Pimping the Wheel

by Simone Spearman

People have always asked me what it's like to work in the house. I usually answer with a bit of pride, 'cause I've worked at Jackson & Louis for twelve years. Most men leave after eight months, or less. "The average meatpacker has a work-life expectancy of a year and a half." I saw this in a spiral notebook in the foreman's office. On the glossy cover it had a picture of a fat pig slapping hands with a white guy wearing an apron. I thought it was strange, the gleam in the pig's eye and the worker so friendly with his victim. But white guys are strange, and I don't even pretend to explain them.

I've watched the temporary men come in, juiced up at first, as if piercing hog necks and slicing off heads was a forbidden treat, like cheating on your girl. But these boys always left, claiming they found something better. A real job that didn't shove hog stink through the membranes of your eyes.

Temporary men are like kids going back to school in September. They don't want to work in a slaughterhouse, but it's new and there's the prospect of something to be gained, perhaps camaraderie amidst the grind. Come December the newness is long gone, most of the comrades, they realize, are full of shit, but the innocence of Christmas and the year-end bonus makes the job seem fine for now. After winter passes and the men are nostril-to-nostril with the hot stench and their hands are beginning to twist and gnarl, they make a break. Just like toughs who drop out of high school to follow the scent of freedom, smokes and liquor tucked into a back pocket, the temps quit slaughter every warm spring.

I came to the house in Detroit for one reason: to make a decent wage. A black man in the nineties has about three choices, I think. He can go to college, bite his lips, and fight for the employment of his dreams. He can let his anger and frustration melt into the inner layers of his soul and become lost in drugs, violence, and prison. Or he can find a grunt job, a tough job, and stick it out. Find pride in remaining steady. My grandfather did this, my father did this, and I have found no reason for not following their lead.

Some brothers make fun. Others say I have allowed "the system" to crush my balls. But I know I have a good life. I have a sweet loving wife, three children who go to school in clean clothes and shy smiles, and a steady income. While other men cash their checks for beer and nightclubs, I go home to a family of warmth and love.

At first, as I say, it was about the decent wage. After a while, it became more than that. It had to. A slaughterhouse is a house of death, and no amount of money can blind you to this. That's why the weaker ones leave. I don't mean to say that I'm so tough, mentally or physically, but I found something in the house that other men couldn't see.

I found order and the vivid and harsh display of why the world works the way it does. You have your chain of command. Your cause and effect. Your oppressor and oppressed. And despite what the brothers say, I was the oppressor-man, and, yes, that felt good.

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Simone Spearman lives in San Francisco. This is her first story in print. E-mail: pohevol@hotmail.com