache was dotted with bread crumbs.

 "Not hungry, boy?" he asked, flipping out a cigarette.

 "No," Kenny said. "Any chance I can have one of those?"

 The man looked down at the pack of cigarettes in his hand and flipped out another for Kenny. He lit both filterless cigarettes with a silver fliptop lighter, then leaned back against the door and sucked in the smoke.

 Kenny spat out bits of tobacco from the tip of his tongue. The smoke scratched at the back of his throat. But if felt good deep down in his lungs, sweeping through the craving caverns. Money for food had run out at Eugene. Cigarette money long before that. He had kept back the worse of the cravings by smoking butts from the street in his pipe. When those were rare, he sucked the dry pipe. But a whole cigarette seemed a sinful indulgence.

 "Thanks," Kenny said with the expelled smoke.

 The man studied him through the haze. "You haven't eaten yet," he said. "Hard to work on an empty stomach."

 "Don't I know it," Kenny said, staring through the trees as a boat horn sounded. The pang of it reverberated through the river valley setting off something inside Kenny that the cigarette could not satisfy.

 "Oh well," the supervisor mumbled and dropped his half-smoked cigarette to the ground. He crushed it slowly with his heal, then stared out at the guard house gate for a moment before turning back to the door and the smoke and the sound of laughing men inside. "You'd better get something besides smoke in your stomach or you'll feel it later."

 As soon as the door closed, Kenny retrieved the remains of the cigarette, the pale brown leaves now mingled with tar-colored earth. He separated them gingerly and placed them carefully into his shirt pocket as the whistle sounded.

                                                       ***********

 He hurt-- muscles like sticks poking through his flesh as he walked, each limb dragging as if filled with stone. He grown used to the rhythm of lifting and pulled and didn't stop with the whistle though others in the yard had, rolling forward to finished dumping his load while others abandoned theirs where they were. All had vanished by the time he turned back towards the factory, and inside the machinery had ceased its ravings. Banks of lights shut down one after another leaving only a single avenue illuminated. Men plowed out of the dark on either side, making their way to the front. Kenny followed, the pale brown glow of the descending sun shifting through the dirty windows above.

 In the lunch room, gray men stomped hardened tar from their boots as they waited for the time clock. Dust and cigarette smoke permeated the air. Weary faces glanced at Kenny as he made his way through them to the payroll window. The office beyond was dark with only the green face of another clock staring back.

 "Something wrong, boy?" Dennis asked, dark eyes looking up at him from one of the lunch table, charts and graphs spread out before him like a deck of cards.

 "I need the slip from manpower to get paid," Kenny said. "Cooper had it this morning."

 Dennis put down his pen slowly. "I have it here," he said, pulling the pink paper out from between a stack of reports. "But I meant to talk to you earlier."

 "Talk to me about what?"

 "About working out the week with us," he said.

 "The week?" Kenny said, leaning back against the window sill, the muscles in his legs quivering slightly. He glanced around the room but other men paid no attention to them.

 "Does that mean no?" Dennis asked.

 "I was thinking about the man in the yard."

 "Ben? He's all smoke. He won't bother you again."

 "Are you sure?"

 "If he does I'll break his other leg."

 "We could use the money," Kenny said, staring down at his hands and the streaks of tar that crossed this inside of the fingers like cuts.

 "Good! Then it's settled," the man said, banging the table. "See you in the morning, boy! Go home. Get some rest. You look exhausted."

                                                       ***********

 The sea swayed in the old house, salt and brine bubbling out its gray wood like sweat and tears. Its balconies, worn with the back and forth movement of sailors wives' pacing feet, sagged a little. No Louise waited on any of its decks. But a shutter flapped and a cool breeze up from the harbor made the climb to it bearable. The gables and porches from a distance grew less and less like a tired face as Kenny came closer.

 He stopped at the bottom of the stairs and leaned against the rail. Its metal was still warm despite the vanished sun. He gripped it and pulled himself up the steps one slow incline at a time, like an old man, like his grandfather had in his waning days. The brass door knob radiated heat, too, after its long bath in sunlight. The door had swelled and stuck when he pushed it open, emitting a ripping sound when it finally caved in. The dark hall greeted him and he felt inside for the light switch. A mad array of dayglow purple emanated from the walls with the burst of light, part of the psychedelic color scheme chosen by the house's previous owners. Even the winding banister along the stairs up had not been spared. Only the worn rugs and splinter floor and stairs retained the patterns of its old life, deep threads of mustard gold and varnished wood.

 But the smell of sea and age had been vanquished by the scent of food, and Kenny frowned, sniffing slowly, some distant sense of recognition rising with its sweet aroma.

 "Louise?" he called.

 A faint reply rose from the rear of the house, muffled by the maze of rooms. Kenny turned right, stepping from the hall into the living room, trading purple for canary yellow. A small lamp glowed from a table near the window, casting the room into parade of oblong shadows. Bow-legged Victorian-styled chairs and tables added to the odd effect.

 "Louise," he called again.

 "I'm in the kitchen," the voice replied, cheerily, rising out from the rear of the house, through a double door to the left. A bright white light glowed from the kitchen. He paused in front of the fire place and removed the crumbled tobacco from his pocket, piling it carefully on the mantel for later use. Then, he stepped into the dinning room. The light from the kitchen shimmered off its bright blue walls, but did not pierce its dark corners where sideboards and china closet made it feel like his grandfather's house again. The darkness made it seem almost normal compared to the other rooms -- though a cot had been added in one corner.

 The mad-max painters had left the kitchen alone, choosing white rather than something psychedelic. Louise stood at the stove in a swell of steam, pots and pans boiling around her. She stirred each in turn with a large wooden spoon, the odor of cooking food filling the air instead of tar. Kenny's stomach grumbled.

 A pale pink sunset glowed through the window above the sink, coloring Louise's cheeks, the worn Formica counter and table cluttered with implements of a meal: dishes, bowls, silverware, glasses and napkins, giving all a dream-like haze.

 Louise looked like a country wife with her hair folded back into a bun, a drooping granny dress sweeping the floor as she moved. But the hippie ride up from California showed on her cracked lips and sunburned forehead.

 "You're home earlier than I thought," she said.

 "What's all this?" he asked, waving a hand towards her preparations.

 "What does it look like?"

 "Paradise," he said and leaned against the door frame feeling himself melt in place. "Where did you get the dress?"

 "In the attic," she said, turning off the flame beneath the steaming pot. She gripped the handle with two oven gloves and carried it across to the table. "There's lots of clothing up there. Do you like it?"

 "You look like my grandmother."

 Louise looked up, a flicker of doubt showed in her eyes. "Is that bad?"

 "No," he murmured and staggered to a chair, sagging into it, his legs suddenly too weak to keep him up. His jeans showed slashes of tar across the legs that looked like dried blood. "I liked my grandmother."

 "Are you all right?" Louise asked with a note of concern, small crow marks thickening at ends of her eyes.

 "I'm just tired, I guess," he said, examining the bowl of steaming rice at the center of the table, white mounds that looked strangely unadorned. "Did you get that in the attic, too?"

 "Don't be silly," Louise said, plopping out the contents of the pot into a second bowl, thick, yellow paste emitting the sweet smell Kenny had caught from the door. "They gave it to me downtown."

 "Who gave it to you?"

 "You know," Louise said waving the spoon towards the side of the house that faced down hill. "One of those places that gives food away. Like that place in Berkeley. A government surplus something or other."

 "What's the yellow stuff?"

 "Cornmeal."

 Of course! It hit him like a blow to his chest, full of the early Saturday morning images he remembered as a kid, his uncle standing at the kitchen counter rolling balls of yellow.

 "I should have remembered," he said.

 "Remembered? What do you mean?"

 "My uncle used to fish with it."

 "Corn mean? I thought people used worms?"

 "Fishermen will use anything they can, from potato chips to sirloin steak."

 "And your uncle used corn meal?"

 "He's the only one I ever heard of," Kenny said. "It was his little secret. I'd wake up to the smell of it every Saturday morning. Grandma used to complain saying it smelled up the house for days. But I didn't mind. Sometimes I even helped him mix it up. Egg, pancake syrup and corn meal."

 "Did he ever catch anything?"

 "Sure. He was the hit of the river. But he never told anybody what he used. What else did your government people give you?"

 "Jelly and tea," Louise said. "They didn't have much left. I just missed out on the cheese."

 "Just how did you find this place?"

 "I went looking for you," she said. "I was afraid..." She stared down at her hands.

 "I wasn't that angry," Kenny said.

 "But you didn't want to go and I made you," she said.

 "Let's not fight old arguments," he said. "Did you go down to manpower looking for me?"

 She nodded. "They old me you went to work. I found the place on the way back. It had a free clinic, too."

 "And?"

 "They said I should gain some weight, but the baby seemed fine."

 "No word about the acid?"

 "I didn't ask," she said staring straight up at him, her eyes angry. "Let's not talk about it any more. Just eat before the food gets cold."

 He put a spoonful of rice onto his plate and then one of corn meal. He took a mouthful of the rice. It tasted bland, but seemed to fill the need that had been throbbing in him since lunch. The corn meal went down less easily, sticking in the back of his throat as he tried to swallow.

 "Fish food," he hissed and put down the fork and grabbed for the cup of weak tea near his elbow, washing away the taste.

 "You didn't use the jelly packets," Louise scolded and tossed him a plastic packet marked grape. "With the jelly it almost tastes like cake."

 "It'll always taste like fish food to me," Kenny said, but took another forkful. Alternating it with salted rice and quick swallows of tea, it managed to fill. He even reached for more when Louise gasped.

 "My God! What happened to your hands?"

 Smudged of black tar clung to Kenny's fingers, exaggerating the knuckles and nails. They looked like the old man's hands. He laughed.

 "It comes with the job."

 "Well, you're not going to eat like that," Louise chided, pushing herself up from the table. "And that smell-- don't they let you wash when you leave?"

 "To tell you the truth I was only too glad to get out. I didn't even think about washing."

 "Up with you," she said, grabbing hold of his arm. "We'll take care of that right now."

 She dragged him across the room to the sink where she twisted on the hot water and reached for the dishwashing liquid.

 "So Cooper was right," Kenny mumbled.

 Louise looked up at him, her eyes questioning him as she squeezed out droplets of lemon soap onto his hands. "Cooper?"

 "The factory manager. He said people got used to the smell."

 "Not me. You smell like a paved road."

 "My uncle would call it an honest smell."

 "That doesn't make it any prettier," Louise said, scraping at the tar with her fingernails. "I suppose he smelled like this, too."

 "No, my family are boatmen. They smelled like woodshavings and sweat."

 "Just as bad," Louise said, rinsing my hands, staring at the smudges which had not come off, obviously dissatisfied. Kenny reached for the dishtowel; she slapped his hand.

 "I won't have tar in my towels," she said.

 "Your towels?"

 Red splotches spread across her cheeks; her gaze jerked away towards the now dark window above the sink. "You know what I mean," she said.

 "Do I?"

 "Never mind whose towels they are," she said, still avoiding his stare. She pulled open the doors to the cabinet below the sink and drew out a can of comet cleanser. Kenny's hand jerked out of hers.

 "You're not going to use that on me? It'll take the skin off."

 "Hold still," she said and grabbed at his hands again, drawing them over the sink. "I just want to get the worst of it off. After supper you can take a bath."

 She shook a light dusting of green powder over his knuckles and scrubbed gently, pausing at intervals to study the results. After a few attempts, she sighed.

 "All right," she said. "The hands'll do for now-- but ugh, you're clothing's ruined. I'll never get the stains out of them, or the smell."

 "May I sit now, mother?"

 "Don't tease me, Kenny."

 Still she motioned him to sit, his hands like boiled lobsters, clumsy and red as he picked up the fork and spoon. They tinkled and he half expected to see blood boiling up from the pores. Then, staring across the table at Louise he started to laugh.

 "What's so funny?" Louise asked sharply, her gaze looking around uncomfortably self-conscious.

 "Us," he said. "We look so domesticated sitting here like this. You in your granny dress, me in my work clothes."

 "What's wrong with that?"

 "Nothing," Kenny said, the humor dying as fast as it had come. He patted his pockets for his pipe. The ache in his middle had been satisfied and he felt strangely sedated, more comfortable than he'd felt since he'd come west. Even without tobacco or some more euphoric weed in his pipe, he seemed high, the weariness of the day working up into his muscles and bones. "It's the house," he said finally. "We've been on the road for so long, I've forgotten what civilization is like."

 Louise stared down into her plate, moving the food around with her fork. "it sounds like you don't like the idea of being a husband-- or a father."

 "I was only making an observation," he said, pushing away from the table. "Have you see my pipe?"

 Louise glanced up, her eyes catching on the lights as they came to life again. "Oh yes," she said. "I forgot. I got something for you, too."

 "For me?"

 She put down her fork and folded her napkin, then rose slowly and hurried across the room to one of the kitchen drawers, yanking it open as the wood swelled with the heat. A moment of routing through the contents produced a brown pouch. She pushed this into Kenny's hands.

 "I know it isn't the same as cigarettes," she said. "But I figured it might hold you over until.."

 He looked down at the pouch. It was a packet of cherry blend pipe tobacco. He grinned and gave her a pecking kiss on the cheek.

 "It's wonderful," he said. "Let me go find my pipe."

 He eased back through the dark room to the mustard colored living room, where his pipe rested at an angle on the fire place mantel. The pipe of cigarette tobacco at its side like gunpowder, black with the tar-stained earth from which it was recovered. He took up the pipe and left the tobacco, stuffing the bowl with the slightly dry cherry blend leaves. He struck a match on the mantel side and puffed the tobacco to life. Its smell erased the scent of tar from around him.

 "Before you get too comfortable, go take a bath," Louise called from the kitchen.

 Kenny took a few more tokes from the pipe then let the ash die, leaving the pipe where he had found it on the mantel. The stairs greeted him like the face of a cliff and his legs struggled to make each step, hands clinging to the banister like an old man's. Guitar music filtered into the house from across the street, and through the window above the door, Kenny saw a hippie seated on the stoop of another house, playing accidental jazz. It reminded him of more peaceful times back in LA, before the money had run out, before news of Louise's pregnancy had sent them on a panicked journey north.

 Down in the belly of the house, Louise's unmusical voice rose, singing soft folk tunes from her mountain days in Colorado, songs about race cars and motorized cowboys. A twinge of jealousy triggered deep in Kenny's chest.

 The hall at the top of the stairs greeted him with the dark open mouths of several doors as the banister continued around to another stair. The first door to the right led into the bathroom. It, too, had missed the strokes of the mad painter, rising into a pale white when Kenny flicked on the light. The Victorian bathtub, toilet and sink squatted inside, their short legs resting upon an oddly tiled floor. The interlocking pattern made him dizzy. He turned on the spigot and let the water run into the tub, then sat down wearily on the closed toilet lid. The steam rose into the room around him, pressing into his nostrils and chest. He sucked in greedy breaths of it.

 "Are you in the tub yet?" Louise called from downstairs.

 Almost," he said and slowly stripped of his soiled clothing, the blackened fabric peeling away like skin. He tested the water with his toe, then let the whole foot sink into the clear liquid. Heat seeped into the bone, massaging the aching muscles and he lowered himself into it, feeling the water's fingers shredding the hours of toil from him the way he had his clothing. Sleepishness rose into him as the water lapped at his chin. His hands looked like bloated fish beneath the surface, streak with a pattern of black.

 "And just how did you expect to dry yourself off when you got out?" Louise asked, appearing suddenly in the doorway, folded towels pressed to her chest, complete with wash cloths and bar of soap. The empty soap dish gaped foolishly at Kenny from the wall behind the tub, as did the towel rank near the sink. He grinned up at Louise as he took possession of the soap.

 "I guess I would have used my clothes," he said.

 Louise's mouth twisted down into a sour expression. "And you would have come out as dirty as you went in."

 The soap slipped out of his wet fingers and plopped into the water, floating away like a little white boat, brand name carved into its top. Louise eased herself down onto the closed toilet.

 "Did you get paid today?" she asked.

 "Friday," he said, staring down into the water at the soap as it sailed under his elevate knee.

 "Oh," she mumbled, sounding disappointed. He looked up. She stared at her hand and the broken and bloody cuticles. Dishwashing and the road had taken their toll on them.

 "Did you need something in particular?" Kenny asked, recognizing the symptom of something else on her mind. "I mean besides food."

 "A few things for the baby," she muttered, but didn't look up.

 "Like what?"

 Her mouth tightened. "Things."

 "Diapers?"

 "No," she said. "Maternity things. My clothing's getting tighter, if hadn't noticed. I hardly own any underwear that fits."

 "That's all? Underwear?"

 "No, Kenny McDonald. That is not all. I need vitamins and powders and a better diet."

 "Vitamins?"

 "Yes. They told me that I should get some."

 "They?"

 "Those people at the center where I got the food. I told you they had a clinic there, too."

 Kenny sank deeper into the water, the image of his own face floating between the clouds of soap suds. It looked wrinkled and old like Casey's face trapped in a vat of churning tar.

 "Maybe they should have given you vitamins while they were at it," he said, wiping away the image in the water with his hand.

 "They would have, but they ran out of them," Louise said.

 "I see, Portland, Oregon has suddenly developed a flood of pregnant women clamoring for welfare."

 "It isn't welfare!" Louise said, bolting up, the towels tumbling to the floor a her feet. Her face reddened as her fingers balled into fists.

 "Calm down," Kenny said. "Your rich parents are peeping over your shoulder now. It's okay to take charity if we need it."

 "It isn't welfare," Louise hissed through clenched teeth.

 "All right," Kenny said, lifting his dripping hands in a sign of peace. "Let's not harp on it then. Where exactly did you figure on getting these things?"

 She stared at him a moment, blinking slowly, then the rage eased from her eyes, and she sat again. "I found a second-hand store downtown," she said.

 "You would wear second-hand clothing?"

 "If I had to."

 He studied her face, looking for cracks in the mask. But she seemed sadder than he remembered, and tired, with the mark of a mother indelibly carved into the flesh.

 "We'll go down Friday when Manpower pays me," he said.

 "Will we have enough-- I mean, after only one day..."

 "I have the job till the end of the week," Kenny said, staring into the water again.

 ""Kenny! That's wonderful!" she shouted and leaped towards him as if planning to join him in the tub. "A Job. I can't believe our luck."

 "It only for a week, Louise," Kenny said. "And I'm not sure I want to go back at all."

 "But you have to go back," Louise said, a sharp note of rising panic curdling her previous elation.

 "Have to?"

 "For the baby."

 "There are other job," Kenny said, his fingers rising up again out through the islands of foam. Each was stained black with tar. Each looked like storm clouds or used steel wool.

 "But there's no guarantee," Louise said. "Not with the dock strike. Here someone's given you a whole week's work. That's wonderful."

 "For you, it's wonderful."

 Louise stopped, catching something in Kenny tone. Her eyes went cold again. "Oh no," she moaned. "You're not going to start that again."

 "Start what?"

 "All that nonsense about you getting trapped in a job."

 "I don't mind working," Kenny said. "But it has to be something I want to do."

 "What about me, Kenny," Louise said. "You don't think I feel trapped with the baby growing inside of me?"

 "I know you're scared," Kenny said. "But I'm not going to become someone's slave just because you're pregnant. That's probably happened to Casey."

 "Who's Casey?" Louise asked.

 "An old man who's been working down there for fifty years. You can feel how much he hates it, walking around in his own little alcove as if it was a cage."

 "A week is not going to tie you down, Kenny."

 Kenny looked up straight into Louise's confrontational eyes. "No. But a week will give you a taste for more."

 She sagged. "So you don't care about the baby after all."

 "But I do."

 "Then prove it, Kenny. Work out the week with this job."

 

 Kenny sighed. The water was cooling quickly around, a scum beginning to form around its edge. "All right," he said softly.

 "Thank you, Kenny," Louise said, clutching at his arm. "Thinks'll work out. You'll see."

 "Not if I stay in this tub all night," he said in a weak attempt at humor, lifting his waterlogged toes from the suds.

 But Louise's gaze lingered on the momentarily exposed thigh. She smiled sly and glanced out the bathroom door towards the bedroom.

 "Maybe you should hurry up and dry off," she said, recovering the towels from the floor. She stacked them on the toilet lid then paused at the door, looking at him again briefly with a mixture of expressions before she vanished into the darkened hall.

 Kenny climbed out, fingers slipping on the wet bug. The murky water remained like a polluted pool, wash cloth and soap floating dead on its surface, both streaked with black. He dried himself, letting the towel drop down among the other remnants of the day, forming a pile of tarnished cloth in the corner, a chameleon's skin he no longer needed.

 The cool hall air teased his naked limbs as he passed through it to the bedroom. Louise lay in wait on the bed, devoid of her clothing, too, smiling up in invitation he couldn't refuse. He swept down into her arms and struggled for a while in a valiant effort at love making. But day's labors had left him wounded and he tumbled off into sleep even as they fell apart. He woke hours later in the dark, Louise's pale body turned away from him like a beached fish, the steady sound of her breathing rising and falling among the night sounds. Crying cats and chirping crickets, fog horns and the bassy voices of ship sailing out to sea. In-between each there was emptiness.

 "Kenny?"

 "Yes?"

 "Everything is going to be all right, isn't it?"

 "Of course," Kenny said and touched her thigh. But the sounds of morning already strained the night, the hoot of a commuter train wrestling the darkness into submission. Soon the whole world would wake, demanding his return to work.

                                                        **********

 The room glowed red, its dayglow magic coming to life with the full glory of the sun, as startling as a nuclear explosion. He squinted against the brightness, then shut his eyes tight, drawing in a deep breath for a second attempt. His fingers felt the sheet behind him to where Louise lay. He felt the softness of her swollen breast and stoked it.

 "Wake up, honey," He said and turned and nibbled at her ear.

 She shuttered and turned, her face scarred with the ribbed pattern of the sheet. Her blue eyes dilated.

 "You don't mean now?" she whispered.

 "Why not?"

 "Because you'll be late for work."

 "So?"

 "I'm serious, Kenny."

 "So am I?" he said, pressing his lips into the nape of her neck. "Tonight I'll be too tired."

 She stared at him, then sighed, and melted into his arms as the temperature rose in the room, boiling them down into sweat and semen from which Kenny later crawled, his and her limbs sprawling across the bed as if in death. Then, both fell back to sleep.

 When he opened his eyes again, the day looked older, the angle of light across the red ceiling looked more extreme. The cool morning crispness had wilted into something pathetically moist. Boat traffic sounded from the river despite the dock strike, accompanied by the groaning of opening and closing bridges.

 Kenny slipped out of bed, feet striking the hot floor with two sharp slaps. Behind him, the bed remained dented where he had lain. Louise's folded form beside it, cradled it a fetal position. He tip-toed to the bathroom where his clothing from the day before sat in a pile in the corner. He picked up the pants with two fingers. The smell of the factory swirled around him like a bad memory. Through the angled doorway, he could just see the leg of a clean pair poking out of the top of a half-unpacked duffel bag in the corner of the bedroom, Louise's hand sprawled across it. He cringed and pulled on the dirty pants. The tar had stiffened over night.

 In the mirror a grizzly face stared back, frizzled hair and fuzzy jaw and eyes that looked more haunted than usual, though not quite as sad. Kenny grinned and ran the brush uselessly across his head a few times before turning back towards the stairs. He was half way down when Louise called. He stopped and turned as she appeared at the top, a thin yellow blanket wrapped around her torso toga fashion.

 "Good morning," Kenny said cheerfully..

 "I made you lunch," she said.

 "Really?"

 "It's in the kitchen."

 He took the short cut through the door at the rear of the hall, past mops and brooms. A paper bag stood stiffly on the kitchen table, its top neatly folded. The clock above the stove clicked, drawing his attention to the time.

 "Oh God!" he moaned, grabbed the bag and sprinted towards the front door, shouting his good byes over his shoulder.

                                                       ***********

 "Mr. McDonald!"

 Kenny stopped mid-stride half way across the lunch room floor. Cooper's angry round face bobbed up and down behind the payroll window like a child's distorted balloon, vanishing onto to reappear at the door.

 "Perhaps I didn't make myself clear here yesterday. We want our employees here on time."

 "I'm sorry," Kenny said. "I overslept."

 Cooper's forehead crinkled as he snorted. "Very well," he grumbled. "Just see that it doesn't happen again. Is that understood?"

 Kenny nodded. Cooper waved him towards the door and stared until it slammed behind Kenny. The smell of the factory hit like a blow to his chest, its putrid stench a thousand times worse than Kenny's clothing had suggested. He sucked in air for a minute without moving, then, when the smell seemed to fade, he moved on, weaving towards the aisle Cooper had led him down the day before. The huge vats rumbled like giants on either side.

 "Hey you!" someone yelled from high up on one of the platforms. Kenny squinted up and could make out the figure of Dennis leaning over the rail waving for him to stop. The man hurried down one of the ladders and across the floor, dusting his palms on his pants. "You're late, boy!"

 "I overslept."

 Dennis' dark eyes registered the same annoyed expression Cooper's had. "Don't push it, boy," he mumbled. "Bad enough Coop doesn't like your hair, don't go making waves."

 "My hair?" Kenny said, fingers rising to touch the shanks that encircled his face. "He never said anything to me."

 "He doesn't have to say things to you, boy," Dennis said. "He tells me and I'm telling you."

 But it was Dennis' gaze that lingered on Kenny's hair, eyes dilating as they studied the neglected tangles that the brush had not been able to penetrate.

 "I'm sorry," Kenny said.

 "Don't be. Just get your butt to work. Last thing I need is the old man bitching at me, too."

                                                       ***********

 The hand truck was missing when Kenny got to the alcove. So was Casey. Kenny pulled himself up onto one of the barrel and looked around at Casey's world-- particularly at the dented green locker tucked in the back. Paint pealed from its dents and rust had set in. Strangely enough, it reminded Kenny of the hold man's face, as if both had gone through some significant change together.

 Kenny eased closer and studied bits of yellowed newsprint that poked out through the air vents. Snatches of words making their message meaningless. But one dated corner read 1898. The lock was thick with tar and finger prints.

 "And what do you think you're looking at, Lad?" the old man barked. The thump of the falling hand truck announcing his return.

 Kenny whirled around. "I wasn't...."

 "You were snooping," the old man said, hobbling forward, his face twisted into a mask of rage. "You're just like the rest of them, sticking your nose where it doesn't belong!"

 Kenny's face reddened and warmed as he stepped away from the locker and the advancing old man. "I didn't mean anything by it," he said, circling around till the old man stood where he had been. "I was just curious that's all."

 "About something that's none of your business," the old man said and spat, then eyed Kenny again with a single raised brow. "Actually, lad, I'm surprised to see you. Your kind usually doesn't last more than a day around here."

 "My kind?"

 The old man waved a stained hand at Kenny's hair as if it marked some kind of tribe, his glassy stare remained fixed upon his face. "You know what I'm talking about," he said. There's no need for me to tell you what you already know."

 "Don't tell me you don't like my hair either?" Kenny asked, a little annoyed by the repetition.

 "You hair has nothing to do with things," the old man said. "Not if you're here to work. And there's plenty of it to be done. So get on with it."

 He waved the same hand like a wand towards the line of barrels he had filled that morning, then shuffled away raising a dusty trail from locker to the first set of stairs. These he climbed with wounded dignity, dragging up each foot before taking the next stair. It was as if he had taken a leap in age over night, looking more weary than he had. From the top he cast another wary look, studying Kenny, the locker and the waiting work.

 "Well, lad?" he asked coldly.

 Kenny stared for a moment, then grabbed up the handtruck and fitted a barrel to it. He paused and saw the old man's stiff figure slowly stirring, white hair across his wrinkled brow. But the man's gaze did not look down into the black broth, but outward over the sea of vats before him, and their slowly moving figures like bobbing corks.

 Kenny moved on with the wobbly contraption, every other wheel striking at the pavement with a hollow slap. In the yard, Kenny discovered the old man had been busy at both ends of the production line, leaving a half dozen untended barrels on the ground around the pallet-- some at precarious angles which Kenny had to straighten and stack.

 He had barely finished this when the whistle sounded announcing the morning break. The men at the far end of the yard leaped down from the back of the truck and exited through the gate. Kenny watched their slow trek along the far fence till they vanished behind the pallet wall, headed in the direction of the gray door out front. Some waved for Kenny to follow, mistaking him at a distance as one of their own.

 He turned the other way and plunged back through the large black door into the factory, dragging the handtruck behind him. He stopped at Casey's alcove. The old man was bent before the locker, blackened fingers twirling out the combination, oblivious to Kenny's stare. He grumbled and cursed when the lock didn't open and repeated the process, yanking the hackle free with the rattle of the thin metal door.

 Yellowed paper fluttered out like tattered strips of confetti. Some flapping from inside the door where cheap, cracked cellophane tape kept them from flying away. Most were pieces of crumbling newsprint with photographs years out of date.

 "What are those?" Kenny asked.

 The old man leaped up and around, face and torso twisted into an expression of animal rage. He slammed the locker door sending a spray of tattered paper into the air around him, and glared at Kenny

 "What did I tell you about snooping?" he roared, delicate voice echoing like a bat's call among the metal vats.

 "I wasn't snooping," Kenny said. "I just came back to get my food." He indicated the folded bag on top of one of the drums.

 The old man barely looked at it, gaze narrowing as his jaw shifted from side to side. He spat once into the dust then motioned towards the bag.

 "Take your food and be off with you," he growled, and waited until Kenny grabbed up the bag and started away, his hard stare burning at the back of Kenny's neck until the angle of vats intervened.

                                                       ***********

 Kenny maneuvered into a vacant seat at one of the tables, wide-shouldered men shuffling aside to make room. Some grumbled, but most remained fixed upon their own coffee cups and newspapers. A general sleepiness seemed to hover over the room. Their eyes were glazed with it as they puffed their cigarettes and mumbled about sports. Someone had propped open the gray door letting air sift through: hot, stifling air, but with a hint of river in it.

 "How are the Mets doing?" Kenny asked, glancing over the shoulder of the man beside him, the columns of scores listed side by side on the sheet like tiny grave markers. The man glanced up, a deep and doubting ridge forming between his brows.

 "The Mets?"

 "It's a baseball team," Kenny explained.

 "I know what they are," the man growled, his gaze doing a quick study of Kenny's face and hair. "The question is why anybody cares?"

 "Sorry," Kenny mumbled and turned to his still-unfold lunch bag. He had half hoped to hear the banter of his uncles routing for the team through the lean years. Now as World Champions, no one seemed to care.

 The gray door opened then slammed shut. The man from the yard the day before stood just inside, clutching a can in one hand as he adjusted his greasy hat with the other. He glared at Kenny.

 "Hey!" one of the other men shouted. "Who closed the door?"

 "What the hell's the hippie doing in here?" he asked.

 No one spoke. The closed door had cut circulation in the room, though a small fan in the corner stirred the columns of cigarette smoke.

 "Ah leave the kid alone, Ben," one man near the wall said.

 "Yeah," the man beside Kenny said. "The boy's got enough problems. He's a Met's fan."

 A peal of laughter rippled through the men. Ben's thick brows folded down as his gaze shifted from face to face. "You can joke after what he did to me?"

 "Just sit down, Ben," someone else said.

 "Like Hell I will! I'm putting the little bastard out before he goes and hurts someone else."

 He took a stumbling step forward. But several men rose, including the man beside Kenny.

 "You don't hear to good, Ben. Sit down before you have another accident. The boy's not bothering anybody sitting here."

 "But..."

 "I said sit!"

 Ben shifted the cane to other hand, swaying a little for a moment as if waiting for others to take his side. When no one did, he grumbled and shoved his way into a vacant seat, glaring at Kenny through the forest of propped arms and tilted head. But he said nothing more.

 Kenny slowly unfolded the bag. The smell of corn meal seeped out. Two chunks of yellow biscuit filled the bottom, grape jam oozing out from between them.

 "Fish food," Kenny mumbled, drawing questioning glances from several men. He broke off a small corner and stuffed the overly sweet piece into his mouth. The cake was dry despite the jam and it took him several swallows to get it down. Still, it filled him, the way it had the night before and for that he was grateful. He ate about a third of what Louise had packed, then folded the rest back into the bag. He rose, wiped his sticky hands on his pants and moved towards the water cooler.

 Ben grabbed his arm.

 "I ain't through with you, hippie," he whispered, but alot of the air had gone out of him, and Kenny detached himself, took his sip of water and pushed through the door into the factory again.

                                                       ***********

 The old man sat alone, his short legs dangling over the side of a barrel like a child's. His lunch box sat open beside him, an assortment of foods spilling out in neat plastic bags. The broken shell of a boiled egg littered the metal surface mixed with bread crumbs and bits of potato. His head was bent forward, staring down at the stack of yellowed paper piled on his lap. His shaky fingers turned them with exaggerated effort, as if each was a precious document. To Kenny, who had stopped at the mouth of the alcove, the old man's face had lost its lines, shadows from the angled light disguising him. Even the white hair might have been the blond hair of some younger version of himself, seated at the side of the road waiting for a ride.

 Suddenly the clear eyes rose, then clouded, staring straight at Kenny like two shards of broken glass. His hands clapped together, sweeping up the crumbling paper as if nothing but junk, bits of yellow slipping through his fingers to the floor.

 "And what did I tell you about sneaking around?" the old man screeched, his face now chiseled wood, lines cutting deep into the flesh, molding him into something hateful. He threw the pages into the locker and slammed its door, spinning the combination with an enraged twist.

 "I finished early," Kenny explained, easing into the alcove, but slowly, not wishing to startle the man any more than he had. He lifted himself up backwards onto one of the barrels farthest from the old man. "Don't you ever take breaks with the others?"

 "No," the old man grumbled, backing against the locker with his hands folded down in front of his stomach, bits of egg shell and bread crumb still clinging to his pants.

 "Why not?" Kenny asked.

 "Because I don't like them and they don't like me," the old man said, gaze snapping up, still enraged. "And you're just like them."

 "You don't even know me," Kenny said, taking his pipe from his pocket, the bowl stuffed full of cherry blend.

 "And I don't want to," the old man said, waving him out of existence with a sideward gesture of his hand. "And don't you go lighting up that fog machine around here."

 "I wasn't going to," Kenny lied, sucking on the dry mouthpiece, tasting the biting edge of countless other burnt offerings. Many of them cigarette butts from along the roadside, scented now with the aromatic cherry flavor of the unlighted tobacco. Its sweetness did nothing to counter the corn meal and jelly, nor helped ease the ache in Kenny's lungs. He closed his eyes and leaned back against one of the girders. The metal was surprisingly cool. High up above the factory, the whistle sounded calling him back to work.

                                                       ***********

 Corn meal and rice waited for him at home, piled into warring factions: Yellow in one bowl, white in the other. He stared down at both and the assorted accouterments: pig-shaped salt & pepper shakes, knives, forks and spoons. His stained hands gripped the utensils as if over a feast.

 "Is something wrong?" Louise asked, seated again at the far end of the table, her eye lids painted azure from some discovered makeup in the attic, as was her dress dotted with white and yellow flowers.

 "I'm not a fish," Kenny mumbled.

 Her cheeks reddened. "I'm sorry, but it's all we have," she said.

 He put down the knife and fork and rose.

 "Where are you going?" she asked, a note of hurt in her voice.

 "For a smoke," Kenny said and wandered back through the dark house to the living room.

 Silver light shimmered through the front bay windows from the street, bathing the room in a glow too dim for color, like a old black & white snap-shot emphasizing the features of the previous century. Kenny fell into the arm chair with one leg slung over its arm prodded loose the packed tobacco from the bowl of his pipe which he been able to light up at work. The flair of the match brought back the horrors of his generation, the stark canary yellow walls leaping out of the darkness like a bad acid trip.

 Louise appeared a moment later, framed by the dining room door. Even in the twilight, Kenny noted the snugness of the dress around her lower abdomen, not quite yet hinting the shape of a baby.

 "You really should eat something," Louise said, her voice low and apologetic, matching the squinting expression of pain. She might have had a tooth ache or a migraine.

 "I'm not hungry," Kenny said, puffing slowly on the pipe, sending up plumes of cherry-flavored smoke, some of which caught in the silver light like streams of gray water.

 "But you've worked so hard," Louise protested. "It'll wear you out unless you eat."

 "I'll be fine," he said. "I just need to sit here for a while. All right?"

 The tone came out too harsh and loud, and it echoed in the upper stories of the house like someone else's voice, like his uncle's voice calling down him as a boy over some blunder.

 "Can I sit with you?" Louise asked.

 "If you want to," Kenny said coldly, staring over the mouth of his pipe at her approaching face, how the glowing embers painted her slightly orange. A silver and orange goddess looking much like she had in Colorado, only now with cracks around her mouth and eyes.

 "Can I turn on a light?"

 "No."

 "Please."

 "I don't want to see the paint."

 She slid across the room to the side of the chair, but made no move to pull the lamp's chain. "I don't think the paint's so bad," she said softly, leaning into the chair like a child, her head against the side of its high back.

 "Not if we lived in a head shop," Kenny said, puffing deeply, feeling the smoke swirl around inside of him, clouding out the pain of the day and the ache for better food.

 "We could repaint it," she said, touching Kenny's slung leg tentatively, her stubby fingers pressing into the flesh through the tar-coated fabric.

 He looked up at her and frown. "Why would be want to do that?"

 "Because you don't like it," Louise said.

 "But we're only going to be living here for two weeks."

 "I know," she said, slumping into the chair side as if too tired to stand, her gaze moving from one part of the room to another, studying the fire place, furniture and view of the street. "How much do you think it would cost to rent a place like this?"

 "We can't afford it."

 "But you have a job now, Kenny."

 "A temporary job. For one week."

 "But you could find other work. We could rent this place for a month Friday."

 "A week's pay wouldn't pay the rent on this," Kenny said, pipe stem slipping off his lower lip, leaving behind the bitter taste of tobacco resin. He shifted to see her face better. "Even if it did, we wouldn't have anything left to eat with. Unless of course all we ate was corn meal."

 "I could if we had to."

 "Not me," Kenny said. "I'm about corn mealed out."

 "I could go back to the place downtown. I'm sure they'll have something else by next week."

 "And if they don't? We can't depend on charity to make things work, Louise."

 "I could get a job. That would help."

 "You're pregnant."

 "So?"

 "So in six months you'd have to quit, then where would we be?"

 "Six months richer and in a home."

 "Stuck in a house we can't afford."

 "You'll find a better job."

 Kenny put the pipe down on the lamp table and lowered his leg. He stared more directly at her. "I don't even have a job now," he said.

 She glanced towards the open window through which the sound of water came-- a distant lapping south from the river as the tide rose against the wooden piers at the bottom of the hill. It was the whispering sound that underlined everything here at night. Kenny listened to it, and for a moment imagined them living at the turn of the century, waiting on incoming ships.

 "So what do we do in two weeks when the rent runs out?" she asked without looking at Kenny.

 "I don't know," Kenny admitted, rubbing his eyes, the smell of tar and cherry blend tobacco thick on his fingers. "We'll think of something."

 "Like what? Going back on the road?"

 "What's wrong with that?"

 Even in the dark the horror showed, sweeping across Louise's face like a crack of sudden lightning, her dilated eyes filled with remembered terrors.

 "You promised, Kenny," she said. "You promised we would stop here."

 "I know," Kenny said. "But we both thought things would be better here. People down south said Portland was heaven, and it's not."

 "It could be."

 "I don't think so."

 "Damn it, Kenny," Louise said, twisting my head around, her hard, short fingers pressing deeply into Kenny's cheeks as she gripped his jaw. "Going on the road isn't the answer to everything. We can't keep wandering around waiting until the baby's born before we settle down."

 He pushed her hands away. "We'll find something before that."

 Louise straightened and took a full step back from him, fading slightly, yet not her hard stare. "No we won't," she said bitterly. "We'll just stop on the side of the road and have the baby there-- like some Chicano field hand. I should have suspected this was coming the minute you started mumbling about feeling trapped."

 "When did I say that?"

 "Not in so many words, Kenny. But you say it just the same. You seem to think anything short of wandering the highways is part of a plot to put you in prison. The next thing you'll say is we ought to go east to see that nutty friend of yours."

 "Hank is not nutty."

 "Then why hasn't he answered any of your letters?"

 Kenny stared at his fingers, picking at a piece of tar as if at a scab. "I don't know," he mumbled.

                                                       ***********

 An hour later, after his bath and after the light had been extinguished, he was still awake, lying on his back staring at the shifting lights that moved across the ceiling. Headlights from the road diluted by the trees and buildings sliced apart in the shades of gray. His legs throbbed and his hands had begun to blister where they'd gripped the hand truck, pulsing with the beat of his heart like two dying fish at his side.

 "Kenny?" Louise asked, her bare back just visible among the pile of sheet and pills as if half covered in sand. "Are you still awake?"

 "Yeah."

 "But why? Aren't you tired?"

 "I'm plenty tired," Kenny growled. "But you've got me thinking about this stupid house."

 Louise turned, her hopeful expression revealed for a moment in the slanted beam of a passing car. "What about the house?"

 "It reminds me of us," Kenny said. "Somewhere under all this hippie crap there are some solid virtues."

 Kenny's fingers brushed the wall, his stained thumbnail picking at a bubble of red paint until it came free. Beneath it appeared an archeology of previous paintings: blue, tan, green, brown, down to the root of the plaster itself. Each layer hinted at a cycle of life. New hopes brought as new residents sought to erase the past.

 "I don't understand, Kenny," Louise said, in an obviously disappointed tone.

 "Never mind," he mumbled and turned away from her, the whole bed bouncing with his changing position, a sea of springs rising and falling beneath him. "It's not important."

 "It must be. Something's keeping you up."

 Kenny breathed slowly through his teeth, then said: "Do you remember Sledge Hammer Harry?"

 "Oh please!" she said in disgust. "Why bring him up now?"

 "He used to lecture me about you."

 "Over what?"

 "He said you were going to lead me down a crooked path."

 "I don't see the point."

 "There's a man like him down at the factory."

 "Warning you against me?"

 "No, but he seems to think there's something worth-while under all my hair."

 "So?"

 "I hate it there, Louise."

                                                       ***********

 Kenny woke dripping sweat. The sheet clung to his legs like strands of white sea weed. He kicked at it, but couldn't free his feet and had to bend up and work the knots loose. Louise turned, her half-opened eyes still dull with sleep,

 "Are you all right?" she asked. "You were acting very strange last night."

 "Was I?" Kenny asked without looking up. Louise turned, her bare breasts plopping down on the bed one after the other.

 "Yes," she said. "And you don't look too much better this morning."

 "I'm all right," he mumbled and stretched back again. "I was thinking about staying home."

 "Kenny!" Louise shouted, springing up as pillows and sheets fell to the floor. "You're not going to start this again? I won't call in for you like I did in LA"

 "I was only kidding," Kenny said and swung his legs off the bed.

 "It was a poor joke, Kenny, and you know it."

 "Yeah," he mumbled, grabbing his clean clothing from the duffel bag as he hobbled towards the bathroom. He dressed quickly and headed down the stair. Louise's voice yelled behind him.

 "Don't forget your lunch."

                                                       ***********

 Casey hummed an old Irish ballad Kenny had heard from his grandmother as a kid, something about home and ale and the ache of heart both seemed to bring. Kenny stopped at the mouth of the alcove and watched the old man flipped through the crumbled yellowed photos from the day before-- now lined up a top several barrel like baseball cards, his wrinkled fingers smoothing out each as if a precious document. Then, his sharp us flickered up and noticed Kenny staring.

 "You again!" the old man bellowed and grabbed up the paper with his shaking fingers, careful not to crush them this time, though a few yellowed flakes fell despite his care, floating down across the tar-stained floor to Kenny's feet. "First you're late and now you're early. Can't you make up your mind, lad?"

 Kenny bent to retrieve the paper and the old man howled.

 "Give me that! Nobody said you could touch it!"

 "I was only trying to help," Kenny said, but withdrew his hand.

 "Well don't. Just keep to your own business," the old man said, snatching up the paper and then with the others stuffed them all into the locker's upper shelf. He slammed the door and snapped the lock, then leaned his back against it. "Why are you spying on me? Did that Dennis put you up to it?"

 "Nobody put me up to anything," Kenny said. "I'm just here early. That's all."

 "Too early. Get away from here and come back when you're supposed to."

 Kenny started to reply but the old man turned towards the vat, pretending as if Kenny had already gone, stumbling towards the nearest set of stairs to his vats.

 But the old man had missed one of the fluttering papers and Kenny bent again and took it up. The paper crumbled between his fingers, but bore the image of old style photograph, more wood cut than real. Someone had scrawled a date in the corner, but this was faded, too, except for the year: 1899.

 It was a family portrait taken beside a wagon, mother, father and boy smiling into the camera, their flesh unnaturally bleached by the ancient means of exposure. But nothing could bleach away the expression of hope deeply burned into those eyes, weary but proud.

 "Who are these people?" Kenny asked.

 The old man's face paled into the color of glass when he saw the paper in Kenny's hand.

 "Give that back to me!" he roared and stumbled down the stairs again, groping at the picture. But Kenny stepped away from him.

 "Not until you tell me why these things are so important?"

 "It's none of your business, thief!"

 "I'm not a thief," Kenny said. "Here's your picture."

 He thrust it back into the old man's hands as the whistle sounded above them, its wail wiping out any reply the man might have made.

 "Get to work," Casey said when it had ended, cupping the photo in his palms like a withering lily.

 "Gladly," Kenny mumbled and grabbed up the hand-truck, maneuvering one of the barrels onto it. He rolled it out the alcove and down the aisle, and out into the brittle light of the yard. But the bleached sunlight did little to erase the boy's face from his mind, the image of the photograph floating in his head like a ghost, bearing the old man's squint. A relative? Or the man himself? Was he that old to have come across country at the turn of the century

 Fifty years, the old man had told Dennis. I've been here fifty years!

 The old man was silent when Kenny returned. The photo had vanished back into its rusted cage and the old man stirred his vats as if nothing had happened, as if Kenny did not exist either, leaving his trail of barrels as if they vanished by themselves. Kenny complied, choosing the silence to the man's anger, taking one barrel, then another, while around him, the rest of the factory quickly came to life, banks of lights flickering into illumination, relieving the main corridors of their shadows. The vats shuddered and began their chant in bassy voice that soon vibrated the floor. Twice in the yard, Kenny saw a scowling Ben hobbling down the gravel path, shadowed by his small companion. Both times, Kenny hid until he was gone.

 Kenny avoided the lunch room during morning break, skirting through the gate the way the men from the loading dock had done the day before, and around the fence to the gray door. He perched beside it, and caught glimpses of blue water and gray ships through the twisted trees. He didn't eat the corn meal and jelly sandwiches Louise had prepared. The thought of them made his stomach uneasy. Even the cherry blend tobacco had become too sweet, teasing his tongue for want of something bitter. He leaned against the warm brick and closed his eyes. He could hear cars on the roadway below and wondered where they were going.

 East, maybe? How far?

 The whistle woke him from a daydream. He extinguished his pipe and took the short way into the factory, through the gray door, joining the other men as they rose from the lunch tables. Dennis grabbed Kenny's arm near the payroll window.

 "Where you been, boy?" he asked sharply. He seemed to be angry about something with the scar tight around his eye.

 "I was just sitting outside," Kenny said, indicating the gray door with his thumb. "Like I did yesterday. Is something the matter? I can explain about Casey..."

 "Bullshit!!" Dennis growled, staring at Kenny's face and hair, an odd light in his eyes.

 "I'm sorry," Kenny said. "I didn't know I wasn't supposed to go outside."

 The man blinked. He seemed confused by Kenny's words, tilting his head as if to hear better. Nor did he seem to see Kenny well, squinting at the face, his tar-stained fingers rising up towards Kenny's hair wiggling at the strands. Kenny staggered back a step, but the hand had stopped and the face behind it changed again. Growing sadder. And more distant. Dennis blinked again and the anger and oddity faded. He stared at his own uplifted hand and seemed puzzled by it, his scar tightening the face into a melancholic mask.

 "Outside?" he said.

 "That's what this is about, isn't it?" Kenny asked. "Me spending my break out there?"

 Dennis shook his head. "No," he mumbled.

 "Then what's wrong?"

 "Nothing," Dennis said, waving Kenny towards the factory door. "Forget about it. Just go back to work."

                                                       ***********

 "How the devil should I know what's wrong with him?" the old man barked from his perch, little of the earlier anger dissipated yet, though a spark of curiosity, even humor showed deeper in the eyes as he'd heard such reports before.

 "You know him," Kenny said.

 "Know him? Not any better than I know you."

 "But both of you have been here for years."

 "That doesn't mean anything," the old man said, staring down at Kenny, white hair falling over his brow like a child's, disguising the harsher lines imbedded in the forehead. His hands kept the paddle moving across the top of the thick black liquid contained in the vat.

 "But you must know something!"

 "I keep to my own business here," the old man growled.

 "Right!" Kenny barked, glaring at the locker before grabbing up the handtruck again. "If I didn't need the money so bad, I'd walk out of here this minute."

 The old man nodded, but stared down into the vat. "That's just about what people expect of you, lad," he mumbled.

                                                       ***********

 Kenny stopped when the whistle blew, but didn't turn back towards the factory. He had left Louise's corn meal sandwiches on the counter at home deliberately, refusing to torture himself with their gritty sweetness while the other men around him ate meat. It was easier to starve. He didn't even circle the yard, but climbed up one of the pallet walls to the top as the other workers vanished. Sunlight ravished the landscape. Wilted weeds and trees and flowers pressed in on the fence in a in mass of slumped yellow. Even the sky had bleached itself, the trapped city fumes forming a miserable yellow bile from horizon to horizon. Up top, he sat in a pool of shadow cast by the overhanging factory wall, sucking in the brief breezes up from the river. Those breezes took the billowing smoke from his pipe and made twisted patterns out of them. Strange animals. Unfamiliar faces. Lost dreams. But the wind changed, bringing down the thick black clouds of star laden smoke from the factory stacks. It drove him back down to the ground.

 "McDonald!" Dennis waved from the open gate at the end of the yard, then slowly made his way up the dusty track. "I've been looking all over for you, boy," he said as he drew closer, sweat and dust marring his face. "I thought you'd be up front."

 "Too hot," Kenny said. "I figured I'd try and catch a breeze back here."

 The man sniffed and eyed the blank sky. "Smells like rain," he said.

 "I hope so. It's part of the reason I came north."

 "For the rain?"

 "And the trees," Kenny said. "People said it rained daily but I've only seen it once since we got here."

 "It hardly ever rains in the summer," Dennis said. "Other seasons it hardly stops."

 Both stared off into the withered trees, a sudden silence over the factory and the harbor as if everything had ceased production for that hour, squirming out from under the heat of the day. Rain? Where, Kenny wondered, searching up into the mustard sky for signs of darkening. He saw nothing but a few far off birds winging their crazy way north.

 "You said you were looking for me?" Kenny asked.

 The man's face reddened slightly under the crusty surface of dust and sweat. His thick fingers fiddled with his clipboard, then rose and scraped at his mustache as if trying scrape the color from the hair.

 "I wanted to apologize for early," he said, still staring out passed the fence. "I was in a mood. One of the machines was acting up."

 "No problem," Kenny said, still feeling something odd about the man, a mood of a different sort which he couldn't define. Kenny turned to go, but the man grabbed his arm, pressing his face close to Kenny's.

 "I mean it," he said, his breath smelling of spearmint gum and coffee. "I don't want you thinking me as bad as Ben."

 His eyes looked wounded and serious, though something angry still remained deeper down, something twisting and turning and uncomfortable.

 "I didn't think that," Kenny said. "But you seem to want something from me."

 The anger rose like a surface whale, filling up the total surface of the man's dark eyes. His frame stiffened and his stare turned more directly onto Kenny-- Kenny's reflection shimmering in the black as if in pools of tar.

 "I was thinking that maybe you should get a haircut," the man said coldly. "You look like unkempt."

 "No worse than any of the others," Kenny said, suddenly angry, too. Manpower had promised no hassles about his hair. "This isn't exactly a clean business."

 "You know what I mean, boy," Dennis growled.

 "Sure. But my hair is my own business."

 "Why? What does it matter? Is there something religious about having long hair?"

 "Not religious, personal."

 There was no easy way for Kenny to explain the past, or life in his Uncle's house when he had been forced to live with crewcuts, and how he had struggled and squirmed, refusing to make the barber's job any easier.

 "I like my long hair," Kenny said.

 "There's plenty of boys out there without it," Dennis growled.

 "Most of them are in Vietnam," Kenny said. "Or recovering from it."

 Dennis's face tightened again, a twitching muscle in the cheek pulling the draw-string scar till his right eye nearly closed.

 "My boy died over there," he hissed through clenched teeth.

 Kenny stared, letting out his apology in one long gushing breath. "Look, I'm sorry," he whispered. "I didn't mean anything bad. Maybe you should have sent him to Canada. I've got some good friends who..."

 "Maybe you should come to work tomorrow with a reasonable head of hair, Boy!" Dennis said, emphasizing each word with a finger jab at Kenny's face.

 "But Manpower said I didn't have to..."

 "Fuck Manpower. You either trim those golden locks or don't come in. You hear me, boy?"

 Kenny stared down at his hands trying to avoid Dennis' hard glare, at the tiny lines of black that filled in the details of his palms, darkened futures he couldn't quite read-- though he could see Louise's hurt fact among them, her eyes blaming him for losing the job too soon. Before she had gotten her things.

 "I hear you," Kenny mumbled.

 "Good," Dennis said, then twisted around and marched back the way he'd come, the heals of his shoes kicking up gravel and dust.

                                                       ***********

 "No," Casey said without turning from his perch, though his shoulder's had risen into a hitch that altered the even flow of his stirring. "And I mean no, lad."

 "But he'll listen to you."

 "Even if it was any of my business-- which it's not. He won't listen. He's got a head of stone and once he's made up his mind about something, that's the way it is."

 "But you could try."

 Casey's head turned and eyed Kenny, his body twisted into a odd shape. "I work with you, lad. I'm not your mother. If you want to talk to him, talk to him. Leave me out of it."

 "But you wanted me here. If you don't talk to him, I'll be gone."

 "I wanted work, not problems. There are other people who can do the work as well as you. Besides, there's nothing stopping you from cutting your hair."

 Kenny's swallow as if a lump of tar had caught in his throat. "I see," he said and slumped against one of the barrels. He glance danced from one part of the alcove to another, looking for something in the dust. But each thing encountered seem alien to him, as touched with tar as the old man was. Only the locker seemed unaffected, stained but not touched, its dented and rusty face like something out of his own past, not the old man's. Casey followed the line of Kenny's stare and snorted.

 "Don't even think about what's in there!" the old man growled.

 "My thoughts are my own," Kenny said but without enthusiasm.

 "But you were thinking about what a fool I am for keeping things like those?" the old man said, stepping down from his perch, his shaking hands spreading like a virus to the railing.

 "No. I was thinking how painful it must be to grow old being as angry as you are, doing nothing for anybody but yourself."

 Kenny slid off the barrel and snatched up the handtruck. Casey shouting after him.

 "That's not true!"

                                                       ***********

 "I'm sick of this shit!" Kenny shouted, throwing down the silverware. It bounced off the plate and clattered to floor, the sound echoing through the house like a loose shutter. He rose, the chair falling, too, adding to echoes, leaving their mark of Louise' down turned face. Her wounded mouth shaped out words of apology without projecting them.

 He stared down at her, then barged out of the room, through the darkness of the blueroom and into the canary yellow of the front parlor. He fell into the armed chair and yanked down the light chain, changing the world back to its Victorian twilight.

 Louise eased into the room behind him, pausing in the doorway, her shape framed by the bright white light of the kitchen two doors distant. Her pudgy nose and rounded chin showed in a slice of silver light from the street. She looked like the nuns Kenny had grown up fearing in religious school-- though her eyes lacked their brilliance, too watery, soft and sad.

 "You have to eat, Kenny," she whispered, her voice caught between the random notes of the neighbor's guitar and the big-bellowed sound of ships sailing from the harbor.

 "No I don't," he said, teeth clamped down on the stem of his pipe.

 She crossed the room, the hem of her dress whispering over the dark wood the way the wind had through the high grass along the road. It drew up images of green in him and the desire to flee there. She settled at his feet and wrapped her arms around his leg.

 "I'm sorry," she said.

 "For what?"

 "For not being able to give you what you want. I've never been able to do that, even when we had money."

 She looked up, the pale disk of her faced dotted with the orifices of eyes, nose and mouth, more mask in this light than human. She looked like the mimes Kenny had seen on Berkeley's Telegraph Avenue.

 "It's not up to you to give me what I want," he said after a long time, fumbling for his pipe pouch. A cloud of stale cherry floated up into him as he stuffed the bowl of the pipe. "My uncle always said I had to work for what I wanted. But he worked all his life and never got anything for it. Nobody I know has gotten anything from hard work but tired.. Not unless they lie and cheat and give up part of themselves in the process."

 "Did something happen at work today?" Louise asked, turning her head. Her suspicious gaze straight out of the troubled days in LA "Did you get fired -- or quit?"

 Kenny laughed, and lit his pipe. The match flare cast shadows across the room like a lightning flash.

 "No," he said, the smoke curling up into his eyes. "I didn't quit or get fired."

 "But you're acting peculiar."

 "I guess I'm just feeling guilty."

 "About what?"

 "Everything. Stealing my uncle's money. Getting you pregnant. I guess I'm guilty about not going off to Vietnam to die like a good American boy."

 "Other people didn't go," Louise said.

 "But a lot of people did," Kenny growled. "Maybe I'm just scared of things."

 "Of dying? That's nothing to be ashamed of."

 "Not dying. Staying alive and winding up like my uncle," Kenny said, pushing himself up from the chair. Louise's fingers feel from his leg like broken ropes. "I'm going to sleep."

                                                       ***********

 He woke to find Louise curled in a ball beside him on the bed, her arms tight around her belly as if in pain, her soft face shrouded by a corner of the sheet. He touched the tip of the sheet, his dirty fingers leaving their stain. Then, he rose, easing into a sitting position, his legs and arms and back stiff. He could barely move, yet somehow thrust them over the side of the bed. He wavered a little when he stood, and more when he walked, staggering out the door to the hall and into the bathroom.

 He turned the sink tap on, running scalding water into the basin. Steam rose around him and with it the diluted scent of tar. He scrubbed at the stains on his hands and arms, but the tar had hardened over night. He scraped at each pore with his finger nails. Some of it came off. Most did not. The hair was worse. Clumps of black matter clung to the strands. They broke the teeth of the comb before any of them came loose. The painful jolts shattered the last vestiges of sleep.

 When he finished, a dark stain ringed the sink and residue of tar streaked the towel. He dumped the linen back through the towel rack and opened the window. A cool breeze eased through. It smelled of rain. But only a few puffy clouds sailed across the sky.

 Louise appeared in the doorway behind him, blinking at the light, her face wrinkled with the pattern of the disheveled sheets.

 "Good morning," Kenny said, turning to the sink again. He ran the cold water, washing away the ring before brushing his teeth.

 "Are you all right?" she asked.

 "Sure," he said around his tooth brush.

 "Are you sure?"

 "I said I was, didn't I?"

 The harsh words clashed like china around her face. She regretted them immediately.

 "Look, I'm sorry," Kenny said. "I'm not myself this morning."

 "Or last night."

 He stared at her for a moment, studying her serious face, then shuttered. "I'm late for work."

 He moved around her, then down the stairs.

 "Kenny?"

 He stopped and looked back.

 "Yeah?"

 "I packed you lunch."

 He shook his head and continued down the stairs. He didn't even glance towards the kitchen, but plunged out into the day, only barely resisting the temptation to slam the door behind him.

                                                        **********

 "So what did he say?" Kenny asked.

 The old man stopped half way up the nearest set of stairs, stained hands gripping the rickety banister, man and wood sways slowly to the rhythm of the factory as if on the deck of a ship. The old man ran the fingers of one hand through his hair, leaving streaks of black in the gray. He stared past Kenny down into an unused section of factor across from alcove where even the lights had been shut, leaving a hole of darkness.

 "You did talk to him, didn't you?" Kenny pressed, taking a step towards the old man.

 Casey blinked and refocused in on Kenny's face. For a moment, he looked surprise, but slowly the anger worked back into the wrinkled flesh around the eyes, seeping into the colorless orbs like poison.

 "Not on your account," he growled, glancing nervously towards the aisle as if expecting to find Dennis standing there listening-- He looked startled again, remembering something that should have been there. "But you're name came up."

 "And?"

 "He wasn't in a talking mood."

 Kenny took  side step to the line of empty barrels and hoisted himself up on one. The diffuse sunlight sprayed in through the double wide doors from the yard farther down the aisle, creating a single stretch of illumination, specks of dust danced in its beam.

 "He certainly is a moody son of a bitch," Kenny grumbled.

 Casey stiffened-- not apparently angry at Kenny so much as alarmed by something, his wrinkled face has lost all of its previous haziness. He stared sharply at Kenny.

 "You'd better get to work," he said, though made no move to continue up or down from his platform. His paddle remained above, floating lazily in the unmoving tar. The whistle had sounded minutes early and already the big vats up near the front of the factory had begun to come alive again.

 "Why?" Kenny asked. "He's just going to fire me the minute he sees my hair."

 "Then maybe you should have cut it," the old man said.

 "For two days more of work?"

 "This won't be the last place to dislike your hair, lad."

 "I know," Kenny moaned, rubbing his forehead with the tips of his fingers. "People have been hounding me about it since we left LA"

 "So?"

 "So I don't want it cut, all right!" Kenny barked, sliding back down to the floor. "I'm sick of people telling me what to do, as if they knew how to live my life better than I do."

 "Maybe they do," the old man said, though his tone was kinder than the words, his gaze searching down at the boy's with the same lost expression Kenny had seen in the boy's photograph. Was there hope in those eyes? Or some sense of admiration?

 Admiration? What was there to admire? Poverty? Doubt? A pregnant old lady at home cooking corn meal?

 "That's bullshit!" Kenny said, spitting out the dust from his mouth. "My uncle thought so, too. But he's still sweating his ass off in a stupid boat store back home, working for the mortgage payments and taxes. The only time he gets to be himself is when he goes fishing. And that's not often. I don't want to live like that, trapped in something for the rest of my life. If fishing made me happy, then that's what I'd be doing, even if I only made enough to keep me in fish hooks and bait."

 Casey shook his head, his mouth puckering as if he had sucked something distasteful, eyes overshadowed again. He turned sharply away and staggered up the stairs to the platform and paddle, and didn't turn till he had the paddle firmly gripped, stirring the black tar with hard and shaky strokes.

 "You've got spirit," he mumbled too low for Kenny to hear distinctly over the hum of the machinery. "But that's not now things are done these days. No one does what he wants any more." He cast a nervous glance over his shoulder at the locker and shivered. "Things haven't been like that since I was a lad -- if then."

 "That's a load of crap, too," Kenny shouted. "All you have to do is follow the road."

 "To where?"

 "To wherever it goes."

 "And if it doesn't go anywhere?"

 "It has to go somewhere."

 But Casey slowly shook his head. His eyes said he'd been around and around this circle before. His gaze said the road ended here. "No more talk, lad," he said.

 "But it's not fair!" Kenny yelled again, beating out the rhythm of words with his fists on the drum. The booms filled the alcove and the echoes carried deeper into the factory.

 "Nothing's fair," the old man said.

 "But he's asking me to cut my hair for a temporary job!"

 "It might not be as temporary as you think."

 "What's that supposed to mean?"

 "There's talk of keeping you on permanent."

 "Did Dennis say that?"

 "Not directly. But he's likely to ask you."

 "But the man hates me!"

 "He hates your hair," Casey said, back turned towards me now, shoulders hitched. "But if you got a mind of move on, then don't cut it. You can get more work with Manpower once you leave here."

                                                       ***********

 Dennis waited in the yard like a hungry bear, hovering over the half-filled pallet of barrels, scratching out useless figures onto his clip board. He even looked surprised when Kenny appeared, though his face was taunt and gaze screwing up into anger only after seeing Kenny's hair.

 Kenny stopped just beyond the lip of the doorway shadow, too far to turn back without being obvious.

 

 Dennis straightened, then strode forward, growing taller and more angry with each stride, mouth tight and grim, his right eye nearly closed as the scar tugged down.

 "I thought I told you to get a haircut, boy?" he growled, then halted a few feet away, his shadow over lapping Kenny's where they met in-between, both shivering with waves of heat. Kenny squinted, then looked down at the man's dusty feet.

 "I guess you did," he mumbled.

 "Well?"

 A boat horn sounded from down in the valley like the cry of a dying animal.

 "Look, Dennis!" Kenny burst out. "I'm not working in this stink hole for my health. If I had money for a haircut, I'd be eating well."

 The anger drained out of the taller man's eyes, his jaw shifting slowly from side to side as he studied the boy. "Things are that tough, boy?" he asked.

 "You might say that," Kenny said. "It's not just me either. I got a pregnant old lay who's going to need things before the baby comes."

 Dennis stared, his eyes registering some mixture of emotions Kenny couldn't read accurately, partly anger, partly surprise with something deeper.

 "A baby?" he murmured. "I'll be a..."

 "Look, I'm not asking for any favors," Kenny said. "I just want to do my job and be left alone, okay?"

 The words, however, didn't appear to register and the man blinked again. "I didn't know," Dennis said. "Working here you forget people don't eat regular meals."

 "I know," Kenny said. "I've watched the others eating lunch."

 Dennis let out one long breath then dug into his pocket, producing a wad of bills. He unfolded a five from the top and pushed it into Kenny's hand.

 Kenny pushed it back. "I don't want...."

 "Take it!" Dennis said. "Get yourself a haircut. Then you and I can talk about other things."

 "Other things? Like what?"

 "Like getting you situated here permanent," Dennis said. "Think of the five as a loan. You can pay be back on Friday when you get paid."

 Then the man turned stiffly and marched back down the yard towards the loading platform, leaving Kenny standing in the dust, the five dollar bill loose between his fingers.

                                                       ***********

 From the below, the house looked dead, a chunk of cold wood and dark windows upon which thick gray clouds were reflected. Rain threatened the day-- its cool breath a teasing touch on Kenny's face as he climbed the stairs. Even the river seemed silent, the ships and cars muffled by the thickened air.

 "Rain, damn it!" Kenny yelled.

 Someone in one of the other houses waved from the porch thinking Kenny had called to him. A streak of blue-green lightning appeared in the sky followed by a distant rumble, rolling over the hills to the west. But no rain came.

 He stopped half way up and shifted the paper bag from one arm to the other and repeated this when he reached the door. He turned the handle, but the wood had swell again with heat forcing him to bang at it. The echoes resounded through the darkened house. No smell of cooking greeted him when it opened. No sound of Louise's singing. Only twilight and silence.

 "Louise?"

 "In here," a whispered voice sounded from the direction of the parlor.

 He entered the dark room. Louise had drawn the curtains closed so that even the silver light from the street had been extinguished. It took him a moment to make out her shape in the dark seated in the high-backed armed chair, as much a part of the Victorian world as the fireplace or lamps, her arms slung over either side like a broken doll's.

 "Why all the darkness?" Kenny asked, putting the bag down on one of the end tables before yanking the curtains open. The combination of silver street light and gray day poured in, repainting the room in glorious silver.

 "You know," Louise said, looking up, her eyes like shards of glass. "Close the curtain and leave me alone."

 Kenny eased closer and bent close to her. The smell of the kitchen remained in her hair, cornmeal and grape jelly and detergent. "Are you still upset from this morning?" he asked.

 "And from last night and the night before last, yes," she said, her voice as brittle as her eyes looked. "And don't you go telling me how sorry you are, either. You've been saying that for so long I can't believe it any more. You make promises you won't keep and let me dream of things that'll never come true..."

 "Louise, please," Kenny pleaded.

 But she turned her head away from his, her face red, her breathing coming in gulps.

 "You said Portland would be it, that we wouldn't have to go on after this. You said you would find a job and..."

 He knelt beside her, urging his shoulder near her to lean on, but she pushed him away.

 "Go away!" she insisted.

 "What about supper?" he asked, whispering the words in her ear.

 "Supper!" she exploded, drawing back shortly, her head hitting the soft chair's headrest as her disbelieving eyes studied him. "There isn't going to be any supper," she said. "Not unless you want corn meal and rice."

 "But you're wrong," Kenny said and rose, taking her hands as he drew her up from the chair. He yanked her to him, her face an inch from his. He could barely contain his laughter and swung her around in a poor imitation of ball room dancing, their feet whisking over the bare floor and dirty throw rugs as if caught in another age, only the Beatle song he hummed for music clung to the present.

 She yanked free of him.

 "Are you stoned?" she asked, squinting suspiciously at him.

 "Only on life, my dear."

 "Then you're crazy," she said, stepping back another long step as she studied his face.

 "I guess I'm that," he said. "If wanting to be free is crazy. I can't help that, Louise."

 He stepped towards her; she retreated.

 "You quit your job, right?"

 "No," he said, though not without a wry twist to his lips, something sad and distant showing in his expression. Tomorrow was Friday. It would all be over then anyway. His stint of five days. He had survived after all. It didn't matter what the old man said, or what Dennis did. "Actually, they've asked me to stay on with them."

 "That's cruel!" Louise said. "Don't kid me like this."

 "I'm not kidding," Kenny said.

 Her face stayed fixed for a moment, then slowly transformed, completely the metamorphosis in deliberate disbelieving steps from doubt to utter joy.

 "Why-- That's wonderful!" she exclaimed.

 "It is and it isn't," he said. "They want me to get a haircut."

 "That's no problem!" Louise said, chattering as she paced, as full of plans as she had been months earlier in LA "We'll go downtown as soon as you get your paycheck..."

 "They want it by tomorrow."

 Louise paused, her eyes clouded for a moment, but that moment passed. He could see the shift in her eyes as if drawing up alternate plans from some deep source. She grinned somewhat deviously.

 "I know I'm not good at it, but I do have a pair of scissors," she said.

 "No."

 "But it's better than nothing," Louise protested. "We could go back to the barber after you get paid and have him dedo..."

 "I'm not getting the haircut, Louise."

 "B-But then you won't get the job."

 "I know."

 She stared, blinking slowly, her frown growing deeper and deeper as she tried to puzzle out his words. Then, her eyes opened wide. Outside, thunder boomed, followed by a heavy downpour of rain. Great blue flashes cracked open the sky, sending dancing shadows in through the windows, shadows shaped like the line of houses across the street.

 Kenny crossed to the open window. Water sprayed through the screen. He pulled the window down, but remained staring out through the splattered glass. Across the street, other windows shimmered with light, shadowy figures imprisoned in each, sitting down to supper or looking out at the sky. No music sounded save for the storm itself.

 "Kenny?"

 "Yes?"

 "Do you care about the baby?"

 "More than you can guess."

 "Then why...?"

 He turned and saw the package still sitting on the end table. It drew a low laugh from him and this drew a deeper frown from Louise.

 "You think this is funny?" she asked.

 "No," he said, crossing to her, putting his fingers across her lips. ""But let's not talk about it until after we eat."

 "Eat? But I already told you..."

 "Shush," he said, taking her by the arm as he grabbed up the bag. "Just come along."

 He led her through the blue room to the kitchen. Both rooms were dark now, and deserted, the way they had seemed at Kenny's arrival, as if no one had lived here since the Victorians-- the psychedelic paint simply some odd but natural phenomena that science could explain away.

 He flicked on the overhead light, the white walls exploding out of the darkness.

 "I still don't see what this is all...." Louise said as Kenny dumped the contents of the bag onto the table. "What on Earth?"

 She stared open-mouthed at the packages of food. Chopped meat. Potatoes. Corn. String beans.

 "Supper," Kenny announced with a flamboyant wave of his hand.

 "But where did you get the money?"

 "Don't worry about that right now. It's only important that I got it. For once we're going to eat well."

 "But I am worried about it, Kenny," she said, fingering the can of string beans.

 Kenny shrugged. "The boss gave me five dollars to cut my hair."

 "And you bought food?"

 "It seemed more important."

 She leaned against the back of a chair, letting out a long breath before shaking her head. "And what is he doing to say in the morning when you show up without it?"

 "We'll worry about that tomorrow," Kenny said, moving towards the sink and the cabinet near it where Louise kept the pots and pans. He drew out a heavy skillet, then looked back at her. "Are you going to help me with this stuff, or do I have to find everything myself."

 "What are you looking for?"

 "Oil."

 "Oil? What do you need oil for?"

 "So I can cook the meat, silly," Kenny said, hefting the skillet.

 "Give me that!" Louise commanded, snatching the pan from him and pushing him away from the stove and food. "Go get some plate from the cupboard. I'm not going to have good food ruined by letting you cook..."

                                                       ***********

 "I could give you a haircut," Louise said, seated on the edge of the tub, a patch of her patterned dress darker than the rest from where the water and soap had splashed her during washing dishes. "It would be easy enough. And you wouldn't have to stay at this job forever. Just until the baby is born, then we can do what we want again."

 

 "Do really believe that?"

 "Why shouldn't I?"

 "Because it isn't true," Kenny said, sinking deeper into the water, letting it lap at his chin. "You never get untied. Ask the old man at the factory that keeps pictures when from he was a kid in his locker."

 "Pictures? Why?"

 "God knows," Kenny mumbled. "Maybe he figures he can get back to that someday. But he's being a fool about it and so are you if you think there's a chance."

 "Kenny McDonald! You be nice to me."

 "I am being nice. I just don't want a haircut."

 He reached for the soap which floated in the grimy bubbles. His fingers missed grasping it twice, but succeeded on the third try, lifting it from the water as if it was a small white fish. He washed his upper arms. Louise stood, wandered back to the toilet and sat down again on its closed lid.

 "But we'd have food and clothing, Kenny."

 "We've had those things before."

 "With your uncle's money. This would be our own."

 "What happens after the baby's born? You think we can just take off like that?"

 "Well-- not just take off."

 "Of course not. There will always be excuses why I shouldn't leave the job, things the baby'll need, etc. No, if we're going to settle down, then I'm going to have to find something I want to do, not anything like this-- but some place where I won't regret being stuck after a few years."

 "Which means we go back on the road again?"

 Kenny hesitated, drawing in a slow breath, something aching in his chest-- the tar fumes already leaving their mark on his lungs, staining him. "Yes," he said, expelling the breath.

 "Where to this time?" Louise asked sharply. "We're running out of cities, you know."

 "I was thinking about going back East."

 "To Hank?"

 Kenny nodded.

 "But he never answered your letters."

 "Maybe he couldn't for some reason," Kenny said. "Maybe he never got them. You know how the village is. Things get lost there."

 "Maybe Hank's lost, too."

 "No," Kenny mumbled. "He's there some place. We just have to find him."

 Louise's mouth tightened. Her nostrils flared as they released a long snort. "Damn you," she said and rose and plunged out into the hall, her floppy sandals slapping on the steps as they descended.

 Kenny head fell back against the rounded rear rim of the tub, an equally long sigh escaping him as he closed his eyes. He remained unmoved for a long while, not exactly asleep, but not quite aware of the water's growing cold either. Or the factory scum floating on the water's top like spoiled black milk.

 When he finally opened his eyes again, his own hands startled him, the fingers as wrinkled as an old man's. Like Casey's hand, lacking only the thick crust of tar around the nails and joints. He climbed out of the water and dragged a towel from the rack. Cool air circulated in the upstairs hall and his moist feet left their mark on the blood wood, like footsteps in sand, evaporating as he descended the stairs.

 Louise had not gone far. Her crumpled form had curled into a corner of the landing where the stairs turned sharply left. She looked up with the eyes of a frightened child. He touched her arm. She jerked away from his hand.

 "Come to bed," he whispered.

 She shook her head.

 "This is silly, Louise. We can't settle things this way."

 But she refused to even look at him, the way she sometimes had in LA during one of those argument. The reminder made him angry.

 "Fine!" he said. "Stay there! I'm too goddamn tired to argue any more."

 Then, he marched back up the stairs and paused at the top. She rose, wavering slight as she smoothed down the wrinkles in her dress.

 "Thank you for supper," she said, then hurriedly ran down the rest of the stairs, swallowed by their darkness.

 "Louise?" Kenny called. But she didn't answer.

                                                       ***********

 Her smell struck first: the soft fragrance of perfumed soap mingling with the rising morning heat. Kenny had piled pillow around his head like a small fortress. He shoved them aside. She stood above him, morning stretching its bright fingers on the red walls around her. Her face floated in the air, wearing something of a doubtful smile. Her cheeks bore the unmistakable pattern of the arm chair's ribbed fabric.

 "Kenny," she said, touching his arm. "It's time to get up."

 "I'm not going," he said closing his eyes again.

 "Of course, you're going," she said, yanking the sheet off of him, his skin suddenly chilled as the sweat was exposed to the air. It washed the last vestiges of sleep from him.

 "Why should I?" he asked, trying to snatch back the sheet. But she stepped back out of reach.

 "For one thing you have to pick up your pay check," she said, her smile growing on her. Kenny frowned.

 "How come you're in such a good mood?" he asked. "Last night you wanted to murder me."

 She shrugged. "I guess it's just too hard to fight you, Kenny. You always win in the end."

 It was a debatable point and she knew it. He was full of l.c.'s scars. But there was no reason to bring up the details now. He worked himself up onto his elbows.

 "I'm not being mean about this," he said. "I just want to be happy, Louise."

 "I know," she said. "Now are you getting up or do I have to get a pail of water?"

 "Ten minutes more," he said, clutching a pillow. But she snatched this away from him, too.

 "I said up!"

 He feigned a grab for the pillow and grabbed her arm, yanking her towards him.

 "What are you doing?" she protested, her pointed breasts poking through her dress like fingers. He caressed them, making them stiffen. "There's no time for this now. You'll be late for work."

 "Who cares," he said and wrestled her until she was beneath him with her arms pinned. He kissed her neck, then released her hands to stroke her breast again. She had stopped resisting. His fingers worked the buttons free, exposing the flesh beneath, then they were both naked again, Woodstock children making love in the heat, his hands roving up and down her as he made slow love to her, hands pausing on her slightly swollen middle where he could almost feel life beginning to bud within her.

 When they fell apart, the bed around them was soaked with seat. Kenny nodded into sleep, then woke later, slipping up out of the bed without waking Louise. But when he looked back at her naked form on the bed, he hesitated, drawn back, caring nothing for the paycheck that waited for him. He could go get it any time, he thought. Still, there was a nagging in the back of his head, and moved through the hall to the bathroom where he dressed and dragged a comb through his tangled hair.

 "Kenny?" Louise called from the bedroom.

 "Yeah?"

 "It's late. You'd better hurry."

 Kenny laughed. "What are they going to do, fire me?"

 "Just go," she pleaded.

 Kenny finished grooming as best as he could and hurried into to the hall, pausing at the bedroom door to smile at her before hurrying down the stairs.

 "Kenny!" Louise called again, this time appearing at the top of the stairs, sheet dangling down where her dress had earlier. "Don't forget your lunch."

 His expression soured. "We're not starting that again, are we?" he asked.

 "Don't be silly," she said. "It's the left-over hamburger."

                                                       ***********

 Mister McDonald!"

 Kenny stopped, his hand still around the warm handle of the factory door. The whole lunch room seemed to boil with trapped heat as if building up over the week with a final burst. A bead of sweat rolled down his brow and into his eyes. Through the gap of the partially open door the stink of tar attached him like a vicious dog, snarling and snapping at his nostrils and throat.

 Cooper barged through the other door from the office, his round race red and his eyes bloated behind his specks.

 "I thought this business of being late was settled," he said

 Kenny grinned. "I guess it is."

 "There's nothing funny about this, Mr. McDonald."

 "No, you wouldn't think so."

 "What exactly is that supposed to mean?"

 

 Kenny shrugged, yanked open the door and marched through it, leaving the shocked factory manager's face behind the slamming door. He didn't have to hear the words, but knew he had stepped beyond the point of keeping the job.

 He found Casey still on his perch, as if the old man had spent the night there, as if he'd spent every night stirring up the past from the bottom of his vats, watching it swirl around trapped in the caldron of metal. Around the foot of the wooden stairs, barrels waited the way they had Kenny's first day for transport into the yard. Nothing had changed. It would always fluctuated between this and the slightly more organized condition with Kenny's back aching from attempting to make a difference. He could see himself on those stairs in twenty years, stirring a pointless broth of oily black.

 The old man acknowledged Kenny's arrival with a raised brown, but didn't cease to stir. Perhaps he couldn't. Perhaps the future was in those swirls as well, as dark and terrible as the past had been bright.

 "I decided not to take Dennis up on his offer," Kenny said, fingering the handle of the hand truck.

 Casey turned, his eyes registering some new emotion Kenny had not seen there earlier-- no so much the expression of the boy in the photograph now, but of the parents that had been on the boy's either side, staring passed the camera and photographer towards some unseeable vision outside the frame.

 Mountains, maybe. Or stands of trees. Or maybe it was the road itself, stretching on before them, winding up from plain towards those mountains and trees, a brook gurgling at their feet, drooling with lost dreams.

 "And where would you be off to this time, lad?" the old man asked, finally looking at Kenny.

 "East," Kenny said. "To New York."

 "And Dennis?"

 "The worst he can do is send me home," Kenny said.

                                                       ***********

 Dennis' bellow rose from the end of the yard like that of wounded moose, the echoes of Kenny's last name trapped among the pallet walls. Kenny didn't even see him at first, stopping in the twilight just outside the door, squinting at the bright slash of sunlight that dominated the rest of the yard. But a shape moved among the dust and wavering lines of heat, taking only solid form as it drew near. Dennis' march was stiff, like the wounded soldiers Kenny had  seen coming home from the war full of broken dignity.

 "And just what the fuck is the matter with you this time, boy?" the man roared, glaring at Kenny through one unsquinting eye. "I thought we had it all settled."

 "We did."

 "Then why no haircut?"

 "I decided it was a bad idea."

 "What?"

 "It's difficult to explain."

 "Why don't you try, boy," Dennis growled-- though his gaze looked less angry than hurt. "I think I deserve that much for putting up with you all week."

 "Putting up with me."

 "Putting up with your hair, then, and all the trouble it's caused."

 "You mean Ben?"

 "I mean everything. I bent over backwards to keep you hear long after Coop wanted to be rid of you. What did you do with the money I gave you? Spend it on dope?"

 "On food," Kenny said.

 Dennis' face darkened-- the mustache and scar suddenly vivid against the reddened flesh. He stared with a puzzled frown that lasted for a long moment. Behind him, the whine of the forklift sounded, its forks lifting a large pallet of roofing shingles onto the truck, straining itself in the process, threatening to tumble over with the burden.

 "Son of a bitch!" he said and spat into the dust before turning back the way he'd come, not even bothering to look at Kenny again. Kenny watched as the man shrank into the heat and dust of the yard, then moved his barrel out into the heat, dumping it on the pallet as if nothing had happened.

                                                       ***********

 Dennis leaned against the wall near the payroll window, looking over as Kenny came through the door from the factory. The day's finally whistle ending the agony. The other men shuffled by, punching their time clocks with the rhythm of robots, vanishing through the gray door for the weekend. Few even noticed Kenny, waving stiff farewells to Dennis as they passed.

 The anger had faded from Dennis' eyes. They looked empty now. Like the drained bottom to one of Casey's vats.

 "Well, boy," he said softly. "I guess this is it."

 "Not exactly," Kenny said. "I still need my slip so Manpower can pay me. And there's the matter of the five bucks I owe you. I'll bring it back when I get my money."

 "Forget it," Dennis said, looking away, out the door towards the string of crumpled trees. Kenny could smell the river and wondered if Dennis could, or had the factory killed that ability.

 "I insist," Kenny said.

 The man glanced at Kenny again. "Don't insist on anything, boy," he said. "You'll be hungry again before too long. Use the money to feed your kid. You'll need it."

 Kenny shrugged and took the wrinkled pink paper from the man's dirty hand, stepping back into the flow of men as they moved out into the front yard, over the gravel path to the gate, where the road began and the river breeze wafted up from the valley with the hoot of leaving ships and seas full of promises. Kenny could smell the salt and feel the road under his feet. He didn't look back. There was nothing back there for him to see but a cage.

 

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