December 1st

Keppler died from pneumonia two weeks ago, the first of December if I’m remembering this correctly. The morning when I had first learned of his death, it had been cold. Miller street’s brick buildings and cobblestone alleys had been buried, practically painted white. The roads had been slogged with snow and mud and bodies. Along the wintery roads trudged slouched men with drawn faces. They were the common folk of West Bend. Already soot-covered before they had even reached their factories or started their shifts. The gaunt men walked shoulder to shoulder, I amongst them. 

The news had spread as mild gossip. Entertainment for those who did not know the man, those who had not seen the quality of his character, or the wife and six children he left behind . A friend of Keppler's youngest son, a chimney sweep of sixteen, had mentioned the death to a welder. I had heard of the loss in passing the two on the street. I’m sure my fellow assemblymen learned their own ways as well, although it wouldn’t have been hard to deduce from his absence.

The overseers have yet to clear his station on the assembly line. His rickety green stool is still tucked under the counter. His date stamper, scissors, and plastic wrap are all lined up in neat rows around his cutting mat. Keppler’s spare toolkit remains unopened inside the wooden crate near his stool. No one has touched it, and not due to a lack of need. 

Keppler was reliable, he’d manned the line for three decades. The man knew how to work; He clocked in early and left late, he pressed and packed double the amount of calendars than the rest of our assembly line, and he grinned with all of his teeth, no matter how few and crooked they were. 

And now, he’s gone.

The overseers reckon he’ll be returning to work soon. That thought tied me down to my own rickety chair, and kept scissors in my hands. I let the falsehood of that fact settle in the pit of my stomach, and smothered it. A new set of shears will be trimming calendars in Kepplers station before January. Franklin had called it on our way into the factory this morning.

I looked down the assembly line, rusted scissors resting in my hand. Our line seats about seventy two workers, over a hundred on the days the overseers want to cram more temp-workers in. 

The temps habitually trimmed the Calendars wrong. Although I’ve always felt some do it intentionally. Gazing down at the flimsy stock-paper stacked on my cutting mat, waiting to be transformed, my mind drifts. The temps would trim too much from the top of each paper, rendering the month header space too small for our text stamps. They’d stamp it anyway. In the absence of the overseers they’d laugh, they’re jokes were always merry, they’d drink from flasks they'd hidden in their smocks, and they’d leave like they’d come. 

Temps are too good for Calendars. “Bland and Boring,” one had complained. Bland and boring is leagues above working in the coal mines, or digging ditches for our great king. My calloused finger does not bleed as I run it along the edge of the paper. 

The sheet before me feels cold and lightly textured against my touch. I collect the whole stack of paper and hold them taught. I lower my face to one side of the paper and fan through them. The pages release a sound like the shuffling of feet on carpet. A low whistle would have been ideal, or at least standard quality. Continuing my inspection, I return the stack to it’s bin and take a handful of sheets from its top. The corners on twelve of the pages are already bent despite this stack being fresh from the mechanical presser.

 I rub my stubbled chin and exhale. The date squares, blank save for tiny printed numbers in their right corners, aren’t centered correctly on their pages. Mathematics have never been a strength of mine, Keppler could tell you, but I’ll bite the bullet and estimate they were an inch too far down the page. The printers must need to be recalibrated. 

I glance at Luke. He, like all of the men on my assembly line, wears the same patch-work overalls and blank expression everyday. His eyes are down-cast. His bin for completed calendars is low. Low enough to draw the attention of the overseers. His slumped posture and life-less eyes may mean he’s simply stopped caring about the overseer's discipline. Perhaps he welcomes it. 

If he has noticed the erroneous date squares on his sheets, he hasn’t alerted the line. No one has. A hand-bell perched on the edge of my station, where my cutting mat meets the conveyor belt, reflects the dim light of the overhead windows. 

I should ring the bell. A bead of sweat rolls down my forehead as I measure its distance from my clenched hands. At the bell's curve my own distorted reflection stares back at me. Even the smallest movement, like shifting slightly on my stool, contorts the man into bizarre shapes. 

The bell says nothing. It sits and waits. The longer my fingers stay curled around the handle of my scissors, the louder I can hear the bell laughing. It reflects back the image of a man with blood-shot eyes and dark circles. 

The calendars are off. If Quality Control discovers the flaw, we'll all be punished. Whips and canes hang like mounted displays in the Overseers office. Flogging staff too.  

 I lift my hand to the bell, my fingers brush its wooden handle and pause. It’s cool against my fingers. The handle has small notches in it where a past employee had dug their fingernails into its wood. Quality Control may fail this batch. Like they missed errors on our batch two years ago, that oversight may be repeated. A stool along the line squeals. 

My eyes immediately shoot up from the bell and lock on Joe who is hunched over his calendar. His bell rests on a stake of seldom used tape measures. Absorbed by his work, the old man makes no move towards the bell. He must have only shifted on his stool. Carrie, a woman seated four work stations down from Joe, caught my attention next. Her wrinkled fingers shake as she stamps a completed calendar. Her bell, more weathered than Joe’s in appearance, is left unused. Joe and Carrie were two old crows. No one knows how much longer they’ll last, but it won’t be long. 

Carrie coughs once. The snipping of scissors and rumble of the conveyor belt had muted the sound, but I had seen her. I watched as she halted in her seat, quietly placed her scissors down on her cutting mat and pulled a scrap of fabric from a pocket on her smock pocket. She placed the fabric to her chapped lips. 

The men sitting next to her, Thomas and Harold - south county men - don’t flinch as the frail woman between them hacked until her lips had turned blue. I can’t help but flex my own hands as Carrie grips the edge of the counter to steady herself. 

I retracted my hand from the bell and rested it in my lap. Straightening the paper before me acted only as a minute distraction. Collecting the date stamper from its row, I flipped it over and checked the date pressing end. 

“C-e-c-e-m-b-e-r.” I muttered to myself, rubbing my stubbled chin again.

 That wouldn’t do. 

Squinting at the stamper, I turned its letter dials. After re-evaluating its wording, I wiped my ink-stained hands on my overalls, held the stamper by its handle again, and pressed the stamper down on the paper hard. 

December, stamped in bold black, broadcasted the calendar pages month. Someone down the assembly line began to cough again. Looking was pointless. I stapled the page to the calendar and tossed it into the complete bin.