

I used to tell Bill Pancoast that he was going to get his ass kicked if he didn't shut up. I'm glad he didn't listen to me. _Wildcat_ is the story of the auto industry no one ever believed when I told it.

—Ken Kreiger, retired autoworker, 41 years service

Bill Pancoast's _Wildcat_ is a funny, sad, and thoroughly convincing portrait of autoworkers—many damaged by war, broken dreams, or substance abuse—dependent on a General Motors plant in fictional Cranston, Ohio, during the Sixties and Seventies. After reading this moving story, I once again asked myself: why is the subject of work so often neglected by today's fiction writers? Fortunately, we have Pancoast to fill in some of the blanks.

—Donald Ray Pollock, author of _Knockemstiff_

Most novelists haven't been anywhere near an auto plant, let alone worked in one, but Bill Pancoast has. _Wildcat_ takes us inside a spontaneous strike at an Ohio stamping plant in the Vietnam era, showing how righteous anger, insane hijinks, and bloodshed can break out when workers decide to do something—anything—about brutal and boring working conditions.

—Christopher Phelps, Associate professor,

American Studies, University of Nottingham

Just when General Motors is facing its biggest challenge, along comes Bill Pancoast's _Wildcat._ This gritty story follows a team of autoworkers back in GM's oil-spattered glory days. Whether you're reading about security captain Big Bill or line worker Bobby Finnegan, _Wildcat_ reveals the slimy underbelly of the car industry with a muckraker's finesse. Pancoast's knowledge of factory operations, his portrait of labor—and human—relations in America's heartland, recall Upton Sinclair's _The Jungle_ , as well as Ida Tarbell's exposé of the Standard Oil Company.

—James Reiss, author of _Riff on Six_

In most of the recent books, articles, and analyses of General Motors, few armchair critics have bothered to write about the company's attitude toward the rank-and-file workers who build its cars. Fortunately, we now have Bill Pancoast, a front-line autoworker in one of GM's key factories for many years, to thank for filling that void. In this slim volume, Pancoast packs in accounts of the company's behavior before, during, and after "wildcat" strikes, the union's response, and the very human stories of life and death on the line. For those trying to understand why the auto industry is where it is today, _Wildcat_ will provide some of the answers.

—Dave Elsila, editor of _Solidarity_ , 1976-1998

### WILDCAT

A novel

by

William Trent Pancoast

Blazing Flowers Press

WILDCAT

WILLIAM TRENT PANCOAST

COPYRIGHT WILLIAM TRENT PANCOAST 2010

PUBLISHED BY BLAZING FLOWERS PRESS

AT SMASHWORDS

THIRD EDITION

FIRST PRINTING

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

ALL OF THE CHARACTERS IN THIS BOOK ARE FICTITIOUS, AND ANY RESEMBLANCE TO ACTUAL PERSONS, LIVING OR DEAD, IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL.

INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BOOK NUMBER: SMASHWORDS

Once again, as always, for Deb

And for the people who do the work

### Part I

### Chapter 1

### November, 1970

### Wildcat

The security chief barged into command headquarters. "It's this simple," he said, glaring around the room at the other officers and guards. "The plant manager wants his turkeys back."

The chief was referring to the thousands of frozen birds in the Chevy dump trucks parked at the Cranston General Motors plant main gate on this day before Thanksgiving in 1970. The guards had been handing out the company gift of turkeys as the autoworkers left work that day, but then had come the wildcat strike at two p.m. The shop chairman, president, and shop committee of this local United Auto Workers union had walked through the General Motors stamping plant hitting E-stops, shutting down the presses, stopping fork lifts and tow motors, motioning for the men to follow them. By two-thirty, the parking lot was nearly empty, and the four security officers on turkey detail had been forcibly relieved of duty by eight union pickets who continued handing out the birds.

"I wished I'd had my gun," one of the young guards said.

"Yeah, if we'd had our guns we could have held the turkeys," chimed in one of the other fellows who had been on the gate.

"Just shut the fuck up," the chief said. He laid out a well-worn map and began assigning sectors to the lieutenants. The four square miles of the plant grounds were divided into six sectors, and the chief assigned one to each of the lieutenants. Both captains would be on sector one today for the assault up the hill to the main gate. Big Bill, one of the captains who had been passed over for the chief's job, rubbed his hands, each the size of a picnic ham, as he thought about kicking a little hillbilly ass on the ramp.

"Each of you," and he nodded at Big Bill, then at the other captain, "will have six men and a lieutenant. We are going up that hill, and we will take back our turkeys. The other men will secure the gate. We will move the dump trucks into the executive parking garage as soon as we take possession." He picked a dozen of the toughest out of the forty security guards. He had hired many of them, and he knew that five of the twelve were just back from Vietnam, half fucking crazy yet from their time in the bush. He would have possession of the plant manager's stupid turkeys shortly.

"We taking side arms?" asked one of the lieutenants assigned to the assault force.

"Hell no," the chief spat. "Look, you got a handful of dumbfuck hillbillies up there. They got our turkeys. We're going to take them back. You'll have your sticks and riot gear. Just push them out onto Route 30, and they can run or get run over. We'll have two snipers on the roof just in case."

Across the street at the union hall, the parking lot was full, cars spilling onto the edge of the state route running through this Ohio town that fifteen years earlier had welcomed the General Motors plant. Seen from a distance, the haphazard assemblage of vehicles looked like a junkyard, most of the pickup trucks and cars showing long, red streaks of rust. Up close, the bald tires and worn interiors were visible. These guys weren't getting rich working at GM, or if they were, they weren't spending their money on the product they made twelve hours a day, seven days a week.

Milt Jeffers, the shop chairman, leaned back in the leather chair in his office in the new union hall and popped open another beer. He took a long swig, then sat forward and peered over his sunglasses. "What the fuck you mean, what are we going to do with the turkeys?"

"Well, I just wondered...."

"Fucking idiots, everywhere I turn," Jeffers said as he stood up and tossed his car keys to Jimmy Hatfield, his personal assistant. "Take my car over there and fill the trunk up with turkeys."

By now the second shifters had formed a single-file line on the highway as they saw the turkeys being handed out. One man in each dump truck was tossing the frozen birds, which were then handed down the line of men to the waiting cars. Crazy Jack was in charge of the operation and seemed to know all the workers, shouting to many by name as they approached to get their Thanksgiving turkeys, courtesy of General Motors and the United Auto Workers. Jack saw the chairman's Cadillac do a U-turn and swing towards the line of cars, and he stepped forward, holding his hand up to stop the next car. The chairman's boy buzzed the electric window down and popped the trunk release all at the same time. "Fill her up," he shouted, and flipped his thumb at the now open trunk.

"That goofy son of a bitch," Crazy Jack muttered and motioned to the guys to put their turkeys in the trunk. The back end of the shiny, new car was beginning to sag when Jack heard the crack of a rifle. Hell, he knew that sound, even identified it as a 30-06. He instinctively pulled his neck into his shoulders and looked around. Craaack, came another round and Jack knew that it was coming from somewhere in the parking lot of the union hall. One of the guys was shooting the video cameras off the plant walls. He shook his head and looked down the highway towards town. This was bad shit happening. Once the guns are fired, the cops show up fast.

Then Crazy Jack heard a shout. He figured the cops had already been spotted and was ready to wing it out of there. The man in the closest turkey truck gestured wildly down the hill to the plant. About a fourth of the way up the two-hundred-yard-long concrete entrance ramp marched the assault force, shields held in front, helmets and face guards in place, sticks at the ready, just like a big city police force, with the best equipment that money could buy. They were in no hurry, marching six wide up the ramp, which was two lanes wide and skirted on the sides with 12 gauge sheet metal in place of guard rails. Big Bill called the marching cadence through his megaphone, slapping his nightstick in rhythm against his bad left leg: "Leeefft. Leeefft. Leeefft, rot, leeeeffft."

Crazy Jack came around the trucks. There were a couple dozen union guys there by now, pointing down the ramp, laughing and giving Big Bill and his boys the finger. Big Bill responded by going to a double time: "Leeft, leeft, leeft, rot, left." Here they came, GM's own private police force, going into battle for their plant manager's honor and the honor of every plant manager, every GM assistant vice-president, and the honor of the GM chairman himself.

Then there was a thunk as a turkey hit the pavement and rolled down the concrete ramp, bouncing unpredictably as only a frozen turkey can. More turkeys rolled crazily down the ramp, and then a dozen guys were on the trucks lofting frozen turkeys down the runway, turkeys careening this way and that, ricocheting off the sheet metal walls. One of the front guards went down as a turkey slammed into him. Big Bill shouted into his megaphone, "Kick their sorry hillbilly asses! Come on, motherfuckers!"

Big Bill marched on, all his pent up resentment at his commander's incompetence and all the nepotism that ran this industry giant urging him onward and upward on the concrete ramp. He might as well have been back in Korea because he was fixing to kill somebody at the top of that damn hill when he got there. Then a turkey going about twenty miles an hour hit a rock six feet in front of him, launched itself and caught his left knee. Big Bill went down in a massive heap of beer belly, holding his left knee in pain.

And above the din of shouting and laughing and horns honking, and the thunking and banging of the frozen turkeys as they clattered and careened down the chute past the guards lying every which way, towards the plant and the reinforcement guards entering below, could be heard the wailing of sirens filling the air from every direction. The dump beds of the Chevy trucks were activated, and another two thousand frozen turkeys slid out of the beds like a flash flood toward GM's finest, and while the men all scrambled across the highway toward the union hall, the chairman's Cadillac slowly pulled away from the scene, its rear bumper only inches from the ground.

### Chapter 2

### Jobs

Thomas Greene was the five hundredth man hired at the General Motors Cranston stamping plant. It was fall of 1956, and word had spread fast—down Route 23, through Chillicothe and Waverly and Portsmouth in Ohio, and on down through Kentucky and West Virginia, the manpower providers for the Ohio and Michigan auto industry. To Olive Hill and Somerset, Hazard and Pikeville, Flattop and Redbush and Louisa in Kentucky, and over to West Virginia to Fort Gay and Williamson, Welch and Logan, and Matewan and Vulcan, and down along the Big Sandy, and then the Tug River to Bluefield, and all throughout the Cumberland Plateau, where men were used to the harshest of all work, coal-mining, word had spread when the hiring began. Automotive drove the migration, but if you didn't get on at the car factory, there were steel, tires, appliances, all waiting to be made or built up north.

Thomas was lean and strong and smart, as were most of the men coming north for work. Word traveled fast from relatives already there. He had heard from an aunt in Matewan, who had heard from Crazy Jack. "They're hiring Monday, fifty men, but you got to be here in line." A few would show up on Saturday night with blankets and a box lunch fixed by the wife or Mom or Sis or Grandma, and their sober vigil for the opportunity of a lifetime would begin. By late Sunday night, the last slots had been filled. Thomas Greene was 37th in line when the processing began Monday morning.

The men were herded through the executive parking garage along folding tables with chairs set before them, and they filled out paperwork. On either side of them were the automobiles they would be making, and most of the men had never seen so many beautiful cars in one place. Even the dealerships down home usually had only two or three new models on hand. There was a black Cadillac Eldorado Brougham and a new '57 Chevy convertible, bright red with a white top, an Oldsmobile with the Rocket V-8, a classic Roadmaster Buick, and a big, blue Pontiac Bonneville with the new 347 cubic inch engine. Not a man there failed to take a few moments off the task at hand to look at one of those babies and imagine himself behind the wheel with his wife or girl, prompting the guy in charge to bellow every few minutes, "Keep your eyes on the paperwork, boys, not on the cars."

The guys that couldn't read and write very well were helped along by the folks in the white shirts, and Thomas thought that was a mighty fine thing—not penalizing a fellow because he couldn't read. He was further encouraged by the lieutenant at the end who, after glancing over page one of Thomas's application, said, "Army Infantry, hey? Welcome aboard. That was some rough going in the Ardennes." The lieutenant gave a relaxed salute as he linked Thomas's unit to that part of the action in 1944. The nation was not so far away from WWII that one's service record was not an immediate source of respect.

"Yes sir. But we got her done." A few minutes later, Thomas was thinking what a fine and friendly place this was going to be to work, when his name was shouted out. Oh, no. He turned to the reject table where several other men had already gone and been shown the way out. "Yes, sir. No, sir. 1941. Yes, sir."

The lieutenant came over to the table. "What we got, Ed?"

Ed had overheard the earlier conversation between the two vets and said, "Well, Lieutenant, seems this fellow's been in some trouble," and he shrugged towards Thomas.

"Sir...Lieutenant...."

The lieutenant took the application and glanced over it again.

"Who started it?"

"They did. Donny, he was the sheriff's son, he said something rude to my girl."

"What'd he say?"

"He hollered, 'Fuck her. I did.'"

"It's not a felony," the lieutenant said.

Thomas Greene got the job. After a few minutes of safety training, Thomas's group of ten was led out to the factory. The place was like a thunderous cave, with welding smoke, oil mist, and concrete dust as thick as fog in the air. Sirens from the cranes wailed away, motion everywhere as men not only made the car parts, but finished the plant construction. Thomas Greene had never seen a picture of insanity, but if there was one, he was sure he was looking at it.

Sheriff Thomas Greene put these memories from his mind as he pulled to a skidding stop at the main gate in front of the GM plant. For a few moments, he just sat and stared at the mess on the ramp. Big Bill came limping over as Thomas got out of the cruiser. "Now what?" the sheriff asked.

"Damndest thing you'd ever see in your life. These assholes stole our turkeys, and then attacked us with them."

Thomas looked down the ramp towards the plant—there were turkeys everywhere, some lying in little piles along the edges, others by themselves in the center, and at the bottom, a huge sloppy pile of frozen turkeys. A security guard about a third of the way down, on turkey cleanup detail, angrily kicked a pile of the hard birds and recoiled, swearing, in pain.

"Getting hard to find good help," the sheriff chortled as they watched the guard hopping around.

Big Bill shouted into his megaphone, "Gary! You damn fool! Just pick the bastards up." And at that, a half dozen of the other guards hooted and hollered at the hapless Gary. The union guys were long gone, back to the safety of the union hall.

"Anybody get hurt?"

"We have a couple of guys headed to the hospital for x-rays, and I'll probably be there later. You know how GM is about documenting everything." By now several other cruisers had arrived—one from the city, a state patrol car, and another sheriff's department cruiser, and the other lawmen were listening in. The city cop was actually the Chief of Police himself since dealing with GM was always tough; the company wanted to control the police reports, always trying to make the union look as bad as possible.

The four cops moved off to the side and huddled together. Thomas and the police chief had sons playing together on the city football team, and they talked about their chances in the district playoffs, the farthest the local team had ever advanced—two more wins and they would be state champs. The state patrolman heard the call on his radio and went over to his cruiser. Ten seconds later he had his lights and siren activated and gave his comrades the thumbs up as he sped off. They had an agreement for calls here at the plant—anything involving confrontation, the company always called it "violence," belonged to the sheriff's department. Beer in the parking lot, thefts, chickenshit stuff belonged to the city police, and the state patrol always showed up as a courtesy. There had never yet been any real violence at the plant, but you never knew as a cop when that extra cruiser would make the difference.

"What's the boss going to want here, Bill?" the sheriff asked.

"You never take this shit serious, Tom. Somebody's going to get killed out here sooner or later."

"Well," Thomas Greene started off, trying to hide his laughter, but couldn't help himself and waved his arm at the ramp and the frozen turkeys. "What the fuck you want, Bill? Somebody calls in a disturbance and I get out here and find out you just got your asses kicked with frozen turkeys. It's always some goofy shit like this. You can't beat these guys."

Big Bill spat through his front teeth at a piece of gravel and hit it, then picked out another. "I ain't in charge here," he said looking back to Thomas. "It only looks like I am."

"Guess I never thought about it that way. You do seem to end up with more than your share of the mess."

Big Bill was thinking, as he watched the sheriff drive away, that he always got stuck with the shit. How come he always got the short end of things?

### Chapter 3

### A Bad Thing

The angry roar and hiss of the factory fill the air. A cherry bomb goes off behind Bobby Finnegan. He flinches at the explosion, only five feet from him, and he lets loose of his share of the roof panel and watches it settle onto the trim die, then steps back as Eddie cycles the press with the lone pair of palm buttons. There is a tremendous crunch as the press bottoms out and the scrap pieces clatter down the scrap chutes or onto the floor, to be kicked or shoved down the chutes later when there is a lull in the action. And then, whoosh, he can feel the air as a rolled up pair of cotton gloves whizzes past his face. Down the line a plastic sandwich bag filled with water hits the press face and splatters over the guys manning that press.

Bobby hurries back to the draw press, which has just boomed and exploded another huge piece of sheet metal into the form of a car roof. Then he and his partner, Eddie Smoad, reach into the die, well, not really into it, since putting any part of your body in a pinch point is grounds for firing, and drag the heavy panel out and tip it up so that they can get both hands on it, one hand clamped tightly to keep the panel from slipping and slicing to the bone through the thin, cotton gloves. Bobby and Eddie are in a rhythm, running at times back and forth between their press and the big, lead toggle press, which is capable of cycling every eight seconds. They load another huge panel and the men step back, two more of them on the other side of the press waiting to take the trimmed roof panel on to the next press. Like a huge game of leap frog, there are four men between presses, two cycling the press and two going back upstream to get the roof panel out of the prior die, alternating job positions.

Bobby and Eddie grab another panel out of the greasy draw die, and a shower of cotton glove balls rains down on them. One of them hits Bobby in the side of the face, knocking his safety glasses part way off. It won't be long until he can return fire; he knows who threw that one and now he owes him. Bobby and Eddie load the panel, step back, and the monstrous trim die crunches another one. Then Bobby sees his chance; there are a half dozen glove balls on the die shoe, and he grabs two of them and wheels around, preparing to fire as his torso rotates, when he slips in the oil that has steadily dripped from the roof panels and the press all morning.

Bobby can hear the press movement and wonders at that. That is what he always would remember, the press cycling when it wasn't supposed to. Bobby stops himself from falling into the scrap chute, with his back against the lower die shoe and his left arm on the die adaptor, and can feel the rough cast iron sliding, as if in slow motion, down the back of his head, remembers it touching his shoulder, and hears the ka-lump as the die bottoms without metal in it, and the huge die pad settles itself.

Dazed, Bobby stands leaning against the press bed and die shoe, thankful that he had not fallen down the scrap chute or into the die. Then Eddie is screaming, and something doesn't feel right to Bobby, and it is then he notices the big red splotch in the roof die, and sees the bone fragments hanging along the trim edge of the die adaptor, looking like the metal slivers that sometimes build up when the trim steels are getting dull. Bobby releases the glove balls onto the floor and watches as one of them bounces down the scrap chute. Then the pain comes like a deep, evil fog, and Bobby sees that his left arm is gone from his biceps on down.

_Cranston Journal_ editor Tom Finnegan was alone in the newsroom as he imagined the day of his brother Bobby's accident yet another time. This was the way Tom always pieced it together. There was the oil on the floor that Bobby had explained made him fall. Usually there was a guy assigned to mop up the oil and panel lube every hour, but Bobby's area was shorthanded that day and went without. Then there was the horseplay—the firecrackers, glove balls, water bags, fire extinguisher fights—it was just the way the place was, a way to break the monotony and stupidity of the simple, yet brutal atmosphere in the plant. But more importantly and strangely was the press cycling when it did, the feared "random cycle" that can happen anytime on a press and which is something most people can spend a lifetime in a pressroom and never witness.

In the hospital, Bobby kept high spirits. His wife and babies were there everyday to see him, and they, after all, were what his life was about. What more could a good Catholic boy from a large Catholic family need but family? And taking care of your family was everything—putting the food on the table and the dresses on his two pretty, red-headed daughters and a smile on wife Katie's face. When she had gotten pregnant in the spring of their senior year, Bobby didn't hesitate—they got married immediately with a gay, spring church wedding full of pretty little nieces and serious little nephews carrying flowers and rings and more. The baby was just a little bit early was all anyone needed to know, and that was good enough.

Tom Finnegan gazed out his office door at the rows of typewriters and composing tables in the newsroom. When it was quiet here it was such an unnatural state for the place, usually filled with the clack-clacking of the typewriters and the bustle of young folks hustling copy here and there to the editors or layout or composing. He wondered if it had gotten quiet at the factory the day Bobby lost his arm. He thought not, that the monster of a plant, always working people seven days a week, holidays, holy days, everyday, would surely not take notice of the blood and bone of a young man who was still a little boy to Tom Finnegan, the oldest of the Finnegan clan of nine children. No, the plant did not pause for Bobby Finnegan.

He was writing an editorial for the Sunday paper about the General Motors stamping plant. The day before, for the Thanksgiving Day edition, he had personally written the headline for the wildcat strike of Wednesday: "Once Again: Violence Strikes." Tom Finnegan found it amusing, if sardonically so, to listen to the other community leaders speak of the money spigot that the GM plant was to them. No one could deny the benefit of the multimillion dollar payroll the plant provided or the tax that payroll generated for the school system. And realistically, if General Motors had required the annual sacrifice of a virgin, it is likely that the Chamber of Commerce would have okayed it, with the stipulation, as with all things requiring sacrifice, that the virgin come from the other side of the tracks, or even better, be imported.

At the Chamber or Kiwanis or country club, he heard over and over what ingrates the uneducated masses working at the plant were. A wildcat strike was illegal. Call in the National Guard. Show them who is boss. Tom used to try to present an opposing view, the actual reality of the plant, the working conditions of the job, and the disregard for human rights by GM, but they always laughed him off as a raving Irishman who needed to be getting on with his life, that it was his granddaddy who had fled the potato famine and, "Pinch yourself, Tom, you really are the editor of a very large American newspaper." But they didn't know his little brother, or, if they had, could not remember him. They could not comprehend that Bobby had taken a forty cent an hour cut in pay from his job bagging groceries at Big Bear to go to GM, and that the only reason the men made good wages was because of the overtime. Bobby didn't work it all, and he still averaged seventy hours a week.

Only one person from the plant had at first been involved when Bobby lost his arm, a young fellow named Milt Jeffers, Bobby's union representative. "We're just getting the paperwork right," he told Bobby's wife, and Tom Finnegan, who happened to be in the hospital room that evening. "I expect the first check will be cut in a few days and we'll get started on rehab." They all thanked Milt, and he went on his way.

Fuck, there was nothing the young Milt Jeffers could do. Deals were always being made, but he wasn't yet the dealmaker. First the company said Bobby violated shop rule #3 about putting any body part in a die pinch point. Then they said it was horseplay, a violation of shop rule #27. But the strangest thing was the random press cycle. For sure, Eddie had not cycled the press; there were enough eyes in the area to know that for sure. A General Motors press just cycles and takes off a man's arm.

The day the registered letter came from GM, Bobby was in good spirits. Just he and Katie and the girls were in the room, and Bobby was getting ready to go home the next day. He eagerly tore open the envelope and scanned its contents quickly. The color was gone from his face when he tucked it away and turned back to Katie and their plans. Later when Katie had gone for the day, he took the envelope out and read the letter again. He was fired! GM had fired him for horseplay, which caused his accident!

Tom had helped Bobby in dealing with the company, most of it through Milt Jeffers. He was dumbfounded at the outcome. Bobby was permanently disabled and unable to make a living, and GM had fired him? The personnel director refused to see him. The shop chairman at the time, along with Milt Jeffers in a meeting, said the matter was in step two, and explained the lengthy grievance procedure. Ultimately, it did not matter about the steps. A month later, Katie found Bobby in the basement. He had courteously set a folding chair near the floor drain, removed the drain cover, and tilted his head back before shooting himself through the mouth.

### Chapter 4

### A Profane Man

Milt Jeffers was born profane. His mother had told him, his father had told him, his teachers had told him what a miserable, profane being he was, and he had always laughed at them. He ignored his parents as he stole from them and had his way. He laughed at his teachers as they were forced, by his overwhelming evidence of intelligence—he could pass any test they threw at him and argue his position with great skill—to give him all A's and B's. By the time Milt Jeffers was thirteen, he knew that he was rotten to the core, and it did not bother him. At age sixteen he was already a successful used car salesman, pushing nearly forty units a year at the car lot near the high school.

His mother had known from his birth that the son who came into being with such an easy labor, who slid into this world as if charmed, was evil. By the time he was a teenager, his mother had had her fill of Milt's incorrigible ways. He would not accept guidance in any form and had taken to smoking and drinking at an early age. And for his mother, it was these two vices that came to represent his overall profanity and which she finally seized upon as the reasons for his condemnation. She hated it when he sat in the living room smoking Camel cigarettes and drinking his dad's Stroh's beer. Sat there like he had a right, even though he knew how much she hated it, and maybe hated him, too.

Just before his seventeenth birthday Milt Jeffers' mother had told him, "I have decided that you will have to move out of this house if you keep smoking and drinking." They had been alone in the kitchen, she preparing the daily supper for the family and Milt getting ready to leave for his job selling cars. He walked on past her to the back door, started out, then turned back to her and said, "Well, fuck you, then." And he went on out the door. It was this remembrance of profanity to his mother that he was thinking about when the phone in his office at the union hall rang on this day after Thanksgiving in 1970.

"Asshole. You stole my turkeys." It was the plant manager.

"You stupid fucker. I told you I needed a job for my brother-in-law. And next week I'll need one for my cousin. You're lucky all I did was steal your damn turkeys."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. How many dumbfuck, hillbilly relatives you got? I thought they all already worked here."

Milt chuckled. This plant manager he could get along with just fine. All Milt really needed to do was keep the plant running smooth enough not to interrupt the guy's drinking schedule, and he could help himself to anything he wanted. Not like that last fool who was so ambitious he went by the book on everything. "Be over here in an hour," John Dunham, the plant manager of GM's biggest stamping plant, maybe the biggest stamping plant in the world, said to Milt Jeffers and hung up.

Milt's thoughts turned back to his mother. It had never been anything personal, and he knew she knew that. Gradually she had come to see through his evil, especially with the coming of his three children, the only grandchildren she had. And now, as she became more confused all the time with the artery problem or whatever was making her confused and forgetful, his mother more and more sought solace in the love that Milt's three beautiful and loving children bestowed plentifully upon her.

Milt had graduated from high school and prospered as a used car salesman at the car lot. But then he got caught jumping titles for the second time, and the boss showed him the door. Milt couldn't blame him; he might lose his dealer's license if the dealership ever got caught jumping a title. One of his customers got him a job at the GM plant.

He would have quit the day he hired in if his wife had not been pregnant. About the only thing he had ever done right in his profane, miserable life was take care of his children. So he stayed, going through the mind-numbing ritual of running a stamping press day after day.

It didn't take him long to recognize that power was just lying around to be usurped, and things were just lying around waiting to be stolen, at the plant. His committeeman got fired three months after Milt was hired, and he ran for the job. The union had been voted in earlier that year, and no one had a real power base built up in that short period of time, so Milt had no trouble getting elected.

Being a committeeman in a union was a lot like selling cars. Most people, you just told them what they wanted to hear and everything would be okay. "Yes sir, that transmission is just like new. That old lady never once kicked this baby into passing gear. Listen to it when we leave the stop sign here at the corner. Hear that whine? That's new gears you hear there, boy. New gears!" And at the shop, "Don't you worry about your foreman. When I'm done with that stupid motherfucker, he'll kiss your ass for doing your job!"

And sure enough, Milt Jeffers delivered. Foremen dreaded him—Milt Jeffers would fuck them up. He had gotten so many foremen fired through the years that if Milt Jeffers said the sky were pink, a foreman would grin and nod and shuffle his feet all at the same time. He had served as committeeman, shop committeeman, and for the last three years as shop chairman. He was the top dog, the union equivalent of plant manager, except he had to be elected every three years by the five thousand men in the plant. The union head honcho had to be smarter and better than the plant manager. At age thirty-two, Milt Jeffers was the youngest shop chairman in any General Motors plant.

It was a sunny, unseasonable day in Ohio, the temperature approaching fifty as Milt and Jimmy nudged the Cadillac through the picket line. Jimmy was always with him, a smart guy who played lackey, who had enough smarts to serve his master but never ever consider being master. Jimmy was gopher and diplomat all rolled into one. He could run for pizza and beer or represent his master at the local United Way meeting with equal ease. Born in Vulcan, West Virginia, "just a ways south of Matewan" he used to tell people who wondered where Vulcan was. Never mind that nobody knew where Matewan was either. Jimmy's claim to fame was that Cotton Top Mounts, the guy who started the Hatfield-McCoy feud, was Jimmy's fourth cousin on his mother's side and that his great grandmother's maiden name was Mounts.

Jimmy wasn't afraid of anything. That was really why Milt Jeffers had chosen him. Jimmy would get to drinking moonshine now and then and didn't have enough sense to go home and go to sleep. Oh no. He would ask for the baddest motherfucker in the bar. Most times folks let Jimmy have his night to be king and had a good time with it, watching him shout at whole barrooms full of grown men that he was going to kick their sorry asses.

Once he had been out at the Roundup, the little hillbilly bar down the road from the plant, and a new guy was there—he said he guessed he was the baddest motherfucker anywhere. Well, Jimmy and he went out to the parking lot, and a big group of guys had already formed. Jimmy gave up nearly a hundred pounds to this guy, a fellow hillbilly come up north trying to find work, and Jimmy said, "Just remember, motherfucker, this ain't over till one of us is dead." Then he took his shirt off and pulled out this big damn skinning knife and started dancing around slashing with that thing like a crazy man. That big, old fellow stood there frowning at Jimmy, covering up his innards with his huge hands just in case Jimmy took a swipe at his vitals, for what seemed like a long time but was probably only ten seconds, and then started backing real slow out of the circle. "Fucker's crazy," he muttered a few times until he made it to the safety of his car.

A week after that, Jimmy became a skilled tradesman. And after Jimmy had stumbled up and down the press lines with a screw driver and hammer for a full week, Milt pulled him off the line, marched him up to the plant manager's office, opened the door without knocking, and said, "Jimmy's coming with me and will be my assistant till I come back and tell you different. He'll be on the clock twelve hours a day just like me." That was all it took. Wherever Milt was, Jimmy was there. Whenever Milt was in a meeting, Jimmy was, too. As long as Milt was chairman, Jimmy would never hit another lick. Today Jimmy would be running for pizza and beer for the pickets.

"Boys, I'm proud of you," Milt Jeffers said as the pickets pressed up against his car. "And Walter Reuther would have been proud of you. I'll be buying the pizza and beer today to honor Walter's memory." The group snickered and grunted at this news. "Be ready to work the weekend," Milt said and sped off down the ramp. He stopped at the bottom, where the four plant security guards were stationed to keep an eye on the pickets. They didn't question the chairman for driving on to the plant grounds; the one standing agreement Milt had with the plant manager was that, no matter what, both of them would have access to the plant. Milt stopped, buzzed the window down, and the young men walked over to see what he wanted. "How was the holiday? Your families all well? You boys get enough turkey to eat?"

"Sure did, Milt. How about you?"

Milt didn't answer but knitted his brows together in mock concentration and said, "Hadn't you guys better be gathering up the rest of them turkeys before they start stinking?" And he motioned to the shrubbery along the brick face of the building where here and there could be seen the white plastic butt of a turkey. He pulled away and glanced in the rearview mirror. Already the guards were starting to search the bushes for the leftover turkeys. "Them's good turkeys back there," Jimmy said. "Folks down home was all glad to get the turkeys you gave me on Wednesday. They all said to tell you thanks."

"Glad to help. Folks around here got it too easy today, Jimmy," Milt said as he wheeled the big car into his reserved parking place next to the plant manager's.

John Dunham got to be a plant manager because his father-in-law was a vice-president for General Motors. And it just so happened that the old man was here for the holidays and sitting with John when Milt and Jimmy walked into the plant manager's office.

"Jimmy, get the keys for that company Caddy out front and go on and get the pizza and beer."

"Ah Jeez. You can't do that," John said resignedly. "You're on fucking strike and you want to have that little freak driving around town in a company car?"

Milt laughed. "Ain't it great? General Motors is a wonderful company to treat its employees so well."

"No fucking way," John said, getting mad now.

His father-in-law held up a hand to silence him. "Hell, let him take it. I'll be responsible." Then Harold asked, "Where do you keep the booze?" The main reason Harold had come over to the plant with John was to get away from the women and kids and have a drink or two.

John pointed to the cabinet, and the old man quickly produced a bottle of vodka and three glasses. "John tells me you like a snort now and then," Harold said and started pouring. What the hell, Milt told himself. He could outdrink either of these birds if that's how they wanted to settle the strike. They tossed the first one down.

"What's it going to take?" Harold said importantly.

Milt was properly impressed by Harold's position and sat assessing the man. Finally, Milt laughed. "It's real simple—pay us for yesterday and today, and we'll be back to work tomorrow."

The old man sputtered and choked on his drink. When he had recovered, he snorted, "Are you nuts? Nobody in Detroit will ever buy that."

"We're not in Detroit," Milt said simply.

John poured more drinks. Ahh...the first drink of the day was always the best. He leaned back in his chair, barely listening to the heated conversation.

"You got any ice," Harold asked his son-in-law.

"Nah, we get it from the cafeteria...but they're closed."

"Come on," Milt hollered and got up. "Let's run down to the corner and get some."

"Go ahead," John said. "I've got some paperwork to get ready. We should be able to get this little disagreement cleared up in short order."

Harold downed his vodka and followed Milt. As they climbed into his Caddy, Harold was impressed. "Hell, you drive a nicer one than I have right now." In a few minutes they had pulled into the Roundup. There were a couple dozen cars there, mostly autoworkers waiting their turn for picket duty or having a few beers after their picket shift.

"Ain't scared of hillbillies, are you?"

Harold scoffed. "Hell, man. I don't guess they could be any meaner than a crazy Jap at Iwo Jima." Harold had been a Marine Captain when they took the barren pile of rock and wasn't scared of much of anything except his wife Mabel.

They sat down at the bar and Milt hollered, "Lookee here, boys. We got a GM vice-president with us. That's how important we are!"

Several of the guys gathered around, and momentarily, a pint of clear liquid was used to pour drinks for Milt and Harold. "Better have beer chasers with this stuff," Milt told the girl behind the bar.

Harold hadn't had moonshine for so long that he had forgotten how devastating to the human brain it could be. He downed the shot and poured half a beer after it. It hit him immediately. He relaxed onto the bar stool and felt very good. The world was suddenly a great place. This stupid hillbilly sitting next to him in rural Ohio was a good guy. Everybody was good people. He found a fellow Marine and they talked animatedly about Iwo Jima and other battles. They sat for an hour drinking shots.

"When's the last time you had a blowjob, Harold?" Milt asked the vice-president of General Motors. It took Harold a minute, but then he fuzzily recalled the convention in Las Vegas where he had bought himself one. He just nodded through his developing stupor. A blowjob would be a good thing. His glass was full of the shine again, and when Milt called, "Let's go," a few minutes later, Harold drained it.

By the time Harold reached the car, Milt had the back door open. Waiting in the backseat was a woman they had seen earlier in the bar. Harold slid on into the car and the door shut behind him. It didn't take Margie long to get Harold's pants down. She was busy when Milt tapped on the window, and she motioned him away..

Milt popped open the door, sighted the instant camera, and clicked. Harold didn't even notice. Hell, he was getting a blowjob! Milt got two more pictures for insurance.

When they got back to the plant, Harold was slouching lazily against the door in the front seat. Milt had to stop when Harold saw the food the pickets had. Milt set him on a camp stool and gave him a Pabst and slice of pizza. He got the Polaroid camera out of the glove box and framed Harold and the pickets against the General Motors sign by the highway, with the plant in the background. When Harold held his can of beer skyward a minute later in a toast of Solidarity with his new friends, Milt snapped another.

When they finally made it back to the office, John was irate. They had been gone for nearly two hours, and his wife and mother-in-law were looking for the men. Milt guided Harold into the office and put him in a chair. The shine had really fucked him up, and he leaned against the wall for a few seconds before burping and passing out.

"You rotten son of a bitch," John said slowly to the shop chairman.

"Hell, I didn't know he was a drunk, too." Milt shuffled the Polaroids like playing cards on the conference table.

"What have you got there?" John asked.

"Strike settlement," Milt answered and slid a couple of the pictures across the table.

John looked in amazement at the pictures. In the first was framed Harold's head and body with Margie smiling up at the camera from Harold's lap. The second showed him having a beer with the strikers in front of the plant. John shook his head sadly. "What'll it take?"

"Holiday pay for Thursday and Friday. Work one hundred per cent overtime this weekend. And the jobs for my relatives...oh, and Margie's son needs a job."

"Who's Margie?" John asked.

Milt flipped over an ace and slapped it onto the table. There was Margie, busy doing what she needed to do to get her son a job at the General Motors plant.

### Chapter 5

### War

"In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you."

—Leo Tolstoy

5.1—Home from Vietnam—Steve Brown

5.2—The Mathematician—Dana

5.3—Kent State—the lieutenant

5.4—Profiteer—Rudolph

5.5—A Dead Son—longhair apprentice

### Chapter 5.1

### Home from Vietnam

Steve Brown stood at his job in the pressroom, loading door inner panels into press P3, the blanker presses nearby banging so hard they shook the entire forty acres under roof. The presses were as loud as a fucking LAAW fired over your head. The pressroom was in full motion, the draw dies at the front of each line whoomphing as they pressed the metal into its various shapes, everything from quarter panels to inner panel support pieces. The trim dies could be heard crunching the metal, with the trim pieces clattering down the scrap chutes. The hem dies did their clump, clump-clump dance hammering the panel flanges from every conceivable direction. The gap presses on the quarter panel lines added their own special thumps each press cycle. The place was an affront to the senses.

Steve loaded the panels, one after the other, 575 an hour, and grew numb to his task, wishing by eight o'clock that he had a beer to drink, to work with the Bennie he had taken at daybreak to get him up and into the factory for his Saturday shift that paid time and a half. The fog of noise and oil mist drifted over him just like the dawn mist and the last few C-40's of the night in a rice paddy in Nam would have only a few weeks earlier.

He still wore the Vietnam suntan, dark all over his body except for his skivvies lines. He should maybe have taken a few months off, but knew he probably would have just drunk himself to death. He had gotten home, signed in at the plant office, and was back to work only a week after he had stepped out of the bush in Nam.

He hadn't slept in three nights, had sat up drinking beer, popping the Bennies and acid he got from the longhairs in the plant. Strange, him just back from Nam and the only people he could relate to were the kids who were against the war. Hell, nobody in their right mind was for the war. Not now. He still wore his fatigues, but only because they were the only clothes he had that fit him. Some of the older guys thought it was because he was proud. He wasn't proud of anything right now, not a fucking thing he could think of, and wasn't even sure he wanted to live. Nothing in his life made any sense at all.

This place was pure bullshit, but it was something to do, something to get him off the couch above the garage at his parents' house and out into the world. They couldn't understand why he didn't want to sit with them on Thanksgiving Day and talk about shit with his sister and her family, her gung ho kill-a-gook husband who had never set foot out of the states in his defense services job.

He had sat the night before watching the news, watching the rerun of his buddy Tinker getting blown away as he ran for a helicopter two months ago. He couldn't believe it—reruns of the fucking war and folks at home watched the same shit night after night, not even knowing they were watching reruns.

The line was running good today, and if the P line workers ran rate they might have an hour to get a nap, or get in the eternal poker game in the cafeteria, or, more likely, go through the hole in the fence and walk the quarter mile through the woods to the Roundup to get started on the nightly drunk. The Roundup was good for the plant. When a foreman wanted to track down one of his guys, all he had to do was call the bar. And it was easier to get guys to work all the overtime, since they could get started on their decompression, after-work drinking at time and a half.

At lunch time, Steve went to the Roundup. He had three shots and two and a half beers, and was feeling much better about his life. And on the way back to his job one of the longhairs slipped him a blotter, righteous blotter acid, maybe from the master Owsley himself. By twelve-thirty, the stinking, noisy fender factory was looking mighty fine. The noise was music now, and the oil mist was the fragrance of industry and prosperity for all. But then the line went down. The foreman got Wimpy the die maker, called Wimpy because he looked like Wimpy in the Popeye cartoons, to put his gin and tonic down and diagnose the problem—a broken trim steel—and the line would be down the rest of the shift.

This was bullshit. Now they would get beat out of the hour they had coming in rate for busting their asses all morning. There went their nap time and their drinking time. The foreman set the men to work cleaning up, and gave Steve a chisel to pry slugs out of the tar floor. He took the tool docilely. A week out of the bush and he was supposed to make sense of sitting on a tar floor in 90+ decibel noise prying fucking metal slugs?

Thanks to his sedation, he was doing all right, squatting and prying with the chisel-like tool, stacking the slugs into three piles—one inch, three-quarter and half inch, with the smaller slugs in a haphazard pile. He imagined it as a game, and was doing just fine until someone came by and kicked all his slugs toward the scrap chute. He looked up and it was the white shirt dude. Then all of a sudden over by the tree line, where Tinker and Doper were on lookout, a C-40 exploded.

He clutched his chisel and crawled along the press line. Ah, good, somebody had called in the coordinates, and the napalm was already dropping. The fire and smoke filled the air over behind V line where a group of press welders was operating. Now all they needed was to get the lieutenant to send a recon out to back up Tinker and Doper. They hadn't returned fire, and he knew they were down. He would go himself. He would slither the rest of the way to the hole they were in and bring them out.

### Chapter 5.2

### The Mathematician

In high school, Dana was on the math team, one of only seven members the year he was a senior. Algorithms, calculus, trig functions, and advanced geometric configurations were the language he spoke best. His high school math teacher said that Dana had one of the best analytical minds he had ever seen and should apply to both Case Western and MIT.

His dad had laughed at him. "Hell, you're an idiot! College? You can't even build a fucking dog house," he had shouted at Dana, referring to his attempt to build one so he could get a dog when he was eleven years old. The old man had bought him a four by eight sheet of plywood and some two by fours and nails and set the wood up against the saw horses in the corner of the garage. Dana drew a picture of the dog house and would go out to the damp, dark garage everyday after school. He even cut the two by fours in half to make them easier to deal with, but the handsaw kept getting stuck in the plywood.

It was about this time, after the dog house defeat and after his mother left home, that Dana started walking with his head down. Folks mistook him for a wizened old man when they saw him shuffling along, never looking up, like he carried a great weight on his thin, young shoulders. It wasn't until he met algebra a couple years later that he snapped out of his physical slump and began walking upright again. He might never have a dog, but math was something that felt good and true, just like he imagined it would have felt to have a dog when he was eleven.

He had been somebody for a while. He always got the top scores in math on the Iowa Basic Skills Tests, and scored in the top one tenth of one per cent on the Merit Scholarship tests. He would be a professor, maybe, or a scientist. But his dad just laughed at him. "Shit, boy," he would holler at him and hold out the big roll of money he carried in his pocket at all times. "Here's what it's all about!" And the old man would point out the back window of the dilapidated farmhouse to the junkyard he had made out of the forty acres he had inherited when his dad died.

Dana's dad was rich. He worked second shift, seven days a week at the stamping plant and ran the junkyard during the day. When the boy was a senior in high school, his dad gave Milt Jeffers $1,000 to get Dana a job when the company was hiring again. Sure enough, by the fall of 1969, Dana had been hired, and had become a full-fledged autoworker. Once again, he started walking with his head down.

Then in the spring of 1970, he found love, got laid, got married, and he straightened up again. She was a kindly, plump girl, as happy as Dana was to have found someone, and she didn't see any reason he shouldn't check into going to college part time and studying math. There certainly couldn't be any harm in it. So he had enrolled in the regional Ohio State campus in calculus, and was scheduled to start in the winter quarter of 1971.

But then had come the draft notice just before Thanksgiving in 1970. "Viet fucking Nam," he had muttered over and over as he and his wife sat at their little kitchen table, and he drank beer for only the second time in his life.

"It's time for bed, dear," she had finally said, as midnight approached.

"Viet fucking Nam," he had answered and passed out on the table.

Dana started walking with his head down again. He would never be a college professor. He would never win the Fields Medal. He would never do anything but stack five thousand fucking door support panels every day for the rest of his life. His fate was unthinkable, and he hatched a plan, which, if successful, would not only keep him out of Vietnam but put him in college fulltime on the way to fulfilling his destiny as a mathematical genius.

He would get hurt at work in order to make his plan a success. If he were permanently disabled, he could collect Workman's Compensation benefits, or even Social Security disability benefits. For days, he imagined the various ways he could get injured—get run over by a tow motor, get his foot caught in the conveyor track, get crushed between a rack and the press, get his arm tangled in the parts conveyor—he would figure something out. But after a week of flirting with tragedy and death, Dana had gotten nowhere. He always stopped at the last moment before walking into the aisle in front of a vehicle, and the one time he forced himself to carry through, he got honked at and told to get the fuck out of the way. Another day he tried to cut his hand off in a press, but only got grease on his shirt before he pulled his arm away. Disabling himself was proving to be more difficult than he had imagined.

Finally, on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, Dana decided to walk into a scrap chute. He didn't know how badly he would be hurt, but some of the guys who had fallen in got pretty fucked up; one had been killed, but Dana was sure that could not happen to him. Right after lunch, he abandoned his post and walked across the aisle to the quarter panel line. Phoomph. He fell faster than he had thought he would. Immediately he was struck by the putrid smell. Then he felt the sharp scrap pieces cutting him. He cried out, but it was too late. More pieces came down on his head, cutting his scalp. Then he got stuck, and the slime from the panel lube was suffocating him as he struggled. Finally, after a full minute in the bottleneck at the bottom of the chute, he came piling out onto the conveyor belt in the basement. Shit, he told himself, this was really a bad idea.

He was coated in blood from head to foot. He tried to get up and off the moving conveyor belt, but kept slipping and cutting himself even more. Then his conveyor hit the main conveyor. He had to get off this thing. Hadn't anyone seen him fall, he wondered? He made one violent lunge to try and roll off the conveyor and onto the concrete floor six feet below, but his leg was stuck. Dana realized he might die. And he wasn't ready to die. Better to die in Vietnam than in this stinky, slimy pile of scrap.

He passed other conveyors feeding into the main one, like so many small streams feeding into a river. And the conveyor was getting wider. Shit. The baler house was only another thirty yards away. He pulled himself up and looked ahead at the scrap metal feeding into the compartments and being squashed into two foot cubes. The noise was deafening, and he knew that no one could possibly hear his yelling and crying, yet he kept it up, tugging at his leg, which was held fast with the frayed wire of the conveyor belt deeply entwined in his blue jeans. He forced himself onto his side to try and get his pocket knife out.

He was on the final uphill run to the baler house. Then he felt the pain. A panel stuck along the side of the belt sliced him, and he looked down, his crotch already red from the gushing blood. He lay back and waited for death, suddenly feeling calm. Let death come, he told himself. Maybe he could get a dog in heaven, or puppies even.

Up in the baler house, Howard belched and said, "I got all the cans?" They were tidying the place up for the next shift, and Howard was getting ready to toss the day's beer cans into the compacter when he saw a big red thing on the conveyor. It was a body! Howard hit the E-stop and yelled for the others, then called the maintenance base to get some millwrights over to get Dana unstuck. Hell, he wasn't going to wade onto that slimy mess. He didn't have to—the conveyors were maintenance work. It was a millwright job, not his classification.

### Chapter 5.3

### Kent State

"Double time," the lieutenant shouted through the fog, aware of the futility of the words aimed at the platoon under his command in 1945. Moments before, Frankie had slipped in one of the snow-covered mud ruts and slid just enough to his right, a foot maybe, and got under the tank tread. The lieutenant had turned only in time to see the wide-eyed expression of terror on the young Italian-American boy's face as the tread advanced—Frankie knew there was not time to roll out of the way, and his head disappeared with a tiny pop under the tank tread.

Another shell hit up in front of them, and the lieutenant could hear the shrapnel ricocheting off the tanks. Then came the shower of dirt and rocks raining down on him and his sergeant. He took one last look at Frankie as one of the guys pulled him off the side of the road and into the tree line. The noise of the tanks gunning their engines and the smell of diesel and gasoline were momentarily reassuring—these were the things of civilization. The tanks were firing now, but the enemy bullets were a steady rain on him and his men.

After seeing what happened to Frankie, the guys were trying to stay away from the tanks, but one of them had been picked off already by the barrage of bullets. The lieutenant shouted for them to get back down in line. Then came the steady German artillery, one shell dropping every 20 seconds—off to the right, to the left, above center where the road curved, and then one right on top of them, and there were bodies and tank parts flying through the air, and the screaming of men, wounded and dying. "God help us," the lieutenant muttered, and charged up and out of the roadway, shouting over and over, "Follow me! Follow me!" He jogged along the tree line, motioning for his men to follow. There were hedge rows a quarter mile away on the right flank, and in the darkness the tank commanders were finding the range of the machine gun bunkers. The lieutenant's hand stung, and at first he thought it was because of the cold. Then he saw the blood. His ring finger had been hit by a bullet and severed at second joint. He felt its warm wetness with his thumb and was reassured that his wedding ring was still there.

He pushed the last of his men down the ravine past the tree line. Three days earlier they had numbered thirty-two, including him, but now they were six that he knew of. He hoped there were more than that scattered among the mile long line of tanks, and he turned to roll away down the hill. Then the first of the American artillery zeroed in, and the fires began dancing along the hedgerows. He ordered his men to dig in. They could still sacrifice themselves in the morning if need be.

"Morning, Dan," a familiar voice broke him from these memories of the war.

"Morning, Fred. How was your holiday?"

"Great. Everybody was here. Keith was back from basic training, and Jim was here from school. How about you?"

"Good. It was good."

The lieutenant refocused himself on the timecards in the racks along the wall as Fred passed him by. Good? No, it had not been good. Thanksgiving Day had been all right, a quiet day at home with his daughter and her fiancé, and his youngest son Tommy home from college. His oldest could not make it because it was his turn to be on duty as a first year resident. But then it had gone bad. He and Tommy had gone up to the American Legion on Friday about 5:00 p.m. to have a beer. A lot of the guys were there, off work from the factories on holiday, and the place was lively, some of the guys half shot by evening from sitting at the bar all day.

Dan knew them all, knew the WWII guys and their stories, knew the WWI guys and deferred to their age and their war, the Korean War guys, who had kind of had the shit handed to them, and now the handful of newer guys who had served, or were serving, in Vietnam. He and Tommy had spent a lot of time there together through the years—shooting pool, eating the grilled burgers with onion as thick as the burger itself when Ralph was doing the cooking, hanging out with the regular guys Dan wanted all his kids to get to know, imperfections and all, the men who had fought the wars and risked their lives for the freedom of America.

They were finishing their beers before leaving for home and supper when the news came on the TV at the end of the bar. There were the usual Vietnam scenes, the latest footage of the war, and then came some video from May 4 of that year of the Kent State shootings. After that, some still pictures of that May day on the hill were shown. It didn't look any different to Tommy than the countless other times he had seen it—kids running or standing, all watching the troops in the distance. Then came the shots. His roommate had wanted him to come along and see what was going on that day, but he didn't want any part of it. He had a project due the next week and besides, he had a bad feeling about all that was going on. He had been on his way to the library when he saw a large group of the students running up the hill between the library and the dorms and heard the shots. He shook his head and kept on going. It was just unreal to him that the Ohio National Guard was actually firing blanks on a college campus in Ohio on a day in May. Then he heard the screaming.

Now as he watched the still pictures, he noticed one with a girl knelt over one of the dead students. "Should have shot that bitch, too," Tommy heard from down the bar. "Fifty caliber is what they needed." "Damn hippies."

Tommy stood up. "What the hell's the matter with you? People were killed there," he shouted. They glared at him. Who the hell did he think he was? Fucking little draft dodger. What did he know about war? But he was Dan's boy, and they grumbled into their beers as the lieutenant nodded to the bartender and headed for the door. Tommy stood for a few seconds, then turned and followed.

Outside, the lieutenant said, "You shouldn't have done that."

"Why not? They want to cheer on shooting unarmed kids? Fuck them."

"The soldiers had a job...."

"They shouldn't have had live ammo."

"You don't understand."

"You and that bunch of burnouts in there are the ones that don't understand."

The lieutenant stood staring at his youngest son, putting his thumb on his ring finger as he had so many years before.

The lieutenant and Tommy had never discussed the shooting. They had barely discussed the war, and now they stood squared off 10 feet apart in the gravel parking lot behind the local American Legion Hall, gathering spot of heroes, veterans, and freedom fighters from America's wars. The lieutenant spat in the gravel. He was secretly glad that neither of his sons had had to go to Vietnam. He had never been the same since he and his men had straggled out of the woods in Germany, and all six of them had been loaded into a truck and moved up to France. They were all treated for battle fatigue and eventually went their separate ways to finish the war. The lieutenant, with the help of plenty of alcohol, spent the remainder of the war in France doing transportation logistics, which he had studied in college. But he had never been right again. Nobody who has been where he was and seen what he saw is ever right again.

He looked at Tommy. He was a good kid. The best of his three children, the most naturally caring, and the one he would most trust with anything. Tommy—he just did what was right.

"Bullshit," the lieutenant said and got in his car and drove away, leaving Tommy in the gravelly dust behind the American Legion Hall.

The lieutenant was tired as he finished up the time cards before lunch. And his arm was aching from holding the clipboard for so long, a strange, pulsing ache that went up into his neck. He hadn't talked to Tommy since the prior afternoon. After he had gone home, the lieutenant had looked through his unit book. Seemed like a long time ago, but it was only twenty-five years since he had gotten out of the service. Twenty-five years and America was already in its second major war, first Korea and now Vietnam. Tommy stayed out late, and the lieutenant had gone to sleep thinking that maybe there really was something wrong with this Vietnam War.

### Chapter 5.4

### Profiteer

Rudolph trollied the gantry crane from the die car to his work bench, stopping near the huge spotting press to let Charlie, his work partner, move out of the way. "The chains are manmade," he always said of the crane safety rule about carrying a load over anyone. Weak link, weak chain...if only the affairs of men could be so easily understood. The spotting press bottomed out, an apprentice making one of thousands of hits necessary to spot a die to its finish, hit after hit, grind after grind, shift after shift, day after day, month after month, like the lives of men, every little episode adding up to a lifetime.

As he stood waiting, Rudolph harrumphed to himself over the inferior tool room here at GM. Back home before the war, ninety per cent of these die makers would have been fired for their slowness or incompetence. But, ha, he laughed to himself then: this big, slow meandering industrial machine of America had been good enough to defeat Germany.

Rudolph was talking to himself again. He didn't like doing that, but more and more there were discussions occurring in his mind. He had hashed most things out again and again, always coming up with the same conclusions: that he was becoming an old man, that his children and grandchildren and soon to be great grandchildren were doing well, and that he was a very rich man with the machine shop that he ran in Cranston and the seven-day-a-week job here at the stamping plant. He could retire, but there was something inside him that would not let him walk away from such easy money as the factory provided. He had known hunger. His family had been hungry after the war and during the transition to the new world, first to Canada and then to Ohio, USA. In every instance it was his status as a tool and die maker that had allowed him to provide both for his family here and his relatives left behind.

And now, after all the tragedies that war had visited upon the Motherland and the world, time after time, age after age, as if to prove the stupidity of man, this new war, this Vietnam, was happening. And it was making him a wealthy man beyond belief, this war in Vietnam. And wasn't that what wars were about? Money? He felt the one ounce gold coin in his pocket, his "just in case" coin that he had carried for twenty years, just in case a calamity should occur and separate him from home and family one more time before death. His wife and children and grandchildren also all carried a one ounce gold coin at all times, at least they said they did, but he knew they sometimes found his gold coin plan amusing and left the gold at home. Let them think what they like—the day, God forbid, might come when an ounce of gold bought a tank of gas to flee to safety, or bread to stave off starvation. He had seen it and lived it. In the safety deposit box, along with lots of cash, were two hundred ounces of gold.

He would be ready if and when this land of plenty was plunged into the darkness of war or famine. And wasn't that his role as patriarch now that he had seen the greed and evil of men destroy civilizations, countries, and the lives of man? To be ready in case of darkness of war so that his offspring could survive? What he knew about the pitiful and precarious state of mankind was simple—given the right conditions, lack of food, clothing and shelter—men became animals, and their savagery was unequaled in the animal kingdom.

His daughter had been on the outskirts of Dresden after the firebombing. The little girls and all the young women had been hidden away as well as possible from the Russians, while the older and wiser females fared as well as possible through the rampant and brutal rapes. She had never talked about it, but he knew. Just as his time at the camps was something his own mind kept hidden from him, his daughter's mind must also have hidden the horrors from her and her generation. Indeed, to go on after a war, one must attempt to put those things of the war behind and bury them forever.

He had watched the beginning of the war in Vietnam, studied its tactics and needs, and taken the gamble and invested in the huge automatic lathes and boring machines, turning out shell casings twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, to be used to kill the enemy in Vietnam. The government contracts were lucrative and profitable beyond belief. His shop had gone from thirty employees to over three hundred since 1964. In the last few years he had managed to save, after taxes, several million dollars.

Finally his way was clear, and Rudolph trollied the crane to his work bench. He set the 20,000-pound die shoe on the steel horses, walked to the bench, and poured himself a cup of coffee from his thermos. Then, sitting on his metal stool along the wall, under the huge set of blueprints for his job, he closed his eyes. The wars were never far from his mind, even after all these years. He had been only a boy for the first one, seventeen years old, and ready to die like a man, but he knew, all through the year he spent in the trenches and fields of war, trembling and cold at night, fearing death, that he was no different from boys of all nations sent to fight and defend their countries in the name of God and patriotism, when in fact, the reasons they were fighting were usually money, pride, narrow self-interest.

Rudolph sipped his coffee and remembered his childhood friend Wilhelm whom he had held dying in his arms shortly before the end of the first war. Why was his mind forcing him to see these long-forgotten pictures of cruelty and pain, he asked himself, starting yet another conversation within. Had he not put to rest the hunger and violence and the mindlessness of war many years before? Had he not suffered enough of war than to sit and think about it? Thankfully, his mind generally shied away from memories about the second war, a war in which his wife and one of his sons had died. His time at the ovens was something that he was able to mentally retreat from immediately, what he had done too ghastly for even the mind of a killer such as himself to ponder. His family did not know what he had done during the war. And even now, here in America, he knew that if his presence could ever be connected to the camp, he would be tried for war crimes.

He stood up to pull himself away from these thoughts and began unhooking the chain from the die shoe on the horses. His partner Charlie had gone to wash up for lunch, and he sat back down, suddenly tired. His American wife had been after him to retire, and he had begun thinking a little about it. If the company knew how old he really was he would have to retire anyways. But he couldn't stand to be around his bumbling fool of a son-in-law, who ran the plant for him. He really could not hurt something as profitable as the business, but Rudolph hated to watch inefficiency and stupidity at work, and could never keep his mouth shut. Better that he stay here at the fender factory to pass his days.

He thought of his grandson William, probably the best hope to carry on the business. The boy was a good mechanic and studying mechanical engineering at university. Rudolph remembered with amusement that when the boy was home from college last summer, he and some friends had organized a march against the war in Vietnam. They marched in the Fourth of July parade, bravely carrying their homemade signs. Rudolph could have been proud of him were it not for the absurdity of what the boy was doing—protesting the war that was paying for his college and all the nice things he took for granted, protesting against the spoils of war, the shell casings made in the machine shop of his grandfather.

Rudolph leaned back against the prints, twenty sheets of them making a cushion for his head, and dozed off.

### Chapter 5.5

### A Dead Son

It was cold and raining that May day in Matewan in 1920 as Jack watched the Baldwin-Felts detectives let themselves down one at a time from the train. They had just finished the evictions of the miners at Mine #2, three miles south of town. They were big men, used to sitting a lot and eating well. But they were all crack shots, whether it was with a revolver or a rifle; no one in Matewan who knew anything about the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency would dispute that. Through the steam rolling out from the boiler and stack, Jack could not make out how many of them there were. Rumor had it they were sending the whole dozen of the Baldwin-Felts men stationed in Bluefield to evict the miners from their company-owned homes at several area mines.

Union organizing had stepped up in southern West Virginia after the nationwide coal strike that winter, but the southern coalfields were still not organized. Those being evicted by the detectives hired by the mine operators had signed union cards. Evicting the mine families from their camp homes and from mine company property in Matewan was something that Sid Hatfield, the police chief of Matewan, had refused to do. Those were his friends and relatives. Nobody was going to put them out in the mud streets of the camps in his jurisdiction, at least that is what he had been telling everyone for the last week. The people in Matewan who knew what the Baldwin-Felts men were capable of, especially this bunch from Bluefield, were sure of one thing—there would be mine families on the street. The only way to stop the detectives would be to kill them.

From where Jack lay in the loft of the old livery just off the uptown area, he could now see six big men whose trench coats obscured the Colts they would for sure be wearing. They moved onto the cinders along the tracks, and stood conferring, checking the area around them visually.

They reminded Jack of the hawks that sat out in plain sight up the holler, surveying all around them, and then swooping down to grab some critter that never saw them coming. They were in no hurry as they ambled toward Jack's position. Then he saw the seventh. Jack drew a bead on him at the fifty yard distance and started shaking, the Winchester Model 94 wavering back and forth across the target. The boy hadn't counted on buck fever, had in the past pulled off a few twenty-two caliber rounds at mine company detectives outside the camp where his uncle lived, and never had a problem. He had never hit one of them to his knowledge, and if he had, he probably wouldn't have killed him. But he was shooting a forty-five today, and knew that if he hit a man he would likely kill him.

Then the detectives walked across the tracks toward the dry goods store. Jack saw Sid Hatfield come out of the barber shop. He was wearing both guns all right. Town folk had said that would be the tip-off that Hatfield would settle the matter on the street—if he had both Colts on his hips when the Baldwin-Felts men got there. Not many men could shoot with Sid Hatfield. For sport, he shot coins out of the air with a forty-five. He was the best anywhere in these parts and maybe all of West Virginia.

In a few minutes, Jack heard a man shouting. Then he heard Hatfield answer. Then it was quiet. A couple more minutes passed, and Jack rested the barrel of the heavy gun on the wood slat of the loft vent. Then he heard a boom, and all hell broke loose, the shooting so intense it hurt his ears. He aimed where he thought one of the detectives would have to pass, between the tracks and the hardware store. It would be his only shot. Then his target was there, not thirty yards away, and Jack squeezed off the shot. He watched as the man's head exploded and he fell over backwards from the force of the bullet. Jack levered another round, and waited in his hiding place, his heart pounding wildly. When he was sure the shooting was over, he climbed down from the loft, leaving the rifle behind.

The street was full of armed men—both from the mine camps and the town itself. Hatfield's revolvers were holstered as he walked among the corpses, checking each man. Several of the detectives had been shot in the forehead. When he got to the detective Jack had killed, Hatfield glanced down at the man and then back up the street, trying to trace the path of the bullet. Whoever shot this one had saved his life.

Jack, Crazy Jack, as he was now known in his role of skilled trades committeeman at the stamping plant, made his way into the machine shop, stopping along the way to answer questions or give greetings. He knew what the call was about—it was Ernie Davis again on the small machines wanting to make the longhairs go away, to make his son come back from Vietnam alive instead of dead. He saw Hank Schmidt on one of the engine lathes, but didn't see Ernie.

At the union meeting last week, Hank Schmidt had been recognized under new business. "I want to make a motion," he had said.

"What have you got, Hank?" the president had asked.

"We got some longhairs in our new apprenticeship class. I want them fired." All the men knew that Hank's best friend, Ernie Davis, had lost his boy in Vietnam six months ago. They worked the small machines together, and anybody who passed by couldn't help notice Ernie, who, ever since the funeral, had spent everyday cutting air on his engine lathe, staring blankly down the aisle in the tool room machine shop, with a clear view to the main entrance up the long aisle to the offices, like he was watching for the military to come back and tell him it was all a mistake, that Ernie Jr. wasn't really blown all to hell in a fucking rice paddy not fifty feet from a village full of Vietnamese people, the folks he was sent over there to save from the Communists. His boy was killed by a land mine in a place called Phu Phong, and Hank could often hear Ernie muttering to himself, "Phu Phong, sounds like fucking Chinese food...fucking Chinese food."

And when the longhair apprentices rotated through the machine shop, or were on the die floor across the way, Hank would catch Ernie staring at them for hours, shaking his head and muttering to himself about "the longhair bastards. Got no right to be here...no right." Once Hank had stopped Ernie with his ball peen hammer in his coveralls pocket, the big, twenty ouncer, the one they used on the heavy stuff, his eyes glassy and fixed on the longhair grinding on the die across the way. Hank had put his arm around his big, hurt friend and guided him back to the bench by his lathe.

At the union meeting, the president had grimaced. He knew what it was about. Everybody knew what it was about. While guys working the lines were getting drafted and disappearing to the country of Vietnam, and kids like Ernie's were coming home in body bags, the apprentices were draft exempt, just like the pansy-ass, draft-dodger college boys. They were selected through a testing process and were damn bright kids, as bright as any that ever went to college, and this had always been a good thing.

The union had fought hard in the early sixties to force this stamping plant to put the apprentice program in place. One hundred and fifty young guys at any given time were paving the future of the plant, ensuring the presence of skilled tradesmen for decades down the road.

Hard as it was to get the older guys to accept the apprentices as "draft deferred" while their own boys could be sent to Nam, it was nearly impossible to get them to accept the longhaired young guys showing up in the last couple of apprentice classes as legitimate. They were fair game outside the plant, but the company was pretty proud of its apprentices, assuming ownership of the program after the union had negotiated it into being, and there was little tolerance for harassment under the plant roof. Hell, some of the top management pulled strings to get their kids into the program, as did the union board and shop committee.

"Not going to happen, Hank," the president had told him.

"I want to make the motion, and we'll vote on it."

The president stared down at the table and then over at Milt Jeffers, who really was the one who should speak on this issue. Jeffers controlled the bargaining issues and the president ran the meetings. But it really couldn't go to a vote. It couldn't go that far, because there was no form of valid motion to fire fellow union members because they had long hair. And if it couldn't be a legitimate motion, then it sure as hell could not be put to a vote.

"We're going to fucking vote on it," Hank had said. He was getting agitated, and that was not good. Lately, the union meetings had become incendiary, and at the last, a fist fight had broken out over the apprenticeship program—it was hard to test into the program for the guys in the plant already, and one view was that too many "outsiders," the longhairs and college kids, were taking slots that belonged to the guys who had put their time in on the press lines. But the contract specified a quota to be hired from within the union ranks, and the quota was strictly observed.

Crazy Jack saw Ernie then, who had been sitting beside his lathe, the chuck spinning slow motion at about a hundred rpm's. Jack knew he was going to have another problem one of these days—when management got tired of Ernie producing nothing day after day. The tool room superintendent had already given him the warning. "What's up, Ernie?" Jack asked as he approached.

Ernie looked up and then jerked his head to the longhair across the aisle. "He don't belong here," Ernie said.

Jack knew the apprentice. He was old Vinnie's boy. Vinnie worked in salvage and had always been a good union man, and his son was one of the best kids Jack had ever seen in the apprentice program. He just liked to wear his hair long.

"I'm going to kill that son of a bitch," Ernie muttered.

Crazy Jack believed him. As he had grown older and lost some of his strength and quickness, Jack had started carrying a gun. He knew what only old guys know—that they become more dangerous the older they get.

Ernie was one of millions of lumpy, middle aged guys getting tired with the coming of age and arthritis, weaknesses creeping into their boring, working men's lives. Ernie was a dangerous man because he had nothing to lose. At least nothing compared to what he had just lost, his son, in a war that even lumpy, tired old patriots increasingly saw as a blunder. Going to send him to prison? He didn't care. Hell, Ernie was right. Nobody should be able to get out of serving. Kids with the brains to go to college or to test into a GM apprenticeship shouldn't get deferred from the draft. But to have all the bullshit with the war in Vietnam boil down to the length of an apprentice's hair?

"It's them lying bastards in Washington that make the laws, Ernie."

"That don't make it right."

### Chapter 6

### Big Bill

Big Bill always got the short end of things. Like ending up here at GM instead of on the city police force. Before he went to Korea and left his toes by the Chosin Reservoir, he was already a sergeant on the Cranston Police Department.

He should have quit the job his first day on the GM security force when the boss stationed him at the bottom of the escalators and stairs to watch for guys who weren't wearing their safety glasses. If they didn't have them on the moment they stepped into the roar of the factory, he was supposed to "arrest" them. Or like today, watching the men file past the security office on their way to the time clock to make sure they weren't drunk, or on the way out, to make sure they weren't drunk.

Hell, at any given moment in the plant, somebody was drinking or plotting to steal some bullshit thing. He had lost count of how many of the guys had been arrested for DUI on the way home directly from work. Ah well, it paid okay, lots more than he would make as a city cop. And the older and lamer he got because of his war injury, the better the place looked.

But it was meaningless work he did here. He was nothing more than a prison guard watching over the unfortunate inmates. The three strands of barbed wire on top of the six-foot-tall, chain link fence around the plant even pointed inward. He had noticed that the day he came out here to apply for the security job—the fucking fence was designed to keep people in, not out. He had even asked about it and been told that he would see soon enough what it was for.

Big Bill was cold today. The sunny, mild weather of the last few days had given way to the gray of an Ohio winter, snow flurries and sleet slanting across the parking lot of the General Motors plant, the drafty, single-paned windows of the security office letting a stream of cold air across the knee he had sprained Wednesday. He popped a couple more pain pills and shivered with the cold. Always the left leg—the three day retreat at the Chosin Reservoir giving him frostbite in the left foot. The ends of four toes had been amputated after the headlong march, in which he had lost all but a couple guys out of his unit. He ran on as they fell or were shot one by one by the Chinese. What a massacre it turned out to be. It was shit. Fucking shit the way it happened. And now there's this Vietnam thing.

Big Bill looked around and then opened his desk drawer. He took out the flask and poured several ounces of vodka after the Vicodin. He stared across the parking lot, full as usual even on a Saturday, a Saturday on a holiday weekend at that. There weren't any holidays in the auto industry, just days of the week. Out by the fence, he noticed Joe open his truck camper door. The poor, dumb son of a bitch had been living out there for a couple of months now. It was against the plant rules, but what the hell, Big Bill wasn't going to be the one to run him off. Joe wasn't hurting anything out there.

After lunch, just as Bill was dozing off at the desk, Bob Franklin, the personnel manager, opened the office door. Big Bill got up quickly. Franklin was one of the few who never showed his face on weekends. In fact, he had been on vacation at his Florida home the week of Thanksgiving. He handed Big Bill an envelope. "Big John said you could take care of this. Call in as many men as you need and get this done before the end of the shift." Then the man turned and walked out.

Big Bill opened the envelope, and incredulous, read over the list of names. Included were shop chairman Milt Jeffers, Crazy Jack, and a couple of others. He was supposed to fire them all by the end of the day. "Holy shit," Big Bill muttered to himself. In disbelief, the first thing he did was call Big John, the security chief.

"That's right," Big John told him. "They're all fired. Came from up north. Seems GM is tired of a bunch of fucking hillbillies here in Cranston shutting down the company every few weeks. Time to clean house...and time for you to earn your paycheck." With that, Big John hung up.

Harold, the GM vice-president, didn't know anything about the pictures of him getting a blowjob in the backseat of a Cadillac. Hell, he didn't even remember that he got a blowjob. What he did know was that some hillbilly fuck in Cranston got him drunk and sick and in the dog house with his wife for being drunk and sick. It had only taken a phone call to Detroit and less than 24 hours to get the necessary paperwork through human resources, which, in the GM hierarchy, trumped all other sectors of the company. So the orders to fire came down through the local personnel director, who had to catch the first plane from Miami Beach to come back here and take care of the dirty work.

Big Bill, accompanied by four other security guards, limped his way down to the committeemen's office, a ramshackle, smoke-filled, little room to which committeemen retreated when not answering calls or fighting with management. By the time he got there, he was in such pain and bad humor that he kicked the door into the office and smacked El Stinko, the production committeeman, into the wall. Clyde, El Stinko's real name, had Big Bill by the throat before he could even think what had happened. The sight of the four other guards caused the rest of the committeemen to pull Clyde off of Big Bill.

Then Bill stepped importantly into the middle of the room. "I get to fire a few of you badass motherfuckers here today...Milt Jeffers," he said and glanced around to find Milt looking on, incredulous, from the corner of the office under the picture of Walter Reuther at the Overpass. He handed Milt his copy of the official document. "Crazy Jack," Big Bill announced next and looked around. Jack was not there but on the shop floor, tending to business like he usually was. "Bobby Batch," Milt said, and handed a slip to the local union president.

Milt was on his feet by this time. "What the fuck is this?" he demanded.

Big Bill looked him in the eye. "You're fired, dumbfuck."

"Come on, boys," Milt hollered, brushing past Big Bill and his guards. "We're going to shut her down again!" They all scattered in different directions into the plant to begin another wildcat. "You motherfuckers are fired," Big Bill yelled at the men as they ran in all directions. "Come back here!"

### Chapter 7

### War Dead

Milt Jeffers and the gang roamed through the shop hitting E-stops, shouting, and motioning for the men to leave the factory. There was no persuasion needed, although some of the die makers in the tool room always stood around for awhile before finally locking their tool boxes in disgust and following the rabble out the doors. They were slower than usual today, these recent wildcats coming just after the sixty-seven day national shutdown, which had cost them big money.

The foreman's kick to Steve Brown's rump while he was peering through the smoky haze of the battlefield brought him to his feet like the wiry animal Nam had made him. He sprang up and slashed with his knife all in one motion, cutting the foreman in the chest, and then turned and dove into the tree line. Steve Brown landed in the midst of the automatic welders. There were no sparks the next welder cycle, just his head compressing in the weld fixture. The war was over for Steve Brown.

The millwrights were on the conveyor belt cutting Dana loose. "My dick's cut off...my dick's cut off," Dana, delirious now, kept yelling, as he had since they had gotten there. One of them slapped him with a greasy leather glove and said, "Shut the fuck up, you moron. Your leg's cut. You still got your dick."

The lieutenant saw the wildcat strike unfolding and left the plant quickly. He was opening his car door when a fellow WWII vet came by. The two knew each other from the American Legion. "Hey, Lieutenant. Stopping by for a beer?" The lieutenant turned slowly to face him. His arm and neck were still hurting, and when he turned, the pain sharpened. He had been thinking again of the events with his son Tommy from the day before. But he shook off these painful thoughts. "Sure," he said. "I'll be stopping by." Suddenly the lieutenant slumped to the ground.

Rudolph muttered to himself as he swept his area before leaving. Another strike. Fools, he thought. "Come on, Rudolph. Put the fucking broom down. Let's go." He looked up sharply to the speaker, a young machinist who was one of the few to stop and talk to Rudolph now and then. Rudolph leaned the push broom against the bench and fell into line. He had never liked that word and wondered why Americans were so fond of it. "Fuck," he muttered to himself. What a meaningless word. As they neared the exit, Rudolph reached into his left pocket to finger his gold coin, but couldn't find it right away. Frantically, he felt every corner of the pocket. It was gone! His one ounce gold coin was gone! He turned to go back into the factory to look for it. Everyone and everything was flowing toward the exits. The forklift driver never saw Rudolph as the old man came running around the blind corner in search of his gold.

Hank Schmidt was locking his bench tool box when he saw the motion off to his right. He watched the steel plate spinning through the air and across the aisle, watched it hit the longhair squarely in the neck, and then it seemed like everything was in slow motion as the young fellow slipped to his knees and then pitched onto the first step of the spotting press. Ernie turned and walked up the tool room aisle, joining the wildcatters in shutting down the place. Hank saw that others were tending to the longhair apprentice and turned and joined his friend. "Fuck it," he thought. "Just fuck it."

Milt Jeffers and Crazy Jack walked in the middle of a small group of their comrades. "Bring 'em to their fucking knees," shouted Jimmy to the group. "Shut the fucking place down," shouted El Stinko. Milt gave a faint grin. He was shutting the fucking place down all right, but he was worried. He was fired. The number one right the company always placed first, both in local and national negotiations, was the right to hire and fire. Management did the hiring and they did the firing. It was that simple. By the time the union group got to the executive garage, there was a small army of cops—local police, sheriff's deputies, and state patrolmen clearing the way for the ambulances.

Big Bill and the guards, joined now by Big John and a dozen other guards who had been called in, were organizing to take control of the sprawling facility. Sheriff Thomas Greene stood at the top of the ramp, and warily turned to look at the union hall across the busy highway. There were two dead that he knew of in the plant, and a deputy assigned to monitor the radio had just reported a possible third to him. Below on the plant grounds he watched as three thousand men tried to extricate themselves from the parking lot. The air was filled with black smoke from the junkers the guys drove to work. There was honking and yelling and tires squealing. The parking lot looked like a battlefield.

There were already two ambulances in the plant; all the aisles were wide enough to drive down, so the paramedics could get wherever they needed to go. Greene had called in a total of eight ambulances from the surrounding communities, and they sat idling along the highway, their lights slashing through the November gloom. Now word came of a man down in the parking lot, and he ordered another ambulance to go and get the lieutenant.

Tom Finnegan, a notebook at the ready, a photographer shadowing him, spoke to Thomas Greene. "Hell of a mess."

Greene nodded and waved his arm over the valley before him. "What the fuck is the matter with this place?"

"Can I quote you on that?" They both laughed. They had a handshake agreement that there would be a free flow of information between the two, sometimes confidential, that would help each do his job better.

"It's insane...."

Down below, all of a sudden, a fight broke out. The flow of men out of the plant stopped, and the little sphere of activity grew in size, then became an abnormal shape. Several men ran from the struggling group toward the parking lot. Police officers who had been standing around the front of the plant ran toward the group with their nightsticks drawn.

"Ah, shit," Thomas Greene spat between clenched teeth and ran for his car. Never before had he mixed his men with the strikers. Today had been different, though, because of the deaths in the plant. "Let's go," he shouted into his radio mike. "All available men to the ramp on Route 30." He put his siren and lights on and started down the hill, but by the time he got there, Milt Jeffers and the boys had pulled their guys out of the melee, and the cops, thoroughly pissed off as one of their number was down, reluctantly pulled off to the side.

Then the first ambulance made its way out of the plant and up the ramp to the gate. And everyone involved sensed the gravity of what was happening. They all knew by now that people had been killed in some way or another during the last hour in the plant. Nothing like that had ever happened before during a wildcat. It had just been fuck the place up a little bit, go home for a couple of days, and then come on back for more days and weeks and years of boring shit, whatever it took to keep the fender factory spitting metal out the doors and down the railroad tracks.

Before he went home that night, the sheriff knew that five men were dead. An apprentice had sustained a broken neck from a hurled four inch by six inch steel wear plate during the plant exodus, probably horseplay. A young production worker had bled to death from a sliced femoral artery. And the only one he knew, his old friend the lieutenant, had died of a heart attack in the parking lot. An old German guy had been run over by a forklift. And a young fellow had had his head crushed in a welder.

### Chapter 8

### Public Relations

Darius Delaney got the call at 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, exactly a half hour after he had gotten home from guard drill. The call meant he would have to leave immediately for Cranston, Ohio, to quell another labor disturbance at a plant that had been regularly jamming the GM parts pipeline for the past 10 years. "Enough is enough," he was told by the GM president, who was in the Bahamas for the holidays. "Take care of it."

Darius was the first special assistant to the president of General Motors. He was a fireman in the Michigan National Guard. He was an MBA graduate of the School of Business at Miami University in Ohio. He was a member of the prestigious Phiwi fraternity, which was famous nationwide, no, worldwide, for its luau every fall on the Oxford, Ohio, campus. And Darius had served as the chairman of the luau for three consecutive years during his time at Miami, a period of service unmatched ever by any other fraternity brother.

The luau was not trusted to just anyone; rather, there were usually enough complaints every year—the Tri Delt freshmen wore panties to the party, the pig was done too late, or maybe the baby oil ran out at midnight—always some detail that caused enough grumbling to ensure a yearly turnover of chairmen. But Darius had proven himself three times, and only finally relinquished the position because it was time for him to move on—"Time to grow up, boy"—as his grandfather and GM vice-president of sales pronounced, "and come put the GM yoke around your neck and get ready to be somebody."

The same day Grandpa had arranged his National Guard physical, Darius had interviewed for his first GM position. He and Grandpa never dreamed that he would be starting out in the president's office. In fact, the old man had laughed, if he had known that, the National Guard thing would not have been necessary—Darius would have been exempt from the draft by virtue of his high position in a company so necessary to the national defense of the United States of America.

What had landed Darius this advanced starting position was none other than the fact that he had been chairman of the Phiwi luau for three consecutive years! As a past president of the Phiwi chapter at Duke, the corporate personnel director had been privy to a permanent invitation to the yearly bash, though finally one year at age 25, when he awoke in the kitchen naked with a pair of men's underwear around his neck, he never went back again. But he knew, as did anyone who knew about such things, that a man who could be trusted to be in charge of the Phiwi luau for three years could be trusted with anything GM had to throw at him.

So it was that Darius Delaney found himself on Route 23 near Carey, Ohio, on November 29, 1970, at 8:00 p.m. He had hustled in to GM headquarters where he had been met by the president's secretary and briefed on the Cranston situation. He needed to leave immediately, he had been informed. This was bad news to Darius since he and his fiancée had planned an evening together once he was back in town from guard duty. He had hinted over the phone from the base that he was horny, and Melanie had admitted the same, and for a nice girl like Melanie to say she was horny meant that Darius had a pleasurable evening before him.

But now, surrounded by the corn stubble of dark Ohio farmland, Darius was not going to get laid. He was going to get a hotel room that smelled like old shoes in a town full of fucking hillbillies whose main goal in life seemed to be to fuck up the works of the largest corporation in the world. And he was going to put a stop to it.

The United Auto Workers Union was a pain in Darius Delaney's ass. If not for the union, it would be smooth sailing for the company—record profits every year instead of a struggle to match last year's. And without the UAW, Darius would have smooth career advancement. The recent national strike, which started on September 14 and lasted sixty-seven days, had left him exhausted. He had been on the go the entire time, writing press releases, flying here and there to offer his superb organizational skills wherever they were needed. And yet the union had kicked the company's ass. Thirty years and out for retirement. That meant a man could possibly retire at age forty-eight with a monthly income of $400! That wasn't right in Darius' mind. That and the wage increases would cause inflation. And dental care? That was unheard of for any industry, yet the UAW had gotten it for all the hillbillies and their families. More money, cost of living wage increases, more holidays, more health insurance, retirement. It might not have seemed so bad to him, but he was sitting at the bargaining table as it happened. He wasn't responsible for the negotiating and the giving in, but he was sure that anyone who was a party to this boondoggle of a contract would go nowhere within the giant company in the future. Only a bunch of losers would have agreed to such a contract. And Darius Delaney wasn't a loser. He had chaired three consecutive Phiwi luaus!

By the time he reached the edge of Cranston, Darius had hatched a plan. He would design an ad for the local newspaper blaming the United Auto Workers for the deaths at the plant, saying that the hourly workers who died had been killed for not supporting the union. That's what he would do. He would make a name for himself on this strike. It was this local UAW union in Cranston that had caused more trouble than any other local union in the country. It was this bunch of hillbillies that was the enemy. Darius Delaney would bring the UAW to its fucking knees!

Darius had to pass the plant to get to his hotel in downtown Cranston, and was shocked at what he saw. At all three plant gates on Route 30, there were huge bonfires, each with at least a dozen men sitting around the fire drinking beer. Others stood along the highway, holding their picket signs aloft for the entire world to see that they were in charge of this General Motors plant. Darius was pissed.

As soon as he checked into the Imperial Hotel, he called the city police. He wanted action now, but the dispatcher on duty at the tail end of this holiday weekend calmly told him he would have to come down to the station and file charges. He slammed the phone down and then dialed the sheriff's department number. He got a similar response to his call for the cavalry to come swooping down on the hillbillies and throw them off his property. "Yes, I own the fucking property," he found himself shouting into the phone at the dispatcher. "I am management! I own it!"

It just happened that Sheriff Thomas Greene was at the office making sure his orders to make an hourly check of the plant were being carried out. He was concerned over the fatalities even though his initial investigations had shown that all but one appeared to be accidental. He was on his way through the dispatcher's office when he heard the shouting over the phone receiver, which he took from the bewildered young woman at the desk. "You will do what I tell you to do!" Darius shouted.

"Who is this?" Thomas asked.

"This is General Motors! Who is this?" Darius shouted.

"Sheriff Greene here."

"Ahhhh. About time. Now here is what you are going to do," Darius said.

Thomas chuckled as he heard the usual GM tantrum begin. "And what would that be?"

"Why, for starters, enforce the law. There are too many pickets."

Thomas shook his head. He had made sure that no vandalism was taking place by having his deputies drive past the plant every hour. If they knew the pickets, the deputies were free to stop and talk in order to get more information for the sheriff. He was concerned this time. The men had just completed a sixty-seven day strike and had only worked three days when they went on the first wildcat. That one was just for fun compared to this one. The shop chairman and the president were both fired, leaving no local leadership in the union. And both of them were popular leaders. If it had not been a holiday weekend, the sheriff would have been in contact with GM and UAW brass in Detroit to get things moving. The United Auto Workers International Union had grown just as weary of the Cranston plant as had General Motors. Thomas Greene was worried about real violence if this thing did not get settled. He knew many of the men at the plant and knew what they were capable of.

"Do you understand me, sir?" Darius barked at the sheriff.

"Yes sir," Thomas answered, thinking ahead to tomorrow when he could get some assistance from Detroit. Whoever this pissant on the phone was, it wouldn't do any good to get him more fired up than he already was.

Darius set to work immediately on his ad. "Five men are dead because of the United Auto Workers," it would read in bold print. "Just when you think the union can stoop no lower, it resorts to murder," the ad would read in fine print. Darius stared at his document. Maybe that was a bit much, he thought to himself, but just as quickly knew he needed to get _some_ kind of information in the paper tomorrow. GM was already losing the public relations battle, witness the morning's _Cranston Journal_. He had looked at the front page story, "Five Dead at Local GM Plant." The first couple of paragraphs covered the deaths of the five men. The third one was what had caught Darius' attention.

After a 67 day national strike to secure basic cost of living wage increases and a decent retirement, the local United Auto Workers union has seen the need to once again strike the local GM stamping plant. The difference between all the other strikes and this one is the obvious anger among the rank and file.

Darius had planned to get the ad out in the morning, but after reading the newspaper story decided to take it downtown tonight. Quick action was needed.

Editor Tom Finnegan was still at his desk late Sunday night. He was convinced he knew what had happened at the GM plant. And it wasn't just a one-day occurrence that had resulted in five more deaths at the factory, but a cumulative, abstract sort of cancer that was festering out there and destroying lives and families. He wasn't sure that he should write the truth, indeed, that he _could_ write the truth. First, he had to be vigilant that his feelings about what had happened to Bobby stayed under control. In addition, he knew that the following days would bring the GM Public Relations brass into town, and

also that the owners of the paper would be interested in what he had to say before this thing was finished. And just then his phone rang. It was the shift editor. GM had just dropped off an ad for the morning paper. And he was a little concerned over it. "Bring it up," Tom said.

All it took was for Tom Finnegan to read the GM ad and he proceeded with his editorial:

The deaths Saturday, November 28, 1970, at the local General Motors stamping plant are a continuation of the irresponsible behavior of General Motors to the community of Cranston. The tragedy on that day brings to ten the total number of men who have died within the walls of that plant in as many years, leaving children, and parents and wives and brothers and sisters to grieve at the unnecessary losses of life.

It appears that GM's arrogance in handling personnel matters is out of control as this time the plant fired the union's leadership. Firing these men is the equivalent of the union kidnapping and holding for ransom the plant manager of the local plant. GM has been asking for trouble, and it appears that this time they have gotten it....

### Chapter 9

### Big Men Rule

By noon the next day, Monday, November 30, 1970, the three major network television stations had set up in Cranston, chomping at the bit to dive into this story of death, deception, and Big Labor. "Is the union out of control?" ABC from Cleveland asked from where it had set up on the Gazebo to Honor the War Dead on the Cranston Town Square. Had dissident elements taken over the United Auto Workers International Union after the death of Walter Reuther on May 9 of this year? Was Cranston the battleground for that takeover?

Just down the road from the plant and union hall, NBC from Columbus panned shots of the factory complex and picket lines, its broadcasters concentrating on the circus-like atmosphere of the wildcat strike. "Look there at that one skinny little fellow without a shirt out here in this cold weather," Pat twanged in his Midwestern dialect. "Amazing stuff here in Cranston," Pete answered.

Cranston's own CBS station was set up in front of the Imperial Hotel where its reporters knew, from past practice, that the real action—the GM press conference—would be. While waiting for GM to make an announcement, the cameras panned a Nickles Bakery delivery truck, and followed its driver to the side door of the hotel with his rack of bread and rolls for the daily delivery. Then they panned the Isaly's Dairy store down the way, watching patrons come and go.

Darius Delaney was standing before the hotel room mirror checking his appearance one more time when the phone rang. It was Sylvia Porter! This was big, Darius told himself. If Sylvia Porter was calling _him,_ then his career was on track. "You're my favorite columnist! I've been reading your work for many years!" he gushed.

"That's sweet. But you know that the only way for GM to make money is to end this work stoppage," she said, going immediately into advice mode.

Word out of Detroit, she informed him, was that this was an illegal strike, that the UAW could not condone violence no matter what its purpose. That is true, he agreed. But what really made this strike different was that GM was going to show the United Auto Workers once and for all who was the boss. If need be, Darius told Sylvia, GM was prepared to close the Cranston plant. And with this verbal commitment to all out war with the United Auto Workers and her assurance that he would be quoted in her _New York Post_ column the next day, Darius alerted the press in front of the hotel that he was calling a news conference for 2:18 p.m. He was asked immediately by the CBS reporter why the odd minute time? Why not just 2:00 o'clock? "Because that is when I say." The GM brass would be here by evening, but until then Darius was in charge. Darius, who was quoted by Sylvia Porter!

John Dunham got the call from Darius and forced himself into action. As he was shaving, he was wondering why his father-in-law had not returned his call. Harold and he had not talked since Saturday morning when Harold, still shaky from the brain damage from the moonshine on Friday, and his wife had said their goodbyes and headed back to Detroit. He really needed to talk to Harold and get this strike settled. But Harold was mad at him, blaming him for his "illness" on Friday. Damn, John said over and over in the shower, the old man had better get hold of him quick.

The only conversation that John had had with anyone about the strike was with Milt Jeffers, and the two of them had agreed that they could settle this thing with a six pack, a handshake, and the burning of some pictures. And they had been prepared to do that this very afternoon until the position of each side became entrenched by Detroit and appeared on the national news. As it was, each of them had been told by their respective superiors in the company and union that they were to do nothing.

The NBC camera truck had been creeping closer to the United Auto Workers union hall all morning. And now, just after lunch, they were in the UAW parking lot. Pat had at first been afraid of the guys, but as he watched them come and go, some of them with their wives and children, the fear had subsided. They had been invited onto the union hall property and had been told of a union meeting scheduled for 2:00 o'clock.

"Hell," Pete told him. "These are just working blokes, just like my daddy on the railroad. I know this bunch." And Pete was right. Ninety-nine per cent of the guys in the plant were like his dad and dads everywhere. They were married. They had kids. They were buying little houses. They were Little League coaches, church members, brothers, and grandfathers.

Two black Cadillacs were headed into Cranston on Route 30. Inside each car were four very large men. One group represented General Motors. The other group represented the International United Auto Workers Union. The four GM men were there to take control of GM's stamping plant. The four UAW guys were there to take control of the local union. At 1:45, one car parked down the road from the union hall and the four men, dressed in dark business suits, opened the trunk of their car. They put on long coats and could be seen adding items of various shapes and sizes to their pockets. Pete swung the NBC camera towards the men, and one of them immediately peeled off from the group. "You need to leave this property immediately."

"Well, we were invited...."

"That was not a question. Turn off the camera and go away."

They started throwing their gear in the van. "But we're parked in and we...."

"Leave the van. We will guarantee its return."

Bewildered, the two network reporters started down the highway on foot. "Why should we listen to him?" Pat asked.

Pete stopped and watched the big man join the other three in front of the union hall. "Because he's a big son of a bitch?"

On the stage inside the union hall, Milt Jeffers was at the microphone. "The purpose of this meeting," he shouted, "is to bring you up to date on the strike situation. As you know, several of us have been fired. The International Union has ordered us back to work. We are here to vote on whether to go back or stay out."

Jimmy came dancing onto the stage shaking his fist in the air. "Bring 'em to their fucking knees," he shouted. His was shirtless and had that crazy look about him that he got when he drank moonshine.

"Shut the fuck up, you idiot," one of the guys in the front row called. "Yeah," others joined in. "Shut the fuck up." The guys had lost a lot of money in the last two and a half months. They were in no mood for Jimmy's clown act. Jimmy stopped and stared down at the crowd, mistaking his union brothers for the enemy. He was ready to launch himself off the stage at them when he was grabbed in a bear hug by one of the big men from Detroit. At the same time, Milt Jeffers was picked up by two of the men, one of them on each side of him. Both Jimmy and Milt were carried toward the nearest exit, Jimmy squirming like a wild animal caught in a trap, Milt going quietly. In front of the union hall along Route 30 sat Sheriff Greene, two other cruisers, the city police chief, and a state patrol car. Sandwiched between the police cars was an ambulance, and Milt and Jimmy were stuffed into the back of it.

On the union hall stage, the remaining big man from Detroit bellowed into the microphone, "There is only one vote here today, and it is mine. You will report to work tomorrow at your regular starting time."

Downtown, Darius and John stood in front of the Imperial Hotel. Exactly at 2:18 p.m. Darius began speaking into the NBC microphone. "I have called this news conference to clarify GM's position on this illegal strike and on our relationship with the United Auto Workers. I talked to Sylvia Porter this morning and...." Darius was hoisted into the air by two of the GM big men from Detroit.

"Put me down," he shouted. "Don't you know who I am?"

John Dunham had seen these guys in action before and knew this game was over. He followed meekly to the waiting ambulance where Darius could be seen with his nose pressed against the glass, peering incredulously as his empire crumbled.

The other big man took the microphone. "GM's announcement here today is that the strike is over. All issues have been resolved. All workers are to return to work tomorrow morning at their regular starting time."

### Chapter 10

### The First Joint Program

The death certificates of all the men who died at the GM plant on Saturday read that they died at Cranston General Hospital. No one had ever died at a GM plant. It was a company law, and the company doctor followed that law. He was in the first ambulance with Rudolph while it was at the plant, shouting orders at the EMTs. When they left for the hospital, Rudolph's mangled, dead body was hooked up to an IV and a respirator.

The only body he really had trouble getting out of the plant was that of Steve Brown. The caved-in skull and near decapitation would normally indicate death. But when the ambulance arrived down at V line, there was the plant doctor giving Steve chest massage—pushing, pushing, pushing, pounding. And before the technicians even got a look at the body, the doc was shouting orders, then got the man's head under a sheet, and rode with Steve Brown in the back of the ambulance.

The doctor was really a doctor. He had wanted to be an apprentice at a General Motors plant, but could never score high enough on the apprenticeship test to get in the program. He just wasn't good at taking tests, he told everyone. He decided that if he could not be an electrician or a die maker, he wanted to be a doctor. He made it through college okay; truth be known, it was easier to get a college degree than it was to become a skilled tradesman at General Motors. And his daddy, a vice-president of marketing at GM, found a medical school in Grenada for him to attend.

Dexter B. Flag, M.D., read the sign on the metal, fireproof door at the plant hospital. The doctor had his own little office with metal bookshelves, a clinic with two nurses and two beds, two small observation rooms, and a private examination room where the doctor did all the pre-employment physicals. His eyes were so bad that he had to get right down in the men's groins in order to check them for hernia, at least that was the story he had told to the police the day a man kneed him and broke his nose after he touched the man's dick with said nose. He wished the nurse had never called the police, but as a doctor you just learn to deal with things. Word got around the plant, and that was a good laugh for awhile, because the doc had touched every man's dick with his nose before they got hired.

Doctor Flag was a curious sight that Saturday afternoon as he roamed among the corpses in the hospital emergency room. The doctor on duty threatened to call the police to get rid of the strange little man who kept checking the dead workers with his stethoscope. Finally, Dr. Flag muttered with great sorrow, "They're dead. Every last one of them is dead. I thought I could save them, but it wasn't to be." The ER nurses and doctor watched Dr. Flag slowly exit the hospital, shaking his head on his skinny shoulders as he made his way outside and lit a cigarette.

The hospital staff all knew the drill. "What is good for General Motors is good for Cranston General," was the hospital president's answer whenever he was approached about the GM encroachment on the hospital. And what he said was a true thing—32.8% of the entire revenue of Cranston General was from the employees and families from the GM plant, and over sixty per cent of the psychiatric unit's income was due to GM's business.

After being plucked off the labor and business stages and loaded into ambulances, John Dunham, Darius Delaney, Milt Jeffers and Jimmy Hatfield were taken to this bastion of high finance—the psychiatric unit of Cranston General. They were all strapped down and unconscious as they were wheeled through the glass doors and down the cheery, lime and yellow hallways of this newest wing of the hospital.

This was the age of electroshock therapy, the largely unregulated practice of shocking people's brains in order to cure their mental illness, usually labeled depression. The truth was that GM did not recognize alcoholism as a disease, and when men could not go another day drinking and functioning, their doctors arranged that they come into the hospital to dry out under the guise of treatment for depression. And treatment for depression at Cranston General came to mean electroshock therapy several days a week. The practice had started with management personnel, most of whom really were insane (but also drunkards) from working at the plant, but once the hospital and local doctors recognized the plan for the money maker it was, the program grew rapidly and the alcoholism/insanity/depression line grew fuzzy.

For each treatment, the hospital got $1500 for providing the equipment and straps, the psychiatrist got $500 for eight minutes of work, and the family doctor signed the chart for $50. As the practice had ballooned, the number of psychiatrists in Cranston had swelled to ten times the per capita norm nationwide. A shrink could earn enough in only a few years at Cranston General, treating autoworkers for depression, to consider retiring. And with all the money flowing from GM to the doctors and hospital, a dozen more money managers could make a living in Cranston. And all of these high wage earners needed new homes. It really was true that every auto industry job created ten more jobs. Indeed, what was good for General Motors was good for the country. History will show that no one actually ever said that, but it sure sounded good.

The lounge was full of chain smoking autoworkers, sober for the first time in a decade, marveling that there was a world functioning all around them. "There's the fucking plant manager!" Dancin' Dan called excitedly as the first gurney was wheeled past the lounge. Dan had killed so many brain cells from drinking wine that he danced everywhere instead of walking, a gangly, jerky motion mostly involving his upper body. Dan's dancing had actually increased in intensity since he had arrived at the hospital, so happy he was to be out of the stinking factory and watching TV all day.

Then Milt Jeffers could be seen on the next gurney. "There's the fucking shop chairman!" shouted Crazy George, a production foreman who had taken to masturbating at the end of the quarter panel line whenever quota was not met. One day someone had thrown a bag over his head, and next thing he knew, here he was. He, too, was happy to be here in this light and airy place.

Then right there in the lounge of the psychiatric unit of Cranston General Hospital, the men started shaking hands with one another. Though the hourly and salaried men had always kept a distance from each other, the sight of the plant manager and shop chairman both arriving for treatment for insanity instantly dissolved any animosity they felt for each other. Then they were hugging—foremen hugging tow motor operators, parts stackers hugging superintendents, and electricians hugging accountants.

History was being made. They could not possibly know it, but their spirit of mutual understanding was to become the basis of tolerance and cooperation between the union and management. They could not state what they felt, but it was real and genuine—insanity was the great equalizing force in the auto industry. They were all fucking nuts! Why not just get along from now on?

Dr. Flag was at the hospital when the four men began waking up that evening. The big men from Detroit had stood stoically before the four rooms, taking turns guarding the miscreants who were costing GM big money and the union its credibility.

The doctor sat in a chair along the hallway, listening to the party atmosphere in the lounge, secretly wishing that he could be a part of it. He was a working man; he should be in there with them chain smoking and playing grab ass. "Doc," one of the big men called.

Doctor Flag entered the room of Darius Delaney with his clipboard. The luau chairman sat up in the bed, looking around in disbelief. He had no idea where he was. Had he been in some sort of accident? The last thing he remembered was talking to Sylvia Porter. "How are you feeling, Darius?" the doctor inquired.

"What day is this?" Darius asked. Maybe it was tomorrow and he had already been quoted by Sylvia Porter.

Doctor Flag went about his work, listening to Darius' breath with his favorite stethoscope, and he checked his blood pressure. "Please stand up and drop your drawers."

Darius did as he was told, but before the doc could check him, there was a commotion in the hallway. "Bring 'em to their fucking knees," Jimmy shouted, then ran down the hallway, a couple of the big guys chasing him.

In the lounge, Dancin' Dan and Crazy George were politely discussing the steel lubrication problems of the quarter panel metal. They heard the ruckus and listened. As Jimmy neared, and they heard the rant, they both knew who it was. Together they moved quickly to the lounge doorway. The two had played high school football, so when Dancin' Dan muttered, "I got him low," Crazy George knew to hit him high.

Insanity as equalizer; working together for progress. Dancin' Dan and Crazy George tackled Jimmy and showed what was possible when union and management were willing to work together. Although it would be many years for the Quality Work Life program to be born, it was recognized industrywide that it, and many other joint programs, began right here in the nut house in Cranston, Ohio.

### Part II

### Transition

Even before the Japanese kicked the hell out of the domestic auto industry in the seventies during and after the Arab Oil Embargo, the GM brass knew they were going to get an ass kicking. So what did they do about it? Nothing. They actually laughed about it.

"What the hell are we going to do about it?" asked the GM CEO at one meeting.

"Yeah. What the hell are we going to do about it?" asked Darius Delaney's grandfather at the same meeting.

"Nothing," was the unanimous decision.

"Fuck the Japs. We kicked their ass once and we'll kick it again," vice-president Harold, plant manager John Dunham's father-in-law, of Cranston, Ohio, fame said.

And they went on to discuss their pay packages and bonuses. After that business, they discussed the declining productivity of their plants. "Walter Reuther said he would take care of that," GM Chairman Roche said. That is what Roche had told Sylvia Porter in an interview in 1969. That sure had been fun, getting interviewed by Sylvia. He always remembered his exact words concerning increased productivity: "This, labor itself must decide to do. Labor must be realistic in recognizing its obligations to increase its productivity. This is the key solution to the problem of inflation."

But Walter Reuther had died in a plane crash on May 9, 1970, on the way to Black Lake, the site of the UAW education retreat being built in the woods in Michigan, up by the Mackinac Bridge. The Walter and May Reuther Family Education Center provided many decades of first rate union education programs as Reuther had intended.

Leonard Woodcock, Walter's replacement as UAW International President, and a member of Richard Nixon's original Enemies List, had pretty much told Roche he was full of shit. "You clowns start managing the company and we'll hold up our end. We need to modernize, to build a variety of cars. And oil is not going to get cheaper. You've seen these Toyotas? They get thirty-five miles to the gallon. You should talk to DeLorean. If he can ever get that Vega off his neck, he's got some damn good ideas about small, fuel efficient cars." John DeLorean, designer of the Pontiac GTO, and later head of the Pontiac division and then the Chevrolet division of General Motors, walked out of his big GM office one day and never came back. Some said he was fired and some said he smoked too much dope and just wandered out of his office and never returned. In any case, he would leave the company in 1973, and GM would still have only the rusty, warped-block Vega with which to fight Toyota.

GM's solution to lagging productivity and the Toyota problem was to crack the whip, make the workers work harder. Good, old-fashioned hard work would solve all their problems. But the union saw differently. The sporadic wildcat strikes continued, and in 1972, the Norwood, Ohio, plant would hit the street for 174 days, the longest strike in GM history. Lordstown in Ohio, one of the newest GM plants, the one which made the lowly Vega, hit the street on a regular basis. And of course there was the Cranston stamping plant, until recently a sore spot for GM.

After its wildcat strike in 1970, which occurred only days after the national sixty-seven day strike, the Cranston plant, under the watch of GM brass and the International UAW, started building its reputation as one of the most productive plants in the nation. Milt Jeffers' job had been spared when it was found he had the blowjob pictures of Harold, the GM vice-president and father-in-law of John Dunham. John, by the way, would later go on to be a vice-president in charge of the Quality Work Life Program, originally called the Department of No Drinking on the Job. John had never wanted another drink after his 13 electroshock therapy treatments at Cranston General Hospital in 1970. The big men the UAW had sent to town made a deal with Milt—they wouldn't kill him, and he would give them the pictures.

Just after Thanksgiving in 1970, a dozen hourly and salaried Cranston employees started a bowling league together, the first joint union/management bowling league in the nation. They called it the "Crazy Bowling League," ostensibly named after a fellow named Craze who had died in Vietnam, but for those in the know, the league was named after the revelation in the local loony bin that insanity was the state of auto industry employees, union and management, everywhere.

There had been a preacher, Oakley Wilson, in the Cranston General psychiatric ward the day that the plant manager and shop chairman had arrived together for treatment. He watched in amazement as the men hugged and cheered in the loony bin lounge, as they shared the revelation that they were all equal because of their insanity. Oakley had just had his thirty-ninth electroshock treatment for alcoholism, and he vowed to stay straight this time around. He had wrecked nine cars, been divorced four times, and jailed six times in the last decade. Oakley had had enough.

When Oakley got out, he turned in a suggestion and arranged meetings with the plant manager and shop chairman, who also had paper trails certifying their insanity, and pointed out the dollar savings if they just started treating drunks for alcoholism instead of depression, saving the Cranston plant alone millions every year by eliminating the electroshock therapy program at Cranston General Hospital. When they had trotted the plan out at a GM board meeting, the projected savings were about a quarter billion dollars over five years nationwide. Thus it was that Cranston set up the first program to treat its insane employees for alcoholism instead of insanity. The program sounded complicated, but was really very simple. The local hospital president and the local psychiatrists were upset, but they quickly learned that there was money to be made out of treating drunks. Cranston became known as a progressive plant. In Cranston, a drunk was called a drunk.

And while Cranston might have figured the insanity thing out first, the rest of the nation was not far behind. There was another contract coming up, and the issues were quickly becoming about the human beings who worked in the plants. The fight was already on as the Norwood strike showed. The union would be pushing to humanize its plants, and the company would be pushing to wring more money out of every worker. A collision of sorts was inevitable. And what all the differences finally boiled down to was the issue of "voluntary overtime." The men in the plants had been working seven days a week, 12 hours a day for years. The issue could just as easily have been over alcoholism, since that was the result of working seven days a week. But alcoholism was still confused with insanity, and the union didn't want its workers labeled drunks or lunatics either one, so they settled on "voluntary overtime" as the issue.

Ever since Walter Reuther had led the charge to convert America's manufacturing might from domestic to wartime in 1941, the UAW commanded respect from people in high places. Wrote Laurence G. O'Donnell in the _Wall Street_ _Journal_ before the 1973 contract, "...union leaders are already talking about the need to 'humanize' factories, enrich jobs and spread the workload over more workers. Indeed, it seems certain that life in GM's...plants—the pace of work, the monotony, the authority of management—will be a central issue in the contract talks. And in the meantime, it seems certain that workers will continue militant resistance to management's efficiency drive." Even the wise Mr. O'Donnell didn't know the contract was about the workforce being drunk and crazy.

Over the next decade, the UAW tamed General Motors. Safety training, education, and the treatment of alcoholism and substance abuse, to name a few workplace improvements, were addressed through contract negotiations.

General Motors became a driving force for civil rights. Where before, the hiring was solely at the discretion of local plant management groups, the corporation set guidelines concerning hiring. No matter that the impetus was the federal government and the United Auto Workers, General Motors began hiring women and minorities in numbers sufficient to comply with federal law.

But even as it became a good corporate citizen, General Motors failed to address the issues which would gradually erode its market share. The company was slow to challenge its foreign competitors with new products. GM did not address, as the UAW urged, the viability of national health care, furthering its disadvantage to foreign automakers, all of which had the help of their governments in providing health care for their employees.

The Cranston plant boomed. It became the largest, most efficient stamping plant in the world. So what did General Motors do with its most productive factory? It shut the fucking place down!

### Part III

### November, 2008

### The End

The dozen GM Cranston retirees sit four to a yellow vinyl booth, like passengers on a train, craning their necks to join in the conversation from the other booths. The row of tables next to the booths fills quickly with the other dozen old men who are joining them. They are survivors, appreciative of the resilience of the human liver, or cognizant by now of the importance of good genes. They have made it through the gauntlet of workplace injuries and diseases, boredom, mental and physical fatigue, and emerged in retirement.

As a group, their aura is gray, born of their thirty, forty, fifty years of daily immersion in oil mist, grinding dust, and welder smoke. The heat treat man has a red leathery face from his decades of leaning over two thousand degree oven pits. The press operators sit calmly like well-trained dogs, as if the bondage to the press lines still exists, and they are awaiting orders from either the boss or the movement of parts toward them. The die makers wear porous faces turned pallid from the daily barrage of abrasive materials.

The talk is of the upcoming interview with Rick Wagoner, CEO of General Motors, and Ron Gettelfinger, the United Auto Workers International President. The retirees continually glance at the television hung on the lime green wall at the end of the seating area, as if their future hangs with it. They are watching the financial channel, CNBC. The ticker line displays the current value of GM stock, at its lowest valuation in fifty years. Toyota could write a check for $2.5 billion and own the whole mess—all the hundreds of factories around the world, along with the name brands of Chevrolet, GMC, Pontiac, Buick, Cadillac, and Saturn. Later in the day will be the Easter Egg Hunt on the front lawn of the plant, the last scheduled joint activity to be hosted by the local entities of General Motors and the United Auto Workers. No matter that it is November—hundreds of children will dash across the front lawn one last time, scooping up plastic eggs filled with prize certificates from local merchants who, one more time, had coughed up tens of thousands of dollars for the annual Easter Egg Hunt.

The men had stood on picket lines together, carried their wounded and dead out of the jumble of press lines on stretchers, and worked uncountable hours of overtime to get through model changeover in the heyday of GM. These old men would go out to the plant and watch the grandchildren that were their legacies, the flesh and blood that had commanded their bondage to rows of machinery most of their adult lives, scurry after plastic Easter egg prizes.

The ticker crawls across the bottom of the screen as CNBC's announcer somberly yet cheerfully recounts the demise of the American auto giant. The men watch the symbols of stocks they once owned or now own through their retirement accounts—all, it seems, worth only a small fraction of what they paid for them. The stock market did not treat any of them well, though it is something they do not talk about. None of them would publicly admit that they had been hoodwinked by a government and economic elite that had convinced all of America to put its money in the stock market to be harvested as fast as human gullibility would allow by the day-trading experts on Wall Street. None of them would admit to faring any worse than "breaking even" in the stock market, though most of them had lost ninety per cent of their retirement savings.

Bob Elliot enters the diner, and the men at the tables begin shuffling their chairs to make room for the man. Bob was the manager of the Cranston plant for twenty years after John Dunham was promoted in the late seventies. He guided the plant through the tumult of the eighties and was considered the reason for the plant's longstanding success. Elliot had planned to stay in Cranston only a couple of years before being promoted to GM vice-president, but some things happened which pitted him against the top brass—mainly, after the two years in Cranston, he was told that his ticket to Detroit would be shutting down the plant. He told them to go to hell, and dug in and fortified the Cranston plant, pulling in all his favors from around the country to increase the workload and job security at his plant. In short, he declared war against the GM system. And it had worked until his retirement ten years ago. Only now, thirty years after it first tried, was GM successful in shutting down his beloved plant.

"Hey, Bob," calls one retiree, and the others give their greetings or nod to this man they all respect. There had not been a constant union/management problem during the years that Bob ran the plant. He made it clear through his actions that he was one of them—if they failed, they would all fail together, all go down together. When all was said and done, Bob was a working man like they were.

Then Wagoner and Gettelfinger are on the TV. "We are on the verge of bankruptcy," Wagoner begins. "The next one hundred days will determine if we survive. Sales are down nearly fifty per cent since gas prices doubled and the Wall Street bailout began. We need a short term loan...if we can pledge a trillion dollars to the banking industry, we think it is fair that we are loaned this money...."

The CNBC announcer interrupts, "Why should we give you any money? Foreign car makers are doing okay in the south."

"They were subsidized by the states," Gettelfinger says.

"Isn't that how it works?"

"When tax abatements first started in the 70's, the UAW warned of their consequences," the union president continues.

"Isn't the truth of the matter that GM has been mismanaged?"

"You know better than that," Wagoner says. The jaw muscles tighten in his face. Just once he would like to tell these people what was what. Sure, mistakes had been made....

"Aren't your labor agreements the problem?" the announcer asks.

"No, no, no," Gettelfinger answers. "Labor amounts to ten per cent of the vehicle cost. Our government looked the other way when foreign governments manipulated their currencies to gain market share in America. It was our own government that sold GM out with NAFTA...."

"Sorry, we're out of time," the guy on CNBC bellows. "Ladies and gentlemen, Rick Wagoner from GM and Ron Gettelfinger from the UAW. Thanks for being here."

"Turn that shit off," one of the guys hollers. Then the waitress is bringing their eggs and bacon and fried potatoes. They eat in silence, the impending bankruptcy of their company and the end of their retirement pay and benefits looming. There are a few attempts at humor or reviving a story or two from the old days, but nothing takes hold.

When the waitress brings the checks, the heat treat man grabs the plant manager's. "Your money's no good here today, Bob." In a few minutes they have paid their bills and filed out of the restaurant, where a few of them linger in the parking lot.

A convoy of lowboy flatbeds snakes around the plant. Every couple of hours, a loaded truck groans away from the shipping docks and onto Route 30 with press beds and motors, lathes and mills, and fork lifts and tow motors, all on their way to new owners who bought them at auction several months ago. There is no way to stop the procession of movers, men making a living dragging away the remnants of other men's lives.

A thousand people pack the front lawn of the stamping plant. There are the children, making their way to the starting line, the parents and grandparents, and the plant management along with the union officers, all together this one last time.

Then a whistle signals the beginning, and the children dash out onto the prize-covered field. The boys and girls fill their donated, plastic Walmart bags with the prizes, all of them finding success as there are thousands of eggs scattered on the lawn. On the far side, a couple of children race along, scooping the eggs into their bags. When the smaller of the two reaches for a large egg, he is sent reeling across the lawn by the other boy. The boy sits up, his prizes scattered before him. He looks around to get his bearings, and sees his transgressor actually picking up the eggs that spilled out of his bag. He rushes over and confronts him.

"Those are my eggs."

"You dropped them. They're mine now."

The cheers from the parents and grandparents drift across to the two. The younger boy looks around and then back to the boy. "There's eggs everywhere. Just go on and leave mine alone."

The bigger boy steps forward and shoves him. "You don't get it, do you? My dad's management. He owns this plant. He'll always be in charge. And so will I someday."

The younger boy doesn't understand what the other is saying. He glances across the field to where his dad and grandpa are standing. They both worked here. Didn't they maybe own some of the place, too?

The boy starts scooping up the rest of the spilled eggs. "Go on now. Or I'll push you down again."

The boy hits the other as he has been taught—with his fist, on the eye, and as hard as he can.

The older boy sinks to his knees, sobbing now as he fingers his already swelling eye. "You hurt me...."

The smaller boy takes both egg-filled bags and backs slowly away. "Fuck you," he says. "I've got all the eggs now."

### William Trent Pancoast

1949—

"Blue collar writer" is how the _Wall Street Journal_ referred to William Trent Pancoast in a 1986 front page article. By that time, his working-class-flavored short stories and essays had appeared in many Midwestern and international magazines and newspapers. Pancoast's novel _Crashing_ had been published in 1983. In 1986, his United Auto Worker's union history was published. Pancoast would spend the next twenty years as the editor of a monthly union newspaper—the _Union Forum—_ while continuing to publish his fiction, essays, and editorials not only in the _Union Forum_ but also in _Solidarity_ magazine, the 1.2 million circulation United Auto Workers International publication.

The term "blue collar writer" suits Pancoast just fine. As he said in the _WSJ_ interview, "The reason I write about work is that that's just about damn near all I've ever done." The dust jacket of _Crashing_ notes, "He has worked as a construction laborer, gas station attendant, railroad section hand and brakeman, factory laborer, commercial laundry foreman, and machinist. He has been an English teacher and is a journeyman die maker." Pancoast supplements his blue collar writing credentials with a B.A. in English from the Ohio State University.

William Trent Pancoast is now retired from the auto industry after 30 years as a die maker and union newspaper editor. Born in Galion, Ohio, in 1949, Pancoast now lives in Ontario, Ohio.
