Revolt of the Rats - Reed Blitzerman (early readers txt) 📗

“No problem. Yeah, sure.” Occasionally she sat with Kahle and Aggie over lunch. She worked with Aggie as a planner, scheduling parts for assembly.

The booths were 1970’s orange, overstuffed, patched with duct tape and wide as a pickup truck bench seat. She filled half her side of the booth, her shoulders casting deep shadows in front and behind her.

“Hey. Saw you at the briefing.” She asked, “What’d you think?”

What he thought was that he hated Bodge and the falling sensation his speech had created. The word ‘austerity’ had burned. He got the underlying message: no one was safe. It left him jangled, wanting to leave Frampton in his rearview mirror. 

“I guess if we have to do it, we have to, but....” he trailed off. He set the bottle down to hide his shaking hands.

“I’d just like to know how they came up with this,” she said. “Run the machines above ninety percent efficiency and we’ll be making stuff we don’t even need.”

She took out a pen and drew a chart on the coaster between them. Her bangs swished down in front of her eyes and she pinned them behind one ear with the wave of a hand. “Here’s what we’re spending now, and we’re already waiting sixty days to pay our suppliers.”

“How’d you know that?” Kahle asked.

“I’ve got people. Anyways, in another ninety days, if not sooner, our vendors are going to cut us off for non-payment. We’ll have to pay cash for everything. We’d be dead.”

“How do you know all this finance stuff?”

“I’m an actuary. I was a manager at the Frampton Savings & Loan but we had so many defaults they closed the place and let everybody go. Some of those foreclosures are still sitting empty.”

She caught Kahle’s eyes lingering on her hands. They enveloped the beer glass with only the edge peeking out. “I threw hammer in college. Track and field paid my way through the University of Michigan,” she said, trying to sound casual.

Kahle realized he’d been caught and tried to keep talking. “With an education like that, you could’ve gone anywhere.”

“Sure but my grandmother is here. She’d never move, and since I take care of her, I guess I’m not moving either.” Her head dipped briefly. Shadows under her eyes deepened.

She asked, “So I heard you went to Swale. That’s a military academy, isn’t it?” Her hand went to her neck where it played with her locket.

Kahle nodded.

“So you were in the Army, right? My dad was in. He said he got out in order to start a family. Why did you get out?”

“You know, I’m not really sure.”

“Well, my grandmother’s got that cottage on Edison. You know, the one with sunbursts carved in the doors.”

“Yeah, I’ve passed by there a few times.” It was an arts and crafts style home, painted with yellows and pinks. He drove past it every day he could: looking for the flower boxes of roses, admiring the bright colors meticulously painted on the dormers and trim. It would be nice to belong someplace like that.

“That’s the place. She fills the window boxes with red roses all summer long. She and my grandfather built that house as newlyweds. That’s why she said she’ll never move, even if Frampton dies around her. I made her sound morbid,  but she’s not, just pragmatic.” She hasn’t been well.

“I’d suppose so. To have a house like that would take an optimist,” Kahle said.

“So what do you think of Frampton?”

Frampton felt like an indigent husband half out the door. It was full of houses like her grandmother’s. It was full of people like the Fischbacks. Where would they go if the plant shut down?

“It reminds me of my neighbors back home in Wisconsin. Midwest neat and tidy, you know?”

“So what are we going to do about Bodge?” she asked.

“Order another beer, I suppose.”

He could feel something shift. She didn’t like his answer. Her voice was husky now. It was strident. The vibration was a pressure in his ears.

She said, “There’s no other jobs here. I’ve looked. We can’t follow this plan. We’ll lose our houses and so will everyone else at the factory.”

“What does that leave?” Kahle’s head was swimming in disbelief. The trajectory of the conversation had led to this. It was a path through the jungle opening onto a clearing. In the center was a Bengal tiger, his stripes distinct in the light of full noon. The savage lands lay beyond. He anticipated her words with dread.

Margaret leaned forward, blocking the overhead light, leaving them in shadow. “Revolt.”

“There's just you and I.” Kahle scanned the room without turning his head.

“There's you, I and Boomer.”

He was tempted to get up and leave. “I don't want to lose my job.” The tiger licked it’s lips and prepared to pounce. This was the part in school where they'd been trained to run away.

“You'll lose it anyways. But if we succeed, maybe you'll impress Weezy.”

He tried and probably failed to keep emotion off of his face. “Her proper name is Beezor Wasikowska and why would I want to impress her?”

“I see the way you watch her. When she's in the room you go off into your little world. It's so intense like you're...”

“What?”

“Obsessed.”

Kahle felt small, as if she were judging him. He wanted her to go away. “And why would you need my help?”

“I think you're an outlier. That daydream thing you do has to be good for something. You know my dad told me once that....”

“Your dad told you what?” He thought about Swale and felt real fear. What he knew, he’d never tell. Lots of people asked, and it usually started just like this.

As if she’d read his mind, she changed the subject, looking for something safe. “Never mind. Like you said, I think it's time for another beer. This round’s on me.” She raised her hand for a waitress. Maybe Margaret was alright.

The alarm clock came to him from a distance, a siren on the rocks calling out as his bed drifted by. His head was filled with cotton batting. Trying to keep up with someone twice your size was always a bad idea. His face burned hot as he vaguely remembered her carrying him baby-like up the stairs to his apartment. He pushed the thought away, wishing again for a memory erasure device.

Kahle filled his thermos and scooted off to the plant. He was tapping through the morning headcount when a mailroom clerk entered with a box.  He asked for a signature then reversed out the door.

The carton lid rasped dryly as it opened. On top was a form letter from Wesley Brummert. The memory of Wesley’s hand on Bee’s arm rose unbidden and Kahle summarily tossed the letter in the trash. Two books were inside. The first was “Motomax, a History of Financial Engineering.” He imagined Bodge holding the book while Wesley soaked it in ether and then watched God-like from Chicago as Kahle faded into a dreamless stupor. He put it back in the box and slid the box under his desk.

The second manual was not “The Motomax Playbook”. Instead, it was a thick pamphlet. The hand drawn pictures seemed to move as he flipped through the browning pages. It seemed alien. How had he ended up with this? He looked up from the book in the grip of paranoia.

The corner office where Gary Queeg was normally bent over his computer monitor or silently staring at him was empty. Queeg didn’t need to know about this. He placed it in his desk’s left-hand drawer. When he got home tonight he would read it. Right now he was hungry.

Kahle rode into heat treat and looked both ways; nobody on duty. A small portable parts furnace was at the rear of heat treat. He opened the tinfoil wrapped around two bratwursts from his lunchbox and carefully placed them on the rotisserie table. He’d seen two old timers do this last week. He waited a few minutes and his sausages popped out the other side a golden brown. Perfect. Kahle wrapped them in bread and sat at the tables outside. Time for a picnic.

The day stretched out, elastic. He entered inspection sheets into a table on his computer until finally the bell rung to end the shift.

Breathless smokestacks witnessed his climb up the apartment stairs, their clinker bricks painted gold by the setting sun. He sat on the deck with the book, a glass of wine, and a pizza. He was twenty pages in when he sat upright, dropping it to the wood slat deck. If what this said was accurate, he needed to see Boomer first thing.