Rivethead by Ben Hamper Page B

that if they held it directly into the overhead lights and looked through the hole, they would get a gorgeous glimpse of
Hustler
’s Miss August. There was never any shortage of volunteers.
    There was never any Miss August either. The victim grabbed the peep tube, tilted it straight up to the lights, only to get doused with a generous flow of water right in the eyeball. Dan-O also made sure to line the peephole with black paint. Not only did the victim wind up drenched, he'd also slink away sportin’ a shiner the size of a tennis ball.
    Another Dan-O favorite was his “crucified wallet” trick. He would nail down an old wallet into the woodblock floor in the aisleway, flip the wallet closed to conceal the nail, and insert the torn corner off a $20 bill. Invariably, some guy would stroll by and notice the apparent gold mine. As we pretended to look the other way, the victim casually glanced around and, feeling unnoticed, swooped down for the wallet only to wind up tumbling on his face or developing an instant hernia. The Jungle would explode in laughter as the victim retreated sheepishly.
    The most entertaining of Dan-O's pranks, from a spectator's view, was the “charging tarantula” trap. Dan-O would take fishing line, attach it to a very realistic-looking rubber tarantula, and rig the fish line so that at the flick of his wrist the tarantula would come scampering out from beneath a stock crate near the aisleway. For bait, Dan-O would crumple up a dollar bill and place it in the aisle. The innocent pedestrian would come along, start to reach for the dollar, and…SHIT GOD ALMIGHTY…the bug-eyed terror you would see in the faces of these victims was enough to send you howling to your knees. After the victim had fled, Dan-O would leisurely reset the trap and we'd await the next pigeon. Man, the time just flew.
    The absolute craziest co-worker I met during my first year was my relief man, Jack. He was a doper, the pied piper of dumbdom, always banged to the gills on some queer mix of speed, mescaline, hash or cocaine. As my relief man, his duties were to come around twice per night and spell me for my break period. I would often hang around as Jack ran through my job. Though there was something plainly dangerous about him, it could never be denied that Jack was always a great source for laughter. His rantings were legend.
    Jack also presented me with one of my first confrontations with an enigma that had been bothering me since I had hired in. He was so resolute in his hatred toward General Motors that it completely baffled me as to why he hung around. He had this persecution complex that ate at him like a bellyful of red ants. I didn't really understand it. I was still relatively raw, but I assumed a deal was a deal. GM paid us a tidy income and we did the shitwork. No one was holding a gun to anyone's head. I didn't harbor any hatred toward GM. My war was with that suffocating minute hand. With Jack, General Motors was the taproot for all that was miserable and repellent in his life. To hear him tell it, GM was out to bury him. He was obsessed with vengeance and anarchy.
    For instance, one night Jack arrived to send me on break. Before doing so, he raced around the corner to buy a pack of smokes. A moment later, he reappeared screechin’ his lungs out. Apparently, the cigarette machine had eaten his money. An unfortunate break? Not the way Jack saw it. This was just another GM conspiracy designed to crank up the animosity level. The war was on. Jack reached into my workbench and grabbed my sledgehammer. I had a very uneasy feeling about the look on his face.
    Moments after Jack charged off with my sledgehammer, I heard the sound of glass being shattered. The pounding continued. He was obviously destroying the vending machine. GM had absolutely nothing to do with these machines. They were serviced by private vendors. Still, Jack bashed away at the machine as if he were poundin’ the very last breath out of Roger Smith