Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar

by Richard Ford

  Boone just sat on his bunk with his skullcap in his lap, leaning against his big belly. He knew I was telling the truth and he knew he wouldn’t change. But he said: “That’s the trouble with the Negro waiter today. He ain’t got no humility. And as long as he don’t have humility, he keeps losing the good jobs.”

  Doc had climbed into the first waiter’s bunk in his longjohns and I got in the second waiter’s bunk under him and lay there. I could hear him breathing. It had a hard sound. He wasn’t well and all of us knew it.

  “Doc?” I said in the dark.

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t mind Boone, Doc. He’s a dead man. He just don’t know it.”

  “We all are,” Doc said.

  “Not you,” I said.

  “What’s the use? He’s right. They’ll get me in the end.”

  “But they ain’t done it yet.”

  “They’ll get me. And they know it and I know it. I can even see it in old Crouse’s eyes. He knows they’re gonna get me.”

  “Why don’t you get a woman?”

  He was quiet. “What can I do with a woman now, that I ain’t already done too much?”

  I thought for a while. “If you’re on the ground, being with one might not make it so bad.”

  “I hate women,” he said.

  “You ever try fishing?”

  “No.”

  “You want to?”

  “No,” he said.

  “You can’t keep drinking.”

  He did not answer.

  “Maybe you could work in town. In the Commissary.”

  I could hear the big wheels rolling and clicking along the tracks and I knew by the smooth way we were moving that we were almost out of the Dakota flatlands. Doc wasn’t talking. “Would you like that?” I thought he was asleep. “Doc, would you like that?”

  “Hell no,” he said.

  “You have to try something!”

  He was quiet again. “I know,” he finally said.

  III

  Jerry Ewald, the Unexpected Inspector, got on in Winachee that next day after lunch and we knew that he had the word from the Commissary. He was cool about it: he laughed with the steward and the waiters about the old days and his hard gray eyes and shining glasses kept looking over our faces as if to see if we knew why he had got on. The two hardheads were in the crew car stealing a nap on company time. Jerry noticed this and could have caught them, but he was after bigger game. We all knew that, and we kept talking to him about the days of the big trains and looking at his white hair and not into the eyes behind his glasses because we knew what was there. Jerry sat down on the first waiter’s station and said to Crouse: “Now I’ll have some lunch. Steward, let the headwaiter bring me a menu.”

  Crouse stood next to the table where Jerry sat, and looked at Doc, who had been waiting between the tables with his tray under his arm. The way the rules say. Crouse looked sad because he knew what was coming. Then Jerry looked directly at Doc and said: “Headwaiter Doctor Craft, bring me a menu.”

  Doc said nothing and he did not smile. He brought the menu. Danny Jackson and I moved back into the hall to watch. There was nothing we could do to help Doc and we knew it. He was the Waiter’s Waiter, out there by himself, hustling the biggest tip he would ever get in his life. Or losing it.

  “Goddamn,” Danny said to me. “Now let’s sit on the ground and talk about how kings are gonna get fucked.”

  “Maybe not,” I said. But I did not believe it myself because Jerry is the kind of man who lies in bed all night, scheming. I knew he had a plan.

  Doc passed us on his way to the kitchen for water and I wanted to say something to him. But what was the use? He brought the water to Jerry. Jerry looked him in the eye. “Now, Headwaiter,” he said. “I’ll have a bowl of onion soup, a cold roast beef sandwich on white, rare, and a glass of iced tea.”

  “Write it down,” said Doc. He was playing it right. He knew that the new rules had stopped waiters from taking verbal orders.

  “Don’t be so professional, Doc,” Jerry said. “It’s me, one of the boys.”

  “You have to write it out,” said Doc, “it’s in the black book.”

  Jerry clicked his pen and wrote the order out on the check. And handed it to Doc. Uncle T. followed Doc back into the Pantry.

  “He’s gonna get you, Doc,” Uncle T. said. “I knew it all along. You know why? The Negro waiter ain’t got no more humility.”

  “Shut the fuck up, Boone!” I told him.

  “You’ll see,” Boone went on. “You’ll see I’m right. There ain’t a thing Doc can do about it, either. We’re gonna lose all the good jobs.”

  We watched Jerry at the table. He saw us watching and smiled with his gray eyes. Then he poured some of the water from the glass on the linen cloth and picked up the silver sugar bowl and placed it right on the wet spot. Doc was still in the Pantry. Jerry turned the silver sugar bowl around and around on the linen. He pressed down on it some as he turned. But when he picked it up again, there was no dark ring on the wet cloth. We had polished the silver early that morning, according to the book, and there was not a dirty piece of silver to be found in the whole car. Jerry was drinking the rest of the water when Doc brought out the polished silver soup tureen, underlined with a doily and a breakfast plate, with a shining soup bowl underlined with a doily and a breakfast plate, and a bread-and-butter plate with six crackers; not four or five or seven, but six, the number the Commissary had written in the black book. He swung down the aisle of the car between the two rows of white tables and you could not help but be proud of the way he moved with the roll of the train and the way that tray was like a part of his arm. It was good service. He placed everything neat, with all company initials showing, right where things should go.

  “Shall I serve up the soup?” he asked Jerry.

  “Please,” said Jerry.

  Doc handled that silver soup ladle like one of those Chicago Jew tailors handles a needle. He ladled up three good-sized spoonfuls from the tureen and then laid the wet spoon on an extra bread-and-butter plate on the side of the table, so he would not stain the cloth. Then he put a napkin over the wet spot Jerry had made and changed the ashtray for a prayer-card because every good waiter knows that nobody wants to eat a good meal looking at an ashtray.

  “You know about the spoon plate, I see,” Jerry said to Doc.

  “I’m a waiter,” said Doc. “I know.”

  “You’re a damn good waiter,” said Jerry.

  Doc looked Jerry square in the eye. “I know,” he said slowly.

  Jerry ate a little of the soup and opened all six of the cracker packages. Then he stopped eating and began to look out the window. We were passing through his territory, Washington State, the country he loved because he was the only company inspector in the state and knew that once we got through Montana he would be the only man the waiters feared. He smiled and then waved for Doc to bring out the roast beef sandwich.

  But Doc was into his service now and cleared the table completely. Then he got the silver crumb knife from the Pantry and gathered all the cracker crumbs, even the ones Jerry had managed to get in between the salt and pepper shakers.

  “You want the tea with your sandwich, or later?” he asked Jerry.

  “Now is fine,” said Jerry, smiling.

  “You’re going good,” I said to Doc when he passed us on his way to the Pantry. “He can’t touch you or nothing.”

  He did not say anything.

  Uncle T. Boone looked at Doc like he wanted to say something too, but he just frowned and shuffled out to stand next to Jerry. You could see that Jerry hated him. But Jerry knew how to smile at everybody, and so he smiled at Uncle T. while Uncle T. bent over the table with his hands together like he was praying, and moved his head up and bowed it down.

  Doc brought out the roast beef, proper service. The crock of mustard was on a breakfast plate, underlined with a doily, initials facing Jerry. The lid was on the mustard and it was clean, like i
t says in the book, and the little silver service spoon was clean and polished on a bread-and-butter plate. He set it down. And then he served the tea. You think you know the service, youngblood, all of you do. But you don’t. Anybody can serve, but not everybody can become a part of the service. When Doc poured that pot of hot tea into that glass of crushed ice, it was like he was pouring it through his own fingers: it was like he and the tray and the pot and the glass and all of it was the same body. It was a beautiful move. It was fine service. The iced tea glass sat in a shell dish, and the iced tea spoon lay straight in front of Jerry. The lemon wedge Doc put in a shell dish half-full of crushed ice with an oyster fork stuck into its skin. Not in the meat, mind you, but squarely under the skin of that lemon, and the whole thing lay in a pretty curve on top of that crushed ice.

  Doc stood back and waited. Jerry had been watching his service and was impressed. He mixed the sugar in his glass and sipped. Danny Jackson and I were down the aisle in the hall. Uncle T. stood behind Jerry, bending over, his arms folded, waiting. And Doc stood next to the table, his tray under his arm looking straight ahead and calm because he had given good service and knew it. Jerry sipped again.

  “Good tea,” he said. “Very good tea.”

  Doc was silent.

  Jerry took the lemon wedge off the oyster fork and squeezed it into the glass, and stirred, and sipped again. “Very good,” he said. Then he drained the glass. Doc reached over to pick it up for more ice but Jerry kept his hand on the glass. “Very good service, Doc,” he said. “But you served the lemon wrong.”

  Everybody was quiet. Uncle T. folded his hands in the praying position.

  “How’s that?” said Doc.

  “The service was wrong,” Jerry said. He was not smiling now.

  “How could it be? I been giving that same service for years, right down to the crushed ice for the lemon wedge.”

  “That’s just it, Doc,” Jerry said. “The lemon wedge. You served it wrong.”

  “Yeah?” said Doc.

  “Yes,” said Jerry, his jaws tight. “Haven’t you seen the new rule?”

  Doc’s face went loose. He knew now that they had got him.

  “Haven’t you seen it?” Jerry asked again.

  Doc shook his head.

  Jerry smiled that hard, gray smile of his, the kind of smile that says: “I have always been the boss and I am smiling this way because I know it and can afford to give you something.” “Steward Crouse,” he said. “Steward Crouse, go get the black bible for the headwaiter.”

  Crouse looked beaten too. He was sixty-three and waiting for his pension. He got the bible.

  Jerry took it and turned directly to the very last page. He knew where to look. “Now, Headwaiter,” he said, “listen to this.” And he read aloud: “Memorandum Number 22416. From: Douglass A. Tesdale, General Superintendent of Dining Cars. To: Waiters, Stewards, Chefs of Dining Cars. Attention: As of 7/9/65 the proper service for iced tea will be (a) Fresh brewed tea in teapot, poured over crushed ice at table; iced tea glass set in shell dish (b) Additional ice to be immediately available upon request after first glass of tea (c) Fresh lemon wedge will be served on bread-and-butter plate, no doily, with tines of oyster fork stuck into meat of lemon.” Jerry paused.

  “Now you know, Headwaiter,” he said.

  “Yeah,” said Doc.

  “But why didn’t you know before?”

  No answer.

  “This notice came out last week.”

  “I didn’t check the book yet,” said Doc.

  “But that’s a rule. Always check the book before each trip. You know that, Headwaiter.”

  “Yeah,” said Doc.

  “Then that’s two rules you missed.”

  Doc was quiet.

  “Two rules you didn’t read,” Jerry said. “You’re slowing down, Doc.”

  “I know,” Doc mumbled.

  “You want some time off to rest?”

  Again Doc said nothing.

  “I think you need some time on the ground to rest up, don’t you?”

  Doc put his tray on the table and sat down in the seat across from Jerry. This was the first time we had ever seen a waiter sit down with a customer, even an inspector. Uncle T., behind Jerry’s back, began waving his hands, trying to tell Doc to get up. Doc did not look at him.

  “You are tired, aren’t you?” said Jerry.

  “I’m just resting my feet,” Doc said.

  “Get up, Headwaiter,” Jerry said. “You’ll have plenty of time to do that. I’m writing you up.”

  But Doc did not move and just continued to sit there. And all Danny and I could do was watch him from the back of the car. For the first time I saw that his hair was almost gone and his legs were skinny in the baggy white uniform. I don’t think Jerry expected Doc to move. I don’t think he really cared. But then Uncle T. moved around the table and stood next to Doc, trying to apologize for him to Jerry with his eyes and bowed head. Doc looked at Uncle T. and then got up and went back to the crew car. He left his tray on the table. It stayed there all that evening because none of us, not even Crouse or Jerry or Uncle T., would touch it. And Jerry didn’t try to make any of us take it back to the Pantry. He understood at least that much. The steward closed down Doc’s tables during dinner service, all three settings of it. And Jerry got off the train someplace along the way, quiet, like he had got on.

  After closing down the car we went back to the crew quarters and Doc was lying on his bunk with his hands behind his head and his eyes open. He looked old. No one knew what to say until Boone went over to his bunk and said: “I feel bad for you, Doc, but all of us are gonna get it in the end. The railroad waiter is doomed.”

  Doc did not even notice Boone.

  “I could of told you about the lemon but he would of got you on something else. It wasn’t no use. Any of it.”

  “Shut the fuck up, Boone!” Danny said. “The one thing that really hurts is that a crawling son-of-a-bitch like you will be riding when all the good men are gone. Dummies like you and these two hardheads will be working your asses off reading that damn bible and never know a goddamn thing about being a waiter. That hurts like a motherfucker!”

  “It ain’t my fault if the colored waiter is doomed,” said Boone. “It’s your fault for letting go your humility and letting the whites take over the good jobs.”

  Danny grabbed the skullcap off Boone’s head and took it into the bathroom and flushed it down the toilet. In a minute it was half a mile away and soaked in old piss on the tracks. Boone did not try to fight, he just sat on his bunk and mumbled. He had other skullcaps. No one said anything to Doc, because that’s the way real men show that they care. You don’t talk. Talking makes it worse.

  IV

  What else is there to tell you, youngblood? They made him retire. He didn’t try to fight it. He was beaten and he knew it; not by the service, but by a book. That book, that bible you keep your finger stuck in. That’s not a good way for a man to go. He should die in service. He should die doing the things he likes. But not by a book.

  All of us Old School men will be beaten by it. Danny Jackson is gone now, and Reverend Hendricks put in for his pension and took up preaching, full-time. But Uncle T. Boone is still riding. They’ll get me soon enough, with that book. But it will never get you because you’ll never be a waiter, or at least a Waiter’s Waiter. You read too much.

  Doc got a good pension and he took it directly to Andy’s. And none of the boys who knew about it knew how to refuse a drink on Doc. But none of us knew how to drink with him knowing that we would be going out again in a few days, and he was on the ground. So a lot of us, even the drunks and hustlers who usually hang around Andy’s, avoided him whenever we could. There was nothing to talk about any more.

  He died five months after he was put on the ground. He was seventy-three and it was winter. He froze to death wandering around the Chicago yards early one morning. He had been drunk, and was still steaming when the yard crew found him. On
ly the few of us left in the Old School know what he was doing there.

  I am sixty-three now. And I haven’t decided if I should take my pension when they ask me to go or continue to ride. I want to keep riding, but I know that if I do, Jerry Ewald or Harry Silk or Jack Tate will get me one of these days. I could get down if I wanted: I have a hobby and I am too old to get drunk by myself. I couldn’t drink with you, youngblood. We have nothing to talk about. And after a while you would get mad at me for talking anyway, and keeping you from your pussy. You are tired already. I can see it in your eyes and in the way you play with the pages of your rule book.

  I know it. And I wonder why I should keep talking to you when you could never see what I see or understand what I understand or know the real difference between my school and yours. I wonder why I have kept talking this long when all the time I have seen that you can hardly wait to hit the city to get off this thing and spend your money. You have a good story. But you will never remember it. Because all this time you have had pussy in your mind, and your fingers in the pages of that black bible.

  Alice Munro

  SOME WOMEN

  I am amazed sometimes to think how old I am. I can remember when the streets of the town I lived in were sprinkled with water to lay the dust in summer, and when girls wore waist cinchers and crinolines that could stand up by themselves, and when there was nothing much to be done about things like polio and leukemia. Some people who got polio got better, crippled or not, but people with leukemia went to bed, and, after some weeks’ or months’ decline in a tragic atmosphere, they died.

  It was because of such a case that I got my first job, in the summer holidays, when I was thirteen.

  Old Mrs. Crozier lived on the other side of town. Her stepson, Bruce, who was usually called Young Mr. Crozier, had come safely home from the war, where he had been a fighter pilot, had gone to college and studied history, and got married, and now he had leukemia. He and his wife were staying with Old Mrs. Crozier. The wife, Sylvia, taught summer school two afternoons a week at the college where they had met, some forty miles away. I was hired to look after Young Mr. Crozier while she wasn’t there. He was in bed in the front-corner bedroom upstairs, and he could still get to the bathroom by himself. All I had to do was bring him fresh water and pull the shades up or down and see what he wanted when he rang the little bell on his bedside table.