The Canals of Mars: A Memoir

Union Grades

T he first day I worked at the Heinz factory, near the end of themandatoryphysical,Isuddenlywentcoldandclammy. I started to stand, and a few seconds later, I found out I’d fainted when I snapped back to consciousness with the nurse screaming in my ear because I was sprawled on top of her after dragging her to the floor as I collapsed. It was less than half an hour since I’d punched in at 7:45 A.M. Another voice calmed her screams. “Whoa there,” it said from somewhereoverhead,andIfeltahandonmyshoulder.Thecompany doctor owned that voice of reason, and he rolled me over. He didn’t look at all anxious about my health. “Let’s give her some room,” he said, as if the nurse was the one who’d passed out. A minute later I was sitting in a cubicle sipping orange juice and listening to the doctor ask me if I’d fainted recently (No), had dizzy spells (No), or had eaten breakfast (No). “There’s something,” he said, pausing after my third “No.” “I got in late,” I said. “I wasn’t up for eating at 6:30.” “Drinking?” “Some.” “Somewilldo,”hesaid,smilingasifheknewexactlyhowlucky I’d been to manage my parents’ station wagon into the driveway at three A.M. after a night of helping my girlfriend celebrate her high school graduation. It wasn’t long before he started telling me stories about his collegedays,concentratingonthesophomoreyearI’djustcompleted withoutdistinction.Hewasyoungerthanmyfather,buteverything he mentioned that was interesting—Christine Jorgenson undergoing the first sex change operation, girls swooning while listening to Johnny Ray sing “Cry”—happened in 1952, when I was in first grade. Or if it was still going on, surviving into 1965 like panty raids, the fad was so old-fashioned it was only done by losers who actually wore their freshman beanies. ItoldhimIwaspremed,notatotallie.Istoppedshortofadding I’d decided to give up that fantasy and opt for English, the only Union Grades 126 ■ w o r k subject’s homework that didn’t encourage me to look for a dorm room where the stereo was playing and cards were being shuffled. “I’ve never seen anyone faint during a tine test,” he said. “You make sure you eat lunch now.” I’dlastedlongenoughtohavefinishedthattuberculosistestbeforeIcollapsed, so I didn’t have to face the nurse again before I followed directions to my first work site. Waiting for me was a man dressed in the same blue pin-stripe pants and white T-shirt that I was wearing, and he instructed me, in two minutes, on everything I needed to know about herding institution-size cans of soup onto racks that would be wheeled into the sterilizing department. To someone as hungoverandrecentlyrecoveredfromblackingoutasIwas,thosecanslumbered along the conveyor belt with a frightening regularity. I could see more than a hundred feet of the line as it approached above the corridor from an adjoining building, and there wasn’t a break in that parade of cans. By the time the man hopped down from the work stand, the metal bench in frontofmewasnearlyfilledwithunlabeledcans.Istartedgatheringandpushing. I pulled a lever and lowered the rack, threw a rubber mat onto the next shelf, and began again. For the next hour, I managed to stay ahead of the cans and the urge to vomit orange juice over the side of the work station. Just after eleven A.M., a half hour before lunch, I saw someone dressed in a Heinz work outfit who looked familiar. Astonishingly, he recognized me. Jim Brittner walked up and extended his hand over the railing. I shook it and then hurried back to the cans that kept threatening to outrun my sluggish arranging. “What the fuck you doing here?” he said. “I thought you was a smart boy?” Ihadn’tseenJimBrittnersincehe’dquitschoolonthefirstreport-carddayof ninth grade, celebrating his sixteenth birthday by telling the principal to shove his high school up his ass, and following that declaration by strolling past my group of fourteen-year-olds and out the door to drive away in a car that rumbled and smoked and held a girl sitting inside who looked like she was auditioning for a part in the next Mamie Van Doren girls-gone-wild movie. Jim Brittner had been driving that car without a license since school had started two months before. He’d said maybe three sentences to me in the two years we’d been in the same grade, all of them variations on “Get the fuck out of my way.” But now he...