Gray People

Murray walked out the door and into the late afternoon. Early-evening winds jogged over the blasted topsoil of the parking area; its black surface dominated by itinerant veins of oily leakage sprung from a lineage of underserved and cheap cars. Over this geography, the gust of air lifted itself to meet the concrete structure of the factory, towing in the updraft a chemical bite of chloride and ammonia scraped from the ground. It was a particular breed of wind that tended to burn the nostrils and loiter in the chest.

Murry stopped at the topmost steps of the exit’s stoop, inhaling slowly. It was a practiced motion contrived to avoid the inevitable cough should one be overeager to breathe. After a moment he was acclimated and descended onto the gravel-dirt patina of the lot. Men followed him, alone and in groups, intermittently down the steps, fanning out from the building slowly to settle in acquainted and usual spots. They spoke amongst themselves in hushed tones. All practiced the universal motions of fishing through dirty coveralls to find their misplaced cigarettes.

Murry did not stand with anyone, instead following his own ritual and solitary path under the overcast sky. Gravel crunched meekly under his work boots as he lit his own cigarette with a cupped hand. In a moment he reached what he secretly thought of as his thinkin’ spot.

It was a gray basalt pedestal that rose from the ground about to his chin. He stopped shortly before it and gazed at the metal objects which rested on its flat summit. Two pairs of bronze shoes, large and splayed in a wide stance, nestled there. At one time polished, they had become dirty, encumbered by a tint of grime and the creep of green corrosion. It had stood there for as long as he could remember.

Murry exhaled smoke through his nose as he looked at the base of the pedestal. Near the bottom, within a perimeter of four broken points suggestive of bolts that had been ripped out, was affixed a bronze plaque. Its state mirrored those of the shoes, a blanket of green sulfate spreading over its face. The words, however, remained legible. Here stood the Chelovek. Torn down by the men of the 22nd Workers Union. And underneath this, a declaration: We Can Build a Better Future.

Gravel crunched as Murry shifted his weight. His eyes crept back up, past the memorial and to the landscape beyond. The sky bled over concrete blockhouses that rose and fell like miscued teeth stunted on their way to maturity. They rose to myriad heights, dominating the horizon. Intermittently a spiderweb of frantic black cables spun between the buildings in apparent abandon of the electrical grid, their tendrils giving life to structures in a helter-skelter abuse of power. Of the poles that sustained them skyward, many could be seen cresting the rooftops at sharp angles, ready to fall like great and dead trees in the blasted desert.

His eyes wafted back down to the scene just beyond the factory grounds. A road ran just past the limits of the car park. Besides its ribbon of cracked concrete, a billboard had been raised, just a way off from where Murry stood. Buy Crest! a towering advertisement implored in bloated primary colors. Someone with an admirable determination and lacking a fear of heights had spray-painted Profits to the Workers! in a frantic scrawl within lower margin, just below the exclamation point. The paint was black.

Murry snorted. It was the same snort he’d done past days he could count. Someone behind him coughed hard, and he looked over his shoulder. A man was bent over, heaving air in convulsive fits. Another fellow stood by and held his shoulder, offering neither comfort nor reprieve. Only the kindness of stability, the codependence of cattle.

They all looked the same, the workmen. Some were black, some white, others a kind of brown, but reigning over this was gray. Gray coveralls over gray work shirts. A gray building to which they were carried by gray boots. And when the skies had turned to pitch, they all retreated to the gray bunkhouse, where they laid, closing gray eyes to have gray dreams. Murry was the same, and he knew it. They all knew it.

Murry was still young when they came to this place. His father had patted his head while they took their seats, with his mother sitting tall and vital beside him. The lights of the passenger liner were bright then, blinding his eyes, and he remembered looking up to his mother and seeing something like a halo form around her from the streaming brightness of the cabin. Both gone, long gone, taken in turn by anonymous and brittle chemical disorders. Ten, fifteen years, he’d follow, clutching at his stomach and staring at the wall like all his ilk. There was a snake in his belly that wriggled then, shaking his skin awake like water brought to shiver under the rain.

No whistle screamed and no bell cried out, but a ripple spread through the men as ten minutes died out. Groups began to slowly shift themselves and quiet conversations found their conclusion. Cigarettes were thrown down and their fire ground out. All slowly began to shuffle back to the door, back to work. The coughing man strangled his coughs and spit a brown-red mass onto the dirt. His friend nodded in approval.

Murry looked a final time at the pale monument. Taking a final drag of his cigarette, he spit on the bronze plaque, completing his daily ritual. He let smoke escape his lungs and joined the rest of the atmosphere as his eyes swept back from the scene before him. He turned and walked towards the door, with the rest.

He considered absently if today would be a good day to murder his supervisor, but decided against it. It didn’t really matter. He would probably bleed gray anyway, just like the rest of them.