Ella stood on the yellow lines in the middle of Washington Street and stared at the backhoes devouring Mid America Steel Corporation. More than a dozen of the machines, with long curved and articulated steel necks, picked at concrete bones with iron beaks. Only shattered foundations and a few chunks of metal remained of the seventeen buildings that had once contained Richville's flagship industry.

A car honked next to her and she jumped. Eyes wide with confusion, she clutched her handbag and glanced from side to side. Gusts from westbound cars brushed at her back and tires of eastbound cars near-missed her toes. Old fool! She thought. Daydreaming in the middle of rush hour traffic. Gonna get yourself killed.

As quickly as arthritic joints would allow, she shuffled across the remaining lane and onto the sidewalk. Ella stopped next to the chain link fence separating the public from the factory's remains and stared at the growing piles of rubble.

At one time, it was said that any man out of a job could always find work at Mid America Steel -- and once he found that work, he was set until retirement. However, the dream died when the mill died, and several good men died early because they couldn't face the death of their dreams. Sam, Curly, Butch, Frank...and, of course, her Robert.

In front of her, on the other side of the fence, backhoes continued to chew away at I-beams and stone. A continuous line of dump trucks joined their effort, hauling away load upon load with ant-like determination.

Ella stared the mill's progressing demise. No fantasy here. No dreams. Just reality.

This morning had been a bad morning for reality.

Ella finished making her bed and stepped out of her bedroom. A shooting pain shot through her left knee. Oh, great. Looks like this will be a bad knee day. She picked her way past Robert's recliner, stepping around the couch, and worked her way across the living room's worn brown carpet. As she entered the kitchen, Robert's grandfather clock tried almost successfully to chime nine o'clock.

She clutched her dress and grabbed the doorframe. The back door stood open. White patches on the wall glared at her where pictures had hung. A pile of dust bunnies frolicked on the floor where last night her china hutch had stood. She fumbled for the phone but stopped when she saw a note taped to the receiver.

"Mother. Don't worry. Jack and I loaded up some of your pictures and the hutch. We didn't want to disturb your sleeping. Back at about three o'clock. Love Mary."

"Damn." Ella muttered. Today they would move her to live with them in Atlanta. Or was that tomorrow?

"You’ll have your own room, Mother," her daughter had said. "And Jack and I and the kids will all be able to look after you."

"Atlanta." Ella tossed the note onto the counter top. "As if I can’t take care of myself." She glanced around the room. "Fluff? Where are you?"

Ella rummaged through the refrigerator and finally found a can of cat food, hidden in the back. She stared at her half-empty kitchen and wiped unbidden tears from her face with the back of her hand. Fluff answered her call and brushed himself back and forth between her legs, anticipating his meal. Besides, Robert won't want me to leave. Mary should know that.

Opening the can of cat food, she walked over to Fluff's dish sitting in its spot near the back door, leaned over and filled it with food.

"Here, Fluff! Breakfast."

The cat did not appear. She looked back down to the floor and saw that the cat food wasn’t in a cat dish. It lay on bare tile, splattered inside a faded circle of rust where her cat's food pan had sat years ago.

She dropped the can and the spoon, stumbled against the wall, and cried.

Ella cringed as a giant loader steamed past. It banged and groaned while dropping its load of stone into the bed of a massive dump truck.

Her actual visits inside the mill had been limited. But Robert had been dedicated to his job and she owed her husband a farewell look at the place that had been such a large part of their lives.

Besides, Mary and Jack were coming at three o’clock; she'd never have another chance. Ella glanced at her watch. Just past two. She had time.

Ella studied the progress of the backhoes. Though all of the buildings were demolished, the foundations remained partially intact. As she peered out over the mess, the sun appeared from behind a cloud and found her. Her face flushed and her eyes watered.

Wiping the tears out of her eyes with a tissue, she turned back toward the mill site. No longer a desolate plain dotted with heavy equipment, the steel mill's buildings were taking shape, ghostly images superimposed over an empty realty.

Frightened, Ella lowered her eyes. No, please not again. Returning to reality is so hard. Hesitantly, she lifted her head up.

The backhoes, cranes, and dump trucks remained, but a vague outline of the mill now rose from battered foundations. She raised up onto her toes to see better, but her foot twisted on a piece of rock and she stumbled. When she looked down to see what had tripped her, she saw only clean, white concrete.

A backhoe smacked a tough section of foundation and she jumped at the noise. It ripped a cantankerous block of cement out of the ground and chewed at the pieces. That's where the nail mill used to be. Sure enough, her eyes saw it again, just as she remembered. Long and low with gray walls. Robert worked in nails for several years -- on the swing shift. She smiled and thought, the long hours almost killed us both.

Her vision of the nail mill flickered. A dingy yellow machine had broken up the mill's foundation, loading the last of it into a dump truck. The truck's engine gunned, scaring several red-winged blackbirds into flight. Gaining gradual momentum, it trundled off with its load.

The building's ghostly corona shredded.

Farther back, Ella saw a column of dust and powder rise high into the air as a crane lifted the last pieces of some unidentifiable iron beams over the fence and into a railroad car. Her eyes darted, frantically searching. There! The rod storage building glimmered for a moment, then disintegrated like a water-soaked newspaper photo.

The activity kicked up a breeze that touched her face. It brought with it a memory of a smell. An acrid smell...of metal...hot metal and dirty oil. She had forgotten that scent even though it came home everyday on Robert's clothes; pants stained with ash, his shirt layered with sweat and dirt from the open-hearth furnaces.

Ella left the cat food lying on the floor.

She closed the front door behind her, locked it and hurried down the porch steps to the street. She stopped in momentary confusion, then turned left. With stiff small steps, Ella trudged down the sidewalk.

At first she walked just to get away, down half repaired sidewalks butting up against newly asphalted streets, giant oak and maple trees providing a leafy canopy overhead, and hidden high above starlings screeching in dissonant unison. Parked cars owned the street.

After four or five blocks, houses began to be replaced by run down convenience stores, dirty Laundromats, and iron-barred liquor stores. She paused in front of a boarded up one-story red brick building. She peered at its dirty picture window. Nearly hidden by dust, written in broken neon cursive, the name "Steel Inn" half hung inside the window. She remembered the orange glow of the letters in the evening.

Ella smiled. She and Robert had enjoyed many late night beers at the Steel Inn. He and his friends from the mill would clock out at quitting time and walk to the bar. She and the other wives would meet their husbands. The group would push tables together and spend the evening. Great friends, fair beer, and excellent breaded tenderloins. The kind that stuck out far beyond the edge of the bun. The memory brought a small sob to her throat and for a moment, the neon flickered. She gripped her hands, pressing her fingers into her palms and squeezed her eyes shut. She took a deep breath, opened her eyes and studied the picture window and the broken letters. The sign remained dark.

Ella looked at her watch. Almost two o'clock. She knew she should turn back, but she now knew where she was going.

Knees and ankles protested, but she resumed her walk. She turned the corner, crossed the street, and began wading through an empty weed-filled parking lot.

About a hundred feet from where she stood, past clumps of mustard plant and Queen Anne's lace poking up through cracked concrete paving, just on the other side of Washington street, stretched the chain link fence that enclosed what had once been the Mid America Steel Corporation.

She heard a crash and jerked her head to the left. The aura of the galvanizing building soundlessly shattered as two persistent bulldozers snorted and ripped concrete slab flooring up and out of the ground.

No! The confusion of her vision conspired with the pain of her joints and her knees buckled. Her gnarled hands fumbled, then gripped the fence for support. She pressed her face into it, peering through its zinc-coated diamonds. Her eyes searched for the truck bays and found them. Their images still stood; resolutely resisting the efforts of the backhoe vultures nibbling away at the last bits of what was once the base of the west wall.

West wall? I remember. I used to stand right here and wait for Robert to leave work.

A flight of mechanized cranes clanked and chattered their way into the area. They moved a final load of steel girders into giant bins for transport. The truck bays lost their fight, shimmered, and flickered out.

She frantically searched to see if anything was left. Ah! The open-hearth furnace building. Ella watched in rapture as a spectral 125-ton ladle poured an orange-white load of molten steel into a mold.

Dust blew through the fence and onto her face. Her eyes watered and the open hearth, with its load of liquid steel, vanished.

Now the backhoes began beating the ground in earnest. They punched and smacked last bits of concrete foundations, making white powder out of gray blocks. Buildings popped out of sight one by one. Somewhere in the distance, she heard the sound of the Presbyterian Church bells. They chimed three times, and then stopped.

With the silence, Ella's felt a pain in her hands and arms. She released her hold on the fence, but her fingers continued to tingle.

However, the church bells and her throbbing hands had vanquished the images. White stone powder now stretched as far as she could see. All the support beams had been loaded and trucked away. The cranes were gone. The trucks were gone.

One last backhoe resolutely pounded and poked its steel beak at the ground, looking for a last morsel of memory to root out and devour.

She rubbed her hands trying to stop the tingling. She turned to leave but the corner of her eye caught something familiar. Glancing back, Ella discovered a remaining image. The small timekeeper's shack that used to stand next to the street wavered and blurred in the bright sunlight.

Her ears picked up a sound. A whistle. The mill's end-of-shift whistle blowing faintly. As the whistle died, pale, translucent men began filing out through the faded exit.

Man after man punched his timecard and placed it into the proper slot. The men wore dingy short jackets and work pants with rough shirts. A few men wore T-shirts; some wore overalls. All had a scruffy hat of one kind or another. She stumbled and pressed her back against the fence. Ella’s arms and legs shook as gray men filed past her, almost touching her. Each one tipped his hat as he passed.

The pinging of the time clock accompanied each man. The end of their day. Some hefted empty lunch pails under their arms and scurried through busy traffic toward near-invisible cars parked on the other side. Others began walking home, swinging cold thermos jugs.

The men continued to clock-out as the last backhoe gnawed away at bits of stone. The resolute machine ripped the last piece from the ground and the timeshack and the men disappeared. Her inflamed knee joints gave way. She fell against the fence and shut her eyes. Tears forced their way out and flowed over her pale cheeks. Her breathing slowed. Very slow. She closed her eyes and slid down the fence to the ground.

She felt the backhoe rumble off over a flat, clean lot.

For a long time, she listened to silence.

She pressed her eyelids tight together and felt a tear form. Ella smiled.

She became aware of the sun on her face. It warmed her cool cheeks and dried her wet face. She opened her eyes and stared at the timeshack, its bright green paint almost glowing in the bright sun. Her legs felt stronger and she stood. She turned toward the fence to see the seventeen buildings of Mid-America Steel Corporation, rising in front of her. The line of mill workers once again shuffled past and on down the street.

As the shift whistle blared one last time, a final man sauntered out of the timekeeper's building. Ella saw him and gasped. The man punched out and carefully filed his timecard in its proper place.

He was a small man, but obviously powerful in his own way, with thin light-brown hair and an impish smile on a broad face. He wore brown work pants and a once white T-shirt.

He searched up and down the sidewalk and gave her a wide-open smile when his eyes found hers. He strolled up to where she stood. "Hi, Doll! Sorry you had to wait. The boss held me over to talk about my transfer." He grabbed her by her shoulders and looked into her eyes. "I'm now on first shift full time! No more nail work."

Ella couldn't move. The sight of him made her dizzy. She stood unresisting as he reached down and wrapped an arm around her slender waist. He brushed his lips quickly through her dark brown hair -- his shy promise of a kiss for later. He felt strong. His arms felt good.

"Are you okay?" He pulled a clean handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped tear tracks from her face. She stared at him and nodded.

"Hey! I know. After we get home and I shower, let's jump in the car and head over to the Steel Inn for dinner. We'll celebrate. What do you say?"

Her eyes cleared and she gazed at her husband. Ella reached out and hesitantly grasped his rough hands. Her strong, smooth fingers squeezed his. He guided her left hand under his right elbow and led her, like a new bride, across the street to their car. He opened the door for her, but she paused.

Over the light blue top of their '57 Olds, she could see the mill. Sparrows played tag through the chain-link fence openings. Robins tittered and fought for scraps in the truck bays. She heard men shouting and laughing, steel bars clanking, and the nail mill dinging rhythmically in the distance.

A faint image of a pale yellow backhoe shimmered among the solid buildings.

Ella shook her head to clear her eyes then turned back to face Robert. She flashed him a smile. Sweeping her hands down behind her full skirt, she turned her back to the opening and slid gracefully into the car. The familiar scent of clean upholstery and snuffed-out cigarettes greeted her. The quickly ticking clock mounted in the dashboard read three-fifteen.

He shut the door and walked around the front of the car. She watched his every move. He slid past the hood, pausing to brush a speck of dust from spotless paint, then bounced around to the driver’s door and climbed in next to her. He started the engine and she listened as the car purred with perfect timing, just as she knew it would.

As he maneuvered out of the lot, Ella slid over to sit close to him, curling her legs up underneath her on the car seat. She squeezed his metal and oil stained leg, took a deep, clear breath and spoke, "Let's go home, Robert."

The End

Bio

John Borneman is an engineer to pay the bills, but a writer to maintain his sanity. He has had science fiction short stories published in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine and in the Fortean Bureau.