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ELI SCOWLED AT THE pressed discs of clear, round glass sitting on the smallest piles of paper on Joe’s desk. He picked one up, turned it in his hands a few times, and focused on the white bits within. Pot 16 had stones again.
“Okay, let me get this straight.” He leaned back in Joe’s wooden office chair, feeling his butt slide on the timeworn seat as he tilted the chair back on its legs. Joe was his boss, but Eli learned to relax in behind the closed doors of his white-walled office cluttered with gray filling cabinets and shelves of problem glass items. He could be himself just a bit more here. He waved his hand at the samples, aware that he was a lot looser at the wrist than he’d allow on the hot floor, where the burly, occasionally surly, and mostly old-school workers kept an eye for him to see what the new guy does next.
Eli frowned, focusing on the problem. “We dumped the pot last week, they charged it with a new batch. They added twenty percent of good cullet from before, and that cullet was right on spec. No stones, the same coefficient of expansion, refractive index, everything.”
“Yeah,” Joe nodded. “Go for it, genius. I need you to find out what they’re fucking up, because the glass temperature was just right all weekend long. I came in twice on Saturday and twice on Sunday just to check on it.”
“So it’s not under-melting,” Eli stated the obvious. “It’s something else.”
“That’s right. Talk to Paul in the lab. We have other pots to check, and we have to measure conductance on those aircraft lights. I need you to squeeze this in somehow.”
“What are they making now?”
“Pot 8 has cadmium red and they’re making more aircraft wingtip lights from that. Check with Paul, make sure the color’s not too dark again.”
“And if it is?” Production problems occurred all the time. Eli’s job was not just quality control. He also worked with the lab to trouble-shoot glass production issues. In the case of colored glass, adding more raw materials, minus the colorants, was tricky. It would take a while to melt, and there was always the danger of the red glass having clear streaks.
“They’ll press it a little thinner, just on the edge of the spec.” Joe yawned again. He eyed the half-empty coffee cup, the scent of which warmed the air and chased off the ubiquitous smell of dust and machine oil. “Sorry. Joey’s teething, so Charlene and I are taking turns getting up for him.”
“That sounds rough all around,” Eli said, knowing well he had no idea what Joe was talking about. Him and kids? That was never even on the horizon. He’d take the muffled sounds of cut glass screaming in the finishing shops over a crying baby anytime. Presently, the shop sounds mingled with the faraway roar of ventilation fans, the rumble of steel-wheeled carts full of raw materials, and the clatter and cling of glass production on the hot floor.
Joe must’ve read his mind, because he gave him a wry look. “Right. And when it comes to pot 12, I need you to check the reflector lenses under the polarizer for stress. Have you done that yet? No? I’ll show you how. They are thick, and sometimes they need to be reannealed.”
“Yeah.” Eli remembered the talk about the pretty, jagged chunks of colorful cullet Joe made him anneal before he could put it in his office. Had it stayed unannealed, the internal stresses might even blow the glass apart at the least opportune moment. Eli jotted down more notes, adding to a list of things he needed to take care of before the customary Tuesday staff meeting. The list had a way of growing while he wasn’t looking.
“Oh, and talk to Bo Bartowski. He’s the one sitting on pot 16, keeping an eye on it. Find out if he’s seeing anything unusual. Learn the procedure of what he does and what he sees, okay? Those guys may be doing stuff they shouldn’t. On the other hand, they also know the glass in a way we never can, because their work is hands-on and they’re there all the time.”
“Okay.” Eli added it to the bottom of the list as though talking to Bo was just like any other onerous tasks. He was leaping for joy inside and twirling pirouettes, though. Any excuse to talk to Bo was good on his to-do list.
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ELEVEN ROLLED AROUND, the lunch hour shut down the workflow on the dot, and a blanket of silence settled over the work crews and their stations.
Bo welcomed it. Even though he still felt the hum burners under the furnace kick in at their predetermined pattern, distributing heat from pot to pot and keeping the glass liquid, the furnace was like a huge dragon that went down for a lunchtime nap. The lehrs still moved along, inching their steel grid conveyor belts and moving the glass items travelling inside from a zone of searing heat to something less hot, and then just hot, and then barely tepid, spitting the glass out the other end all safe and warm to touch. The lehrs rumbled, and if he stood very still, he could feel the thick brick floor vibrate like a living thing.
“Hey, the kid was looking for you,” Lukowski said, turning to Bo as he clicked the lamp over his press off.
“Oh.” He had to act normal. Not excited, not scared. “Thanks.” And he had to get out and eat his lunch outside, or else Eli would hunt him down in the lunchroom by the vending machines and try to talk to him in front of the others.
Bo suppressed a nervous shudder, set his punty against the stone blocks of the furnace, and walked toward the loading dock. There was a way down and around, once he got his lunch out of his truck, crossed the tracks, and scrambled his way down the wooded hill. There were worse places to eat than a fishing spot on the banks of the Allegheny.
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ELI KNEW HE COULD CHOOSE when to have lunch. His workday wasn’t at the mercy of the production whistle, like Bo’s, and he could eat early with the labor, or later with the staff. Or in-between, depending who he needed to talk to that day.
“We’re ordering out for pizza,” Paul said, sticking his head through the open door of Eli’s office. “You want any?”
“Nah, thanks though.” Eli made a long face. Pizza with Paul and the lab staff upstairs sounded pretty good. “I packed.”
“So you’ll eat with us, but we shouldn’t order extra?”
“No, I’ll eat downstairs today.” Eli stood and stretched his arms up, making his back crack.
“With labor, huh.” Paul shot him a knowing look. “You need any moral support?”
Eli gave him a surprised stare. “No. Why?”
“Why? Seriously?” He choked out a bitter laugh. “In my five years here, the only pearls of wisdom I managed to get out of labor had to go through the foreman. And two years ago, when the union was negotiating a new contract? They got stuck on the benefits package. We’re just kids to some of those guys. They will share, but only when it makes the staff look bad.”
Eli nodded. “Okay. Thanks.” The new information would explain some of the tension he’d been feeling downstairs on the hot floor. The sly looks, the challenging grins. He figured it was just guys, though. Guys acted that way, like on sports teams. Not for the first time, Eli regretted not having played sports along with dance. Sports taught teamwork. Not fitting well within a team had been an issue even in Peace Corps. He had blamed a lot of it on cultural issues back then, but now he was back home and team dynamics were still kicking his butt.
He did so much better as a prima-donna.
Eli grabbed his paper bag and strode through one of the many tunnel-like hallways to the area behind packaging, where some of the union employees ate their lunch. If they didn’t stick around to sit down, they at least passed through to get a cup of coffee or a soda from the vending machine.
The tables were half-full. Eli searched the small crowd of fifteen men, but Bo wasn’t there. He did see the guy who was his presser, though. The presser ran the crew, dictating the pace, gesturing for the cutter when to cut, telling the gatherer whether the gob of glass should be bigger or smaller, and by how much.
Bo would show up.
Eli pulled up a chair across from the presser. The patch on is gray work shirt was smudged with graphite and grease, and Eli barely made out his name. “Freddie Lukowski, right? You press with Bo Bartowski.”
Stan nodded from next to Freddie, chewing on something formidable.
“Hi guys,” Eli said, including the whole table with the gesture of his head.
They nodded back and turned most of their attention back to their lunches. Or to the football draft, and whether the Steelers needed a new offensive tackle more than a better second quarterback.
“What do you think, kid?” One of the guys aimed the question at Eli, who had been following the ebb and flow of the conversation, hoping Bo would show up and sit next to his presser. The question caught him flat-footed.
“What do I think of what? The stones?”
A wave of laughter rippled through the room. “No, the football draft. You follow that, right?”
Eli shrugged. “Not really. Not my thing.”
Freddie looked up at him from under his dark, bushy eyebrows. “Not your thing, kid? You’re in Pittsburgh. That’s Steeler Country!”
“I just moved here. But it’s nice.”
“He just moved here,” Freddie repeated for the benefit of the whole lunch room. “You went to college, didn’t you?”
Eli had a distinct impression that Freddie was building up to something. They way the others settled down to watch, they way they slowly chewed their food and exchanged knowing, amused looks, tipped him off to the possibility that he was being set up. He nodded.
“So, college. What did you study? Glass?”
“Chemistry was my major, actually.” Eli took a bite of his sandwich. This was a lot like when he sat in a room with other dancers, waiting for his turn to audition, and holding his own in a snarky conversation.
“Chemistry,” Freddie said with a serious nod. “And what else?”
Eli knew where this was going, and he knew this could be bad. Just like on stage, the only way was onward. He straightened up and looked Stan straight in the eye. “Dance.”
The laughter from the guys around the three tables came in a deafening burst.
“He’s got you there, Lukowski,” one of the older ones wheezed, wiping his eyes with his gnarled fist. “You figure you’re the only wiseass, but now you’ve met your match.” He wheezed again. “Dance!” The second volley of laughter was just an aftershock compared to the first outburst and this time, it didn’t shock Eli. He grinned at Freddie as it washed over him. So they figured he was just joking.
Eddie wasn’t smiling, though. “You think you’re some kind of a fucking comedian, but you don’t know shit about glass.”
And here it was, a rapt audience of experienced glassworkers, and an opportunity. “You’re right, I don’t,” Eli admitted with a wry grin. “I know ceramics okay, but not glass. And even if I knew glass, it wouldn’t do me any good. This place is pretty unique. Every composition’s different, every pot has different temperature, depending on where it sits. Or how old it is. And that’s why I’m having lunch down here, instead of upstairs.”
Now the focus was on him, and even though the frown on Eddie’s face looked just as stubborn as before, Eli thought he saw a glimmer of interest in his hazel eyes.
“Except y’all don’t talk about glass, you keep talking about football.” Eli took a disinterested bite of his tuna sandwich, making sure to shut up and leave some room for others to fill the void.
“First of all, kid, when you’re in Pittsburgh, you don’t say ‘y’all,’ you say ‘yinz’.” That came from Bert, a short, old, toothless man. A carrier. The way his clothing hung off his thin frame was unmistakable – Eli recalled his early amazement when he saw old Bert and other guys carry each piece of glass on a paddle covered with woven asbestos, like a piece of pizza. From the press and straight to the lehr, over and over. Bert must’ve walked miles each day. No wonder he was so thin.
“Yinz?” Eli grinned. “You’re pulling my leg.”
“You started,” Freddie growled from across the table. “And he ain’t.”
Honesty was the best policy, right? What could go wrong? Eli stood up and fished a few quarters out of his pocket. He walked past them all and got a Coke out of the machine. “No, actually. I did study dance.” He popped the tab and took a pull. The effervescent taste hit his taste buds, sweet and cold. He sighed with pleasure, because sugary foods were a rare treat.
“You did? Really?” A younger guy from another table looked him up and down. “What kind of dance?”
Eli glanced at him. Their eyes met for just a split-second. “Ballet, some jazz. Some Broadway stuff, but I loved ballet the best. But that’s a long time ago, and I don’t want to bore you with it. I came down here ‘cause I was just hoping to catch up with Bo, and ask him about that stony glass.” He sighed. “If any of you want to tell me anything interesting about Pot 16, well... “ he looked around. “I’m all ears.”
Few significant glances shot across the room, but this time, a lot of curious gazes were pinned to Eli. He had revealed something about himself, a point of weakness. Not an incompetence, precisely, but... dance. These rabid football fans probably just went home to their wives every day, mowed the lawn, and settled down with a can of Iron City to watch football news. Local team, local beer. Local slang, like ‘yinz.’ He still didn’t believe yinz was a real word – he’d have to look it up.
Eli finished his lunch. It didn’t look like Bo was eating inside today. He pushed his chair away from the table, making it creak. “See you all later.”
“See you, Dancer-boy!”
“See ya, kid!”
Freddie just nodded.
Eli walked out the other end of the lunchroom, toward the hot floor. The two round furnaces squatted like immense centerpieces, the right one bigger than the other. He walked between them, gliding silently, almost on tiptoes. The bigger furnace bathed him in heat so strong the air felt viscous. Even with the glory holes partially closed with stone covers, Eli forced his way as though the heat was a force field.
Work stools, presses, metal tables with graphite slabs and their grimy tool-racks stood abandoned, waiting to come alive like a stick insect after a cold spell. He didn’t see anyone here, but there was a loading dock on the other side, and some of the guys often sat on it and smoked.
Eli ghosted past a pile of broken, turquoise glass. Its color came from evenly dispersed copper and nickel ions, and the broken pieces seemed pale along their fracture lines. Like sea foam. Few sunbeams slid through the grimy factory glass panes, illuminating the pile, setting it alight with an internal glow of its own.
In the otherwise dark interior of the hot floor, the gleaming pile of sea foam cullet was magical. Eli was here to see it all alone, and for just a moment he recalled his mention of dance only minutes ago. And this vision of brilliant refractions, colors and rainbows, it too was like dance, and the empty hot floor was a stage of his own.
The gleam of the glass and the silent solitude of the hot floor was messing with Eli’s head. He was seeing things, hearing things.
Music.
Like a glassy wind chime, high and barely audible, with a beauty of its own.
Eli straightened. He turned his hips out, broken glass crunching under the thick soles of his work boots. Up, up, up on his toes.
Releve.
His arms opened into two graceful arcs – port de bras – as Eli coupe’d his clumsy, booted foot to his ankle. This wasn’t like dancing at the club. This was spontaneous, fed by the energy of the furnaces, by the beauty around him.
He heard the music of the glass, the song of the springtime sun.
Old muscle memory kicked in. Just standing in place, nothing big... develope... he let his right leg lift and bend and unfurl like a flower petal, counterbalanced by a change in his arms.
Just like the old times. It felt so good –
Pop.
The cymbals crashed. The music stopped.
Pain lanced his supporting leg.
He stumbled, form gone, as he tried to figure out what the hell happened.
His leg hurt, dammit, and his tan chinos darkened with blood. His left arm, too – sharp, cutting pain flashed through his bicep as he turned his palm up to get a better look.
Red flowers blossomed on the sleeve of his shirt, highlighted by a lovely, turquoise shard of glass that pierced it.
“Hey, you!” Bo’s shout split the air like an angry blade.
Sticky warmth glued Eli’s trouser to his leg. It was hard to walk.
Why was it so hard to walk?
Eli looked down at his leg, at the dark stain that began to spread with alarming speed. He thought he heard a drum beat – or maybe it was the thud of boots against the dusty floor.
“Eli!” Bo was right behind him now and Eli felt, rather than saw, Bo pull him in and steer him away from the cullet pile.
The music of glass, the song of the springtime sun? And that alien popping sound. Eli wondered whether he had heard a piece of glass sing right before it yielded to its internal stresses, and exploded.