The Jig of the Union Loller

by Michael Burnham

  #

  Darkness fell and a nip returned to the air. Bertha Dombrowski answered the door in a white apron with large blue polka dots on it. She greeted Claude with a smile and insisted he come to the kitchen for a cup of coffee and a piece of her famous banana bread. Once she’d cut a thick slice for Claude, smeared it with butter, and poured a cup of coffee from a forty-year-old percolator on the counter, she led him to the living room, where Frank sat in his stocking feet watching a television documentary on the battle of Guadalcanal.

  “That’s some pig snout you got there,” Frank said. “Makes you look like you’re pledging a frat or something.”

  “Can’t wait to get it off,” Claude said. “Bertha’s banana bread isn’t the same when you can’t smell it.”

  Bertha smiled and left the room.

  “Did Jeff hold court?” Claude said.

  “Didn’t see him,” Frank said. “I went right to the crane and minded my own business. I did see Bubba come in. He couldn’t run to Felicia fast enough to tell her. She’s never lonely, that girl.”

  “What did everyone think?”

  “I don’t really care. You shouldn’t neither.”

  Claude took his eyes away from Frank’s. “If you see Jeff, tell him I’m sorry.”

  “Come again?”

  “Don’t make a big deal of it, Frank, but let him know I wish I hadn’t done what I done. It wasn’t right.”

  Claude nibbled the bread and sipped the coffee. He looked for a place to set the mug down, and Frank waved that it was all right to put it on the coffee table. Claude put the piece of banana bread on top of the cup so he could reach for his wallet.

  “Here’s the money I owe you,” he said, counting the bills to be sure he had the right amount. “Thanks for coming to get me. I really appreciate it.”

  “No problem, old buddy. No problem at all.”

  Their attention turned to Guadalcanal. Claude finished his banana bread and coffee. Frank motioned for Claude to leave the empty mug and plate on the table. At the next commercial, they both stood up. Claude held out a hand and Frank grasped it.

  “Stay well,” Frank said. “If you need someone to put in a good word for you when you go for a job, let me know.”

  “Thanks. And don’t forget about getting together. Sometime soon. No excuses.”

  #

  By the time Claude noticed the blinking red light on the answering machine in the family room, it was already ten o’clock and he wasn’t far from calling it a night. Though comfortable in his chair, once he’d seen the message he couldn’t ignore it. He crawled off the chair, tapped the play button, and heard Malcolm’s voice:

  “Hey, Claude, got that number I promised you: 401-334-9892. Ask for Russell. I gave him a call a few minutes ago and told him you worked at the electric company for twenty years, and he seemed interested in meeting you. Anyway, give him a shout, and good luck. Hope you get the job. Take it easy.”

  Chapter 50

  First Rate Carpet Cleaners shared a small, one-level building with a realtor and a karate school in Johnston, west of the city. First Rate’s front door opened to a small reception area with a bright yellow carpet, a small, uncluttered receptionist’s desk with no receptionist, and a row of three guest chairs. A sign on the desk welcomed visitors in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

  As Claude sat in the reception area, he fretted about explaining his broken nose. If he told the truth, Russell might think he was some type of drunken troublemaker. If he invented some household mishap, Russell might think he wasn’t a safe worker. If he concocted some exotic tale, maybe one that painted him in semi-heroic fashion, he’d better be ready with a ton of backstory, with consistent details, and he just didn’t have the energy.

  It was warm in the office. Although Claude longed to take off his sweater, he couldn’t for the wrinkled shirt beneath it. He felt his armpits becoming clammy, and imagined sweat forming on his forehead.

  Before long a shortish Asian man with graying temples appeared in the doorway beyond the desk and smiled at Claude. Claude stood. The man walked across the carpet and extended his hand.

  “Claude Amognes?”

  “Yes. Most people don’t pronounce it right.”

  “Russell Tagaki. Nice to meet you. Good golly, it’s hot in here.”

  As he led Claude to the back office, Russell veered to the thermostat to turn it down. In the office, he held a chair for Claude to sit in, and then walked around a desk to his own chair.

  “I understand from Malcolm you accepted an early out from the electric company, but already want to get back into the work force,” Russell said. “That’s good. I think I’m like you. I’d go nuts if I had to sit around the house all day.”

  Claude smiled.

  “Let me tell you a little about the company, and the job, and myself, and then you can tell me about yourself. Do you have a resume?”

  Claude’s chest tightened. “No. I thought I’d write everything on the application.”

  Now Russell smiled. “No applications. Just as well, I suppose. Whatever we’d write on paper we can discuss just as easily now, can’t we?”

  Claude forced a chuckle, but sat forward, with his interlocked fingers between his knees and his shoulders stiff.

  “We’re a small company,” Russell said, “but we do good work and have our share of loyal customers. In the last year, though, the more I’ve listened to my customers, the more they’ve told me I need to change my way of thinking. Ten years ago when I first started this business, we had customers who wanted us once a week, but nowadays hiring someone just to do carpets is a bit of a luxury. People want more for their money. So, a couple months ago, I made an agreement with Belltech to supply them with a four-person crew—daytime work, not second shift—to handle all their building maintenance issues, from facility repair to bathroom cleaning to snow removal. I’m not going to lie to you, Claude, it’s been a rocky start. You know, when you’re cleaning carpets at eleven at night and you have a problem with an employee, nobody sees it. If you need to work extra hours because someone up and walks off the job, you stay late and nobody knows the difference. But during the day, that kind of stuff can’t happen. Plus, with daytime work you need someone who can work well with the Belltech people, you know, earn their trust. I have some hard workers, Claude, but I don’t have that good lead person who can kind of do it all. The two people I tried there just didn’t work out.”

  “Are you still going to clean carpets?” Claude said.

  “Oh yes. But I’m going to pay a little more on the day shift to try to make it something for people to aspire to. I could stick with cleaning carpets and be safe for the time being, maybe for the next five years even, but eventually I want to put my emphasis on full service, because I think that’s where the future is. I need a good foreman to help me get established.”

  Russell smiled, and leaned back in his chair. He waited for Claude to speak, but Claude said nothing.

  “My foreman will have to coordinate assignments and check to see the work is done well. He’ll have to respond to the day-to-day emergencies that pop up with a cool head. He’ll have to deal with people from diverse backgrounds. But whoever takes this job will have my support. We’ll agree on a list of written expectations by which to measure each other. We’ll have regular conversations. I’ll let you know what I need and you’ll let me know what you need. Do you speak Spanish?”

  “No.”

  “Well then, I’ll get someone to teach you the basics. Maybe a few Portuguese phrases too. Most of my guys speak enough English to get by, but if you know a little of their language, it doesn’t hurt. It’s a small way to show them your respect.”

  “Are your crews union or non-union?”

  “Non-union,” Russell said. “If my people ever wanted to unionize, I’d feel I let them down. You shouldn’t have to organize to get decent conditions and good pay, it should come with the job to start. That’s my philosophy. Is that a problem?”
/>
  “Nope. Not at all.”

  Russell told Claude about his education at Rhode Island College, his wife and two sons, his passion for ice hockey, and his previous career in charitable organizations. When he finished he asked Claude to say a little about himself.

  Claude smiled. “Well, there isn’t much to talk about. My father was union president at Rhode Island Electric, so right out of high school I went to work there as a meter reader. From meter reading I moved to the stockroom, and all in all I was at the company more than twenty years, twenty good years with mostly good memories. But, like anywhere else, there’s politics, and I guess I just got tired of it all. When they offered me a package, I thought I was the luckiest guy on Earth, but I was wrong. Dead wrong. Then when I ran into Malcolm and he mentioned this job, I felt like the luckiest guy again. This time I hope I’m right.”

  Russell moved forward in his chair and fidgeted. “Claude, I shouldn’t ask this, but I’ve been dying to: what happened to your face?”

  Claude’s head swayed slightly as an internal debate raged. After ten silent seconds, he sat upright.

  “I was wrong there, too,” he said. “I had an argument with my daughter Jamie, and I was mad at the world. The wrong guy said the wrong thing at the wrong time, and I clobbered him. Problem was, he clobbered me back.”

  “Your daughter is Jamie Amognes?”

  Claude’s upper back stiffened. “You know Jamie?”

  “Sure. She works for my wife. My wife has nothing but good to say about her. And she certainly thinks the world of you, too.”

  “Your wife?”

  Russell smiled. “Jamie. Evelyn says Jamie talks about you all the time. You seem to mean a lot to her.”

  Claude searched for a response, but unexpected emotion rattled him for a moment. He looked Russell straight in the eyes. His own eyes started to water.

  “She means a lot to me,” he said at last.

  Russell picked a pen and a pad of paper from his desk and turned in his chair so his back faced Claude. Claude wiped the corners of his puffed-up eyes and with a single strong sniff drew the watery whatever in his nostrils back to the cavity from which it had seeped. Russell turned the chair back toward Claude and handed him the pad. On it, he’d written $17.50.

  “That’s about $35,000 a year,” Russell said. “We’ve got a pre-tax saving plan. I’ll give you three weeks of vacation, plus five personal days to use however you want, for sick days or mental health days or whatever, no questions asked, plus the same holidays as Belltech. We have health care, too, though I admit the premiums are getting to be outrageous.”

  “I don’t need health care,” Claude said. “I have it for life from Rhode Island Electric.”

  “Then what do you say?” Russell said. “Can you start in two weeks?”

  Claude started to nod, first a little, then harder. He raised his eyes from the desk to meet Russell’s.

  “You bet,” Claude said. “Thanks.”

  Chapter 51

  On the last day of her mid-semester break, Jamie took a long walk on the beach. When marsh and rocks interrupted smooth sand, she backtracked until she found a narrow footpath leading through packed-down grass to the main road, an unpainted two-laner that curved along the contours of the ocean. A small convenience store caught her attention, so she crossed the road and walked the quarter mile to it, and once inside bought a cup of hot chocolate from a machine. She took the drink outside, sat on a bench with her back to the wind, and tried to think.

  She knew what she wanted, but it seemed silly, since all she wanted was to be able to see what she wanted. She felt mad at her father, yet guilty about storming off on him. She felt glad to be back with her mother, yet sad her mother had left in the first place, and annoyed the months following their reunion would play out in Connie’s house. She felt happy about her new job, but worried she couldn’t afford an apartment on a social worker’s pay, putting her back at the beach under who knows what kind of conditions or back at home under who knows what kind of conditions. The senior prom, graduation, working full time, college—until recently she’d been able to picture it all unfolding. Now, she couldn’t see any of it, and that simple failure created something inside her, something she wanted to purge but couldn’t. She didn’t want the situation as it was. She couldn’t change it.

  She began to sniffle, and couldn’t tell whether the wind or her parents had brought it on.

  By the time she’d walked back to the footpath between the road and the beach, her sniffles had stopped. Jamie found her footprints in the sand and made new prints to match, the left shoeprint of the return trip snuggling into the curve of the right shoeprint already there. After a few hundred yards she decided to make closed circle prints. She brought her right foot over the top of her left and set it next to the right footprint in the sand, the heel of one print lining up with the toes of the other. With her legs crossed, she searched for the next print in the sand, then swung her left foot over to match it. After a few steps she started to giggle. After twenty yards, she laughed out loud. Jamie kicked the next footprint into history, scattering sand into the wind and back into her own face. She launched into a pair of cartwheels, then trotted over the next dune before settling into a brisk gait over the cold sand.

  As she stuffed her hands deep into her pockets she looked up and saw in the distance a man with a long, thick pole surf-casting into the wind. She thought it odd. Unless he had a boulder on the end of his line, he couldn’t possibly cast far enough out to catch anything worth catching. She walked and watched. The man looked to be sixty or so, a lanky guy with a white beard that looked like the end of a toilet brush. Not pretty. But he had a beautiful cast, smooth on the backswing and strong on the stroke. Even so, the wind knocked his line down after it had barely passed the wave point, where ripples in the ocean turned into crashing whitewater, and cast after cast landed in knee-deep, swirling surf. Still, the man tossed his line and reeled it home in an easy, steady rhythm, as if he were playing laconic bass to accompany the drumbeat of the Atlantic.

  When she neared the man, Jamie stopped, not close enough to talk casually, but not far enough away where she wasn’t in his presence. The man cast again without looking at her. The wind killed his line. He reeled in. He cast again. On the second reel he looked to her.

  “Cold, isn’t it? And just think how warm it was just a couple days ago.”

  She smiled. The man cast once more. Jamie thought she should walk on and leave him be, but didn’t. On the third reel he looked at her again, only this time he delivered the smile.

  “Catch anything?” Jamie said.

  “Not in this wind.”

  Jamie flinched. “Why fish if you know you’ll never catch anything? Isn’t it kind of pointless?”

  “Not at all. People cast about all the time without any tangible result. It doesn’t make them stop.”

  “But if they know they’ll never get anything, they will stop.”

  Once more the man snapped his line toward the ocean. As before he reeled in slowly.

  “Will they?” he said. “Maybe the best part of life isn’t holding a dead fish by the tail. If you’re hungry, you need the catch. I’m not hungry.”

  He let the arm holding the rod drop below his waist, telling Jamie he wasn’t set to cast again. Her eyes darted, and she decided to continue toward Connie’s.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said.

  “No trouble, young miss. No trouble at all.”

  #

  The screen door opened, and the interior door too, but Jamie didn’t enter until she’d shaken the sand from the cuffs of her blue jeans and set her shoes beneath the coat pegs on the wall. She hung up her coat and stuffed her mittens in the sleeves. Connie read a magazine at the kitchen table.

  “Aunt Connie?” Jamie said. “I want to get my parents in the same room to talk this whole thing over. When mom comes home, will you speak to her with me?”

  “No need, dear. Your mother call
ed from work while you were gone. Your father stopped by Home & Yard and convinced her to meet him at your house after work. Should we do a big salad for dinner?”

  “Sure. Did mom say why?”

  “No. She said his face was a mess. Apparently he was beaten up in some bar. Probably has to go to court in the next few weeks. Needs money for a lawyer if he does. Sounds like same old same old to me.”

  Jamie went to the fridge and removed a can of ginger ale. “Same old same old. I could handle it.”

  #

  Joan came through the front door quietly, and didn’t call for Claude as she removed her coat. The house didn’t look bad. She walked to the family room and saw him, asleep in his recliner, wearing the pig-snout protector, struggling to breathe through a wide-open mouth. The puff of his purple eyes reminded her of baby fat, and she smiled as she resisted the urge to press the swelling with her index finger. She surveyed the room more carefully: no clutter. A little dust atop the television, a pair of boots in the corner, but nothing near what she’d expected. Her spot on the couch remained disfigured. Her favorite magazine lay on the end table, right where she’d left it, though it had some kind of circular stain on it.

  Joan sat on the arm of the couch. She watched Claude for a minute before nudging him awake, then decided not to nudge him at all. She went to the kitchen, searched the freezer for something to eat, and found amid the frost a package of chicken parts that still looked good enough to eat. She pulled out her pans. She was home.

  Claude awoke when Joan used electric beaters to whip potatoes. As he scrambled to the kitchen to investigate, the whir of the beaters stopped and he heard something sizzling on the stove.

  “Joan, I fell asleep. I’m so sorry.”

  Joan turned to him and smiled. “Don’t you love the smell of fried chicken?”

  “I wish,” Claude said. “Right now my smeller’s out of action.”

  “So tell me about this new job.”