The Jig of the Union Loller

by Michael Burnham

  By default Joan filled the role of primary confidant.

  Trouble was, Claude didn’t share real problems with her very often. For years he had his father. For a period he had no one.

  After all, Joan was a wife, not a friend. In the early years of their marriage, Claude treated Joan like his father treated his mother. A husband had authority over all household decisions, though he could cede some if he desired, and the wife held a job or didn’t hold a job as he commanded. A husband didn’t cook, except to barbecue, and didn’t clean. He handled all carpentry, auto repair, exterior painting, and snow removal, and until he had teenage children also mowed the lawn and took out the garbage. A wife confided in her husband and sought his advice, but a husband was not obliged to reciprocate.

  In the early years, Claude played his father well enough, but Joan didn’t fare so well as his mother. Although they had traits in common, Gail had intellectual and social abilities beyond Joan’s reach, and perhaps because of her abilities, Gail possessed a quiet confidence that helped her maintain a positive, level-headed demeanor even in the face of Jackie’s orotundity. Claude found this quality conspicuously absent in Joan.

  Claude wouldn’t call himself a thinker, but he did believe there was a learning element to relationships, and thought the fact he never had a serious girlfriend before Joan—nor Joan a real boyfriend before him—played a hand in their marriage. Some people develop good relationships only after a string of failures. With each new partner, the mistakes of the past are erased, while the successes are carried over. But with Joan, mistakes weren’t erased, they lingered in the haze of history, sometimes a sheath of verbal arrows Joan could fire into Claude to win an argument, sometimes a collection of mental stuffed animals to hold close when the argument was lost and Joan was all alone.

  From the picture of Jackie, Claude’s eyes meandered over to the clock. Jamie would be home soon. He wouldn’t say a word. He shook his head to confirm his plan, and heard the front door open and Jamie call hello. Jamie entered the family room and punched her father in the shoulder.

  “What’s up?” she said.

  “Not much. How was school?”
“Same old. Whatcha watching?”

  He tossed her the remote control. “Your call.”

  Jamie tossed it back. “I’ve got homework to do. Let me go change, then we can play one game of cribbage, then back upstairs I go.”

  “All right,” Claude said. “After supper, you want to go to the video store with me and pick out a video?”

  “No can do,” Jamie said. “Mega-homework.”

  She went to change. From the pace of her feet on the stairs, Claude decided she wasn’t carrying many books, and therefore couldn’t have as much homework as she believed. He concluded they’d be watching a movie after all.

  An hour later Joan struggled through the door with two bags of groceries. Jamie rumbled down the stairs to greet her.

  “You should’ve gotten plastic bags,” Jamie said. “They’re easier to carry.”

  Joan showed Jamie what to leave out for dinner, then plopped in her chair at the kitchen table as Jamie put the remaining items in the cupboard or refrigerator. Joan kicked off her shoes. One slid toward the garbage pail. The other flipped upside down, leaving an inch-high heel pointing to the ceiling.

  “What a day,” Joan said. “Must be a full moon.”

  “A lot of people buying home appliances?” Jamie said.

  “It was crazy. ‘I want I want I want’ is all I heard. One lady wanted a curling iron, and had a newspaper ad that had to be a year old. I kept telling her we don’t stock that brand any more—that’s why they were on sale to begin with —but she kept telling me her husband cut the ad out for her and told her it was only a few weeks old. I felt like saying, ‘Duh, lady, that’s what husbands do.’ She wanted me to special order one for her at the price in the ad. I said, sorry, I can’t do it, so she threw a screaming fit right there in the middle of the department. In front of everyone.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I waited for Mr. Abeles to come over, and let him deal with it.”

  Joan peeled some potatoes and set them to boil, and tossed four pork chops into a big frying pan on the stove. Jamie set the table, then opened a can of peas and put them in the microwave. She poured lemonade for herself and her mother, and placed an unopened beer near her father’s plate.

  A few minutes later, Joan called Claude to eat. The three sat down at the table in the small kitchen.

  “How was your day?” Joan said to her husband.

  “Good day,” Claude said with a mouth full of pork chop. “Schulke tried to drop the hammer, and us union guys shoved it right back in his face.”

  “What do you mean?” Joan said.

  Claude swallowed, and loaded his fork with mashed potato.

  “Schulke read my warnings to everyone in the group, and told us a couple of new rules that were obviously meant for me.”

  Joan stopped eating. “What do you mean meant for you? Are you in trouble? Are they going to get rid of you?”

  “They’re not going to get rid of me. Jesus, woman. That’s what all this is about.”

  Jamie looked down at her plate. Joan sipped some lemonade.

  “Schulke read my warnings, trying to be all tough and everything. Then Frank stood up and said Schulke had a lot of damn nerve singling me out, when I was as good a worker as anyone in the department, and that he’d better not try to frame me in some Mickey Mouse scheme or the union would see that his ass was busted all the way down to janitor.”

  “So you’re telling me you’re in a union again?” Jamie said with a smirk.

  “I know,” Claude said. “Can you believe it? I’m gonna go see Jim Shepard tomorrow. Schulke admitted he’s out to get me, so I think I can get some of my other warnings cleared off the board.”

  “Oh, that is good news,” Joan said.

  “Well I’ll raise a toast,” Jamie said. “Here’s to no warning.”

  The Amognes touched glasses and beer bottles, and finished their supper.

  Chapter 14

  Tom Schulke lived in a modest cape in a town called Cranston. The white house had red trim and a red front door, a maple tree in the small front yard, and a black mailbox with a metal guard to protect it from drunken teenagers with baseball bats. A chain-link fence defined the sides of the property, and also the back, but not the front, where a small curb separated the lawn from the street. Paint peels curled from the garage door, exposing the wood beneath it, and blue window boxes held mildewed dirt but no flowers. A cement birdbath lay on its side beneath the maple tree, surrounded by dandelions and uneven, above-the-ankle grass.

  Schulke pushed open the front door, laid his jacket and satchel on the rocking chair in the living room, and headed for the bar he built between the kitchen and the dining room. Something smelled good. When he rounded the corner from the living room he saw his wife Winnie unloading white cardboard boxes from a large paper bag as she drank a gin and tonic. On the bar stood a bottle of Scotch and an empty glass.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Schulke said. “It was some day.”

  He poured a Scotch and soda, stirred it once, and took a big gulp. Without replacing the cap on the soda bottle, he moved to the other side of the bar and slipped his free hand around Winnie’s narrow waist. Neither spilled a drop as they met for a kiss, even though Winnie had to rise to her toes to reach her husband’s mouth.

  “What made you decide on Chinese?” Schulke said.

  “No reason. Don’t you want ice in that?”

  “Nope. How was your day?”

  “Nuts,” Winnie said. “The computers snarled up about ten o’clock, and I had five press releases to get out. Then Mr. Lennon came down and said we received a grant to expand the neo-natal unit, so I spent the rest of the day calling around to see if I could get coverage. None of the television stations were interested, which isn’t going to go over well when Mr. Lennon sits down to watch the news t
onight.”

  She raised her glass. “Let’s hope when that S.O.B. has his first heart attack, he winds up in our emergency room.”

  Schulke laughed. He touched his glass to hers, took a quick sip of his drink, and sat down with her to eat, spooning generous helpings of pork fried rice and lo mein onto his paper plate, along with seven chicken fingers, but avoiding the broccoli-and-something dish altogether. Winnie loaded her plate, but before beginning went to the bar and mixed herself another drink, replacing the cap on the tonic water bottle but leaving the cap to the soda bottle as it lay. After she settled back in her chair, she noticed her husband staring into his plate as he moved his fork from the food to his mouth and back.

  “You all right, dear?” Winnie said. “You look a little blue.”

  “We had our big locker meeting at work,” Schulke said. “Frank Dombrowski stood up and basically told me to shove it right in front of everyone. If it was anyone else I would’ve hollered right back, but with Frank you can’t do that. He knows when he’s holding a trump card, and he knew he could say whatever he wanted and his union leaders would back him up, and human resources would back up his union leaders. It sucks. I should be the guy management is backing with shit like this, but it never happens. Someone breaks into a guy’s locker, destroys everything in there, destroys the locker itself, and I’m powerless to do anything about it. At a lot of companies, heads would roll after something like this, but Clarke, he won’t even investigate.”

  “Last night you said he gave you new cameras and a computer.”

  “That doesn’t help me now. I went to see him at the end of the day, hoping he’d give me some advice about how to handle the situation, and all I got was ‘Tom, keep it off my desk.’ Big dope. He’s supposed to be the manager of human resources, supposed to know something about dealing with people, and he treats the people beneath him like dirt. He should be working for me, helping me with anything I come to him about, but instead he’s just concerned with giving the union whatever it wants and kissing ass upstairs. You know what he said to me today?”

  Winnie chewed an oversized forkful of lo mein and swallowed it, then reached for her drink and washed down the remnants. “No, dear, what?”

  “He said if Gino Carbone wins his grievance, he’s putting him in stores.”

  “Who’s Gino Carbone?”

  “Gino’s the guy who caused that big explosion. I told you about it.”

  “Two guys with third-degree burns?”

  “That’s the one. Well think about it: this fucker ignored every safety rule in the book, caused a flash, mouthed off to the operations manager, and we can’t even fire him, he goes to an arbiter and wins his job back. What message does that send to the union? It tells them, don’t worry about safety, because the company can’t punish you even if you do something wrong. So what happens is the union guys start to strut around, doing all kinds of stupid, unsafe things just to show everyone that they can flaunt the man’s rules any time they want, and you watch, someday somebody’s going to get killed, and then everyone at the company will run around saying, ‘Oh my god, how can this happen? How is something like this possible?’ When all the while if they set real standards and stood behind them, accidents wouldn’t happen.”

  Schulke rose to pour another Scotch and soda. He drank half of it, topped it off again and returned to the table.

  “So now I’m going to be stuck with Gino,” he said.

  “What’s wrong with that?” Winnie said.

  “I don’t want him. He’s a dink.”

  “Well speak up.”

  “It won’t do me any good. If he wins his grievance, he’s mine. Clarke has to make sure Feeney is happy and the union is happy and Munson is happy. Who cares if Tom Schulke’s happy? Shit, I say anything and I’m a nuisance, a big bother. I get all the troublemakers, everyone else’s headaches, but not a word of thanks for getting production out of them, getting them to work even a little, and not an ounce of support when one of them gives me lip. It’s a pisser.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “Call ‘em like I see ‘em,” he said, “just like I always do. Those guys are paid to work, and when they don’t, it’s my job to chew them out. If I catch them once too often, out they go. Hand them their severance pay, wave good-bye, and wait for the next bum to stroll in, take his place, and start the big charade all over again.”

  Winnie finished eating and pushed her plate away. Schulke stuffed a full chicken finger in his mouth, and talked as he chewed it.

  “Know what else I’m going to do?”

  “No,” Winnie said. “What?”

  “I’m going to knock down another drink and see if I can’t get beneath that blouse of yours.”

  Chapter 15

  The next day Schulke had an off-site, all-morning meeting, so Claude told Scotty he was going to see Jim Shepard and would be back in twenty minutes.

  He was back in five. Upon returning, Claude walked straight to a computer and entered invoices.

  Scotty was curious, so he called Shepard from the phone near the bays.

  “Hi Jim, this is Scotty. Bugsy just got back, and he looks upset. Is everything all right?”

  “Fine in my corner,” Shepard said. “But Mr. Bugsy may not be too chipper for a while.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  “Nothing happened. That ballsy bastard came over and asked me if I could get his warnings rescinded. He said it was obvious now that Schulke was out to get him, and his warnings were no good.”

  “So?”

  “So I laughed in his face. Those warnings are no good, he says —what dream world is he living in? I told him he’s damn lucky he’s not already in the unemployment line, and unless he thinks Frank Dombrowski was struck by lightning and is suddenly lord almighty, he ought to keep the lip to a minimum and concentrate on doing his job. You know what he says to me next?”

  “No, what?”

  “He says, ‘Watch it, Jim, the rank and file are behind me on this.”

  “So what did you say?”

  “I didn’t say nothing at first. I couldn’t believe he was serious. When I saw he was, I said, look, your father’s time has come and gone. We don’t protect lazy bums anymore, just because they hold one of our union cards. You get a lot from the company, and from the union, and the only thing you owe in return is a good day’s work. Guys who give an honest effort, I go to the mat for them. Lazy bums? Hey, if the letter of the law finds, them guilty, then off they go, sayanara, nice knowing you. And as far as the rank and file being behind you? Well, if you mess up again, maybe you’re right, maybe a wave of solidarity will burst from the stores department with such power that the company has no choice but to bow down to its awesomeness. But it isn’t bloody likely. I think it’s more likely that the next time you screw up you’ll be trampled by a stampede of brethren running to tell Schulke about it. So make sure you’re wearing your hardhat, ok?”

  “Harsh.”

  “Too bad,” Shepard said. “I’m not going to be intimidated by Claude Amognes. Besides, he’s better off knowing the real score than believing that fantasy tale he sold himself. Isn’t that right?”

  Scotty agreed, and hung up. He thought it was an opportune time for some friendly support and started toward Claude, but after a few steps he reconsidered, feeling it best not to risk setting Claude off, and instead returned to work and let him be.

  After lunch, a shipment of safety equipment lay on the dock waiting to be put away. Claude loaded it onto a flatbed dolly and pulled it beyond the office to the storage cabinets, where small items like goggles and work gloves were kept. He worked alone, cataloguing each piece as he removed it from the box, and making sure it went in the correct drawer, in the back, so the older stock would be used first. The bottom drawer of the cabinet held earplugs, and as Claude counted the tiny boxes of earplugs he was about to put there, he heard Frank lean on the warning buzzer.

  He looked over his shoulder, and sur
e enough, there was Schulke, marching toward him at full steam, with his jaw clenched so tight the muscles on the top of his cheekbones twitched.

  That’s it, Claude thought. God fucking dammit, that’s it. I’ve had it. I’m going to knock his fucking block off, hell be damned. Come on, you fucking bastard. Take a swing at me, ’cause I’m going to knock your goddam fucking pisass shitbrained block off.

  Claude dropped a pack of earplugs to the cement floor and climbed to his feet to face Schulke. “I’m working, for Christ’s sake!”

  Schulke took three more steps, as if he hadn’t heard Claude yell, then stopped suddenly. A momentary look of confusion ran across his face. He started forward again, stopped again, and turned to Claude.

  “Where the hell’s Warren?” he said.

  Claude stepped back. “Um, I haven’t seen him.”

  “I know,” Schulke shouted. “He’s not here. I want to know where the hell he is.”

  Schulke continued out the back door. Claude fell to the dusty floor and folded his arms over his knees. He felt drained. He sat for a minute and stared, seeing with an unfocused eye the blurs and shadows of the shelves across the aisle. In a minute, he blinked, saw clearly again, and rolled to his hands and knees to fill the bottom shelf with the remaining boxes of earplugs.

  #

  At home that night, Claude waited up for Joan to return from Bingo, and around 10 o’clock heard her come through the front door and go to the kitchen. He snuck from the family room, crept up behind her, and startled her by sliding his arms around her waist. He pulled her close and kissed the back of her head.

  “What’s got into you?” she said.

  “Nothing. How was Bingo?”

  Joan turned to face her husband, who released her, and extracted a $20 bill from the front pocket of her slacks. With a wide grin, she waved it in front of Claude’s eyes.

  “Twenty big ones,” she said. “Tonight I’m the diagonal queen.”

  They both smiled, and she put the twenty away.