Auggie's Mirror
-Joe Trocino
As tough a guy as he pictured himself, Auggie Pastorini found it difficult to walk past a mirror. At fifty-seven years, Auggie had one view of himself in his head. Yet the mirror, any mirror, betrayed another, older, grayer view. So it was a struggle for Auggie every morning, when shaving a day’s worth of black and gray stubble from his craggy face required peering into to his bathroom’s medicine cabinet mirror. Just like Auggie himself, the mirror was a kind of throw-back. Small and hinged on one side, its metal door opened to cluttered glass shelves and a small slot for safety razors that emptied into an abyss beyond the wall, where its contents is known only to the mice. Like so many of the things that surrounded Auggie, the bathroom mirror was from an earlier time. It wasn’t one of those huge, flat mirrors with bright lights above, the ones that are so popular in the newer houses. No, it was one of those mirrors from a time when capacious bathroom luxury was not yet a big idea. Auggie’s house wasn’t a big idea either. Half of a flat roofed duplex, it looked just like most of the houses on his block: dull, with white marble steps leading to a small landing in the front, and a backyard in the back filled with old-growth shrubbery and tomato plants. It had been "Auggie’s place" since 1965, when he and his wife had found the money to move out of her parent’s flat and into this, their only home. Parts of Fell’s Point had not changed for half a century. Certainly not since Auggie had moved into his duplex. Homes hadn’t come up for sale very much in the fifties and sixties, and Auggie was sure he was going to have to wait for his in-laws to die or move to a nursing home before he could have his own home. But the duplex came up for sale suddenly, and between his job at the Sparrow’s Point Steel Plant and his wife’s part time work, they managed to get the house. Rubbing the lather slowly onto his face, in a shaving ritual that had begun for him in his teens, Auggie began to think about his days at the steel mill. Hot, sweaty days filled with the odors of burnt, carbonized impurities and ozone. Inserting the safety razor blade into its holder, Auggie began to scrape away his stubble as he always did, from left to right. Somewhere around the cleft in his chin, Auggie began to consider his life at the steel mill. Flat feet had kept him out of the reach of the Army’s draft, so Auggie, with the help of an uncle, had gone straight to work at the Sparrow’s Point plant when his school days were over. At first, it was nails. Millions of them, in myriad shapes and sizes. Brads and staples, flat heads and dry-walls, all made by Auggie and his mates by feeding thin steel wire through a machine ("like spaghetti," Auggie would tell his wife) where each nail would be chopped off to its proper length, have one end pounded flat if it needed to be flat and have its opposite end chiseled into a point. Auggie made nails for two years and became an expert at assuring that the nail machine chopped, banged, chiseled and pounded correctly. But Auggie also began to realize that in listening to the incessant chopping, banging and chiseling, he had lost interest in a few things that were important to his life. Like reading. And travel. The nail machine had to go. His uncle helped him once again, and Auggie move up to a higher level at the mill. He became a "pickler." Sweeping the razor across his left cheek, and rinsing the suds away in the sink, Auggie thought back to his days galvanizing steel. It was not the best job at Sparrow’s Point, but it paid more than working the nail-making machine. It was a dangerous job, and one that was usually avoided by the older workers. To galvanize steel sheets, that is, to harden the sheets against corrosion, required the submersion of the steel into a bath of pure sulfuric acid for a short time; to "pickle" them in the acid. Auggie’s job was the bathmaster. He still has acid burn scars on his arm, places where body hair won’t grow, to remind him. What Auggie learned during this time was fear. Pure, muscle tightening, throat constricting, speechless fear. Even at home at night, in the dark of his bedroom, visions of splashing acid melting his face would haunt him. Worse, Auggie would dream, as he still does, a recurrent nightmare. In this dream it would be lunch time at the mill, and he would be alone, pickling a final batch of sheet metal. An unseen wet spot on the floor, a slip - and a head first, screaming tumble into the acid bath would bring instant death to Auggie. But worse than death, the acid would quickly dissolves Auggie’s body into tiny atoms - never to be seen again, or missed, by anyone. The pickling vat has, in Auggie’s dream, changed him from a man into nothing. Auggie stops shaving for a moment, and braces himself with both hands against the sink, so great is his remembrance of this fear. Not the fear of a scalding, sulfuric acid death, but the fear of becoming nothing. It takes Auggie a few moment to gain control of his breathing, to loosen the taut muscles in his arms, in his jaw. But he finds a way to continue shaving. His mind begins racing again, as it has for the past few years. "I am not alone," he tells himself. "I have never been alone - I have a wife and kids, and friends and family." This nightmare is just a dream." Continuing, Auggie reminds himself that the pickling vat is long, long out of his life, and that he has moved up, over the years, to more prestigious work at Sparrow’s Point. "I’m never going to fall into that vat, I never did, no one ever has, and I will never melt away into nothingness," thought Auggie, as he addressed his fears. About the age of twenty six, Auggie was promoted at the mill again. This was good, since now it was wife and first child at home, and the extra money was a helpful Godsend. The new work involved the shaping of huge slabs of steel into I-beams. This was accomplished through the dramatic pounding of red hot ingots of steel by massive machines which passed the ingots over rollers and into giant hammers and flatteners until the proper shape was achieved. Auggie learned to operate this series of machines, which brought considerable prestige to Auggie among his coworkers, even though it never meant much to Auggie. At first, the rolling of the hot steel over the shaping machine, followed by the loud pounding of the end-shapers was exciting and demanding to Auggie, so much so that he forgot the pickling vat. His nightmares eased off, for awhile. By the time he was thirty two, however, Auggie began to feel that he was the steel ingot being rolled, pounded and shaped by an unseen manipulator. Auggie didn’t want to be an I-beam. He didn’t know what he wanted to be, but he knew it wasn’t the I-beam someone else wanted him to be. Auggie tried to resist, but the rollers moved him this way and that, his head and feet being pounded into the shape desired by this unseen worker. There was nothing he could do about it. The rollers were slick, and the pounding machine hard, and unforgiving. This was Auggie’s new dream, and he dreamt it more often, and over more years than he had dreamt the acid-vat dream. Auggie’s career at Sparrow’s Point never faltered. He was a diligent worker, reliable and teachable. So it was not without the understandable admiration of his coworkers that one day, at age forty five, Auggie was promoted to the most demanding, responsible job at Sparrow’s Point. Auggie became the operator of the giant steel cauldron. As with all Bessemer steel plants, scrap iron or, at times, raw iron ore, is placed along with oxygen and carbon, in a giant container which is then heated to temperatures which approach those of the sun. The impurities are driven off by this heat, leaving pure, molten steel in the cauldron. At the right time, a giant crane swings into place, lifts the lid off the cauldron, and with a great roar, tips the cauldron in such a fashion that the now molten steel is poured into various shaped molds. All of this is accomplished with a great cacophony of sound, many sparks, great heat and a great white light. All present must wear ear plugs and dark eye protectors. It is an impressive sight, one that invariably leaves newcomers speechless. Auggie was the operator who now orchestrated this ballet molten steel. >From a cab hung high above the cauldron, Auggie could control the giant crane, move the molds into place, and tip the cauldron. It was one of the most important jobs at the mill, and not one without risk, both to himself and to many other workers. Auggie knew this risk. At first, for his first year at this assignment, under the tutelage of an older worker, Auggie could contain his fears. He found that in total concentration, he could avoid thoughts of killing and maiming workers and himself. But after awhile, the dreams returned.
This time, it was no vat of acid melting Auggie into his component atoms. This time, it was the worst of dreams. Auggie had lost control. He had forgotten which lever did what, which control knob regulated the heat, or tilted the cauldron. It seemed to Auggie that the cauldron, the malicious cauldron, had taken control of itself and was hell-bent on destruction. In his new dream, he saw the melted scrap iron superheat well beyond safe limits. He watched with undisguised horror as the cauldron began to tip over, well outside of his control. In his nightmare, a tidal wave of molten steel rushes toward him, ten feet high, as the cauldron tilts over. Like lava spewing from a fiery volcano, everything in the path of the molten steel is consumed, people and objects exploding into giant sparks as the liquid steel reaches them. His back against the control room wall, Auggie shakes in fear as the wave approaches him. It is Auggie’s hands, planted firmly on either side of the sink, wet from his sweat, that alerts Auggie to the reality that there is no wave of molten steel about to vaporize his body. There is no melting death awaiting him. Slowly, reality returns to Auggie, in his bathroom and with his half shaven face. But in his bathroom, another reality comes into focus for Auggie. Peering into the mirror, Auggie becomes aware of the incredible amount of sweat that has covered his soapy face, his arms, his palms. What is worse, his arm aches incredibly, clean down to the fingers of his left hand. With a shortness of breath and a sudden great desire to lay down, Auggie pushes himself to open the mirror and reach quickly for the medicine he stores there, medicine prescribed to calm him during these moments of hard anxiety. Opening the mirrored cabinet door, he struggled to find the medicine bottle. His breathing became worse, so short, and his chest seemed to want to explode. And the medicine- really a depressant - its cap just won’t open; it was all so difficult for Auggie. Struggling with the cap, teary eyed, Auggie became suddenly fixed upon the razor slot, the small razor slot at the rear of the cabinet wall. Never before has Auggie noticed that a remarkably bright light shining through this tiny slot. Could the wall beyond the bathroom cabinet have somehow collapsed, allowing sunlight to pour through it? Auggie, with all his pain and fear, found a way to lean into the cabinet to investigate this light. Pushing pill bottles out of the way, Auggie eyed the slot at close range, the light seeming so bright and focused to him that he raised his hand to cover the slot. And with this, Auggie entered the body of the mirror, through the slot, his body falling downward in the direction of the bright Light. To Auggie, it was like falling down a well, or a tunnel. And with each second, the noise of the ingots being pounded into I-beams became more faint. With each second of fall, with each approach nearer to the Light, thoughts of a wave of molten metal leave him; thoughts of deadly, splashing acid vanish, as does the incessant pounding, clipping and chiseling of nails. With no sweaty palms or tightness in his chest, Auggie found himself no longer falling through space, but landed on a shore. Landed in great peace, on a tropical beach that is bathed in an incredible, golden white light. Rising up on his feet, Auggie had never felt so energized, so alive. Looking about, Auggie found others on this beach, some on their feet, some just rising. Newcomers to this eternal shore, all, Auggie included, were moving with the confidence of a great homecoming, toward the source of the Light. Auggie would never feel alone again, he was sure of it. Rita Pastorini had just finished searching for her car keys in the living room when she heard a loud, weighty thump from the second floor. "That’s Auggie and his shoes, again. He’s always throwing something around.," she surmised. "I better go fast, though, I’m late. I’ll call him from the office to see what he broke this time." |