Book Review/Heather Seggel

Waiting For The Man

“Howard & Charles at the Factory” (Outpost19) is a short novel whose title establishes its premise neatly. When these two older men pull up to their shuttered former place of employment and open their lawn chairs, it is with an air of defiance. Their jobs are coming back, they are reclaiming what is theirs, it’s all about to be—and this will probably not surprise you—Great Again. But things take longer than they expected, and along the way it gets a little bonkers. Dave Housley has written a comic novel that’s frequently heartbreaking, even when the dinosaurs and UFOs drift in.

Taking into account that there’s a T. Rex appearing at the edge of the trees where they go to urinate, this is a quiet story, as it is mostly about waiting. Charles unfurls a newspaper and barely says a word throughout, though his health begins to fall apart rather dramatically over time. We as readers are set more inside Howard’s perspective, and he is struggling in many areas of his life. Widowed, now out of work, father of a furious daughter who has moved to San Francisco (with all that implies for a man who can’t bring himself to say more about it). He misses his daughter but the last thing he heard from her was a text message eviscerating him for his vote in 2016. These things happen. He blew out his knee on the job and had been going to yoga classes with his wife, one of many things he can’t share with any of his old coworkers. But it’s all going to turn around and be better than before! “He wonders if they will have longer breaks now but then puts the idea out of his mind. It is a Democrat idea. A liberal notion. Socialist. It was his right to give the knee and he gave it, one shift at a time.”

At one point, a young man pulls up in a giant pickup. His name is Brad, but he goes by B-rad and sports a grand pompadour with a side shave. He lures Howard and Charles into vandalizing some surveying equipment—workers have been out to the site and are readying it for conversion to natural gas pumps — and records it all with his phone in an attempt to become a reactionary online celebrity. (Brad was fired from his job for being late repeatedly, but has decided he was displaced to make room for “Mexicans.”) The two jump in to help but are befuddled as to how it might benefit them.

All these occurrences filter through Howard’s consciousness, sometimes roiling into a MAGA fever dream, then mellowing into simmering hostility (certainly toward liberals, but also toward Charles, who ignores him and maybe had an easier time of thangs than he’s letting on), and in quieter moments, even regret. When he sees Charles is becoming ill, it strikes him. “He is disappearing cell by cell, minute by minute, just like Howard has been for the past 20 years, one job application, welfare check, doctor’s visit, unreturned phone call, Mexican getting a job, tattooed Lesbian supervisor at a time.” The specificity stings when it’s spelled out so literally, but we’ve come so far by now that it’s hard to look away.

Things don’t end well for these men, as you might surmise; just start to type “has manufacturing” into a search engine and the autocompletes will break your heart. Has it come back? Is it coming back? When will it come back? (A quick survey of the answers reveals a kind of shell game, but the overall numbers appear to be stagnant.) They are lonely in their quest, but not alone. You might know one, or be one. Author Anne Lamott has written about the “one inch picture frame,” the only view of a story a writer should need to describe at any given time. Housley has created a world that will fit inside that frame; two men in lawn chairs, gradually fading from view, as the chaos surges around them. It’s funny and poignant, and the surrealism only makes the sadness land with greater force.

Heather Seggel is a writer living in Northern California. Email heatherlseggel@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, May 1, 2020

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