MIDNIGHT MAN

                                              MIDNIGHT MAN

                                                   by Moss Hall

           It was my nose that gave me the first clue that I was near my objective. I was looking for a bakery, and its aroma filled the neighborhood around it with memories. Mine took me back to first grade and my Mom’s kitchen, with a lemon cake in the oven and chocolate fudge in a bowl that I would be allowed to clean.

           Jobs were scarce in that summer of my eighteenth year. If I failed to earn money my plans for college would have to go on hold. But I hit a rare bit of luck. The ad in the paper looked promising; Apprentice. Bakery. No experience required. We train. I called and scored an appointment with a Mr. Pomeroy, some honcho with the CrumYummy Bakery USA. I found the large brick building that was their headquarters and walked into the lobby “dressed to impress”: sport coat, clean shirt and tie, leather shoes.

           I was quickly ushered into the office of Mr. Pomeroy, a large man with both belt and suspenders over a rotund stomach.

           “Mason Donnelly,” he said, “Welcome to CrumYummy Central!”

           “People call me ‘Mace,’ sir,” I replied.

           “Didn’t you play some ball over at the high school? He asked.

           “No, sir. That was Marsh Donnelly, no relation. He was All-City in football. I was on the debate team.”

           Ah, ho!” he said. “I guess we won’t be arguing with you then, will we? Ha!”

           “No, sir. I guess not,” I smiled

           “Mace, when we take on new employees here, we seek people who are eager to learn the bakery business from the ground up. Does that sound like you?”

           “Aww…just like me, Mr. Pomeroy!”

           “I like your style, son. We have an opening now in our Restore Department, on the graveyard shift. You seem to be a good fit for it. Whattaya say?”

           “I’d really like the job, sir!”

           Okay, Mace! You report back here tonight at 11:30 and ask for Mr. Trask,

Our night foreman. He will show you the ropes. Dress casual and bring a sack lunch!”

           “Okay! I will be here, Mr. Pomeroy,” I said, a bit taken aback by the suddenness of it all. Wow! That was easy! What’s the catch?

           He held out his hand and I shook it. Then he turned serious: “Mason Donnelly, welcome to the CrumYummy family. You are our new Midnight Man!”

                                                              ***

           Mr. Trask met me in the lobby that night. He was a wild-haired guy in shirtsleeves, his tie askew. He carried a clipboard and the general attitude of someone who wanted to be anywhere but here. He led me into the plant, a warehouse-sized building containing a labyrinth of machinery, from large glowing ovens to clicking, clanking assembly and packing equipment. And that aroma! I stopped and inhaled deeply. Trask noticed.

           “You’ll get used to it,” he snapped, checking his watch. “Let’s move it, Donnelly!”

           As we walked, he filled me in on ‘Graveyard Shift.’ “You work from midnight to eight in the morning, with a half hour food break at 4 a.m. Got it?”

           I clutched my sack lunch a little closer. “Yes, sir,” I said. We finally arrived at the “Restore Department,” my work station. This turned out to be a long “tray washing machine” which had two chainlike conveyor belts moving through it. The job was to take the trays in which something called “Treemies” had just been baked and set them upside down on the conveyor belts so that they could be drawn through the washing process. 

           If you have never seen or eaten a Treemy, they are sausage shaped confections consisting of golden sponge cake with a vanilla cream filling. They are baked in flat, rectangular trays with about a hundred indentations to hold the dough. When the trays come out of the oven, they are turned over and the Treemies fall out, leaving a bit of residue in the indentations. My mission was to remove that residue.

           I got my first hint of how long a night this was going to be when a worker showed up towing a cart with dirty trays stacked on it. The stacks were higher than his head. He pulled the cart up next to me and left. Trask showed me how to do the work: you had to take the trays off the stacks three at a time and, in one motion, flip them over onto the conveyor belts. But the trays were made of cast iron. I tried lifting three at once and couldn’t budge them. Trask, a busy man, left me to my fate. I tried two trays. Too heavy. I tried one, and could just make it. But those belts were motating; I couldn’t fill up all the empty slots with just one tray at a time.

           The cart man came back hauling another load. I checked the time. It was about 12:30. How was I going to get through eight hours of this? I struggled on valiantly, wrestling those damned filthy trays onto the belts as full carts lined up one behind the other. Finally, the lunch whistle blew and I sat down with my little sack. But I was too wasted to eat anything. I just sat there, staring at a tomato sandwich and those damned Treemy trays. 

           Then I noticed that near my washing machine was a long table where several jolly African-American women worked. They were a happy bunch, chatting, laughing and singing at their work. I edged over to see what they were doing. The ladies stood in front of an assembly line. Moving along it were flat rectangles of cake. Their job was to spread jelly on them and roll them up. They were jellyroll makers.

           My mind began to wander. What if...

           If I stuck it out on the Treemy machine for a couple of years...I could get a promotion to jelly roller and work with the happy ladies. A couple of years of that, and I would be promoted to the premier bakery job, the one everyone longed for but few attained -- cream shooter.

           Because it was obvious that the sweet cream had to get into those baked Treemies somehow. It must be injected with hypodermic needles, and the operators of those needles would be, obviously, cream shooters. I could be one. My overactive imagination took over…

                                                                ***

           I stood facing the assembly line, my loaded hypo ready, as the golden Treemies paraded past. With one deft move I picked them up, carefully inserted the needle, and filled them with cream. Then I placed them on the packaging line for final inspection. I was a skilled and highly paid bakery worker now, on the best shift -- noon to 8 p.m. When we Shooters got off, it was time to party.

           The four perky girls at a table in the Rusty Sprocket Bar looked up as I came in. 

           “Who is HE?” one of then whispered.

           “Oh, that’s Mace. He’s a Shooter at CrumYummy,” a second replied.

           “You know him? Well, wave or something! Get him over here!”

           I spotted their bold waves and flashing smiles, and gave them a kindly grin in return. With a suave gesture, I indicated that I had a previous engagement at the bar. And that I did. Standing there were two tall, striking beauties with tousled auburn hair, holding out flutes of champagne and smiling enticingly as I approached. And I knew that later that evening, in my oceanfront condominium, I would be giving a demonstration of my specialty to both of those lovelies. Life was good.

           But fate intervenes in my happy story. Too much partying, too many ladies too late on Sunday night and a Shooter can quickly fall from the heights. I know all too well. It happened to me one Monday morning. Oh, all seemed well as I took my post and accepted the first loaded hypo from my eager assistant. And my first few injections were perfect, as usual. 

           But after an hour, something went wrong. A slight tremor in the hand, a wave of pain behind the eyes...and I missed, badly. My needle entered at the wrong angle and the sweet white cream penetrated the surface of the cake. I had produced an Erupted Treemy, or ET, as we knew them in the trade. By company rule, all ETs had to be consumed on the spot by the perpetrator. And, clever devils that they were, the managers had us all carefully weighed after each shift. These weights were charted and compared, to track the wastage on the shooting line. If a Shooter gained up to one pound during an occasional month, it drew a stern reprimand. Two pounds and you were summarily fired.

           With a confident smirk, I consumed the offending Treemy and took a freshly loaded hypo from my assistant, implying with a shrug that it was the needle’s fault, not mine. But on three of the next four insertions, the same strange malaise hit me and I stuffed three more ETs into my protesting gullet...

           Why eat these ruptured desserts? Why not hide them, stash them, destroy them? Management was way ahead of that game. Their security squad was the best in the business. Security staffers patrolled on catwalks above the assembly lines, their eagle eyes fixed on every movement.

           And who could forget the horror of a crime uncovered? The frightening Trumble! of their boots as the Security Enforcers tromped down the aisle, their eyes blank, their truncheons at the ready. And the sickening Trak! of metal on bone. Then the long swush of the miscreant body being dragged out by the feet...Oh, no. You did not mess with these people...

* * *

           The whistle whined. My lunch break had ended. I turned again to my machine and the horror of feeding it hour after hour, night after night, week after week...

           Somehow, I got through the shift. When dawn came, my relief arrived: the day guy, the guy who would do the job for the next eight hours and who had been doing this for who knows how long. He was built exactly like the Hairy Ape of O’Neill’s famous play. A square, squat, muscular little guy with long sinewy arms and a very low brow. He began flipping Treemy trays, three at a time, onto the belts as easily as I might shuffle a deck of cards.

           I did not return to the CrumYummy family the next night, or ever. I sent Mr. Pomeroy a nice letter, which read:

           Dear Mr. Pomeroy:

I want to thank you for the opportunity to learn the bakery business from the ground up. After one shift on the cleaning machine, I was so “ground up” that I could barely move.

I wish you all the best in your endeavors, but for God’s sake, change the name. “CrumYummy” is the dumbest business name ever invented.

If you are looking for a replacement for the cleaning job, I suggest you try the zoo. Ha!

Cordially,

Mason Donnelly

Retired Midnight Man

                                                          ###