Waiting for Nothing and Other Writings

A GLASS WORKER DIES

A GLASS WORKER DIES JUDSON ART GLASS Co., Makers of Fine Glass . . . and he'd pick up this pipe that lay on the rack and sprint with it to this tank that had in it the glass. These other working stiffs would circle the tank the same as my old man and you'd think this was a Merry-Go-Round in a circus when you'd see them around the tank like this. He'd stick the end of this hollow pipe down in the hole that was in the side of the tank and down into the orangy glass and the heat would sheet out and scorchhis face and clear back to the stoopingshoulders. Pay attention only to me. It's my old man Michael I am telling you about. He sits there now and looks in at the embers of the fire and thinksof nothing but the belching factory chimneys and the pot of glass that he will see no more for his sweat will drench their goddam floor no more and come up in hot steam from their floorno more. The bugs have got him at last and he sits by the fire and hardly speaks all day. Gas on the stomach he thinks and he will be all right in aweek. Gas on the stomach, hey, old man? And what are those pussy sores on your side and on your belly if it is not the cancer that had worked clear through you and clear through to the outside? Look at your legs that are swollen up like a couple of telegraph poles. Bloated up like a couple of telegraph poles your legs are and if you got up out of that chair and walked, you would gurgle when you walked. That is not you sitting in that chair, old man. Youare in the factory. Youare molded up in the tumblers that people drink 228 A GLASS WORKER DIES highballs out of and get drunk and throw them on the floor, and I know that it is not a tumbler that is on the floor, but my old man, broken and splintered and crumbled. He'd pull this wad of glass out of the pot and hurry over to the marble, this shiny, steel, flat marble, and he'd roll it around on the marble till it was as round and as smooth as the pipe it hung to. Then my old man would blow through this pipe that was a hollow pipe, and the glass on the end would come out like a balloon, a red balloon, a carnivalballoon . But where the hell was the carnival there} The pink lemonade, the hoocha-koocha dancer, and the red lemonade ! And now it's the lake. The old man thinks the lake will help his indigestion. He thinks the lake will help the sores that cover his side and spread to his belly that I can see as I wrap the thin gauzy bandages around his side and his belly. Well, I hope he is right but I know he is dead and as good as dead. Fordon't I know the lake won't do him a bit of good and nothing will do him a bit of good for when he laid his pipe down on the rack and keeled over on the floor that was wet with the sweat ofa million bottles, wasn't he dead then? He is only a shell that sits by the fire and now he wants to go to the lake and he is like a peevish child that wants to go to the lake. A broken tumbler thrown on the floor by a drunk who asks for another and says he will pay for the tumbler and what's a tumbler that's broke when you're feeling good? Hock the family furniture and send the old tumbler to the lake. Three-anda -half per cent a month and aint that forty-two per cent ayear and payit and like it. On to your sister, old man, who lives on the lake in Lorainand for Christ's sake stop grinning like that with the skin of your lips stretched across your teeth like that. And my old man would hand this pipe up to the blower who stood on the dummy, this boxy platform with a mold that they called a dummy, and that blowerhad the bugs and 229 [13.59.82.167] Project MUSE (2024-04...