I’m fascinated with this whole printing process, much more impressed by the factory than I am by our top salesman’s million-dollar account.
I stand beside a stack of wooden pallets and watch Rubie go to work. He’s the Feeder for this press, meaning that the whole job depends on whether or not he can keep the paper moving. He stands with legs straddled in front of the latest four-foot-wide roll he’s about to feed into the machine. The paper is dull--high-bulk, they call it--and the press can run off about 60,000 impressions in minutes. He hits a few buttons on the console to the left, slashes a perfect inverted triangle on the front of the roll with a razor he stores between his teeth, then rips off the excess paper.
He winds the “junk” paper around and around into a four-foot-long cone, then hefts it with both arms to the right into a large recycle basket. The cone sails past my head on its way to the basket, a little too close for comfort. Drops of sweat spring up on Rubie’s brow--the temperature is always fifteen degrees warmer in the factory than it is outside. He slaps some double-sided tape onto the inverted triangle, then feeds it carefully beneath arm-length metal clamps. The last roll is just about to sputter away, until the clamps lift the new roll up and into place. He now has five minutes to rest.
I’m getting bored with all this work, so I start bouncing on my toes with my fists raised, swinging around like a shadowboxer.
He glances at me and cracks a half-smile. “You’re a nut case!” he yells.
Thirty feet away, at the front of the press, the supervisor turns to peer down at us. I immediately drop my impromptu boxing stance. Rubie fiddles with the controls in his Rollstand, and I smooth down my wrinkled dress shirt.
“Hey, I’m gonna take off!” I yell.
Rubie turns, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of a hand. The gesture stirs a strange feeling inside me, like longing, or subdued pain. Before he can say anything, I step into the small, hot enclosure of the Rollstand and pull him into my arms. He doesn’t resist, and I feel his chest, solid and warm as his body bends to mine.
I hold onto him for the briefest second as the presses rumble all around us. Then I stretch upward--he’s taller than me by only an inch or so--and whisper, “Merry Christmas” into his ear. I kiss him on the cheek and pull away, my courage now fading. He doesn’t move, only looks at me with softened eyes and an impossibly young face. A strong urge to cry rises in my throat, so I spin around and head for the back door. I remember, as I clamber down the metal steps, that Rubie is impractical, that together we are a volatile mix. I have to keep balancing on that tightrope, keep my sights on the other side.
But it's never easy.
