United Colleges - Vox Yearbook (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

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He dipped the tar pot into the kiln and poured the boiling contents into a large pail Illustration by the author of boxcars. A red glow now and then traced the flight of a rivet from the pincers to the metal cup a car’s length away. The kid stumbled after Weller, squeezing the rod, stepping over cables, ducking under cables, peering through the darkness. “We’re here kid. Stop slow now . . . slow, slow . . . that does it. Now I’ll lift this pail up into the car and you’ll see how to lay a floor.” The kid pulled himself into the car. There was a small dust-covered light bulb hanging from the middle of the ceiling. It swayed whenever anyone put his foot down and the car became a maze of moving shadow. The floor was covered with tar paper except for the two extremes of the car where work-horses and tools were laid out. The kid sat down on a work-horse and watched Weller and his crew as they brought in the long strips of flooring that the carpenters had just finished. Then Weller, with one motion, thrust the scoop-pot into the pail, brought it out full of oozing tar, emptied it on the tar paper, and thrust the scoop pot back into the pail, all the time running along the wall stooped over, leaving a solid strip of hot tar two feet wide along the length of the car. Three men picked up a strip of flooring and lowered it onto the tar. They shoved the edge tightly against the wall, and two men began to hammer in na ils with a short, chopping, wrist motion. Before they had Page Seventeen

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By DAVID BLOSTEIN N OW look, kid, I’m responsible for you now an’ I don’t want you to get into any trouble. This tar ain’t candy y’know—y’can’t lick it off. And it’s hot, kid, it’s hot.” Old Weller turned back to his tar kilns, two mounds that had once been cylinders, now al¬ most conical with the black deposits around their bases. He picked up a two pound chunk of tar and lowered it slowly into one of the kilns. It melted and boiled before it could reach the bottom four feet below. Weller hobbled to a corner of the shack and was lost for a few minutes in the darkness. He came back with his arms full of kindling, scrap wood that the kid had brought in that morning, and put them down on the dirt floor in front of the kilns. The kid sat on an overturned pail near the opening of the tar-shack and looked at the tar boiling in the open kilns. He watched through the smoke-steam as Weller, shielding his eyes, tossed the kindling into the narrow opening at the bottom of one of the amorphous ovens. ‘‘Remember, kid,” Weller said, picking up a mucky tar pot by its three-foot handle, “this is the best job you can get, here, in these shops . . . don’t let anybody fool you.” His whole face, a folded lump of dough, was continually working. He dipped the tar pot into the kiln and poured the boiling contents into a large pail. “You ain’t so smart, y’know, goin’ back to school,” the old man continued, still filling the pail, “you should stick to this job — there’s a future in it. Look at me, now—never went past seventh grade, but look at me.” He spat into the kiln and the tar sizzled angrily. “Why, do you realize I’m the head of the tar shack, me, and nobody above me but the labour foreman, the superintendent of the car shop, and the presi¬ dent of the railway. I got the best job in the shops, I have.” The pail was filled, and Weller suddenly pointed a finger at the kid. “I’m the first one here every morning. Think of that. Forty-seven hundred and sixty-three men working in these shops and I’m the first one here every morning.” “Everyone knows it,” he added, testing the pail for weight. “Foreman, he says to me, nothin’ gets lifted from the tar shack when Weller’s around.” He picked up a scoop-pot. “Every morning, kid.” He spat again into the kiln. “Six o’clock. “Take that rod over by the door. No, not that one, the long one . . . That’s it. All right, put it under the handle of the pail. I’ll go in front. Now don’t lift it up too fast. Slow and straight up . . . that’s it . . . straight up. Now look, if the pail starts rockin’ don’t try to stop it. Just yell to me and run. That tar don’t know nothin’ about Emily Post. Now let’s go.” The kid didn’t take his eyes off the tar pail, where groups of bubbles floated slowly on the surface of the liquid, gently bumping each other, like friendly cannibals. He didn’t see how the winter sun’s ochre light blocked everything in the yard into shades of yellow and black. He didn’t notice the carpenters slopping sheep fat on reefer doors, and the passing paint crew with its spattered scaffold and stencil, and the three¬ wheeled cart loaded with scrap iron groping its way out of the car shop to be emptied on a flat¬ car. Weller and the kid entered track nine and the yellow disappeared, leaving only varying shades of grey to contrast with the black. The vague forms of men flitted between the black masses Page Sixteen

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finished, others were jumping up and down on the strip to tamp it down, and Weller’s scoop- pot had resumed its flight between the pail and the floor. Another strip was lowered next to the first onto the new layer of tar and the men be¬ gan again their overlapping motions, always moving in a crouch, running from the knees, squeezing speed out of throbbing muscles. And then it was finished. Purple cheeks and red eyes were drawn slowly away from the heat of the floor, the bent, strained backs were slowly straightened, and the men stood up. Then they stared, and blinked, and silently left the boxcar. The kid followed them to the tar shack, bouncing the end of the long iron rod on the concrete floor of the car shop. ❖ “That’s one hell, there.” “A-a-ah, Schmidty, yer always complainin’ about somethin’,” Weller bawled at the old man who had spoken. “Why, don’t you take no pride in your work. You’ve got the best job in the world, and you’re still crabbin’.” “Maybe best job in world for young fella, Weller, but not for old fella,” Schmidty said quietly. “Me, I an old man, Weller—you an’ me, we both old men. I like to go some place else, get better job, but too old, me. I gotta stay here, that’s all. But it’s one hell.” “You just ain’t got ambition, Schmidty,” Weller said. “I got the best job in the shops, and I’m satisfied. I got all you guys workin’ for me, and I’m set. I’m plenty satisfied.” “Like HELL you satisfied!” Schmidty sudden¬ ly shouted at him. “You say that cause you know you can’t go somewhere else, same’s me. You stuck, Weller. That’s why you pretend you so satisfied with your job, you stuck. That’s why you strut around like big boss instead of little worker. You stuck.” Weller stood silently with a face like hoar¬ frost. His eyes slowly moistened and his shoul¬ ders sagged. And then he sank onto a tool box. Schmidty was sorry he said it, and he mumbled something and left the tar shack, the rest of the crew following him. Weller sat on his tool box, staring out the door. Then he turned to the kid. “Don’t listen to him, kid ... he ... he don’t know nothin’, anyhow.” The kid nodded, and picked up a stick and poked at a piece of tar that had hardened on his boot. Ghost Town The winds of time have swept each corner hare In this forgotten city of the past; The sun beats down on empty streets, and everywhere Is silence—broken at last By twittering sparrows nesting in a glade And a rustling in the grass Of wild animals who pass Unafraid. —Wilda Reynolds. Page Eighteen