!Peace Dividend
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by Anna @ October 2022
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Chapter 3: Work at the plant
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Eleanor told me people who do office work wash up
before work but people who work with their hands
like we do wash up after work because our work's
dusty and we sweat, Agnes mused to herself while
she washed from the steaming basin, water mixed
pump-cold with scalding samovar-hot.
I don't know, she thought. I usually wash up before
work too. It wakes me up, gives me time to think.
She dressed, walked to work, took her punch card
from the rack, punched it in the machine. She
caught up on goings-on with her neighbors as they
punched in. The aggregate sifter got stuck. It had
to be shut down and cleaned while Agnes and Eleanor
were at the dacha. There was a new woman in the
kiln. Tanya was pregnant. Peter was scheduled to
recite his poetry at the house of culture after
their shift Thursday.
Agnes put on her eye protection and hearing protec-
tion, went to her work area. Lunch, someone had
said, would be sea vegetable and forest mushroom
with bread.
This plant was built when Agnes and Eleanor were
kids, as one of the peace dividend industries. Most
war industries had to close. It was messy and ugly.
Agnes didn't remember much of it. There were fights
at school, lots of trouble. No one had a good sense
of the future. No institution had the capacity to
manage such a big transition.
The first peace dividend program was health insur-
ance for life with no deductibles, copays, or any
of that old stuff for war workers who lost their
jobs. Then these industries got built. Socially
useful good jobs, Jobs Guarantee jobs doing work
that needed done. Twelve weeks off a year,
pensions. Where you pretend to work and they
pretend to pay you.
Agnes's great-grandma Ruth, who she got her middle
name from, worked in a factory on an assembly line
in a Pennsylvania coal patch. Mama'd told her about
Meme Ruth. Just a few stories, but often enough
Agnes could recite parts of them and anchor her
identity in them a little.
She thought about Meme Ruth while she checked the
accretion electrolyzers' functioning and the qual-
ity of concrete depositing on the forms. She
thought about the solar concentrator Eleanor told
her about two counties over that made the anodes
she was checking. She wanted to visit it and see
all its mirrors.
She saved the inspection notes in the logbook, got
the equipment adjustment tools back where they all
belonged in time for handoff to Andrew, punched
out. She caught the trolleybus to the house of
culture in her work uniform because walking home
would take too long.
