Repair Work
October 19, 2015 - 283 words
“Up we go boys, gotta get ourselves through no fewer ’n fifty of these things afore the night is out!!” The foreman bellowed his greasy voice through a megaphone too small for his fucking face.
Grumbles from the worker crew. 13 hours of this meaningless labor. Hey, they signed up for this, as the foreman loved to holler on the hour, every hour. Didn’t like it? Too bad, shouldn’ta signed up. Shouldn’ta been conscripted. Shouldn’ta been home when we busted down your door and forced you into it, ya moocher.
The last guy on the line, looked like Saitoshi probably, or maybe Gus, you couldn’t tell in this light, stumbled and fell in the ditch. Maybe he just tripped or maybe he had a muscle spasm. Maybe he got pushed. Like we said, you couldn’t tell in this light. Laughter poured out of the men next to him. He scrambled out of the ditch, muttering incoherent profanities that offended all the gods, all the gods real and imagined, all the gods that didn’t even have believers anymore!
What kinda work is this? It’s man’s work, that’s what it is. You got up in the morning, put on your blue collar, groomed the grizzled grizzlies outta your beard and off you went, punched right in, punched your buddy on the arm, and punched the air with a fist. A man’s fist.
“ACHOO!!” somebody sneezed. Who sneezed? Can’t tell in this light. Nobody would admit it anyway. Not in this group. A chorus of bless-yous blasted back in response. The old social contract still existed, it seemed, even when everything else had disintegrated. That’s the way it goes. Some of the old forms still held.