SAFETY FIRST – by Tim Wintermute

Kansas City Rail Yards

The deck ran a hundred yards into the night. Fifteen feet below on either side were the railroad tracks and beside those tracks were other tracks that stretched across the flat bottomland beside the river under the shrugging bluffs of Kansas City, Kansas. On the wooden deck were two thin rails that ran its length. The icer, an ugly, metal machine, rode on the rails pouring crushed ice into the bunkers of refrigerator cars from either of the funnels that protruded from its sides. It was fed by a conveyor belt on the deck, carrying three hundred pound blocks of ice from a tunnel that ran under the railroad tracks. On the other side of the tracks was a six story icehouse. During the winter the ice was made and stored in the windowless, concrete building.

Although the deck was infected with dry rot the owners hadn’t repaired it just as they hadn’t replaced the insulation peeling from the high voltage electrical wires that hung inside of the tunnel above the puddles of melted ice. Instead, they put up signs labeled “Safety First” warning workers to watch their step and to not touch the conveyor belt or the wires. The obsolete ice cooled refrigerator cars were being replaced with electric ones, leaving behind the Railroad Ice Company like an iceberg calved from a retreating glacier.

“Cruz is crazy,” Joe Bill said to Griff as they sat on the edge of the loading dock taking a break from their summer jobs on the midnight to eight, graveyard shift.

Cruz wore an old Kansas City “A’s” baseball cap and carried an outfielder's glove that he constantly pounded with his right fist. He never looked a person in the eye when he spoke to them. Instead, he'd stare into the distance. When he wasn’t looking past someone or looking down at them from the cab of the icer he would sit at the end of the dock where they loaded the trucks that delivered bagged ice to supermarkets, convenience stores and gas stations. He was in the shadows so you couldn’t see more than his dark form but you could hear the smack of his fist on the leather.

“What do you mean he's crazy?” Griff said in response to Joe Bill.

“For one thing, only a crazy person would want to work on the Fourth of July and that's what Cruz wants to do,” Joe Bill said between gulps of the Dr. Pepper he always drank on breaks.

“Maybe he just wants to do it for the extra pay they give you for working on a holiday.”

“Not just his regular shift. Cruz wants to work all twenty four hours of the Fourth.”

Griff whistled. “He must really be hard up for money.”

Joe Bill stared at Griff and shook his head, "Hell, Griff, it’s not that. Reece told me Cruz got himself all fucked up over in Viet Nam and working the Fourth of July is a way of showing what he thinks about America."

“How does Reece know all this?”

“Reece is the foreman, so he knows everything about this place.  He says the only reason that the company gave Cruz a job again when he came back was because he used to be the star pitcher on the company’s baseball team. They won a league championship."

"I didn't know they had a baseball team?"

"They don't. They got rid of the team when Cruz was in Nam. Why the hell spend money on a baseball team when you're going out of business."

"You mean they're closing this place?"

"You don't have to worry because you're going to college, but these other guys…" Griff shrugged.

"What will you do?"

"Me, I already got a job lined up. Going to work for Uncle Sam." Joe Bill pantomimed shooting a rifle.

“You’ve been drafted?”

He shook his head. "Volunteered for the Marines. Report at the end of the summer.  I just hope I don't have a guy like Cruz in my platoon."

"Why not?”

Joe Bill looked at Griff as if he still didn't get it. Then he put down his Dr. Pepper and pulled a cherry bomb from his lunch pail. “Just watch and you’ll see why.” He struck a match against the rough wood loading dock where they were sitting and lit the short fuse. It hissed and sparked as he held it momentarily cupped in his hands. Then, with a sidelong smile toward Griff, he tossed it onto the ground. There was a silver flash followed by a sharp explosion. Joe Bill pointed toward Cruz who had curled his body into a tight ball, his capped head tucked beneath his arms.

“Jesus H. Christ,” what the hell was that?” Reece bellowed as he popped out of his small office at the end of the loading dock.

Several of the workers were laughing. Cruz raised his head, got to his feet and walked away.

“Who did it?” Reece demanded.

“Yo!” Joe Bill raised his hand.

Reece walked over to him. His balding head reflected the overhead light bulb as he knelt down and looked Joe Bill in the eyes. “You’re the wiseacre who ruined my nap.”

“I saw a rat; a big one.”

“And you just happened to have a fire cracker with you?”

“A cherry bomb. Got it to celebrate the Fourth.”

“Where is this big old rat?”

“Hell, Reece, if you were a rat would you hang around after someone tried to blow you to pieces?”

“No,” Reece sighed, then grinned at Joe Bill. "But I just might come back and bite your ass.”

There were no floors inside the icehouse, just blocks of ice stacked on top of each other. When Griff started at the beginning of summer he had to bend down to avoid hitting the ceiling as he pried the blocks of ice apart and slid them toward the elevators for their descent to the receiving room where they were placed on the conveyor belt that carried them through the tunnel to the icing deck. By now, Griff estimated that they were where a third floor would be as he stood on the ice, the metal creepers strapped to the heels of his steel toed boots dug into the blue sheen as he pulled the blocks apart with his ice tongs. He shoved them with a rubber glove and they accelerated across the slick surface toward a metal chute. The chute led to the thick, lumbered shafts of the two hydraulic elevators. Waiting just in front of the elevators, Joe Bill would kick the hurtling cubes, deflecting them to whichever elevator was ready. As one elevator descended under the weight of the ice the other one, now empty, would ascend. Their work was to the metronomic beat of the elevators, punctuated by the dead thud of ice.

 “I can't believe you really joined the Marines,” Griff said to Joe Bill, his words trailing vapor in the frozen air.

“It was that or get drafted into the Army and be a grunt. It’s the jarheads that get the glory.”

“What about college?”

“What about it?” Joe Bill laughed, releasing a cloud of steam.

Griff watched it rise toward the lights in the ceiling far above them. Yeah, what about it, he said to himself as he bent down and pulled at the ice with his tongs. He saw himself throwing a grenade at a Viet Cong hidden in the jungle. Standing, exposed to fire he wrenched the pin from the cold steel and threw it. He watched as the block of ice slid down the chute toward the elevators. Joe Bill was gone.  The elevator must have gotten jammed and he'd climbed down the shaft to free it.  “Heads up, ice coming!” Griff yelled watching his words drift away hopelessly as the three hundred pound cube slammed into the empty elevator shaft and disappeared. A couple of seconds later there was a loud bang from the bottom of the shaft.

Griff stood frozen for what seemed an eternity. Suddenly, Joe Bill’s head popped up from the empty shaft.

“I sent the block before I saw you were gone," Griff sputtered. "You should have let me know you were going down.”

“Sorry but Reece yelled up the shaft. I used this shaft and was already at the bottom when you dropped that block down the other shaft. You should have seen Cruz jump when that mother exploded at the bottom. I thought he was going to crap." Joe Bill grinned. "Anyway, Reece says we need to go with Cruz to the deck to ice another train."

“Watch for live wires, safety first and all that other bullshit,” Joe Bill joked as they walked single file behind Cruz through the icy water in the narrow passage under the tracks to the icing deck. “Oh, there’s a live wire right in front of us. Naw, it’s just a loose wire.”

“You should keep your voice down, Cruz can hear you,” Griff replied in a whisper.

“So what? He’s too fucked up to do anything about it.”

When they were on the deck, Griff watched Cruz as he walked toward the icer and climbed up into the cab. He had not said a word.  Sparks flew from beneath as the electric motor came to life. The icer started to move toward them. Griff and Joe Bill jumped onto the car of the train they would be icing. The icer stopped on the deck beside them. The funnel was lowered and, like an anchor being drawn from an artic sea, the conveyor belt started moving. “I’ll open the bunkers while you tamp them down with your pike and close them,” Griff said to Joe Bill who stood beside him with the spear like metal pike slung over his right shoulder.

“Don't worry, I got your back,” Joe Bill laughed.  

Griff went forward, leaping from car to car pulling the hatches up in one motion. He imagined they were hatches for the tunnels that he heard the Viet Cong dug and that he was a jarhead tossing in grenades. Finally, exhausted, he reached the end. After catching his breath, he inhaled the sweet smell of the fruit that was ripening in the refrigerator car beneath him. On a nearby track a pair of diesel engines pulled a long line of box cars that had just been assembled in the switching yard. Then, out of nowhere a man sprinted toward a boxcar with an open door, threw a bag inside and climbed on board. The tramp stood up in the doorway and waved as if he was inviting Griff to join him in his adventure.

“To hell with college,” Griff cursed. Suddenly, lightening ripped the black sky to the west, splitting it in jagged seams followed by the crack of thunder. The rain hit Griff like pellets. He turned his back and jumped from the top of the refrigerator car onto the deck and he began running. The icer had stopped and instead of crushed ice, rainwater flowed in a torrent from the funnel that stretched out over the train. Griff ran under it as blocks of ice slid off the rain slick belt and onto the deck.

“Tell the crazy bastard to shut the conveyor belt off,” Joe Bill yelled, his terrified face lit up by lightening as he jabbed frantically with his pike at the white bodies of ice that trapped him. 

Grabbing the slick railing of the ladder to the cab Griff swung onto the bottom rung.  “Turn off the damn conveyor belt before it kills him,” he screamed up at Cruz. He looked at Joe Bill who had dropped his pike and was trying to push the ice away with his hands. Griff pulled himself up to the rain smeared window of the cab and shouted. “Safety first, goddamn it, safety first!”

Cruz pulled a lever and the conveyor belt stopped. Griff scrambled down the ladder and furiously shoved the blocks off the deck until he could reach Joe Bill.

“Jesus, Jesus and Jesus,” Joe Bill muttered as Griff helped him pull his right legs from a hole in the rotted deck. "I could have been killed by goddamn ice cubes.”

Cruz climbed down from the cab and walked past them toward the open hatchway leading to the ladder and the tunnel. “You’re crazy, Cruz,” Joe Bill screamed after him as he sat on his knees with rain streaming down his face.   

Cruz stopped and turned around. Then he pounded his fist into the baseball glove and grinned.