known in a long time, including booze, food, some grass when he felt like it, and little sexpot May Lou, whom he might tire of sometime, but hadn't yet. She was no grand door prize, no beauty queen, and he knew she had knocked around plenty with other guys who had been there ahead of him. But she could turn Rollie on. It made him horny just to look at her, and be laid pipe, sometimes three times a night, especially when May Lou really went to work, taking his breath away with tricks she knew, which Rollie had heard of but had never had done to him before.
It was the reason, really, he had let May Lou find the two rooms they shared, and hadn't protested when she furnished them. She had done the furnishing without much money, asking Rollie only to sign papers which she brought. He did so indifferently, without reading, and later the furniture appeared, including a color TV as good as any in a bar.
In another way, though, the price of it all came high-long, wearying work days at the assembly plant, nominally five days a week, though sometimes four, and one week only three. Rollie, like others, absented himself on Monday, if hung over after a weekend, or on Friday, if wanting to start one early; but even when that happened, the money next payday was enough to swing with.
As well as the hardness of the work, its monotony persisted, reminding him of advice he had been given early by a fellow worker: 'When you come here, leave your brains at home.'
And yet . . . there was another side.
Despite himself, despite ingrained thought patterns which cautioned against being suckered and becoming a honky lackey, Rollie Knight began taking interest, developing a conscientiousness about the work that he was doing. A basic reason was his quick intelligence plus an instinct for learning, neither of which had had an opportunity to function before, as they were doing now. Another reason - which Rollie would have denied if accused of it - was a rapport, based on developing mutual respect, with the foreman, Frank Parkland.
At first, after the two incidents which brought Rollie Knight to his attention, Parkland had been hostile. But as a result of keeping close tab on Rollie, the hostility disappeared, approval replacing it. As Parkland expressed it to Matt Zaleski during one of the assistant plant manager's periodic tours of the assembly line, 'See that little guy? His first week here I figured him for a troublemaker. Now he's as good as anybody I got.'
Zaleski had grunted, barely listening. Recently, at plant management level, several new fronts of troubles had erupted, including a requirement to increase production yet hold down plant costs and somehow raise quality standards. Though the three objectives were basically in-compatible, top management was insisting on them, an insistence not helping Matt's duodenal ulcer, an old enemy within. The ulcer, quiescent for a while, now pained him constantly. Thus, Matt Zaleski could not find time for interest in individuals - only in statistics which regiments of individuals, like unconsidered Army privates, added up to.
This - though Zaleski had neither the philosophy to see it, nor power to change the system if he had - was a reason why North American automobiles were generally of poorer quality than those from Germany, where less rigid factory systems gave workers a sense of individuality and craftsmen's pride.
As it was, Frank Parkland did the best he could.
It was Parkland who ended Rollie's status as a relief man and assigned him to a regular line station. Afterward, Parkland moved Rollie around to other jobs on the assembly line, but at least without the bewildering hour-by-hour changes he endured before. Also, a reason for the moves was that Rollie, increasingly, could handle the more difficult, tricky assignments, and Parkland told him so.
A fact of life which Rollie discovered at this stage was that while most assembly line jobs were hard and demanding, a few were soft touches. Installing windshields was one of the soft ones. Workers doing this, however, were cagey when being watched, and indulged in extra, unneeded motions to make their task look tougher. Rollie worked on windshields, but only for a few days because Parkland moved him back down the line to one of the difficult jobs - scrabbling and twisting around inside car bodies to insert complicated wiring harnesses. Later still, Rollie handled a 'blind operation'- the toughest kind of all, where bolts had to be inserted out of sight, then tightened, also by feel alone.
That was the day Parkland confided to him, 'It isn't a fair system. Guys who work best, who a foreman can rely on, get the stinkingest jobs and a lousy deal. The trouble is, I need somebody on those bolts who I know for sure'll fix 'em and not goof off.'
For Frank Parkland, it was an offhand remark. But to Rollie Knight it represented the first time that someone in authority had leveled with him, had criticized the system, told him something honest, something which he knew to be true, and had done it without bullshit.
Two things resulted. First, Rollie fitted every out-of-sight bolt correctly, utilizing a developing manual skill and an improved physique which regular eating now made possible. Second, he began observing Parkland carefully.
After a while, while not going so far as admiration, he saw the foreman as a non-bullshitter who treated others squarely - black or white, kept his word, and stayed honestly clear of the crap and corruption around him.
There had been few people in Rollie's life of whom he could say, or think, as much.
Then, as happens when people elevate others beyond the level of human frailty, the image was destroyed.
Rollie had been asked, once more, if he would help run numbers in the plant. The approach was by a lean, intense young black with a scar-marred face, Daddy-o Lester, who worked for stockroom delivery and was known to combine his work with errands for plant numbers bankers and the loan men. Rumor tied the scar, which ran the length of Daddy-o's face, to a knifing after he defaulted on a loan. Now he worked at the rackets' opposite end. Daddy-o assured Rollie, leaning into the work station where he had just delivered stock, 'These guys like you. But they get the idea you don't like them, they liable to get rough.'
Unimpressed, Rollie told him, 'Your fat mouth don't scare me none. Beat it!'
Rollie had decided, weeks before, that he would play the numbers, but no more.
Daddy-o persisted, 'A man gotta do something to show he's a man, an' you ain't.' As an afterthought, he added, 'Leastways, not lately.'
More for something to say than with a specific thought, Rollie protested,
'For Cri-sakes, how you fixin' I'd take numbers here, with a foreman around.'
Frank Parkland, at that moment, hove into view.
Daddy-o said contemptuously, 'Screw that motha! He don't make trouble. He gets paid off.'
'You lyin'.'
'If I show you I ain't, that mean you're in?'
Rollie moved from the car he had been working on, spat beside the line, then climbed into the next. For a reason he could not define, uneasy doubts were stirring. He insisted, 'Your word ain't worth nothin'. You show me first.'
Next day, Daddy-o did.
Under pretext of a delivery to Rollie Knights work station he revealed a grubby, unsealed envelope which he opened sufficiently for Rollie to see the contents - a slip of yellow paper and two twenty-dollar bills.
'Okay, fella,' Daddy-o said. 'Now watch!'
He walked to the small, stand-up desk which Parkland used - at the moment unoccupied - and lodged the envelope under a paperweight. Then he approached the foreman, who was down the line, and said something briefly. Parkland nodded. Without obvious haste, though not wasting time, the foreman returned to the desk where he took up the envelope, glanced briefly under the flap, then thrust it in an inside pocket.
Rollie, watching between intervals of working, needed no explanation.
Nothing could be plainer than that the money was a bribe, a payoff.
Through the rest of that day, Rollie worked less carefully, missing several bolts entirely and failing to tighten others. Who the hell cared? He wondered why he was surprised. Didn't everything stink? It always had. Wasn't everybody on the take in every way? These people; all people. He remembered the course instructor who persuaded him to endorse checks, then stole Rollie's and other trainees'money. The instructor was one; now Parkland was another, so why should Rollie Knight be different?
That night Rollie told May Lou, 'You know what this scumbag world is made of, baby? Bullshit! There ain't nothing in this whole wide world but bullshit.'
Later the same week he began working for the plant numbers gang.
