The Jig of the Union Loller

by Michael Burnham

  “How’d it go at work?” she said. “Did they wipe away your warnings?”

  “No,” Claude said, “and they’re not going to. I went to see Jim Shepard, and he told me my father’s time had come and gone. He said he wasn’t going to protect me.”

  Joan noticed Claude’s non-plussed tone. “That’s too bad,” she said. “You’ll have to go a year then, I guess. Can you make it?”

  “I think so.”

  Chapter 16

  When Jamie Amognes and Betty Allen stepped off the city bus at College Square, they still had thirty minutes before they had to report to a Mrs. Ferguson at the state high school softball tournament, where they’d been hired to work the concession stands for the 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. games. Betty wanted a falafel, and tried to convince Jamie to get one too, but Jamie declined and said she’d meet Betty at the softball stadium in half an hour.

  Betty started the three-block journey to the falafel stand, while Jamie walked to an intersection and headed down Adams Street. As she went she paused to look in the display windows of a vintage clothing store, a skateboard shop, an internet cafe, and the College Square Compact Disc Emporium, but didn’t linger long at any of the four. A few blocks later the small shops and student hangouts gave way to a residential neighborhood in which the city’s oldest buildings had been preserved in near-Colonial form. The way narrowed and changed from pavement to cobblestone. Thin trees, spaced evenly along the sidewalk on both sides of the street, provided shade, and the wooden houses, modest today but glorious in their time, each had a historical marker by the front door indicating the year the house was built, the first owner, and which famous people, if any, had lived there throughout the years. A house built in 1671 flew an American flag with thirteen stars. Seven doors down on the opposite side of the street a house built in 1722 flew the white anchor and hope flag of Rhode Island. At the end of the stretch of Colonial homes, Jamie turned left and entered the small art district, pausing to check out the student sculptures adorning the telephone poles, a wire pegasus here, a sheet-metal African mask there. On the side of a brick seven story building, neon lights formed the shape of a person standing on the ledge of a fourth-story window. When the lights of the shape on the fourth story clicked off, another set of lights, a floor lower, showed the outline of a person in a swan dive. The animated sequence continued until the form hit the street (complete with splat rays), rebounded in tuck position as if coming off a trampoline, and concluded with the resurrected figure standing tall on a third-story landing with arms raised in Olympic-like glory. The lights on the final figure held for thirty seconds, then the entire display went dark, and the falling sequence began again.

  Jamie checked her watch and saw she had to be at the stadium in fifteen minutes. She turned and started back up the hill toward the oldest part of campus, walking quickly, passing the museums and faculty buildings without a second look. When she reached the summit of the hill, however, she stopped and pressed her face against the black iron gate she’d heard opened only twice each year, once to let the new freshmen in and once to let the graduating seniors out. Beyond the gates lay a well-manicured quad, lined by brick buildings that indeed had patches of ivy on their walls, though not many, a quad dotted with people reading alone on blankets or talking in small groups even though the bulk of the student body had left for the summer. A young man looked up from his book, caught Jamie’s eye, and smiled before returning to his reading. Jamie smiled back, but wasn’t sure the young man had seen it, so she remained in the same position, hands gripping the gate high over her head, cheeks against the cool iron, until she realized what she must look like to someone inside and stepped back. She chuckled to herself and resumed her trek to the stadium, but after five steps stopped, returned to the gate, and spent a few more seconds watching the activity on the quad. At last, she turned and scurried toward the softball field.

  At the stadium, Mrs. Ferguson handed Jamie and Betty their cash drawers and stood by until they’d counted the money to make sure it matched the figure taped on the side.

  “You girls think West will make the tourney next year?” Mrs. Ferguson said.

  “Doubtful,” Betty said. “My drawer is good.”

  “Mine too,” Jamie said.

  “I’ll be in the press box if you need me,” Mrs. Ferguson said. “I’ll come back near the end of the second game to help you cash out and give you your money.”

  From the little wooden hut that served as concession stand, neither Jamie nor Betty could see the field, but they followed the score by listening for the between-inning updates over the public address system. Although the stand had a grill, a popcorn popper, a coffeemaker, and a hot dog boiler, Mrs. Ferguson expected a small crowd and decided not to use them, leaving Jamie and Betty the fairly simple task of dispensing canned soda, candy bars, and bags of potato chips. By the fifth inning of the first game, they’d only had six customers.

  “This is a pretty easy gig,” Betty said. “Who worked it with you last year?”

  “Jenna,” Jamie said. “She ate more than we sold.”

  “Can you believe in two more weeks we’re going to be done with finals?” Betty said. “And then we’ll be seniors. Seniors in high school. Have you finished Mr. Anderson’s project yet?”

  “I haven’t even started.”

  “Who are you going to interview?”

  “I’m going to interview a friend of my aunt’s who works at a bank,” Jamie said. “Then I’m going to interview a woman from my mom’s department store, then I’m going to interview my dad.”

  “Your dad?”

  “Sure, Mr. Anderson said we could interview one relative.”

  “I know,” Betty said, “but it’s a project about work. Your dad hates his job.”

  Jamie hopped up and sat on the counter. “It’s either that or some stranger. Besides, it’s not like I have to make any of it up myself. I just have to ask the questions and write what he says. If he says anything embarrassing, I’ll leave it out. Mr. Anderson’s not going to sit there with the tape and read along word for word.”

  “He might, you know. Don’t forget, he wants one of us to be the next Stud Terkle.”

  Jamie and Betty both laughed.

  “The gayest teacher on the faculty,” Betty said, “and his favorite writer is a guy named Stud. Or Studs. Whatever. Stud this and Stud that. I wish he could stop looking at Jimmy Rosen for five seconds whenever he talks about Stud.”

  Another wave of laughter overtook the two girls until someone approached the stand and they had to reign in their giggles. For the rest of the evening, they chatted around the intermittent customers. In the sixth inning of the second game, Mrs. Ferguson showed up, counted their money with them, checked the stock, and paid them for their four hours of work. As Mrs. Ferguson locked the little hut, Betty’s father ambled around the corner to take them home.

  #

  The following Saturday a June breeze rocked Claude in his hammock. Although he’d thought about going fishing, Jamie said she needed to do her school interview with him that morning so she’d have time to transcribe the tape and finish the paper before deadline. Late the previous night, though, Manny Vazquez called to ask Jamie if she’d be willing to watch three year-old Valeria and ten month-old Bernardo while he took his wife to brunch for her birthday. The Vazquezes, who lived down the street from the Amognes, paid better than any of Jamie’s other babysitting clients, so Jamie rarely said no when they asked her, but their generosity had a flip side, because they felt as long as they were willing to pay—and they always were—there was never a need to hustle home. Most of the time Jamie didn’t mind, because once the kids fell asleep she felt the Vazquezes were paying her to just to stay awake and watch television, but this day she wished they were slightly less affluent and a lot more concerned about cost overruns with the babysitter.

  Claude swayed in the hammock and watched the clouds meander through the blue sky. He wondered if clouds always travel in the same directio
n, and first decided it couldn’t be so, but then figured they must at least flow the same way on the same day, since he couldn’t ever remember seeing a cloud float overhead, stop, and reverse direction, and wondered if, in the history of the world, it had ever happened, but then, after considering the puzzle in those terms, changed his mind and decided it happens every time the wind blows in a different direction, which it does frequently, meaning clouds do move in one direction and then about face, even though he couldn’t recall seeing it in person. For the next twenty minutes, he searched the sky for backtracking clouds. He didn’t find any.

  He looked over to his wife. How was she passing the time? There she sat at the picnic table, not reading, not listening to music, not anything. Was she daydreaming? It didn’t seem so, Claude thought, but she had to be. She had to be.

  Claude put his hands under the back of his head and cued up his favorite daydream. In it, he wins 100 million dollars. He and Jamie live on a sunny island, and he has beautiful blondes all around him, and handsome men court Jamie, but she’s not interested in any of them, and every time Joan’s image pops into the reverie, he starts a sequence leading to her death in a car crash, poor thing, and sees himself crying over her grave, but tells himself life must go on and in the next scene is back to guilt-free partying with scantily-clad blondes.

  At noon the portable phone rang and Joan answered it. She rose from the picnic table and walked toward Claude.

  “It’s Jamie,” she said.

  Jamie explained to her father that while the Vazquezes were eating at the restaurant, someone smashed into their car in the parking lot. The damage wasn’t too bad, but a police report had to be filed, the car had to be towed to an auto body shop, and a new car had to be rented, so the Vazquezes didn’t expect to be home until around two. Jamie apologized and said she’d be home as soon as she could.

  “That’s ok, Princess,” Claude said. “But if Vazquez calls again, tell him to quit the dillying and get everything straightened out. I’ve got an important interview to give to the world.”

  Jamie laughed. Claude clicked the off button and tossed the phone to the ground before returning his attention to the sky.

  #

  At 2:30 Jamie strode around the corner of the house and called hello to her parents. With a big smile, Joan jumped up and rushed her daughter for a hug. Claude, who’d fallen asleep in the hammock, lifted the cap from his eyes. As he disentangled himself from the netting, he slipped in a puddle of spilled beer and kicked the small pile of empty cans beneath the hammock.

  “Hi Princess,” he said in a groggy near-whisper.

  “Hi daddy,” Jamie said. “Ready for our interview?”

  “I reckon.”

  “Let me run upstairs and get my notes and the tape recorder,” Jamie said. “I’ll meet you in the family room.”

  “Are you hungry, dear?” Joan said.

  “No,” Jamie said. “I ate.”

  “I’ll have a sandwich,” Claude said. “What have you got?”

  “Turkey, roast beef, ham. Peanut butter and jelly.”

  “Roast beef,” Claude said.

  “Coming up.”

  When Jamie shuffled into the family room, she dropped to her hands and knees and plugged the old-fashioned portable tape recorder into the open outlet beneath the table. She hit the play button to see if the tape moved, and it did, so she clicked it off and climbed to her feet. Claude slapped a deck of cards onto the table.

  “Cut ’em and I’ll deal,” he said.

  “Not now, daddy. I’ve got to get this interview done.”

  “Aw, come on, one game won’t hurt. We’ve got all night.”

  “It takes forever to transcribe a half hour tape.”

  “So transcribe half of it.”

  Claude began to deal.

  “Look, I lost half the day because of the Vazquezes,” Jamie said. “I’m not playing cards. I want to get this interview done so I can get to work on the paper.”

  “Work, shmurk,” Claude said. “One game.”

  Joan entered the room with Claude’s sandwich, a pile of potato chips, and a can of beer. As Joan moved to set the meal down, Jamie reached over and intercepted the can of beer. With her free hand she swept the cards on the table onto the floor, grabbed the remainder of the deck, and set it near the leg of her chair. She stared at Claude, inviting him to make the next move.

  “All right,” Claude said at last. “The interview.”

  Jamie asked Joan to leave them alone, and Joan did, announcing she was going to the kitchen to make cranberry bread for Sunday morning. Jamie broke into a smile. Claude forced a corner of his mouth to rise. Jamie pointed a small microphone toward her father.

  “Well Mr. Amognes,” Jamie said with a grin, “tell me about your first job.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “What type of job it was it?” she said. “Who was it with? How did you like it?”

  Claude gave an exaggerated stroke of his chin. “Ok,” he said, “my first job was on the mowing crew of the parks and rec department when I was sixteen. City union.”

  “How did you like it?”

  “It was great. The first week I was there I rode the mower like a devil, cutting one lawn and moving right on to the next. I bet I mowed most of the park myself that first week. Then some old buck pulled me aside and gave me the what-for. Told me it hadn’t rained. If it hadn’t rained the grass don’t grow. If the grass don’t grow, you don’t mow it. Said come here and have a beer, so that’s what I did. When it rained we didn’t mow, but the next day we’d mow a little if it wasn’t too hot, then do some more the day after and some more the day after that.”

  “What did your boss think of that?” Jamie said.

  “Oh he was a hollerer, he was,” Claude said. “The first time he yelled at me I jumped up and ran for my mower like there was no tomorrow. And once he left the guys said if I ever did that again they’d kill me. Let him holler, they said. Because they were seasonal the wait to join the union was only two weeks, and once you were in you had to commit murder to get fired. Literally. Some guys would just lay on the grass, and if the boss told them to do anything, they’d just flip him the bird, they didn’t care, he couldn’t do nothing. Seven bucks an hour, and back then that was a ton of money. It was great.”

  “What did you learn from that first job?”

  “I learned I love beer.”

  Jamie smiled, and turned the page on her legal pad. “Let’s move on to your next job. That was at Rhode Island Electric, right?”

  “Yup, as a meter reader. Good money, good exercise. If a dog growled at you you just maced him.”

  “That’s horrible,” Jamie said.

  “They get over it. Of course, nowadays meter reading isn’t what it used to be. In my day, we had sixty or seventy meter readers, all on the road eight hours a day and sometimes weekends too, but now they’re all getting replaced by computers. Now one guy in a truck can drive around all day with some gizmo that reads meters without him even having to stop. It’s terrible.”

  “What’s so terrible about it?”

  “Well, it’s going to wipe a whole job off the face of the earth,” Claude said. “No more meter readers. With all the money the company is willing to spend on these fancy meters, they could pay twice the number of meter readers they have now and then some. But you know the worst thing? They’re making the current meter readers install the new system throughout the state. It’s like making them dig their own grave before executing them. Thanks for helping us get rich; now we’re never going to see you again. Goodbye.”

  Claude chewed a large bite of sandwich and motioned for the unopened beer. Jamie slid it toward him.

  “Which is more important,” Jamie said, “your company, or your union?”

  “Definitely the union,” Claude said. “No doubt about it.”

  “But how can that be?” Jamie said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Without the co
mpany, there are no jobs. Without jobs, what good is a union?”

  Claude gulped a third of his beer, boomed a belch, and wiped his mouth with his backhand.

  “You don’t need a company to have a union, honey. Lots of unions stand alone. The members go to the union hall, and wherever there’s work, that’s where they’re sent.”

  Jamie decided not to argue, since the path seem headed in the wrong direction. Mr. Anderson had instructed Jamie’s class to avoid freelancing, so each interviewee would cover the same ground, and with that in mind Jamie returned to the questions written on the pad.

  “In your current job, what’s a perfect day?” she said.

  “No boss, no deliveries, no work.”

  As she learned in class, Jamie remained silent to encourage the interviewee to continue speaking. He didn’t.

  “Ok, then,” she said, “what was your most satisfying moment at your current job?”

  Again Claude stroked his chin. “When the company put in a new payroll system and confused my social security number with one of the vice-presidents’. My pay was three times what it should have been, and it took them two weeks to notice. They tried to get the money back, but the union threatened a grievance and the company let me keep the money. Remember our trip to Florida? That’s what paid for it.”

  “But it wasn’t your money,” Jamie said.

  “It is the company’s responsibility to pay its employees,” Claude said as if reading from a script. “It is not the job of a union worker to oversee the payroll process. What was really great was I called in sick from a pay phone on the beach. Waves crashing on the sand, cars rumbling up the strip, and I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’ve got a touch of the flu. Doubt I’ll be in all week.’”

  Jamie picked up a pencil and put a check mark on the pad. “And what was your most disappointing moment on your current job.”

  Claude’s face went blank. “Nothing,” he said. “It’s been roses from day one.”

  “Come on, daddy,” Jamie said with a smile. “You complain about work all the time.”

  “My most disappointing moment, then,” Claude said, “was the day I looked at my paycheck and found they’d corrected their error.”