Western Avenue and Other Fictions

Western Avenue

93 Western Avenue From the distance, the blinking lights of the ethanol plant’s blue smokestacks. In this November light the freshly turned fields glisten coal black, a few cornstalks still standing, their thin leaves rustling in the wind. In the summers the sweet smell of the surrounding mint fields. Now the stench of the refining ethanol holding close to the ground. The heavy odor—something like burnt baked potatoes, fried chicken, mixing with smoldering vinyl. On the other side of the refinery, Vulcan’s air-compressors suck and hiss, and the material lines thump the resin powder from the outside silos. The factory in full production. Men standing at the end of a line, inside the throttled pitch of the slamming punches, the concrete floor quaking with each downward punch. Saws whirring across panels, vinyl snowing into the air and powdering the floor. The wind blowing off Lake Michigan at five below. Their arms turning, inside this heat of one hundred degrees. They turn their arms and flip the twelve-foot pieces of vinyl siding into a box. Every three and a half minutes, they fill a box with twenty-one panels. Two men stand at the opposite end of a packing table. They bend over, slam the box lid down, beating their fists against its glued lips, then staple each end with an air-powered staple gun. One of the men pushes down a lever, the packing table opening, and they turn the box on its side and lift and swing the box from the table to a pallet on a wagon. A forklift backs up. The driver jumps down. He lifts the wagon’s tongue to the forklift’s hitch, and jams in place the steel pin. He takes off his gloves, lays them on the seat, pulls out a cigarette. He leans against the forklift, smoking and watching the men turn a box on its side, turning their arms to take hold and lift and throw the box onto the wagon. In three and a half minutes they’d have the last box, and then he’d pull away another full load. 94 Ernest walked along his and Danilo’s lines. The red emergency lights blinked crazily on top of his extruder’s control panel. Four years into this new life as an extruder operator, and these lights still caused his stomach to drop, adrenaline and worry pounding through his arms. His foreman, Dave, was up on the catwalk. He beat on the material lines with a steel bar. Danilo, Ernest’s line partner, walked forward. He rubbed his eyes and yawned. You on break, Danilo, or me? Ah, Ernesto, I tired. No sleep today, Danilo answered. Ernest and Danilo had been hired at Vulcan’s on the same day—Ernest in the morning, Danilo in the afternoon, six weeks after he gained an exit visa from Poland—and they always worked the twelve-hour night shift and chose adjoining lines. They had a system; one would watch the lines while the other took a long break. You check the hopper, Danilo? He shrugged, picked up a wrench. They could hear Dave beating on the lines. Over the speaker system someone called for a maintenance man to check the material hopper down on line number three. Ernest liked working with Danilo. They lived in the same Polish neighborhood in South Bend and took turns driving to work. Danilo had come to America in the pre-democracy days, and he kept telling Ernest that it must now be better in Poland— more work, money, food. There was more, he couldn’t really express it—more vodka, he could have a girlfriend, go into the city and party. His family couldn’t call that often, but he would at least call one Sunday out of the month, and they told Danilo life on the farm was mostly the same. Danilo often told Ernest how he couldn’t sleep, wondered if his leaving was a mistake. Ernest would tell Danilo worry invents a sore heart. Why not go take a break, he’d tell him. Then recognized his lie: All he seemed to do was live in a worrisome sea of memory and regret, his heart feeling soft and bruised, a shadow of purple inhabiting the edges of his hands. All he could do was take a seat on a stool, pick up a book, and begin reading. He’d look up occasionally to watch the packers fill another...