Turning the Worm: Foundry Trilogy, #2

By W. Jan Lockwood

Trapped within the embattled steel mill, Anne struggles to fulfill all the conflicting demands her newfound fame in the newspapers has suddenly foisted upon her. Meanwhile, outside of the mill, Slaide starts leveraging the strikers' attacks for his own personal gain, despite it reacquainting him with the sordid lifestyle that so badly jeopardized his marriage in the past. And when Leonhard tires of being made the scapegoat for one too many personal and professional misfortunes, he hatches a plan that sets them all on a collision course.

• Language: English
• Publisher: W. Jan Lockwood
• Release date: Apr 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9781536570618

Book preview

being trodden on

To whom do lions cast their gentle looks?

Not to the beast that would usurp their den...

The smallest worm will turn being trodden on,

And doves will peck in safeguard of their brood.

—William Shakespeare

such a drubbing

BEYOND THE TENNIS COURT’S fence, countless billboards, utility sheds, water tanks, and radio towers clutter the surrounding rooftops. And beyond them, a blimp skirts a scrim of low clouds, the sky’s cobalt sheen framing it with a flatness that defies the vast space.

Within the fence, the red clay radiates the afternoon heat with such ferocity that when Leonhard stands still for anything more than a few seconds, it bakes the soles of his feet through the thin rubber treads of his tennis shoes. Which makes angling his posture to keep the midday sun from blinding his serving stance even more challenging. Undeterred, he bends his knees while spreading his arms downward in opposing ovals, and as his hands overreach his shoulders he tosses the ball and leaps. But his sweat-soaked shirt binds his biceps, and the ball is fairly lost to the dazzle, reducing him to swinging at where he guesses it to be. It clips the racket’s wooden frame with a tuneless twang, and after sailing high over the fencetop, a single bounce on the softening tar sends it over the hotel’s parapet, beyond which the facade drops sixteen stories to the street below.

The ball-boy suppresses a snicker.

Oh my, says Harper, I hope that didn’t hit anyone.

I always do like to sacrifice one ball to appease the tennis gods.

Gayla Swenson points her racket at him. Well mister, we’ve only three new ones left, so if you need any more of your divine intervention, how about restraining yourself to simple prayers. Lithe as her figure is, her usual layers of finery easily obscure it. But today she wears a form-fitting, short-sleeved, calf-length cotton frock flimsy enough to hint at her hip bones.

In comparison, Harper’s tone but sturdy build, within its ankle-length serge and bustle, is a study in frumpishness. We need all the heathen rituals we can get at this point.

Leonhard’s second serve lands well within the service court, so thoroughly neutered in both speed and spin that Kent charges the net. But Harper reads his return to perfection, and with an extravagant slide on the slickened clay delivers a crosscourt backhand that finds both Swensons flatfooted.

My oh my. You may get a game from us yet.

No thanks to Leonhard’s lumberjack chops.

Now, now. It’s only what’s safest for the unwary pedestrians.

The Chamberlains do indeed win the game, but when the next goes to the Swensons, giving them the set, both sides retreat to a pair of patio umbrellas shading a circle of whicker lawn chairs. As they towel off, Leonhard quaffs two waters and then reclines with a lemonade and iced tea.

Despite Kent’s gray hair and deep wrinkles, he’s barely sweating or even breathing hard. I’m used to winning big, but almost feel bad dealing you such a drubbing.

Don’t be ridiculous. Gayla cups an ice cube beneath her auburn ponytail, moaning with pained relief. It’s precisely the sort of ego-boost you’ve been craving.

Leonhard must make a conscious effort not to gawk at her. This lockout has obviously taken a harsh toll on my game.

You should demand a rematch once it’s done likewise to mine, says Kent, At this rate, that won’t be too much longer.

She smoothes the fast-shrinking cube across her temples, its melt beading down her flushed cheeks and jiggling on her chin. People are just so horribly worked up.

Leonhard says, I pay their threats no mind. If anyone were truly planning something, why bother warning us? It is the threats not made that we should be worrying about.

Most are just stupid, hateful vulgarity, adds Harper, But some are beautifully written, almost poetic. Even, I hate to admit, convincing. Read too many of those and you might start to believe you deserve it.

Gayla fixes incredulously upon her. Oh fie.

Leonhard rattles the ice loose from his glass. I know you mean, Harper. Sometimes I believe you deserve it as well. But seriously, I might have Farrell publish some of the worst. That should debunk the myth of unionists as innocents aggrieved.

Oh no you don’t, Kent says, Part of my charter is to prevent any ongoing escalation of tensions. Making those letters public would do quite the opposite.

Leonhard adjusts forward on his chair. Certainly you realize that we intend to resume shipping product as soon as is humanly possible. And when our resources run low, we intend to import whatever is needed to continue doing so. I also make no secret that I am in town all this week negotiating those very orders. Relative to all that, printing a few letters will not signify much.

A pattern of reckless disregard will work against you should any charges come before the panel. Unless you can guarantee that there won’t be another outbreak of violence — and I don’t think you can — you need to resist any such temptations.

It is not a foible we are indulging. Leonhard pulls his oxford from his chest as he walks to the fence and scans the park’s meadows for Oko and Percival. Everything about our replacement workers was handled with the utmost of discretion. That is why it was done far upstate, at great inconvenience and cost to us.

I’ve hundreds of flyers that show otherwise.

What they don’t show, however, is what steel mill, or where.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out.

Not even the crew knew their final destination until the last minute.

Which means next to nothing in the age of telegrams.

And Royce was indeed correct that the recruiters’ names and histories are all available for your perusal.

Exactly the sort of excessive detail I’ve grown suspicious of. It’s as if you were crafting an alibi in anticipation of a clash.

Royce would keep records of his hiccups if they affected productivity. When a bowl of fruit salad is served, Leonhard stabs a melon slice with his swizzle stick. How reasonable is it to penalize us for assembling a workforce?

The opinion of my bosses is that you consistently incite the strikers.

Leonhard throws an arm towards the horizon in what he guesses to be Vetchburgh’s general direction. They commandeered the mill with mob violence. Their attempts to sink, burn, and blow up the barge killed dozens, and if successful, would have killed hundreds more. To blame us for that because of diligent recordkeeping is ludicrous. We could incite them as much as we could incite a tornado.

It’s quite regrettable that those barges also held a cache of weapons.

Now Leonhard gestures away from the mill, to the stripes of skyline visible between the high-rises. Along with food, cookery, medicine, shelters, and countless other supplies. All in unmarked crates. The sole reason it was discovered was because of the strikers’ attacks.

I can’t ignore the political fallout of not running these leads to ground.

If those same lawmakers had deployed the militia when we originally asked, the standoff would never have occurred. Fortunately for us, we thought to keep their refusals on file. Yet, somehow, I doubt they would prefer that we publish those instead.

Which only proves you knew the volatility of the situation.

Of course we did. Our entire executive staff moved to the mill because of it.

Without comment Gayla stands and positions herself at the far baseline. Taking her cue, Kent chugs his tea and joins her to rally the ball.

Harper lowers her voice to say, This was supposed to put us in their good graces.

They chide me for doom-saying, and then blame me when that doomsday comes.

Having it both ways is their job. They’re politicians.

They are legislators first and foremost. Politics only wins if we let it.

Politics always wins.

And how dare you accuse me of overreacting mere hours after insinuating that I’m emotionally stunted.

I’m not insinuating that. I’m stating it as fact.

Your hypocrisy is no better than the government’s, writ small and personal.

You and your writs can go suck an egg. No stretch of your twisted logic lets you dictate my behavior.

However twisted you might consider the social contract to which I hold the world, at least I have the decency to hold myself to it as well.

Of course you do. Your arrogance leaves no other choice.

What leaves me no other choice, is that my wife is estranging me, my boss is manipulating me, and the law is scapegoating me. All of you have grown entirely too accustomed to my unflinching stoicism, and take for granted that it will persevere through even the worst of your affronts.

I’m not estranging you, Leonhard, I’m removing myself from an unhealthy situation. Doing the same things at the same place with the same people can only make it worse.

If you were not also removing my daughter along with you, I might concede the point.

Not just unhealthy for me, but for her as well. The best thing we can do right now is to put some distance between us. Heaven knows her wellbeing can’t figure too high in your crush of responsibilities.

Leonhard straightens his racket’s strings into a perfect grid. "Catering to her whims might give you the illusion of being a loving parent, but subjecting her to a modicum of hardship will build the character that will last a lifetime. That is the true touchstone of proper child-rearing." Although there’s little doubt that by now the Swensons have confirmed any suspicions they had about the Chamberlains’ marriage, Leonhard hurries onto the court and into their earshot before Harper can respond.

As the next game seesaws through a series of deuces, Leonhard’s distraction glazes into detachment. He plays more from instinct than thought, covering the court with a predatory zeal, allowing the incoming shots to dictate his moves, forcing nothing. His dinks of the ball, with extreme backspin, mere inches over the net, is a thing of lethal wonder. And since their teasing about his ‘chopping wood’ is always the most spirited immediately after having fallen prey to its wiles, it really amounts to nothing more than good old-fashioned sour grapes. Deep into the set, and for the first time in longer than he can remember, the protests, replacement workers, militia, contracts, and even the personal directives he’d usually be calculating, all lift from him, and there’s nothing more to his being than the damp leather in his grip and the thwack of velvet against catgut.

AFTER LEONHARD AND Harper’s eventual defeat, he skips showering in the club’s locker room and instead rides the elevator down and crosses the busy boulevard. The park’s old-growth forest reduces his search to a rambling, seemingly hopeless stroll along its network of footpaths. Yet with the eternal shade, beside wending canals that freshen even the most overgrown and secluded recesses, occasionally featuring moss-covered stone bridges and aqueducts, it feels like a season apart from the rooftop.

He’s contemplating how the Sump in Vetchburgh might be converted into something similar — minus the pox of post-romantic modern sculptures on display — when he spots Percival bounding alongside one of the ponds, doing his three-legged best to dispatch a flock of panhandling waterfowl. Somehow sensing Leonhard’s arrival, the dog quits the chase, gazes about with a stiff neck and pricked ears, and then dodges towards him through the picnickers, artists, and players. His legs are stained a dark brown, and a foamy slobber splutters from his flapping jowls.

The feeling is mutual, my dear chum. He joins Oko where a hundred-year oak shades a patch of rocky beach.

Her rare repose brings out the vitality of her petite, work-honed physique. That’s a gamesome outfit, mister sir.

It is more gamesome yet when not saturated through and through with perspiration. So utterly and evenly saturated that you might mistake this rich, creamy hue as its normal color. He cuts off a slice of the picnic basket’s cheese. I will be lucky if a heat rash does not crop up.

So you’ve more to play?

I am well beyond finished. But Harper feels obliged to spend every spare minute between now and dinner squandering my hard-earned pay at the boulevard’s high-end retailers. And frankly, the less the Swensons see of me right now, the better. So why not take in my first greenery since our star-crossed adventure to Balksdale.

It had its moments. Oko’s hand is rattling in her pocket, and at Leonhard’s questioning glance she pulls out a smooth, flat stone. Been playing ducks and drakes like me and sis used to do.

You must miss her dearly, God rest her soul.

I’d rather be sad than forget.

What are our lives but memories in the making? Especially with an enduring pastime I recall fondly myself. Leonhard holds out his palm. After turning the stone longwise between his fingers, he throws side-armed. It curves high, dips hard, and hits the water at such a sharp angle that it skips only once, sideways and short. If inaccurately, judging by that.

Oko pulls out another stone, a disk so perfect as to appeared machine-made. She starts turning as if to walk away, but instead plants her leading foot and swings the other out and up, her elbows tucked close against her side even as her knee lifts almost to her chin. Then with her stomp and twist, the stone flies forth at a startling speed, skipping rapid-fire and dead straight over many tens of feet before slowing into a curved skim and finally sinking begrudgingly under.

I lost count in the twenties.

I’ve had an hour’s practice.

Easily in the mid-thirties. He surveys the beach for a stone suitable to such a level of competition.

Would the missus ma’am want that I help with her shopping? Lugging them bags around can be a real chore.

There is little doubt that she would appreciate your help. But, if there is one thing I refuse to do, it is to facilitate the further stocking of her already overstocked wardrobe. Each purchase will only be one item more for us to move later.

Oko brushes the stones with her toes, but regains herself. A few outfits won’t break the axle.

Nor one straw the camel’s back. Until it does. By Leonhard’s fourth toss, his solid middle sequences raise his scores into the upper teens.

Not a bad plinking, mister sir.

Plink for show, pitty-pat for dough.

A skip’s a skip a skip, by my book.

He squats to stroke Percival’s ear. Harper plans to move home by late summer. I am surprised rumors of it have not yet reached your tender ears.

I don’t believe most of what they say.

This once, it bears a vague semblance to the truth.

Pains me to hear it.

I had hoped that the sheer logistics of the undertaking would dissuade her from following through. But as fate would have it, she is an organizational savant, and her preoccupation with coordinating the innumerable, ever-changing details appears to be a reward in and of itself. He intentionally hands Oko a handful of lumpy, uneven stones, but with only minor adjustments, she maintains an admirable consistency. I have always held tight groupings in the highest regard, consistency being the bedrock for refinement, but cannot help but wonder whether your particular style is adaptable to pure distance.

Oko smirks. But as they wander along searching for heavier stones, a squabbling alerts them to the geese’s plundering of the picnic basket. Percival races back to disperse them in a clamor of barking, honks, growls and hisses.

Once the breeze has scattered their feathers across the ripples, Oko asks, Harper mention anything about the stables?

The Imperial will obviously remain behind, her lacking the ability to drive it. She should, however, have help enough there for her and Quinevere’s horses. But I suppose it is you yourself that you are most concerned about.

I’ll be happy either way. Knowing would be nice though.

Oblivious as I sometimes may seem, it has not escaped me that you and Quinevere have become friends.

Mostly we both just care a bunch for Percival.

There is no call to belittle the bond you share. Leonhard picks a tuft of down from her bangs. Having you act as something of a surrogate parent, or perhaps big sister, compensating for what has become our chronic shortcomings, is a genuine comfort to me. And although I admit to occasional pangs of jealousy at your easy rapport, I in no way resent it.

It’d take a real scoundrel not to adore so sweet a child. She just comes on by to see how I do, passes some time, and even helps a smidge if I’m busy. Some days we hardly say a word.

Having amassed an arsenal of heftier stones, they resume alternating throws. Hers are more finessed, traveling great distances by virtue of their sheer number of skips, whereas his are vehicles of brute force, skipping five or less times but with great expanses in-between.

Make no mistake, it would be a profound loss to me if you were to leave. But I will abide by that if it is what you and Quinevere prefer. Please talk with her about it, and let me know. And while you are at it, I would appreciate it if you could also glean what might make her remaining time at the mill more bearable.

She don’t grouse for much.

All evidence to the contrary.

That’s just a teenage girl being a teenaged girl. They can’t think straight if they aren’t dumping their parents a whole heap of backtalk. Mostly she talks about the other kids and asks about the strike, like how long it’s going to last and if she’s maybe going to die in it.

I am panging now.

Mostly she’s bored I guess. Why else waste away the hours with a crazy old dragon lady?

If that is what you fancy yourself, you have your work cut out.

The lady part or the dragon part?

Neither one plays ducks and drakes.

That’s where the crazy comes in.

And if you are old, what does that make me?

It makes you the Mister Sir is all, never to be sized in years, but only in the wisdom of long experience.

Heaven forbid, because the years are a kinder measure at this point.

Despite his melancholy, or maybe because of it, the technique of her next few throws gives him an idea for the first of Quinevere’s diversions. In his excitement he skips a stone so far it tocks against the freeboard of a passing canoe. He’s shouting his apologies across the water when there’s another commotion back at the picnic basket. This time it’s not the geese, but rather a grown woman, and so he, not Percival, advances upon her.

Unhand that thermos flask, you petty sneakthief.

But before she does, she twists off the cap and flings the tepid, red stew upon him from head-to-toe. Wallow in the sty, you capitalist pig.

Then while Oko is dabbing it from his stinging eyes, and Percival is lapping up every last pungent drop from his shoe-tops, the geese ravage all the food that’s left in the basket.

still a gruff ride

LAST NIGHTSHIFT THERE was a breakdown at the converters, and its letup ripples slowly down the line until it reaches the rollers by midafternoon. So after Knocks caddies the last flattened plate off to the shears, he takes up a torque wrench the size of a baseball bat and starts tightening the nuts and bolts to spec. Meanwhile Anne throws the gearbox into neutral and wriggles her lanky frame between and around its workings to dab grease onto all the bearings and chains. Done sharpening their grapples and trueing the headers, they sweep up and wipe down until the foreman tells them they’ve got three hours of leave, unpaid.

Two buildings over they sit on a shaded ledge of the open-hearth mill, just watching.

After shucking her sweat-soaked gloves and cap, she tousles her matted hair to help it dry faster. Then she loosens her shoelaces enough for her boots to slip off with their brown leather tongues flopping as limp and slimy as overripe banana peels. In the habit eating in quick snatches between ingots, she wolfs five heaping spoonfuls before the ease at hand dawns upon her, and from then on she chews its gristly bits as calm and mindless as a cow cudding.

Each heat in these three-story furnaces lasts for several hours, so they’re run staggered, with old-timers tending to them in a round-robin fashion. At Vulcan’s Gift a stout tyke not yet to shaving climbs hand-over-fist up a chain and hangs there for his weight to pull the stove’s door slowly open. After hooking it down he joins the puddler staring through smoked glasses into its blinding mouth like they’re doing nothing of more consequence than sizing up tarts in a bakery’s oven. Then with a shovel having a handle as long as a fly-fishing rod and a blade the size of a saddle, the puddler slams dolomite by the tens of pounds onto all the hollows, pits and thin spots of the hearth’s sidewall.

Both Knocks and Anne tilt their grub buckets up to drain every last drop of the drippings, and run their fingers along the sides to lick from them what leavings cling there. Unaccustomed to downing so much so fast, and owing to those drippings being laden with glistening globs of grease, their bellies soon turn toasty as kilns and a wave of drowse takes ahold. So although they’ve come to study on this high-dollar work, they do no more studying than to daydream, and no more working than to swat off firebrats and stay in the shade. Not that that shade does them much good, because even at their distance, the heat from twenty tons of iron being charged still scorches them to parched.

Zed awakens Anne by blowing a raspberry in her ear, and it’s only his snappy recoil that keeps her from bashing him upside the head with a blind swipe of her bucket. Three yawns later she spots Knocks sound asleep on the cool of a plyboard laid across a pair of gaping slits in the workfloor.

A turd-eating grin breaks across Zed’s face as he hunts down the second-helper. How can you resist throwing her over?

Me can’t, says the man as he twists his valves.

This starts the pressure building in the basement’s hydraulics, and as they expand they raise their piston-arms slowly through those slits, lifting the plyboard with them. All work within eyeshot slows as far as it dares without stopping outright. The board’s several feet up when the tilt becomes too much and it slides off and slams to the ground like sheet-ice from a lean-to’s roof.

Although it jars Knocks but good, he wobbles up as if it wasn’t any worse than a rooster’s crow. After knuckling his eyes, scratching his backside, and patting down his cowlick, he sets the plyboard neatly back where he got it from. Your mill stalled too?

If it is, it ain’t nothing to me no more, seeing as to how I’ve resigned my post.

Knocks clutches his crotch, I got your resigned post right here.

I’m serious now. I’m not cut out for this brand of overwork.

Nor any other brand of work, over or under.

Far as I’m concerned, I’m lucky to’ve survived what I have.

And us not?

Anne says, It doesn’t do them any good to have a mill full of strikebreakers who ain’t breaking nothing but their rules.

My chances are better against their thugs than against their converters. Way folks over there are getting offed, they’ll probably count me among them just to square the headcount. And what with all these greenhorns coming ashore, they’ve got hands aplenty not to trouble over little old me.

Knocks asks, What you plan on doing instead?

And the Poet help me, adds Anne, if you’re heading back for a taste of home.

More like I’m helping to bring a taste of home to the heads here.

So as to make it the worst of both worlds?

Zed cozies up beside her. That shine of your paps, you can brew it, right?

Knocks throws his head back. And there’s your wooden muskox.

Distill it, you mean? Yeah, I done it for years. From filching the corn and sugar, to mixing the mash and nursing the yeast, to filling the bottles. All Paps ever did was the paw-greasing and money-keeping.

How about the still itself?

Most every batch needed a twiddle here or there, if not an outright fixing. All of which by me. So I know the ins and outs inside and out.

Think we could bang one together from the scraps around here?

Slim to none of it’s the copper we’d need. Otherwise the corrosion will poison it and worse yet ruin the taste.

There’s gotta be some squirrelled away someplace.

Pricey as it is, that’s likely under lock and key.

Maybe not in times like these.

Besides, banging one together’s just the start. They take a constant caring. And you’ve never been one for caring, let alone constant.

Knocks says, Nor running a business anywhere but into the ground.

This time’s different. That company store is shy on spirits, and these strikebreakers are drying out fast. Whoever finds a way to wet them is gonna blow the top off this joint.

Not the kind of talk us shiners care for.

Knocks says, Twelve-hour shifts leave little room for hobbies.

I’ll do the heavy toiling. All I need from you Anne is the knowhow. Kinda like the way the mill’s got us working with these doohickeys on contraptions we don’t know the first thing about.

Speak for yourself.

We’ll use their tricks for our own good.

The shift whistle blows on its eight-hour mark, but not a one of the puddlers so much as glances up from their work.

There’s no dodging me wading in tits-deep for the starter batches, what with all the cobbling together and tuning up. Like I was saying, they’ve got an inclination towards blowing their tops off.

"Yeah well so do these furnaces. Just last week Caged Sun wasn’t fettled thick enough and it burnt straight through to its under-chamber. Took out three stove-gangers and cost two tonnagers their jobs."

Which is why we’re learning on them, to be front-of-line for the next spots that come open. This right here’s where the real money gets made.

Mighty peculiar then that they’re striking.

Knocks asks, Split three ways?

What’re you bringing to the party?

These schemes of yours always get all three of us wrapped around the axle by when they’re saucered and blowed. Shouldn’t I get paid for my fair share of that?

Anne says, Three ways even or no ways at all.

Oh okay, I’ll try my best. But don’t go worrying your greedy little heads too much about it. If this pans out, we’ll be farting through silk in no time flat. Zed leaves a pad and pencil on the ledge. Write me up a list of what all you need for the still’s makings and the shine’s fixings.

Knocks scoots into the space he left. Wonder why everybody don’t try this?

You’re about to find out. She scribbles out her mash recipe and sketches on a still until there comes a caterwauling right beneath her.

An erstwhile lumberjack is yelling at the tyke, For the love of money, boy, crank the knob on that stopcock. Crank it hard and fast. You gotta squeeze and twist a cock’s knob, boy, squeeze and twist. And not like some ten-thumbed mother’s son neither. Then he calls Anne and Knocks down to help with the making of Summer Noon’s backwall, one of the most sporting jobs on the hearths. He knowingly taps the timepiece in his bib pocket. By the clock she’s got a half-hour yet to go. But I can tell by the sizzle of my piss on her bloom that she’s already done.

If ever once a puddler don’t claim to read a heat by the sizzle of their piss, I’m gonna give them my dessert every day for a week.

But you’ve none to give.

Make it two weeks then.

The pair bookend the crew that’s standing afront the furnace, and as the tyke climbs the chain and its door slides open, they all march towards it in lockstep. Anne elbows in close and swings her shovel through a wide sweep, such that just inside the hearth’s mouth her dolomite flies off with wings enough to clear the flames of the throat. Everybody’s got different follow-throughs, so their scoops and handles rattle together like winter limbs in a norther. But Anne savvies to hold hers waist-high, to cut the bright of the lively silver bubbling for the instant needed to see her throw land square against the back wall.

The lumberjack says, Poor Knocks swung a pole-maul’s splitter-chop, when what he really needed was a dress-hatchet’s shaving-chip.

With you tripping up my lead-in, it’s a miracle I landed at all.

Anne says, "Judging by your accounting, mister loggerman, he’s missed five of his last three throws."