The Jig of the Union Loller

by Michael Burnham

  “You know, there really isn’t any excuse for her not bringing the dishes to the sink.”

  Joan stormed out the door and peeled out of the driveway even though she drove an automatic. For Jamie’s sake she tried to keep a calm exterior, but inside she raged. Jamie explained through another gush of tears that she was going to the waves to talk to that little girl playing by herself. Joan explained that Lou doesn’t understand how nice it is to have friends and didn’t mean everything he said. Jamie said she always picks up after herself —or almost always —but this time she forgot. Joan said she knew, she knew what a good girl Jamie was, and she appreciated all the ways Jamie helped her out around the house. She told Jamie not to cry, and to hold her head up.

  For five years, Joan and Connie exchanged Christmas and birthday cards, but despite the many days Joan longed to call her sister, they didn’t speak. The next time Joan heard Connie’s voice she wished she hadn’t: when the Amognes returned from Maine last Memorial Day, a message on the answering machine informed them Lou had died of a massive heart attack. Joan drove straight to Connie’s house and the sisters cried in each other’s arms until the following dawn. Although Connie didn’t expect Claude to attend the wake or the funeral, he showed up for both. At the wake he patted her hand and told her she was always welcome in his home.

  “I wished Lou would’ve at least tried to see things my way,” Claude said, “but you know, that just wasn’t him. These last few years have been hard for Joan. I hope you two will see a lot of each other from now on.”

  Claude hugged his sister-in-law.

  Connie smiled. Claude’s sportcoat needed dry-cleaning, his necktie hung off to one side, his workboots tracked oil residue throughout the funeral home, and his brief remarks weren’t much of a eulogy to Lou Farley, but even so Connie smiled. It beat what she expected. Claude hadn’t offered to fix her up with one of his union brothers, hadn’t spit on the coffin or vomited beneath it, hadn’t shown up drinking a bottle of beer.

  “Thank you, Claude,” Connie said. “I’m sorry it took Lou’s death for us all to realize how much we mean to each other. I’m grateful you’ve come, and once everything settles down I want you to come to the beach with Jamie and Joan. We’ll have a nice dinner. We have a lot of catching up to do, and we have a lot to look forward to.”

  #

  In fact, the idea to invite Connie to Maine on the anniversary of Lou’s death came from Claude, not Joan. In years past Joan complained about Claude and Jamie leaving her alone while they fished, canoed, or played mini-golf. Maybe with Connie around, Claude figured, he wouldn’t have to listen to it.

  Saturday morning was mostly cloudy, though still warm. Claude drove the Buick and Joan sat in the front passenger seat. Jamie sat behind her mother, with Connie seated behind Claude. The radio played, loud enough to hear but not loud enough to stifle conversation between the Knowlton sisters.

  Because Claude and Jamie had taken advantage of a rare Friday night together by playing cribbage until three in the morning, neither offered much in the way of conversation for the early part of the trip. As they drove into New Hampshire, though, Jamie and Claude began to perk up.

  “Daddy!” Jamie said suddenly. “Can I have a beefalo sandwich?”

  “Beefalo, Buffalo, beef beef buffalo,” Claude chanted.

  Jamie chimed in, and Joan too, and the three Amognes sang:

  “Buff buff beefalo, chase me a beefalo. Beef beef buffalo, I see a buffalo. Buff buff beefalo, eat me a buffalo s-a-a-a-ndwich. Or run like hell, hey!”

  At the last word, the three, including Claude at the wheel, thrust their hands in the air and laughed deep laughs.

  “What’s all that about?” Connie said.

  “One time we were driving to Maine,” Jamie said, still giggling, to her aunt, “and back there we saw two buffalos chasing a guy down the street.”

  “Buffalo?”

  “It’s true,” Joan said. “The song kind of evolved over the years. We only go to Maine on Memorial Days.”

  “Forget the song,” Connie said. “I want to hear about the buffalo.”

  “It was pretty funny,” Joan said. “We were driving to Maine after Claude and his buddies had been out drinking all night. There was some game on, and it went into overtime, and when Claude got home he was so drunk he could hardly walk. The next day we were heading to the lake, and he was pretty hung over. Isn’t that right, dear?”

  Claude grinned. “I was begging that morning, that’s for sure.”

  “So Claude’s driving along, and all of a sudden, we see this guy come sprinting out of the trees as fast as he can down the road. And right after him come two huge buffalo, charging hard as can be, raising up dust just like you see in the movies.

  “Well, me and Jamie, we don’t say a word. Then after about five minutes, Claude says, real quiet, ‘Did I just see two buffalo chasing a guy down the street?’ We all started cracking up. Claude thought he’d hallucinated the whole thing.”

  “I did,” Claude said. “That isn’t something you see every day.”

  “What were they doing there?” Connie said.

  “Don’t know,” Joan said. “Maybe part of a hamburger experiment at the university. But there wasn’t any mistaking them. They were buffalo. And they sure seemed mad at that guy they were chasing.”

  Claude rolled his window down a few inches and lit a cigarette. Although he made an effort to keep the smoke from filling the car, Jamie cracked her window too. The four listened as the radio announcer gave the holiday weekend traffic report.

  “Traffic reporter,” Claude said. “Now there’s a job I couldn’t do. I’d be too busy yelling at people from the copter.”

  He held his cigarette like a microphone and deepened his voice. “Traffic is backed up on 95 north this morning because some asshole is doing 45 in the high speed lane. Looks like a gray Saturn, license plate QS-311 —hey, if you’re listening QS-311, you’ve just won your choice of a lifetime supply of bus passes or a thousand-pill jar of amphetamines. Come on, buddy, move that sled.”

  The others in the car laughed.

  “This is Claude Amognes of the Idiot Patrol Copter, reminding everyone that, folks, if you’re gonna get in the fast lane, go fast. Over and out.”

  Again everyone laughed.

  “The job I could never do is flight attendant,” Jamie said. “I couldn’t peddle that junk about the flotation device. I’d apologize, and tell people the only reason I have to pretend a flotation device will save them if the plane goes down is that my bosses are too cheap to give everyone the one thing that could really help: a parachute. Then I’d say real loud, so the pilots could hear: ‘Am I misinformed about the parachute? Do my bosses really expect me to believe that parachutes cause more freefall deaths than they prevent?’”

  “Sure, the parachute will get you to the water,” Claude said, still speaking into his cigarette microphone, “but what will you do when you hit the ocean and don’t have anything to float on? Got you there.”

  Joan laughed loudest. She sat sideways in the front bucket seat so she could see the three others, and occasionally slapped the headrest beside her as she convulsed. Connie laughed too, but without her sister’s zeal.

  “I guess I couldn’t work in a nursing home, either,” Claude said. “I mean, changing a baby is one thing —they’re so cute and little, what can they really do? But the idea of a hundred and sixty pound octogenarian grunting into his Depends —that one I’ll leave to someone else.”

  “That’s gross,” Joan said, as Jamie chortled in the back.

  Before long the quartet reached its exit, and Claude pulled off the highway. He swung into town to pick up the cabin key from the owner, Armand Fecteau, and headed up Route 5 for the half-hour drive to the lake.

  “So Claude,” Connie said, “how’s everything at Rhode Island Electric?”

  “It sucks. The place has really gone to hell.”

  “Oh?” Connie said. “How so?”

&nb
sp; “If I could retire, I’d do it in a heartbeat, but I’ve got another twenty years in that rathole. Some days I don’t know how I make it. Management walks all over us, and the union doesn’t do a thing to stop them. It’s all screw the working stiff. The bosses bust balls on everyone they don’t like and lay easy on their pets. It would make my father sick, rest his soul. We break our backs and get squat to show for it.”

  “Now Claude, it can’t be that bad,” Connie said.

  Joan tightened her face and gave a miniscule head shake to her sister. It was too late.

  “It is that bad,” Claude yelled. “It’s our union. It’s supposed to be for us. It’s not supposed to be about a few guys who cozy up to management and get everything they want and to hell with everyone else. You leave your shoe untied nowadays and you’re getting a written warning and a lecture from the boss, while the union guy who’s supposed to protect you is sitting there smiling and nodding his head. We need a union to save us from our union.

  “And my boss is the worst of them all. He used to climb poles, play softball, just like us, but then he got the calling, and lordy lordy, now’s he’s converted to the other side. Doesn’t know shit one about being a manager, so he comes off extra tough so the dumb ones think he’s got everything under control. God forbid someone smiles at work. Oral warning. Someone tells a joke. Written warning. Someone’s hardhat is tilted two degrees. He’s a skunk. He deserted his union brothers for a few extra bucks and can’t look anyone in the face because of it, at least those of us who were around then, and he’s out to get anyone who refuses to bow down and kiss his holy ass, especially me, because of who my father was and because he knows I’ll never forget that he scabfinked on the brothers he should have stood by forever.”

  Jamie, Joan, and Connie spent the next few minutes gazing out the windows. Claude realized he’d gone too heavy.

  “So that’s how it is at Rhode Island Electric,” he said, smiling a little, using the rear-view mirror to make eye contact with Connie.

  Soon they turned onto a dirt drive, a root-stricken, quarter mile trail Claude negotiated slowly. Near the end of the drive, the heavy woods gave way to a large open space, populated by just enough pine trees to keep the ground thinly carpeted with pine needles and most of the area shaded even on the sunniest days. The open area lay on top of a ridge surrounding the lake, and had several practical uses, including parking lot, whiffle ball diamond, and basketball court, though it was difficult to dribble near the baskets because of the soft ground and thick roots.

  From the ridge, one could see the roof of the cabin, built into the ridge, and the lake beyond. The property sported a gray wooden patio with a red rail and a brick and mortar barbecue pit. Between the cottage and the patio a cement stairway, painted yellow by the owner, Armand Fecteau, descended from the ridge to the dock. Because of the steep drop from the ridge to the water, on its lake side the brown cabin rested on a twelve-foot high foundation, which Armand also painted yellow. Viewed from the water, the yellow wall screamed for attention amid the earthtone background of scrub and pine and made the cabin easy to spot even from a considerable distance.

  Claude unlocked the door and helped his wife, daughter, and sister-in-law transfer the weekend’s provisions from the car to the cottage. The back door opened to an L-shaped space housing the kitchen and living room. Two small bedrooms, one containing a bathroom, lay off the kitchen, and a third bedroom, used by Claude and Joan because it afforded more privacy, lay off the living room. Through a thick red door a porch, as wide as the cottage, with tall windows, a built-in day bed, and an assortment of easy chairs and sofas, overlooked the lake. The Amognes preferred the porch to any other room in the cabin.

  The cottage had no telephone, no shower or bathtub, and no indoor heat, though the gas stove warmed the place well enough if Joan baked three or four pies and kept the porch door closed. A small gray table and four metal chairs with red vinyl seats stood in the center of the kitchen area, while the living room section boasted a ratty green couch and a scuffed-up rocking chair with an orange seat cushion. On the walls hung wooden plaques inscribed with scatalogical humor and downeast witticisms about lake-in-the-woods living.

  #

  Claude first came to the cottage as a boy. Armand Fecteau, a UUW official from a utility in Maine, met Jackie Amognes at a national convention and offered him the cabin at a reasonable rate for two weeks every summer. Back when Claude was nine, there were few cabins and many loons on what was considered a large, peaceful lake. Now there were few undeveloped lots and no loons. On summer weekends, motorboats and jet skiers crowded the lake, and parties echoed over the water late into the night. Residents who summered there for the tranquility had long since sold and left.

  Not that Jackie Amognes or Armand Fecteau treated the place like a monastery. In those days, Armand also owned a cottage two lots down, and if Jackie and Gail weren’t visiting Armand and Blanche, Armand and Blanche were visiting Jackie and Gail. Most nights they played cards for pennies and nickels, drinking as they played, laughing, listening to scratchy records until one or two in the morning, interrupting the games on the warmest midnights to shed their clothes and hop in the lake, sometimes as a nightcap, sometimes to refresh themselves for a few more hours at the porch table. At Jackie’s funeral, Gail told Armand the two weeks she and her husband spent at the lake were always his favorite days of the year.

  Claude remembered nights at the lake less fondly than his parents did. For him, nights consisted of watching other people play cards, listening to baseball alone in his room, or going to the other cabin and sitting through whatever television programs Armand’s two daughters, one Claude’s age and one four years older, had on the dial. For him, daytime was the fun time, the time he could swim, take boat rides, or go fishing.

  In fact, Claude traced his lifelong love of fishing back to his very first year at the lake. Jackie met Armand at a convention in April, and arrived home from the convention not only with news of a new vacation spot but also with a fishing pole for his boy. From April until the day they left for Maine, Claude practiced fishing in the back yard, hooking flowers, leaves, and the back of his own head twice, but even the occasional self-catch didn’t dissuade him from casting and reeling and casting and reeling again. When they got to the lake, Claude spent the first two hours running around, trying out the water and the tire swing, bouncing on his bed and teasing spiders in the bathroom. But once the Amognes had settled in, Jackie told Claude to come to the dock and bring his fishing pole. He strapped a bulky orange life preserver around Claude and lifted him into the metal rowboat, put in the poles and a pail of worms, climbed in himself, and rowed toward the center of the lake.

  “Go ahead, Claude,” Jackie said, “see if you can get the worm on the hook.”

  Claude picked a nightcrawler from pail and stabbed the hook through it. Jackie laughed.

  “No, no,” he said, “you have to rip the worm in half, then slide it onto the hook so there isn’t any metal showing. That way the fish can’t see any hook. They only see worm, and my does it look yummy. Here, let me show you.”

  Jackie took the worm from Claude’s hook, tore it in two, and crammed the hook into its innards.

  “See? It isn’t hard. And make sure you leave part of the worm off the end of the hook. That way, it’ll wriggle around a little and the fish will be more likely to see it.”

  Claude butchered his first attempt, but Jackie encouraged him to try again. Claude tossed the worm mush into the water, and as he reached into the pail to extract another crawler he heard a minute splash.

  “Hear that?” Jackie said. “Hear that? That worm wasn’t in the water two seconds and a fish jumped up and grabbed it. Oh boy, they’re going to be biting today.”

  Sure enough, within five minutes after Claude’s line hit the lake a fish bit. Claude jerked the reel a little too hard and the fish got away, but Claude rebaited quickly and got his line back in the water. His father got the next bite. A
s the line clicked away, Jackie looked to his son and winked.

  “Reel him in, dad.”

  “I will. But first I want to make sure he’s hooked.”

  When he was sure, Jackie cranked, slowly at first, then faster. As the line wound thick on the reel and the small bass came into view a few yards away, Jackie put both hands on the grip and yanked the fish out of the water, ripping it clean into the air and smack in the middle of the boat. The bass flipped around the boat as Claude and Jackie laughed. At last Jackie caught the fish and held it up to Claude.

  “Sometimes you can get the hook out easy, see, but sometimes you have to rip it through the fish’s lip. Don’t worry, though, it doesn’t hurt him.”

  The hook removed, Jackie handed the bass to Claude.

  “Just a little one,” he said. “Whaddya think, five inches, maybe six? Hardly worth the bother. Throw it in the tub and let’s get on to the next one.”

  Claude did, and before long had his own bite. He turned the reel, but when he went to heave, Claude pulled too hard and stumbled backward as the fish flew over the boat. With the hook firmly imbedded, however, Claude simply turned toward the other side of the craft and reeled the bugger in again. This time he reached over the side and got it with the net, then suddenly looked to his father to see if he’d done something wrong, but Jackie nodded his approval and Claude lifted the net and dumped the fish on the floor of the boat.

  “I think he swallowed my hook,” Claude said.

  “So cut him open and get it. You’ve got a knife. Use it.”

  Claude did, with Jackie guiding his cuts. He retrieved the hook, rebaited it, set the dead fish in the tub, and cast again. Father and son fished the entire afternoon, returning to the cabin with smiles on their faces.