by Ben Dudley

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Ball Bearings

Every Tuesday and Thursday since he began school, Tommy had walked the half-block from the bus-stop to his dad’s South Side factory hand-in-hand with his dad. The last couple of weeks, however, he had made the walk on his own. He agreed with his dad that, yes, he was in Second Grade now, and that, no, he wouldn’t tell his mom, so he would be fine by himself. He’d been getting Cokes for him and his dad at the machine in the back alley for a year and that was even further away than the bus-stop.

It was initially frightening to him and he felt untethered and small the first few times, running until he reached the factory door and then nonchalantly walking in. His dad never made a big deal that Tommy had made it there in one piece and Tommy took comfort in his confidence.

Tommy no longer needed to run from the stop, but he chose to on his first Tuesday back in the factory since returning from vacation with his mom and Jerry. He had resolved to explore more of the factory after he discovered his classmates were interested in the old building over which Tommy had free reign. He wanted to be able to answer more of their questions (“Any dead bodies?” was the one that intrigued him the most) and all he could think about as Jerry endeavored to teach him how to eat lobster for an entire week was the one door in the factory that he had never even tried to open. It was in the back office and he couldn’t fathom what was on the other side, apart from darkness, which seeped out from under the door.

Tommy forced himself into a nonchalant walk as he entered Tanlan Binderies, dropped his Evel Knievel lunchbox in the main office, said hi to his dad, and crossed the factory floor to the back office. He realized his dad had asked him a question thirty seconds ago and muttered “Maine was fine” to himself as he entered the seldom used room.

Tommy’s dad used to spend more time in the back office, but he stopped using it because it was on the other side of the building than all of the machines and he spent more time fixing the presses than he used to. Tommy himself hadn’t been in the back office since he was five, when he found a green ball-bearing on the black carpet and tried to eat it, even though he knew it wasn’t candy. He remained embarrassed that he had done something so stereotypically childish. Even if it had been candy, it had been on the floor. It was one of the only times he had been yelled at and he absolutely deserved it. There were still ball-bearings on the floor now, but they didn’t seem green or round anymore and Tommy was smugly disinterested in them. His attention was on the door, which was there on the far wall, as solid and dark as it had been in his memory.

As he approached the door, he passed a compartmentalized wooden desk, legless and completely empty except for dust and a photo of his father and a woman. The photo was tacked up inside one of the cubbyholes in the desk and the woman was in a bright pink bikini. Tommy’s dad had on jeans and a t-shirt and big dark sunglasses, even though it was night wherever he and the woman were (Tommy wasn’t sure: there was mud everywhere, a chain link fence out-of-focus in the background and a giant tire sticking into the picture from the right). Tommy’s dad was smiling, a can in one hand and his other hand around the woman’s midsection. The woman’s pubic hair was visible along the top of her bikini bottom. She was smiling slyly.

Tommy turned with his back to the door he had come through and bent down so the picture was near the cubbyhole where he had found it, in case he had to shove it back in quickly. He’d seen bikinis before and he knew what pubic hair was. His dad’s hand on the woman’s side was only a few inches away from her pubic hair. His fingers were spread out and pressed firmly against her skin. Why was she dressed like that at night, outside, with no water around? Did his dad know she was going to be there when he was going? What did his dad think when he saw her pubic hair? When he was walking up to her, did he look at it? Did he say anything to her about it?

Tommy hoped he hadn’t.

He thought about his dad’s poster of Chicago as seen from a helicopter and how his dad had shown him, way in the back of the picture, a grey swatch of color that was the South Side. He thought about how the giant industrial building was a speck in that swatch, and how he was in just one of the factories in the building, in a room in the factory, holding a picture that was in a cubbyhole in the room.

The house he had lived in with his parents when they were still together wasn’t on the poster. When Tommy asked where their house was, his dad had put the poster down on his workbench and pointed to a spot a few feet to the left, in the middle of a ring a beer can had left on the wooden surface days or years prior.

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Ben Dudley is pursuing his Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Cincinnati, where he teaches composition. He occasionally directs commercials for a down bedding company, often performs stand up comedy, and sometimes writes screenplays. His work has appeared in Foliate Oak Magazine and Zero Ducats.