Allegiance or whatever. Then the sergeant came up and slipped the black Marine Corps mask over Birdie’s sullen face. His new ID number was stenciled across the forehead in big white letters: USMC100-7011-D07. And that was it, they were gorillas.
Bodies
1
“Take a factory,” Ab said. “It’s the same sort of thing exactly,” What kind of factory Chapel wanted to know.
Ab tipped his chair back, settling into the theory as if it were a warm whirlpool bath in Hydrotherapy. He’d eaten two lunches that Chapel had brought down and felt friendly, reasonable, in control. “Any kind. You ever worked in a factory?”
Of course he hadn’t. Chapel? Chapel was lucky to be pushing a cart. So Ab went right on. “For instance—take an electronics-type factory. I worked in one once, an assembler.”
“And you made something, right?”
“Wrong! I put things together. There’s a difference if you’d use your ears for one minute instead of that big mouth of yours. See, first off this box comes down the line, and I’d stick in this red board sort of thing, then tighten some other mother on top of that. Same thing all day, simple as A-B-C. Even you could have done it, Chapel.” He laughed.
Chapel laughed.
“Now what was I really doing? I moved things, from here to there….” he pantomimed here and there. The little finger of the left hand ended at the first knuckle. He’d done it himself at his initiation into thek ofc twenty years ago (twenty-five actually), a single chop of the old chopper, but when people asked he said it was an industrial accident and that was how that goddamned system destroyed you. But mostly people knew better than to ask.
“But I didn’t make anything at all, you see? And it’s the same in any other factory—you move things or you put them together, same difference.”
Chapel could feel he was losing. Ab talked faster and louder, and his own words came out stumbling. He hadn’t wanted to argue in the first place, but Ab had tangled him in it without his knowing how. “But something, I don’t know, what you say is … But what I mean is—you’ve got to have common sense, too.”
“No, this is science.”
Which brought such a look of abject defeat to the old man’s eyes it was as if Ab had dropped a bomb, boff, right in the middle of his black, unhappy head. For who can argue against science. Not Chapel, sure as hell.
And yet he struggled up out of the rubble still championing common sense. “But things get made—how do you explain that?”
“Things get made, things get made,” Ab mimicked in a falsetto voice, though of the two men’s voices Chapel’s was deeper. “What things?”
Chapel looked round the morgue for an example. It was all so familiar as to be invisible—the slab, the carts, the stacks of sheets, the cabinet with its stock of fillers and fluids, the desk…. He lifted a black Identi-Band from the clutter on the desk. “Like plastic.”
“Plastic?” Ab said in a tone of disgust. “That just shows how much you know, Chapel. Plastic.” Ab shook his head.
“Plastic,” Chapel insisted. “Why not?”
“Plastic is just putting chemicals together, you illiterate.”
“Yeah, but.” He closed one eye, squeezing the thought into focus. “But to make the plastic they’ve got to—heat it. Or something.”
“Right! And what’s heat?” he asked, folding his hands across his gut, victorious, full. “Heat is kinetic energy.”
“Shit,” Chapel maintained. He massaged his stubbly brown scalp. Another argument lost. He never understood how it happened.
“Molecules,” Ab summed up, “moving. Everything breaks down to that. It’s all physics, a law.” He let loose a large fart and pointed his finger, just in time, at Chapel’s groin.
Chapel made a smile acknowledging Ab’s triumph. It was science all right. Science battered everyone into submission if it was given its way. It was like trying to argue with the atmosphere of Jupiter, or
Bodies
1
“Take a factory,” Ab said. “It’s the same sort of thing exactly,” What kind of factory Chapel wanted to know.
Ab tipped his chair back, settling into the theory as if it were a warm whirlpool bath in Hydrotherapy. He’d eaten two lunches that Chapel had brought down and felt friendly, reasonable, in control. “Any kind. You ever worked in a factory?”
Of course he hadn’t. Chapel? Chapel was lucky to be pushing a cart. So Ab went right on. “For instance—take an electronics-type factory. I worked in one once, an assembler.”
“And you made something, right?”
“Wrong! I put things together. There’s a difference if you’d use your ears for one minute instead of that big mouth of yours. See, first off this box comes down the line, and I’d stick in this red board sort of thing, then tighten some other mother on top of that. Same thing all day, simple as A-B-C. Even you could have done it, Chapel.” He laughed.
Chapel laughed.
“Now what was I really doing? I moved things, from here to there….” he pantomimed here and there. The little finger of the left hand ended at the first knuckle. He’d done it himself at his initiation into thek ofc twenty years ago (twenty-five actually), a single chop of the old chopper, but when people asked he said it was an industrial accident and that was how that goddamned system destroyed you. But mostly people knew better than to ask.
“But I didn’t make anything at all, you see? And it’s the same in any other factory—you move things or you put them together, same difference.”
Chapel could feel he was losing. Ab talked faster and louder, and his own words came out stumbling. He hadn’t wanted to argue in the first place, but Ab had tangled him in it without his knowing how. “But something, I don’t know, what you say is … But what I mean is—you’ve got to have common sense, too.”
“No, this is science.”
Which brought such a look of abject defeat to the old man’s eyes it was as if Ab had dropped a bomb, boff, right in the middle of his black, unhappy head. For who can argue against science. Not Chapel, sure as hell.
And yet he struggled up out of the rubble still championing common sense. “But things get made—how do you explain that?”
“Things get made, things get made,” Ab mimicked in a falsetto voice, though of the two men’s voices Chapel’s was deeper. “What things?”
Chapel looked round the morgue for an example. It was all so familiar as to be invisible—the slab, the carts, the stacks of sheets, the cabinet with its stock of fillers and fluids, the desk…. He lifted a black Identi-Band from the clutter on the desk. “Like plastic.”
“Plastic?” Ab said in a tone of disgust. “That just shows how much you know, Chapel. Plastic.” Ab shook his head.
“Plastic,” Chapel insisted. “Why not?”
“Plastic is just putting chemicals together, you illiterate.”
“Yeah, but.” He closed one eye, squeezing the thought into focus. “But to make the plastic they’ve got to—heat it. Or something.”
“Right! And what’s heat?” he asked, folding his hands across his gut, victorious, full. “Heat is kinetic energy.”
“Shit,” Chapel maintained. He massaged his stubbly brown scalp. Another argument lost. He never understood how it happened.
“Molecules,” Ab summed up, “moving. Everything breaks down to that. It’s all physics, a law.” He let loose a large fart and pointed his finger, just in time, at Chapel’s groin.
Chapel made a smile acknowledging Ab’s triumph. It was science all right. Science battered everyone into submission if it was given its way. It was like trying to argue with the atmosphere of Jupiter, or
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