Chapter 10: Dead Wood

At 8:15 on Tuesday, the security bat from the front lobby telephoned Ms. Hazel to tell her that Cuffy and Carol had reported for their new jobs. Ms. Hazel met them up front. She gave them their new badges and hardhats, and walked them back to Seedler’s office.

“Mr. Seedler, your new Wheelers are here.” Then she whispered disappointingly, “They’re a little late.”

Seedler rose from behind his desk, “It’s all right, Ms. Hazel,” and then glanced understandingly at the two munks. “I’m sure it won’t happen again. Probably just had trouble finding the tree.” She strutted away muttering something about this being the biggest tree in The Woods.

Once she was gone, Seedler walked Cuffy and Carol back to the Nut Production Department, “Let’s get you two started, shall we?” They entered the factory hollow, and descended to the floor where there were two unused wheels and several bored-looking munks standing around near two idle elevators.

Seedler approached the empty wheels and explained, “This job is very important. We’ll need you to power these wheels. They’ll take the Climbers up to the branches, and move the nuts down to the Haulers. Why don’t you give it try?”

The two munks tentatively climbed into the wheels, and cautiously took a couple of steps. The wheels moved slightly, and the conveyors and elevators nudged forward. “That’s it,” said Seedler. “Keep it up.” They took a few more steps and made the belts move a little faster. “Good!” directed Seedler as the group of Climbers and Haulers watched them, a little nervously. They got up to speed, slowed down to catch their breath, and started back up again. They finally got to a point where they were running in place, and the elevators and conveyors began to move at full speed. “Excellent, you two!” Then he addressed the rest of the staff. “Well, Climbers, Haulers, the lines are working again. Time to get back to work.” Satisfied, Seedler climbed back up out of the department and headed back to his office.

A few of the Climbers began to get on the elevators and rode them about halfway up when Cuffy and Carol began to get tired. They slowed from a run to a slow trot, then to a walk, then to a dead stop. As a result, the elevators slowed, and then with a jolt, stopped hard. The Climbers riding the elevators teetered dangerously, waving their arms around to keep their balance so they didn’t fall.

Cuffy and Carol were panting hard, completely out of breath. The Haulers were still watching them, and they called another, more experienced Wheeler over to try to give them tips, “Left…Right…Left…Right…C’mon…Breathe in…Breathe out…Keep it up!” The Haulers and a lizard kept an eye on them as they worked the wheels—poorly.

They tried again and the elevator restarted. One of the Climbers made it to the top, hurried off the elevator, and kissed the floor in relief. Eventually, the two munks tired again. They started and stopped, sped up and slowed down, panting and resting, until eventually Cuffy’s wheel broke and became dislodged. The lizard shook his head in disgust, and began to tinker with the wheel. The Climbers looked down at the two munks and were terrified. One of the Haulers left to report the problems to Seedler.

He returned to find the shop floor in chaos. A wheel was broken, there were terrified munks up in the trees with no way down. No nuts were moving, and Cuffy and Carol were collapsed in exhaustion in the wheels. Seedler surveyed the situation and said, “Maybe this isn’t the best job for you two.”

“Let’s try you two out as Haulers, instead,” Seedler suggested. “This job requires a little more brains and a little less brawn.” He called two of the Haulers over to man the wheels, and showed Cuffy and Carol what to do. He showed them how to take the nuts off the conveyor, inspect them, transfer them to the rail cart, and move them out. “Now you two try it.”

The conveyors were already working at full throttle, and the acorns began to arrive at the bottom from the limbs. Seedler watched them for a moment as they each removed a few nuts from the conveyors, inspected them as instructed, and placed them in the rail cart. They seemed to be doing all right, so Seedler excused himself and headed back to his office.

Left alone, Cuffy and Carol did the Hauler job for a while, but quickly became bored. Inspecting and transferring the nuts was not fun. Back in The Tiny Grove, they played games all day. The only reason they came to The Woods was for the acorns. They began to think of fun ways to do the Hauler job. They tossed the acorns back and forth to each other, took bites out of them, and juggled them playfully before transferring them to the rail carts. The nuts they didn’t take bites out of, they accidentally broke with their careless play, and there were shattered acorns and broken shells all over the factory floor.

Again, Seedler got wind of the situation, and came back to find another huge mess. A few of the other munks complained that Cuffy and Carol were making their jobs harder, and creating a safety hazard. Seedler decided that maybe this job wasn’t for them either.

Finally, he suggested they try the Climber job. “You’ll get to ride up twenty feet to the branches,” he said, and Cuffy and Carol became fascinated that they would have such exciting duties. “First, you ride the elevators up to the branches. Then you clip the nuts. Then you stow the nuts onto the baskets, and the conveyors take them down to the factory floor. Think you can do that?”

“Oh, yes,”

“We can do that.”

“Certainly!”

“It sounds so exciting!”

“And fun!”

So Seedler directed them towards one of the elevators. But when they approached it, they both looked up. The branches were really high. The very thought of riding all the way up there made them dizzy.

“There you go…hop on,” Seedler said. The two munks were turning green. “Oh, go on. It’s not so bad.”

Carol cautiously stepped towards the elevator, and Cuffy followed her hesitantly. They held on tight as the Wheeler powered the elevator quickly up to full speed, and they soared up to the branch at the top. It was higher up than they’d ever been, and, rather than get off, they held on to the elevator cable for dear life. The munks below shouted instruction and encouragement, but they couldn’t bring themselves to get off. Neither of them had clipped a single acorn when Seedler gave up and brought them back down, shaking with fear. “Why don’t you two go wait in my office,” he said, and they staggered out of the department. Seedler helped them down the hall, and they both collapsed, exhausted and nauseous, onto a couple of chairs in the office. He had to get them both a drink of water to calm them down.

The two munks took the rest of the day to recover, but they began to stir when the day approached quitting time. Seedler was piddling around in the office, not doing much of anything, when they finally had the strength to speak up.

“Mr. Seedler, sir…”

“Thank you for bringing us to The Woods.”

“Yes, thank you.”

“We really appreciate it.”

“We really do.”

“Yes, we do.”

“We’ve had a very hard day.

“Very hard.”

“Yes.”

“Do we get acorns today?”

“We tried very hard.”

“Don’t you think so?”

“You’ve always been just and fair.”

“And we’ll return tomorrow.”

“And try again.”

“Even harder!”

And even though they didn’t do a particularly good job that day, Seedler gave them five acorns apiece, and they left for the evening. The next day, and every day thereafter, Cuffy and Carol reported for work, always a little late. And every day they went to the Nut Production Department, but mostly wound up messing things up. They always ended up hanging around in Seedler’s office, not doing much of anything. But Seedler gave them their acorns anyway. Pretty soon, they began to go straight to the office, and forgot about Nut Production entirely, and it wasn’t long before they began to simply come in, collect their nuts, and leave.

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Down the hallway, Plujo was doing very well as a Salesmunk, and after some time, Snick met with Mr. Filbert and Ms. Hazel to discuss his future. Plujo was on the fast track now, so Mr. Filbert decided to promote him again, this time to the Bean Counting Department.

He was one of four Bean Counters at the Nut-ro-Soft Company, and he worked just as hard there as he did in his other jobs. They gave him his own cubicle, visor, and adding machine, which he quickly mastered. He could add and subtract so fast he had to keep extra mosquitoes near his desk, because he wore them out so often and constantly needed refills. Plujo diligently and carefully inspected the bills, ran inventory reports, summarized the revenues, and double-checked the expenses.

Plujo asked a lot of questions, too. He was always pestering the other Bean Counters. He wanted to learn the job as quickly as possible. Since he was new, he needed to understand how many acorns usually went out, and how many came in, so he could report any irregularities to Mr. Filbert.

It was here that Plujo learned about Mr. Filbert’s big plans. He was saving up to expand the berry division, and he would need every acorn possible. It was a huge investment. Mr. Filbert needed to buy a tree that was close to lots of berries. He needed to buy all the new equipment—the conveyors, the rail carts, and the wheels. He would need to hire a lot of new employees. That was where Plujo came in. His job was to make sure Mr. Filbert had all the acorns he needed, when he needed them. When it was complete, the berry division would provide inexpensive berries for everyone in The Land, provide a lot Woodland creatures with jobs, and generate a nice profit for Mr. Filbert. It was all very exciting, and Plujo was happy to be a part of such an important investment.