Imaginary Life

By Gooding

They were scattered all around that squalid, filthy place, their feathered corpses splayed or huddled in a thousand different attitudes of inglorious decease.

Or so it seemed to Duffy, anyway. In fact, there probably werent more than a dozen of the scruffy little wretches littering the plant at any given time. But they were there, all right; Ill grant that much. I saw them too, and so, Im sure, did everybody else. You never knew when you might round a pillar or a post and nearly stumble on one of the fat little lumps or, in some cases, cross paths with one that was still hobbling along in an agonized quest for relative privacy, a place to die in peace. One morning I opened the door to the john, and there was one of them lying on the floor by the trash can. It appeared to have nosed its way into the corner between the trash can and the block wallas far removed from the madness of life as it could get under the circumstances. Then it had tucked its beak down into its breast and expired. I dont know how the hell it got inside the john.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Aug 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9781490764351

Gooding

The author is a retired academic who escaped from the insane asylum that is now higher education just before it was entirely taken over by lunatics. He lives in Mesa, Arizona, with his son and, apparently, any stray animals that happen to show up at their door in search of food and shelter. They must like the food and the company here because they never leave. That’s all right; we’ve got room.

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ONE

Dead pigeons.

They were scattered all around that squalid, filthy place, their feathered corpses splayed or huddled in a thousand different attitudes of inglorious decease.

Or so it seemed to Duffy, anyway. In fact, there probably weren’t more than a dozen of the scruffy little wretches littering the plant at any given time. But they were there all right; I’ll grant that much. I saw them too, and so, I’m sure, did everybody else. You never knew when you might round a pillar or a post and nearly stumble on one of the fat little lumps, or, in some cases, cross paths with one that was still hobbling along in an agonized quest for relative privacy, a place to die in peace. One morning I opened the door to the john and there was one of them lying on the floor by the trash can. It appeared to have nosed its way into the corner between the trash can and the block wall—as far removed from the madness of life as it could get under the circumstances. Then it had tucked its beak down into its breast and expired. I don’t know how the hell it got inside the john.

So I saw them all right, but seeing them did not affect me the way it affected Duffy, who must have had pigeons bobbing around inside his brain. Duffy said the disgusting little vermin made him nauseous. He cared little enough for them at a distance, even when they were quite alive and going stupidly about their scavenging, germ-infested, head-bobbing, beady-eyed business. Rats with wings, he called them, and he said he always felt the temptation, when he came across a flock of the little bastards waddling in front of him on the asphalt or the concrete, still healthy and looking for all the world as if the sole purpose of their existence were to fatten themselves up so they could better serve as prey for their savvier, more voracious counterparts in the animal kingdom—he said he always felt the malicious temptation just to run up and boot one of them clean into eternity.

Such was the love he felt for the squat, ugly little beasts when they were living. But he loved them much less still when they were either in the throes of death or already beyond those throes, steeped in eternal slumber. The very sight of one of them lying motionless, an inert, feathered lump with its round little head tucked under its wing; or, worse yet, still alive but stumbling heedlessly along in search of a final resting place—the very sight of one of them in such a hopeless condition was enough to set a rock inside his stomach. If he looked too long he’d feel vertigo whirling up through him and then he had to look away. Christ, what an embarrassment it would be to pass out there, in that pit, in front of those people, over a fucking pigeon.

It was ironic, he remarked to me. He could stomach the sight of a human body mutilated in an automobile accident—didn’t relish it but could stomach it if stomaching it was required. He said the mechanism evolution had developed in him to trigger revulsion—generally for his own protection—did not jar into operation at the sight of a mangled mortal. But put feathers on the body and he had to turn away or risk losing his lunch. Go figure. He said it was probably that aversion to the pathetic little beasts that made it seem like there was a dead pigeon lurking around every corner. It seemed like there were millions of them, he said. All lying in wait for him.

I told him it was the metaphor. The metaphor was working on his subconscious mind. This shit is pure Lacan, I told him.

You’re so full of it, Dizzy. Jesus Christ. Ju learn that shit in school? Izzat what they’re teaching you? Lacan. Jesus Christ. He shook his head. "This ain’t even Freud. An’ Freud knew shit. This ain’t projection. It ain’t transference."

What is it, then?

I don’t know what the fuck it is. Hyperactive imagination, I guess. Personality quirk. You’re the guy who’s projecting shit. Lacan—for Christ’s sake! You read that asshole, you start hallucinating.

You have to see the world from my perspective, I said. Up there in the heavens. You guys all look like pigeons to me. Down here bobbing along like slow, dull-witted, doomed pigeons, the whole lot a ya’s. I did the pigeon walk to illustrate.

Comical, he said. You’re a funny sonofabitch. You oughta come down here where the real work is done. Get away from that thin air up there.

The air up there suits me, I told him. That rarefied air. It’s headier. Sublime. You cretins wouldn’t know.

Of course not. How could we ever hope to understand the likes of you? You’re too far above us. It’s another metaphor. You fucker. You’re a real abstract thinker. Prob’ly have glorious visions when you jerk off.

I think about you when I jerk off.

Faggot.

I was not the one, though, who believed the birds were being killed by the same poison in the air that all of us had to breathe every night. It was Duffy who came up with that harebrained misimpression. Till one night, he said, he looked all the way down the length of the plant from the furnace cubicle and saw Gabe Rodriguez prowling the floor near the pouring platform with a shotgun under his arm. Pretty soon Gabe looks up, brings the gun up against his cheek, aims carefully, and fires. A few seconds later Duffy sees another bird fluttering floorward on its way to becoming a corpse. And Gabe shoulders his weapon and moseys on down the floor toward heat treat.

Hell yes, I said to him. You thought those pigeons were just dyin’ from breathin’ the air? Then I thought about it a minute. I see how you could think that, I said. "But it’s a purge. The foremen are just thinnin’ the little bastards out. There were gettin’ to be too many of ’em in here. You want ’em shittin’ all over ya when you’re tryin’ da tap a furnace?

They come in here to get away from the owls and the hawks. Can you believe that? This hellhole is actually a safe haven to ’em.

Must be another fucking metaphor, he said.

Well, the joke’s on them. I seen an owl take a pigeon right outa the air one night. I was up in the crane and somebody was pourin’ a heat an’ all of a sudden this owl just darts right in front of me and snatches this pigeon with both feet. Swooped in from the open end a the plant and just grabs this pigeon that was flyin’ across between the crane rails. Bam! Like that. I snapped my fingers to illustrate the suddenness and the rapidity with which the incident, still vivid in my memory, had occurred. It had happened so fast that at first I wasn’t sure what I had seen, but then, watching the owl dart away through the open wall of the plant, twenty feet above the pavement, its pathetic victim tight in its clutches and doubtless still thinking stupid, horrified pigeon thoughts about the predicament it was in—watching it dart away I knew exactly what I had just seen. It was spectacular, I said. In its own way it was sorta beautiful. The hunter an’ the hunted—all that sorta shit.

Jesus, Duffy said. Charlie Darwin would be pissed. One less pigeon ta write about in his book.

Bullshit, I said. Charlie would be pleased. It’s the natural order a things.

Vindication for the old bearded fucker?

Absolutely.

You speak the truth, he said.

Then he told me about one night when he was up on the pouring platform, just trying to stay warm, killing a few minutes with whoever was running the holding furnace. Marvin Hicks was the foreman up there on the platform that night, and he came up with a deformed young pigeon in his gloved hands. The thing was just sitting there in the palms of his hands, looking dumbly around at the sights and blinking. Probably had no idea what was going on. Probably thought Marvin was its mother or something. It’s crippled, Marvin hollered over the noise to Duffy and whoever was up there with him. Watch.

He took it over to where the stream was pouring from the spout on the holding furnace, a steady stream six inches wide and nearly white hot, close to three thousand degrees, a thousand degrees hotter than volcanic lava. With a boyish grin at both of them on the platform he pitched the little pigeon into the stream, and without so much as a flutter it was gone, disintegrated by the liquid metal. Duffy said it was one of the strangest things he’d seen in his whole life. It was like a fucking magic act, a disappearing act, only without the sleight of hand. This disappearing act was the real deal. He said the stream didn’t even waver. The bird was just there one instant, gone the next, leaving not more than a trace of vapor in its wake.

Hell, yes, I said. A coffee cup-ful a that shit would penetrate right through you. Prob’ly leave a hole in your chest like so. And I used my gloved hands to form a hole the size of a softball. This is dangerous shit we’re dealin’ with here.

And Duffy couldn’t resist. A metaphor, he grinned at me. It’s another metaphor. All of life is fucking metaphors. Ask Lacan.

Go fuck yourself, I told him. He was funny, though; I’ll grant that much.

TWO

If you want a metaphor, consider the one that everybody in the plant inevitably came up with. They said the place was hell. Duffy, who was literary, said it was Dante’s hell, Il Inferno, and when I asked him which circle of Il Inferno it was, he said the metaphor was not as simple as that. He said that like Dante’s allegorical dream world, our place of employment harbored diverse sinners and varying degrees of iniquity. Not all sinners were equally guilty or equally punished, but he assured me that most of Dante’s storied locales—excepting Il Paradiso, of course—were represented by various denizens of the steel mill. The owners of the plant, for instance, dwelt in the fourth circle of hell because of their unrepentant avarice. Our whoring, brawling mutual friend Rob Martin split his time between the second and seventh circles, where the lustful and the violent, respectively, were punished.

What about me? I said.

You oughta know that, Dizzy. Seventh circle, inner ring. With the other Sodomites."

It figures. And you?

Duffy had consigned himself to the first circle, Limbo, where the faithless but virtuous resided, but I said he was giving himself more credit than he deserved. I sent him off to circle six as an unregenerate heretic. My judgment gave him pause, and he finally accepted it, nodding his head thoughtfully and saying I was probably right.

Few of our coworkers were literary, though, besides Gus Logan, the fat furnace operator, possessor of an acid tongue and an acerbic wit, who had an actual college degree in English literature, of all things, and who had once worked as a recruiter for some small university but couldn’t take the pressure of trying to meet quotas, and so he ended up pushing buttons on an electric-arc furnace and sometimes risking his neck. And still there were quotas to meet, for melting furnaces do not run on good will, and if they do not produce molten metal they do not earn their keep. Nor do their operators. When I brought this fact to Gus’s attention all he said was, It’s different. And I suppose it was.

Gus chuckled when I told him about Duffy’s metaphor—a deep, guttural, mildly embittered sound in keeping with Gus’s temperament, and somehow reminiscent of the growling effusions of cartoon bears. He said he couldn’t remember much about the circles of hell but he knew that his own sins were gluttony and sloth, and perhaps blasphemies against the Lord Almighty Himself, whom he had cursed many times in his life and would not repent a single oath; so if I wanted I could look the poem up and figure out where to put him. At any rate, he appreciated Duffy’s ingenuity and mused that maybe someday he would look up the poem and sit down and chart out where every asshole he’d ever known should be placed in Dante’s schema, like a verbal version of a Hieronymous Bosch painting. I don’t know if he ever got around to it.

So there were those few of us who appreciated Duffy as a glib litterateur, but most of the mill rats were not themselves litterateurs, and some of them were probably not even literate. A significant number of them had not achieved beyond grade school, scholastically, and so the hell they imagined was the hell from church, a hell of leaping flames and fearsome demons and eternal anguish, but without depth or complexity or varied forms of punishment—and without much style or character either. But it was certainly hell enough to describe the place where we all worked, a place that also offered little in the way of style or character.

Watching it all beneath me from the cab of my bridge crane, I could certainly picture it as a hell of some kind or other, with the furnaces blasting and the sparks flying and the helmeted workers dragging along in their flame-retardant clothing, some of them wearing tinted masks that made them look faceless and demonic. Before the castings came out of their sand molds they were shot from both sides with water under very high pressure, to cool them and to temper the metal, and the cooling steel and oily sand gave off thick shrouds of steam that wrapped around the workers and heightened the impression of an enormous chamber of the damned, each toiling form a Sisyphus sentenced to an eternity of torturous and repetitive labor. The deafening roar of the furnaces and the toxic dust in the air that powdered our skin and turned our snot black completed the effect, and it could not have been difficult for anybody who visited the place, no matter his or her level of educational or literary attainment, to conceive of it as a hell on Earth, where damnation’s fires were hot and the working conditions were miserable, and where eternal anguish was indeed fathomable.

Under the very worst conditions, in fact, the misery at the plant could even outstrip imagination, or practically outstrip it, as happened late one night a year or so before I hired on, when the gear busted on a fifteen-ton ladle and the wheel used to turn the ladle slowly by hand, to control the outward flow of its deadly contents, broke loose suddenly and started spinning freely, and neither Ramirez nor Moreno—and for that matter no human or beast—could keep the ladle from going over. So over it went, an act of God or an act of Nature, or an act of defective workmanship, or maybe just an act of time wearing out the mechanism. And the metal gushed out over the spout as the weight of the molten steel continued to shift, the ladle going over faster and faster, like a bucket that has reached the tipping point and then passes it, so there is no stopping it from going over, not until it has emptied itself. So it was with that ladle. All the way over it went, and about ten tons of liquid steel, by later estimation, hit the floor beneath the pouring platform, and beneath the men who worked on that platform. It spread quickly, sending its searing heat upward, so that Ramirez and Moreno were grilled, the two of them, like a couple of human fajitas. The rest of the crew saw it coming and spilled down the gangway and out the exits just ahead of the liquid holocaust, but those two were trapped on the pouring platform and charcoaled. When they could abide the murderous heat no longer they leapt off the platform and into the puddling steel, one of them first followed closely by the other—out of the frying pan and into the fire, so to speak. Moreno never made it out at all but Ramirez, according to Bob Newhoffer, who was the foreman in charge of the pouring that night, managed to drag himself out of the fire on what remained of his arms and legs and languished for nearly half an hour on the cooler concrete floor of the plant before he died. His hair