What Is All This?

by Stephen Dixon

  “Anyone call the police for an ambulance?” I said to the manager, and he repeated the question to the customers and staff surrounding Nelson and me, and they just looked at one another, some shaking their heads.

  One man, speaking for his wife and him, said “We didn’t; nobody said to.”

  “Well, someone call the police for an ambulance,” the manager said.

  “Want me to do it, boss?” Richard, a food bagger, said.

  “Dial 9-1-1, Richie.”

  “Nine-eleven, right, that new police emergency number, right away. Which phone should I use—the one in the office or the pay one in back?”

  The office, and quick, now, Nelson’s hurt.”

  “What I do, what I do for this?” Nelson said, his eyelids and nostrils fluttering, and just my trying to blow away the ashes on his chest that were the remains of his short-sleeved white shirt caused him great pain. He seemed to be going crazy and his hair smelled singed like burned chicken feathers and we were both getting more soaked by the second from being in this large puddle of juice. Nobody seemed to want to get near us or even get their shoes wet.

  “How do I keep him from going into shock?” I asked the manager.

  “Put his legs up on that olive-oil can there and keep his head straight down.”

  “No,” a woman said, “you put his head up on something soft and his legs down.”

  “Which do I do?” I asked the manager.

  “Let’s keep him flat, then. The police will be here in a sec.”

  A combination of different sirens was heard in a few minutes and then police came and firemen with picks and fire extinguishers and what looked like gas masks and then ambulance people from the local city hospital. Nelson was given oxygen and put on an IV and treated briefly for his burns and was being wheeled out of the market on a gurney when he threw off his oxygen cup and yelled “Boom, damn bomb went boom. And I saw the man who threw it, saw the bum who went boom.”

  “Hold him there for a moment,” a police officer said to the bearers, but the doctor said he’d have to insist that Nelson not be detained.

  “Just one quick question, please.” And to Nelson: “Who’d you see throw the bomb, son? I’m saying,” when Nelson looked at him blankly, “the person who threw it, I mean. You know him? Could you give me a description of him?

  The person was a man,” Nelson said. Threw it right through it, right at me, right through the window at the Heinz beans I was ringing up. Went boom. That man went boom. And the boom went off like a bomb and burned my back, the bum, my back.”

  “Is that what happened. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine and dandy in a few days, son, and take care.”

  “Good luck to you, Nelly,” one of the register clerks yelled out.

  “Safe recovery.”

  “Now, what happened?” the police officer said to me. “And please say it nice and straight and slow. Shorthand’s not my profession.”

  My wife asked if anything had happened at work that day, as she asked almost every night when I first got home and immediately went to the bathroom to wash my face and hands and sometimes take a shower, and I said “No, nothing much.”

  She said “Oh. It’s because this time you look more tired than usual, so I thought something might be wrong. Like a beer?”

  “Yeah, a beer—no, an ale. I’m dying for one ice-cold.”

  “You bring home any from work?”

  “No, I didn’t even bring home a beer. I didn’t even bring any groceries. There was a fire at work, that’s why.”

  “A fire? So, now what are we going to do for supper? I was counting on a chicken from you, Kev. Why didn’t you stop at another market? Or, better yet, phoned me so I could shop somewhere near here. I would’ve, even though we don’t get the discount like at your C & L.”

  “Someone threw a Molotov cocktail through the store window and Nelson Forman nearly got burned to death.” She asked who Nelson was and when I told her, she said “Was he seriously hurt?”

  “I said he was nearly burned to death. That means nearly being burned to death. The hospital I called said he has second-and third-degree burns on about fifty percent of his body and that he’s still critical and probably lucky to be alive.”

  “Which is worse, second or third?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t even know if first is worse or better than second. All I know is that fifty percent body burns is very bad, very critical.”

  “You should’ve phoned me, Kev. You phoned the hospital; I admit that’s more important, but you should’ve also phoned me. Now we have nothing for supper but eggs, unless you want to go and walk the ten stupid blocks to the market.”

  “Is that the closest?”

  “And the only one. It’s almost seven and that’s it in about a square mile around here that stays open. I think they’re worried about robberies and such. An enterprising chain should open a store nearer the project, stick an armed guard in it and stay open till nine or ten at night and make a fortune. You ought to suggest it to C & L.”

  The phone rang just around the time we normally sit down to eat. “Who is it?” I said, angry, as if everyone in this time zone should know that most families have supper at this hour, and a man said “Wimer, Kevin Wimer, you’re in charge of the C & L produce section at Bainbridge, correct?”

  “Sort of assistant in charge. Finerman’s head.”

  “Finerman, that’s right. There was a fire in your store today, caused by a particular labor-trouble reason I’ll disclose this very minute, if you’re not in a rush. There’s a movement going on for better wages and working conditions by the ras-, black-and loganberry pickers of this country. And your food chain has continued to sell these products, even though we’ve expressly requested it to boycott all the big growers of them till they’ve fallen in line with the few smaller growers who’ve raised pickers’ wages to the national minimum and improved the pickers’ living and working conditions while they’re on the job. Were you aware your store was firebombed today?”

  “Sure. One of the clerks got fifty percent of his body burned, both second and third degree.”

  “I heard. And it’s terrible. But if it’s only five percent second and forty-five percent third, it wouldn’t be that bad, am I right?”

  “You are if second is worse than third, but it could be fatal the other way around.”

  “I’m very sorry for this clerk. But if I related to you some of the living and working conditions these pickers have to endure, you’d see they’re almost better off dead than alive.”

  The pickers can always get other jobs, can’t they? I mean, there’s no Government law saying they can’t.”

  “Are you a union man, Mr. Wimer—I mean a good one? Then you, of course, know you can’t be fired from your present position without an exceptionally good cause, correct? And if you’ve any complaints that can’t be settled by you directly with management, then the union settles them for you, correct? The pickers formed a union, but the major growers won’t recognize it, so no complaints are settled in any way except the way the growers want, and that’s always to the extreme disadvantage of the pickers. These pickers are relatively uneducated but very honest people, usually from a foreign-speaking minority, good family men, they know how to pick fruit, like the outdoors and accept gladly their means of livelihood. And now all they want is for their legitimately formed union to be recognized and honored by the growers, so the union can bargain directly and fairly for better wages, decent wages, the most minimum of national-minimum-wage-act wages, and for the most commonly accepted working and living conditions, which means a portable privy near their work area and dormitories that weren’t built ages ago for pigs. Now, is that asking for too much?”

  “No.”

  Then support us by joining the boycott movement against the illegal growers. We’re asking you—and, incidentally, this is in full accordance and sympathy from your own union organizer, Mr. Felk, at Local 79—to refuse to sell ras-, black-and loganbe
rries in your store. And, in fact, tomorrow, in the street outside your supermarket, to publicly dump and destroy the berries you already have while TV news cameras of two local stations here take pictures of you doing it, all of which we’ll be instrumental in setting up.”

  I made a few whews and good Gods into the phone and asked the man to repeat what he’d just asked me to do, which he was doing when Jennie walked over with a blackboard that listed the ingredients that were going into her “New Superspecial Famous Northern California Egg Dish tonight, which includes sweet cream, Swiss and parmesan cheese, scallions, peppers, pimientos and fresh chopped oregano and parsley,” and said “Who’s on the phone?”

  I said “Union business.” And to the man: “What’s your name, if I might ask?”

  “I’ll give my organizing name, which is Blackspot. Now, what do you say?”

  I said why not ask the head of produce, and he said Finerman was too old, besides being in complete agreement with the berry growers and management against the pickers. “Do what I ask, Kevin, and it might be the spark to make our Eastern boycott successful. We don’t want any more firebombing. Innocent people get hurt and it looks bad for us, besides. Just dump the berries at ten a.m. tomorrow, which the stations say is the latest they can cover the story, because of previous camera commitments. We swear we’ll use every pressure we have to keep you on at the store, if they decide to fire you, and if that’s impossible, then your union has promised to place you at even a higher wage at a pro-picker store. You’ll also be stamping your own special mark for the same things your union fought for and won only twenty years ago. Now, what do you say?”

  I said I’ll think it over, but he said I had no time. I said why didn’t he get a produce head of one of the giant, more influential markets to do it and he said because my store was in the news now and to gain back respect for the movement, that firebombing had to be whitewashed from the public’s mind. “What you’d do would mean that even though one of your favorite colleagues was severely burned, his fellow employees still thought so much of the movement that they forgave the firebombing and were, in fact, placing direct blame on the market owners for selling those berries.”

  I said oh, what the hell, I’d do it, and he said I’d see him in front of the store at ten, then. “You’ll recognize me as an ordinary pedestrian with the most unordinary happy grin an ordinary pedestrian ever had. Pickers around the nation will never forget you for this. You’re a credit to your profession and local.”

  I didn’t care about being a credit to my profession. I never had any illusions my job was difficult, or needed many physical or mental skills, though I did have to use some better judgment and really strain a muscle or two when I worked for a small market five years ago and had to get up before the pigeons do to select and buy the store’s produce line right off the trucks. Now I open crates that are delivered twice a week to the market, make sure the fruits and vegetables look appetizing and salable to the customers, which mostly means using the right fluorescent lights and straightening out the food and spraying it every other hour to give it that just-picked or rained-on look and odor, put up the price signs that management directs us to from its offices in another city and occasionally use my own mind by writing and installing cute and clever sayings on the more perishable items, such as “Act like this fruit is your mother-in-law: Please do not squeeze.” But I agreed with just about everything Blackspot said about improving the lot of the pickers, was bored with C & L after three years and didn’t mind losing my job, with two weeks’ severance pay, if I could get another one. And it’d be a kick seeing myself on television, having my wife, friends and relatives all seeing me, which’d be the most exciting thing to happen to me since my plane came back with me and my National Guard unit in it from an overseas emergency Middle East crisis several years ago and my crying wife and family nearly suffocated me at the airport gate.

  “How’d you like to see me on television tomorrow night?” I said to Jennie when she set that superspecial northern-California egg dish in front of me, and she said “And how’d you like to see me in a brand-new Valentine gown?”

  “But I’m serious.” And she said “And so am I. Wouldn’t I look spectacular? Now, eat up.” And to that five-month-old thing in her belly: “You, too, mister, and don’t be letting me know if you think the dish is too hot.”

  The eggs weren’t very good, too bland, which not even salt would improve, which surprised me, with all the different herbs, spices and ingredients she put in it. When she asked how it was, I said “Great, fine, though still not as good as one of your plain cheese omelets or fried egg marinara, so maybe this should be the last time we have it, okay?”

  “I like it. The sautéed pepper I could do without, but I like it.” She ate all her eggs and, without asking me or anything, spooned half of my eggs onto her plate, while I just sat there, thinking about how I was going to get the berries to the street tomorrow before the manager or Finerman got wind of what I was doing.

  I got to work a little earlier than usual and cleaned up the produce section a half hour before the store was to open at nine. The window from the bombing the day before still had wooden planks and tape over it and the store still smelled some from the fire, even though we had used several cans of bathroom spray. One of the girl food clerks said that just before she left work last night, the manager told her the company wasn’t going to replace the window till the weekend, just to show the agitators that we didn’t think a broken window was going to lose us much business and to also show the neighborhood how difficult it was providing them with the wide selection of food products we thought they wanted. I told her I thought a broken window was sure to lose us trade, not only because it looked bad but also because it reminded customers that more agitation might come if the dispute wasn’t settled and, worse than that, of Nelson’s near death.

  “How is he, you know?” she said, and I said I’d been thinking of calling the hospital; in fact, would do it right now, since I had a few minutes before the store opened, and went to the office.

  “Good morning, Kevin,” the manager said. “Everything straightened out up front?” He said this almost every time I saw him and he meant was the floor swept in my section and was I getting the more perishable items that wouldn’t last the week right up on top for everyone to see or at least working with Finerman ordering replacement produce, since the company prohibited markdowns on its fruits and vegetables. This was really his office, he made us very aware of that; made us feel uncomfortable whenever we had to use just one of the three desks in it. And he red-circled the check-in numbers of our timecards if we clocked in three minutes late more than once a week or two minutes late more than twice a week and even complained to our department superiors if he thought we were spending too much time in the washroom, which happened to be within seeing distance of his desk overlooking the store, as I guess everything else was, except the stockroom in back, where the staff took their breaks. That was why I was a little jittery and maybe too hesitant when I asked if he’d mind my using the phone to call about Nelson. He said I needn’t bother, he had called himself last night and the hospital said Nelson’s doing satisfactorily and it wouldn’t know of any improvement in his condition for two days. “He has those kinds of burns.”

  “I’d still like to call, if you don’t mind, and find out if he just might have improved overnight.”

  “I never knew you and Nelson were that close.”

  “We weren’t, exactly. I mean, Nelson liked me and me, him and we had lots of respect for each other, as we were both on the company softball team that made the league playoffs two years ago, Nelly at short and me at second.”

  “It’s also that the company’s been complaining to me recently about the excess calls from this phone, and on both exchanges. That they’re completely out of proportion to the excess calls of their other stores. They even sent me a notice to post on the bulletin board, which I haven’t done, because I thought a brief mention of i
t at our next staff meeting might serve as well.”

  “I’m sure they could make an exception with this one.”

  “I’m sure they could, too, if this were the only exception. But I can’t be explaining to them why each excess call of my employees—or at least the calls I find out about, because I’m not always in this office—is an exception. I’d be explaining to them all week, if that were the case.”

  So he wasn’t going to let me use the phone. He didn’t care about Nelson, except that he had to be replaced by a less efficient man at the register and that might lower the day’s profits a fraction of a percentage point and—good God!—how was he ever going to explain that to the company. He didn’t care about the pickers or even his own employees. And if it had been me burned and Nelson who wanted to call the hospital, it would have been the same excuse: excess calls. I said Thank you,” I don’t know for what, and called the hospital from the pay phone in back. Nelson was doing satisfactorily, a woman there said, though chances of his complete recovery wouldn’t be known for at least another day.

  “You see the TV cameras?” Mary Sarah, another food clerk, said when I got back to my section. They’re setting up outside—two of them from different stations. What’re you think they’re for?”

  “Probably to film the scene of yesterday’s bombing.”

  “And the paper today? There was a picture of our market, real as life except for the boards, and another of Nelson, all bandaged up, waving from his hospital bed, although he looked so grim and weak, it seemed maybe strings were making his fingers move. My hubby, Mike, and I talked about it and couldn’t decide what all that degree business meant. Though because third sounds so much the worse over second, we almost agreed it wasn’t, because that would have been too obvious, so we wouldn’t have even considered the question in the first place. Do you have a clue?”