Specimen Days. Michael Cunningham

an inch of the belt.

      “When the drum is turning, you pull the other lever.”

      He pulled a second lever that stood beside the first. The belt slowly began to move. Lucas watched the belt bear the iron plate forward until it met with the teeth of the wheel. The teeth, impressing into the iron, sounded like hammers banging on glass that wouldn’t break.

      “Now. Follow me.” Jack led Lucas to the back of the machine, where the plate was beginning to emerge, full of shallow, square impressions.

      “When it’s come through,” he said, “you go back and pull the levers again. First the second one, then the first. Understand?”

      “Yes,” Lucas said.

      Jack pulled the levers and stopped the machine, first the belt and then the wheel. He released the clamps from the plate of iron.

      “Then you inspect it,” he said. “You make sure it’s taken a complete impression. Four across, six down. They must all be perfect. Look into every square. This is important. If it isn’t perfect you take it over there” (he pointed across the room) “to Will O’Hara, for resmelting. If you have any doubts, show it to Will. If you’re satisfied that the impressions are perfect, if you’re sure, take it to Dan Heaney over there. Any questions?”

      “No, sir,” Lucas said. “I don’t think so.”

      “All right, then. You try it.”

      Lucas took a new plate from the bin. It was heavier than he’d expected but not too heavy to manage. He hoisted it onto the belt, pushed it carefully up to the white line, and attached the clamps. “Is that right?” he asked.

      “What do you think?”

      He tested the clamps. “Should I pull the lever now?” he asked.

      “Yes. Pull the lever.”

      Lucas pulled the first lever, which started the wheel turning. He was briefly exultant. He pulled the second lever, and the belt moved forward. To his relief, the clamps held tight.

      “That’s all right,” Jack said.

      Lucas watched the teeth bite into the iron. Simon would have been pulled under the wheel, first his arm and then the rest. The machine would have ground him in its teeth with the same serenity it brought to the iron. It would have believed—if machines could believe—it had simply produced another iron plate. After it had crushed Simon it would have waited patiently for the next plate.

      “Now,” Jack said, “let’s go and inspect the piece.”

      Lucas went with him to the machine’s far end, and saw what he had made. A plate of iron with square impressions, four across and six down.

      Jack said, “Does it look all right to you?”

      Lucas looked closely. It was difficult to see in the dimness. He ran a finger into each impression. He said, “I think so.”

      “Are you sure?”

      “I think so.”

      “All right, then. What do you do now?”

      “I take it to Dan Heaney.”

      “That’s right.”

      Lucas lifted the stamped iron, carried it to Dan Heaney’s machine. Dan, bulbous and lion-headed, nodded. After a hesitation, Lucas placed the plate carefully in a bin that stood beside Dan’s machine.

      “Fine, then,” Jack said.

      He had pleased Jack.

      Jack said, “Do another one.”

      “Sir,” Lucas asked, “what are these things I’m making?”

      “They’re housings,” Jack said. “Let me watch you do another one.”

       “Yes, sir.”

      Lucas did another one. Jack said it was all right and went off to attend to other things.

      Time passed. Lucas couldn’t have said how much. There were no clocks. There was no daylight. He loaded a plate onto the belt, lined it up, sent it through, and inspected the impressions. Four across, six down. He began trying to drop each plate onto the belt so that its upper edge fell as close to the white line as possible and needed only the slightest nudge to put it in place. For a while he hoped the impressions made by the wheel would be perfect, and after what seemed hours of that he began hoping for minor imperfections, a blunted corner or a slight cant that would have been invisible to eyes less diligent than his. He found only one flawed impression, and that debatable. One of the squares seemed less deep than the others, though he could not be entirely sure. Still, he took the plate proudly over to Will for resmelting and felt strong and capable after.

      When he had tired of trying to hit the line on his first try, and when he had grown indifferent to the question of whether he was searching for flaws or searching for perfection, he tried thinking of other things. He tried thinking of Catherine, of his mother and father. Had his mother awakened? Was she herself again, ready to cook and argue? He tried thinking of Simon. The work, however, didn’t permit such thoughts. The work demanded attention. He entered a state of waking sleep, an ongoing singularity of purpose, in which his mind was filled with that which must fill it, to the exclusion of all else. Align, clamp, pull, pull again, inspect.

      It was after the lunch hour when his sleeve caught in a clamp. He’d allowed his mind to drift. The tug was gentle and insistent as an infant’s grip. He was already reaching for another clamp and saw that a corner of his shirtsleeve was in the serrated mouth of the first, pinched tight between clamp and plate. He pulled instinctively away, but the clamp held the fabric with steady assurance. It was singular and passionate as a rat with a scrap of gristle. Lucas thought for a moment how well the machine was made—the jaws of the clamps were so strong and sure. He tugged again. The clamp didn’t yield. Only when he turned the pin, awkwardly, with his left hand, did the clamp relax itself and give up the corner of his sleeve. The cloth still bore the imprint of the clamp’s tiny toothmarks.

      Lucas looked with mute wonder at the end of his sleeve. This was how. You allowed your attention to wander, you thought of other things, and the clamp took whatever was offered it. That was the clamp’s nature. Lucas looked around guiltily, wondering if Tom or Will or Dan had noticed. They had not noticed. Dan tapped with a wrench on his machine. He struck it firmly but kindly on the flank of the box that held its workings. The wrench rang on the metal like a church bell.

      Lucas rolled his sleeves to his elbows. He went on working.

      It seemed, as he loaded the plates onto the belt, that the machines were not inanimate; not quite inanimate. They were part of a continuum: machines, then grass and trees, then horses and dogs, then human beings. He wondered if the machine had loved Simon, in its serene and unthinking way. He wondered if all the machines at the works, all the furnaces and hooks and belts, mutely admired their men, as horses admired their masters. He wondered if they waited with their immense patience for the moment their men would lose track of themselves, let their caution lapse so the machines could take their hands with loving firmness and pull them in.

      He lifted another plate from the bin, lined it up, fastened the clamps, and sent it under the teeth of the wheel.

      Where was Jack? Didn’t he want to know how well Lucas was doing his work? Lucas said, as the plate went under the wheel, “Urge and urge and urge, always the procreant urge of the world.”

      Jack didn’t come to him until the workday’s end. Jack looked at Lucas, looked at the machine, nodded, and looked at Lucas again.

      “You’ve done all right,” he said.

      “Thank you, sir.”

      “You’ll be back tomorrow, then.”

      “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

       Lucas extended his hand to Jack and was surprised to see that it shook. He had known his fingers were bleeding; he hadn’t known about the