Workers' Compensation

Workers’ Compensation          
For eight hours a day, five days a week the Teteron Drill factory produces electronic hand drills. The work is monotonous and takes place on an assembly line. Monte Stanton had been in the top of his class in high school, but had decided he was done cultivating impractical skills. A hand drill is indispensible for men who do useful things. A man who makes hand drills is equally necessary. These things flicked before his mind like the street lights across the dash. Those thoughts continued to waver on the precipice between his consciousness and the extremities of his body. It wasn’t long before they disappeared, leaving Monte with only the rest of the day to think of. He drove home from the Teteron Drill Factory to his wife.
         Charlene always turned the television from whatever she was watching to Jeopardy! when he came in the door. As Monte entered and sat in his chair Charlene didn’t turn to see him. He noticed her Drug Stop nametag was still on her blouse. A slit was cut down from the neck. Two flaps of fabric hung in limp triangles from the cut. Monte saw her cleavage and a thin black line between her breasts. A blue answer square came on the screen.
“What is the Panama Canal?” he said unconfidently.
“What is the Panama Canal?” the contestant guessed.
He turned back to Charlene. Her eyes moved a little in his direction, but when she realized he was staring she looked back at the television. He looked at her chest again. He followed the shape of her breasts to where they intersected with her ribs. How many men had seen her in the blouse at Drug Stop and imagined her naked? Monte tried to remember what his wife looked like naked. Last night they’d had sex, but now her figure floated in his mind as a contracting and expanding approximation greater or lesser than her actual figure. Charlene didn’t notice she was naked when she was with Monte. He was looking at the screen.
“What is umm umm, shit,” said Monte.
“What is The World’s Fair?” the contestant said again.
Charlene reached up to scratch her head. Her mechanical and self conscious movement betrayed her purpose. Monte knew that the only way to crack her feigned disinterest was a sneak attack. With a grunt he pushed himself out of his chair. He strode behind the couch as if he were going to the kitchen. Monte jumped over the back of the couch and settled with his arm around Charlene.
She gasped. “You think you’re so smooth.” She pushed his chest away and then laid her head on his paunch.
Charlene told Monte how the manager got in an argument with a customer over expired coupons. She mentioned her friend who was pregnant and how Monte’s mother had called Charlene at work. Monte’s mother wanted a grandchild and called Charlene daily. His mother would start the conversation with banal gossip and always end with urging Charlene to have a child. She always warned Charlene that men are opposed to children and that they only warm up to the idea after the woman is pregnant. Charlene used to wait until her mother-in-law had finished and then explain that they couldn’t afford a child. After several identical instances she stopped explaining and just listened to her mother-in-law absently.
“Did she talk about having a baby with you?” Monte asked.
“Every time she calls I just wait for it,” Charlene said. “It’s odd, but I can always tell it’s coming when she starts to talk about her garden. . . .”
While she said these things both of them stared at the television. The commercials played and the images and sounds spewed out into their living room. The name Roberts Roberts and Cohen appeared in a three dimensional dark green font. A note at the bottom emphasized that the performers were real lawyers, not actors.
“Have you been hurt in a car accident?” The real lawyer stood next to a car giving practiced hand gestures. A computer generated cityscape moved to give the illusion that the car was driving. The lawyer floated beside the car. A truck ran a red light. Tires screeched and smoke came from the hood of the car.
“Have you been hurt at work?” Another real lawyer put his hand on the shoulder of a man in a wheel chair. His wife held his hand and two children stood by soberly.
“Have you been the victim of any of these medications?” The third real lawyer stood behind a desk while a list of medications scrolled by.
“What you need is a lion!” all three men yelled in unison. A lion leapt through the window of a computer generated building. It stood on the street, erect and powerful. The building was labeled “Big Drug Company.” People ran out the front doors for fear of their life. They threw their hands in the air and distorted their faces. The same animation played twice more. The sign on the building changed to “Greedy Corporation” then to “Insurance Giant.” Each time there was a vicious lion breaking into the building and then screams of horror.

The next day Monte was walking in from the parking lot when Brian called out his name. Brian jogged toward Monte. When he caught up they walked beside each other.
“Looks like you and I made the cut.” Brian chuckled.
“What’s that?” Monte asked.
“They laid off twenty people last night,” Brian waited for a reaction. “Most of the guys worked on the other side, but I think some of us will be next.”
The building grew and became noisier. The structure formed a powerful and erratic beast and he was part of its bowels. There wasn’t any of the usual yelling or singing. The sounds of the moving parts impressed a special reverence on the workers. Monte clocked in and hurried to his station. A drill slid in front of him. Monte took a handful of bolts and attached them to the drill. He slid the drill back on the belt and repeated. The physical repetition formed his worries into a cyclical routine. His mother was wrong. Monte wanted children maybe even more than Charlene did. They had just enough money each month to pay the rent. His mother would help, but she lived in Minneapolis. He worked faster. The siren rang and everything stopped. Monte looked up and saw the drill that had fallen off the line. He pulled the lever to stop the gears and climbed up on the belt. The drill had been sucked in between the gears. Monte pulled on the handle of the drill and leaned backward. A couple co-workers were watching him.
“Pry it out with this,” Brian held a crow bar toward him.
“Hold on. I got it.” Monte kicked the drill with his boot several times and it shot out of the gears and skidded across the floor. The men were back to their spots and Monte hopped down. He pulled the lever to release the mechanism that ran the belt. The buzzard rang again and another drill dropped in front of him.

That night Monte told Charlene about the layoffs. The management said that in the next week there was a possibility of more lay-offs. They had managed to save a little money that had gone into a fund for the baby. Monte held Charlene’s hand when he told her and it was limp and doughy. He reassured her that his work had been immaculate, but her hand showed no response. Charlene went to sleep, but Monte stayed up. The living room was only lighted by the television. In the kitchen he poured a cup of coffee and sipped it cold. He got a slice of bread and sat on the couch. The sounds of the TV were obnoxious and he muted it. There was a woman selling the Abliminator Xtreme. She kept talking into a head set and doing awkward exercises. He thought of her at Drug Stop. She was bending over to put a luffa on the bottom shelf. A man was looking at combs further down the row. Monte noticed that the woman was wearing a nametag that read Charlene. In fact she was Charlene. The other man kept looking down her shirt. Monte looked at the man scornfully. The man wouldn’t look up and so couldn’t be reproached by Monte’s eyes. Monte walked around the other side to obstruct his view. The man walked around Charlene to where Monte was before. He looked back down her shirt. It angered him that the guy wouldn’t look at him and he was going to go shove him. Before he could move a lion trotted past the end of the aisle and knocked some cans of soup off the end display. Monte no longer noticed the pervert. Something brushed against the back of his leg and his spine tightened. The lion’s head emerged from behind him. One of the lion’s ears flicked as if to knock off a fly. The motion blew a gust of air that touched Monte’s face. Its body continued to brush past Monte. It was grumbling deeply and powerfully in its throat. Charlene kept stacking the luffas in obsessive perfection and the man’s eyes remained paused. He needed to warn them, but his throat wouldn’t work.
Charlene pushed on Monte’s shoulder. Stinging pains ran through his back as he sat up. The room was bright with the morning sun. A quarter of a bread slice was resting on the sofa beside him.
“Ahhh shit.” Monte groaned.
Charlene threw Monte’s coffee into the sink.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“Eight Thirty,” Charlene said. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah except for my back,” Monte scratched his head. He winced as he sat up.
The dream stayed in Monte’s mind all through the day. Sometime before lunch the buzzard rang and the whole line stopped working. Something had jammed. He checked the belt and the gears around him and they were clear. Someone down the line jumped up to fix the jam. He couldn’t wait for a child any more. Monte took a bolt out of his pile and inserted it at the base of the lever by his station. When he pulled the lever to stop the gears it only went down half way before jamming. The buzzer rang. The belt started back up and Monte was humming to himself. For years he’d given the factory all his time and work. He would get what he needed. He screwed in the bolts on the drill in front of him and threw it up onto the belt. The drill slid off the belt and into the gears. The buzzard rang again. Monte pulled his lever and climbed up onto the belt. The other workers thought the first jam hadn’t been fixed and were yelling at the other guy. The front of the drill was pressed in between two gears. Both the drill and the gears twitched and bayed as they tried to grind forward. Monte reached down and placed his left hand on the twitching machine. It pulsed against his hand unpredictably. Monte’s sweat bled into his eyes and beaded on the end of his nose. He used his right hand and to wiggle the tip of the drill loose. A couple men realized where the jam was and were watching him. Their eyes were sagging and their arms hung limply from their shoulders. Monte pressed his teeth into each other and ripped the drill free. The gears sprung forward. His left hand was being tugged down by the machine. He lost his sight for a moment as the pain struck his hand. Monte let it go just enough and then ripped free. His pinky and ring finger disappeared into the gears and blood sprayed onto the belt.

There was no way to recover the fingers. They had been ground into a soup. Once the nubs had been bandaged Charlene drove Monte home from the hospital. Charlene stayed calm. She didn’t mention his fingers. She wasn’t sure if the permanence of the injury should be brought up. Monte told her about how it happened. He told her that he had pulled a lever which was meant to stop the machinery, but that when he freed the drill it started up again. She nodded silently.
A couple hours after they got home the phone rang. It was the Teteron Drill’s Workers’ Insurance. They asked Monte to give an account of exactly what happened. They told him that he would most likely receive two thirds of his previous pay tax free. However there were a few details and some paperwork to complete before everything would be in place.
“So you pulled this safety lever right?” Charlene asked him after he told her what the man had said.
“Yes I’m sure that I pulled it.” Monte held his hand out in front of him and wiggled the three remaining fingers.
“Sounds suspicious to me. If their equipment was broken than they should be paying you more than two thirds.” Charlene turned around to see Monte.
“I should call the lion,” Monte smiled.
“Why not?” Charlene walked into the kitchen and pulled the phone book out. On the back cover was a full page ad for Roberts Roberts and Cohen. “I think we can get more out of this. It’s worth a try.”

It took a long time and Monte and Charlene had to spend all the money they had saved in their baby fund. There was a young lawyer working on their case and to Monte’s disappointment it was neither Roberts Roberts nor Cohen. At first the company denied that there was anything wrong with the equipment and said that they had tested the breaks a couple days after the incident. No one seemed to have any evidence that the machinery wasn’t working. Charlene was working sixteen or eighteen hours a day to pay for the case. Lines were staring to form at the corner of her eyes.
“The case doesn’t have any evidence at all. I believe you Monte, but there is nothing I can do,” his lawyer told him at their last meeting.
“What about the guy who came on after me, the guy who’s working in the same spot I was. Maybe he noticed something.” Monte’s lawyer took this tip and sure enough the man had found a bolt in the brake lever. In court the young lawyer contrasted Monte’s responsibility and flawless safety tract with the company’s shrewd compliance to safety regulations and neglect of a man they should have rewarded. Monte was rewarded with a large sum of money.

Soon after the case had settled they moved. The house was modest and had two extra bedrooms. The linoleum in the kitchen had started to curl up around the baseboard and sometimes the pipes would groan at night. After all of their stuff had been moved in and spread evenly around the house it was still too empty. On her day off Charlene bought furniture to fill the house including a twin bed for one of the extra rooms. Charlene decided that she shouldn’t quit her job because she couldn’t imagine being home all day with Monte. Monte had been going out every day to look for a job. This was his opportunity to get a job with room for growth. He didn’t need the money right away and he knew that despite his education he was intelligent. Every time he went somewhere he heard the same thing.
“Listen,” the interviewer at Freddy Brother’s Custom Roofing told him. “I’ve got about five openings here every year and about twenty five guys that have just come out of college and are looking for a job. They have more education and work harder than anyone else I could hire.”
After a week Monte quit going out every day. He would watch infomercials for rotisserie chicken ovens and sip coffee. Every other day he went out to some place he read about in the paper, but he was never the person they were looking for. The interviewers all spoke so fast. They would cut off the ends of his words and sentences. He needed fast precision and authoritative answers. In high school he got really good grades in most of his classes. He wanted to tell this to the man at Freddy Brother’s, but he knew that none of it mattered. Monte borrowed books from the library on economics, business and algebra. He would start reading them and then fall asleep or turn the T.V. on and recite the lines of infomercials.
Charlene would come home from work each day and clean the dishes or vacuum the floors. She didn’t complain when Monte gave up on trying to find a job because they didn’t need money. She told him that if he didn’t find something he could take care of the baby. Her cleaning replaced her time watching television, but she would still ask Monte if he wanted to watch Jeopardy! He usually said no and then muttered something about how he had to do something and walked off to another part of the house or out to check the empty mailbox. Sometimes Charlene pulled him into the living room and they watched it together.
Two weeks after the move Charlene came into the bedroom after she had gotten ready for work. “Hey Monte.” She pushed down on his back bouncing him on the bed until he opened his eyes. “The hose out back isn’t running and I need to water the flowers. Can you fix it today?”
“Yeah,” he said.
When he got up it was late in the day. The house was hot and the light reflected off every surface into his eyes. Charlene had left half the coffee pot for him and he switched it on to warm up. Monte stood in the kitchen and scratched his thigh while looking out at the backyard. The charcoal grill sat on the back porch like a little spaceship. The last time he’d used it was at the other house. He thought about how he’d like to cook something on it soon. He remembered the hose and went to put on some pants.
Outside the branches of the trees shook with the wind and the leaves fluttered like confetti. Monte unscrewed the hose from the tap. The end of the tap was coated with calcium and some of it crumbled into the grass. He turned the tap on and he put his ear up to it. He couldn’t hear anything in the pipe. Monte went back in the house and into the basement. The flow valve to the hose was off. Monte turned the valve and the water surged through the pipe. The pipe shook and grumbled for a second then stopped. He went back outside and turned the tap on. A choked stream dripped out onto his hand. Monte found his wrench. He started humming to himself and he went back to the basement. With his right hand he gripped the pipe that he needed to remove. He tried to loosen the other pipe with the wrench in his left hand. He could only grip it with his index and middle finger. The wrench slipped onto the concrete floor every time he tried to turn it. He moved to the other side so that he could hold the pipe with his left hand and the wrench with his right. Every time he tried to put pressure on the nut the pipe slipped out of his left hand. An hour of this effort ended with nothing but his exhaustion. He imagined Charlene coming home and asking him if he’d done it. She would be so understanding and reassure him that it wasn’t important. They could call a plumber to do it. Then she would put her arms around him. He couldn’t help it that his hand was injured. Monte raised his hand behind his head and threw the wrench against the radiator. The wrench flashed as it clanged off the surface. With his left hand Monte smashed a vase that was sitting on a cardboard box. The shatter wasn’t as loud as he wished it. White porcelain flakes were imbedded into the cuts on the back of his hand. He walked up stairs, pulling out the flakes and dropping them.
That night Monte told Charlene that he couldn’t figure out what was wrong with the pipes and that he had also accidently knocked over a vase. Charlene went into the kitchen and filled up a pitcher to water the flowers. She asked him if he had called the plumber yet and he said he hadn’t. After watering the flowers Charlene went to the bedroom instead of running the vacuum. While Monte was on the couch Charlene stepped in front of him in her underwear.
“Today at work I was thinking about how we haven’t had any time to relax.” Charlene turned off the T.V. with her foot. “Between the case and the move it’s been almost two months.” She looked at Monte then took a step toward him. “Let’s make a little Monte.” She jumped on him. He pulled her clothes off as quickly as he could. Her skin felt softer than he had remembered. Monte started to kiss her neck and her breasts. He grabbed her and flipped her on her back. Monte climbed on top of her. He stopped.
“What is it?” she asked.
“It’s not working,” he said. Monte stood up and walked around the empty living room. “It’s not you at all. I want to. Maybe it’s been so long or something. It’s just. I don’t know.”

For a week Charlene tried to be sexy for Monte, but he couldn’t get an erection. She bought new lingerie and played Barry White. They ate grapefruit together and she bought Monte some herbal medicines. One night Monte came into the bed room where there were rose petals scattered on the bed sheets. He gathered enthusiasm and made his way onto the bed. Charlene kissed him and rubbed her body against him. Monte pulled away from her. He lay on his back with his hand over his eyes.
“Do you not find me attractive anymore? I can understand. I guess I’m not exactly as good looking as I used to be. I don’t really blame you.”
“Charlene,” Monte’s voice was flat, “you’re as sexy as you’ve always been. I haven’t even thought about any woman except you since we’ve met. I swear.” Monte rubbed his forehead. “Nothing works anymore.”
She rested her head against his shoulder and told him that she loved him. Monte placed his hand weakly over hers.
Monte woke with the sun in his eyes.
“Hey I need you to take the trashcans out. It’s trash day.”
“Hm.” Monte slid his head under a pillow.

When she came home Monte was lying awake in bed watching TV.
“Monte,” she yelled. “Why didn’t you take out the trash?” Charlene came into the bedroom. “So you’ve just been on your ass all day feeling sorry for yourself.” Her fists were closed tight. “I ask you to do one god damn thing.” Monte looked back at the television. “Get over yourself and be a man.” She walked out and went into the kitchen.
Roberts Roberts and Cohen had a new commercial. Monte turned it up. There were two guys pretending to argue in front of a green screen. On the screen a couple cars had crashed into each other. The arguing guys were giants compared to the cars. A voiceover said it would fight for your rights.
“I’ve made an appointment with a doctor.” Charlene leaned inside the doorframe. “I’m hoping this will help something.”
Monte flipped the channel. He couldn’t entertain any hopes about medicine helping. The weight of his body kept him from moving. Even lying to Charlene and telling her he thought things would get better was too hard. His jaw was heavy and when he tried to speak his throat stuck.

The doctor perched Monte on the edge of the exam table where his thighs stuck to the paper covering. The appointment went quickly. The room was cold and the lighting washed the color out of everything. The doctor interviewed him about his medical history, the start of the problem and his current relationship.
“When does the dysfunction occur?” the doctor asked.
“Always,” Monte answered mechanically.
He wrote on his clipboard. “Do you have any problems in your current relationship?”
“No, Nothing unusual.”
“OK I just need you to lie on your stomach now so we can check your prostate.”

In the car ride home Charlene was smiling. When Monte had come into the waiting room he handed her the sample pack the doctor had given him. She turned on the radio and hummed along. Monte’s lips curled up into a grin, but his cheeks and eyes kept sagging. The house was quiet when they got home. Charlene went to the kitchen. She brought Monte his sample pack and a glass of water.
“Take two and I’ll be back in a second.” She kissed his forehead.
On the front of the package stood a lion. The lion held his head up with his mouth barely open. Its eyes gazed into the distance. The box read “Only two pills will reinvigorate you for up to two hours.” He tore the blue pills through the foil into his palm. His hand’s had gotten so soft since he’d stopped working. His knuckles wiggled where his fingers used to be. The glass had been filled to the brim and some water had spilt in a ring onto the table top. Monte drank from the glass and found that he was very thirsty. He drank three quarters of it in a single breath. He was refreshed. He pressed the two triangles together on his open palm. He spun the corner of one so that they rotated together. The tiny words on the pills circled like cogs on their twin axes. He thought about Charlene telling him to be a man. He wouldn’t be passive anymore. Monte held the pills between his thumb and index finger and shoved them between the cushions.