Cheeseburger Subversive Read online

  But then one of the Dobermans rears up, flips several times in the dust, then sprints away, yelping like an alarm siren. Seconds later, the second Doberman flees like the first, dragging its ass away as fast as its front legs will carry it.

  Devin and Cliff, who had been running towards the scene to watch my dog get eaten by the Dobermans, turn tail and run in the opposite direction when Smiley bares his teeth and gallops towards them, barking like crazy. As soon as they are far enough away, Smiley stops his pursuit and trots back to me.

  Smiley has a few small cuts on his nose and ears, and he’s limping slightly on one paw, but overall he is in pretty good shape for a friendly little mutt that has just taken on two attack dogs at once and kicked the crap out of them. I guess Chopper and Slash’s barks are worse than their bites, and it occurs to me that this might be true for their owner and his gang as well.

  From this point on, with Smiley running alongside me, I will buzz around The Badlands with a little less fear and a little more joy in my heart.

  Pushin’ Pickle

  (Grade eight)

  “So, Dak,” my father says, in a businesslike tone which always means bad news for me, “how would you like to make some extra money this summer?”

  Is this a trick question or something?

  “Sure,” I answer cautiously.

  “Well, great!” Dad cheers, “because I was just talking to Mr. Potzo, and he’s going to pull a few strings and get you on at the factory for the summer.“

  It appears that making a man out of me has become too much work for just one person, so Dad has recruited the neighbourhood men to help out. Like Mr. Potzo, supervisor at the Krispy Green Pickle factory.

  “You can meet him in the briefing room in building A-3 at seven on Monday morning. What do you think of that? Your first real job!”

  All I can do is nod along. While meeting somebody in the briefing room of A-3 sounds kind of cool, like something that would happen in a James Bond movie, I’ve also read a few books about the Industrial Revolution, and factories are not portrayed as wonderful places to be. Besides, what self-respecting thirteen-year-old would wake up before seven during summer vacation?

  Nevertheless, it is now six-thirty on Monday morning, and I am about to pedal my bike across town to the Krispy Green Pickle factory to meet my fate as a man.

  Mom makes me pose for several photos while wearing Dad’s workboots and holding my new lunch box.

  “Enjoy your first day, honey!” she squeals. It’s as if I’m getting on the school bus for my first day of kindergarten.

  “Good luck, son,” Dad says gravely, as if he is watching a prison bus take me away. “See you at the end of your shift.”

  The briefing room in A-3 does indeed look like one of those subterranean spy training facilities in James Bond movies: large and windowless, with cinder block walls. There are, however, no Ninja fighters sparring, nor any weapons being tested by men in lab coats, only a couple dozen guys lounging around on plastic chairs. Nobody is blowing the heads off mannequins with missiles launched from fountain pens, either. The only pen in the room is the ballpoint in Mr. Potzo’s right hand as he stands at the front of the room making checkmarks on a clipboard.

  “Hi, Mr. Potzo!” I say, but he pretends he doesn’t know me.

  The men in the room are all approaching or past middle age, with beer bellies in varying states of development, and thick, vein-rippled arms. A few of them have military-style brush cuts, and a few have handlebar moustaches or stubbly beards, but every last one of them is wearing the same earth brown work pants. With my old blue jeans, my skinny arms and complete lack of a paunch, I couldn’t feel more out of place. I resist the urge to run back to my bike and pedal home at full speed. I am going to make my dad proud of me, even if these guys marinate me in pickle brine and eat me for lunch.

  Mr. Potzo glances up from his clipboard at the biggest man in the place. His arms are as big as my torso, encircled with tattoos of pythons and barbed wire. With his shaved head and black goatee, he looks as hard as a coffin nail.

  “Bart,” says Mr. Potzo, “before you start, take the kid down to L-17 and show him what to do at Station 8.”

  “Come on, kid,” Bart says as he walks over to me. “Gotta getcha to over there before the line starts.”

  I do as I’m told. I follow silently behind Bart as we wind our way through an obstacle course of huge machines, tanks, and conveyor belts whose main purpose seems to be to generate metallic noise. The inside of the cavernous factory sounds like the noise our lawn mower made, amplified about a hundred times.

  “Yer pretty small, kid,” Bart grumbles. “You sure yer old enough to be working here?”

  “How old do you have to be?” I wonder.

  “Sixteen. You are sixteen, right?”

  “Ah, sure,” I lie. If anybody has fibbed on my behalf, I don’t want to get them in trouble. No wonder Mr. Potzo ignored me back in the briefing room! “I was born prematurely, that’s all.”

  Bart rolls his eyes and says, “Whatever, kid.”

  He leads me past a conveyor belt filled with empty pickle jars, beside which an amazingly obese, flush-faced fellow casually leans, using a broom handle as a crutch. There are sweat stains between the rings of flab that encircle his waist. This guy is so bloated he needs suspenders to hold his brown pants up.

  “Hey, Michelin Man!” Bart hollers, in a gruff but friendly way. “Get to work, ya bum! Quit spankin’ yer sausage and get sweepin’ with that thing!”

  “What? With my sausage?” the guy counters with a grin. “Or do you mean the broom?”

  I grin. To my thirteen-year-old brain, there is something both funny and liberating about hearing two grown men joking so freely about masturbation, especially when one really does look like the Michelin Man, and the other resembles a WWF wrestling character.

  After we have walked farther into the factory, Bart says, “Geeze, kid! Don’t you talk?”

  “It’s loud in here,” I offer.

  “Hah! Everything’s on standby right now while the shifts change — wait until they get the belts going. Then you’re in for some noise!”

  We pass another guy who is lounging in the driver’s seat of a forklift truck, his feet resting on the steering wheel’s spokes. He is studying a magazine called Chix.

  “Hey, ya ol’ forker!” Bart calls out to him. “Quit pullin’ yer goalie and get to work, ya perv!”

  Without looking up from his magazine, the forklift truck guy flashes a one-fingered salute in our direction.

  “At least I’m not a perv with little boys, Barto,” he grunts.

  I swallow hard. Where exactly is this Bart guy really taking me?

  “Don’t worry, kid,” Bart reassures me. “He’s just jokin’. Besides, you ain’t my type. Too skinny!”

  Changing the subject, I ask, “How come everyone here’s got brown work pants? Is there a dress code or something? Nobody told me.”

  Bart laughs.

  “Well, you gotta work here for 90 days before you can be in the union. Once you’re in, the company gives ya a pair of brown work pants every month ‘cause it ain’t fair for guys to have to spend their own money on pants which the pickle brine’s just gonna eat away. So when you finally get in the union, they call it getting yer pants. Are you tryin’ to get yer pants, or are ya just a summer slave?”

  “Uh, summer slave, I guess.”

  “Oh. Well, once you get yer pants, they’ve gotta give the best jobs to you first, ‘cause you’ve paid yer dues. Whenever something shitty has to be done, you get a guy who hasn’t got his pants yet to do it ‘cause he’s not in the union yet, and he won’t want to stir up any shit with some foreman like Cocksucker Cobb, who’ll see that he gets laid off on his 89th day. That sunnuvabitch did that to me three seasons in a row before I finally got my pants!”

  Cocksucker Cobb? Could he possibly mean Mr. Cobb, the guy who lives across the street from us and is always yelling at his wife? That guy is in a
position of authority around here?

  “What colour pants does this Cobb guy wear?” I wonder aloud.

  “Grey. He’s a foreman. Don’t let that prick push you around, though.”

  After another couple minutes of walking around machinery and conveyor belts, I ask, “Are we ever going to get to this L-17 place?”

  “We just passed L-14, so L-17’s just three away.”

  “Ah,” I nod, but my expression must reveal my confusion.

  “L stands for line, bud. Production lines. Each line of machines makes a different kind of pickle. At the far end of the plant, the cucumbers are dumped onto big conveyor belts and sorted into different sizes, then they get carried by other belts to washing machines, then the medium ones go to the slicing machines to make restaurant pickles, the biggest ones go to a grinding machine to make relish, and the small, crisp ones get sent to the lines we’re headed for. The cucumbers come in right from the farmers’ fields on one end of the building, and they go out the other end as pickles and relish. Cool, eh?”

  I can think of lots of other things that are cooler, but I nod anyway. Bart continues talking as we work our way deeper into the factory.

  “L-15 to L-21 are used for dill pickles — baby dills, deli-style dills, dills with garlic, dills with garlic and onions — and then there are the special lines, 22 and 23, which are used for makin’ Kosher dills. A Rabbi actually comes in, robes ‘n’ all, to inspect and bless those two lines so Jewish people are allowed to eat ‘em. Cocksucker Cobb’s in charge of those two lines too — he calls ‘em the kike lines. What a dick, eh?”

  At first glance, Bart looked like this mean dude who would rather step on your face than speak to you. But it turns out that he’s this major talker — he should have been a factory tour guide. He knows so much about the machines and personalities inside this factory, it’s as if he was born and raised here.

  “Well, here we are, sport,” he barks, stopping and slapping me on the back, “L-17, Station 8.”

  Indeed, there is a red plastic plate affixed above a section of narrow, waist-high conveyor belt, which reads “L-17, Station 8.” Without Bart as a guide, I wouldn’t have been able to find this spot with a map and a compass.

  “So, kid, do ya know what pushin’ pickle is all about?”

  Since here in the Krispy Green Pickle factory world, pulling the goalie, chokin’ the Bishop, and spankin’ the sausage technically mean masturbating, but seem to also mean slacking off on the job, I can only assume that pushin’ pickle means something similar. Not wanting to look like an amateur in front of Bart, I enthusiastically declare that yes, I know what pushin’ pickle is all about!

  He looks a bit surprised.

  “What? Somebody already toldja? Well, what the hell did Potzo send me over here for then? Probably tryin’ to make me late for my shift so I’ll lose my pants. He’s probably in cahoots with Cocksucker Cobb!”

  He stomps away, shaking his head.

  So here I stand, positioned in front of the narrow conveyor belt, having not even the slightest notion as to what my job is supposed to be. The conveyor belt starts moving, and the noise level multiplies tenfold. From behind a flap on the monstrous machine that towers over me to my left, a train of cucumber-filled jars comes rattling towards me on the conveyor belt. I look around, trying to find clues as to what I’m supposed to be doing. I notice a big red button next to my post, with the words Emergency Stop stencilled above it. Maybe if there is an emergency, it’s my job to push the red button and stop the line. So, I stand there with my finger on the red button, alert and ready.

  My big moment finally arrives after twenty minutes, which seems more like three days, when I hear a voice screaming over the din of the machinery, “Stop the line! Stop the fuckin’ line!”

  An emergency! I jam the red button as hard as I can, nearly spraining my finger in the process. But, I have done my job.

  Then I feel the hot wind of someone’s breath on the back of my neck.

  “Turn around, you shithead! I want to go face-to-face with the motherfucker who — ”

  I turn around. Inches from my face is the rage-reddened mug of Mr. Cobb, his jowls shaking furiously.

  “You stupid fuckup! Do you know what you’ve done?”

  “I stopped the line.”

  “Do you know what the fuck you’re supposed to be doing here? Do ya?”

  “Not really, I guess.”

  “Whadda ya mean, not really, ya goddamn faggot!”

  “Nobody told me what I’m supposed to do.”

  “Bullshit!” he hollers, and launches a big glob of spit. It lands on the end of my nose. “Who the fuck did Potzo send with you to show you the ropes?”

  I don’t want to get Bart in trouble, so I simply shrug.

  “Then how the fuck did you find your way in here, shithead?”

  “With a map and compass,” I say, immediately regretting it.

  He grabs me by the ear and tugs me further up the line.

  “See this, asshole?”

  He points to a long conveyor belt jammed with pickle-filled jars.

  “The fucking jar-capping machine can’t screw the lids on top when there are fucking pickles sticking out the top of the jar! And how the fuck do you think the pickles are supposed to get pushed down into the jars, moron? Huh?”

  “Um, with the pickle-pushing machine?” I suggest, realizing as soon as I say it that I’m the pickle-pushing machine.

  “You’re the fucking pickle-pushing machine!” Mr. Cobb confirms, still gripping my ear between his chubby thumb and forefinger. He tugs me over to the belt, which is jammed with jars, and pushes my head down so that my nose is almost inside one of the still-warm jars.

  “Now, dickhead, this is what your gonna do, ‘cause you’re holding up the whole goddamn line. You’re gonna take every fucking last one of those jars off the line and put ‘em on the floor. Then you’re gonna get your ass over there to your station, turn the line back on, and start pushin’ them pickles like you ain’t never pushed. And on your fuckin’ lunch break, you can carry all those jars back over to your station, and push those fuckin’ pickles in and run ‘em through. Get it?”

  Despite the pain it causes my captive earlobe, I nod yes.

  “Get goin’! And if so much as one jar breaks on the floor, I am going to kick you in the ass. If a second one breaks, I kick you in the balls. If you break a third one, I’m gonna — ”

  “What’ll ya do if I drop a few on the floor, Cobb?” comes a booming voice from behind us. Cobb lets go of my ear. It’s Bart.

  “Mind your own fucking business,” Cobb says.

  “If you wanna feel tough, Cobb, why don’tcha try pushin’ me around, instead of a kid on his first day.”

  “If I wanna feel tough, maybe I’ll fire your ass, Bartholomew,” Mr. Cobb says, as he stomps away in the opposite direction.

  “Don’t worry about it, kid,” Bart says. “I’ll help you get those jars through during lunch break.”

  Bart switches the line back on and shows me how the job is done.

  “As each jar passes, you grab the jar between your knuckles, and push any pickles which are stickin’ outta the jar into the jar with yer thumbs.”

  “That’s it?”

  “It’s the toughest damn job in the whole factory, bud,” he says. “Why do you think nobody with their union pants is doin’ it?”

  Bart steps back, and I take over. I grab the first jar between my knuckles and ram a protruding pickle into the jar with my thumbs. Then another. Then another. Another. Another. Man, do these jars move fast!

  “How do you think I got all these muscles?” Bart says as he walks away. “Three seasons of pushin’ pickle.”

  By the time the horn blows for lunch break, my thumbs are completely paralyzed and I am unable to fold them back in. My wrists are throbbing and swollen. My elbows have begun to ache and, through the magic of muscle burn, I’ve discovered my underused triceps and shoulder muscles. With my wri
sts turned up and my thumbs frozen in position, I must look like a geeky, skinny version of The Fonz.

  As promised, Bart shows up to help me with the job. With his help, it’s done in a few minutes. He carries my lunch box to the cafeteria for me since I can’t convince my hand to close around the handle. When some of the other guys in the cafeteria see me holding my sandwich sideways between my immobilized palms, turning my head sideways for each bite, they look at each other and say, “pushin’ pickle.”

  I’m not even half-finished with my sandwich when Cobb shows up at the cafeteria entrance.

  “Sifter!” he barks, “get over here!”

  Cobb is leaning on a long stick, like the handle of a rake.

  I stand up straight, straining against the aches in my upper body, and walk over to him. Cobb’s knobby nose hovers just beneath my chin.

  “Just wanted to inform you that the company requires that employees wear steel-toed safety boots,” he says, in an even tone of voice. “Are your boots steel-toed?”

  “I don’t know. They belong to my dad.”

  “Your dad? The overpaid, got-the-whole-fuckin’-summer-off English teacher? Your dad the pussy owns workboots?”

  This pisses me off and I shoot off my mouth.

  “Are those steel-toed running shoes you’re wearing, Mr. Cobb?”

  His thick neck begins to redden at the collar.

  “I’m the boss, dipshit. I can wear whatever the fuck I want.”

  The cafeteria has fallen silent. Cobb jabs the end of the poking stick into the toes of my right foot and leans his substantial weight onto it.

  “Ow!” I yelp.

  “Guess they’re not steel-toed, eh? An English teacher wouldn’t have steel-toed boots. Your pussy dad can’t even teach you to mow the fucking lawn!”

  “At least my dad isn’t teaching me to abuse my mother,” I say under my breath.

  “What did you say, pussy boy?”

  “I said I’ll get some steel-toed boots for tomorrow, sir.”

  For the rest of the afternoon, I manage to keep up with the speed of the line. My clothes are saturated with sweat, and my entire body feels like it’s made of jelly, but I fight on. This is a battle I cannot lose. Of course, in the time it takes this manly thought to cross my synapses, my left arm seizes up. I can’t move it at all. Frantically, I pound the pickles into the jars with my functioning right fist, but it occurs to me that I will soon break my hand if I keep it up. Angry at myself, I slam the red button.