The Ax

32

I'm crossing the bridge again, in bright sunshine, high over the Hudson River, seeing towns and woodland and factories and onetime mansions along both shores, the bustling but grubby town of Kingston out ahead. Wednesday morning; my second visit to the second HCE.

Yesterday, at our counseling session, there was an uncomfortable silence for a while, partway through, none of us seeming to have much to say, as though whatever the counseling's purpose had been was now completed, but then Quinlan said to me, "When you were laid off from the mill, it wasn't a surprise, was it? Not a complete surprise."

"Not a complete surprise," I agreed. "There'd been rumors, and the whole industry was shaking up. But I didn't expect it so soon, and I guess I wasn't ever sure I'd be part of it. I was always good at my job, believe me—"

"I'm sure you were," he said, with a small smile and an encouraging nod.

"I didn't know they were going to move the whole thing to Canada," I said. "We trained them, the Canadians, and now they're cheaper than we are."

He said, "How did you feel, when it happened?"

"How did I feel?"

"Well, I mean," he said, "were you angry? Frightened? Resentful? Relieved?"

"Not relieved," I said, and laughed. "All the others, I guess."

"Why?"

I looked at him. "Why? Why what?"

"Why feel angry, or frightened, or resentful?"

I couldn't believe we were descending down to this kindergarten level. I said, "Because I was losing my job. It's perfectly natural to—"

"Why?"

He was beginning to annoy me. He was beginning to be one of those inspirers they'd set loose on us at the mill during the last months before the chop. I said, "What am I supposed to feel, when I lose my job?"

"There's nothing you're required to feel," he said. "There's not even anything that's perfectly natural to feel. What you felt was angry and frightened and bitter and probably perplexed, and you still do. So what I'm wondering is, why did you take it that way?"

"Everybody did!"

"Oh, I don't think so," he said, and sat back in his chair, away from his desk, farther from me. "Do you remember your co-workers? The ones who were let go the same time as you? Did they all feel the way you did?"

"There was pretty general depression," I told him. "Some people put a better face on it, that's all."

"You mean some of them took a more positive view," he suggested. "Saw there might be an opportunity here—"

"Mr. Quinlan," I said, "they sent specialists around to us, the last five months on the job, people to help us learn how to write resumes and dress for a job interview and all of that stuff, people to advise us about our finances now that we weren't going to have any finances, and people to inspire us, give us all this sloganeering and pep talks and feel-good stuff. You're beginning to sound a lot like them."

He laughed and said, "I suppose I am. Well, I suppose I have the same message, that's why."

"The message is crap," I told him.

I hadn't said that to any of the inspirers at the mill. Back then I was polite and receptive and obedient, just the way you're supposed to be, but I didn't think I should have to go through it all over again, so I just told Quinlan what I thought, to get rid of this Pollyanna stuff forever. Every day in every way we are not getting better and better.

Marjorie looked at me, startled, when I said that, when I told Quinlan he was saying crap, because we'd all been gentle and polite with one another up till now, but Quinlan didn't mind. I'm sure he's heard a lot worse in that office. He grinned at me and shook his head and said, "Mr. Devore, what you're picking up as the message is crap, I'll go along with that. But what you're picking up is not what I'm sending out, and it's not what those people at the mill were sending out. The real message is, you are not the job."

I looked at him. Was that supposed to mean something?

He saw that I still wasn't receiving whatever it was he was trying to send, so he said, "A lot of people, Mr. Devore, identify themselves with their jobs, as though the person and the job were one and the same. When they lose the job, they lose a sense of themselves, they lose a sense of worth, of being valuable people. They think they're nothing any more."

"That isn't me," I said. "That isn't the way I look at it."

"But you felt depressed and angry," he reminded me. "Didn't you feel they'd taken away part of your self?"

"They took away my life, not my self," I told him. "They took away my ability to pay my mortgage, care for my children, have good times with my wife. A job is a job, it isn't me, but it's necessary. And I'll tell you what we all knew, Mr. Quinlan, in those last five months, the hundreds of us there, used to be best friends, working together, counting on one another, not even thinking about it, we always knew we could rely on each other right on down the line. But it was the end of the line, and we were enemies now, because we were competitors now, and we all knew it. That's the thing we weren't saying to each other, and the counselors weren't saying, and nobody was saying. That the tribe was bust, it wasn't a tribe any more. We wouldn't be watching each other's backs any more."

He leaned forward again, watching me carefully. "Enemies, Mr. Devore? They were your enemies?"

"We were all enemies, each other's enemies, and we all knew it. You could see it in the faces. People who always used to have lunch together stopped having lunch together. When somebody said, 'Do you have any leads?' you said no, even if it was a lie. We started lying to each other. Friendships stopped. Relationships stopped."

"You couldn't trust one another any more."

"We weren't a team, we were each other's competition. Everything changed."

Quinlan nodded. He wasn't smiling, he was serious. "Every man for himself," he said.

"That's what it is. Before you get the chop, you don't have to know that, you can pretend we're all buddies here. That's the message the inspirers were trying to implant in us, the idea that we're still all together in this, it's still a society, and it is functioning, and we're all a part of it. But after you get the chop, you can't afford that fairy story any more. It is every man for himself. The big executives know that. The stockholders know that. And now we know it."

"And what does that mean to you, Mr. Devore?"

"It means I have nobody to count on but me." Turning to Marjorie, I said, "That's why I've been so distant, and so focused, because I'm all I've got, and I'm in the fight of my life. I'm sorry it's made me so cold to you, I'm sorry, I wish… well. You know what I wish."

"You aren't alone, Burke," Marjorie said. "You've got me, you know that."

I shook my head, but I managed a smile as I said, "Have you got a job for me?"

She took that as rejection, of course, I could see it in her hurt reaction, but it wasn't, that's not what it was meant to be. It was just part of seeing clearly. We don't have the luxury of sentiment now, Hallmark cards. At this moment, in this condition, in this situation, we have to see clearly, there's no other choice.

I turned back to Quinlan. I said, "There's nothing out there but me and the competition, and I have to beat the competition. I have to. Whatever it takes."

But we were getting too close to reality here, the new reality, my own personal way of dealing with the competition. I'd followed the new line of reasoning all the way to the end, and acted on it, but I didn't want anybody else doing that, not around me. Certainly not these two, not Marjorie or Quinlan. So I added, "It's may the best man win, now, and all I can do is hope I'm the best man."

That was the end of the session. Quinlan had let it run on, it seemed, an extra five minutes. And when we left, I thought he looked very closely at me, trying to understand.

Better not to understand, Mr. Q.

Down off the bridge; Kingston. I turn south, toward Sable Jetty.