During the course of a conversation with my sister, she mentioned a guy she had met. He was a socialist who worked in a cannon factory. She knew that would get my attention. So, I asked, how does a socialist justify working in a cannon factory? She grinned, and said that he screws up everything that he can.
I laughed. And I thought it deserved its own story. Following is my absolutely true, sort of, story of the Loose Cannon.
LOOSE CANNON
“I’ve heard wind-up dolls with more smarts than you, Malcomb. And less repetitive. What’s it been? Five years? And you're still telling the same story you told then.”
“That’s because nothing has changed. When things change, I’ll change my story.”
Malcomb and Len were at it again. It was a bit of a tradition, when some of us gathered for a beer after work on Fridays. I sometimes thought that Malcomb picked his fights on purpose, just for the sake of having something to fight about. No, not fistfights. I’d have to guess that Malcomb was too much the coward to get physical. But he sure could argue.
“Here we go again,” said Len. “Change. That’s all I keep hearing. Change. Change to what? I don’t see any reason to change. I’m not suffering. You’re not suffering. Your family’s not suffering.”
I think Len knew that he’d left Malcom wide open. Maybe he didn’t care. Maybe he enjoyed all of this. At any rate, he put the bottle of beer to his lips and took a long draw as Malcomb expounded.
“And that works for you? You’re not suffering, so to hell with everyone else? I’m not suffering, so to hell with everyone else? What about the millions of people who ARE suffering? To hell with them, because you don’t know them? And if you don’t know them, you can’t feel their suffering. So to hell with them.”
It was Malcomb’s turn to suck on his beer, as Len responded. “So, how do you know they’re suffering, if you don’t even know who they are? I’ll help people when I know they need help. Hell, I’d even help you, if I knew you needed help. Oh, wait. You DO need help. Lot’s of it.” Len glanced around at the rest of us to gauge our acceptance of his joke. It achieved only minor chuckles. The problem was that we witnessed conversation like this far too regularly, and we were a bit tired of it. Even a funny joke goes flat when it’s repeated too many times.
Carl jumped in. “You two are driving me nuts. Talk is cheap. We all care. Maybe we all care about different things and in different ways. There’s no one right way.” He took a pull on his beer, but everyone knew to wait. “You two are a friggin’ broken record. What’s any of it good for?”
“I’ll drink to that, “ laughed Tommy, as he raised his bottle. Interestingly, we all raised our bottles, even Malcomb and Len.
I was always the least inclined to talk, but I chimed in. “What in the hell is it that we’re drinking to?”
“To bullshit”, answered Tommy. “Meet in the bar after work, order our beers, and then let the bullshit fly! It’s the American way!” Again, he raised his bottle. “To bullshit!”
“To bullshit!” we all cheered.
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We all work at Johnson and Walters Munition Corporation. We make cannons. We make cannons of every size and for every occasion. We make cannons for tanks, and we make cannons that destroy tanks. We make the cannons for the navy, and we make good old fashioned howitzers. All of our group, all the guys who meet at the bar, are machinists. It’s involved. Milling and rifling a cannon barrel to within one thousandth of an inch takes skill and experience. I like that. I like that it is up to me. That is, the parts that I am responsible for are up to me. There’s a whole big factory, and a lot of people are responsible for a lot of things, but I mill the barrels. It’s satisfying to have an objective, a goal that is up to me to achieve. All I need to do is to do it. Like I said, it’s challenging, but the objective is clear.
The others are a lot like me in that way. Yes, we cooperate and consult if there are problems with a machine or some other reason to put our heads together. That happens often enough, but we mostly have our own responsibilities, and we see to them.
And then there’s Malcomb. He’s just different. He’s one really nice guy, and we all like him and he likes us. But I don’t get why he’s here. He has little pride of workmanship. He is dedicated, all right, but to what I can’t really say. I’m not sure he can really say. But if there’s a cause, he’s probably part of it. Yes, he wants to save the planet. But don’t we all? He wants to feed the hungry. Don’t we all? But for Malcomb, somehow, such things are divisive issues. Really, I think there’s something inside him that needs to have issues to stand on. He needs them to gain some sense of purpose, or meaning, or something. It all makes perfect sense to him, but I don’t get it.
So, the rest of us at W-M make cannons, each doing our part to make a workable cannon. But Malcomb is, well, a loose cannon. He screws so many things up that I think the factory would be more productive without him. In fact, I’d surreptitiously suggested to the shop superintendent, Ken Shaw, that we might all do better without Malcomb. He blew me off, telling me that Malcomb met the job requirements and there was nothing he could do about him. I can’t say I was shocked. On the one hand, how can such a clearly incompetent guy meet the “job requirements”? Yet I know that not rocking the boat is necessary to a successful business. I’m a machinist, and I machine gun barrels. Malcomb is somebody else’s problem.
Well, not entirely. I’ve had extra work on my hands, thanks to Malcomb. He operates the gib crane that moves those barrels from station to station. The first time he dropped a barrel, creating a loud boom and cracked concrete, I ran to him and surveyed the damage. Others were gathering around, just like at an auto accident. I told him, are you nuts? Somebody could have been killed! He leaned to me a bit and said quietly, “Not a chance. I made sure the area was clear before I dropped it!”
The look on my face seemed to satisfy him. I couldn’t think of anything to say. The cannon barrel would have to go back to my station to be remachined, which is two days down the drain. One day, if it wasn’t too badly damaged.
Oddly, I couldn’t decide if I should report Malcomb, or even tell my coworkers. Reporting him would probably count for little, since Malcomb would deny what he told me. The company of course has records of accidents, and they must be made available to anyone. So, I looked. Malcomb had dropped barrels on several occasions, but nobody was ever hurt, and injury accidents were the ones that got attention. Without making a big thing of it, I asked Ken, the shop superintendent, about why the company accepted barrels being dropped. Even if truly accidental, it wasn’t a good thing. Ken replied that the incidents were within established parameters. But, I said, those parameters were set by Malcomb dropping barrels. Why accept them? Ken replied with a sight smile, “It’s not all as obvious as you think it is. I suggest you just let it go.”
So, I let it go. Sort of. I had the chance to talk with Malcom privately a few days later. We were both the first at Buddy’s for lunch. He was sitting at a table by himself, and I sat down across from him. Others would be there shortly. Sally brought us each the drinks that she knew we would want, and walked off. She’d take our orders when we were all there. After she left, and before Malcomb could start up with anything, I said, “Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”
“Sure. I’m an open book. What do you want to know?”
“Why in the hell do you drop those barrels? Even if you make sure to not kill anyone, why do you drop them? For what?”
Malcomb looked at me as if he was trying to decide how to explain to a child that there is no Santa Claus. “I don’t like the system. We are being controlled, put in positions from which there is no escape. We might as well be farm animals, controlled by, and for the use of, the farmer. You know me. I’m opposed to the military-industrial capitalist system. That’s why I do it. But of course, if you say anything, I’ll deny it.”
The drinks came. “But it’s so pointless. You are changing nothing. Accomplishing nothing. The guns get made. It all goes on. What’s the point?”
He thought a bit as we took a pull on our beers. I think he was showing me something that not too many people ever saw. “I do it, first of all, for myself. It’s how I rebel. It’s how I keep a sense of my own self, even in this world of conformity to capitalism. In small ways like this, I get to win sometimes.”
His sincerity impressed me, even if I didn’t get it. His own self? I identify as a skilled machinist. I did work that few could do, and I did it well. What was Malcomb’s sense of identity, such that he could destroy our work and feel good about it? I should have been mad, but I wasn’t. Why wasn’t I?
Malcomb took another swig of beer as he observed me processing my thoughts. “And you know, it’s not just me. Different people; some here, some there; you’d be surprised how effective we can be. It takes far fewer people to tear something down, than it took to build it….”
He would have continued, but the rest of the guys walked in, and it was time to order lunch.
I enjoyed this post. I can relate. I worked at a bomb factory once.