Fields of Fire

   Most of the workers spent their lunch breaks in the courtyard, where they could sit at the rusting picnic tables and inhale some of the crisp air that so seldom made it into the factory. They were dressed in similar overalls of dull blues and greys, with a few wearing caps in the same shades. Each had a lunchbox issued to them which sat uniformly along the edges of the six tables, and their red color gave them the look of stunted toolboxes.
    The courtyard bordered the west side of the squat factory building, with the tables on the southern end in a three by two grid. The other end of the lot was for employee parking, where second hand pickups and dented compacts rested between faded white lines. The factory itself was two stories of brick and tiny windows, and its only distinguishing features were the two smokestacks that rose on either end of its roof.
    “Twelve years.” One of the men said, staring at his sandwich.
    It was bologna and Swiss.
    “Next year would‘ve been my twenty fifth.” A man with a tuna salad sandwich replied.
    “Any of you remember what was here before?”
    The two men looked to the next table over, where the oldest man at the factory was chewing on a hoagie. They shook their heads.
    “Wasn’t anything, nothing at all. Just a big empty field where the grass was overgrown. Used to be a bunch of prairie dogs that would dash around in it.”
    The men looked back at their lunches.
    “I used to come as a boy. I’d run up the hill with a lunch from home in a kerchief.” The hoagie man pointed and traced the line of the hill from memory, drawing his imaginary slope over the hard angles of the factory building. “I’d sit up top, and on cloudy days when the light poked through just right, sometimes the field looked like it was on fire.”   
    The man with the tuna sandwich cleared his throat and nudged the man with the bologna sandwich. They smiled to each other as the old timer went on.
    “It was beautiful.” He said.
    For a moment, the dim colors of the courtyard bled away and let through the shades of the old man’s youth. For a moment he felt strength return to his old joints and remembered what it was like to pump his legs and lean into the wind as he crested the hill of the field. For a moment he could see the long lazy stalks of wild grass whip round and play tricks on his eyes again, inviting imaginings into the mind of a curious boy. For a moment, and then he was just an old man at a picnic table again.
    A few men seated at the old man’s table had gotten up and walked to the far side of the lot. They were lighting cigarettes as justification, but really they just didn’t want to listen to him anymore.
    “Sometimes there’d be a dog; a scruffy thing with black and white fur. All in patches, you know? I played fetch with him for a whole afternoon once.”
    The man with the tuna sandwich had finished his food, and crumpled his garbage into his lunchbox. The man with the bologna hadn’t yet finished, and looked betrayed as his neighbor got up and left.
    “Even when they started developing up around the dunes, and over to Hill 57, they still left the field. They put up them ugly condos and built a few silly shopping centers around, but they left the field alone for a long time. Least until the factory folks came along.”
    The old man had left his hoagie sitting on the table, with two big bites taken out of the end of it. The wax paper wrapped around it flapped in the breeze as he talked.
    “One day when I was about fourteen I was walking up with my lunch like always, except they had the field marked off behind this brand new chain link. Same as it is now, I think.”
    The man with the bologna sandwich stuffed the last two bites in his mouth and stood up, leaving while chewing.
    “They had a whole team of guys cutting down the grass, just shredding it all to pieces. Had those big gas powered weed wackers, and the lawn mowers you ride on. Must’ve only taken them the afternoon to bald the hill.”
    There were only a few men left at the tables, with most at the other end of the courtyard smoking away from the old man.
    “They had the concrete for the foundation down by the next week, and then it felt like the field had never been there at all. Just this cold patch of grey over the spot where I’d been a boy.”
    The low whistle from the factory sounded, and the men began to shuffle inside to finish their last day at work. The old man stayed at his table.
    He put his sandwich down and studied the building. The red of the brick was a bland brown now, but he couldn’t tell if it was the building or his eyes that had dulled. He thought about a few years from now, when the lot would be long vacant and the blacktop would be cracked and uneven. He pictured the weeds that would be overgrown, the dust and soot that would blanket and hide whatever couldn’t be sold inside the factory, and the way the windows would dirty and fill with haze. He thought that maybe if it went untouched long enough there might be a chance that the lot would split and open enough to let some of the old wild grass push through again. And maybe if left alone, it could grow as long and virile as the memories of his youth, and dance in the eyes of another young man.
    As the last of the men trailed in through the factory entrance, the old man stood up slowly from the table and made his way to meet them. He left his sandwich absently on the table, where its paper crinkled and caught in the wind like a sail, tumbling over itself and falling to the ground.

Reviews

[DavidRyanM]

I dig it, man. I'm enjoying the same kind of writing - small moments in someone's life that has a lot of meaning behind it if only looked for, and sometimes meaning that is pushed into the reader's line of sight. I enjoyed the imagery of the man telling his story and how it meant the world to him (and was about a world left far behind) and the other men not paying it much attention and going back inside. Heartbreaking to think that even though the building is closing and will soon be left vacant, it's all these men have so they file back in for their last hours of pay. Liked this piece a lot, man. Great job.

[13.9]

I really have to agree with DavidRyanM. This is really well written, and I love the idea of taking just a snippet of these men's lives. Not giving them names removes a sense of specific continuity between characters, which I think worked well for this, like there's no solid attachment to any particular character. I also really like your description and the use of detail, focusing on particular small aspects of the scene, like the sandwiches or the toolbox lunchboxes.

I spotted a few comma errors, which I can point out if you like, but if I really had to nitpick over anything, there was one sentence which stood out a bit. "They were lighting cigarettes as justification, but really they just didn’t want to listen to him anymore." I felt like that kind of clashed with the rest of the story, outright stating their motivation and making their actions a little too flagrant, something you seemed to avoid in the rest of the story.

Overall, though, I honestly did really like this story. I thought it was well written, I love your use of detail, and I'm particularly fond of the ending, with the old man deconstructing the factory. Good write. ^^