The End
1976It is seven a.m., Monday morning. Detroit’s lower east side is still. Pobre Blackstone turns off the alarm and lets his head drop back deep into his pillow. Another day another dollar. Ford Motor Company’s assembly line is waiting for him to show up, punch the clock, and do his time for the day. Dammit, better get up. He has felt the same way each morning for the past twelve years.
Forgetting to brush his teeth or comb his hair thoroughly, Pobre runs out into the brisk morning air and waits for his 1973 Cadillac to warm up. Pobre’s legs aren’t as long as he’d like them to be so he has to pull the seat up as far as it will go. He doesn’t look like the Cadillac type with his short dumpy frame, but he handles the car with grace. He looks more like a Mustang Man, you’d think. He’s handsome enough to get away with a Cadillac because when he takes his Sunday afternoon drives, all the women on the street turn in wonder at this handsome creature in the gold Coupe de Ville.
He turns on the soulful FM station for some music to heat his body, but the news is on instead. Let me see what’s up today, Pobre says out loud. Nixon’s dead!? Hallelujah, the sorry mutha f***a shoulda been dead, long time ago. People are in mourning but are going to work anyway. What was it they said he had? Phlebitis or some shit? Turns out he committed suicide and no one can understand why for the life of them. Turn the station. This is too morbid and funny at the same time. AM. That’s more like it, and one of his favorite tunes accompanies him toward the freeway.
Every dull ass morning I drive the same dull ass way, wear the same dull ass uniform, and feel the same dull ass way going to this lousy job. And look at that old bitch over there. Got enough hairspray in her hair to starch a laundry of clothes. She can afford to bleach her hair to lightening frightening blond and tease it so everybody can see it cause she’s rich. In her Mercedes-Benz, bitch. All them honkies is rich, including the women. This must be her neighbor behind her. Seems like rich people don’t mind tailgating each other. But if it was me behind em, they’d change lanes. I’d like to run into one of em and get me some insurance, something ugly. I bet that dude is in Ford’s office from eight to five, and I bet he has clean fingernails, and I bet he loves his job. I bet he doesn’t mind getting up in the morning. He can drink coffee and eat doughnuts all day and have lunch with the fellas. Probably drinks wine with his lunch and eats his steaks rare. That’s about how often some of us get em too. And look at me, driving this damn Cadillac and don’t even have a savings account for my daughter’s college education. Ain’t had a vacation since we visited Salina’s folks in Norfolk six years ago, and that was a drag anyway. I bet that sucker was in Europe last summer. I work my nuts off, lose six days a week to make money to survive, and can’t say I liked one day, not one damn day.He parks the car in the lot filled with thousands of automobiles. He tries to count the Fords but hardly any are visible.
Good. At least all of us aren’t as stupid and dedicated as they think we are. Here comes Gus, smiling his ass off, and I wonder what makes this man so damn cheerful every morning coming to this Giant Machine.“Hey, what’s happening, Gus? Why don’t you wipe that smirky smile off your face and be serious? I can’t smile when I get up: can’t think of one good reason to. One day I’m gonna wake up and say f*** Ford Motor Company, you know what I mean, man? Doesn’t this job, this place, just make you want to vomit sometimes?”
“Here we go again, you know darn well it’s alright here, man. The pay is good, benefits are excellent, overtime is great, and, besides, where will you ever get a three-week vacation after working two years in a place? You niggers are all alike. Never satisfied with anything but sex. What’s wrong, didn’t you get any last night?”
Gus Nixon, a twenty-nine-year-old country boy, looks down at Pobre and taps him on the shoulder. Gus doesn’t complain about his job. After eight years in the navy, he sees Ford’s assembly line as somewhat of a relaxing atmosphere. He doesn’t have to exert any mental energy like he did then. He just collects his check every Friday, gets drunk on the weekends, and smiles. These are his plans for the next thirty years. Ford has a family plan that Gus is crazy about because it has fit his needs perfectly. What’s to complain about?
Pobre follows him, smiling with his eyes at this fool, but with a serious look on his face, bolts out, “Man, if you weren’t my only white friend, I’d kick your ass for saying that shit. I can never be satisfied with a dull ass job like this, and, if you are, then you’re not as intelligent as the rest of your race, you’re a stupid man. Can’t you do anything else? You shouldn’t be here noway. If it wasn’t for your godfathers I probably wouldn’t be here now. All the rest of your people got every damn thing. What’s your problem? I know you didn’t dream of growing up to be a Ford’s play toy, or did you? This job is enough to drain all your guts dry. No. Hell no! I’m not satisfied with this job. As long as I have to get up every morning when I don’t want to, as long as my paycheck keeps getting bigger and buying less, man, I can’t be satisfied. If I was, then I’d be just like you. Now, we can’t let that happen, can we?”
The two men laugh it off and go their separate ways. Pobre walks past rows and rows of gray and black machines until he gets to his own personal spot. It is already in operating order because the man on the night shift has just gone home. Swissh. Shzzz. Swisssh. Shzzzz. All the machines are holding their daily arguments, each seeing who can be the loudest. Pobre has gotten used to the noise, but he hears nothing as he puts the first steel wedge into its socket. This wedge is the embryo of a car door.
I hope all the doors fall off before it leaves the plant. But they won’t. They never do, never have, and if they did, he wouldn’t be there today.
If this were the pickle factory, I could just spit in the jars or something, but here there isn’t much I could get away with without getting jammed. I used to crack up when Salina told me how they used to flick cigarette ashes in the jars, put buggers in em, and anything else they could find. They hated that job. I guess everybody hates their job.As Pobre begins his daily ritual, his mind goes blank. This happens every morning. This is when he can get his thoughts out of his system because he doesn’t have to use his brain to run a stupid machine. Pobre’s mind begins to drift to last night’s dream or nightmare, and he goes over it again in his head.
In his dream it was worse than the thirties. It had to be. The country was in a big bind, and everybody was freaking scared, almost to the point of leaving. But there was nowhere to go. Everybody was having internal and external problems with other nations. They were all fighting for the same thing. Power. Control. Money. They couldn’t see how impossible it was to sustain all three without the likelihood of war. But that was another thing that had been conspired by all the nations. War was the safest and most undetectable form of genocide.
Even on the domestic front things were taking on the shape of total societal perversion. Men no longer screwed women. Everyone smoked packs of cigarettes a day and bought Valiums in supermarkets for their nerves. Women and men had begun negotiations for a civil war for the same reasons that the nations were battling over. Power. Religious fanatics were all making concessions and preparations for the day the whole world would end because they said it would be any day now. They had foreseen it long ago. It was true, though. Every traumatic incident had taken place and shape in the past five years, and it was just one big scene after another.
The government had initiated a new program called Project Search. It was geared toward capturing all Black people under thirty who were not educated and making them slaves to the government. They all had guaranteed jobs, a place to stay, and good pensions. It created more jobs that people didn’t like but did anyway. All for the same reasons. They didn’t understand what was going on at all. No one did. They just did what they were told and asked no questions. Had a good time.
Things were bad. It seemed as if the Bible was telling the truth after all. Universal Studios recently had gotten a federal grant to turn it into a movie so that in case it was finished before the world ended, everyone would be able to understand why. The movie would be free. Who cared?
Copyright © 2025 by Terry McMillan. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
