Read Online Now and on Earth by Jim Thompson - Free Book Online Page A

sure. But Mom and Roberta are so angry still that seeing him would mean not seeing them. So-
    I don't know why the family is so damned casual about some things and so intense about others.
    I couldn't get an extension on my fellowship; they were afraid that the war would so change things that any material I gathered would have no value. Or so they said. I wrote to a couple of Hollywood writers I'd corresponded with. They didn't reply. (And I didn't blame them.) Fawcetts was willing to give me a try at studio gush and gossip, but the Hays office wouldn't accredit me. There were too many writers only half-living in Hollywood already.
    In the end, I went out to the aircraft factory, hoping they wouldn't hire me and wondering what I'd do if they didn't. And that's about all.
    It's hard to say how I feel about the place. I'd like to be disinterested, but I can't and hold my job. And, as jobs go, it's no worse than any would be that I had to hold. It's just something to endure, something to live through, numb yet painfully aware of what is going on around me. It's like-well, I'll try to give you an example.
    Three months after Mack was born a doctor acquaintance of mine performed a vasectomy on me. It was around Christmas, and the only payment he exacted was ten fingers out of a quart of rye; in advance, yes. I think he must have served an apprenticeship at cutting out baseball covers, because I was going around in a sling for weeks afterward. But what I started to say was-to strike a parallel with my job-it drove me nuts without actually hurting at all. I was so shot full of local that he could have trimmed out my appendix without hurting me. But that snipping and slicing finally got me so bad that I raised up and whanged the hell out of him, and he had to sit on my chest to finish.

9
    The plant, in this, my fourth week, is beginning to make a little sense. There is still a great deal that confuses me, but I am getting a vague idea of what it's all about. I should have sooner, but for my timidity.
    On the day I took over Gross's job, Moon remembered his promise to show me around. We went down to the Drop-hammer Department, first, and watched the manifolds and other castings being pounded out. They are as large as a small room, some of these hammers, and when they are dropped the concrete floor shakes for hundreds of feet around. The men are the huskiest I've seen, and you can see just about all of them because they're practically naked. Their bodies, and particularly their arms, are covered with scars from the splattering metal and from cleaning out the hot pots.
    I didn't think that was as it should be. There are very few things with which I can't find something wrong. I suggested to Moon that it would be better if they bundled themselves against the heat and other hazards of their work as cooks do.
    He replied, "These men have been working this way a long time and they probably know what's best."
    We only looked through the door of the Plannishing Department, and that was enough to give me a headache for the rest of the morning. Here the castings are run back and forth through a series of rapidly moving hammers until they are beaten smooth; and the noise is too frightful to describe. It has no cadence; you can't accustom yourself to it. Every one of the hundreds of thousands of blows of the hammers rips right through you.
    Through a side door leading into the yard, I noticed several men wandering idly around, massaging their ears and heads, smoking but not talking.
    "Some of the plannishing boys," said Moon. "They get a rest period every half-hour or so. Have to have it or they'd go nuts."
    "I suppose they get pretty good money," I said.
    "Not so much. They're here because they can't get out of it. At least, most of them are. They're put in here, not knowing what plannishing means, and pretty soon they begin to build up seniority so they hang on, hoping they'll get a break and be transferred to some other department. If the