Flatline

It happened yesterday afternoon, about 1:00 p.m. I was working away in the stockroom when I suddenly became aware that it was quiet - very quiet. Having worked so many Saturdays and 5:00 a.m.s in the past, I'm accustomed to the quiet of those times, though I never stopped noticing the difference from a regular workday. Yesterday's quiet was different. It was a Thursday afternoon. There should have been the background noise of a living factory - fork trucks honking, machines running in sheetmetal, the machine shop, and the paint chain. There should have been talking, radio chatter, phones ringing. There was nothing. It was as though everyone had shut off their machines and left the building while I wasn't looking, the kind of sensation I sometimes got when there was an all-employee meeting that I had forgotten about and everyone had left the area. The quiet continues today, and it will not change. The paint chain made its last rounds yesterday, and today everything was wrapped for shipment, painted or not. The machine shop is silent. The last of the large machines in sheetmetal were loaded onto a flatbed. Everyone who has nothing to do is in one of the side rooms, or in the front office, painting the walls, erasing us from the building's memory and clearing the way for someone new. Oh, there is still some noise. I hear the nail gun firing down in the carpenter's shop, as he builds crates for the remaining equipment that is scheduled to go. The fork trucks are still around, and there is still some radio chatter, though it can go long periods of time without a sound, so much so that I sometimes turn mine off and back on just to make sure it's working. This morning I posted the notice for the lunch that the employees club is hosting on the last day. Just awhile ago, one of the supervisors went around handing out layoff notices to his people (they are all in the category that will not be retiring). The end is coming, very soon. After fifty-six years, the heartbeat of this factory has stopped.