As he approached the fountain, he yelled to the people soaking in the warm sun to get out of the way, and although they didn’t immediately grasp what was happening, they complied. The water in the basin was only two feet deep, but it was enough for Claude to submerge himself.
And it worked. The fleas stopped biting him. They floated to the surface of the water. When Claude saw them there, he moved to another part of the fountain, and for a few seconds just sat.
When he climbed from the fountain, he noticed that the half-dozen people in the small sidewalk park had all moved far away, back behind a row of benches, and stared at him. He moved toward the curb and peered down Chalkstone Avenue, looking for the ambulance. He felt nauseous, so he sat down. He wanted to scratch all over. He began to cry. Before long he was sobbing in the palms of his hands, and although none of the onlookers had left or returned to what they were doing, neither had any approached Claude or spoken to him.
After a few moments the sobbing subsided, and Claude lifted his head. From his spot on the curb, he couldn’t see past the parked cars in either direction, so he saw the ambulance too late to flag it down.
The man in the office must’ve told them I ran to the golf course, he thought.
Claude stood up, walked to his company truck, and, without seeing the ambulance, drove himself to the hospital. To his relief, the nurse at the emergency room took him straight to a private examining room, so he didn’t have to face the people in the waiting area. She helped him onto a table, and asked what happened. When he told her, she said don’t worry, he’d be all right. She brought him a glass of water, took his temperature and blood pressure, and told him not to scratch; a doctor would be in in a minute.
#
Claude’s daydream into the past ended when the order of hot wieners arrived at the counter. Claude paid for it and returned to the Dub.
As he descended the steps, he heard the drunks roaring. When he stepped through the doorway, he saw the men at his table laughing in several positions: tilted back in their chairs, leaning to one side, and flopped on the table in front of them.
“Hey Bugsy,” one shouted. “Got the wieners, Bugsy?”
“Yeah Bugsy,” another yelled. “I’m dying to bite something, Bugsy.”
Everyone laughed. Even the bartender chuckled as he dried mugs behind the rail. Claude put the platter of wieners on the table and the men helped themselves.
“Come on Frank,” Dan said. “Go on with the story.”
“I don’t talk with my mouth full,” Frank said with his mouth full, “and that means someone else will have to do the talking until these wieners are gone. Claude, I told them about how you got bit and went to the hospital and how you had a hard time reading meters after that. You tell the rest.”
Claude shrugged. “There isn’t much to tell,” he said. “My dad didn’t think it was a good idea for me to go back to meter reading right away, so he negotiated an agreement that put me in the stores department. Management made the agreement with him, then got all my dad’s enemies behind closed doors and used it as an example of how crooked he’d become. They convinced his enemies to campaign against him, and he lost the next election by four votes. Ever since then, management’s had the puppets they want at the negotiating table, and the union’s pissed away everything my dad got for it and then some.”
“Hey Bugsy,” Dan said, “your stories aren’t as funny. Let Frank tell how it was.”
“What Claude said is one version of the story,” Frank said in an even voice.
Frank raised a mug. “I think we’ve busted Claude’s balls enough for one night. He’s been a good sport. Here’s to Claude: from now on, may he be bugsy in name only.”
The men smiled, but the mood was broken. The conversation proceeded in other directions. Claude drank, but not heavily. At midnight, he said he was going home early, waved good night, and left.
When he arrived home, only the living room light was on. He crept into the bedroom and undressed. As he crawled under the covers next to his wife, he stumbled into her, causing her to snap around as she awoke.
“Claude?” she said. “Claude. How was the Dub?”
He thought of telling her about Schulke and Monday morning, but decided to wait.
“Good,” he said.
He spooned up beside her, lay his arm around her thick waist, and kissed the back of her neck before falling asleep.
Chapter 4
The next morning, Claude slept until eleven. As he headed to the kitchen to make coffee, he called to Jamie and Joan but received no response. As the water in the coffeemaker gurgled, he heard a faint “Oh, don’t break in half!” and looked out the back window to see Joan on her hands and knees in her small garden, holding two pieces of a plant she seemed to be trying to transfer from pot to soil. Claude smiled and shook his head. He picked the sports page from the kitchen table, poured a cup of coffee, and popped three frozen waffles into the toaster oven.
On the front of the sports page he saw a close-up of a grinning white poodle with a ribbon on its forehead. Once a year, a regional dog show took over West High’s athletic fields. It interrupted the slate of games of a normal springtime Saturday, but provided enough in rental fees to leave the administration at West more than willing to make the necessary accommodations to the schedule.
Hmmph, Claude thought, that’s not sports.
But the picture got Claude to thinking: where’s Jamie? She played yesterday instead of today. I thought she said she didn’t have practice. Where is she?
Claude ate two syrup-drenched waffles and read to page three in the sports section before he put the paper down, walked to the breezeway, and opened the screen door.
“Hey Joan,” he called. “Where’s Jamie?”
“Working the dog show,” Joan shouted from the garden. “Twenty-five dollars for the whole day.”
Claude returned to the kitchen and refilled his coffee mug. Ignoring the paper and the plate holding his third waffle and a puddle of maple syrup, Claude went to the family room and turned on pro wrestling. He’d planned to spend the day with his daughter. She’d made other plans. There wasn’t anything else he wanted to do.
#
At 4:30, Jamie strode through the front door, announced she was home, grabbed a soda from the fridge, and headed for the family room. Claude was watching cartoons and only grunted at his daughter as she entered the room. Jamie flopped on the couch next to her mother.
“How was the dog show?” Joan said.
“Good,” Jamie said. “I worked the concession stand. Those people don’t buy much, so mostly I just watched the dogs do their stuff.”
“Those dogs are so talented,” Joan said.
“Big whoop,” Claude said from his recliner. “So Fido can walk on his hind legs and balance a beach ball on his nose. Big deal.”
“It’s not a circus, daddy,” Jamie said. “They don’t do tricks.”
Claude lifted his legs from the footrest and stretched. “All I know is they should pay you more than $25 for a whole day’s work. That’s only three dollars an hour. It’s slave wages.”
“Maybe,” Jamie said. “But nobody offered me $26 for today, so I’m not complaining. It’ll pay for a movie and leave me a little to stick in the bank.”
“You’re going to the movies tonight?” Claude said.
“Yup.”
“What about cribbage?”
“That’s why I came home,” Jamie said. “Deal ‘em up.”
Claude rose from the recliner and moved to a small card table at the back of the room. Jamie followed. She shuffled a deck of cards and began dealing.
“I saw Mr. Linsky today,” she said. “He said to say hi. His dogs are so beautiful. One of them won something, and you could tell he was so proud.”
“He’s such a nice man,” Joan said.
“He is,” Jamie said.
“He’s a goody-two-shoes,” Claude said. “He’s not a true union brother. Does whatever management
tells him to do. Always makes everyone in his group look bad. Do you know he hasn’t missed a day of work in like five years?”
“What a scoundrel,” Jamie said. “It’s not your crib.”
Claude slid the two cards on the table toward his daughter. “And god forbid you should run into him in the lunch room . It’s always ‘my youngest baby did this’ or ‘my oldest baby did that.’ They’re dogs, for crying out loud. Last fall Nate was telling everybody that his kid won the starting quarterback job at Central, and Linsky jumps in and says ‘well, that’s nothing, my oldest won best in breed and newcomer of the year at the same show.’ I was like, okay fella, time for me to go. See ya.”
“You’re just mad because he reported you for telling dirty jokes that time,” Joan said.
“It’s everything,” Claude said, “with that guy it’s everything. I had five guys rolling on the floor, and he plays all insulted, storming off in a huff. A total dick move. He got the worst of it, though, ‘cause the guys razzed him for weeks once word got around.”
Claude and Jamie played their game, and Joan watched the rest of the cartoon. By the time Jamie had gone upstairs, showered, and dressed, Betty Allen was at the front door to take her to the movies.
Chapter 5
Sunday night, the potential of a morning meeting with Schulke upset Claude’s attempt to sleep.
After he turned out the light, he rehearsed in his head his testimony for the next day. As the story flowed to his liking, Claude lay still. As flaws appeared in the narrative, he changed arms under his pillow or rolled to a different side, curled his knees close to his chest or turned to lay on his back. At times, the silent re-telling of the story lulled him to sleep. Before long, however, he’d be conscious again, seeking the red lights of the bedside clock, estimating the time left to rest if he could sleep it in a single block. He convinced himself the meeting was a certainty.
At 5:45 the alarm rang, and Claude spent five minutes discussing with himself the merits of calling in sick. Pro: It would delay the meeting with Schulke for at least another day. Con: The meeting would eventually come. Con: He would need to devise a new narrative about his false illness (and he was too tired). Con: It was stupid to take a single sick day, but with his less-than-stellar absence history, calling in for a whole week would probably prompt a meeting with Schulke. Con: To call in sick, he had to speak with Schulke.
Claude got up to take a shower.
Hell, he thought, maybe they’ll fire me. Then I can come home and collect unemployment.
Upon arriving at work, Claude went to the line shed for a cup of coffee and a donut. Built in the middle of the company’s main parking lot, the building featured lockers, showers, a television, toilets, card tables, a small kitchen, and an assortment of centerfolds and lewd cartoons. It had no windows. The shower area was reasonably clean, but in some parts of the building one could see footprints in the grime on the floor. Although other members of the Union of Utility Workers were allowed in the common areas of the shed, it was the domain of the line workers, and no lesser member of the UUW dared usurp, infringe upon, or tarnish in any way the clubhouse privileges of a lineman in the shed.
It was also a good place to hear gossip. If Schulke planned to write Claude up, he’d have to alert the union, and word would get around.
Claude passed through the lobby area to the kitchen counter. As he scanned the donut options, he kept himself from interrupting the conversation —apparently about some work incident that happened over the weekend —to feel the linemen out about Schulke. Although he tried to get to work early, he only had about ten minutes before he had to punch in. Still, ten minutes should be plenty of time, he figured, for the current topic play itself out.
He was wrong. Over the weekend, there’d been a flash—a moment when electrical current leaps across open air to reach a nearby conductor—that burned two members of a substation crew and landed the crew foreman, Gino Carbone, in hot water. Gino, Randy Bohenko, and Desmond Curtis were just about to finish a nice overtime shift installing new equipment when two city blocks in Providence lost electricity, forcing dispatcher Buddy Catanese, who had been reading them their switching orders, to put them on hold while he rerouted power to bring as many homes as possible back on line. Buddy said it should take about twenty minutes. But Gino had a hot date and didn’t want to wait.
“Goddamn it,” he said. “Two fucking orders from going home. Close and check closed the 3J21 breaker. Close and check closed the 3J24 breaker. Take down our grounds, and we’re done.”
He reached for the first switch, but Randy grabbed his elbow. “Don’t, Gino. Let’s wait.”
Gino slammed his hardhat to the dirt. “They’re working on shit twenty miles from here. Don’t be such a pussy. What are the chances this will close into a live source?”
As it turned out, there was a one-hundred percent chance that closing the switch would send electricity head-on into more electricity. Gino just didn’t know it. When the flash happened, Gino called all the right numbers —911, dispatch, the on-call supervisor —but when Gino tried to go with his mates to the hospital, the on-call supervisor insisted he accompany him back to the office. Gino panicked. He’d fucked up. Without permission, he’d thrown the switch; his crewmen had burned for his error; their flesh had shielded him from harm. He scrambled to concoct a story to cover his ass, but knew it was futile.
So he became belligerent. Who are you to tell me about safety? I’ve been a crew foreman for fifteen years. You’ve got no goddamned authority to question me. If I hear another word from you I’ll have my lawyer’s foot so far up your ass you’ll have boot marks inside your rib cage. The entire ride to company headquarters it continued. What Gino neglected to consider was that the on-call supervisor had already alerted company brass to the situation, so when Gino saw Feeney standing at the front gate with his arms folded, the rate of his already-sprinting heart doubled again. But the campaign of belligerence seemed to be working, so Gino leapt from the car and screamed the who are you bit in Feeney’s face. Feeney fired him on the spot.
Unfortunately for Claude, the guys at the table recounted the tale at a pace that gave him no natural opportunity to ask if Schulke planned to write him up. As the clock hit seven he punched in, waved to Frank in the cockpit, and shuffled through the pile of invoices he had to enter into the computer. He didn’t see Schulke anywhere. For two hours, he typed material descriptions, purchase order numbers, and activity codes into his terminal so accounts payable could cut checks to various vendors. Despite constant traffic around him, Claude worked uninterrupted.
At nine, he and his coworkers walked to the cafeteria for break. Claude drank his coffee, ate his English muffin, and kept quiet.
After break, Claude still didn’t see Schulke, so he returned to entering invoices. An hour later, Claude convinced himself that Frank’s warning at the Dub was crap. He rose from the computer and mingled with the guys as they moved a shipment of large equipment from the bays to the storage area.
Up in the cockpit, Frank had a half-ton regulator on the line and was inching the crane toward the back wall. When the crane advanced beyond the office in its journey from front to back, Frank noticed Schulke in the doorway. A few seconds later, Frank saw Jim Shepard, the current UUW president, and sounded the horn.
Claude would have liked to have been inputting invoices when the boss arrived, but it hardly mattered. Disciplinary proceedings weren’t the chew-‘em-out, arm-flailing rampages they might once have been. Much like the monotone routine of a Catholic funeral helps subdue the emotional energy of the bereaved, so the bureaucratic procedure of the so-called positive discipline policy aimed to distract and pacify a worker now another checked box closer to unemployment.
Schulke sent for Claude and Scotty, and when they arrived he closed the door behind them, walked across the office, and closed the other door as well. In the middle of the office, a semi-circle of chairs intended for Claude, Scotty, and Shepard faced a singl
e chair meant for Schulke. Shepard greeted Claude and Scotty and sat in an end chair. Claude sat in the middle.
After closing the door, Schulke walked to a brown metal desk in the corner of the office, keeping his back to the three seated men, and opened a worn leather satchel from which he pulled a thin packet of papers. He paused to read the cover page, took a few more seconds to scan the second page, and turned to the third.
Claude wished he had an angle to glimpse the pages. Schulke stood 6-2 and maintained a respectable physique for a man of 57. Seventeen years of climbing utility poles, as linemen did when Schulke was a young man, kept him in athletic condition, though in recent years the paunch invaded his middle to a noticeable degree. From his seat, all Claude could see was Schulke’s gray polyester slacks, his white short-sleeved collared shirt, a few inches of each hairy arm, and the crescent of hairline on the back of his head.
When he finished glancing at the pages, Schulke turned around. He looked each man in the eye. At the silent count of five, he stepped forward and sat down.
“Claude.” he said, “I have a problem.”
Claude hated the way Schulke said that, so mechanical, with that unnatural pause in the middle. Since the beginning of the year, Claude had had a streak of attendance, conduct, and performance problems, so this was the sixth time since January he’d heard Schulke say he had a problem. For the sixth time, Schulke delivered it as though he were a third grader who memorized the line for a Christmas play.
“Excuse me?” Claude said.
“Claude,” Schulke said. “I have a problem.”
Scotty Williams folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. Claude put the fingers of each hand beneath his thighs and leaned forward with his eyes toward the floor.
“On Thursday afternoon, May 18, you were loading truck 317. The work order said to place seven spools of 477 on the truck. You placed five spools of 477s on truck 317, and two spools of one-oughts.”
Although Schulke hadn’t been reading from the packet of papers in his hands, he now looked down and flipped to the next page.
The Jig of the Union Loller Page 4