The Jig of the Union Loller

by Michael Burnham

  As Claude stared into Schulke’s eyes, his own watered up. Although he expected anger to surge through his veins, it didn’t, and the two men faced each other for nearly a minute, one expecting a response, the other devoid of the will to speak. Schulke apparently resolved to stand firm, because he continued his boxer-like gaze even as Claude’s eyes welled. At last, Claude snorted, lowered his head, and left through the door behind him.

  He started toward the bays, but saw Frank wagging a finger at Darezzo, John, and Elton as Scotty stood to the side with his arms folded. Wonder what that’s about, Claude thought. He’d had his fill of harsh words, so he wanted no part of whatever lecture Frank was delivering. He looked up to the nest, then to the office where Schulke sat, then toward the bathrooms. With the back of his hand, he wiped his forehead, and as skin came away from skin, he snapped his wrist in a get-lost motion toward the office and headed toward a pile of empty cardboard boxes near the trash compactor.

  For the next twenty minutes, he ground box after box into the noisy machine and pictured himself playing cribbage with Jamie. After he finished, he moved equipment to the dock and daydreamed about a game of toss with Jamie. When the trucks came in, he unloaded refuse from the trucks as they came in and thought back to the first fish Jamie ever caught.

  Chapter 20

  At the Dixwell Center, Apple Team’s assignment for the day was to assemble hospitality boxes for an upcoming charity golf tournament. Although Debra, Joshua, and Earl worked a steady pace, Millicent almost matched their production by herself. She folded a little white towel, once, twice, three times, and placed it in the upper left corner of the box printed with the club logo. She put two matchbook-like packages of golf tees, one atop the other, in the lower left corner, a ballmark repair kit in the top right corner, a sleeve of balls in the lower right corner, and a dime-sized ballmarker in the middle. She closed the box without disturbing the contents and placed it on a pile to the right of her chair. Next box, next towel. Next packages of tees, next repair kit, next sleeve, next marker. Close the top, put it on the pile. At seven boxes start a new pile. Box, towel, tees, kit, sleeve, marker. Box, towel, tees, kit, sleeve, marker. Hour after hour, day after day, without ever making a mistake.

  No wonder every important job went to Millicent’s team. No wonder businesspeople being wooed into providing work for the center met Millicent first. Millicent the Magnificent, Jamie called her.

  Although Jamie liked all the Apple Team members, Millicent reigned as her favorite. For weeks Jamie couldn’t decide what about Millicent touched her so, until one day she caught Millicent rolling her eyes as one of the members of another team acted up. With that, Jamie realized the truth: Millicent was bright enough to understand she’d been labeled a dummy and placed among dummies. Although in conversation and behavior and I.Q. she fit in better with the staffers than with the lower-functioning clients, the clients, not the staffers, were her peers. She wasn’t like the other clients, yet where they were herded she was herded too. She wasn’t one of them, but she was one of them, the wrong them, and she was just smart enough to know it.

  Earl, on the other hand, annoyed Jamie the most. A thin, hazel-eyed man of 50 with an I.Q. just under normal, Earl rated among the center’s best performers, though his attention-getting behaviors cut his production. Although at the center there was no such thing as a typical background for one of the clients, Earl’s story didn’t stand out as particularly shocking. The day he was born, Earl’s mother had a few too many drinks at a local bar, and when her fellow patrons pressed her for the name of the baby’s father, she decided since she’d soon need a ride to the hospital anyway she’d go the practical route and point to someone with a new truck, underestimating the rage an extended index finger can provoke at such moments. She also neglected to anticipate the single punch that broke her jaw and left her writhing in the floor slush of a smoky bar on a wintery January afternoon. Because of her blood alcohol level, doctors in the delivery room refused to sedate her, so she spent the next six hours trying to scream without moving her mouth, praying for someone to kill her, and cursing the creature ripping its way through her womb. For the better part of a year she made an attempt at motherhood, though the boy’s non-stop wailing drove her back to the bottle, and when Earl still hadn’t walked by his first birthday, his mother began asking houseguests if he looked a little slow. When they agreed he did, she signed him over to the state, which placed him in an underfunded home alongside children with cerebral palsy and autism, children with Down syndrome and encephalitis, children who’d nearly drowned or had slipped off the jungle gym and cracked open their heads on the asphalt below. At that home, Earl learned the art of being retarded. His mother never visited him, and to the employees of the home he was just another boy to discipline, so in Earl’s entire stay not a single person noticed the cunning with which he used bizarre behavior to get his way. When Earl reached eighteen, he graduated to the state’s group home system, and although for the first time social workers noted the correct extent of his abilities, they also agreed he was too far gone, that, yes, with a different upbringing he might have led something resembling a normal life, but, no, even though he was close to normal he was nonetheless retarded, and certainly did not have the capacity to undo all he’d learned over the years and function on his own in society.

  But with a few words of encouragement and an authority figure to keep him focused, Earl succeeded. Jobs that would bore a normal-I.Q. person to the brink of suicide provided just the right challenge for Earl. He earned his pay. He was a good worker.

  Peter Greeley approached the Apple Team table. When Jamie saw him she stood and stepped into the open floor. Peter had an eye doctor’s appointment the next day, and Jamie had agreed to watch his team for part of the morning while it finished an alumni newsletter mailing for North High School. Peter showed Jamie which stickers went with which zip codes, how to bundle papers headed for the same region, and how to log each bundle so the postage would be correctly billed.

  When Jamie returned to Apple Team, Millicent darted her eyes once to her left. “Earl’s putting too many tees in each box,” the thinnish woman with the oddly-shaped head said.

  Jamie turned toward the accused, who scooped three cardboard boxes from the table and concealed them close to his chest. He glanced up at Jamie, and seeing she was looking his way covered his eyes with one hand and shook his head wildly. Jamie waited. When Earl stopped, he looked up, and Jamie smiled at him.

  “Mind if I look?” Jamie said.

  “No,” Earl screeched. “No, no, no. You can’t see them. Please, Jamie, please. Please don’t look at my boxes.”

  Again Jamie smiled. Earl dropped his face to his hands and bawled. Jamie sat in the empty chair next to him.

  “Just put them aside,” Jamie said. “I won’t look in them, I promise, but put them over here in case we run out of tees at the end. The rest of the afternoon I want you to put two packets of tees in each box, okay, because that way all the golfers will have enough when they go play. I won’t look at these boxes, Earl. But at the end of the day I’ll check the last boxes you do to make sure they each have two packets of tees, and as long as they do everything will be all right. All right?”

  Earl agreed. Work continued.

  #

  Jamie had been on board a month when Evelyn Tagaki sent word she wanted to see her. Jamie wondered why. Apple Team seemed to be doing well, though it did take a half day longer than expected to do its last job. Jamie paced. She heard Evelyn bark at a van driver who failed to pick up a new client, and grasped the bottom of her shirt in her left fist. At last Evelyn hung up.

  “Ah, Jamie, come in, come in,” Evelyn said.

  “Is everything all right?” Jamie said in a low voice. “Am I in trouble?”

  “Gracious no,” Evelyn said. “It’s just that you’ve been here a month and I haven’t had time to sit with you. I don’t like to go that long, but sometimes I just can’t help it. Have a seat, have
a seat.”

  Jamie sat. She relaxed the fist, but continued to wear a concerned look.

  “From all reports I get, you’re doing great,” Evelyn said. “On time, here every day, good rapport with the clients. I heard you stayed with Eleanor when her parents were late picking her up, and that’s terrific. We appreciate it. Apple Team has done great under your watch, and the coaches are already comfortable getting their paperwork done within earshot of the group when you’re around. I understand last week you helped Debra take her medication, which for now is a no-no. At some point we’ll get you med certified, but until then it’s too great a risk, because even though I know you can handle it, there’s no sense taking any chances.”

  “It’s just that Debra...”

  “No need to explain,” Evelyn said. She leaned toward Jamie and whispered. “I would’ve done the same thing if I’d been in your shoes.”

  They both smiled.

  “Thanks too for helping out when other job coaches are called away. I understand you watched Peter Greeley’s group when he had a doctor’s appointment. Peter said his team finished two hours early that day.”

  Jamie blushed. She looked at the floor and broke into a smile. Again Evelyn leaned forward.

  “I agree with you,” Evelyn said. “He’s a cutie, that Peter. Why don’t you ask him out? He sure seems to like you.”

  “Me? No. You think? He’s not interested in me. He is cute, though. And very nice. He’s a nice guy. You think he likes me? I don’t see how he could.”

  Evelyn smiled. “What questions do you have for me?”

  “What do you mean?” Jamie said.

  “I don’t know, have you come across anything you’re curious about, or is there anything I can do to make your job easier?

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What’s your favorite thing about the center?”

  Jamie put her knuckles to her lips. “I think I like seeing how excited the clients get when they do well. I never thought they’d have so much ability, and have such personalities. I never came in contact with handicapped people until I started working here.”

  “And what would you do differently?”

  “I don’t know,” Jamie said.

  “Well if you see something,” Evelyn said, “jot it down and leave it for me. People think I know it all, but you’re actually out there working with the clients, so many times you know better than I do what things work well and what things need improving. You’re doing a wonderful job here at the Dixwell Center and we’re very happy to have you. If you need anything, let me know, and I promise not to let a whole month go by before we do this type of review again. Now go have some lunch.”

  Jamie thanked Evelyn and left. At the end of the day she scoured the center for clients who’d been forgotten, but didn’t find any, so she waved good-night to everyone she passed in the hall and whistled Beatles tunes on her way to the bus stop.

  Chapter 21

  Frank Dombrowski’s birthday bash, held the last day of August though he was born the first of September, fell on a Thursday. As they did every year, Ted and Maury, the owners of the Dub, sprang for a Frank-related memento to help mark the occasion, which without fail drew a capacity crowd. This year’s brainstorming session, however, yielded a batch of lousy ideas. Stumped, Maury plucked a dart from the bar and spiked it back into the wood. The flight fell off, and when Maury picked it up, Ted grabbed his wrist. How about flights with Frank’s picture on them? They called and ordered ten dozen. Thursday morning, Ted and Maury, working clockwise from the door, put the Frank flights on every dart sticking from the woodwork.

  Each member of the stores department came to the bash, save Schulke, who wasn’t invited, and John Carrollton, who didn’t go for that sort of thing, and several members of the company’s line, substation, and meter departments also attended. Some guys went straight home after work, dropped off their cars, and arranged to be driven to the Dub for the festivities, since the Dub owners made sure Phil, the backup bartender with the old station wagon, arrived at 11 o’clock to cart home any overzealous partiers.

  Frank held a ceremony to endow the flights with mystical powers, then announced his invincibility at darts—by virtue of the magic flights—and challenged overhead lines to serve him its best representative. Many wagers were made, and much money was lost by Frank’s supporters when Dan Thompson skunked him. But the mood remained festive. Frank regained some honor by defeating Junior in a wiener-eating contest, and the stores department won three of four drinking games concocted by Ted and Maury. Claude won a bottle of Wild Turkey in a raffle, and was a flaccid composition of beer, bourbon, and human elements when Phil handed him to Joan on the Amognes doorstep a little after midnight.

  The next morning, activity in the stores department crawled at a hangover pace. The only quick motion occurred when someone standing under the crane realized he was risking a half-digested wiener and beer shower if Frank couldn’t hold his stomach.

  Claude in particular worked with languor. Headache, queasiness, and exhaustion diminished his enthusiasm for continuing the fine turnaround he’d made at work, plus he took solace in the fact he no longer held the number one spot in Schulke’s doghouse, an honor now owned by Warren Taylor, whose afternoon AWOL in June earned him a written warning, and whose three-day disappearing act in August—he left before lunch on Tuesday and didn’t return until Fridayˆearned him a decision-making leave. One more mistake, in any category, meant the door.

  Though most people at Rhode Island Electric avoided social ties with Warren, Claude liked him, and the two fished together two or three times a summer. After high school, Warren attended college for a couple semesters, but, claiming disillusionment, dropped out and drifted around the country for as long as he could find friends to take him in. Once his friends had all been tapped, he returned home to the only free bed still available.

  In fact, Warren only took the company meter reading exam to get his parents off his back, but had the dual misfortune of a) scoring well, and b) being in a pub when Mickleson called his house with the job offer. His mother sobbed five minutes of thank yous to Mickleson on the phone, so when his parents gave him the message at dinner that night, there was little Warren could do but accept the position. Before long, though, he realized reading electric meters was about the easiest way he’d ever earn a decent paycheck.

  Two weeks before his sixth anniversary at the company, however, Warren blacked out at the wheel of a company vehicle, he maintained, and caused an accident with a driver education car that left a high school girl paralyzed from the waist down. The company doctors found no physical reason for the episode, but to be on the safe side prohibited Warren on medical grounds from driving company trucks in the future. That ended his days as a meter reader, and he landed in the stores department. Once in stores, he realized he’d been wrong about reading meters; stores was even easier.

  Perhaps the bond between Warren and Claude formed because of their shared passion for unions. Warren read everything he could on the history of labor, and frequently cited obscure incidents from the past when discussing the current state of the organized workforce in America. When a union in Rhode Island went on strike and asked for support, Warren joined the picket line, waving an appropriate custom-made sign nailed to a baseball bat, working by day and picketing nights and weekends.

  Though he never held a position in his own union, Warren knew the UUW contract from first letter to final period. People often asked his advice, and rarely pursued grievances which, in Warren’s view, would not succeed, although even in those instances Warren was quick to point out the pain-in-the-ass factor grievances placed on management, and sometimes recommended sure-to-lose grievances on that basis alone.

  This day, Warren noticed Claude’s condition and offered to cover for him if he wanted to go lie down in the Sharon Room, an empty, dirty space on the now-abandoned second floor of the company garage. The room derived its name from a former employee who, legend ha
d it, signed her name in the floor dust each time she treated a coworker to a lunchtime special there.

  “Go ahead,” Warren said. “It’s a little before 9 o’clock now. Take this invoice for engine parts. If Schulke asks for you, I’ll say you went next door to the garage to check an order. I’ll come get you, and you just show him the invoice. If he doesn’t ask, I’ll punch you out at 9:45, and you can punch yourself back in at 10 o’clock.”

  In better health, Claude would have refused the offer, but his body begged him to accept, so he trusted Warren despite the risk. He went to the Sharon Room, spread out on some flattened boxes, and fell asleep. At five minutes to ten, he woke up and saw Warren standing over him.

  “Nap’s over, Bugsy,” Warren said.

  “Schulke looking for me?”

  “No, but it’s almost ten so you’d better get back.”

  Later that morning, Claude returned the favor by treating Warren to lunch. Warren ordered chop suey, while Claude opted for hot soup and cold soda. They discussed the sorry state of the UUW.

  “The problem with Shepard,” Warren said, “is he doesn’t trust his own eyes. If he looked closely at how the top brass acts when there’s a blizzard or a hurricane, he’d realize how much power there is in a work stoppage. When I was a kid, I used to admire electric company workers for their sense of duty. Didn’t matter how nasty the weather was, there they were, trying to restore power. I only learned why after I came here.”

  “Because when the power’s off,” Claude said, “the meters ain’t running.”