Throwback Thursday: ‘The Manufacturing of Sorrow’ by Bob Thurber

When the bell rang, signalling mid-morning break, the floors of the factory shook as workers scrambled away from their stations, rushing to vending machines or out exit doors for a smoke. Morning break was eight minutes. The men on the loading dock kept working. They kept working because they were blind and eight minutes was not enough time to navigate from one place to another.

Every morning during the break some of the women who didn’t smoke or drink coffee because they were pregnant or breastfeeding, or because they were sanctimonious goody-two-shoes, or because they were simply too young, came down to the loading dock to watch the men load the trucks. The men knew when the women were watching because they could smell the fragrances, not as a mix but as individual scents. The men could almost taste each woman’s proximity; through some enriched sense of smell they were able to separate the young from the old, the maidens from the mothers from the matrons. 

Every time a man, with or without a box in his hand, stumbled or fell, the women oohed or ahhed with a trembling, hollow tone that sounded to the men like genuine concern, though sometimes one of the women giggled, then gasped to contain her laughter. Either way, the men kept working. They picked themselves up and continued loading the trucks because they could not stand and gaze at the women, only breathe the scent of their beauty.