The Jig of the Union Loller Read online

loll v. lolled, lolling, lolls—intr. 1. To move, stand, or recline in an indolent or relaxed manner. 2. To hang or droop laxly. loller n.

  That’s the dictionary definition. A loller is a shirker, a slacker, a goof-off, an idler, a goldbrick, a dirtball, a ne’er-do-well—all of which define Claude Amognes’s behavior quite nicely. He’s lazy and selfish; he gets into trouble taking short-cuts at work at the power company while depending on the union to bail him out; having got his job only because his father was the union president, he is never in danger of working himself to death—in fact, taking advantage of the sick-leave policy his father negotiated years ago, he has no difficulty in using the slightest indisposition to generate a week or two of sick leave where he can recover by fishing and boozing. So he’s a good-time Charlie who smokes and drinks too much and does as little work as necessary; but while all these things are true, he’s also a delightful character and fully human. He loves his daughter Jamie and in his own way also loves his long-suffering wife Joan. He alone makes reading this novel wonderful, rollicking fun. Years ago when he began his career with the electric company as a meter-reader, he’d been attacked by fleas in a basement and had to flee for his life, swatting and scratching up a storm. That incident had earned him the nickname “Bugsy” with his union brothers. Later after a scheme to get full disability and a comfortable annuity fell through when Mr. Schulke, his boss, had video proof he was faking his headaches, this traumatic attack of fleas comes in handy. Delightful in a Falstaffian way as Claude is, he is surrounded by dozens of other fully realized characters who add breadth and depth to this wonderful novel. At one point we even get the point of view of a trout! In short, The Jig of the Union Loller is a page-turner. It offers quite a picture of work in America along with much wit and wisdom about human behavior and the human condition.

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  THE JIG OF THE UNION LOLLER

  by

  Michael Burnham

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  PUBLISHED BY:

  THE JIG OF THE UNION LOLLER

  copyright 2009 by Miichael Burnham

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

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  Chapter 1

 

  Nick had jumped. The two men who’d seen him on the third floor knew it, and although they didn’t witness the final transaction, neither doubted that the Rhode Island Electric stores department had lost its second man in eighteen months.

  The man in the blue cardigan stared at the closed door at the end of the empty hallway. The other man, the one with the rough complexion, tugged the cardigan.

  “Come on, John. We’ve got to tell someone.”

  The men rushed to their department and together whispered the news to the shop steward. The steward put a finger to his lips and pointed to the back exit. Not everyone in the department would take the news well.

  The three men punched out for morning break, slipping their manila-colored cards into the time clock, waiting a beat while a set of red numbers thwacked onto the cards, and sliding the cards in the proper slots on the gray metal rack beside the clock. They walked along high shelves to an open door two pickup trucks wide. Once outside, they stood around a white bucket filled with sand.

  “Nick didn’t do it,” the shop steward said. “He’s still with us. I know he is.”

  “We saw him, Scotty,” the man with the rough complexion said. “John and me. Nick was standing with Feeney outside the executive conference room. Wendell from meter reading came walking up, and Nick couldn’t look at him. He turned his face until Wendell passed.”

  “Did he see you?” Scotty said.

  “No,” John said. “He couldn’t. Bugsy and I were down near the safety office.”

  The three men looked to the ground. John slid his fists to his hips and kicked the toe of his workboot into the hard dirt. Scotty pulled a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his flannel shirt, gave one to each of the other men, and lit his own with two firm drags before killing the flame. He exhaled a cloud of smoke as he returned the pack and lighter to his pocket.

  “Maybe he didn’t jump,” Scotty said softly. “Maybe we can still talk sense into him. Nothing frantic. Just talk, nice and calm, and hope he hears us. Before it’s too late.”

  “It’s already too late,” John said. “But if it isn’t, who’s going to talk to him?”

  “I’ll do it.”

  “I don’t know, Bugsy,” Scotty said. “Maybe we better get Frank.”

  “Me and Frank then.”

  Scotty ran a hand from his forehead through his thinning red hair and held the back of his neck for a second before looking up. “All right, Bugsy. We’ve got the Baugh Street kids coming in for a tour, but once they’re gone let’s you and me get Frank and the three of us’ll talk to Nick.”

  John gave his dirt groove another hard kick. “I know one thing,” he said. “As soon as Nick becomes management they’ll work him to death. They will. Then the first time he slows down they’ll get rid of him. I’ve seen it happen. We’ve got to make Nick understand that now, because once he’s gone, he’s the enemy.”

  “He knows that,” Scotty said. “But these guys who skip, they get hypnotized by the money. It sounds like so much—wow, thirty bucks an hour when my last raise was from $24.30 an hour to $24.50. They don’t think, well now I have to become a professional nitpick, and now I have to work whatever overtime they dump on me, and now when there’s a problem with the boss it’s just me against him, nobody to back me up, just the guy making the rules against me. They don’t think of that stuff.”

  Again the three men gazed into the earth. Without speaking, John turned toward the steps leading to the company cafeteria. The other two continued to smoke. Five minutes later, Scotty dropped his cigarette into the bucket.

  “You coming, Bugsy?”

  “Nah, I’m going to have another butt. Punch me in, will you?”

  Scotty nodded. Alone with his cigarette, the remaining man leaned against the brick building and daydreamed about Feeney daring to offer him a management position. As he invented the conversation, his face betrayed the speaker: a scowl when he listened to Feeney’s imaginary pitch, a smile when he heard himself tell Feeney to shove it. At last, he swayed himself upright, flicked his cigarette to the ground, and crushed it with the heel of his workboot.

  “That’s right Feeney,” he said out loud. “Me and the union, I’m in it and it’s in me. Stuff your promises up your ass, because I know your game, and I want nothing to do with you, not now, not ever. Claude Amognes ain’t no fucking traitor.”

  #

  As Claude smoked his second cigarette, John reappeared from the cafeteria door, munching a candy bar as he approached. Claude pointed to a line of children coming over the crosswalk from Baugh Street Elementary. The children reached the near sidewalk, marched in double file along Rhode Island Electric’s black fence, and disappeared behind a stack of spooled wire and a small pyramid of new utility poles. They appeared again after rounding the corner onto Thompson Street, where their teacher stopped them in their rows. Claude and John saw the woman gesture toward the company, and then across the street to a three-level apartment house with a porch on each floor.

  White dwellings lined the block along Thompson Street. Wheelless cars rested in the driveways of two apartment houses, and a neat array of hubcaps for sale adorned the driveway of a third. Tree roots pushed up the sidewalk in places but did not disturb the street itself. Everywhere hung laundry, from third-floor porches to backyard poles. Everywhere were chairs: on sidewalks, in front yards, on porches, driveways and a sprinkling of rooftops.

  Near the corner of Thompson and Baugh, the teacher continued to t
each. Once more she pointed to the company and then back to the apartment building.

  “Wonder what she’s telling ‘em,” John said.

  “Kids, you want to get a job here,” Claude said, “so you can move out of here.”

  John nodded. “They’re sweet. Those big smiles coming from under all those uneven bangs and grubby faces. Kinda breaks your heart. I’m glad we help them out.”

  “You’re a sap,” Claude said. “And please, the company’s not doing this out of the kindness of their hearts. We wouldn’t know that school existed if there was nothing in it for us. Works out well that one of the guys on the utility commission has three kids there. We drop a few bills on the poor inner-city school, he looks the other way while our rate restructuring plan sails past the board. Nice arrangement.”

  “Maybe, but it’s still good for the kids. You coming in?”

  “Too nice out here.”

  “What if the boss is back from his meeting?”

  “Screw him,” Claude said. “Make the bastard drag me back inside if he wants me. But don’t sweat it, he ain’t back from his meeting yet. Besides, if you check my card, you’ll see I’m punched in. It’s all legit.”

  Claude smiled. John finished his candy bar and tossed the wrapper in the white bucket.

  “All right, Bugsy. See you in a few.”

  When he returned from break, Claude heard high-pitched squeals and with a hand over his eyes squinted into the dim interior of the building as if trying to make out the source.

  “Ready?” Scotty said to the children. “One, two, three...”

  “Hi Bugsy,” the children called. “It’s about time you finished your break.”

  The school kids howled. Claude smiled, and walked toward Scotty.

  “Say hi to Miss Karakostas’s fourth grade class,” Scotty said. “Their principal couldn’t afford a real field trip, so they get a tour of Rhode Island Electric.”

  “Better than some stuffy museum,” Claude said. “Come on, let’s race ‘em up the aisles, you know, get a little obstacle course going. I’ll put five bucks on the tall one.”

  “Maybe another time. We’ve only got fifteen minutes until the teacher comes back and takes them to the yard for bucket rides.”

  A cheer went up from the class.

  “Who’s giving the rides?” Claude said.

  “Derek and Leo,” Scotty said. “Medical took them out of the buckets, and Feeney has nothing else for them to do. The kids’ll get a kick out of it. First, though, we’re supposed to show them how our department works.”

  “Let me join you,” Claude said. “I’ll learn ‘em stuff they’d never get in school.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of. But sure, come along.”

  Scotty led the group toward the front of the building and sat the children down.

  “We’re a stockroom,” Scotty said. “That means this is where we keep all the equipment needed to keep the electricity on in your house. When something breaks, or when someone’s building new houses that need electricity, our workers come here to get the things they need. Each day, our big yellow trucks drive in to drop off all the junk they’ve collected during the day. They drive right through one of these four big doors and park here, in what we call the loading bays. When we take all the junk they’ve collected, sometimes we throw it away, sometimes we put it back on one of those high shelves, and sometimes we chuck it in one of those bins over there to be recycled. How many of you recycle?”

  Every child raised a hand.

  “Good,” Scotty said. “Good. Once we’ve taken everything off the trucks, then we put on the trucks the things the crews will need for the next day’s job. It could be wire, or streetlights, or just about anything else that helps keep your lights on.”

  A thin, dark-haired boy turned to Claude. “When can we ride the buckets?” he said in a near-whisper.

  “Soon enough, spud,” Claude said. “But first you have to learn about the wonderful world of the stockroom.”

  Scotty walked to the edge of the loading dock and eased down to one knee. “See this big piece of rubber?” he said. “It’s nailed right into the cement. That way the trucks can back all the way in without worrying about scratching the paint or denting the bumper. We have to climb on and off the trucks while we load them and unload them, so we don’t want them too far away or we’d have to jump to reach them, and this rubber lets them get in close.”

  A chubby blonde girl pointed to clear, foot-wide plastic strips hanging from the ceiling in the mouth of each bay. “What are those?” she said.

  Claude hopped off the loading dock, landing without a stagger, and walked toward the strips. “These keep the outside temperature from becoming the inside temperature when the steel doors are up,” he said in a loud voice. “They move apart easily when the trucks back in, and look, look over there on that wall. When it’s sunny with a bit of a breeze, they shoot colors onto everything that’s dark, which is just about the whole building, because those little windows way up near the roof don’t hardly let no light in at all, and because those light bulbs on the ceiling are what’s called energy-efficient bulbs, which means they don’t cost much to use but don’t light the place worth shit.”

  Claude shot a palm over his mouth as the children burst into giggles.

  “Poop, I mean. They don’t light the place worth poop. Unless it’s dark outside or the steel doors are down. Then you can kind of see in here.”

  Scotty started the group through the maze of floor-to-ceiling shelves, explaining what each shelf held and how it helped keep the state’s electricity on. The children remained quiet but started to fidget. Claude thought axes and giant snips might hold their attention better, but they didn’t, so when Scotty reached the spot where the department stored its forklifts, flatcarts, and dollies, and started in on the horsepower each vehicle could muster and the maximum load it could carry, Claude powered two flatcarts into the middle of the back aisle and gestured for the kids to climb on. They scrambled aboard. Scotty objected, but Claude told him to relax, he wouldn’t race them, he’d just show them how the things worked.

  “Now stay in the middle and don’t move,” Claude said.

  He twisted the handgrips like a biker revving his motorcycle engine, and the cart moved forward. Claude drove them toward the back door, wheeled them in a circle, and drove them back toward the group. When they arrived, Claude motioned for the children to sit tight, and when they did he brought a black lever down slowly and lifted the flatcart bed ten feet in the air. From over the sides of the raised bed beaming children waved to their classmates. After Claude lowered his group, Scotty gave the others the same ride in the second cart.

  “Can we go again?” Claude’s group said. “Take us up again.”

  Scotty vetoed the idea, noting they only had two minutes to finish the rest of the tour, which they could never do, meaning the children would be late for the bucket rides. Scotty hustled the class toward the center of the building, where Rhode Island Electric had erected four plasterboard walls and a ceiling. In the unpainted room were three desks, three file cabinets, and a sign reading “Stores Department.”

  “This is the office,” Scotty said. “This is where we get our paperwork done.”

  Claude leaned over to the tallest boy in the class. “It’s where the big jerk hangs out,” he said. “You can tell he’s not here right now because he’s not yelling about something stupid.”

  A girl in pigtails interrupted Scotty. “Where do those stairs go?” she said.

  Claude bent low and gathered the children around him. “They go to the roof,” he said. “But if you look at the top, you’ll see a little platform.”

  “The nest,” Scotty said.

  “The nest,” Claude said. “If you’re sitting on the back of the platform, near the door, nobody down here can see you, so you can goof off all you want. But the boss don’t know about it, so don’t tell anyone, okay? It’ll be our little secret.”

&nbs
p; “You’re not supposed to goof off,” the pigtailed girl said.

  “You got a lot to learn, little wiseacre.”

  Scotty took over again and pointed to the ceiling, to a small cockpit suspended from two orange tracks on the roof, a metal floor beneath a tiny seat surrounded by black-knobbed levers and shifts. A safety bar ran three quarters of the way around the cockpit, and a safety harness dangled over the metal floor, its buckle reflecting incoming light from the bays. Scotty showed them a ladder on the back wall, which provided the only access, and told the children the crane took three full minutes to inch the 150 yards from the front of the department to the back. He told them the crane could lift up to ten tons, and showed them the different sized hooks and rigs that could be attached to the main lifting line. He also pointed to the yellow lights—like lights atop a tow truck—that twirled whenever Frank, the crane operator, sat in the cockpit.

  “Has anyone ever been crushed?” the thin boy asked.

  “No, thank god,” Scotty said, “We’re very safe here. The lights twirl to let people know to be careful. We take every precaution to make sure nobody is injured, because you don’t want to wait until after an accident to start thinking about safety.”

  “Ahem,” Claude said from the back of the group. Scotty gave a shrug and a wrinkle of his face.

  “This is supposed to be educational,” Claude said. “Now children, we can’t lie to you, once in a while something falls off the hook and almost kills someone, but Frank has a horn he can use to warn people of stuff, and usually a good loud honk will get people scrambling from whatever it is is about to crunch them into a pancake. Most of the time, though, Frank just leans on the bar and does nothing, because the crane moves so slow on its tracks poor Frank would die if he had to haul his stomach up and down the ladder all day, but the good thing about that is Frank has a good view of the place, and does a good job of warning us with a quick blast of the horn whenever we need to look sharp for the boss.”