Jack was letting his dandy image slide. His skin was stiff and yellow. He looked like a cadaver. My grandmother asked him what was wrong, and Buffmeir shook his head gravely. “Cancer, Mag. It’s all in my liver. I just seen a doctor in Chicago. I got six weeks. Who’s going to take care of my dog? Who’s going to mind the trees?” Jack Buffmeir didn’t wait for an answer. We watched him walk down the back steps and cross the parking lot to his shack with his dog behind him. His right hand was pressed firmly under his ribs, an area which pained him greatly; his thin jaw was set hard.

My grandmother had a huge medical reference book with illustrated pictures in her bedroom. I looked up liver diseases and saw a patient looking every bit as bad as Jack. Worse, I saw what cancer did to the liver. The human liver looked much like the liver in my grandmother’s meat cooler. With cancer, it was infiltrated by orange, unnatural-corded knots that sought to strangle it. I quickly slammed the book shut and prayed to God that never would such a fate fall upon me. Jack Buffmeir was a goner!

The night crew at the Durabilt had thirty minutes for lunch. Mag would slice cold cuts for them and dish up salads. They liked to congregate around the pop cabinet, comb back their slick ducktails, smoke, and posture while the Italian girls from the neighborhood came in wearing their shorts in hot weather. Or, if the men weren’t scoping, they would sit out on the front porch talking sports or playing grab-ass.

The factory was set along a trunk of the Burlington Railroad that supplied Aurora with industrial transport. Just beyond were the main rails for the fast Burlington Zephyrs that bolted from Seattle to Chicago and back. I liked to stand and wave at the passenger trains and catch glimpses of the dining cars or the sleepers that seemed like compartments of Pullman pleasure. This was particularly true at night when a passing tableau of scenes was presented by the illuminated compartments. With every need attended to, the passengers had the leisure to read, smoke, eat and drink, or converse. They were often finely dressed and had destinations—places to go and things to do; it was mysterious, romantic, and enchanting. I also loved counting freight cars and spotting hoboes. I most eagerly awaited the passage of the caboose, which would sometimes display a railman asleep in the upper loft while another was preparing coffee in a blue enamel pot, or sitting at a little table drinking it while reading a magazine by a kerosene lantern. I watched wistfully as the clacking and banging of the train receded, and the caboose disappeared; and suddenly I was back in my own world of Lutheran restrictions and sameness.