Rust Belt Blues

Frank Miller woke up at seven. He made coffee. He drank it black. He sat at the table and looked at the wall.

The wall was beige. It had been beige when he moved in. It was still beige.

He was forty. He had worked at Kowalski Steel for fifteen years. Not on the floor—he was too young for that. He worked in the office, keeping records, filing reports, writing internal memos about safety violations that nobody read.

Six months ago, he had written a report about the river. Kowalski Steel was dumping waste into the Calumet River. Frank had documented it—photos, water samples, timestamps. He had sent the report to the local newspaper. The newspaper had published it. Old Man Kowalski had seen it.

After that, Frank lost his job. Not fired. Just... gone. His supervisor told him the company was restructuring. The newspaper editor told him he was "too controversial." His friends stopped inviting him to things.

He lived in a one-bedroom apartment in a building that smelled like other people's dinners. He spent his days drinking beer and watching television. He didn't watch much. He just liked the sound.

Coach Bill came by on Sundays. Bill had been Frank's high school football coach. He was sixty-two, bald, with a belly that had nothing to do with football. He ran a bar on the south side called The Bench. It was not a good bar. It was a bar.

"Hey," Bill said, sitting at Frank's table. "You eating?"

"No," Frank said.

"Come to the bar," Bill said. "I'll buy you a burger."

Frank went. He ate the burger. He drank a beer. He talked about nothing. This was their ritual. Every Sunday. Bill would come, Frank would say no to food, Bill would buy him a burger anyway, and they would talk about the weather and the Cubs and whether the river was getting any worse.

It was getting worse. Frank knew this because he had kept documenting it. He still took water samples. He still took photos. He still sent them to people who didn't reply.

One afternoon, Frank walked to the river. He sat on the bank and looked at the water. It was green. Not the green of a forest or a lake. The green of chemicals and decay. He looked for fish. There were no fish.

He went home. He drank a beer. He watched television. He went to sleep.

Six months later, Kowalski Steel announced it was expanding. They were building a new facility upstream, which meant more waste, more dumping, more river.

Frank heard about it at The Bench. Bill told him. Frank nodded. He drank his beer. He went home. He drank a beer. He watched television. He went to sleep.

Nothing got better. Nothing got worse.