The Jig of the Union Loller Read online

  As Claude spoke, a short man with oil-stained boots and a grease smudge on his cheek rounded the corner, his thick fingers holding an unopened can of soda.

  “Hey, everyone,” Scotty said. “We’re talking about Frank, and here he is. Kids, meet Frank Dombrowski.”

  “Hi kids,” Frank said. “Nice to see ya.”

  “You go up that ladder?” the pigtailed girl said.

  “Just watch, little darling.”

  As Frank climbed the ladder, a voice called hello, and Scotty leaned into the office doorway to see a tall woman with long, dark hair standing opposite him in the office’s other doorway. The children ran to her.

  “Miss Karakostas, Miss Karakostas. Can we go on the bucket rides now?”

  She said yes, but first instructed the children to thank their tour guides, which they did. She herded them toward the door on the far side of the building, near the steps leading to the nest, and down the hall that would take them to the front parking lot. Claude and Scotty watched her backside as she went.

  #

  After the children left, everyone in the department gathered on the loading dock near a van delivering small boxes of office supplies and paper. Dave Darezzo, a short blond man who always wore a hockey jersey to work, sat on a forklift off to one side of the dock, hands folded behind his head and feet crossed on the lift’s black steering wheel. Warren Taylor, whose sandy hair was cut so unevenly everyone thought he trimmed it himself, leaned on an upright dolly. John Carrollton sat on a pile of boxes. Elton MacGibbon, a dark-haired, wiry man in his early fifties, reviewed a packing slip with the deliveryman. Although the van held nothing large, Frank started the crane toward the front of the building. Claude and Scotty joined the others.

  “Where’s Schulke?” Warren asked Scotty.

  “At a meeting,” Scotty said. “Told me he’d be most of the morning.”

  “Him and his meetings,” Warren said. “Useless A and Useless B.”

  John bit his nails, inspected the new shape, and bit some more. Warren stuck a pinky in his ear, pulled it out, stuck it in again, and twisted it around. Darezzo spat on the floor. All three looked up when Frank brought the crane overhead. Frank set the brake, leaned on the safety rail, and waved to the group below.

  Darezzo sat up. “Hey where’s Nick?” he said. “I haven’t seen him all morning.”

  “Shit that’s right,” Claude said. He turned and yelled toward the crane. “Hey, Frank, I forgot to tell you. Nick’s interviewing with Feeney for a management spot. We need you to come with me and Scotty and talk to him.”

  Scotty rolled his eyes.

  “I didn’t know that,” Elton said. “He told you he’s going for a management spot?”
“No, me and John saw him with Feeney before break,” Claude said.

  “Well I’ll have to have a talk with Mr. Dubois,” Elton said. “Give him a few things to think about.”

  “No, we’re going to have a talk with him,” Claude said. “Me and Scotty and Frank. It’s already been decided.”

  “Well I’m coming too.”

  “Sorry, Elton my man, three’s company, four’s a crowd.”

  “Four nothing,” Frank said from the crane, “I just got here and I’m not coming down. If Nick’s interviewing with Feeney, he could be in there all day. You guys take care of it without me.”

  With that, Scotty agreed to include Elton. Claude wheeled around without speaking and headed to the office, where he shuffled through a stack of work orders until he found one for equipment stored near the hallway leading to the overhead lines office. Claude plucked the work order from the pile, drove a forklift to the shelf containing the item, and sat.

  Before long, Nick rounded the corner at the far end of the corridor. He struggled to undo a necktie, and when the knot popped loose he slid the tie from the collar of his mint-colored, short-sleeved dress shirt, crumpled it in one hand, and stuffed it into the front pocket of his blue chinos. The clumps made by his work boots echoed through the empty hall.

  “Whatcha got in your pocket there?” Claude called.

  Nick saw Claude on the forklift and stopped walking.

  “Looking pretty for Feeney?” Claude said. “So come on, how’d it go?”

  “I was just listening.”

  “Just listening, eh?”

  “No concern of yours or anyone else’s. Just listening.”

  “Me and the guys, we don’t want you even listening, Nick. Your union does a lot for you, and, damn it, we don’t like guys running around trying to stab us in the back and join management. It just ain’t good. We all got to stick together. You can’t waltz off on your brothers just because Feeney pretends to kiss your ass for a few minutes.”

  “Thanks for the input, Bugsy. Fortunately I don’t make life decisions based on feedback from you.”

  Nick walked past Claude, and a few steps later arrived at the loading dock.

  “Hi scab,” Darezzo said from his forklift.

  Nick ignored him. The other members of the department gathered around. Claude pulled up in his forklift and joined the group.

  “Hey, Nick,” Scotty said, “does Feeney want you?”

  “I don’t know,” Nick said. “I just went to listen.”

  “If he gets you, he’s going to work you into the ground,” Elton said. “You might as well kiss time with your family good-bye.”

  “Well, my family’s kind of the reason I went,” Nick said.

  “How so?” John said.

  Nick shrugged. “You know, Melissa’s a sophomore in high school, and we could use the extra money when she’s ready for college, and the wife and I, we aren’t too far from retirement age, and we were talking the other day about maybe it’d be nice if we could buy a place in Florida and not have to spend our retirement shoveling snow in New England. You know, move up a little.”

  “The money’s not worth it,” Elton said. “It isn’t that much. It’s not going to send Melissa to Harvard or buy a palace on Miami Beach.”

  “I don’t really want to discuss it any more.”

  “Well you’re going to,” Claude said. “We don’t want management among us. Are you going to collect information for the next two weeks and then spill it to Feeney when he hires you? You think we’re stupid? If you’re a rat, say so, and we’ll put on our rodent gloves until you’re gone.”

  Nick snorted and shook his head. “I knew this’d happen. Look, I’m no dupe for Feeney, or for Schulke, or for anyone, and I probably won’t even take the job if Feeney offers it to me. But as long as I’m in stores, I’m stuck. I make a decent living, sure, but I can never advance anywhere. I’m here until I retire, and then I have to live on a pension that isn’t even a full month’s pay. I hear what you’re saying about the money not being that much different between a stockman and a front-line supervisor, but don’t forget that there are other levels of supervisors. There’s coordinating supervisors, planners, department managers, and operations managers, and those guys make big bucks – I bet Feeney makes a hundred and fifty a year, easy. And remember, most of the supervisors around here are no spring chickens. They’re going to be retiring soon, and when they do the top brass will be looking to move front-line supervisors into the big chairs. Hey, I climbed poles for twelve years before I got hurt and wound up in stores. I can’t string wires any more, but I can supervise. I know the job.”

  “Scab talk,” Darezzo called from the forklift. “Talking scab. Totally scabatious.”

  “Now hold everything,” Warren said. “Let’s get one thing straight here.”

  Everyone froze. Even Frank in the crane leaned forward to hear.

  Warren extended an index finger and waved it once across the entire group. “A scab is someone who crosses a picket line and takes your job while you’re on strike. Nick’s not a scab. He’s a turncoat. Get the terminology right.”

  The group, save Nick, broke into laughter. Even the deliveryman chuckled, but then Frank’s horn sounded and all heads searched the peri
meter for the boss, Tom Schulke, who emerged from the stacks near the meter reading hallway.

  “What’s going on here?” Schulke said. “This isn’t party time. Get this truck unloaded and get back to work. There are a million things to do.”

  Scotty and Elton returned to the packing slip and the others slowly dispersed.

  “Claude,” Schulke said, “I told you Tuesday to enter all the invoices into the computer so the vendors can get paid. They’re not done. You haven’t even started.”

  “I’ve been busy.”

  “Bullshit. Get going.”

  Claude stiffened to mock attention. “Yes sir, Mr. Schulke sir! I know how vital they are to our mission, sir! I will enter these invoices as you have commanded, sir!”

  Claude saluted, put his toe behind his heel, turned military style, and marched away from the boss with a huge grin for the guys to see. With a clenched jaw the boss walked toward the bays. As the guys stifled their chuckles, Schulke jumped off the loading dock and disappeared around the corner.

  Although he went to the office and typed the first invoice into the computer, Claude did not type a second. Instead, he rummaged through the morning paper until he found the sports section. He peeked toward the bays for a sign of Schulke. When he didn’t see one, he flipped a silent middle finger to the absent boss and headed for the bathroom.

  #

  After lunch, with Schulke back, Claude entered invoices into the computer. At 2:30, Claude turned his attention to stock orders for the line trucks pulling into the bays.

  The first truck pulled into Claude’s assigned bay, and Dan Thompson, the junior member of the two-person crew, unloaded the scraps from the day’s work. Claude logged everything coming off the truck, then separated the trash from what might be reused. In another log, he described the reusable items and their condition and set them aside to be put back on the shelves. He next went through the trash pile and removed metal, porcelain, and other recyclable material, jotting each in a third log before dragging the new piles to the appropriate bins and tossing them in. The remaining refuse from Dan’s truck had no use whatsoever, but even garbage came with paperwork: the local trash-to-energy plant burned garbage to make cheap power, and paid Rhode Island Electric a small fee for each ton it hauled from its premises. Claude weighed the trash, recorded the figure in yet another log, and chucked it in the dumpster.

  As Claude and Dan unloaded, Nate Coffey, the senior member of the crew, went to the overhead lines office, reported the work done that day, and picked up the crew’s next assignment. In the stores department, he met with Claude to review the materials needed. By now, Claude had gathered everything in the stock order and moved it to the bay.

  “Easy day Monday?” Claude said.

  “You got it,” Nate said. “Set a few streetlights. Perfect way to start the week.”

  The men checked off the items as they were loaded onto the truck. The pile transferred, Dan and Nate climbed into the truck’s cab, gave a wave, and drove the big yellow beast with the smiling light bulb on its side to the company gas pumps for refueling. Once they filled it with gas and parked it, their weekend began.

  Since no other trucks pulled in right away, Claude meandered to the far end of the department to check out the female meter readers as they came off the road. Before long he heard footsteps, and when Frank confirmed the source of the footsteps with a quick blow of the horn, Claude broke into a play-act, running his finger from left to right as he pretended to search a shelf for an item, pointing to a work order and shaking his head, and finishing by making a face of feigned frustration. It worked. The boss passed without comment.

  Five minutes later, Claude again heard footsteps coming toward him, but this time there was no horn from Frank.

  “Bugsy, what the fuck is wrong with you?” a tall man in a yellow hard hat holding two strips of wire said.

  “What do you mean, Jeff?” Claude said.

  “I needed seven spools of 477. You loaded me with five of 477 and two of one-ought. Look at this, you idiot: One-ought is this really thin wire here, 477 is this half-inch thick wire here. See the difference? How could you not notice? If I’d strung one-ought from the Foster substation the damn shit would’ve melted the first time someone flipped a light switch.”

  “Hey, Jeff, I’m really sorry,” Claude said in a low voice.

  “Sorry is right,” Jeff said. “You’re a sorry motherfucker. You told me all seven of those spools were 477s. If you weren’t such a pussy, I’d kick your ass right here.”

  “The printout must’ve been wrong. Sorry, man.”

  “Stop saying you’re sorry,” Jeff yelled. “The printout wasn’t wrong. You got the wrong shit. Now get me two more 477s and put them by truck 317. Me and Junior have to fucking drive all the way to Foster on a Saturday for 45 minutes of work, because Feeney’s all over us. He wanted that damn substation online today.”

  Jeff slammed his work order for Monday on the floor by Claude’s feet and stormed off. Claude walked to truck 317.

  “Junior, hey man, I’m really sorry. Someone must’ve put one-oughts in the wrong place. Tell Jeff I’m sorry.”

  “You could have screwed our production numbers,” Junior said. “I missed a goal last year and it lightened my bonus check about $500. Jeff’ll cool off, but you can’t keep doing this, man. It isn’t that hard. Make sure what’s on the sheet is on the truck.”

  “Sorry man. Tell Jeff I’m sorry.”

  Claude ran his hand to the top of his head, then back down to the nape of his neck. “Someone put one-oughts in the wrong place.”

  “Just be more careful next time.” Junior stepped from the truck to the dock. “Let’s load this bugger and get the hell out of here. The Dub’s a-waiting.”

  Chapter 2

  Most Fridays Claude’s post-work drinking began as soon as he could punch out and drive to the bar. This Friday, however, he swung by Central High School to watch his daughter Jamie, a junior at West High School, play softball. After fourteen games, Jamie had just three plate appearances and four mop-up innings in right field, but when the vice-principal hit West’s starting right fielder with a three-day suspension for smoking in the school parking lot, the coach told Jamie she’d be starting the second game of the doubleheader against Central.

  Claude parked his red Chevy pickup truck and walked a short tree-lined path to the field, emerging just as West took the field for the bottom of the second inning. Claude found his wife, Joan, seated on the top row of a set of bleachers between the press box and the visitors’ bench. He climbed up and sat next to her.

  “Any score?” he said.

  “Two to nothing,” Joan said. “Mr. Abeles kept us in a department meeting that went on forever, so I got here late. But I heard West won the first game.”

  “Jamie done anything?”

  “Nope. She was just about to bat, but her team made the third out. She ran over to get one ball, but it ended up being foul, I think. I don’t know, maybe it was a hit, but she didn’t do anything wrong. The coach didn’t yell at her.”

  In right field, Jamie chomped on a wad of gum but only blew bubbles between pitches. Her snug uniform —blue pants and a white top with red trim—showed the contours of her body: thin legs, narrow hips, b-cup breasts, slender arms. She pulled her cap lower to her eyes than the other girls, and unlike many of them let her shoulder-length hair fall as it may instead of tying it in a ponytail and pulling it through the hole above the hat’s adjustable strap. Although brown, her hair had natural blondish tints, and her eyebrows were blonder still. She had white skin, colored only by the blemishes she was prone to, and brown eyes. Jamie loved her eyes, loved looking into them in a mirror, but hated her chin, which she felt receded too far beneath her bottom teeth and didn’t match the rest of her skull.

  As her pitcher delivered, Jamie rested her glove and her throwing hand on her knees. Between pitches, she stood upright, hanging her arms free as she blew a bubble or two. The first batter of th
e inning grounded out, but the next two singled to left to bring up Central’s leadoff hitter, a lefthanded blonde girl nearly six feet tall.

  “Jamie’s playing too shallow,” Claude said.

  “So yell to her to move back,” Joan said.

  “No. She’ll be mad.”

  The batter swung and lifted a lazy fly ball to right. Two small steps and Jamie stood beneath it, but instead of settling in her glove the ball hit the outside finger and caromed toward the foul line. Both baserunners scored, and the batter wound up on third when Jamie’s throw to second sailed into left field. The next batter struck out, but after that six Central hitters put up six straight hits – and scored five more runs —before a skinny sophomore tapped to first to end the inning.

  When Jamie came in from the field, teammates Betty Allen and Lyndi Bayne met her near the coach’s box to console her about the muffed fly, but the public gesture didn’t dissuade some of the other West players from firing looks of disgust in Jamie’s direction. Jamie stuffed a helmet onto her head, windmilled a bat a few times, and stepped to the plate.

  “Leading off for West,” the young man at the public address system announced, “the right fielder, number two, Jamie A-mogg-knees.”

  “Not A-mogg-knees, you idiot” Claude yelled. “Amognes. Rhymes with alone.”

  “Correction,” the P.A. announcer said, “now batting for West, Jamie Amognes.”

  “Rhymes with let’s-see-if-she-can-atone,” someone yelled from the far-side bleachers.

  Jamie fouled to third, but later in the game dribbled a grounder past the second baseman for her first varsity hit.

  After the game, won by Central in a rout, Jamie found her parents in the small crowd and gave each a hug.

  “Nice hit, Princess,” Claude said.

  “Thanks, daddy,” Jamie said. “Come on, walk with me toward the bus.”

  “I don’t see why you can’t just come home with us,” Joan said.
“Coach makes the rules,” Jamie said.

  She paused to put on her red windbreaker, then tucked her glove under her arm and started with her mother and father down the path.

  “Is the coach going to play you more now?” Claude said.

  “I doubt it,” Jamie said.